CASEY CADWALLADER ON FASHION AND DESIGN
Photo courtesy of Casey Cadwallader
Casey Cadwallader is a renowned fashion designer and the Creative Director of the fashion house Mugler. In this interview, he discusses how he has grown as a designer and a queer individual, as well as his work with gender expression, diversity, and activism in the world of design.
LTA: Could you please introduce yourself and explain what you do?
My name is Casey Cadwallader and I am the Creative Director of Mugler in Paris.
LTA: What does an average day look like for you, both pre-pandemic and during the age of coronavirus?
I mean, the thing about the fashion designers’ day is that it's really different depending upon the time of the season that it is, cause it's a six month cycle. So in the beginning we have to do a lot of research. Sometimes we get out of the office, go to museums, go to vintage stores, go to old libraries. And then there's a period of looking for fabrics and materials, and then there's a period of sketching. Then there's the period where you actually put the sketches into work, then you start doing fittings to make the sketch into a real thing over a few different tries. Before the pandemic, that was much easier because we could all be in the same room, cause’ it's such a big team and we kind of all have to be there at the same time. Since you're making something that's physical, you can't really do it via Zoom very easily.
During quarantine, I was lucky because it came at a time where we were sketching the next collection. It was time to do research, which we could do on the Internet. We had uninterrupted weeks and weeks of time to sketch over and over and over again. Actually, we designed a really strong collection because we could focus on it so much. Then we came back to halftime. Half of the team was allowed to be here in the office at a time. That was hard because whoever was on Team B that wasn't there, you needed them. So it was really hard to communicate with one another. We lost a bit of time. But now in France the pandemic is doing much better. Everyone is back at the office now, and we've been able to get back to normal pace. Everyone's worried that there's going to be a big, second wave. We'll see what happens, but I think we're going to be prepared over here.
LTA: From the period that you spent communicating digitally, did you notice that there are ways which technology impacted the creative process and design process?
It did. I mean, in some ways it became clearer and in some ways there was a communication breakdown. I'll explain: so anyone [who] usually wanted to show me something, like one of my design team, if we're working on a series of dresses or something, usually they would just come to my desk when they were ready and show me those sketches. But in this case, they kind of had to send me a PDF. And I found that people in general were putting a little bit more work into their PDFs because they wanted to make sure that it was clear without their words. In some ways my job was easier because I would get this really complete presentation. I'd be able to see it, really understand it, and then just say, “yes,” “no,” “yes,” “no.” Whereas often people ask me 14 times along the way about something instead of really finishing it themselves and then showing it to me. So in that way it was kind of more clear for me. But then there were other things that would kind of fall through the cracks. Like what button goes on that jacket, because if no one talks about it, then you forget. And then you find out later when you're back at the office. It's all something that we grew to adapt to.
LTA: What is your personal journey?
For me, I actually didn't study fashion. I started when I was 12 to 20, I worked at a jewelry store, so I was really interested in making things with my hands, and sculpture, and 3D things. I was really obsessed with gemstones and minerals. I was kind of a biology nerd. Then I wanted to be a car designer, and then I wanted to be an architect, and I went to Cornell for architecture, and did a five year degree, and graduated from there. Then switched to fashion. I guess the consistent thing there is to make things. I've always liked to work with different materials to make different things happen. I worked in fashion and I started off as an assistant, an associate, and then I became a designer. I became the senior designer, and then a design director, then a creative director. It was a long path. It was about, you know, 20 years to get to this point.
But yeah, I think for me, the most important advice that I can give is to never stop learning and to always challenge yourself. And always, I think that's what's fun about fashion: that every six months you have to restart your research and try to try to do your ideas in a different way. It keeps you hungry for more. I'm always trying to see every art show, every film, listen to all the new music, because it is inspiring to me, and I need to be inspired if I'm going to make stuff. There has to be something going into the machine for something to come out is kind of how I explain it.
Photo Courtesy of Casey Cadwallader
LTA: Do you have any hobbies or interests, outside of fashion?
