Parenting & Family Quote by Lake Bell

Lake Bell frames fashion less as taste and more as a lifelong practice of self-authorship. The key move is in the phrase "almost full-on costumes": she sidesteps the genteel language of "style" and admits the slightly unhinged, theatrical truth of it. A costume is not just an outfit; it is a role you choose, a signal you broadcast, a small performance staged in public. For a kid, showing up to school in near-costume is both bravery and a kind of dare. It risks mockery, but it also forces the room to accept that you will be seen on your own terms.

The subtext is that adulthood doesn't cure that impulse; it just teaches you to camouflage it. "I've retained a bit of that" reads like a wink at the compromises grown-ups make - keeping the play, sanding down the extremes so it passes as "appropriate". Coming from an actress, this lands with extra charge: her job is literally to inhabit characters, yet she insists this instinct predates the profession. It's a quiet rebuttal to the assumption that celebrity fashion is manufactured by stylists or PR. She's arguing for continuity: the person on the red carpet is an extension of the kid who treated a hallway like a runway.

Culturally, it's also a defense of fashion as emotional technology, not frivolity. Bell is naming dress as a tool for identity - a way to manage attention, mood, and belonging - while refusing the shame that often shadows women who admit they enjoy it.