Chris and fashion

"Oh yeah, you just love to see me in my- in the old red, white and blue."

- Chris to Kacey

Christian Weston Chandler has a somewhat peculiar taste in fashion. Although he is willing to spend thousands of dollars on video games, toys, and sex dolls, Chris is very stingy when it comes to shopping for his clothes, which are usually purchased secondhand at thrift stores like The Salvation Army and Goodwill. Prior to coming out as transgender, the majority of shirts he owned were colorful collared shirts and undersized rugby shirts - most of which were decorated with horizontal stripes, which, despite being scientifically proven to have a slimming effect, have any such potential effects crushed by Chris's impressive physique. Mailbag 42 revealed that at least one of these shirts (the "Advice Dog") was purchased by his mother. Though his mother didn't directly dress him anymore, Chris still chose to wear these shirts. The advent of Chris's transgender shift was accompanied by a change to garb that may have been more feminine but was equally cheap and hideous.

Childhood


In his youth, Chris set the general tone for years to come with many striped polos, T-shirts, and khaki pants. The only difference compared to adulthood is that he sometimes dared to wear single-colored shirts with his favorite game and television characters on them. The only articles of clothing he was seen in until the summer of 2010 that didn't follow the "long-sleeved, colorful clown suit" theme were the yellow Pokémon T-shirt that he owned since he was 19 and a Sonic Heroes T-shirt he wore throughout 2004. They did not look particularly good on him.

Trademark clothing


This is the original and most iconic look of Chris, the standard until mid-2011. It is a look immortalized in his comic book self-insertion. His outfit usually consisted of:
 * His favorite shirt, a Ralph Lauren Rugby Stripe Sueded Polo, which was so tight that it accentuated his voluptuous, masculine bosom. This is the shirt that Chris almost invariably drew himself wearing in the comics. Trolls came to call it the "clown shirt" or "The Classic". It was thought destroyed in the 2014 fire that gutted the Chandler house, but later resurfaced for sale in 2017, when Chris listed it for a minimum price of $12,000 due to the Financhu Crisis. He had found it in a bag of damp, moldy clothes, wet from the water the firefighters had used to extinguish the flames when his house burned three years prior. He washed it, and then wore it for the first time in years when he uploaded Live Game Stream - C-Log 04192017 - The Shirt. The shirt was thrown out by Barb in mid-2018 - since then, Chris has worn a similar-looking shirt, with orange stripes instead of red.
 * A t-shirt undershirt, typically white.
 * His medallions (sporadically) and his High School Ring.
 * A pair of pedo-glasses attached to a chain.
 * Jeans or khaki slacks. Chris's jeans typically defined his rear end to a disturbing level — he may have been wearing women's jeans, or he may have been simply wearing pants his gut long ago outgrew.
 * The Belt Buckle of Fail.
 * Alternatively, a green terrycloth bathrobe with a mismatched (of course) black belt on occasions when he's in the mood for recycling, or when even getting dressed would involve too much stress.
 * On occasion, a dark suit jacket, perhaps for funerals or church.
 * During the winter months, a dark blue parka with orange and yellow stripes to enhance visibility.
 * Starting in late 2009, a bra to keep his previously mentioned bosom in check.

The "IBA" outfit
In mid-June 2009, roughly around the time he made certain friends, Chris temporarily decided that his current look was old-hat. He got rid of many of the striped shirts (mostly because he couldn't fit into them anymore) and grew a goatee.

The reformed Chris's wardrobe consisted of:


 * A plain-colored T-shirt worn over a long-sleeved shirt.
 * Tattoo sleeves.
 * A black vest (unbuttoned) that was too small for his girth.
 * A dog tag worn around the neck as a substitute for the medallion.
 * A goatee.
 * Sunglasses over normal glasses (the glasses chain remains)

His new attire was first properly presented to the world in the Rollin' and Trollin' video.

Soon afterward, however, he went back to sporting his traditional clown shirts and claimed that he had been pressured into making the Rollin' and Trollin' video. However, on the same day he shaved his beard, he drew the first picture of Collosal Chan, a character which preserved the look for all eternity.

