TEXAS HATTERS IN LOCKHART, Texas, is located just off Highway 183 to Austin, and staffed by a fourth-generation of hat makers; starting with Marvin Sr., the Gammages have made hats for all from Willie Nelson to Hank Williams, Ronald Reagan and Prince Charles. Joella Gammage, her son Joel and husband David today ensure that Texas Hatters is full to the brim with cowboy hats in every colour and style, and that each customer is welcomed with banter, smiles and expertise in abundance.

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Joel Aaron Gammage: My friend has a hat that is in between a top hat and a bowler. He wears that hat so much, people call him Country Slash. He’ll even wear it to the swimming pool! He’s an I.T. guy during the day, and a base player at night. I think the right hat has the tendency to bring out the inner character of a person. Your attitude changes. Cock your hat to the right a little, and all of a sudden you’re ready for a fist fight or a poker game. You know, guys don’t have as many facets of articles of clothing as women. You have your cowboy boots, belt buckle, and hat – whatever style.

There’s a historical side to the cowboy, the vaquero, which dates back to Mexican history. In its origin, hats were sombreros. We adapted them to a Western-European style. If we go back to traditional cowboys, your work was signalled by your hat. Depending on what your place was on the ranch, your brim was shorter or longer. It’s very similar to English culture. A tall hat was a symbol of stature.

In my grandfather’s day, hats were black or brown and that was it. There was only one way to wear a hat. My grandfather changed that. Today, hats are becoming more statement pieces. The functionality changed quite a lot. In the actual ranching community, it’s to protect yourself from the sun. But we wear it a lot still because it’s so ingrained. When you walk into a grocery store in a hat, you’ll grab people’s attention. You kind of just want to call that person ‘Sir,’ and treat them differently.

Joella Gammage Torres: I’m third generation. My dad and my grandfather worked together. My father proposed to my mother with a hat and a poem. It was a ladies high roller, with a telescoped crown, and the poem was something to the effect of: ‘Texas crown for the queen of my heart.’ How could she turn him down, right?

We’re in Lockhart, Texas. Prior to that we were in Buda, and before that we were in Austin. When we moved here, people who thought we went out of business thirty years ago in Austin found us because Highway 183 was their favourite road to take to Houston. There is a cattle auction down the road. When cattle prices are good… ‘Sold my cattle, I’ll buy a hat!’ But we get everyone: from what people call hipsters, to politicians and businessmen, fashionable ladies, everything.

The anatomy of a hat? First of all, the important lesson, would have to be that the crown is the part that sits on your head, and the brim is the part that sticks out. A lot of people get that reversed, which I don’t understand. Hats are made from straw or felt, or both. Leather hats exist, but we never made them. For the creases in the hat, there are some styles that can be done with a preformed block. We have quite a few of those, that are seventy-five to one-hundred-and-fifty years old. But primarily we soften the material and then we use our hands to do the creasing.

To make a hat, we have about a two-week waiting period, but if we had to walk one through, it takes a full day. Everything is by hand. We don’t start with something round on the top and flat on the brim and then put a crease in it. We make the hat from scratch, we do all the finishing and sewing here, we don’t use glue, all the ribbon trim is by hand. My dad said, quality is like buying oats. If you want good clean oats, you need to pay a fair price. If you want oats already run through the horse, that’s a little cheaper. We make every hat as though we make it for the most important person in our lives.

Our most popular hats hail all the way back to my dad’s time in the business. He made hats for Stevie Ray Vaughan, Ronnie Van Zant and Donnie Van Sant. There’s fans all around the world that want their hats just like them. The Ronnie Van Zant is similar to what I have on right now, only it’s a solid felt, with a rattlesnake belt on it. There’s a Stevie Ray Vaughan on that stand right there, with the ‘Do Not Touch’ sign. Both styles actually have an oval telescope crown. It’s creased inward and then comes back up, which is why we call it a telescope. And then the Stevie has a flat, bolero-type brim, and the Ronnie has the opposite: a pencil-rolled edge on the brim and then kinda rolled up cowboy-style.

The Gus hat is also very popular, it’s another one my dad created. If you’re familiar with Lonesome Dove, my dad created the styles for that mini-series. The Gus has a centre crease that runs from the front to the back, so it’s lower in the front, and two creases on either side of that so it looks like three fingers ran down the centre of the crown. It has curls on the side of the brim, as though you grabbed it with both hands. We call that a cowboy curl. The most iconic hat that came out before the Gus was probably the one James Dean wears in Giant.

Cowboy hat styles do evolve. Wider brims were really popular in the Forties, then in the Fifties they went a little bit shorter. I think part of it was people got cars. In the Seventies, all the crowns were really tall, like six inches, and really short brims. Today it is completely the opposite. Right now short crowns are really popular with a small dent, as if it fell off, and a really wide brim, barely curled on the side. Most of the colours are basic: black, silver buckle, straw coloured. But a lot of the guys and gals are going for brighter coloured brims now. They say, ‘I want you to notice that I have a style of my own.’ So they’ll put red, purple, or turquoise ribbons on the edges. As well as rhinestones now and then.

Each style also evolves according to who’s creasing it. There’s a design behind you called the horse shoe, it looks like a horse stepped on it. My grandfather would say that looks more like a mule shoe, because that’s how he did it. Everybody has their own hand. It’s like trying to copy some of the master painters, you can’t get the stroke exactly the same. [My husband] David has his style, I have mine. Often, when someone orders a hat from David or [my son] Joel, they have to be the ones that finish it up for them. And vice versa, the customer will recognise – that’s not how Joella did my last hat.

Joel is actually the most experimental. He went through this long phase of… particularly ladies that were interested in getting hats from him. And he’ll tell you, it drove me crazy! I like to think symmetrical, and everything he did was asymmetrical, kind of the Picasso of hat making. Technically they were still cowboy hats, but they were definitely a blend of Western fashion and high fashion.

Joel: In Austin you can pull anything off. You can walk down the street with butterfly wings, pink sunglasses and a miniskirt, and it would be fine. But if you would go to West Texas, and more traditional communities, you might get looked at a little funny. There’s still some traditional farmers and ranchers out there, but they are getting rarer, because you get a cultural shift where people want the modern standard that they see on TV, they want to live past the means they grew up with. For my family’s business, there was a need for somebody – after my grandfather died – to adapt to a variety of different cultures that come from the Austin community. You don’t notice it right now, but my accent will definitely change when I speak to other people. Before I got married, I went out dancing all the time, and I would wear a lot of hats, and sell a lot of hats. Now I do car shows and festivals and events and stuff. I was in the music scene already, so I wanted to bring that scene to Lockhart.

My personal favourite hat is a modified high-roller. If you’re familiar with the Ronnie Van Zant 38, it’s a telescoped crown, with a cylindrical shape and a curled brim. That’s one of the signature hats that I used to wear a lot. I called it my lucky hat. Whenever I wore it, people talked to me.

David A. Torres: I’ve seen wills being written up about hats. People come in here with their dad’s hat, which [my wife] Joella’s grandfather made, and they want it fitted to their size. Sometimes we’ll write down – made for so-and-so, passed on to so-and-so. In the twenty-nine years that I’ve been here, I’ve seen a hat pass on to the third generation once. Once I saved a family from not talking to each other, because two grandsons were fighting and both thought they had right to the hat. They didn’t want the money or the land, because the hat was a status symbol of an elder. They asked me to make another one just like it. I made an exact copy. I put them side by side, I knew which one was the original one, but then they got shuffled and I couldn’t tell which one was the real one. They both came and both offered money to me to let them know what the real hat was, but I honestly couldn’t tell them. They both have his hat over the mantelpiece.

Joella: There used to be drugstore cowboys, or urban cowboys. Someone who doesn’t actually work with cows, or on a farmer ranch, but dresses the part to attract women or men. Real cowboys looked down on them, but not so much now. We have a new generation of teenagers and twenty-somethings that do the rodeos. They raise their animals as children, and take them to shows. They’re real cowboys, but I’m always surprised when they come in here because they wear jeans other than Levi’s or Wranglers. They’re not wearing the traditional Western-style shirts. They’re wearing belts with fur and rhinestones, and headbands with rhinestones. But they’re not pretend, they’re the real thing, but their new style really surprises me. And they’re straight.

As a woman – not as a hatter – when I see a man in a cowboy hat, provided that he looks like a cowboy, not in shorts and flip-flops, I think: ‘That is a real man.’ I don’t know if it’s cultural, bred into us, but my mind goes to – he probably rides a horse, and deals with cattle, all those little-girl fantasies.

Joel: When I think about what a cowboy is, defining it in the traditional sense is almost impossible. There’s fewer and fewer ranches and farms. I’m one of the few people in my generation that actually decided to stay involved in my family’s business. And if you do manage to find a traditional cowboy, in certain communities, they might close their doors to you just because they’re afraid someone might want to come develop on their land. It’s gotten that serious; development has changed so much, there’s cotton fields and oil fields all over Lockhart, polluting all these areas. Places that have been cotton fields for a hundred years are now bought and sold for mass-housing production, so they’ll just become sub-divisions. And for whatever reasons, maybe that family needed the money, but it’s all changing everywhere.

To me, the definition of a cowboy is carrying on the heritage of, ‘When you say something you mean it. When something’s broke you fix it. When something ain’t broke you don’t mess with it. You preserve it.’ What a cowboy is to me, it’s maintaining integrity, and being able to stand behind what you say.

Anja Aronowsky Cronberg is Vestoj’s editor-in-chief and founder. 

Genuine excitement. Apprehensive self-consciousness. Venues so big you feel small. People lining up who won’t get in but stay there anyway. A bustle at the entrance. Overhearing: ‘But I’m on the list!’ Saying: ‘But I’m on the list!’ Exchanging smiles with a security guard who tells you Ah il fait bien d’avoir un petit chaleur humaine. A woman wearing a dunce’s cap on the second row, blocking the view for those on the third. That woman from the TV in mirrored aviators and turquoise hair. Once more a plethora of Asian faces in the audience, despite a shortage on the catwalk. Spotting, in the audience at Undercover, a man in a jacket that spells out ‘Fighting for Freedom’ on the back in the Latin alphabet, and also in Cyrillic: which side is he referring to – you want to ask but never do. Avoiding eye contact with those you’ve already greeted and have nothing left to say to. A complete inconsistency in terms of how people dress: some as if it is a regular day at the tax office, others as if it’s the grandest costume ball of the year; some as if it’s the height of summer, others as if it’s still winter (which it is). More applause than usual. Less applause than usual. Exactly the average amount of applause. A curious mix of expressions on people’s faces: ‘This is my umpteenth show and I just want to go home’ versus ‘Oh my gosh pinch me I can’t believe I’m finally here!’ As soon as the last clap dies down, a throng at the door: hurry hurry hurry or else you’ll miss the next show! People typing furiously on their phones. VIPs and VICs lining up to get backstage: there’s champagne to be drunk, and cheeks to be kissed. Men in make-up. Men in skirts. Men in sequins. Acting cooler than you feel. Sunglasses everywhere, though there’s no sun in sight. Sunglasses indoors, infallibly. Beautiful people, on the catwalk and off. Good bone structure. Good skin. Good hair. Purple hair, green hair, blue hair, pink hair. Influencers and first-timers lingering around after the show taking selfies. The familiar faces. Everybody looking at each other while pretending not to. Bra top and suit jacket combos. A man in a white dress shirt and nothing on his bottom half, except a prosthetic vulva: who is he? A generic-looking old white man with a Germanic accent regaling the crowd with stories about his multiple homes and pools: later you find out it’s the painter Anselm Kiefer. Michèle Lamy conducting herself like Madame de Pompadour, surrounded by adoring acolytes. A throbbing base that makes your heart quiver. Models in perspex heels so high it’s a miracle no one trips and falls. Blacked-out pupils and long trains on skirts and coats on the Rick Owens catwalk. Towering head-dresses at Comme des Garçons. Nicolas Ghesquière showing long knitted scarves at Louis Vuitton, a crowd-pleaser. Peacocking: ridiculous, beautiful, moving. No coats, even in sub zero temperatures. A lot of belly buttons on display. Crowds moving in unison, phones held aloft to catch a glimpse of a celebrity you’ve never heard of. Stern-looking men in dark suits surrounding beautiful young women with perfectly applied make-up and professional hair. Bumping into people you never see, except at fashion shows. Waving to friends across the catwalk, then losing them in the crowd. A swarm of shiny black cars with tinted windows blocking the street. Bored-looking drivers lining the sidewalk while smoking and drinking coffee from paper cups. Monogrammed handbags. Logos, though not as many as last season. Someone who looks like Madonna, but isn’t. Off-duty model style, flawless. Making as if you don’t notice the street style photographers, even when they’re right in your face. Arriving too late after having stressed like crazy, and missing the show. Arriving too early and having to wait outside in the rain without an umbrella. Not getting the ticket you really really wanted. Mind boggling sets intended to awe you into submission, which works, almost. Watching a street style photographer trying to capture an influencer crossing the street as if no one is watching. That same influencer crossing the street multiple times, back and forth back and forth, so everyone gets their shot. Avoiding becoming the figure cropped out behind said street style star. The PRs looking anxious behind clipboards and iPads. The most important members of the audience always arriving last. No visibly handicapped people, ever. A congregation of photographers at the end of the catwalk competing to take the exact same photograph. Always at least one orange knitted hat worn by a man in the audience. Tim Blanks on every front row. Bare breasts on the catwalk for no good reason. Relief that the PR clocked you meaning you’ll get a ticket to next season’s show too (hopefully). Wishing the week was over. Wishing the week would never end. Loving it hating it but loving it more.

