EXCESS (PATTERNS)
EXCESS (PATTERNS)
Digitally externalizing queer internal identity through excessive, space-filling, ultra-layered DIY glamour.
[alt text accessibility descriptions included]
“My face is the front of shop
My face is the real shop front
My shop is the face I front
I’m real when I shop my face”
— SOPHIE ‘Faceshopping’
series continued via @saint_taint
I spend a ton of time on Instagram. Which is interesting because after high school I actually went off of all social media for most of college, then slowly found my way back to Facebook after the 2016 election, and then eventually onto Instagram after realizing it was basically the most accessible art gallery in existence. Instagram has become an obsession to me because it’s both the platform for showing art as well as a shaper of artistic aesthetics itself. This is easily exemplified by the divergence simply in the shapes of how we present media, namely the popularity of the square, without us even examining the media itself—but also changed the ways we view art, now predominantly on smaller screens, causing the types of imagery to change in order to appear well on small surfaces.
Additionally, Instagram is to many queer people the forum for exploring and defining external identity and aesthetics. It’s a gallery, an archive, and a source of inspiration that’s available at all times. It's also wildly excessive—in both its content’s appearance and its sheer supply of imagery. The internet, in large, is all excess in this way. A great example I’m having fun with at the moment is Tik Tok—the same memes rehashed over & over again in every way possible by every teenager with a smartphone. I repeat this theme of excessiveness because in Professor Omise'eke Tinsley’s Femme Theory course, we’ve discussed at length the concept of excess as a crucial role in defining the femme identity or femme-ininity. So to me, it is no coincidence that queerness, and particularly femme queerness, finds a home on Instagram.
I’ve spent the last few months diving into my feed, reading on the algorithms at play, testing bot & automation services, starting a fake queer news account (that sort of turned into a real blog), and examining my own posts to try and understand what they showed about my relationship with externality, and how people reacted to my sharing of these images. What I found overwhelmingly was that all the most popular pieces of my account were, frankly, hot photos of me looking very glam. As we approached the Trans Day of Visibility, I thought about how my visibility as a trans-femme drew the most attention and general interest (for better or for worse), despite it’s online manifestation usually lacking the level of dramatic expression I felt internally. I liked a lot of the photos I was putting online, but they just didn’t capture the level of imaginative joy that my self image did. So I decided to revive a technique I had played with on and off a few years back.
[Two photos are shown side by side. On the left is the original in black & white (with a sepia faded tone) and on the right is the recolored version, with the family (4 young children and 2 parents) predominantly in shades of blue and cool whites standing on a red rug. Most sit on chairs with Max’s great-great grandfather standing in the center as the tallest, wearing a suit. The mother and children wear dresses, and the youngest is holding a doll.]
It all started with a popular Photoshop method that allows you to manually re-color black & white photos. I first used it to explore my largely lost pre-war Jewish heritage by adding some humanity back into these very aged, flat, photos my grandma had in the basement. Every person in that photo was likely killed in The Holocaust, we don’t know all their names, but the process made me feel a little closer to them.
This extended into a project I did using a photo of my partner Magz sketching in Prospect Park, in which they’re doused in vibrant rainbows and various patterns. I did this an attempt to represent how I saw them in my own swooning, queer brain—which is as a magical being exploding with color and imagination. I love them very much.
[Magz with short-buzzed hair sits in profile on the right. They draw in a notebook with a slight smile. Their hair is a busy blue print & their clothes are intricately purple-patterned. Behind them in blurred focus is a pond and dock in gradients of green, blue, and magenta, with a grey tree line in back.]
[Max stand with one foot on a chair and the other on the ground, with one hand on their bent knee and the other on their hip. Their boots are vividly floral-patterned Docs in red, purple, yellow and white. They wear a slightly darker but matching floral crop top under their unzipped grey sweater and black jeans. Their glasses are hanging from their lips, and their eyes look down slightly closed showing red eyeshadow on their lids. Behind them is their room which includes a desk and dresser with some framed photos on top. On either side of this main cropped image are two close-up shots of the boot and crop tops’ floral patterns.]
1: floral
Fast-forward about a year, to an idea using a free app called Layout which allows you to put multiple images in differing grids for Instagram uploads. I took close-ups of my Docs and my crop top from the Goodwill in Davis Square. I named this “Pattern Series 1: floral” clearly using my manic artist brain to conceptualize a large scale project I would likely never continue. But this time it actually stuck when it collided one day with the re-color & pattern ideas.
