September is an inscrutable month.

Around here, it tends to be the best month of the year-gorgeous sunsets, gently sunny days, fewer children scuttling about. It is the time Seattleites start bolstering their daily layers (though after this summer it will be hard to tell where the so-called summer stops and the fall begins).

For some, now is time for back-to-school, also signaling the fall fashion blitz. It's time to bolster the fall wardrobe and batten down the hatches for the months ahead of rain. (Isn't there a saying, "Seattle girls don't use umbrellas unless it's really raining"?) This time of year, the media further saturate us in the marination (merry plus nation) of looks, styles, trends, and event-lets. Everything from the whole "Fashion Rocks" syndicate to the bombardment of back-to-school shopping propaganda.

The cycle begins in early childhood, with back-to-school haircuts, shopping trips, photos and the like (which, whether a child is present or not, or cognizant of it or not, tends to shape them from that point forward). The cycle speeds up with reaction from the kids at school as things begin to matter, more and more. Then there is middle school. Then, there is high school. And one cannot survive by sweats alone at Uni...

Or, there is the uniform option. Either the imposed uniform (i.e. school-type) or the socially chosen one (i.e. the clique uniforms, such as Goth, Wall Street, bicycle messenger, or the like).

For fashion-focused folk, the molding continues per annum with a grandiose September issue of Vogue or maybe FHM, GQ, etc. We all know the onslaught of glossy guidebooks for girls and boys. For the freaks' sake there are even TV shows focused on style and "what not to wear" now, what is hot, what is haute, and what is not. Or, knot.

In le grand scheme of things, formidable and triumphant fashion experiences form fashion experience, collectively forming your dress sense. Memorable scenarios-like when you got your first tube skirt, high heels, three-piece power suit or training bra-are coming-of-age, remember-where-you-were-when, rite-of-passage kinds of things. The first time you shopped on your own or when you found a particular shop, look, or guru. Or moments like when you were wearing the same outfit as another.

v The cyclical nature of fashion exacerbates this too. For example if you had a bad experience with and/or in a certain fashion when it resurfaces these emotions are aroused. Oh, and it will come back.

Hot highlights for this year's B-to-S are metallics. Look for the light of silver to color the standards-skirts to silver lame form-fitting pants to ties and accessories to those omnipresent flats. Look for the era of flirty dresses to be reined in by formfitting trouser suits. In keeping with the '80s, see stripes slither, bold bright colors galore, and bold accessories. Explore. For fun and to get ya'll thinking, here are a few stories from folk who remember their fashion-phobia formations, things that stick out in their minds about back-to-school fashion:

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"You mean high school... I remember that first day, September 1979, I showed up in my white, flare-leg desperados from Britannica and everyone else was wearing 501s. That was the year the flare leg died.

-Dan Leary, Lava Lounge

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"Oh I remember mine. It was the beginning of seventh grade, just a few days before I was to start my first day at junior high (that is what we called it back then). I'd crashed my bike-resulting in a line of stitches on my chin and a lot of scab-age. I was so upset. My mom felt so bad for me. She said, 'I'll take you to the salon and we'll get you any hairdo you like.' The problem was we went to her hairdresser and I ended up with a beehive and the stitched-up, scabby chin in my school picture. Oh, I still remember it."

-KT Moon, Mercer Island

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"The girls in my school (Bellevue High) kept their distance, but going to downtown Seattle on the weekends was three solid nights of Trouble and Girls and some of the best times I've ever had downtown and on Capitol Hill. I tried to look like Richard Butler from the Psychedelic Furs in the picture (see photo), taken the first day of tenth grade, in 1984, but really it was more a prototype for the baby dyke hair cuts of today. I was so ahead of my time

-Michael of Ballard

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"The fashion disasters that stick out most in my mind are some of the guys' haircuts from our high school [Liberty High, 1988-1991]. Most memorable was ML's* 'do.' It was a sort-of extreme variation of the 'spike-y' look of the era. For his version, he'd gelled up the hair along the side-part to such a degree (and length) it looked sort of like a circular saw blade coming out of his head. Then there was MH. One of those who thought he was the too cool for school, literally. I remember him showing up with a page boy [seriously] one day [think Ralph Lauren meets the Dutch Boy]. We laughed so hard. He a senior and us just freshman. His only comeback was that soon EVERYONE would be wearing it like... And, don't even get me started on the Coalfield mullets..."

-Calista, Alki Beach (Names have been abbreviated to protect the guilty.)

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"Oh I pretty much always hated having to go back-to-school and do the clothes and all that. My mom would take me shopping, in the Tri-Cities. But there was one year I remember getting something I liked. I was so excited I put it all on the night before. Slept in my clothes and was ready to go in the morning."

-The Reverend David Vernon Groh, aka Cab-Elvis, Waikiki

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"Lately I've been suffering bouts of insomnia, as well as nightmares, headaches, nausea, vomiting, lightheadedness, tingling in the extremities, and an inability to choose the right tie. I'm having flashbacks of going back to school.

I'll admit that symptoms have grown more manageable over the fifteen years since my last year of college. At one time, my symptoms included heart palpitations and ringing in the ears. Back in junior high, I also suffered cold sweats, constipation, and bouts of involuntary and inappropriate arousal. The trauma, as far as I can reconstruct it, occurred as a result of not knowing what to wear the first day of school. Many people don't realize that in order to create the newest fashions, the fashion industry relies on what young people are doing with their clothes. When you're young, you rely on word-of-mouth to know what to wear, and you are privy to that word-of-mouth by knowing who is in-the-know.

I never knew these people. I still don't. Choosing what to wear the first day of school was always a crapshoot, or like being told you had a test tomorrow to study for without being told whether it was in history, math, English, biology, or social studies. And invariably I would arrive the first day to be given the cold shoulder by Nancy Trobridge-and could you believe that was really Nancy?-because I was wearing the wrong style of Levi's, and had the wrong band on my T shirt, and wore the wrong Nikes, and the wrong haircut. Even my slang was 'soooo last year.' And where had I been all summer? Might as well have been Siberia, or the Galapagos Islands. Prospecting on Mars maybe.

I still have nightmares of sitting behind Nancy Trobridge, and suffering another bout of involuntary and inappropriate arousal just when Mrs. Halverson is calling on me. 'David, would you please stand up now and read the next paragraph?'"