Anja Aronowsky Cronberg is Vestoj’s Editor-in-Chief and Founder.

We talk for hours, over many months and across two continents. He is in the throes of a turbulent summer, first due to a social media commotion in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter uprisings of 2020, and then another, more parochial, turmoil focusing on the originality of his designs. I find myself moved somehow by his attempts to come to grips with the confrontations: a man otherwise so affable and cool he sometimes seems made of Teflon, now torn between wanting to defend himself, the worry about making things worse, and the desire to understand and accept that the narratives which form in the public domain have little to do with intent, or with the perception you might have of yourself.

I often feel like ‘the only one.’ The odd one out – the stranger in the village. When I’m in high society in Paris I feel it. When I’m on the South Side of Chicago I feel it. But I think of doubt as my engine actually. There’s nothing that motivates me in quite the same way. So yes of course I doubt. Can I do this? Am I confident enough? Can I break that wall down? Does the Trojan horse fit? But also, if you doubt me just wait I’ll one-up you. You know, as a kid at school I can’t tell you how many times I heard ‘Hey Virgil, you talk like you’re white.’ Or ‘Virgil the Virgin.’ But I had a witty comeback for every time I heard that joke, and that’s how the roles were reversed and I was laughing at them – and so was everyone else. I’m still like that. If they assume I’m all about ‘streetwear,’ I’ll show them tailoring. If they judge me by the colour of my skin, they assume I’ll talk this way and act that way. They think they know what my work is about. So I’ll one-up them.

Before the summer of 2020, before the racial uprising, it was basically taboo to talk about race in an all-white setting of power. I never made my race the forefront issue when it came to my work because it was obvious that if you were screaming about race issues from the mountaintops, no one would listen. That’s why my Trojan horse was built. But now everyone is like, ‘Hey, I’m ready now, let’s talk about race.’ ‘I’m white and I’m here to listen to you.’ So I can hop out of my Trojan horse for a minute and do some work above ground and it’s not seen as threatening anymore. Nobody thinks I’m complaining now; they know what I’m talking about. Where are the black creatives in fashion? Why are there not more black people in the boardrooms? What is the black experience? What is the black canon? Every corporate partner I have is tackling the racial issue inside their businesses right now. And as a face and collaborator, I can dialogue back to them and be like, ‘What are we doing here?’ There’s a new system in the making, and it’s better for the brands I work with to let me lead the way. Two years ago if I’d said, ‘I’m hiring only black people for this project,’ they would all have been like, ‘Woah.’ Now there’s a PR angle and everyone is on board.

But for me there’s still doubt located in being a black artist, creative, designer, whatever. Being in opposition to the European canon. My race follows me everywhere: because of how visible I am, because of my name, because of this moment in time. It’s what I represent and what I am; there’s no way my work or person can exist outside of that. In the hierarchical, white spaces I move through I’m attempting to add my name to the canon. In fashion, in art, in design, the white European canon is taken for granted to the extent that we don’t even see it anymore. We just think of it as ‘the canon.’ I want to upend that. Or at least ask questions about how to create and exist in that space as a black person. I’m in dialogue with my white peers, but I’m in opposition to them also. That’s where doubt comes in: it’s two-fold. There’s doubt in terms of the validity of my work – ‘he’s not a real designer’ – but there’s also my own doubt. Can I do it? Can I be the only black person in the room, and still make them listen to me? Can I make them give me the resources I need?

So I’ve been inching towards the black canon, defining it, embodying it, in my mind and in my work. I’ve been rearranging the furniture in my mind to use our favourite metaphor. When I first met you, when I was first becoming known in fashion, I didn’t want to talk about it, you know that. I didn’t want to deal with race. And now I think of it as the one legacy I want to leave as a black designer. I lead with race now, and I try to put doubt to the side. I know speaking plainly like this is risky. Maybe it’ll stoke some new social media tornado. Maybe my bosses and peers will worry about the bottom line. Maybe Black Twitter will poke holes in my theory. Sometimes it seems impossible to speak about race for even three minutes without saying the wrong thing. You end up offending white people, you end up offending black people. I don’t have the answer obviously; I’m figuring it out like everybody else. But what I do know is that I want to help define the black canon. Draw lines around it and say, this is it. Because I think that until we better understand the ways it converges and diverges from the white canon we all know and measure ourselves against, black creatives and intellectuals will never be able to drop the prefix. And as far as we might get in our chosen fields, when what’s written and said about us leads with ‘black,’ we’re never going to transcend race. Brilliant black minds will continue to exist parallel to. And as long as that’s the case we’re always being ‘allowed in,’ if you know what I mean. Power doesn’t reside with us: it relies on the magnanimousness of the white canon. I think we need to outline and celebrate black culture, focus on black people, distinguish the black canon first. That’s step one.

There’s something you’ve got to understand. When you’re black in the arts, in order to be seen you must perform. It’s like, ‘Hey! You! Do something! Don’t just sit there – entertain us!’ Dark skin is acceptable if it belongs to someone in front of the camera. A basketball player, a singer, a model, an entertainer. I know that, and I’ve worked with that. I’ve been the basketball player, the singer and the entertainer. The face. But the entertainment aspect of my work is wearing thin. I want to step back and let the work speak for itself, less blatantly, with more nuance. I want to take the space to think, to be a thinker. I want my logic to be more apparent. I want nuance to be welcomed. That’s what clipped me the summer of 2020 with all the social media scandals that swirled around me: my own community saying, ‘Skip the nuance. You need to be direct. You need to fight.’ But I don’t want to give my nuance up. My nuance is my strength.

To the black community I’m not black enough, that argument goes all the way back that to high school. Actually, the first time I felt the effects of prejudice wasn’t from white people – it was from other black people telling me, ‘You speak too well. Why do you talk like that? You talk like you’re white.’ I remember sitting at that lunch table being like, wait, what did I do? I’ve told you before that my parents are African, they’re immigrants in America. My dad came with two degrees from Ghana in the Seventies. So when I was being attacked on all sides by Black Twitter last summer, my dad took me aside and told me, ‘What happened to you is what happened to me when I came to this country.’ Black Americans asked him, ‘Why do you use those words? Why do you drive that car? Why are you not more like us?’ Sometimes it feels as if black culture wants something from me, but will throw me in the trash without a second thought if I don’t fit the narrative. I’m disposable. It’s ironic times ten. At the beginning of my career, I had detractors but I had lots of support too. People were rooting for me. But now… There’s a certain glee in seeing the mighty fall, that’s quite human. Schadenfreude. It’s given rise to a different kind of doubt for me. At the beginning there was less at stake. In a way I doubted less, because I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? Now I have to play the politician. There were forty-eight hours of internet tornado this past summer that got pretty ugly. My wedding photos were uploaded online; it was a true celebrity crazy person zoo. I got swept up in cancel culture. A lot of people in my social circle have been asking why not more well-known people are prepared to say even slightly controversial things, about race or whatever. But when cancel culture is as virulent as it is now I can understand. It’s so easy to say the wrong thing. And then it’s public square humiliation time. That’s why it’s safer to cruise by unremarked upon in the sea of other celebrities also not saying anything. I know this isn’t the doubt we’re focusing on here, but it did make me doubt human nature, and my place in the world. Then you texted me the best quote: ’misunderstandings are ubiquitous and neither intelligence nor the intention to be accurate is any guarantee against them.’

That was something David Deutsch, the physicist, wrote.

Well it really resonated with me. I’m still figuring out how to be a ‘good’ black person of power, in fashion and in culture. What’s my responsibility? What do people want from me? What do I want for myself? As you know, to many people in the industry I’m still not even a designer. I’m some outsider, the perennial new guy, the one doing streetwear certainly not ‘fashion.’ My race is part of that, yes, but so are a lot of other things that set me apart. That I’m American maybe, that I didn’t go to fashion school or climb the conventional hierarchy to success. That I’m multi-disciplinary. That my work is adjacent to entertainment culture. That I don’t subscribe to fashion as an elitist pursuit. What I want is to show that it’s possible to circumvent conventional European codes of fashion, or invert them perhaps and say, this is what a black designer, black artist, can do. I’m trying to push that Trojan horse into the industry: get behind enemy lines and deliver my message in a more efficient way to standing with a megaphone outside the castle walls.

My strategy has never been to call out singular examples of racism, even as I’ve encountered them myself. I don’t want to confront individual people and tell them off. That’s not my style. It’s better for me to think of an action that has ten times more impact than an individual instance of prejudice or bias. That way I’m allowed to keep creating and hopefully in the wake of my initiative I can progress with my work, myself, the cause. The theory of indirect communication: that’s my tactic. That’s how I’ve built my career. I’m going to carry on operating in spaces that aren’t diverse, where I’ll be the only black person in the room. I’m going to carry on having to prove myself, show sceptics that I belong. I wish it wasn’t like that but I know what I’m in for. In the spaces that I move through, you never hear, ‘We don’t like black people.’ Few people in the demographic I exist in – globetrotting, educated, sophisticated liberals – would admit to having racist tendencies. The racist is always someone else, a caricature. So bias is expressed in subtle, underhanded ways: in expressions and body language where you can hide their actual meaning to yourself if not to others. These are the unknown knowns we carry. It comes out in ‘You’re not a real designer.’ ‘That’s not your idea.’ ‘That’s not original.’