I mean, I love art. I love dance. I like to exercise. I run, I swim, do yoga, all sorts of little things. Then my new, big hobby [is] I also ski a lot. I ski, I hike, I mountain run. My newest hobby is sailing. I actually just bought a sailboat. When I have a vacation, I really like to make sure that it's really remote and free and, you know, not in a city.
LTA: Reading more about your upbringing, you grew up in rural New Hampshire.
A little fun fact about Love to All: we're based [at] Phillips Exeter Academy. How did your experience at Phillips Exeter Academy shape your career?
Sure. You know, I was in a public high school in New Hampshire, and I really didn't like it and I didn't like it socially. I'm gay and I was getting kind of bashed by my peers. I was hiding my creativity quite a bit. I was trying to look like everyone else and act like everyone else so that I wouldn't stick out and sort of, you know, have abuse come to me because I had pink hair or whatever, you know, I was trying to hide. And when I got to Exeter I was able to start with a clean slate with a really great group of people and [when I] was able to, I immediately started dressing different. I started being a little bit more bold. I did dye my hair pink. I also dyed my hair with leopard spots. I started listening to different music. I had very different friends, friends from all over the world that really showed me that there was a lot more to the world than just where I had grown up.
The first time I left the U.S. besides to Canada, was to go to a semester abroad in Japan. It just changed my life. It just gave me a different depth and understanding of culture and a specialty design that really started my hunger for more things, and to see more, and to expose myself more.
So yeah, I really find that boarding school lifted me up at a time. That was really difficult for me. It was inspiring and it also was a little bit of a wake up call: “If you want to go places in life, you'd better get it together and you better focus and apply yourself so that you can later, you know, reach your dream.” I was already pretty self motivated, but I think my level went up when I got to Exeter. Yeah, damn.
LTA: [Personally,] going to boarding school, even the way I spoke and the way I dress, it transformed. Also [having] gay friends, too. Where, at least where I’m from, it is taboo to talk about stuff like that.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think in America now it's less taboo to talk about, but you know, I'm 40. So when I was sixteen it was a very, very different situation. It was much harder to talk about. And you didn't have gay characters on TV shows and all of that was very rare.
And if it did happen, it was always in a negative light. So today it's quite different. So, that's a good thing about the world.
Photo Courtesy of Casey Cadwallader
LTA: I've been grateful to be part of this new wave.
How have you personally found your style, and how did fashion help you to express yourself?
I mean, I think fashion is really here to help everyone express themselves. When I was younger and I had no money I would go to vintage stores and cut things up and, you know, put together some crazy outfits. I think that over time, my style has changed many ways. It's funny because now that I'm a fashion designer, I actually wear much less branded clothes. I'm always in a black hat or no hat. Or a white or black tee shirt and maybe some cool jeans. I dress pretty simply now, unless I go to the beach or go to a club, then I will go for it. I like jewelry and other things for my personal expression. I like my clothes to be a little plain. Cause if I was running around, if I'm a designer out of a fashion house and I'm running around wearing clothes from another fashion house, it just doesn't feel right. So, I do wear things that I designed myself sometimes too. I'm dealing for a little bit more flash for the day.
LTA: Oh, that's cool! Do you think that as you've grown as a person, your sense of style and your design has changed too?
I think there's something to be said about when you're a fashion designer and you work at different houses -- you have to put on the hat of that house, and you have to speak within the codes of the house, and you put your own spin on it. At different jobs throughout my career I've grown in different ways. I used to work for a designer in New York. Narcisso Rodriguez was very architectural, and very sophisticated, and very chic. And then I went from there to Acne studios in Stockholm, and that was very young, very cool, very fresh. And it was a very different situation. Then I came to Mugler, which is much more sexy, and sensual, and very bold, and iconic in a way, but it's so much about personal freedom. It's a very different feeling. So each job pushes me to grow in a certain direction. And what's cool is that after working for 20 years or 10 years or whatever, you start to feel the accumulation of these different skills, cause then you get to be good at denim. You've got to be good at, you know, different kinds of dresses, or casual things for young people, or very sophisticated things for older clients, and over time you get a bigger set of tools, basically. Then you can use those in whatever new project comes next.