2: thirst_strap
The idea to combine the two ideas struck as I received a set of harnesses in the mail, which I drunk purchased from a Chinese wholesale fashion site on steep sale while using a bathroom in New Orleans. I had been playing around with the free Adobe Capture app for a while, but decided this time to generate a kaleidoscopic image of the harnesses I was wearing. This way I could superimpose them on an image as a background and replace my rather un-fabulous sublet room in Somerville. So I got all suited up, took a sexy photo, and started layering the patterns. And ta-da, the fractals of kink-ception were born in my brain-holes. I put this on Instagram, and it felt really good to externalize it to friends and the randos, so I thought maybe I’d do some more in the future.
This is the first true test I made at this technique, and I feel so hot in it. One detail I like is that the straps just barely obscure my nipples—and while that generally oppresses breasts on social media, it also sort of actualizes the femme-ininity of “non-female-assigned-breasts” for lack of a better word (because Tibbies isn’t quite right for “pecks” or other ideas of a breast, and I still don’t know what to call my chest—although I say Tits usually). But we’ll get back to my body, I want to explain this method slightly more clearly first.
[Max stands center in black underwear and bondage harnesses crossing their thighs, waist, and chest (forming a pentagram shape). Their head is tilted to the side and being held by one hand, while the other sits on their hip. Their body is nearly nude, with their nipples slightly obscured by harness rings, and they have stubble on their face and hair on their legs and chest. Behind them their room is partially visible but obscured by a collaged pattern of rings and leather straps that inhabit shapes in the background randomly, taking over bits of the room’s objects and surfaces. The color palette is a dark pink-red, a very dark purple, and an off-white.]
The basic technique:
Take a photo of myself with my phone
Take close-up photos of the items I’m wearing
Use these close-ups to generate kaleidoscopic patterns in the Adobe Capture app
Photoshop these kaleidoscopic patterns into the photos of myself using Pattern Layers.
It’s a simple process aside from the fairly painstaking endeavor of tracing out your entire body to designate where the patterns will drop in. But that part I’ve found to be rather therapeutic, because it forces me to truly examine and appreciate every inch of my body from head to toe. All you need for this is a camera-phone, the free adobe app, and Photoshop/an equivalent (which you can torrent for free pretty easily, use a trial, or get a student license if you can afford it. GIMP is also a free alternative). No fancy camera, sets, lighting, even clothes—you can still look fabulous. I just posted up next to my window for light and propped the iPhone on a tissue box. All my shots use thrift store or cheap sale clothes, but given the freedoms of patterns, you could honestly wear the same fruit of the loom shirt over and over if you really wanted. You can use the same item tons of time and swap these pattern generations you make around, which sets up all these crazy DIY combinations. Why am I telling you all this? In the spirit of queering things I want you to be able to make these too so you & your friends can feel glam as hell.
Let me try to explain why this matters so much to me—first off, in one sentence, here’s what I’m doing:
![[A screenshot of the Adobe Capture app shows a small photo of a shoe at center being generated into a larger kaleidoscopic pattern in the surrounding area of the screen.]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2061aa9f8dcef02d2e19b1/1554328876899-4YRXW6EJ3WC6SU5G3QKJ/kaleida+example.jpeg)
[A screenshot of the Adobe Capture app shows a small photo of a shoe at center being generated into a larger kaleidoscopic pattern in the surrounding area of the screen.]
“Digitally externalizing queer internal identity through excessive, space-filling, ultra-layered DIY glamour.”
This project has been a meditation on realizing & externalizing the internal queer identity through fast & cheap digital means. It’s about feeling like you are truly emitting the level of excess you’re feeling internally, it’s about “queering” the glam fashion process, and it’s about spending hours staring at your own body and exploring how you want to modify it in an endlessly fluid way that’s changeable through a few clicks. It’s also about utilizing the safety of your private space to populate a digital realm without needing to risk harassment & threats out in public space. And it’s also about allowing oneself some play-time—the goofy-ness and general lack of seriousness in shooting these in your room (and not trying to have a “photoshoot”) make it fun and intimate. And the process of clicking around in Photoshop like splatter-painting keeps things unfocused and experimental. I have some experience with digital art but not much in Photoshop. So in barely understanding what buttons I’m clicking will do, the process becomes an exciting and surprising play experience.
