Guernica Magazine

Fashion in Isolation

Considering the sentimental, contradictory, and inescapable relationships we have with what we wear.

I love clothes. I possess good financial sense until I walk into a store. I’ve been called a “fashion-victim.” I can be moved to tears by an exquisite piece of embroidery.

But as we started this project on fashion, a pandemic emerged. America was plunged into lockdown, the silence on the streets seeming to amplify the creaking of a healthcare system, politics, and economy on the verge of breaking. Police brutality continued to infect the country, attacking Black and Brown bodies traversing empty streets, sleeping in cars, resting in their own homes. As I witnessed these crises converge, my closets suddenly seemed grotesque, shameful.

Secretly, I hoped the pandemic would sever my dependence on fashion for good. That was indeed the case for

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