LTA: Well, do you think anything is constant throughout your many years of being in the fashion industry?
Yeah. I've always been obsessed with materials, and modern materials, and developing new materials. I think that's always been a big thing. I've always really been into how clothes are constructed. I think that's the architecture part of me. But then there's this other thing that you won't experience until you're older, but I can tell you about, sometimes you keep chasing ideas that you had when you were really young that are really, really good ideas. And you find yourself coming back to them every five years and trying to do that. For me, it's a certain kind of jacket. It's weird. It's like you're always trying to do it better and just still sort of satisfy this urge that you had when you were a young creative. I have friends who are musicians who talked about this kind of coming back to the central core of your creativity. And then also, I know a lot of writers who are like that, always trying to refine, write a whole new book, but the points that you're trying to express are still the same, and you're trying to sharpen it, and make it even more clear to other people, and make it better over time.
LTA: That's so interesting.
It is. It's a weird thing. Cause it makes you realize that at some point in your life, you embed yourself with things that you really believe, and then they stay. It's a beautiful thing.
LTA: How has your queerness effect influenced your view of fashion?
Very much. I mean, it is a great career path if you are queer, because it's a very welcoming environment. A lot of designers are gay, and a lot of people who work in design houses are gay, and they're always in big cities. And so, yeah, it's a very comfortable place to work. It makes you more open. I'm a designer, but I mainly work for women. And I think it's very interesting when a man can really not see so much of a borderline between one gender and the other. I sort of understand the very dynamics. Multiple layers and spectrum, it's like a matrix of different types of gender. So I think being queer made me a little bit more sensitive, and maybe a little bit more empathetic, and more open minded. And I think that that's a great thing for someone. Having gone through some tough stuff. When I was young, it made me very sensitive to the experiences of others, and to make sure that what I was doing on this plan -- it was something that was bringing people joy and bringing people confidence.
I really don't like fashion. That's dictating to people how they're supposed to look. My job is to offer a bunch of different proposals and for the customer to find what they love. For example, now I'm working on clothes that are very, very stretched so that if you buy a beautiful drapes dress, if it was made out of silk, it would not stretch. And if you put it on and your boobs were too big, you would feel like “Oh, my boobs are too big for this dress.” And I hate the idea that people put clothes on and feel bad about themselves. So I'm trying to make clothes that adapt to you so that when you put them on you're like, “Oh my God, this is perfect for me. I'm feeling perfect.” And I think there are some decisions that can be made as a fashion designer about whether or not you're going to make people conform to your needs, or if you're going to provide people with options and make them happy. I choose to try to make people happy.
Photo Courtesy of Casey Cadwallader
LTA: It was really refreshing seeing your collection and seeing models that are dark skinned and had features that weren't very eurocentric. I was wondering, especially right now with protests for Black Lives Matter, what role do you think fashion can play in activism?
So much. I have a platform. I make a decision about what I put into the world and say is beautiful. For me, I'm trying to open the definition of beauty and show the world what I see with my eyes.I think that for me, fashion, there are so many fashion houses that show 18 year olds, six foot tall girls, with no breasts all the time. My work is the opposite. I have women that are tall women, that are short, women that are dark, women that are light, women that are Butch, women that are Femme. It's really about showing the beauty and the range that exists in the world, for me.
I think those decisions that I make, they influence how women of color [see themselves]. When someone sees a campaign that I do with a curvy woman in it, and someone is a curvy woman or a curvy young girl, then they say, “Oh, you know what? I am hot” And you know what? It's so much about someone's spirit. It's not about whether or not they've got big hips and little boobs, or if they've got big boobs, but that doesn't matter. It's about the energy that comes from inside of you, and everyone's got stuff about them. That's beautiful. And so for me, it's more about telling stories about people. It's not just about their looks either. It's about what the person does. I can choose my models because of the lives that they lead, and how good of a leader they are, or how empathetic they are.