You told me once about Joseph Campbell, about his work on myths and folklore and his understanding of the hero’s journey. I’ve been thinking about that. My career has a kind of story arc, a narrative that fits the mould. I’ve gone from obscurity to success, from outsider to insider. Paraphrasing a bit here but if my ‘hero’s adventure’ is that ascent, then I get that now is the time to be tested. The people who once saw me as a symbol, as the underdog righteously crashing the salons, are raising an eyebrow now. There’s some doubt. ‘What will he do?’ I mean, it feels good to root for the underdog, I get it. So no, I’m not the underdog anymore. I’m seen as part of the establishment, as just another gatekeeper. But I’m not an archetype, I’m no hero; I’m just a human being flawed and contradictory like everybody else. And I want to write my own story. I’m always aware of double consciousness: how I see myself, and how I’m seen by others. That’s why doubt is constantly on my mind – I’m never allowed to forget how I come across in the world. As a black creative, every time I put something out, it has to go through this sort of… I have to overexplain myself. I have to have the receipts ready in my back pocket just in case. I’ve got to be able to back everything up, show that my inspiration is correct and credible, prove myself. I always laugh if I go to say a white artist’s talk; they can literally be like ‘I found this piece of paper on the ground and it made me laugh – art premise found.’ I’m being facetious, but you know what I mean. If you belong to the canon, you’re never challenged on a grand scale because a great story is all you need. Me, not so much. It’s like, ‘Okay we know you’ve arrived, but show us your passport one more time.’ So when I get challenged I oscillate between a knee-jerk reaction of defending myself and proving that my work is bona fide. But what I really want is to stay quiet, let it be understood that I don’t need to justify myself, allow the work, the ideas, to speak for themselves.

But I’ve come to realise that my voice is my weapon. I’ve put it off for as long as possible but now I can’t any more. More than a fashion designer, I’m a thinker. I produce to provoke thought. I want to put ideas out in the world, not only objects. My output isn’t about this jacket, or that show – it’s about the underlying logic. I want my work to touch as many people as possible so the surface area needs to be substantial. It’s ironic actually: at the start of my career ‘he’s not a designer’ was the most common objection to my work. And I took offense to that. But now I think to myself, where are the black public intellectuals in design and culture? Where are the thought leaders, the game changers? What I leave behind shouldn’t be objects or even an aesthetic – it’s about redefining what a creative could or should be today. Get this: for me the object is a way to point to the idea. There are millions who’ve come before me. I’m not saying I’m brand new to the black canon: I’m just carving out some more space here. My investigation, my work, my trajectory speaks, I hope, to a generation of young black people who need to know that there’s an open space for them to occupy too. But it’s a work in progress. I’m an autodidact, an explorer, and often I’m an amateur too. My career in that sense is an investigative exploration. It’s about how to be a black thinker in white spaces; it’s about inserting the black canon in art history books. It’s about being a black voice that matters beyond the fringes. I want to be able to look back at my life and career and know that I left some inanimate objects behind, yes, but also a logic that changed the mainstream.

Virgil Abloh (1980-2021) was the founder and CEO of Off-White, and the Artistic Director of Menswear at Louis Vuitton.

Anja Aronowsky Cronberg is Vestoj’s Editor-in-Chief and Founder.

This article was originally published in Vestoj ‘On Doubt,’ available for purchase here.

IRENE IS ONE OF the fashion industry’s many éminence grises. She started her work in fashion in the late 1960s and worked her way from Mademoiselle to Elle to Vogue. In the late 1980s she became the fashion editor of Vogue Paris where she pioneered the work of photographers like Peter Lindbergh, Steven Meisel, Bruce Weber and Paolo Roversi, at the time all young and looking for a break. In 1991 she resigned, after a lunch meeting where an important advertiser tried to put the screws in, and her publisher’s silence spoke volumes. On the day she left she famously received the gift of a photograph from every photographer she had worked with at Vogue, delivered to her office every hour, on the hour. Shortly afterwards a chance encounter with Yohji Yamamoto led to the next phase in Irene’s life, as the designer’s creative director. Next to Yamamoto, who Irene affectionately calls her spiritual ‘brother’, she helped the designer fine-tune his vision and shape his legacy, in the process leaving an indelible mark on the history of fashion.

***

We talk on a bench by the Jacob Javits Convention Center. It’s a glorious summer day, and he’s here to work. He speaks of his long career providing security for gallery openings, fashion designers, ladies who lunch and, later, for New York Fashion Week with a candidness that is totally disarming. I drink my coffee and listen while he looks through the big stack of files he’s brought with him, and reminisces about what fashion once was.  

Forty years ago I was a detective in New York City, but you never make enough money being a policeman you know. You have to supplement your income as a civil servant, so many of us did security work on the side. It’s called moonlighting. My first job was at a cocktail party in an art gallery; I made a crisp fifty-dollar bill in an afternoon. That was a lot of money for me back then. What did I make? Say $20 000 a year? And all I had to do was stand at the door with a guest list and make sure that no one got in who didn’t belong. It was all very innocuous, there were never any issues really. Every once in a while a homeless person would come by, look through the window and see somebody serving trays of hors d’oeuvres and try to come in but that was about it.

I started my company a year later, in 1981. My reputation spread through word of mouth mostly. Alongside gallery openings I did these high end cocktail parties on Park Avenue in people’s residences. I remember noting that most of those women, the dowagers, had very big feet, and telling my wife about it. Getting to know my fair share of ladies who do lunch, as they were called back then, helped when I started working on fashion events. Many of those ladies with big feet would come to the shows too. I knew them by face which was helpful since nobody would bring their invitations to the shows back then. Their face was their invitation. Typically, they would just walk through the door, with a ‘how could you not know who I am’ expression, and I did know who they were. I still do.

Anyway, I get ahead of myself a little. I did a lot of AIDS related fundraisers in the Eighties. I worked with Norma Kamali for her shows and her boutique, and eventually that led to a job for Valentino in the early Nineties. That was a very big job for me. He literally built a piazza on Park Avenue, and called it Piazza Italia. The right people saw me working there, approached me and said that they were going to erect tents in Bryant Park to host fashion shows. I was asked to put a bid in on the job, and I did. I got the job, and the first official New York Fashion Week shows at Bryant Park opened in the fall of 1993. I learnt a lot about fashion from the get go. When the shows are on, you’re immersed in it for eighteen hours a day. It’s very very demanding, and you need to be focused on it.

NYFW has grown so much. In 1993 we only had twenty-seven shows, but last time I was involved we had ninety – that’s almost four times the amount. The venues in 1993 held four hundred people, now they hold 1500. Overall, now we shuffle over 100 000 people into various fashion shows for the duration of fashion week, and this needs to be done in a civil manner. These people are very sensitive, and they cry very easily. I’ve dealt with tears and with tantrums. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard ‘I’m with her, she’s with me,’ or ‘don’t you know who I am.’ They’re all legends in their own minds.

We practice what we call ‘security with a velvet touch.’ We stay in the shadows. The PRs check people in, and most of them don’t know what they’re doing but that’s another story. Anyway, we stand behind the PR people. If we see them lingering with an individual, we might catch the individual trying read the guest list. People do that you know – they can read upside down. If we see that one of these PR persons is taking more than a minute or two with someone, then there’s usually a problem. PRs are often afraid that if they bar someone they’re going to lose their job. Meanwhile, they could also be letting in the wrong people; someone might use your name to get in, and then when you show up five minutes later I won’t let you in since you’re already here. Imagine – that’s a whole scene. Basically, we play the bad cop. But we always try to give people a gracious way out, like, ‘Sorry you’re not on the list, obviously there was an issue with your invitation, maybe you didn’t RSVP in time?’ You never say, ‘Oh get outta here,’ even though you want to. But you can’t, because like I said they cry very easily and you never know who they know.

Only certain people on my staff can do fashion. I’ve learnt to be a good judge of that. To work at a fashion event, number one: you need to look good. And you need to speak well, you need to follow instructions, you need to stay focused, and you need to know who’s coming in the door. You need to know the Anna Wintours. You need to know the first, second and maybe even some of the third row people. Anybody above the third row is in Siberia – they’re somebody’s Aunt Tilly. We need to take care of the first, second and third row. Those are very important people. I keep track; I have photos of everybody. They are posted on our door, and when my staff leave the office they see them.

I’ve been fortunate enough to count about three quarters of my staff as regulars – they’re policemen, they’re firemen, they’re postal workers, they’re ex-army. They come back twice a year and they become more familiar with who’s who. It works out. I don’t hire people who just have a big neck, you know. If you give me your resume and tell me you’re a judo guy, that’s the last guy I’m going to hire. I can’t have that. I don’t want you to be using those skills, or to show me that you can knock somebody across the room. I don’t have that kind of clientele, and I don’t want that kind of clientele. Dealing with the public is so important. It’s like a ballet – you take this part and put it over here. ‘Now what’s the problem? You’re not getting in, is that it? I’m sorry, that’s the score.’ These fashion people are not stupid, they look and they see and they listen. I mean if too many guests tell the designer they had a problem coming to their show, the designer won’t be coming back to us.

We are typically the ones who have to tell people when the show is overbooked and they’re not getting in. They don’t love us then. ‘That’s stupid, how could you do this?’ Well, we didn’t. The designer did. But someone has to be the bad cop, and that someone is us. Stanchions are our best friends in those situations; they allow us to channel people properly, ‘Standing room is to the left, seating room please go right in.’ You have to always let the public know what’s happening, don’t ever keep people in the dark even when the news is bad. Tell them, they want to know. Nobody wants to stand around like a lamp post. I’ve been doing this twenty-five years now, I know the drill. I’ve made a lot of friends over the years, and probably a lot of enemies too. There are some people who just won’t give up.

I’ll show you my archive. I’ve saved everything from every season since 1993. Look, this is me with no grey hair – can you believe it? I had to institute a rule early on, that all my staff had to be in black suits. I can’t tell you how outrageous the suits people turned up in were. And the ties – oh lord. People thought that because it was fashion, they could turn up in a tie with pineapples on it. That was not ever going to fly. Now everybody has a black suit and I give everyone a tie.

I remember the first show during that first Bryant Park fashion week. October 31, 1993, Donna Karan. Donna invited Barbara Streisand, but Barbara Streisand was late. The show was supposed to start at one o’clock. At one thirty Barbara Streisand still wasn’t there so Donna started the show. Who shows up five minutes later? That’s right, Barbara Streisand. And I had to go ‘Barbara’s here! Barbara’s here!’ So what they did is they stopped the show, and then they started it again.

There was a time when people were literally slicing open the tents to sneak in. We had one young lady covered in mud one night – this was a season when it rained all week. I caught her sliding under the tent. I said, ‘This is a fashion show, what are you doing?’ ‘I have to see it, I have to see it!’ ‘Well you’re not gonna see it now anyway let me tell ya that.’ We’ve had people replicating invitations, we’ve had people impersonating others. If they knew a journalist was out of town they would come in and use the journalist’s name – this is another reason we need to have facial recognition. There are so many different ways you could try to sneak into a show. Now we have people selling tickets on the net. I remember a mommy and daughter who flew in from Texas. They were in town for fashion week for three days, and they had four tickets in their hands for the most popular shows that season. None of the tickets were valid. The first show they tried to get in, ‘Bingo!’ ‘Where did you get this ticket?’ ‘Well I bought it on Craig’s List, and I have three more.’ We accommodated them in some way because they already spent airfare, hotel and $3000 to buy four fake tickets. These people don’t know.

