Fruitpunch by Sean Santiago

fruit punch sugar, spice & shit I think is nice 1

contents Of Note & Top Tens Opinion The Perfect Tees Essays On Owning My Sexuality Personal Style Vs. The Internet Interviews With Joy Gryson Shana Tabor Editorial NOT by Jenny Lai Photo Essay What They’re Wearing On The Street An Interview With Richard Haines Editorial Bow Down, Bitches Photographic Contributions By McArthur Joseph, John Kim, Brian Mannone, Steven Markow, Pete Oliviëra, Ariel Park, Anthony Urbano, & David Williams All Content © Sean Santiago 2

The last year has been kind of a big one for my lil’ old blog—so big that I felt the need to make this, the first Official *fruitpunch Zine. After hours and hours of email coordination, shoot scheduling and voice memo-ing, it only feels right to take the features I worked so hard on over the last year and give them another opportunity to shine. A big thank you to everyone featured in the following pages, as well as Daily Candy, Refinery29 and Barneys The Window for featuring me and my work. Another big thank you goes out to everyone I’ve ever corralled into shooting me for the blog. When two hours and 300 frames later I decide that only one image will work, you’ve all been gracious enough not to murder me and I really appreciate that. *fruitpunch is a labor of love—a “side hustle,” if you will—and the fact anyone reads it aside from my mother is kind of mind-blowing, so thanks for that. Hopefully you’ll have as much fun reading this as I had making it. –Sean www.thisfruitblogs.com | @thisfruittweets 3

OF NOTE

My best friend Chelsea moved here at the beginning of the year. I slept over and we made memories and fools of ourselves. We like to get together and make mouth noises that resemble French; we talk about food, movies, and boys. Also art & sometimes the future. <3<3<3

TOP TEN POSTS (BY PAGEVIEWS)

01 Brave New World (On Men in Skirts) 02 On Being a Fashion Blogger 03 Pride & The Problem with Normal 04 How To Wear A Turtleneck 05 Zara Skort + Leather Leggings 06 1 Leather Skirt, 2 Ways 07 5 Blogs That Are Killing Print 08 4 Dos and 5 Don’ts for Summer 09 Decorating With Pinterest 10 [Street Style] Body Talk

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

TOP TEN WEIRD SEARCH TERMS USED TO FIND MY BLOG

Time Pant Federation Fruit Fashion Blog Meels 1900s Golf Menswear Men’s Skirts 2013 Spandex Leggings For Men Cut Gay Otter Men Wearing Skirts In Public Urban Outfitters Meggings Cole Mohr Hand Tattoos 5

OAK

cuts the perfect t-shirts. Shopping for something so basic can be a bitch sometimes, especially when you’re picky... “I want something that’s like, basic...but with less basic detailing.” “Hmm...could you elaborate?” “I want like, a basic tee...that’s also a cape...let.” “I think we have-” “But not like, an obvious capelet.” The search can be messy and I’ll admit it took me several months to decide exactly which t-shirts were absolutely the most perfectest. I finally did, though, and had Keith here model them for me.

ON OWNING MY SEXUALITY

I like a look that says, “I don’t need to be conventionally attractive to feel good about myself.” I try to own that. I try to embody that. But then one day, while waiting for my inevitably late train to arrive, I saw a cute guy I’d given my number to some months before...and I wasn’t so sure I liked the message my look was sending. There’d only been one brief coffee date, but we’d seen each other in passing recently and frequently enough that there couldn’t be any pretending not to know each other. So I sat down next to him. In that moment, I became hyper-aware that I did not, in fact, own my sexuality. I felt absurd and a bit cartoonish. Other’s opinions and their perception of my sex or my gender (“Oh, sorry, from the back 10

I thought you were my grandmother”) were no longer something to be ignored. I was here, next to this super cute guy, wearing Birkenstocks with socks. I had on a thrifted skirt over polyurethane leggings. My hat had set me back a whopping five dollars. Needless to say, I wasn’t quite ready to go dancing on tables, or have sushi eaten off my naked body—you know, normal, sexy things. I couldn’t help but feel like I’d been unceremoniously thrust back ten years in my life. Suddenly I was in the high school cafeteria, a California transplant walking around in Elements skate shoes because aren’t they hella cool? I’ve finally gotten to a point in my life where I feel almost definitely 90-100% comfortable with my body. This is a big deal

for me because in high school, when I started to get chest hair, I freaked the F*CK out about it. I skipped a graduation pool party because I was so mortified of my chest hair and the thought of people seeing it.

I be wearing? How will they see me? What will other parents tell them? How will other people inform them about sex and gender and binaries and dichotomies?