I actually sit down and talk to all of my models when I meet them. A lot of people have models come in, just try on a dress and they go, “Oh yeah, great.” Or, “Not great.” And I'm like, “Hey, what do you do? What are you going to school for? Where did you grow up? What's important to you?” And in the end it helps me find people that have this burning spirit inside of them. That's so much more interesting and exciting than just being a supermodel. Beautiful. I think that fashion has a very strong role in dictating what people find to be beautiful, even in themselves. For me, I'm showing people that in my world, a lot of different things are beautiful. Not just one thing.
LTA: How do you usually approach diversity? How is this seen by other administrators? Has there ever been pushback from someone else?
I mean, I would be lying if there wasn't pushback at Mugler. There is very little pushback because Mugler is known as a house that is very, very open minded and very open to inclusivity and telling different stories and people that are bold and different. So that's why I love the job that I have now. And I think a lot of other houses don't have that as part of their DNA. Yes, especially when things get bigger. The bigger the company, the more corporate [it] is, the more tricky it is.
But I think it's really about the place that you find yourself. I think if you work for companies that have good morality and have good internal cultures, and then really good things can happen. But if you work for a bad company and it's a toxic mentality, then it can be terrible. And it's like that in fashion and in everything else in the world.
LTA: Do you think some [people] starting to work at Mugler noticed some internal changes -- almost like the mission affected the way that you interact with others, even outside of the fashion world?
I’m the creative director, which is very daunting, but at the same time, such an accomplishment. A little boy from New Hampshire [who] runs a French fashion house is very weird. [Before,} I never had to be interviewed really before. I never had to have my picture taken for magazines. I never had to walk on red carpets and get my picture taken by hordes of people. All of that stuff was very, very uncomfortable at the beginning. Over time I got over it, and I learned that the only way for that to be easy is for you to really accept being yourself. Anytime someone used to take a camera out, my face would freeze up, I would turn into a deer in the headlights, and all the pictures would be terrible. And I learned that I have to almost talk when people are taking pictures of me, because then I stay myself. So that was one part.
Over time, the interviews got easier. I was on TV in France for a live TV show and that freaked me out, but then I actually had fun with it and it was fine. But when I was young, I used to be so afraid of public speaking. I used to turn bright red right away. I just wasn't confident when I was younger. That's one thing that's great about getting older is that you gradually get more and more confident.
I'd say for me I had to rise to the challenge of being a public figure with the platform. I used to have a thousand Instagram followers and now I have 39,000, then I have to answer them. You know, that is very weird. It used to just be my friends and now it's a bunch of people that are my fans, and that's a big change. I think people are excited that I came here, because there's something that I picked back up from the spirit of the original house, and being more fiery, and more progressive, and being more innovative. I think when I came in, it was a little bit normal and I wanted to bring back sort of the spikiness of the place, and make it much more of an innovator that was pushing things forward, and trying to express a really more modern culture. In the end, it's my responsibility to bring my own culture. I have to decide which things I'm going to stand up for, and I think casting is one of the biggest clear messages of that.
Photo Courtesy of Casey Cadwallader
LTA: Something you've talked about in a couple of other interviews is the depiction of women. How do you represent femininity through fashion, and do you think that's been changing over time?
I think the word femininity is so loaded. What does that really mean? I mean, it just refers to things that are female, but what does that mean? You know, I don't really think that that definition is fixed. My approach to that is to show variety and to express that in different ways. I love it when a woman is super feminine, girly, girly, girly. I think that that's beautiful. And I like it when a woman is super masculine and super macho, I think that's also very beautiful at the same time. I still find it feminine. I mean, that's the thing, feminine and masculine are always intermixed and always intertangled, and even saying it's a spectrum isn't enough. Cause it's even more complicated than that.