Did you hear about the lady that died on the runway? This was about five-six years ago – her name was Zelda Kaplan, and she was ninety-five I believe. She was sitting on the first row, second seat at the Lincoln Center. Zelda was a fashion icon for years, always dressed to the nines. She was with her escort who was sitting behind her, a younger gentleman. All of a sudden Zelda does this – puts her head down like this, so her friend grabs her shoulders, he realises something is wrong. This is when we take notice, and can you believe it – she’s dead. But the show is still going on. So we cross over as discreetly as possible and pick her up. We cross the runway, carrying her, and we bring her outside and of course the medics are there, trying to revive her. The show never stopped, and most of the people never knew what happened because they were looking the other way. Afterwards of course this makes the newspaper. Death and fashion, they love it. New York Post is having a field day. All everybody wanted to know was, ‘Is she dead?’ Well I’m certainly not going to give away your medical information, so all I said was, ‘There was a woman at the show that needed medical attention, and she was taken to the hospital.’ If there’s an upside, it’s that Zelda Kaplan had been coming to fashion shows all her life. If she would have scripted it, it couldn’t have been done better. She made her exit the way she lived. Anyway, that’s the Zelda Kaplan story.

There were always a lot of people at Bryant Park in the early days: we would refer to them as lobby fleas. They would come in in the morning because they had an invitation to a show, and they’d never leave. They’d spend the day, people watching, just to see who’s there, just to be seen. You couldn’t get rid of them. The lobby would be filled with all these people, if it was cold or rainy, forget it they never left. Fashion people can be fanatical, but then again so are people at football or baseball or basketball games. It’s not every show though; out of eighty shows, seventy are fine. Only ten are ‘I gotta get in’ type shows. Nobody’s breaking into a show at nine o’clock on a Sunday morning. And then if it rains, you’re embarrassed for the designer. You don’t want that to happen. Sometimes we have to sit in as seat doubles; we sit in the front row and pretend to take notes.

Every day, I read the fashion weeklies. I subscribe to People magazine. I don’t read it, I just look at the pictures because I have to know who the next hot starlet is, you know, who the next guy is going to be, because they come to these shows and they sit in the front row. Sometimes a PR person will come up and say ‘I have a talent person with me and we need some special treatment.’ It means they need to go in a certain door, or they want to go backstage so we accommodate them, we do. Sometimes the designer doesn’t want to take a picture with a certain person, and then we have to make sure that never happens. I can’t mention any names but there was one designer who said absolutely not, and she knew that this individual wanted their picture taken together. And of course there are some people that want to sit next to Anna and have their picture taken. We make sure that the appropriate people are sitting next to Anna, not just anybody.

After working with NYFW for twenty years, Anna Wintour said hello to me. It was about ten years ago now. I thought I must have been mistaken, she must have thought I was somebody else. I asked around and was told that she knew exactly who I was. So now it’s ‘hello’ always. She often comes an hour before the show, and sees it alone – before the public. Then she comes through the back door and we bring her in. When that happens, I walk next to her but otherwise I very rarely am backstage. We only allow female security backstage. They make sure that the photographers aren’t taking inappropriate photographs at certain times, right, which we find they try. They make sure that there’s nobody back there that doesn’t belong, you know stagehands, the lighting guy – they don’t belong back there, the models are getting dressed! We also keep the public at the end of the show from charging backstage. Wait two minutes will you, let the models at least get some clothes on. Often the PR people will have some celebrity that they want to let in before the others, someone the designer wants to take a shot with. The word is always, ‘The clothes were fabulous.’ It’s the only word they ever use – ‘fabulous.’ Already in 1993 that was the word. ‘Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous.’

Anja Aronowsky Cronberg is Vestoj‘s editor-in-chief and publisher.

I’m on the Champs Elysées somewhere and oh my god, my heel hurts. I’ve stopped being able to walk like a normal person; instead I sort of shuffle along, lifting my left heel by scrunching my toes up and putting all my weight on the front of the foot to avoid rubbing what must surely by now be raw flesh bonding with my sock. I’m afraid to take my boots off to look.

A Nike swoosh rises like a mirage on the other side of the road and I almost yelp with joy: I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see a big box store. I cross the street and hobble to the sneaker section which is huge and utterly confusing. There’s a boy folding T-shirts nearby, young enough to be my son in another life; with pimples on his chin and in head-to-toe Nike. Of course. I ask for help.

Excuse-moi, est-ce vous pouvez m’aider? J’ai besoin de baskets…  Quelque chose de simple?

I must have been a teenager the last time I wore a pair of trainers outside the gym: navy blue Adidas Gazelles with white stripes, the same kind Damon Albarn wore. As a grown-up, all that conspicuous branding seems puerile, mug-ish, too many logos an anathema to good taste. Though like any self-respecting fashion scholar I’ve read enough Bourdieu to know that ‘good taste’ is a cultural construct. Plus, they are comfortable.

I’ve got a minor tower of trainers in front of me now, size 40 in every imaginable colourway. I try a few on, but lose heart pretty fast. All I want is something cheap, unobtrusive. Something to wear while I limp home. I spot a pair that fit the bill: pretty plain, €85, black with white laces and a swoosh. Well four swooshes actually, swooshes all over, white on black, there’s no way you’ll miss them. They’ll do.

When I get home, I put my new shoes at the back of my wardrobe and proceed to forget all about them. They stay there for quite a while in fact, while other shoes, other concerns, life, takes over. And then one day I’m looking for something I don’t remember what, and instead stumble on those Nikes again. They still look – and smell – immaculate, box fresh: a pair of comfortable everyday, nothing special trainers, one of millions made in a factory far away.

I wear them that day to the gym, because why not, and then continue wearing them: to the supermarket, running errands, to see friends and colleagues, on travels, to fashion shows. And just as they wheedled their way into my wardrobe, they slip into my everyday life – and when I start travelling every month from my home in Paris to Homerton Hospital in London, I wear them too.

* * *

I was talking to my friend Abdul recently; he’s a self-confessed sneakerhead with thousands of shoes in his collection, so many shoes that they’ve taken over every wardrobe in his house, the bookshelves in his front room, his entire office and his mom’s garage.  He told me about falling in love with sneakers as a boy in Sierra Leone. As a kid he played soccer and ran track so they were useful, but then one day he got to see a bootleg VHS tape someone had brought back from America: Police Academy 4. There’s a scene in the movie where a pack of kids skateboard through a mall, then end up being chased by the cops – and every one of them is wearing Air Jordan 1’s. Young Abdul was mesmerised.

What we wear can so easily become a stand-in for yearnings, aspirations, nostalgia. Because clothes always reflect our histories; they can be powerful and transformative, mythical and magical, and full of both symbolic and immaterial value. In my work as a fashion researcher and writer I often return to how full of mystery our relationship to clothes can be, think of a ‘lucky shirt,’ or a piece of jewellery that seems charmed, or an object so connected to aspirations or fortune that it transforms into a sort of talisman, a fetish.

I think of Abdul and his friends nerding out, swapping tips on message boards or WhatsApp threads about where to get the latest iteration of the Air Force 1 or the Adidas Superstar, or the Chuck Taylor, and about how the humble sneaker has become something to stay awake all night for, camp outside a store for, obsess about, fetishise, go bankrupt for. There’s a lovely scene in the movie ‘Just for Kicks’ – a documentary that locates the rise of sneaker culture in the influence of hip hop in New York in the 1970s and 80s: B-Boys, graffiti artists and MCs appropriating shoes worn by basketball players because they were the most comfortable to dance in, stay up all night in, run from the cops in. And because these kids had no money but of course still had to look fly, they cared for their sneakers, they made them last. How? Well by cleaning them, with a toothbrush if necessary, by filling the stripes in with a felt-tip pen, by washing and ironing their shoe laces.

* * *

I’m sure you know as well as I do, what a bad reputation fashion has. It doesn’t seem to matter how successful a phenomenon it is socially or commercially, it’s still thought of as the very apex of superficiality, frivolity, vanity. Intellectuals who write about it mostly seem to do so only in order to denounce it, or else contemplate it with a sort of wry and distanced amusement. Fashion is the part of culture we love to hate. And yet, though clothing is the perhaps most fraught entity of the material world, laden as it is with paradox and ambiguity, is there any object more closely linked with the human body and the human life cycle than the clothes that we wear? There’s a line in the fashion scholar Elizabeth Wilson’s book ‘Adorned in Dreams,’ that describes the intimate relationship we have to our clothes better than anything else I’ve come across: ‘garments are objects so close to our bodies so as to articulate the soul.’

Fashion matters because of it. In getting dressed we construct the self as image, simultaneously exhibiting and concealing who we are to the world. Clothing is our armour, but it can also be a failed disguise, much easier to see through than we imagine. We use clothes as marks of our distinction and authenticity, but also as a way to connect with each other and with the past, real or imagined. By virtue of wheedling their way into our everyday lives, clothes transform into material memories that ensure the past is always carried with us into the future.

The philosopher Roland Barthes once wrote that ‘the narratives of the world are numberless.’ ‘Narrative,’ he said, ‘is international, transhistorical, transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself.’ The narratives we weave around ourselves through the clothes that we wear have always fascinated me. Garments tell stories, and in their subtle communication we find both language and psychology. Unwanted garments can appear dejected and doleful; it’s through use that we give these inanimate objects a soul.

* * *

That’s why my Nikes are so special to me. As I look at them, lying now at the bottom of a pile of shoes by our front door, worn-out and grubby, a pair of nondescript sneakers that sustained me for a year while I visited doctors, being prodded and poked, legs in the air and feet in stirrups, learning to inject myself until my belly and ass were both bruised and painful, messing up right at the end and having to do it all over again, hoping wishing yearning for a baby. It’s a highly intimate story, out of sight mostly, the one about becoming a mother through artificial means. Being fertile is to be productive, abundant, creative – being barren feels shameful. You need comfort, tenderness, compassion, so you look for it wherever you can: in people, in your environment, in the objects that surround you and hold you. My sneakers did their part by letting me forget that I was wearing anything at all on my feet, one less thing to worry about.

See me as I run to catch the Eurostar, wait for the number 30 bus, walk across a bleak East London housing estate to the clinic, stand on a street corner gulping down coffee from a Styrofoam cup, tap my feet in the waiting room trying to focus on the latest Kim Kardashian adventure in some oil-stained issue of Closer magazine. Notice how all the women here look down at each other’s shoes, how careful we are not to meet each other’s anxious eyes. My sneakers are a suitable companion: they just are, and they let me be too – another anonymous woman bearing the Nike swoosh. What would they say if they could talk? Maybe they would nudge the boots to my right, gently ask how they’re doing. Or help me figure out why the Mary Janes to my left seem so relaxed; what do they know that we don’t? Or perhaps they could convince the nurse’s sensible Crocs to stop for a minute, and get their no-nonsense user to instead step into my shoes for a moment. Because I’m falling over here, and I’m scared.

* * *

How many miles of endless asphalt haven’t I covered in these shoes, and in how many cities? Taking shortcuts where there are none, relying on the familiarity of certain routes and city streets, focusing on little changes – a trashcan overturned by the wind, a single glove placed respectfully on the steps of an estate, a network of chewing gum in different shades of grey on the pavement, the jitteriness of traffic on this particular day – to avoid thinking about whether life is growing in me, or not. There is a kind of voluptuous, almost perverse pleasure in forcing my thoughts where they don’t want to go.

This is the stuff that our intimate lives are made of.

I’ve thought a lot lately about these types of commonplace, ordinary objects that are part of our everyday life, the non-fashionable, mass-produced stuff that form the backbone of material culture. A pair of shoes made in Indonesia, one of millions created by anonymous hands, touched by countless others on their way to a big-box store in a tourist trap neighbourhood in my beautiful Paris. These shoes that were gentle with me when I needed relief from pain and that I’ve cared for in return, swapping laces, avoiding puddles, brushing stains away. These shoes that have moulded after my feet; bunions denting the sides, soles worn down by my particular way of walking.

