What You Find
Kent’s sweater came out of the trash. His dad threw it away, his mom fished it out, asked if he wanted it. Seventeen years old in Frankfurt and the sweater became his favorite thing. Carrot jogger, Dr. Martens, the dead man’s sweater. He worries he looks small in it.
Mai’s twenty-two and found a black-and-green pullover at a vintage sale that existed exactly once. Another woman had it first, didn’t want it, and Mai took it. That’s how she moves through fashion—Berlin, shooting photographs, dancing to whatever sounds good. A gold Inca chain from a friend, a brown fake leather bag from eBay because real leather brings customs hell, blue treggings and boots from H&M. When I asked if the clothes help you get laid she just shrugged. Maybe. Probably not. It’s the face and the person underneath that matters. The clothes come off anyway. What interests me is that she actually thinks about this stuff—she told me she looks better dressed than naked, which she explained this way: naked you just see the body, same every day. But dressed you can be a different person. You can try on multiple lives. She wears a pink bra without lace because lace costs fifteen or twenty euros and who pays that. White underwear with pink stripes and a little teddy bear on the ass. The specificity of it made her real to me in a way most fashion talk isn’t.
Jonathan’s twenty-eight, German living in Vienna, and he’s got this brocade vest that a Viennese tailor made to measure. First time he passed the shop he thought it was the Burgtheater selling off its costume archive. It wasn’t. Now he rolls his sleeves to show his forearm tattoo and the vest does what his old oversized pullovers couldn’t—it makes people notice. He won’t wear shorts. Not once the weather hits thirty degrees. Not really ever.
Three people, three different entrances into the same thing. They weren’t shopping. They found pieces that fit who they actually were—a sweater that came from the trash, a vintage pullover, a handmade jacket—and they kept them. No trends, no seasons, just real.