Five Strangers in Clothes They Actually Chose
Fashion bores me the moment it starts explaining itself—trend reports, key pieces, the carefully staged editorial. What doesn’t bore me is the unposed fact of someone wearing something that makes sense only to them.
Kali is eighteen and from Michigan. She’s wearing a red American Apparel dress over a Target striped top, which sounds like nothing until you understand how it lands on a bony frame with the right attitude behind it. The nose ring was a birthday gift from her brother—that small domestic detail somehow completing the whole picture.
Doll is twenty-four and from Porto, an art student who refused to tell anyone which brands made his clothes, which is either a principled stance or a performance of one, and honestly both are interesting. He’s apparently some kind of dark synthesis—hipster meeting goth meeting whatever the vampire generation called itself in 2010—but what I actually care about is the haircut. Some people have one. He does.
Véronika is fifteen and wearing a Jim Morrison shirt, which is the most fifteen-year-old thing imaginable, except she’s carrying it with the unselfconsciousness that only works when you have no idea you’re doing something that works. The glasses, the gray cardigan, the Morrison photo right there on her chest—even the toughest guys keep that image somewhere private. She just stopped hiding it.
John and Kuku are two people whose faces apparently involve color and whose expressions apparently involve surprise, and who together constitute something you’d want to invite home and subject to prolonged affectionate attention. That’s the entirety of what I have on them, and I find it sufficient.
Karin is wearing Levi’s shorts, a Moschino belt, and a flea market blouse, photographed in front of a background containing approximately seven and a half bicycles depending on your counting method. The outfit is probably great. The bicycles are definitely great. The combination of Moschino and flea market is the right move—knowing when to spend and when not to, and not especially caring which one impresses people.