You probably have something like it in your wardrobe too, a pair of shoes or a piece of clothing acquired in an almost off-hand way, without much thought and without the impulse to impress anyone, something inexpensive meant to fade into the background. How much of our lives isn’t made up of these routine purchases, worn day in, day out, memories accumulating, sticking to the fabric almost despite itself. There is so much humanity to be found here, so much of us in the accumulation of these small things. These are objects that we shape and adjust to fit the routine of our daily grind, that we wear for comfort and to ease everyday existence. Our relationship to them is mostly unconscious, though in repetitive habits intimacy is born, and tenderness too.

* * *

And so, one winter morning in early March I wake up. It’s dark outside, so dark. I look at my phone; it’s 4am, and something feels off. My baby girl is moving around, she’s restless. A little elbow pokes at me from inside, or maybe a tiny foot. I get up to go to the bathroom, and oh my god I feel it – wet trickles down my leg. Just a little, and then a bit more. It’s my water, it’s broken; she’s coming she’s coming. What am I supposed to do now, I can’t think straight. There are no contractions yet, I can’t feel anything is that okay? I wake David up, we google. I call the hospital. It’s okay it’s okay. Everything is going to be just fine. The nurse on the line reassures me, ‘Your contractions will start any minute now,’ she tells me. ‘Come to the hospital as soon as you can.’ I’m strangely calm now, though my adrenaline is pumping. I take a warm shower, pack my hospital bag with books, toothpaste, fresh underwear, my phone charger. We have some leftover stale croissants for breakfast, and coffee. Lots of coffee. I get dressed, in soft pants and my warmest jumper. My big military coat, and a woolly hat. David helps me put my socks and shoes on. My feet are swollen so the only shoes that fit now are my sneakers. I’ve been wearing them every day; they’re just by the door.

It’s 5h30am now and time to go. I move laboriously, deliberately, down the stairs and into the street. I lean on David. My belly is huge and so heavy; I put my hands by my hipbones to support it and I feel the little one – she’s ready. The métro has just opened so we take it. Four stops: Gare du Nord. It’s already filling up with workers on their way to offices on the other side of town, and we let the escalator carry us up and into the street. It’s started snowing, millions of tiny flakes that melt as soon as they land on your skin. It’s still dark, but the sky is full of them now. They land on people rushing to get to work, on smokers pulling on their last drag, on junkies rolling up their sleeping bags, on cars lining the side of the road, on brasserie canopies, on benches and streetlights and trashcans. My shoes are damp but we’ll be there soon.

Anja Aronowsky Cronberg is Vestoj’s founder and editor-in-chief.

This essay was originally written for Extra Extra magazine’s podcast series ‘Protagonist of the Erotic.’ You can listen to it here.

He receives me in his beautiful office, at a time when face masks are still ubiquitous and most people are working from home. His loyal assistant sits next to us for the many hours we spend together, soundlessly reminding us both not to get too confidential. This is for the brand after all. He seems thoughtful and kind, and generous with his experiences and feelings – quite different from the foppish man I had expected. Much later, I find myself in the familiar position of wrangling with his people – ‘we like this,’ ‘please change that’ – and I’m reminded of the complex formations present in big business. Where does a person end, and the corporation begin?

When I started in this job I was a cultural appropriator. It’s true. I was perhaps the best one. The way I thought about creativity then was as something totally free and open. Inspiration to me was something that could be infected by anything. I’ve always been an omnivore like that, finding inspiration everywhere and picking whatever I liked. I’ve changed a lot in that respect, and the times have changed too. There’s no room today for ‘Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t know.’ The feeling now is that you must know everything, and you must care about everything. It’s like being at school. But my work is an ongoing investigation so the challenge suits me. But sometimes the limits we put on creativity can make things complicated, and being at a big company means I’m under intense scrutiny. Every day, every moment, everybody is looking at me.

When I got this job and became a public figure I was almost forty-two. I was already a man with a life. I don’t need visibility. What I want is a good life: good conversations and exchanges. Of course I want my voice to matter, because I’d like to think I have something relevant to say. But when the press started paying attention to me six years ago it was really bad. Well, good and bad. Good because people were recognising my work. And bad because I felt that people were somehow stealing my sense of self. I saw my picture everywhere and it was unsettling; I never thought my work was about me. The line between my professional and private self was quite distinct before. But being a creative director of a fashion house today is all about being a public person – sometimes I imagine it’s a bit like being a rock star in the Eighties. So I had a hard time at first with people stopping me in the street to take a picture. I never in a million years thought that would be my life.

I try not to think too much about the ‘Alessandro Michele’ I see in the magazines. I made a conscious decision not to think about my position or status in order for my work and life to continue as before. I love my life. I’m secure in myself. When I come across a bad picture of myself in a magazine, I can laugh about it. I don’t fret. But being a public figure can be really dangerous; it can be like a drug. It can completely destabilise you. I’ve met famous people who don’t see themselves as human anymore. They have become personaggios, and that scares me. You risk losing contact with the things and people that you love. I’ve had to be very transparent with myself in this respect, very straight and very honest, because when I started to encounter people who say they adore me, or think I’m some kind of god, when I started to see my own image everywhere, I had the feeling someone out there was building a parallel version of me. And I never wanted that image, the persona, to overpower the person that I am.

I’m an open person, but when I doubt I speak to my partner. His opinion means a lot. In a way doubt for me is private, but then again it’s also not. Nothing in my job is really private, not anymore. It’s more like one long therapy session. Every aspect of my inner world is on display, so doubt is always just around the corner. Always. My life and work are completely intertwined today. I think of my work like a garden: I plant something, you plant something too and it all grows together. It’s up to me to take care of the garden, to know what to prune and what to fertilise.

Once designers were like royalty; without the right name you were seen as an impostor. Today labels are more like ongoing narratives. If you’re twelve and you go on Instagram, you don’t need to get a dress, or a belt. You don’t need to buy the products to be a part of the vision or the imagination. Fashion now is a point of view, or a stage. It’s not about the clothes. When young people want to take a selfie with me, I don’t think they care about the bag; they care about the world. And the world I want to project says: be strange, be a loser, be a freak. It’s okay. Because when I was young the definition of ‘fashionable’ was very narrow: thin, white, rich, old. And when I was a little boy I was a total outsider. I needed a very special place to express myself, and for a while fashion was just that. It’s funny, I often think fashion is one of the ways we as humans have invented to forget our imminent death. It’s about ideals: perfection, dreams and fantasy. Coming up in fashion I never heard people talk about death or disease, only about what was gorgeous and fabulous. Now maybe things are a little bit different. You can show an image of a disabled person or someone diseased. But think back to fashion magazines in an earlier era: those people didn’t exist. Fashion was about beautiful hair, and a perfect body. Well that’s not the case anymore.

Before I got this job I was bored with fashion. I didn’t feel it spoke to me anymore; it was about predictable sexiness, for rich people. I was really ready to do something else. I still remember how people would react when I told them I worked in fashion – it was as if I was working on another planet. We were completely disconnected from the world. Well it worked for a while, but I was quite sure that there were others out there as bored as I was. You know, there was a point when I felt that being in fashion was like being in a bad relationship, the kind where you know you should leave but you don’t have the will power. I felt stuck making products, without considering the whole fresco. I was losing the creative attitude. Everything became about numbers, about having the right bag or shoe. There was no soul – I might as well have been working in a supermarket. So when I met Marco for the first time I really had nothing more to lose. I allowed myself complete openness and sincerity. In my head I was already moving on, leaving the relationship, so I could speak very honestly. Actually, Marco is the biggest gambler I met in my life. He was really risking something – money and position – with the decisions he made at the beginning. Me, I’m a creative person; I can be reborn a million times.

When I became creative director I really divided the audience. I remember reading some really crazy things about myself. Like what? Well that I looked like Jesus for example. Crazy! It was a coded way of saying I wasn’t fashionable, because to be fashionable is to be sophisticated. So now when I hear people say, ‘he looks Gucci,’ about someone who doesn’t look rich or glamorous but instead a bit strange, it really makes me happy. If I managed to make the freak fashionable, then I’ve really accomplished something. It means that the world is changing a little bit, and that I played a small part in that. I want to think of myself as an interloper, always. I don’t want to become a slave to the history of the company. I think being a creative director today is a bit like being a shaman: you bring to life something dead. Yesterday’s Gucci is finished, and at the same time it’s not. The brand grows in strange, unpredictable ways. It’s a form of magic really.

When I showed the Dapper Dan look on the catwalk in 2017, I didn’t understand how the cultural context would affect what, to me, was a celebration. The Black community invented the most contemporary vision of Gucci in the 1980s. What was happening in Harlem at that time was super interesting; it was a Renaissance for the company and a vision for how a brand like Gucci can be powerful in the street. I saw a picture of a look Dapper Dan made for Diane Dixon, the athlete: she was wearing this poufy jacket with huge sleeves and LV logos everywhere. And I thought, ‘This woman with a “fake” look is like the new Venus de Botticelli for the company.’ So I wanted to reference Dapper’s work and the glorification of ‘the ghetto’ in the show, and I didn’t think I needed to spell it out because it was so obvious. The next day: disaster. What can I say? I learnt. I’m learning. You must be careful with what belongs to other cultures. It doesn’t mean you can’t use it. But you have to be delicate. Not like a… how you say… colonizatore of image. There were other incidents too, and yes they made me doubt. How could my intentions have come across so wrong? Well these situations made me realise how ignorant I’ve been.

Can I tell you a little story? I live with a guy whose professional life is as far from mine as you can imagine. He’s a researcher and a scholar, he works with Native people. He lives among them, eats and sleeps together with them. Before we met, he knew nothing about fashion. So one day I came home with a beautiful fabric, oh it was just beautiful. I’m obsessed with old fabrics, I’m a collector. This piece was from the end of the 19th Century, from England. It was amazing, a masterpiece: a red toile de jouy. I was trying to decide whether to place it on our bed or on the couch, and I asked his opinion – it’s our house so I want his input too. And he told me, ‘Well for me this fabric is unacceptable.’ ‘But why?’ I asked him; ‘It’s so beautiful!’ And he made me look again. He showed me how colonialism was represented in the pattern: the stereotypes, the exoticism. I didn’t understand at first. ‘It’s not our past.’ ‘It was so long ago.’ Those were the things I was thinking. We fought about it for months. But he helped me understand that what I was seeing as a beautiful Indian man riding an elephant was in fact the image of a slave, of oppression. And afterwards, I kept asking myself: am I a racist for not seeing what he saw? I questioned myself. I felt criticised: ‘You’re just a person in fashion, all you can see is the colour, the elephant. You don’t have the skills to understand what’s really happening here.’ It was a hard lesson. It took me a long time to accept my own failure, my own ignorance.

Navigating creative freedom and political correctness isn’t always easy. It’s a delicate process, and sometimes it’s frustrating. Cultural appropriation is such an ambiguous word. I love art history, and it’s full of what we would today call cultural appropriation. It used to be that as a creative person, you had access to everything in order to create work that was powerful, to get a conversation going. I worry sometimes that we today are too much in the political attitude that it’s one against the other. The mind set has changed and we all have to adapt. When I realised I needed help, I was also worried that I’d be inhibited, or too self-conscious to be free in my creativity. So we devised a way. In the studio I work in a very free way, no one controls what I do there. But once my work is done, we now talk about whether what we made in the studio might be perceived differently to what we intended. Everything we do gets discussed in this way. Screening things is normal now; not doing it is just too dangerous. On the catwalk or in a campaign, things can get reduced or simplified. The whole story isn’t always apparent. And anyway working with limits can be quite a good challenge; you have to push yourself more. It’s funny really – just five years ago a designer could use whatever references he wanted. Five years ago I couldn’t have imagined changing my work for social or political reasons. Never. My creativity was sacred. But I see it differently now. You have to think carefully about the impact of what you’re saying.