We all know you can’t control how others It shocks me a little bit, saying that now, see you, or you and your family; how they because it seems so preposterous. But at interpret what they see and what that means the time it just made me feel so old to have to them. But there’s coming to terms with chest hair. I felt like I had lost my “boyhood” that and then there’s thinking you’ve come in some way and I didn’t want my peers to to terms with that and then OH SHIT I havfind out. I was hairy and I hated it. I hated it en’t come to terms with that and I just want because it was something beyond my control him to like meeeee. So I guess I wrote this that articulated my sexuality in a much more just to say that I don’t fully own my sexualadult way than I was comfortable with at the ity yet; that I don’t necessarily feel 100% time. I was just a kid! I wanted to have comfortable in my own skin when I choose foppy hair and be tan and smooth, like all to flout conventions in whatever small ways. the other boys who weren’t prematurely But I think I’m ok with knowing that, and sporting a chest carpet. knowing that I’m working on it. *FP Now I make jokes about being an “otter,” though I don’t have a particularly firm grasp on what that means and should probably tone that shit down considering it’s a search term people are legitimately using to find my blog. Long story short, I used to be a bit “cray” when it came to body confidence and am now doing much better (though I’m still far from perfect). And so I found myself there, sitting next to this guy on this train, and we talked and it was fine. I survived. But as I grow older and my sense of style becomes less rigidly defined by my sex (if I want it to), I have to wonder if these moments that wrench me out of my comfort zone, an evolving space as it is, will become more or less frequent. When I get married will I want to wear a skirt? A kimono? A turban? I want to feel comfortable in any and all of this and I want to feel like I own my sexuality regardless of the sociosexual dynamic of being in a relationship. And as I grow older—when I pick my kids up from school, for instance—what will

“When I get married will I want to wear a skirt? A kimono? A turban?” 11

PERSONAL STYLE VS. THE INTERNET

A million reblogs begs the question: Has social media killed originality?

The other day I thought to myself, “That guy’s outfit is so Tumblr.” That might seem a strange sentiment on the surface, but then I really got to thinking about personal style and the internet. It seems to me that the symbiosis between online style stars and the omnipresent photographers that cele-

brate them has created a chicken and egg situation with far-reaching repercussions. Are these people popular because they’re photographed so much, or are they photographed so much because they’re popular? More than that, what does their popularity mean for the sizable audience digesting 12

their de facto style creeds on a million different dashboards?

specified skill set. Add to that the fact that personal style blogging has become less about an individual viewpoint and more about feeding into the unified aesthetics of the platform distributing a blogger’s content—Tumblr, for instance—to an audience that already knows what it wants and, more than that, already knows what it wants to look like.

Image-based platforms for social interaction have inevitably wound up as tools for sociocultural coding, providing a visual demarcation of who gets It and who’s from Florida. You can see it in Pinterest’s evolution beyond its humble beginnings as an online scrapbook and content-bookmarking service; the site now serves as a portal into a world of rough-luxe Scandinavian cabins, artisanal fig tartines and fireplace-adjacent thoroughbred labradors. The same can be said of Tumblr, with its users’ adherence to an aesthetic equation that drives the popularity of most images on the blogging platform. Conformity can come as no surprise—what else could be the end result of 10,000 reblogs? Is Tumblr more a collective digestive system than anything else at this point?

DeLeon goes on to lament that, “the Tumblr platform—combined with the circle-jerk heavy world of #menswear birthed within it—has changed the culture of men’s clothing for the worse,” and declares the fashion icons of today, many of whom we know solely in the context of street style and blog photography, doomed to become, “ephemeral memes,” with no, “profound cultural impact.” It would seem that if video killed the radio star, Tumblr has killed the fashion icon and left in his stead a pastiche of fickle trendsetters. Balenciaga sweatshirts? Supreme snapbacks? Givenchy tees? Tumblr sometimes reads like one giant, “Who Wore It Better?” feature, skewed to a transcontinental fashion audience.

Jian DeLeon discussed this phenomenon at length in his article, Why Tumblr Is Killing Personal Style. DeLeon argues that, “The cursory way social platforms like Tumblr— and the Internet at large—present style is within a vacuum. Clothing simply can’t be compelling unless it stands for something else...Tumblr, and the Internet version of style it champions, is detrimental because it presents dressing well as a talent in and of itself.” But can we blame Tumblr for the fact that dressing well—or, rather, dressing well according to certain guidelines—is something that does have its own rewards system?

All that being said, it’s not like Tumblr—or any social media platform, for that matter—actively prohibits the development of other stylistic outputs or points of view. I’m not so sure that the men being swayed by “Tumblr style” have a personal viewpoint to begin with, at least when it comes to getting dressed. But the internet is pretty fucking gigantic. No one is forcing you to follow blogs that promote or encourage sameness. If you’re looking for a Tumblr with a flashing Rainbow Brite gif as the background, a penis where your cursor should be and an endless stream of neo-90’s rave-goth chic juxtaposed with David Lynch screencaps and anime porn, it’s out there for you! Just don’t be offended if I unfollow. *FP

