Yes. Exactly. And I answered every question, I checked every box, I’m every pronoun in this shoot. Like, looking at these photos, you can’t choose a category for me, a pronoun for me, a situation for me. He, she, they, all of it. And everything in between, from high fashion to street fashion, to ready-to-wear to easy-to-wear to difficult-to-wear… to where is she going? To why are they there? And you can see it because I’m living in it.
And what about Look 3, the playground look?
The playground shoot was really important. As a kid, playgrounds were places of turmoil for me because the bullies and the mean girls would come for me. I had to learn how to be myself in a place that wasn’t always safe for me. So I chose the playground as a way to repurpose that space into one where I can finally play and be myself safely.
Speaking of your childhood, what do you want people to know about your background and the way you grew up?
Well, it’s what, 2023? And I moved here in 1998, from North Carolina. I always wanted to be somebody different. I knew I was gonna be somebody, but I wanted to be somebody different, so moving to New York was a natural transition. My mother lived here before me — she was a dancer.
What kind of dancer?
Modern dancer. And she loved New York. She went to Studio 54 and really understood the vibe and energy of being an artist in the city. And she also understood what it meant to be an “other” because she was a black woman from the South and moved around to all these different places in her life. And then when she got to New York, she realized she was among a bunch of others, but amazing others. So when I told her I wanted to move to New York, that was kind of a no-brainer for her; she was like “that makes sense.” So I moved here when I was seventeen to go to NYU and I’ve been here ever since.