THE TASTE OF FASHION
I can remember the exact moment I fell in love for the first time, but it wasn’t with a boy. I was 12, buying a candy bar at a convenient store, standing in line at the cash register, and there it was staring at me, “Seventeen.” The cover was white, and the model had long long blonde hair and beautiful black eyelashes. She was wearing a green zip up hoodie and the The word SEVENTEEN called out to me in neon pink desperation, “buy me! BUY ME!” and I did. I read it cover to cover, I would have sleapt with it on my face I loved it so much. I kept it next to my bed in perfect condition, I savored the pictures, the words, the girls on every page.
What I didn’t understand then was that it wasn’t the model on the cover or the clothes that I didn’t own but wanted so badly, it was the entire orchestra of fashion.
I was seeing a concert for the first time, the milky white pages whispering colorful words and carefully chosen fonts, sectioned into perfect paragraphs lining pictures of laughing girls with glossy lips and powder perfect skin, clothes decorating them as if they only existed in these photos just for me.
These pages changed my life forever.
Today, At our photoshoots I watch this symphony.
Every musician has a specific place in the music... the makeup artist wiping lipstick colors on her palm, the model reading her book hair pulled back into pins, the hairstylist clips in mouth, brush in hand. The photographer leaned over his assistant loading pictures into his laptop, saying “beautiful, lovely!”
The stylist throwing together outfits that are all pre-meditated in her mind,
everybody who has helped all week prepping for this shoot, and me. I am here, the conductor, a place I have dreamed of since I was a little 12 year old girl holding her dreams in the form of a magazine. Drawing every model in vogue, smelling the perfume samples that held so much more than a scent.
Fashion tastes like chocolate milk, like honey on toast, it feels like pink silk ribbons and cold glass windows, it looks like white marble statues staring out into other worlds or parisian architecture towering above you. It is the everything feeling of staring into a clear night sky with your best friends, laughing loudly and feeling so very far away.
It is the taste of a first kiss, and every time I see inspiring photographs I escape the world, I escape my body, and I am free in dreaming.