Pretty in Pink
Fashion and food have been mortal enemies since someone decided you couldn’t enjoy both, and somewhere in the eternal standoff between the rice cake and the cheeseburger there’s a column like this one—five strangers, their clothes, and whatever you can read between the seams.
Shelley is nineteen, Swedish, and has the kind of legs that make you briefly reconsider everything. Whether that’s genetics or a committed relationship with the toilet is, in the end, nobody’s business but hers—she looks like she was designed specifically to wear Lee denim and Converse, and she’s draped a self-made Boys Noize memorial shirt over it all for good measure. Leaning at that railing, she looks like one good gust would end the whole session. I would absolutely still risk it.
Alice is twenty-one, Italian by birth and Tokyo by residence, and she’s found something most people miss entirely: a traffic cone on your head—or the architectural approximation she’s working with—transforms the visual hierarchy of any outfit. The clothes look like they came from a Japanese cathedral, which sounds like a compliment and is. She’s too naturally good-looking for the hat to register as a problem. It registers anyway.
Harald defies summary. Who rushes to your rescue when the law arrives? Harald. Is it a bird, a plane, something orange sitting on your roof? Harald. How much sangria before you run into him at a party? Harald. What does your brother claim he’s doing on Saturday afternoons? Harald. I have no idea who Harald is. I respect him completely.
Zara is eighteen, British, apparently in possession of a Fujifilm camera, a decent mirror, and one uninterrupted hour—which turns out to be the exact recipe for something that looks planned and feels completely natural. There’s a version of the world where every person gets those three things and a locked room to do something with them, and Zara is the argument for why that world would be better.
Then there’s Fiia—eighteen, Helsinki, a collapsed version of Pippi Longstocking with a Hitler piercing and a Marley hairdo, hanging around a park with her skateboard and those hellacious blue eyes, bellowing the words to Fuck Forever through an H&M shirt. She has no idea how cool she is. That’s what makes it real.