The "Gay Trucker" outfit


After he promised to leave the Internet in the spring of 2010, Chris threw away his clown shirts, ditched the medallion for several months (it returned in September), and picked up a new wardrobe in an attempt to look like a normal person. This included:


 * A denim jacket from Goodwill that he cut the sleeves off of, making it look somewhat like a gilet.
 * A sleeveless white shirt, exposing his pale, flabby upper arms.
 * The dog tag from his IBA outfit.
 * A baseball cap.

The result was a modified version of the IBA outfit. It has been observed that when Chris tries to look like a bad boy, he ends up looking like a gay trucker, hence the trolls' term for his new wardrobe.

The only way he could have made it look gayer would have been by combining it with his muscle bra. Which, unfortunately, he did. And in public. At this point, going back to the medallion would have actually improved his chances of picking up gal-pals.



With the arrival of the gay trucker outfit also came an interest in T-shirts that boldly expressed Chris's desire for sex, often in exceedingly tasteless ways. The first clear look at one of these shirts was in a profoundly disturbing video leaked in late April 2010 which featured Chris wearing a parody shirt that changed the Mountain Dew logo so it read "Mount and Do Me". Fans hoped that since this was a private video for a potential sweetheart, Chris didn't intend to dress like that outside his bedroom. Alas, Chris destroyed any hope of that being the case on 18 June 2010 when he wore a shirt that said "Enjoy Vagina" to Fridays After Five – a public, family-oriented concert. He topped this by pulling that shirt over his head and standing around in his muscle bra, on which he had written: "WANT WOMAN!". The common belief was that these unfunny, sexually-themed shirts were the next evolution of the attraction sign, a way for him to inform potential mates that he is available without ever having to talk to people, nor spend any effort in making a sign.

In late August 2010, Chris returned to the Internet with a series of videos in which he sported simple, loose-fitting T-shirts. The effect was interesting, bringing him closer to normality than he'd been in many years. He was still a pale, sweaty, balding, fat, pathetically weak manchild, but in Ruckersville, that put him reasonably close to the mainstream.

A number of Chris's T-shirts appear to have been with him for a decade or more – a Manchester High shirt, a souvenir shirt from the BrickFest event in 2000, and a Pokémon trainer shirt from the Books-a-Million where Chris played card games between 1998 and 2000. Either he's willing to keep shirts that have some personal significance around for a very long time, or his packrat tendencies prevent him from throwing any of them away.

The Carlos Chantor outfit


A single picture of Chris posing as a male prostitute was posted on Escorts.com. It is significant because it implies that Chris can dress like a normal human being if he wants to remain inconspicuous.

The black shirt and sunglasses he is wearing are never seen in any later pictures.

Early fashion


In April 2011, a series of leaked pictures showed Chris dressed in women's clothing in public. This outfit consisted of:


 * Bright green nail polish
 * Earrings (a purple glass stud and a blue ring) - Note that piercing the right ear is traditionally code for homosexuality; guess which one Chris pierced twice?
 * Women's sandals
 * Blue eye shadow
 * Jeans
 * Blue string top
 * Black thong
 * A silver ring (Note that silver rings have been used to symbolize a pledge of abstinence until marriage)
 * A red and blue sweater vest (tank top) with a red shirt underneath it
 * Red lipstick
 * A new pair of glasses
 * A new head-band (as seen in the Facebook pictures)

While not seen in the leaked images, Chris's posts in Tomboys And Tomgirls of Virginia revealed he also donned skirts and panties as part of his new look. In September 2011, Chris was also photographed carrying a purse.

Chris was very happy with his new fashion choices, but friction with his parents made it difficult for him to wear makeup and women's clothing overtly. Sometimes he had to change after leaving the house or before returning (but he could always wear a bra and panties).

