What if El's clothes in general represent her mental state in this season?
In the beginning, she wears a plaid shirt (one of Will's plaid shirts probably) and wears a dress at the roller rink. Then we see her taking off her dress and erasing her make-up off of her face because it represents a fake image she tried to pull at the roller rink when she was lying to Mike and faking her life.
Then she takes off the plaid shirt, and after that her blue shirt and blue socks, at the end, she only has a white shirt with pinkish flowers on it. It may represent a re-start or El coming to her own.
Howdy Anon! This is a real good observation.
I've seen some posts before mentioning how El's clothing is showing us how she's slowly developing into her own personality, and that when she starts dressing herself it's her reclaiming herself. So, I feel you when she's just in her white shirt, cuz she is re-starting now that she acknowledged and assessed her trauma and gained a new sense of confidence that she never had fostered in her formative years of life. Someone said a couple months back that her white shirt reminded them of El in the white gown from s1, showing that she's re-starting and going back to the beginning, kinda of like those "heal your inner child" practices cuz now El realizes that she can change for the better despite starting with literal nothing. This also applies to El's independence arc where she's going trusting her decisions more instead of listening to others or trying to people please others.
Thanks for the ask!
