Pretty in Pink

I found myself noticing style that week in the way you notice things when you’re thinking about design. Not fashion-magazine style, but actual people in actual clothes, and what made it work.

Kali had this red American Apparel dress on, a striped top from Target underneath, the kind of basic that only functions if you have the bones for it. There’s always a geometry to that kind of simplicity. When it works, it’s because the person has enough presence that the clothes organize around them instead of the other way around.

Doll was there too—twenty-four, art student from Porto, dark everything, black hair. He wouldn’t tell me where his clothes came from, which I took as a very good sign. When someone’s actually living their aesthetic instead of performing it, they don’t make you verify the sources.

Véronika was fifteen with Jim Morrison on her shirt, hipster glasses, gray cardigan. Could have been pathetic. Wasn’t. She had the kind of unselfconscious ease about her own existence that most people spend their whole lives working toward and never find.

John and Kuku I never quite figured out. They might have dressed as a pair or just happened to think the same way. Either way, they were two people who clearly don’t track what fashion is supposed to be, just existing in whatever they’d thrown on. There’s something honest about that.

Karin had Levi’s shorts, a Moschino belt, a flea market blouse, and this very present energy—the kind where you’re just looking at someone living, not performing. The photo had bikes in the background I kept counting because I’m weird like that.

What actually interests me about style is when you can tell someone isn’t thinking about it in the way they’re supposed to. They’ve figured out their own thing and it works because it’s theirs, not because they borrowed it from somewhere else.