Dressed for No One in Particular
Fashion is one of those territories where I have strong instincts and almost no disciplined knowledge. The gap between the two is wide enough that I’ve learned to just find the people who actually have it figured out and pay close attention to what they’re doing.
Denni is twenty-one, French, and dressed entirely in Topshop, which she somehow makes feel like a personal decision rather than a budget constraint. There is something about a woman who walks the streets of Paris as though she owns shares in the Eiffel Tower without appearing to try at all—that particular carelessness where the effort is invisible even when it clearly exists. She’s got the kind of frame that makes you want to climb something very tall at midnight and whisper terrible things into her ear in very bad French. Touch my baguette. Or something.
Nixon is twenty-two, a designer from Manila, wearing a slightly feminine Topshop tee, Zara trousers, and something on his face that is unambiguously a Star Trek visor. The visor should not work. It works. He has the androgyny of someone who decided gender presentation is basically a design problem, and the haircut of someone who solved it.
Lila—name invented by me just now—is standing in a forest without trousers, wearing something in a red so saturated it could signal aircraft. There is a specific kind of confidence in committing to a color this loudly in the middle of nowhere, with no pants and apparently no audience. The forest is lucky.
Lina is Swedish, twenty-two, Levi’s jacket, Acne shoes, dotted silk stockings, very good sunglasses. Sweden keeps producing people who dress like this at a rate other nations have stopped trying to match. If I could save one aesthetic tradition from some hypothetical catastrophe it would be Sweden’s, and Lina is the argument.
Tab is a Japanese fashion designer running her own shop called Spank, which means she is professionally obligated to look as maximally colorful as possible at all times. She meets this obligation without apparent effort. The combinations are aggressive in a way that makes Hello Kitty look like it has untapped potential. Navigating her online store requires either fluent Japanese or a genuine tolerance for joyful visual chaos, but it rewards the brave.