This method of exploration allows for endless levels of excessiveness. Most of my photos have layers layered upon layers that are them re-layered over layers layered upon layers—it’s just throw on like a bunch of makeup (or at least how I do makeup). Every time I don’t feel satisfied with an appearance, I don’t quit, I just throw another layer on top and keep going until things start looking good. Most of the time I’m shocked by what the computer can generate, as I just sort of browse through different settings and change values, realizing all these forms I can take that I didn’t know existed—and that I didn’t know I liked seeing myself in. Mirrors and unedited photos can be an amazing resource, but I’ve personally found that the process of internalizing these glamorous & imaginative images of myself has done far more for my mental health than any amount of dressing up in front of the mirror. It somehow feels more real to see these than it does to see my own physical body, and because of that, when I imagine myself as I walk down the street, I see these images, and I feel like a sexy-bad-bxtch/hot-tentacle-space-alien. Looking at these images regularly even started to shift my sexual identity a bit (in combination with some exploration into pornography)—in that I actually was reminded that my body is sexually attractive. I’m not one of those people who would have sex with their clone if they could, but this put me closer to that camp. Seeing the thirst_strap image of myself while working on a current musical project as Saint Taint honestly made my writing so much more effective—it embolended this externalized & explosive bad-bxtch identity to bust out of me more often in daily life. Sometimes the only barrier between your self image and yourself is the reflection you keep seeing. Change the reflection you look at, change who you identify as.
Alright now to shut up and show you the images. Let’s walk through the rest of the series:
[Max stands with one hand on their hip, and one leg slightly bent and the other straight, with their head tilted back. They wear a short red floral romper, red sneakers, and a red backpack. Sunglasses sit on the top of their head. Behind them is a brick building with a metal door covered in paint tags. Floral designs cover the bricks and door.]
3: romper_season_returns
This is the third photo collage I did in the series using my romper pattern. It uses a shot of me in an alley in Soho—the first photo I ever saw of myself that I was actually proud of. This was already solid due to my hot legs and an incredible H&M sale the week prior, but was made much more true to my own brain at the time through patterning. I was just seeing floral patterns absolutely everywhere and completely obsessed with how femme they could make me feel, and I wanted to capture this feeling. Floral excess—every surface of everything around me should be floral. The winter is a horrible time to be femme because the fashion just sucks, but when the spring hits, and the rompers come out, it’s gay as day. Plus I’m specifically obsessed with red florals, because the color it makes people want to either fight me or have sex with me, or both (which is the theme of my current Saint Taint project).
4: licc_boot
Here’s the fourth image, entitled licc_boot, using a pattern from the shoe. Here I’m licking my Docs, which took a lot of takes and tasted delicious—thank you for asking. Besides the fact that I am borderline-sexually attracted to these boots, they embody an important saga for me in my queerness. I originally saw a British woman at the train stop in Zaandam, outside of Amsterdam, wearing these exact boots, and immediately became obsessed with finding my own pair. Problem is, as many of us know, women’s sizes are tough to find besides, at very highest, a US 11. I fit, at the very least, a US 12. But I refused to be defeated, however, found size 11’s, removed the insoles, and brought them to ye old local cobbler to be stretched. I found them be not excruciatingly painful, which was worth the beauty.
Now on top of this, Docs have a pretty strong historical association with second wave feminists in terms of style. However, most of those were solid color black Docs as they were more “masculine” combat boot. So I kind of love the excessive floral aesthetic on top of the combat boot, because that feels like a metaphorical representation of my own identity fairly accurately.
[Max’s head takes up the left half of the photo, their tongue is extended licking the toe of the floral Doc boot, which takes up the right half. In the background at center is the pattern generated from the boot, appearing as yellow and blue flowers in a kaleidoscopic print.]
[Max kneels at center with their body straight, chest pushed out, and head tilted back in a white fuzzy vest with a tight patterned white long sleeve top (with shoulder cut-outs and a turtleneck) and grey textured gloves. The top extends down as almost short dress, with thighs very exposed and hairy, slightly allowing us to see their dark blue underwear. They wear blue fuzzy ball earrings and blue glitter wingtips at the corners of their eyes. One arms is hanging down and the other is held at the waist. In the background is a series of snowflake-like blue kaleidoscopic patterns, behind which we can barely see the desk in their room. Light shines from the top left corner of the frame.]
