Donning a black mini skirt, pointy steel-toed boots, and a chic leather jacket draped over a tank top, Dilnawa Kizghin ’25 exudes confidence. Topped off with gold accessories and pops of red in her nail color and earrings, Kizghin uses fashion as a way to both empower and express herself. Primarily inspired by her older sister, Kizghin uses both comfortable and experimental styles to show who she is and who she aspires to be.
Kizghin’s style is a culmination of many influences and inspirations, the greatest being her older sister. While she used to dress almost exactly the same as her sister, Kizghin has begun to branch out and find her own style throughout the years. Beyond her sister’s influence, Kizghin’s style is a mix of her culture and heritage. Having inspiration from other sources has helped her find different ways to style outfits and approach fashion.
“I’m inspired by my older sister. I’m literally her carbon copy. I just grew up stealing clothes from her closet and just copying her style. I’ve been able to deviate a little bit from her style, so now we’re a little bit different. But still 100 percent, she’s the core of my inspiration. One of my cousins is a fashion designer, and he has had a lot of influence on how I choose my outfits. My style is really influenced by my family and my heritage. I would say it’s classic [and] traditional,” said Kizghin.
When putting together her outfits, Kizghin takes an intentional and thoughtful approach, stressing color cohesion and assembling staple pieces together. With many curated pieces that she loves, Kizghin builds outfits according to what she will feel most confident wearing, noting her boots, love for the color red, and skirts as items she defaults to.
“Each outfit has its own theme, and there’s usually kind of a color cohesion… I center my outfits around one color or one vibe. I have a lot of different favorite outfits, but what makes them my favorite is that I wear a color or a piece of clothing that I feel really confident in or an article that I really do love. For example, if I were to wear my steel-toed boots with a dark red tank top and a black miniskirt or something like that, that’s an outfit I know I love just because I love those different articles of clothing,” said Kizghin.
A unique tradition of Kizghin is dressing up in her best outfits on Mondays while using the other days of the week to experiment with different styles. This began with advice from one of her friends, who took advantage of Monday’s packed schedule with all classes to show off her favorite styles.
“One of my old friends… she graduated, but one time she told me that Mondays are the days that you see everyone because you go to all your classes. Your Monday outfits must always be spectacular. So I always took that piece of advice with me even after she left. That’s how I make sure that my most creative, my best outfits are on Mondays or at the beginning of the week. And as we go on, maybe I’ll experiment with something new, like a chill Friday where not really that many people see me,” said Kizghin.
For Kizghin, her classic and chic fashion is a significant part of her confidence. Dressing up in clothes she feels most confident in helps her to feel assured, sometimes trading comfort for confidence during the school day. The confidence Kizghin gains from fashion has also allowed her to branch out to other forms of artistic expression that now define her identity.
“[Fashion] is really important to me because I have this belief that if you look good, you feel good, and you do good. So, when I’m going into a test, I make sure to wear an outfit I really do like. It doesn’t matter if it’s comfortable or whatever. I know as long as I feel good, I’ll be confident, and I’ll do well. Just the way that fashion makes me feel confident… has developed my love for creativity and for art in general. That’s an outlook and a perspective that I’m gonna carry with me for the rest of my life,” said Kizghin.