For me, when people talk about, “How do you express femininity in your work?” I'm like, “I don't know.” You know, it's in thousands of ways, thousands of nuanced ways. I don't think that a woman should be getting one message about the one and only way to be feminine. I think that that's crap. So yeah, I think it's a lot of different mixed messages actually.
LTA: You've cast gender fluid models. What role does [femininity] play in [your models] everyday lives?
I mean, I think that femininity plays a very different role every day for every different person. I think that that's the thing. I think that we all are ourselves, and I think of myself as very feminine. And I'm very proud of that. I'm not scared of being feminine, and I think that I think about my own experience, and even in one day, you know, two hours earlier, I could be in a very queeny moment with my friends when I feel very comfortable, and then I can flip and be super macho in a second. And I think that everyone has that range. I mean, everyone has their own range, not my range, but their own range.
Femininity is so complex, as is masculinity. I mean, think of the stereotypes and the nuances of stereotype in gender. It's endless, and it flexes in all different directions. I think what's exciting in fashion related to gender and related to femininity is diversifying the different messages, and really representing the other messages, and showing them the beauty and the confidence in them, and also that it's okay to do. I mean, I've worked with trans women, trans men, people who are neither. I have learned over time that everyone is totally different. So, you can never put people into groups because that's missing the point. That's why I really enjoy meeting different people, and talking to them, and [getting] the hundred reasons why they actually don't fit in that box, because everyone, I think, has that.
LTA: How has your own relationship with gender expression changed over the years?
When I was younger, I was scared to death to show anything that was feminine. I didn't want to walk in the feminine way. I didn't want to throw a baseball and the feminine way. I didn't want to dance in a feminine way. It's funny, cause I was actually a pretty flashy dancer when I was young. I used to do dance contests at school and stuff. I love to dance. I was hiding because I was taught by the world that being feminine meant that I was gay and that gay was bad. Therefore, I was trying to lock all of that away. And over time, you know, I came out when I was in high school. I wasn't necessarily comfortable with myself at that point, but over time I became more comfortable. I think over time, I felt more free to express myself in a feminine manner, and also, to be able to defend myself about it. I think I can just flip back and forth so fast. And I think that that comes from a certain freedom and a certain confidence. I think I've found where I want to be now. Instead of wondering how society was holding me back, now I've sort of found my spots. And, as I explained, that changes day to day, moment to moment, situation to situation.
LTA: Did it take you a while to get there?
I think that as I go, as I get older, I'm only more and more tolerant of myself. I think when I was a teenager, it was the hardest because you have less experience, and you're a little bit unsure about exactly where your feelings are and where they should be, and you're being pressured by so many different messages all the time. It gets easier and easier to understand who you are and to understand what you don't like, and what's not fair to be said to you, and what makes you feel good, and what makes you feel upset, and how to defend yourself, and how to be the best person that you can instead of being insecure and then being mean. For example, I mean, I think I used to be more bitchy when I was young because I was scared. So, I would lash out and try to be tough, whereas, I'm very, very, rarely angry or mean now because I'm more comfortable.
If someone is really, really mean to me in the street and calls me a f*g to my face, before I would be like, “Oh my God.” And now I'm like, “Yeah, And? Do you have something else to say to me? Or just that? Cause that's boring.” It's like saying you're wearing a hat and being like, “Yeah, I am gay. What?” When I was young, if someone called me gay, and I mean, I remember in high school, people called me gay in the hallway, and it would make me go in the bathroom and cry. It's just because I didn't really know how to handle it yet emotionally or if I was comfortable with that. Now I am comfortable with that. It gets better because you mature and you solidify as a person, and you move past barriers that you had in the past.
LTA: It's really inspiring, I guess with Gen Z, it's weird. We have such a big access to so many LGBTQ+ role models, including [yourself.]
