I’ve really enjoyed reading everyone’s interpretations of Persona this week. I don’t ever use Persona consciously as a keyword, but a few years ago I did some work on my re-occurring “style characters” and made the top half of this collage for my style book. The description for the Melburn-out (combination of Melbourne and burn-out) was as follows: dark colours inspired by the cityscape; playful in a sarcastic way; layers, grunge and badass vibes. 

At the time the other style characters I listed were “coastal cool kid”, “outback wanderer”, “tropigoth” and “regal usurper”. I use coastal and tropigoth more in the summer months but I’ve moved away from the outback wanderer character as I’ve moved away from that environment. Now I live on the outskirts of my home city again I’m more drawn to that Melburn-out character than ever. 

The bottom half of the slide shows outfits from the past 6 months that fit that character too, but with more refinement of the concept. Being in the correct climate helped realise that vision of layers and I’ve collected more pieces which meet the grungey criteria than I did when I was first exploring this character. 

Slide 2 is an outfit from the weekend for a gig at a local venue to see an old local band. I was hoping they’d play their late 90s cover of [A Hazy Shade of Winter](https://youtu.be/rRAxKu3neQM?si=_bM51vjFtvFlLt7K) so I decided to manifest it by channelling a wintery skate-punk vibe. I wanted to make the most of wearing my cool tights as I’d booked a calf tattoo for the next day and won’t be able to for a while. Lots of layers for punching darts in the smokers area because the forecast was 2c overnight, but the venue gets very warm inside so I needed versatility. The reoccurring stripes in the beanie, gloves and tights made me happy and I felt like a proper Melburn-out. 

Evolution of a Persona