There’s a lot of talk now about whether a brand is authentic when they try to move away from the elitism or exclusivity aspect of fashion. ‘You talk about diversity, but do you really mean it?’ or ‘You’re only doing it because you have to.’ I think those arguments are a bit beside the point. Even if you ‘have to,’ it’s a good thing no? We learn from repeating what we have to. Think of a child told again and again by his mother, ‘you must learn to be careful.’ Well some things we have to be forced to learn. I don’t like to be political when I work, but I’ve understood that fashion really is political. It used to be confined to boutiques and rich people in ivory towers but now it touches everyone. I’ve been approached by eleven-year-olds who know everything about Gucci. Can you imagine?

I still question a lot of the practices we have in the fashion industry. Our system hasn’t been renewed in a long time, not really – in many ways it’s as if we’re still doing the job that Monsieur Dior did years and years ago. Like why are we still doing shows using the same structure and rules? Where’s the innovation? Where’s the risk? The rules have become so homogenous: you have to use the ‘right’ models, the ‘right’ light, the ‘right’ stylist. Fashion can be so… come si dice… autoreferenziale. Self-referential? It’s crazy to me that a creative director should use a stylist for example. That’s my job! It’s time to challenge those old rules. Imagine, in twenty-five years of working in fashion I only once interviewed a black design applicant, and she was American. Can you imagine? I think I’ve seen hundreds of white, Western designers over the years, but diversity is still really rare. Why? On what level are we failing? Is it about access to education, or about class or is it about bias on behalf of head hunters? Or the brands themselves? Traditionally fashion has been an exceptionally racist industry; being black meant exoticism, bananas and Josephine Baker. We know better now, but systems take a long time to change.

There was a time when the company didn’t want to sell the GG logo cap to the ‘wrong’ customer. In the New York shop, the cap wasn’t available. So when I became creative director I immediately wanted to open up a dialogue with the people who worked with Gucci ‘fakes.’ To me that was powerful. Fakes are not bad. I mean, what is a ‘fake’ anyway? ‘GG’ is a pop symbol, and today, like Warhol said, pop symbols have power. Labels give value to an object. Is my jacket Gucci without the label? If I put a Gucci label into a vintage piece, does it make it Gucci? Is it more Gucci because I’m the creative director? I was thinking about those things when I worked on the Dapper jacket: am I fake and Dapper Dan real, or is it the other way around? Or are we both fake? These terms are so loaded, and how you value them depends on the time, context and also just your individual point of view. I’m just a guy from a faraway quarter of Rome, I wasn’t born in a rich family, my surname isn’t Gucci. Maybe I’m here just by chance. So what makes you think I’m the real one? [Laughs] I remember the first time I was invited to a really high class dinner; I didn’t know how to manage the wine glasses and I felt so uncomfortable. Now I think I’m lucky not to know, because it means that I’m not oppressed by rules. I am what I am.

The idea of ‘good taste’ is dying. Sophistication or Western ideals of elegance are being challenged. That’s what I want my work to do. I love bad taste. In the awkward or strange you can find the most beautiful things. As designers one of the most important things we can do is to challenge what style or good taste is or can be. That’s why I try to be as unfashionable as possible. I hate when designers talk about being ‘inspired’ by this or that. To me that sounds like someone stuck in their ivory tower and using binoculars to look at the world down below. I imagine a European or American in an elegant Moroccan boutique hotel sipping a spritz by the pool, and telling journalists later that he was ‘inspired’ by Morocco. That way of working is completely irrelevant now. I prefer walking down the street, or just having a nice conversation with someone.

Anja Aronowsky Cronberg is Vestoj’s Editor-in-Chief and Founder

This article was originally published in Vestoj ‘On Doubt,’ available for purchase here.

The first time I meet Kenneth I’m struck by his guilelessness. There’s something boyish about him, even though he’s a man, and an accomplished one at that. His face is open, and his body language suggests someone who is finally at ease with themselves. He lives a little bit in Nigeria, a little bit in Italy, a little bit in Austria, and all the travelling seems to have given him a particular way of engaging with strangers.

I was born in Lagos, and when I was four my family moved to the Austrian countryside. My dad got a job at Ikea and my mum eventually started working as a cleaner in a nursery. In Nigeria my mum had owned a restaurant, so when I was really little she was always beautifully dressed. In Europe she continued wearing a lot of African clothes, for going out or to church or just on a regular day. She would wear head-wraps and import fabrics from Nigeria and have her clothes made. She used to get clothes made for the rest of the family too, but my dad always preferred his three-piece suits. He worked for the government when we lived in Lagos, and he had a really good sense of Western style even then. On weekends, he would wear nylon tracksuits – this was the Nineties – and Nike sneakers but on weekdays he was always in a shirt and a tie. He was super precise about everything: his shirt had to align with his trousers and his tie had to be just so. I grew up in a super African home, moving to Austria didn’t change that. My way of dressing did change though. I hardly ever wore my African clothes anymore, maybe once a year or so. I preferred Western styles: Nike, Adidas, Timberland, Fubu. I suppose traditional clothes felt too much like costume to me in Vienna, they made me feel self-conscious. I already stood out like a sore thumb. For my mum though they were just clothes, her clothes, and she always carried them beautifully. I still remember the silhouette of her kaftan sleeves as she was making a particular gesture. There’s actually no one who has influenced me as much as my mother has. I think of my collections as a part of my mother’s story and legacy, and I can see her wearing most of the pieces. My mum always had a great eye for detail. I remember her getting ready for church on Sundays, and putting on her extravagant trads with Italian shoes and gold jewellery.

When he was alive my dad was the dandy in the family – I really looked up to him. His attention to cut and silhouette is something I’ve tried to emulate in my work. My parents really instilled in me the importance of self care: my dad wouldn’t let me leave the house if I hadn’t showered, and my mum taught my brother and me to lotion our bodies every day. I really think my parents are the reason I love clothes. Even though I knew nothing of the Western fashion industry, I always knew the value of beautiful clothes, and of looking good. My parents had their work clothes, and their traditional garments, or trads as we call them, for special occasions. They were always dressed for the occasion. Eventually, in Austria, my mum started wearing Western clothes too. I think I must have been ten when I saw her in jeans for the first time. Throughout my early childhood she was always this very traditional African woman, and women like that don’t wear trousers. As a married, traditional, African woman you don’t wear anything that shows your body off too much. But moving to Europe changed her, and with time she adapted to the customs of her new country. I still remember being with her when she got her first pair of jeans – she was so excited, ‘Oh my god, my body is so nice. It’s so nice to see my body!’ She started wearing sneakers and hoodies, and I’d be like ‘Mu-um you’re wearing my shoes!’ [Laughs] I’m still really close with my mum. We’re the same star sign – Aries – and we’re both really stubborn and hardworking, always looking out for others and trying to provide.

I didn’t know much about Western designers or the fashion industry until I got to fashion school. We never had any fashion magazines in the house, and my parents didn’t take us to museums or anything like that. A friend of mine showed me Vogue when I was a teenager. I’d heard about Giorgio Armani and Versace but I didn’t know who Margiela was until I started studying fashion at university. I remember when I first had the idea of becoming a designer: I’d already enrolled in psychology at university when my friends told me about this place where you could study design and fashion. I knew immediately that’s what I wanted to do. So I called my mum and said, ‘Mum mum I think I want to study fashion!’ And she told me, ‘I’ve been waiting for you to say that Kenneth.’ She already knew. So, at nineteen I moved to Vienna. I loved studying; if I could I’d do it again and again and again. I loved the freedom and the sense of experimentation and acceptance: wearing skirts in the street, or just a piece of fabric wrapped around your body. The first day of uni I wore a cheap fabric from the market wrapped around my waist with a shirt and platform shoes. My hair was styled straight up, punk style. I felt great.

It’s funny actually, when I was a student the people who wore their own designs were never seen as cool. I stopped wearing the clothes I made then. The anti-fashion trend was really strong back then, norm-core, plain and sombre pieces. People wanted to look as if they didn’t care too much. Now I love wearing my own designs, and if I wasn’t working so much I’d wear them all the time. I’m not yet at the stage of my career, when working means looking fancy behind a big desk. I move around constantly, between all sorts of environments so I can’t wear anything too precious. Also I can’t afford too many of my own clothes yet. [Laughs] That’s the reality. I tend to be quite pragmatic about my work, I think about how comfortable the clothes will be, and how people will be wearing them in real life as opposed to in a magazine or Instagram picture. I don’t want to make something that isn’t relevant. Actually when I talk about ‘comfort’ I think of it not just in terms of how a garment feels on the body but also about the story behind it. I think clothes should make their wearers feel comfortable, in their own skin and in the world. If you feel comfortable, confidence follows. I want my clothes, the ones I wear and the ones I make, to have something to say. A lot of craftsmanship goes into my work and the details are really important. In my own clothes I also want to feel, and be seen as, aware. Aware of what’s happening around me, on a micro and macro level. I’m talking about awareness on multiple levels: about the history of the garment, and its provenance, about where the wind is blowing.

I like to show my body off, yes, but it depends on the context of course. I love the waist, the shoulders, the arms, on both men and women. I’ve been making backless jackets for my collection recently, and I love wearing those. Sometimes, in Lagos, I’ll put a sleeveless, backless T-shirt on, just to provoke. Lagos society is traditional and conservative: it doesn’t fully allow you to express yourself, or even be yourself. If you see a woman in a miniskirt, people assume she’s a prostitute. Gender roles are conformist, and respectability is extremely important. So that makes me want to rebel a bit: I want people to be like, ‘What is going on here?’ I get a lot of looks. I want to provoke the system, question it a bit and make a statement. In Europe I dress differently. That tension that’s so pronounced in Nigeria isn’t there in Vienna or Milan or Paris. People also don’t dress up like they do in Lagos. They wear the same clothes day and night – I do too. I dress in a more relaxed way, and I’m not really concerned about making a statement. A few years ago I loved wearing super-tight sports clothes, top and bottom. I’d put a pair of tight running shorts on and go about my day. Like I said, I like showing off my body! But now I dress differently because I’m always working so I have to be comfortable and able to move around. On a typical day I’ll put on a cashmere hoodie and white denim trousers. But then if I’m invited to dinner at a friend’s house say, or if I’m going out for drinks later I’ll get changed. Then I don’t dress for practicality anymore – I dress for fantasy. Fantasy is actually a really important part of dressing. Mostly though I just dress for happiness. That’s a state of mind I try to invoke: joy.

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is put on body lotion, just like my mum taught me. Then I think about what to wear that day. I sleep naked so I always take all my jewellery off before going to bed. In the morning I put it back on again. My jewellery is usually delicate, and all gold. A lot of it I got from my mother: necklaces, rings, earrings, bracelets. I wear them everyday so they start feeling like a part of me. I’ve probably worn most pieces at least a decade, some I’ve had for fifteen years. When I’ve had a shower and put my jewellery on, I think about what I’ll be doing that day and what clothes to put on. If I’m in Lagos that’s particularly important. I mean, yes I like to provoke but I also need to get work done. So if I’m going to an area that’s more conservative and homophobic, I’m obviously not going to dress in transparent trousers or a backless jacket. Then I wear classic, practical pieces: shirts and jeans. Or I’ll wear trads. I like wearing traditional clothing in Nigeria, people take you more seriously then. You can get more money wearing trads actually. If I have a meeting in an office I’ll put my trads on and hold my mobile phone in a particular way so as to command power. When I’m dressed like that, I hear ‘Yes sir yes sir yes sir!’ You really get treated differently depending on what you wear in Lagos. If the police stop you, and you’re young but wearing trads, you’re much safer. Then at night I’ll change into something more fun and experimental: Issey Miyake or my own design. Night time is for play. How to dress to attract a lover? Well I think about my body first; which part of it do I want to show off? I like to dress sexy for moments like that. There was a time when I was super into ankles: I wouldn’t wear trousers that came below my ankles and I paid attention to everybody else’s ankles too. Now I love necklines, how they frame the face and shoulders. It’s important to think about proportion. I like tank tops to show my shoulders and arms and I like see-through – up and down. I love a see-through pant. And I love it when people show their bodies – as long as it doesn’t look cheap. That’s a fine balance though and there isn’t a precise formula for how to avoid that particular pitfall.