Well, but you have different challenges, your generation. I wasn't a teenager with Instagram, and I think Instagram is very challenging for people because you're comparing yourself to people all the time. There's just a lot of a pressure to understand your identity and to represent it. Whereas when I was young, I just had to do that in interactions. I didn't have to represent it in a photograph and post it for the world. And I think when you're young you make mistakes, and it's hard to be capturing them on social media. I think young people have different pressures. I think in many ways, young people today are the luckiest of all because they get to experience the progress that other people have paved for them. You know, I wouldn't be able to be the gay man that I am today without, you know, the people who fought for Stonewall, you know, all of these other people who did so much work before.
It doesn’t mean that it's easy when you're young. I think being a teenager is very, very challenging. And also one of the best times of your life; you're in formation, it's like you're clay, you're moldable, you're being you. And I think it's just about educating yourself as much as possible and inspiring yourself as much as possible because they're kind of laying the groundwork for who you're going to be.
LTA: So when you were growing up, where did you draw your inspiration from? Before you’ve spoken about George Michael's “Too Funky,” do you have any other figures?
I talk about George Michael's “Too Funky'' because that's the first time that I really knew about Mugler, but really my thing was Madonna and Janet Jackson. That was my thing. I listened to a lot more sophisticated music, but I'm not gonna talk about that. I love pop music. Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa, all of that stuff like Beyonce, Rihanna. I love female vocalists, so that's my thing. But I do listen to men, and I listened to a lot of techno, and jazz, and whatever. But for me, when I was really young, I watched a lot of TV, to be honest. MTV was super cool when I was young, and so I got a lot of influence from there, and that taught me about the world that wasn't necessarily in my hometown. I found [it] very inspiring. I always loved to film when I was young, and I really love science. Actually, I was going to be a marine biologist for a minute.
Photo Courtesy of Casey Cadwallader
LTA: Where do you draw your inspiration from now?
Everywhere. People on the street, museums, artists, performances, fish, birds, designers, literally anything can be the thing. That's why I'm kind of always looking at everything. I can tell sometimes where I'm not looking at enough, and then I try to adjust my course and make sure I'm like, “Have I seen all of the shows in town? Have they been to the little galleries? Have I been to the big museums? Have I been to the ballet?” I haven't been to the opera, bruh. Cause you never know when someone's going to walk out in the opera and some green and black, you know, bodysuit and they're going to be like, “Oh my God, that line on the leg, that has to be on this dress that I couldn't figure out.” You never know, but if you're doing the same thing every day and not altering your patterns, then you're not really going to see more. Sometimes it's a car driving by and I'll be like, “Oh my God, the tail light has a beautiful shape.” I Look on the internet for the shape and then, you know, it's all over the place. I think a lot of fashion designers don't look at everything. They kind of just look at fashion, and I tend to look at everything else. I mean, you've got to look at fashion too, but yeah. I love mixing things together. So my inspiration boards are half clothes and half other random things.
LTA: How do you usually track your ideas in a process?
WhatsApp. [Also,}I kind of do it non-digitally. I mean, I work a lot with boards, so I have these foam boards in my office and in the design studio. And because I have many different things that I have to keep track of, I always put images, and sketches, and pictures of things like fitting pictures and whatever on boards by topic. I make sure that they're always all laid out because it's always about not forgetting about something that you're working on that influences something else, and not forgetting the reference at the beginning. “Oh wait, no, that was the color pink I wanted,” Or “No, I wanted it to be short and angled like that,” Or “That's how the hem is supposed to be.” So there's many little fragments that you have to have a system to keep track of them all. I like inspiration boards, which can be physical or PDFs. I mean, in fashion we have watches, and detailed mockups, and things like that. So they're less exciting in a PDF. So usually it's printouts, and sketches, and everything on the wall, but yeah, a moodboard is a very powerful thing.
I use InDesign or illustrator, and I make these really sort of precise collages of things that I'm thinking about. And that's where I can see that the color wheel, and the, you know, fish, and the dress have the same curves and something about the colors. And that's when you kind of start to map your idea before you pick up the pencil and draw it. By taking four images that you're really excited about that have a common thread and putting them next to each other, you get a really solid vibe that helps you push yourself in a certain direction. That is, I think, an important tool.