5: ice_bxtch(snobunny)
Ugh and next up the ice_bxtch(snobunny) photo, which is the hottest photo I’ve ever seen of myself. It generates the snowflake-like pattern from the fuzzy earrings I’m wearing. This outfit is made of a top I got at the Santee Alley street market in LA for 4 dollars (why did I not buy more?) and this ridiculous fuzzy vest my friend convinced me to buy at an LL Bean Outlet sale in Maine (I added the trans flag on the logo in post). This makes me feel truly femme in a highly commercial way, and I think it sticks out to me more than the others due to the fact I would never in a million years dress like the femme-fatale from a ski lodge scene of a spy movie. There’s something so consumer about this—it makes me feel like a model, and just having that experience is pretty interesting internally. I’m still feeling my feelings on this versus shots of me in outfits I actually wear, I’ll get back to you.
6: bxtch.zip
Next up is bxtch.zip in which involves this very tight 10 dollar zip crop top from a Seattle Buffalo Exchange and matches the zipper earrings I found at a street fair in Fremont for 2 bucks. I interlaced my fingers to mimic the zippers, and covered my eyes as if shielding myself from some non-existent paparazzi flash hiding outside my window. I used some the eye shadow my mother got me for my birthday (entitled Fetish Pallette, which cracks me up), to paint a stripe from my lips to my chest as an extension of the zipper aesthetic. I also covered my lips in it because I don’t own black lipstick. The slightly opened mouth is the key here, because I think it really femmes up the shot in this sort of mildly orgasmic expression.
Zippers are a really interesting trend in fashion nowadays and I love just about everything about them. The cold feel on your skin, the tactile play capabilities, the sexiness of slowly unzipping them, the tight-clothing they make possible, and the pretty sexual sort of yonic imagery they present in their unzipped “V” shape alongside an ability to create an opening as shown on the earrings or by something with a double zipper in which they can create a hole. Plus they just look cool and remind me of goofy Kingdom Hearts anime outfits that are now sort of in-vogue.
[Max is visible from the chest up, with arms up and bent to meet above their head (in a diamond shape) with fingers interlaced. Their eyes are closed, and they wear black lipstick with a stroke of black eyeshadow running down from their lips to their chest. Their head is tilted back with mouth slightly open. They wear a tight, black, zip-up crop-vest, slightly unzipped at the top, and hoop earrings made from zippers. Their skin is covered in layers of triangular zipper tracks and faded white hexagon patterns in a dazzling white color. Behind them is a kaleidoscopic pattern of zippers forming star-like flashes in gold and purple. The image has a glowing quality to it and is very bright.]
[Max is visible from the waist up with one arm outstretched and fingers slightly curled back as if holding something. They stare at their hand with glittery makeup and blue shiny lips, wearing fuzzy blue ball earrings. They wear a shiny sheer top with a blue sports bra underneath with black and white stripes running along the band. Their hand is shining with a scaly sheer-like texture in pink and orange. The background is a pattern of diamonds with white and black stripes around them, and spots of red, blue, and yellow interspersed throughout.]
7: sheer_shine
Now we’re at sheer_shine, which uses an H&M sheer shiny top I got for like 5 bucks and a sports bra from Fred Myer, which was the first bra I ever bought in a physical store. Walking through a women’s budget department store’s lingerie aisle can be wildly uncomfortable, and I had generally avoided it until that point. But this was just too cute to miss out on. In this image, I wanted to capture the visuals the sheer top gave me when I first found it: literally turning into a disco ball/sex-robot. So I overlaid the sheer pattern onto my own skin, a new concept in this series, to embody the clothes not only in my environment, but on my own body. I generated the background from the stripe on the bra’s band. In my mind, I’m permanently glistening, but for other’s sakes, I lay tons of glitter on. My first makeup I ever bought was a Duane Reade glitter eye-shadow set—the last bits of which are applied to the corners of my eyes here.
8: hex_bxtch
This is hex_bxtch, it’s a re-use of the white shirt from the ice_bxtch(snobunny) photo with replaced patterns. This was taken at the Blick art supply shop in Capitol Hill. In the background is actually just a shelf of crappy sale items including stress balls and used notepads. But it also had this amazing kids backpack, which I put on for this photo. Once I captured the pattern from that, it was on. This crazy sci-fi pattern just started working to the point that I threw it absolutely everywhere, including my skin. The real highlight here if you ask me, though, is my butt. You can’t even really see it, but just by cropping it at the location I did, it make it looks like it’s going to really curve outwards a bit when in reality I was wearing straight-cut jeans. That’s a fun trick to femme-up my pants I’m experimenting with now. This is also a great study of re-using the same white top for endless variations of clothing, which I continue to play with.