Sometimes in Nigeria I get frustrated, like, ‘If I was in Europe I’d be able to wear that jacket. Oh my god I wish I could wear it right now!’ That actually happens to me all the time. Things are changing slowly though; a lot of people from the diaspora are returning and they’re bringing different, less conservative, ways of being and dressing with them. I love wearing kaftans in Nigeria but I would never wear one the West. I don’t wear my trads in Europe at all anymore; I get looked at in the wrong way. Moving between continents and cultures like I do requires some skill when it comes to dressing. I have to be mindful of how much I push rules on both continents. I mean, I try not to care about what people think or if I’m being stared at. I want to retain the power; I don’t want the wrong looks to make me waver or feel insecure. But it doesn’t always work. I remember once, six or seven years ago in New York. When packing for the trip, I was thinking about how multicultural the city is, and how many black people live there. This was during an Afrocentric moment in fashion; Solange was wearing headwraps and colourful patterns and fashion was full of ‘African-style’ prints. So I packed a bunch a trads. The first day I went out wearing a kaftan people wouldn’t stop staring at me in the street. And the ones who stared the most were other black people. I felt so uncomfortable, I just turned around and went home to change. [Laughs] It was really bad actually. I felt like Eddie Murphy in ‘Coming to America.’ That was the last time I wore trads in the West.

Growing up as an immigrant in Europe was really difficult. In small town Austria I stood out in too many ways. My headmaster actually said to my face that I would never amount to anything, and then I was kicked out of school. I was spat in the face by my classmates. There was a lot of racism. At the time I didn’t really understand why I was being singled out, and when I would get back home and tell my parents they would make it seem as if it was nothing. They were scared I think. Imagine coming to a new country as a refugee. When you’ve finally been given permission to stay you don’t want to rock the boat, you don’t want to fight. You put your head down and get on with it. Don’t make a fuss, is the attitude I grew up with. I still carry the grudge of everything that happened inside me, and the only way I know to move on from it, is through my work. I want success I do, but more than that I want my work to be meaningful. I’m not a power hungry person. I don’t care to be the number one of anything. I just want to do what I love.

A version of this article first appeared in Extra Extra magazine issue 16 under the heading ‘Kenneth Ize on Dressing to Feel Good.’

Clothes were a huge issue for me growing up. I always dressed like a tomboy: T-shirts, shorts, jeans. I always loved sneakers and caps. Some of my earliest memories are about not wanting to wear girl’s clothes, ever. I didn’t want to sit with the girls; I didn’t want to be with them. I thought I was a boy. I didn’t know I was queer; I didn’t even know what that was. I just thought something was wrong with me.

I come from a conservative, religious background in New England, so everything was always repress, repress, repress. Then add my gender issues to the mix, and you can imagine what growing up was like. When I see pictures of myself age six or something with a bowl cut, looking like a boy, I’m like, ‘Why didn’t anybody tell me?’ I didn’t come out till college – clueless, the whole time. It would’ve been nice if somebody, in twenty years, had pulled me aside and said, ‘Look, let’s have a sit down.’ No, that’s not how it worked. I had to go through the wringer.

Growing up, I had no consciousness of gender but at a certain point in school we were separated by it, at gym class, at lunch, at home ed. I was always getting put back, like, ‘No you have to go with them.’ Clothes went with that, and so did hair. I always rejected those conventions and it culminated into… It was a whopper. It was homecoming – I didn’t want to go with a boy, but I felt all this peer pressure. It was a blow-up situation. I literally had a panic attack in the changing room, putting on dresses – my first panic attack. Everything but my conscious mind was saying no, no, no. I did get a dress – velvet, with lace at the bottom – but I got completely loaded to deal with it all and I ended up getting suspended. I still have a hard time standing in the women’s section in a store with my friends or girlfriend or whatever. I still carry that ‘I’m in the wrong place’ feeling. Like, I shouldn’t be here.

I generally always feel uncomfortable in clothes but when I dress like Murray, I actually feel more like a man – even though it’s a comedic persona. I feel more confident and more comfortable wearing a suit; it’s more natural for me. It just feels right. From a gender perspective, my suits fit more comfortably in the head, but wearing them is also like armour. A suit covers all my feminine parts.

When I first became Murray, I would wear suits that just didn’t fit. I had a big belly and I’d get these old polyester pants and get them hemmed but the jackets would be so fucking big. All my suits would have little Italian guy dimensions. I looked less masculine because my suits looked like clown suits. I just looked like a woman wearing a baggy, vaudeville suit. The first thing I did as Murray was run for mayor of New York, so I wore a blue polyester suit, an American flag tie and a white shirt. Back then I wore only polyester suits that I got at thrift stores. Crazy polyester. They were all ill fitting because I was chubby. Eventually I started dressing more like I am now, a sort of Atlantic City/Las Vegas lounge lizard. Think Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin in the Seventies, back when you could smoke on TV. They had these velvet suits with huge lapels and bowties. That’s always been the look I’ve gone for. It’s out of fashion now, but to me it’s the quintessential Las Vegas lounge comedian look. Over the years I’ve graduated from polyester to custom made suits, but I still use the same references. Now I’m with Dita¹ I wear tuxedos: I get them made for our shows. Very showbiz. Lately I’ve been wearing these ruffle tuxedo shirts that I get off-the-rack at Screaming Mimi’s downtown. They actually fit, well except for the one button. I’ve got fifteen in six different colours: white, pink, red, black, and like a lime green. Oh and baby blue – my favourite colour. I wear them with velvet clip-on bowties: always black. When I’ve got a tuxedo on I also wear a pocket square, always silk. I’m very traditional when it comes to my tuxedos, it goes back to that Dean Martin/Don Rickles vibe. But I like to wear ridiculous funny joke socks: I have socks with drawings of boobs on them for example. And I have, like, three hundred ties, so ugly they’re beautiful.

When I met Dita and learned more about fashion and about custom-made suits I realised that for the illusion of looking male you have to have a suit that fits correctly.

My first custom suit was made by Bindle and Keep, when they first started making suits for the queer community. Getting measured was a little uncomfortable at first but it wasn’t anyway near as uncomfortable as getting my first bra as a kid – that was hell. Because I’m short and have a belly, there were little things I had to tell them, like for example if I button my jacket it looks like I have hips which I don’t want. I always leave my jacket open, so it hangs straight down. Vests, the fashionable people wear them so you can see the belt and everything, but I want to cover my belly so mine are buttoned all the way up. I’m half Italian and half Irish. I have my mother’s Italian characteristics – little hands, little feet, little head – so I have to adjust for these things with the right clothes. My suits are cut for an illusion. My jackets are short so I look taller, as are the sleeves in order for my hands look bigger. I buy my shoes bigger too. The hair’s a whole situation. I use Layrite wax: it’s a water-soluble pomade. When you put it on, it lays right. That’s how it got its name. My hair does not move. And I wear glasses, prescription glasses, Fifties-style. And I’m superstitious so I always wear my name ring.

What I wear has always depended both on where I’ve been at in my career, and on my waistline. I’ve got a whole closet full of suits that I can’t fit into at this time. I probably have about twenty suits now, but only two that fit. I’m holding on to the other eighteen, in case I drop those twenty to forty pounds again. I had to get two new tuxedos made for my most recent tour. I found the designer who makes my suits now on Instagram. I was with Alan Cumming at a show and this guy liked a picture I posted of the event. I looked at his profile and it said ‘suit-maker’ so I went, ‘I’m doing a photo shoot, do you have any suits?’ And he said, ‘I’ll just make you some.’ Showbiz.

I’ve been wearing tuxedos and suits so much lately that I just like wearing tracksuits, Adidas tracksuits, when I’m off duty. When I’m doing Murray it’s all dry cleaning, necktie, bowtie, perfect hair, always. Everything is so regimented. I am very specific with my Murray clothes. My suits are very well taken care of, dry cleaned, in little suit jackets – precious. Everything else, I don’t care about. When I do laundry I throw it all in, all the different colours, all the different fabrics. I just put it all in, say goodnight and that’s it. But the suits? Oh they’re delicate. Now that I’m older – and I put on a little extra weight this summer, I mean last summer, well, let’s say this summer – anyway, now that I’m older, it’s all about comfort. Whenever I’m not wearing a suit I feel like I’m on vacation so I dress in vacation wear. I go for the Palm Springs look, or, as it’s also known, the ‘holiday dad’ look.

The feminists in the Seventies used to say, ‘the personal is the political.’ When I started as a performance artist, I took that and merged it with queer male theory. I was performing as Murray – being Murray really – and I had a very informed, specific goal in mind. Now it’s a career. At some point it all got a bit blurred – who is Murray, who am I? – and I had to learn to separate. I used to be out every night, all night, as Murray and he started to overshadow my personal life a little bit. Then I got a girlfriend so I had to have a personal life. I’ve been talking to my shrink about that. I have different personas, and each has a different look, whatever, but still, Murray is me. In a way, Murray has taken care of me. I have travelled all over the world thanks to this character I created. I live off of Murray. Through him – i.e. me – I’ve met so many people; I’ve had access to so much. I never, ever, thought I’d be an international traveller. Today I like to say that I’m a semi-famous comedian. I don’t get free dinner but I might get a free dessert from time to time.

I’ve always said that when I’m dressed as Murray, it’s ‘him,’ but I still get ‘her’ when I have a suit and moustache on. There’s really no frame of reference. There’s a lot of confusion around me for sure, but I don’t feel I have to correct people on pronouns or educate every single person. I let it roll – otherwise I’d be correcting people all day. The people who know the new terms, which are very specific and compartmentalised, are probably half a percent of the population. The language is changing but I think it’s gone too far. There are, like, seven pronouns now. There’s just so much division. Today queer culture is all about how you identify. Someone called me a ‘moc’ the other day: ‘masculine off centre.’ I didn’t even know there was such a term. When I was young, there was butch and femme and that was it. There was nothing else.

I used to have a lot of shame about being misidentified, but when I come across it today I use my humour. My DJ names – I have two – are DJ Half and Half, and the other one is DJ Sir Madam. Every single time I fly I get that: ‘sir madam.’ ‘Sir madam can I get you something?’ Today I got into an Uber and the driver said, ‘Hello sir’ and, not even looking at the guy I said, ‘Hello.’ He was like, ‘I’m sorry, ma’am’ and I said, ‘No, you’re right, both,’ and that was the end of that discussion. All day long, no matter what the fuck I’m wearing, I get ‘Sir, Miss, Madam, Lady, Sir, Oh I’m sorry.’ It’s always an issue. I live with it and I’m not complaining because I look the way I do, but even today I’ll get constant barrage of mistakes and names. It’s always attention. I’m always attracting attention even when I’m not trying to. I’m working on this in therapy. I don’t want attention when I’m wearing fucking sweatpants. Like, ‘Christ, leave me alone.’