LTA: Sounds like a living philosophy.
What attracted you to interview and mentor with the Love To All Project?
Well, I look at it this way. I had thought that the premise of your group was very beautiful. And the fact that you wanted to talk to me, I thought would be fun for me too. I mean, it's so important to mentor people, and to give back, and to share experience with people directly.
I think older people, like myself, can help people. And I think it's good to be able to answer someone's questions and to help them get past things in their head. I've done a lot of mentoring when I was in New York. I've done less since I'm in France because my French is okay, but it's not great. I knew that you guys were all coming from a similar place as me, and so I just wanted to offer whatever I could.
LTA: Do you have anything to say to your younger self?
Hold on tight. It's going to be better than you thought. I mean, Yeah. It's funny. Cause I'm very much the same person that I was when I was 14. I have a husband I've been with him for 22 years. We didn't get married that young, but it's when we started dating. I was able to kind of try different things in life. You don't have to just do one thing, you know, so decide, do you want to be a lawyer or a fashion designer? And that's the only thing you can do. I was a jeweler, and then I was an architect, and then I was a fashion designer, and if I want to be a furniture dealer tomorrow, I can do that. I think that's one thing as a teenager, you don't think that you can do, you think you have to “I'm going to be a firefighter,” Or, “I'm going to be a doctor,” and that's it. Those things don't define you. There's so much more to that. So I think you just gotta go with your flow. I would just tell myself probably to chill out, be more confident, and don't care about what people think of you. Care about what you think of yourself. Cause’ that's where everything comes from.
LTA: Where do you see the future of fashion heading?
I would say, you know, [from] my own premise, it's about broadening the definition of what beautiful is. It's about telling more people's stories. It's about representing people better. It's about not reducing people, and labeling them, and stereotyping them. It's about being open minded. I think right now America and the world is a little bit closed minded in half of its population. I think it's about creating a much more positive and open place for people to have dialogue in general. I think fashion is about sustainability, and making things out of the right materials, and wasting less, and making better things.
I mean, there's a lot of different priorities that I have there. Yeah, wasting less is very important. Make very special things, but don't make boring things. I hate fast fashion because it's so wasteful, and it teaches people to use something and throw it out right afterwards. I have garments that I bought when I was 18 in a vintage store that I kept my whole life, and that's what you should be doing. They should be like an archive of your life. Things that fall apart after you wear them two times, they don't help that archive very much. Everyone should have less and then they should have better. In general, I think in the world it's been a very challenging six months, but I think that the challenge is going to help us get somewhere better. That's something that, you know, I think it's really important to be an advocate for other people, and to give people the space to tell their stories, to listen to people.
I think the thing that I see the most in the world that is the biggest problem is fear, and I think a lot of people are scared because of a lack of confidence and a lack of cultural exposure. I think you have to travel. You have to understand other cultures in order to really understand your own. The word “empathy” is my favorite word at the moment because it means that you're able to think about something from someone else's perspective instead of your own, which kind of would read out all of the self centeredness that I think is kind of rampant in the world. So, that's my take on things.
LTA: Do you have any advice for LGBT+ youth struggling to find outlets for their exploration?
I think you need to follow your guts because whatever it is that you're looking for, there are other people out there that are looking for the same thing, and you just need to find ways of connecting to them. The world now provides people with a lot of different networks, a lot of different groups, a lot of different communities that you can find online in different ways in order to feel supported. I think what's really important in the world is to know that someone's got your back, and that someone understands you, and that someone empathizes with you. I think no matter what it is, the one thing I can say is there is someone out there for you that can help you, and you just need to focus, and reach out, and connect to people, and you should be able to find what you need.
LTA: Thank you. Is there anything else you'd like to say?
No, I think that was great. That was a really fun talk. Thank you so much.
Written by Morgan Lee
Transcribed by Sara Kolli
Edited by Cal Martinez