A common thread: Memories that never fray

Hung up in a closest, folded in a drawer or tucked away in storage are clothing pieces that are more than just fabric to us. Throughout our lives, we accumulate pieces of clothing that can be hard to part with. A prom dress. An outfit you wore on the first day of school. An outfit from a first date. These pieces can bring back memories from times in our lives — good or bad — proof that we have grown and evolved, given or received love and survived hardship. These pieces are stitched into our memories forever. 

Emma Dunn

Emma Dunn was a competitive gymnast for 10 years when she was recruited by the University of Kentucky. 

Her junior year of high school, she tore her wrist and a ligament in her knee, changing her perspective on gymnastics. 

“I was like, ‘I kind of hate this sport now. It’s stressful,’” Dunn said. “‘I really feel scared and anxious every day, and I don’t think I can do this for four more years’.”

Dunn was told she would regret it if she quit the sport before reaching the collegiate level, but she said she would regret not quitting to allow herself a normal social experience in college. She quit gymnastics and decided to major in integrated strategic communications at UK.

Despite Dunn’s hopes of having a normal college experience, she began college in the fall of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Pivoting from her high school routine of going to school in the daytime and gymnastics at night to fully asynchronous classes in her dorm room caused Dunn to hyperfixate on her body in her isolation. 

After the past couple of years, Dunn said she felt as if her eating disorder was the only thing that she could control.

“It became almost an obsession of like, how many times I could work out,” Dunn said. “‘Oh, I don’t feel that lonely if I’m obsessing over my weight or what I look like.’”

Growing up, Dunn said she didn’t have the best nutritional influences around her and was even sent to a nutritionist as a sort of “apology” from her coaches for going about nutrition the wrong way with their gymnasts.

“That was when I kind of got into like tracking food and being weighed weekly,” Dunn said. 

Along with the measurements of their bodies, Dunn said coaches would tell her and her peers that if college coaches saw them gaining weight, they wouldn’t want them to be on their collegiate teams, no matter their skillsets. 

“‘If you’re promised a Bentley, you don’t want a Honda in four years,’ is basically what they would tell us,” Dunn said. 

After the end of her first semester, which concluded before Thanksgiving, Dunn returned home to her family and said she felt the impact of her college routine weighing on her.

“I realized, ‘Oh my gosh, I like don’t have anyone. This is so lonely,” Dunn said. “It’s so hard to make friends, and I don’t know what I even want to study in college really.”

Dunn said she remembers being on the phone with her then boyfriend, now fiance, crying, thinking she could recover, but not knowing if she would ever be happy with her body. 

She thought she didn’t deserve to be happy if she didn’t feel skinny or had the adrenaline that came from starving herself that day. 

One fear of Dunn’s was not being happy in her future wedding dress, scared that her day would be defined by not feeling confident in the way she looked or being lightheaded throughout the day. 

After graduating from college in October of 2024, she got engaged. 

“I remember I was like ‘I’m so happy with how I am with my relationship with food right now, and my body, but I don’t want to try on a bunch of wedding dresses and ruin that for myself. I’m scared that will be the nail in my coffin of falling back into old habits,’” Dunn said. 

Knowing her and her mother had very different tastes, she tried on her mom’s wedding dress anyway, and she said she ended up falling in love with the way it looked on her. 

“It was just so fun, and such a sweet moment, just everything I couldn’t have imagined of just actually feeling beautiful in it,” Dunn said. 

Though Dunn didn’t wear her mom’s dress in the wedding ceremony, she wore it all throughout her wedding reception. The dress opened a new door for Dunn, and she said it allowed her to finally see herself in the light she thought would never be possible. 

Alex Livers

According to UK’s Institutional Research, Analytics and Decision Support report of enrollment & demographics, 6.7% of all enrolled students in the Fall 2025 term were Black. 837 of those 2,571 students are male. 

For Alex Livers, a junior electrical engineering major, joining his fraternity, The Mu Theta Chapter of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. was about something that was bigger than himself. 

Phi Beta Sigma is a part of the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) at UK, which are historically Black sororities and fraternities, also known as the Divine Nine.

During high school and his first few years of college, Livers said he felt like he wasn’t doing as much as he could in the aspect of helping people. 