I’m against being identified by my sexuality and my gender – especially amongst queer people. I don’t want to be known as a ‘gay comedian,’ or a ‘transgender performer.’ I’m old school – call me Murray, that’s it. I guess I’m transgender by the literal definition, but I don’t go around saying that I’m transgender – I feel it’s reductive. Straight people don’t go around saying ‘I’m heterosexual.’ To me, equality is when we can all just hang out.

This interview was originally published in Vestoj ‘On Masculinities.’

Anja Aronowsky Cronberg is Vestoj’s Editor-in-Chief and Founder.

1. Dita von Teese, a famous striptease performer ↩

PREFACE

What would you take with you if you were leaving home?

What would you bring if you knew you weren’t returning?

Clothes carry memories, tell stories of who we are or want to be. These tactile residues and symbols of the past help anchor us when we feel lost at sea. Because don’t we all go through life, one journey at a time, discarding some things along the way, keeping others?

The things we carry, what do they say about us?

For those forced by circumstance to leave the familiar behind, otherwise insignificant things often take on portentous meaning. An ordinary pair of sneakers becomes an emblem of a brother far away, a silver necklace connects you to your heritage, a winter coat bought cheap in a high street store has to double up as a duvet when all the beds at the nearest camp are full. Most of us don’t have to think about clothes like that; we focus on what makes us look good, or feel good. What makes us belong, or stand out. But for some, displaced by war or hardship, an everyday T-shirt, a pair of trousers or a scarf, turn into tangible material memories of times past, disappointments endured and victories won.

Reflecting our history, garments are sometimes said to be a second skin. They protect, from harsh weather but also from unforgiving looks. They help us fit in, when fitting in is a survival strategy. In the three stories that follow, how to navigate taste and identity when choice is severely limited, how to negotiate nostalgia for home with the practicalities of a new life and how to hold onto the things most dear to us while being constantly on the move becomes woefully clear.

Because the things we carry give us shape.

MOHAMMAD SAEED, AGE 22

Left Aleppo, Syria in 2013

Arrived in Bamberg, Germany in 2017

I arrived in Bamberg two months ago, and I have asylum for one year. They accepted me very fast. When I first arrived in Germany I stayed with my uncle for twenty days, and I was asking around about where the best place to get asylum in Germany was. My friends told me to go to Bamberg and so I did. I had to show my ID from Syria and they asked me many questions. You know, I spent three years in Turkey and one year and five months in Greece before coming to Germany so I know all the questions that the authorities will want to ask by now.

In Syria I was in IT. I was a manager at a company; I lived in Aleppo. When the war started, things got really bad in Aleppo. My family wanted to leave, but my job was in Aleppo so I told them, ‘If you want to go, go. I want to stay.’ My family were worried about me, but I knew how hard it would be to get a job anywhere else in Syria and I had to earn money for the whole family, so I couldn’t leave. My family went to Idlib, and I stayed alone in Aleppo for six months. It was very difficult. I was hurt in the war in my legs and my body, from bomb shrapnel. I had to stay in the hospital for four months. My family told me that they didn’t want me to stay in Aleppo anymore; it was too dangerous. We talked about it and decided that I would go to Turkey instead, but I was already thinking about eventually going to Europe. In Syria you have to go into the army, it’s very dangerous. They’re killing us you know.

I crossed illegally into Turkey with a friend so I didn’t take my passport, only a small bag of clothes. I had never been to Turkey before, and I didn’t know anyone there. I didn’t know where to find or buy anything and I took only the bare minimum. It was very difficult. Some people had no bag at all. When I packed I decided not to take anything valuable with me, nothing I couldn’t bare to lose. I took two of everything: two pants, two T-shirts, two pairs of shoes… I couldn’t take more. I took sneakers and winter shoes, because I went in winter. It was very cold; I had to be strong.

It took half an hour with a car to get from Aleppo to Kilis on the Turkish border. We hid when we got there and when there was a changing of the guards, we crossed. We had to go fast. We were about thirty people: men, women, old men, old women, children. Everybody. I stayed in Kilis for one year and five months; the company I had worked for in Syria offered me a job in Turkey. I loved my work but I had to leave because the pay was bad. I couldn’t support my family. My friend told me, ‘Come to Istanbul, I have a good job for you.’ So I did. In Istanbul I worked in a restaurant. It was the best restaurant in town and I was a waiter there. I worked twelve hours every day but I really liked Istanbul, it’s very beautiful. I stayed one year and five months there too. But Syrian people are not treated well in Turkey. They pay us very bad, less than Turks. Sometimes they tell us, after three or four months, ‘We have no more money to pay you. If you want to leave, you can leave.’ Turkish people don’t like Arabian people, especially not Syrian people. They say we take their jobs because we work for less. We just want enough to survive and send money home to our families, but Turkish people are not like that: they want more money to buy more things. In Turkey they tell us, ‘Why are you here? Why don’t you go back to Syria?’ But they don’t know – the government is killing us, Isis is killing us. We’re normal people: we don’t want war.

I had ID papers so I could stay in Turkey. But my papers were only good for staying in Turkey without being sent back to Syria. I couldn’t travel, I couldn’t work. I could only work illegally. But I had money and every week I would buy new clothes. I earned 2200 Turkish Lira every month so I could help my family too. I lived like a normal person in Turkey: I went to discos, I could drink with my friends. I was happy.

I left Turkey because it became very hard for Syrians there. I met many bullies. And also I wanted to study; in Turkey I couldn’t do that. I love studying; I want to go to university. I left Istanbul in March, with my cousin and my friend. I took what I liked the most, the rest I gave away to my friends in Turkey. This time I was ready for the trip: I took two jackets, two pants, two T-shirts, and shoes that were good for the water. It was cold so I also bought things that would keep me warm: a winter hat and boots. I had a proper bag this time. We took the bus to Izmir to cross into Greece. We found someone who could help us: we each paid him $800. It was about one and a half month’s salary, but I had money saved. The smugglers come from Syria, from Algeria, from Turkey, from Morocco, from all over. Some are very bad people; if you need help they won’t give it to you. All they want is money. We crossed the sea at night. It was winter and very cold. We didn’t talk to each other; we were all scared. We were forty people on a small, inflatable boat. It took us four hours to cross to Mytilene. A lot of people have died on those trips.

When we arrived in Greece we were told that the borders in Europe were closed. We had to wait. I learnt English while I waited, it took me three months to learn. I taught myself. I was in a camp for two and a half months; it was like prison. We weren’t allowed to leave, never. They closed the camp and we couldn’t even go one metre outside of it. We all shared a toilet, we slept in tents. If I wanted to wash my clothes, I had to wash them by hand. I wanted to change my clothes so bad. It was very cold and I didn’t have good clothes, but we weren’t getting any new ones. Everyday we said to each other, tomorrow we will be able to leave. Tomorrow we will have better food. Tomorrow will be better.

Finally they told me to go to Athens to be interviewed but I had to buy the ticket with my own money. In the interview I told them about my situation in Syria, about my leg, about everything. At some point they said to me, we will give your files to the EU and any country that wants to take you, we will send you legally. Oh I was so happy! I forgot all my worries. But the time passed and no country accepted me. I had no money. I had no hope. I had nothing. I was still in Athens, but the camps were full and wouldn’t take me. I had to sleep outside. I stayed for months like that. Four months after my interview I was told that my file had been sent to Switzerland but that they hadn’t accepted me. I was told that they wouldn’t be sending my file anywhere else. That was a very hard time. I was so angry, I felt all this time was for nothing. I saw new people arriving in Greece and getting their asylums fast, I don’t know why I had such problems. I was thinking to myself, ‘Oh my god, what do I do?’ I was thinking I need to get a job, but it took me six months to get one. Eventually I got a job as a tailor: I earned €10 a day. Step by step I started to feel better. I never give up you know.

At some point I was told that I could, maybe, get asylum in Greece but after that interview they told me I still had to wait, two months maybe more. I left the interview very angry and very sad. My friend Sara called me from France, and I told her what happened. She said she would help me. She asked me which country I wanted to go to, and I told her ‘England.’ I love this country. It’s very good for studying and for working too, but England doesn’t accept refugees. I did some more research, I asked my friends. For a while I thought about the Netherlands, but my friends told me that it’s good for studying, but not for working. There are no jobs they told me. Instead I heard that Germany was good, both for studying and for work. At first I didn’t want to go to there because everyone I know wants to go to Germany. I wanted to be different. But in the end, Germany was my best option so I told Sara that’s where I wanted to go. She sent me money so I could buy new clothes, a plane ticket and illegal papers. I got an Italian ID and I went to the airport. I have never been so afraid in my life; my heart died. The man who got me the ticket and my papers told me, ‘Maybe you will have to try two times, three times,’ but I said I will try once and it will work. I trust my gut.

At the airport I ran into problems. The alarm went off at the security check. I had something in my trouser pocket. The security lady told me to go back and take everything out. I had forgotten my lighter. Oh god. I went through the security check again, and again the alarm went off. The security guard was yelling at me in English, and there were people looking at me. I became shy. But I yelled back at her, ‘Why are you talking to me like that? Can’t you see I’m human too?’ I forgot to speak English, and I was yelling at her in Greek. When the security people heard me speak Greek, they changed. They told me, ‘Don’t worry, it’s ok. Go through.’ I got to Frankfurt the same day, and the first thing I did was to throw my Italian ID in the trash.

I still have all my clothes from Greece: I didn’t buy anything new yet. I have three T-shirts, three pairs of trousers, four boxers, two pairs of shoes, and socks. I brought one jacket too, even though I came in summer. But Germany is cold so the first minute I arrived I put it on. Here in Bamberg I dress like everybody else. I don’t want to look different or to stand out. I like everything simple and in one colour. I want people to look at me and think, ‘Oh Mohammad, he’s very handsome!’ [Laughs] I like jeans, black or blue, but I prefer linen trousers. I don’t like pants with windows, you know – it’s the fashion now. You don’t know what I mean? Windows! Like, openings? Everybody’s got them now. They show their legs. Oh my god. Show me photo.

[Laughs] Ah yes, holes! I really don’t like it! I know it’s the fashion, but – oh my god – I don’t like that. [Laughs] I don’t like T-shirts – I prefer shirts with collars – but I only have T-shirts now. I like the clothes I had to wear when I was at the IT company: I like to look like a manager. You know, I was manager before. I look at clothes a lot because I’m a tailor. For shoes, I like Nike the best, they are very original. I’ve been buying them for a long time, but I can’t always afford them. And for clothes, I like H&M and Zara. I like shopping very much: for clothes and for technology. I’m young you know! [Laughs] When I have money, I buy. If I don’t have money, I look. Sometimes I write down what I like and when I have money I come back to buy.

Clothes are very important because people always look at what you wear. They don’t think about who you are, they only think about what you wear. I don’t like it, but I accept it. When I dress up, to go to a restaurant or to work, people look at me well, but if I’ve just woken up and haven’t made an effort they will judge me. They look at me like I’m bad. I don’t really like my clothes now, but I have to wear what I have because I’m living in a camp. I have nothing left from Syria because I’ve moved so many times. I have clothes in Syria, in Turkey, in Greece, everywhere. The only clothes I miss are the clothes I was wearing when the bomb struck and I was hurt. I asked my mum to save them, and she did. One day I will come back for them.

This piece was created in collaboration with ‘An Unpredictable Expression of Human Potential,’ curated by Hicham Khalidi for Part of Act II, Sharjah Biennial 13, Tamawuj, Beirut, Lebanon 2017.

Anja Aronowsky Cronberg is Vestoj’s editor-in-chief and founder.

Rinko Kawauchi is a Japanese photographer.