Late fashion
Chris continued to wear female clothing, albeit with some refinements, over the course of the next couple of years. Although he has long since dispensed with the clownish polo shirts and jeans, many characteristics of his tomgirl wardrobe are remarkably consistent with the way he dressed when he still wore men's clothing, especially in terms of color coordination and clothing size. He also remains committed to buying all his clothes from thrift stores, giving him the appearance of a dumpy bag lady. He summarized his style in November 2014 as "colored leggings, denim skirts mini to knee length, bold colored shirts and blouses". Some of the most frequent themes in his feminine fashion choices are:


 * Clashing, violently-opposed colors (particularly red with blue or green)
 * Clothing far too small for him
 * Dresses or skirts with very high hems
 * Leggings, to help with tucking
 * Sports bras
 * Big, floppy, church-lady hats
 * Eye makeup, applied poorly and usually purple or blue in color

A deviation from this style was seen in the video of the 26 December 2014 incident, where Chris is shown in purple My Little Pony shades, (probably as a disguise); a silver headband, showing off his ever-receding hairline; his Manchester High sweatshirt; short jeans matched with long, purple socks and/or another pair of pants; and boots (possibly Uggs).

The fact that Chris wore skirts and makeup for each of his court hearings in 2015, even those to which Barb accompanied him, suggests that he consistently dresses this way in public, and that his mother has come to grudgingly accept her son's transgender attire.

In 2015, Chris also started dying his hair blue, but predictably failed to do it properly, and ended up dying it an ugly, seaweed green instead. Combined with his wardrobe that manages to somehow simultaneously resemble the attire of a 5 year old girl and a 65 year old cat lady, the resulting look has been sardonically referred to by Kiwis as "mermaid grandma".

Gopnik outfit
In December 2017, Chris appeared in a video dressed as a classic Russian gopnik, wearing a striped black Adidas tracksuit jacket (with his usual ugly skirt) and cap, drinking a bottle of vodka. The full ensemble, as Chris wore for his famous appearance at MAGfest in January 2018, consists of the cap, jacket (often unzipped over another shirt), and a pair of matching tracksuit pants (often under a skirt). However, he often swaps out the pants, and sometimes wears one element of the outfit on its own. Chris first wore the Gopnik outfit under the Idea Guy's influence but seems to have adopted it as a mainstay of his wardrobe. In February 2018, he introduced a new model of the Christine Doll with the tracksuit's stripes and logo painted on. In April 2018, Chris drew himself in the Gopnik outfit on the cover of Sonichu #17.

The Vinyl Scratch


“The Vinyl Scratch” is a white tube skirt with a double whole music note. In 2015, Chris attended OmegaCon cosplaying as DJ pon3, nicknamed Vinyl Scratch by fans, from the My Little Pony: “ Equestria Girls” franchise, the whole note resembling her cutie mark in her pony form. However, after the convention, Chris would continue to wear the skirt that came with the outfit almost daily, likely not washing it very often, up until his arrest.

"Breathe It In"
The Breathe It In shirt is an Athletic Works Walmart-brand women's top frequently worn by Chris beginning in mid-2018. He explained his attachment to the shirt in a tweet, commenting that "the message is always relative to the daily life and situations: “Breathe It In”."

Headgear
Since 2017, Chris has increasingly started wearing various tiaras (alongside his Sonichu Medallion) for his shenanigans both indoors and out.

Chris on fashion
In November 2016, Chris posted a commentary on women's fashion.

In it, Chris implored women to wear skirts with leggings instead of pants, saying to "view it from a pervert's perception: they eye downward and have Good view of the in-between, as well as easier access to picture it in their imaginations from there. With a dress or skirt concealing the area, it is actually more difficult for the perv, and, thus, more difficult to picture and imagine what is or isn't at the groin area."

He also requested men to consider wearing kilts - stressing to wear pants underneath, saying, "NOBODY is impressed with that bulge; moreover, it is Absolutely Offensive," which indicates that Chris has shifted from obsessing over men's chests to obsessing over their crotches.

Several photographs of Chris taken in early 2019 show him wearing an orange, white and blue striped shirt, including an eyewitness photo of him at a Target store.