[Max stands visible from the waist up, leaning slightly back in profile, as they blow on their hand as it holds a “finger-gun” position tilted upwards. They are wearing the same tight shirt with shoulder cut outs and turtleneck, but it is covered in a busy blue, turquoise, and yellow pattern of hexagons. They wear a very small, shiny, pink backpack and unshaded glasses and hoop earrings. Their skin is covered in a glowing white pattern of flower-like diamond kaleidoscopic shapes. In the background we see similar shapes, but brighter, slightly blurred, and in a range of vary pinks, whites, and blues, resembling a flurry of moving lights.]
[(Title image repeated). Max is shown with a shaved head from the chest up with one hand in a green splint raised above their head, and their index finger outstretched. Their skin is pale with green and blue floral patterns covering them like tattoos. They wear a red sleeveless shirt with thin white vertical stripes with a neckerchief attached at the collar, which they hold in their mouth. Large bright white sunglasses cover their eyes and shine brightly with purple floral lenses. The background is a repeated red and white striped pattern interlacing like a series of complex knots.]
9: makes_you_gay
Which brings us to what I would consider my current crown-jewel: makes_you_gay. This is my favorite in the series because of just how unreal excessive and cartoonish it is. The words actually come from the background of the original photo, in which a print is on my wall that I purchased in Minneapolis at the Center for Book Arts, designed and hand printed by Kennedy Prints. It says “COFFEE MAKES YOU GAY” but “COFFEE” was partially blocked by my head so I just cut it out and the end result was awesome. I kind of want to put those words in every photo now. That poster is really empowering to me in it’s satire of what “makes” a person gay. It allows me to define what “makes” me gay in whatever ways I choose, for whatever reasons I see fit, and that’s quite powerful. For the record Andros, the androgynous alien red ranger from Power Rangers in Space, made me gay—next question please.
The glasses here are what I call my “Paris Hilton Hangover” shades because I bought them early on in my queer fashion growth, specifically after getting my eyes dilated while checking for a weird hole in my eye (I’m fine, by the way). I had to find something to wear while mostly blinded at a Duane Reade on the upper east side, and these seemed the biggest and stupidest. Little did I know how fabulous they would make me feel as my first real femme shades. The shirt comes from a thrift store relatively close to that same area, which is usually filled with lots of old ladies’ throw-aways. I love it because it’s just really “too much”—it’s shiny, sleeveless, striped like a popcorn container, and even has an absurd neckerchief/wrap/tie attached to the collar.
I had a splint on at the time which I decided to highlight due to an injury I’d received doing some stupid manual labor at an electrician gig combined with a sexual injury from fingering. That’s now turning out to be a chronic injury, and is back at the moment but I have a much sleeker splint this time. I wanted to make the splint glamorous because despite it being a very minor nuisance to me, all those with casts/canes/chairs/disabilities/chronic illnesses (please feel free to tell me how you’d prefer me to refer to it) deserve the same glam treatment, and I wanted to take an initial try at it while my wrist is flared up again. Above all, the floral pattern generated by combining and inversion of the striped kaleidoscope pattern and the floral boot pattern from my docs looks like I have the tattoos of my dreams—which is fun for me because my body itself can become slightly static despite my fluid fashion. I can barely grow hair, which limits any styling up top, and my body is quite hairy, making tattoos slightly more difficult (although my aversion to tats is mainly cost and the fact that a shifting identity & permanent ink have some conflicts in my head). The background patterns are totally gorgeous to me since they almost look like complex knots.
[Max lays on their neck & shoulders, doing a quasi-headstand with one leg outstretched vertically upwards and the other curled to the waist, knee bent fully, with toe facing upwards. One arm holds the ground for support and the other stretches upwards, and their head lies on the ground facing up. They wear white, black, and pink tweed leggings and bright neon and white high-top chunky sneakers with straps at the ankles. Their skin is covered by a larger pink, white, and black tweed pattern, except for a white bra with triangular cups and thin straps, with a small bow at the center. The background is comprised of a repeating pattern of white and neon-pink diamond shapes, with rounded edges and small yellow circles in-between.]
10: liftoff
Here’s my last finished shot. I ordered these awesome chunky sneakers online from a wholesaler but they sadly did not fit my big ol’ feet and don’t exist in larger sizes, so I had to return them right after taking this photo. However I found a different shoe that will fit from Pleaser with a 3 inch lift, hell yeah. This took a lot of tries to not fall over, since I’m actually totally vertical here, but it was a fun morning.