“I was searching for something that would kind of hold myself accountable and push myself towards that aspect,” Livers said. 

Livers said he conducted some research on the different organizations offered on campus and found that he really aligned himself with a certain fraternity on campus. 

“I really see the brotherhood that it represented, and that attracted me so much,” Livers said. “There’s the D9, (Divine Nine) … Even within those groups, we all, because the community here on campus is so small, we all stick together in it.” 

After finding Phi Beta Sigma, Livers said he reached out and got to know the chapter on campus, which instilled an interest in him. 

Joining Phi Beta Sigma required Livers to devote several months to learning about the organization and the people involved.

“I align myself personally with the values and principle of brotherhood, scholarship and service, which they (Phi Beta Sigma) stand for,” Livers said. 

At his probate, which Livers described as a new member presentation and performance, one of the older brothers in the fraternity placed Livers’ line jacket on him, which was proof to him that he did something that was completely for himself. 

“It’s the achievement that wasn’t, I guess, necessarily easy,” Livers said. 

Now, Livers serves as the treasurer and secretary for the fraternity. 

“The Black community on UK’s campus in particular is extremely small, it’s really interconnected,” Livers said. “I don’t think it’s more than 10% of the campus is black, and it’s a PWI (predominantly white institution), so it is really hard to find that community here on campus, and most of the orgs on campus don’t even have above 20 members.” 

The UK chapter only has about three active members, according to Livers. 

“Kentucky does struggle with finding that Black involvement on campus, especially since the Black community is so small right now, it’s hard to get those members,” Livers said. “We’re still doing good, we’re doing a lot of things on campus, we’re doing a lot of things off of campus. We started service events.”

Livers’ jacket, though only a piece of the fraternity that he said he found community in, reminds him of the sense of belonging and community he feels within it.

Maddie Oakley and Kaidyn Ridenour

The friendship between UK seniors Maddie Oakley and Kaidyn Ridenour of 17 years is one defined by clothing.

Ever since the two were introduced to each other, they have been inseparable, doing everything together. Ridenour said after meeting in Kindergarten — Oakley’s mom was Ridenour’s teacher — they have been dressing each other up and doing each other's makeup since.

Despite pursuing different careers, Oakley studying human nutrition on the pre-dental track, and Ridenour majoring in public health on the nursing track, the two are with each other every day. 

Ridenour said they live right next to each other with windows that “say hi to each other.”

After years of laughing and smiling together, Ridenhour said they’ve developed smile lines from making each other giddy that they joke about needing botox for. 

The two have influenced each other on certain fashion aspects, such as button jeans from Princess Polly that Oakley said she sold out after posting a video on her TikTok account. 

The girls have amassed 38,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok.  The two not only share their love of fashion with each other, but also their passion of creating online content for their followers. 

During Ridenour’s senior year of high school, she said she started posting videos on TikTok.

“Then I started working with some clothing brands like Calypso, WKND Club, and I kind of just was already taking photos and posting that content, and then I was like ‘Wait, I really love doing this,’” Ridenour said. 

Oakley said she discovered her love for influencing after going abroad and filming short-form content there. At the beginning of 2025, she said she started taking it very seriously and ended up landing her first brand deal. 

“It just takes one video,” Oakley said. “Kaidyn and I have both worked with Prada, Versace and Valentino, just insane brands.”

Having confidence, even when it’s just a matter of  “faking it til you make it” Ridenour said is what she believes makes them successful in their endeavors. 

Oakley said having each other as friends also helps make them confident in their influencing. 

“We’re always surrounded by creative minds everywhere we go,” Oakley said. “It’s not hard to want to be creative with our style with our videos that we make.”

When the influencers were younger, the fashion trends that they shared together were Vineyard Vines clothing and Southern Tide. 

The pair are also big fans of vintage clothing, and will often go hunting for vintage pieces together. 

Ridenour said she and Oakley created a depop called @shopthewayshewearsit, which Ridenour runs with over 700 followers, selling old pieces she doesn’t wear anymore. They will also let girls rent dresses from them for things like vacations and date parties. 

For years, the girls have shared pieces of one anothers, defining their years-long friendship.