Theory of fashion
The clothes that Christian chooses seem almost like a costume for him, especially his infamous striped shirt. Given that he is autistic, observers speculate that he may have difficulty with identifying things visually, including himself. In Sonichu #7, he alluded to having to take time to study his appearance in a mirror, possibly wearing the shirt in question.

Chris seems to regard clothing and color as an integral part of people's identities. During the events of the Liquid Saga, Chris took a special interest in Liquid's choice of a brown striped shirt, referring to Liquid as a "Brown-Striped Impostor" and fixating on Liquid's shirt as a symbol of his inauthenticity, despite the fact that Chris owns several brown shirts himself. Chris also believed that police officers wearing brown or beige uniforms weren't authentic, and that true police officers only wear blue. He referred to the man he pepper sprayed as a Yellow-Shirted Foe – and let's not forget that the macing was inspired by Sega changing Sonic's arms from tan to blue.

Like many of his lifestyle changes that occurred during the Tomgirl Saga, Chris's unceremonious abandonment of his classic shirts came as a surprise to trolls who had spent years speculating on Chris's clothing as a symbol of his identity, and his usual resistance to change as a symptom of his autism. However, even in retrospect, Chris seems to hold the clothes he used to wear in very high regard as a symbol of his identity and legacy, as shown when he listed "The Classic" on eBay for a whopping $12,000. Writing after the end of the auction, Chris felt the need to commemorate the occasion with some words:

"Yes, the shirt's auction has ended high, but I am still awaiting payment from the mother of one of my fans, who, unless remains anonymous, will have her name go down in History for not only restoring a very Iconic Artifact but also improves this artist's family's life, After the restoration and disinfection of the shirt. Her most grateful son will be proud of her for having gone down in history for Restoring the Fire-Survivor Iconic Shirt of Sonichu and Rosechu's Creator. Thank You, Missus."

- Chris on why history books should remember the momentous occasion wherein some dumbass bought a moldy piece of cloth from another dumbass

Not only is this statement extremely egotistical even by CWC's standards, but it also betrays the fact that Chris continues to treat a shirt that he let rot in a plastic bag for two years with an undue amount of gravitas. It seems that Chris views the clothing he has worn over the course of his life, much like the various names he has had, as an important symbol of his identity as it has twisted and changed. Because autistics are known to place extreme importance on inanimate objects, this can be seen as standard autistic behavior.

Classic Wardrobe
Below is a gallery of most of Chris's wardrobe prior to 2011, along with links to the videos they appeared in:

Cross-dressing Boutique
In recent years, Chris has ditched the clown shirts, instead opting for an arguably worse wardrobe, see below:

Incarceration Attire
Little is known about Chris' daily wardrobe choices while he is in jail awaiting court hearings on incest charges. Nothing is known about what he may have worn during his 64-day long stint at Western State Hospital, nor where he even is after the case was sealed. Ironically, however, the one photo to exist of him after his initial mugshot in August 2021, would feature him wearing a striped shirt once again. A harrowing callback to something that was once harmless and iconic; now succeeded by a colorless and soulless husk of something vividly resembling a simpler time.

Custom-painted shoes
Chris wears shoes that he sloppily spray-paints blue and yellow. He demonstrated his technique in Shoe Colouring. They would later be sold to Jacob Sockness on 12 March 2019.

Wrist warmer


"Yes, it is a part of my necklace; it's a "Wilson" wrist-warmer I use to cover the discomfort of the number of Links back there."

- Chris

Chris likely wears this article to counter sensory defensiveness, a condition common among autistics, in which a normally harmless sensation directly triggers a fight-or-flight reaction.

Fanny pack
A fanny pack (known as a "bum bag" in the British Commonwealth) is a small fabric pouch secured with a zipper and worn by use of a strap around the hips or waist. Fanny packs reached the peak of their popularity in the late 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s, and was considered to be a fashion faux pas until the late 2010s. Naturally, Chris wore them throughout the 1990s and 2000s.