The leggings are my first non-jeans I’ve really ever worn, I got them from Old Navy the other day. I’ve been wearing them the last few days and feeling really good about my legs and butt. That, combined with wearing crop tops, has really set my fashion loose this year. The bra here is my first ever bra purchase, which came from an amazing brand called XDress that actually makes things that fit male-assigned bodies. Wearing a bra, even when nobody can see it, massively improves my dysphoria. The pattern in the background is comprised of the strap-buckle side of the velcro on the shoes. I don’t usually like how I look in pink (even tho I’m supposed to apparently as a femme), but I do love this photo. There’s also very faintly a pattern that just says “BABE” over and over on my skin here, from a tank my sister’s partner Thor gave me for my birthday. It was actually just Thor’s birthday the other day, so happy Birthday Thor! Thanks for appreciating my femme-ininity!
[Two images are side-by-side. In both, Max kneels in profile with one leg bent and the other behind them with knee on the floor, with head facing towards the viewer. One hand sits on their waist, and the other with just their fingers touching their chin. They wear a blue denim romper tied at the waist, with a deep neckline and no sleeves. Their shoes hold a blue floral pattern with orange designs along the soles and on the sunglasses sitting on top of their head. They have stubble on their face and hair on their legs and arms. The background is comprised of a diamond-shaped light-blue and white pattern, with x-shaped designs in the center of each diamond. In the image on the left, their skin is completely covered by a floral pattern similar to their shoes, with just their eyes and lips popping out. In the one on the right, their skin appears as normal, but slightly glowing.]
X: probably #11
Lastly, here’s my current rough shot, which I actually started before #10 but have yet to finish. It originates from an older photo I took in my old living room in Crown Heights. I got this romper at Uniqlo and yes, it has pockets. I love this one because I was able to get a large size to accommodate my genitals (which always end up hanging on one side of crotch inseam) by getting a large size, since I can just use the tie to fit to my waist. I love this outfit, because I’ve gotten both lovely compliments from people I thought were about to ridicule me, and also horrible harassment and threats from those I wasn’t expecting to do so. Being harassed while walking around with your partner is a unique feeling of anger and weirdness that inspired some excellent and aggressive Saint Taint tracks. Gotta put those feelings somewhere.
The shoes in this photo are these amazing patterned Floral Vine vans that they put back into production, they were destroyed in a mosh pit at an Oh-Sees concert at Neumos. That was the first time I ever moshed & crowd-surfed in a romper & fishnets and everybody made me feel very loved. Punk pits are a beautiful place, and they always have been for me, no matter how my gender shifted around over the years. Vans is an amazing shoe brand in my view because it remains one of the only “unisex” footwear brands in existence (and was one of the first to ever do it), selling all shoes with M&W size labels and no differentiation on style. The pattern on the shoes generates the skin and romper overlays, and the background is created by a close up of the folds in the romper. I can’t quite get the right balance of the skin pattern to the un-patterned version on these, but we’ll get there soon.
Alright, so that’s where I’m at with this project so far, and I’m very excited to keep going. In terms of plans for the future: I’ve started working with some lovely queer folks in my life to glam them up in this excess-pattern series, and I’m having a blast. All the amazing queer people I cross paths with deserve a portrait that makes them feel absurdly glamorous and gorgeous. The reactions and excitement they have for the project makes me so happy. I’m looking to continue this series with them, and to additional create a full walk-through tutorial for creating these images.
And as a last note I want quickly discuss an interesting fashion trend I started to notice since I worked on these pieces. At least from what I’ve been seeing, excess as a general fashions style seems to be more “in” than ever. Quickly scroll through any trendy shop like Dolls Kill, and you’ll notice truly absurd amounts of patterning, pearlescence, laces, clips, buckles, and sheer on most of the outfits. All shoes have massive chunky lifts, and all jackets have absurd amounts of patches and stitching. Big ribbons hang from shoes, giant zippers dominate shirts—it’s just all excessively glam. And I think this speaks to how the internet’s excess has massively influenced fashion over the past few years. The infantilized aspect also comes into play, with lots of cutesy rainbow-pastelle shoes with little hearts on them, and all sorts of child-like clothing becoming very popular. There’s a really playful & childlike nature to it that sort of mimics what honestly reminds me of DIY drag aesthetic. Not sure what to make of it yet, but it’s fascinating, and it seems to point towards the future being a heavily queer-inspired fashion-sense.