Of course people will consider it a talent in and of itself when recent years have seen style bloggers granted more and more privileges for simply wearing clothes, the term “styling” thrown around so loosely it’s lost almost all relevance in describing a 13

by joy gryson model Lauren Gould clothing Maeven Vintage bags Joy Gryson

A New York City native

who grew up on the border of Queens and Long Island, bag designer Joy Gryson knew early on that her passion lay in the creative process. “I didn’t want to sit there and do numbers,” says Gryson, who went to F.I.T. for merchandising and marketing. The designer launched IIIBeCa, the youngest of her three accessories lines, in the fall of last year as a means to give back to her local community. The look of the line was inspired by Gryson’s first designer handbag, by Il Bisonte. “You still see all of these vintage ones today—they really are completely timeless.” Despite its accessible price point, the IIIBeCa line is no stranger to the level of detail typically associated with a more expensive product. “I’m very detail oriented, that’s the Virgo-ness in me,” Gryson says with a laugh. “I’ve designed for people who are at a couture level and I’ve also designed for people who sell bags at Target, so I understand that you can make a great bag no matter what the price point is.”

When Joy first launched Gryson her most eager customers were not so close to home. The Japanese market was one of the first to express a lot of interest in Gryson’s designs, notably for their unisex appeal. “I saw a lot of Japanese men wearing Gryson bags,” she remembers. “Takashi Murakami actually ordered a Gryson bag for himself, which was a big deal for me! So I definitely feel like there’s that masculine/feminine balance throughout the collection...in China, Korea and Japan, it’s amazing—in those three countries, the men’s market is almost as big as the women’s market.” For a brand with only one brick-and-mortar outlet (the bags retail primarily in department stores), Gryson stresses the importance of e-commerce. “Financially it makes more sense for the customer to come to our site because we’re going to make more money—the markup is simply different. But it’s also important for people who don’t know our brand to be able to go to a website like Net-A-Porter and discover us [in the context of their favorite labels.] You’re going to get more potential customers through a website like that because they have a bigger outreach. You never want to completely write off any venue, because it’s the whole process that’s important.” So how did this mom-and-pop operation reach such great heights? Gryson has been fostering the right business relationships over the course of almost two decades, for starters. “I worked 24/7,” says Gryson of the early days of her career. “It’s all about being versatile and being able to maneuver. You have to be creative, not just in designing things, but in how you handle your business.” Nowadays, she and her husband Peter have more time to focus on their family and pursue that ever-elusive work/life balance. “No matter who you work for, whether it’s for yourself or for someone else, it’s about doing the best that you can. I think that’s part of what’s made us successful. So we just keep on going, you know?” *FP 16

IN GOD WE TRUST 19

Shana Tabor is owner and founder of the label In God We Trust. She’s funny, down-toearth and talented—and maybe the first person I’ve ever wanted to legitimately describe as “rad.” Tabor was obliging enough to let me stop by her label’s Greenpoint, Brooklyn storefront-cum-studio to find out how it all gets done, who’s behind it and what’s in a name.

from working in a 9’x9’ room. We got to a point where we couldn’t internally grow anymore.” The work environment is hands-on: every facet of the business is buzzing about in the studio and Shana has a part in it all. As we sit down to talk she notices a shirt for which she finished the pattern just the day before. “I can’t wait until you leave so I can check it out,” she admits. The benefits of doing everything in-house are easy to understand. “[You’re] able to play with a pattern and then two hours later the sample’s sitting there and you’re able to fit it with someone who’s actually sewing it.”

Tabor went to school for jewelry design and used to work as a wholesaler. In a sort of “reverse-scaling” move, she started In God We Trust small—really small. “I’d make like, three of one dress and when we sold one I’d replace it.” That’s changed now, but the company still produces on a tiny scale relative to the production standards most of us are used to.

The name, In God We Trust, is “a general thought on American commerce and what the focuses are of the average human being spending money...all the way up through the value and use of our currency. It was also during Bush’s first term and I was sitting in my studio listening to NPR all day...” Shana says with a laugh. (And then we high-fived each other and got gay married on a weed farm!)

“In the garment district, in New York anyways, it’s still kinda hard to find people that will work with small runs,” says Tabor. “To go overseas to do production you need huge quantities...so I knew that wasn’t even a possibility.” All of IGWT’s materials are sourced in the city, and all of the metals used for castings are recycled. They work with different sources in New York to find textiles and have everything that’s not produced in Greenpoint produced in the garment district.

My last questions are the most pressing: Who is your dream celeb clientele? (Kristen Wiig, who actually shopped in one of their boutiques once, and James Franco) and what would you change if money was no object? After a list of far too pragmatic possibilities Shana confesses, “We’d have strippers serving us tea all day.” *FP

The company moved into their current space in Greenpoint in 2009. “We found this studio space and moved over here 21

NOT by

Jenny Lai

I popped over to independent designer Jenny Lai’s apartment-cum-atelier to talk about her line, NOT, and play dress up. Armed with a duffle bag of some of my ensembular essentials, we excitedly devised ways to take the line, which is solely “women’s wear,” and see how I could make the pieces my own.

24 24

duced,” says Lai. “A lot of my clothing isn’t produced in a traditional way, and it takes time to teach someone how to do that.” The techniques are also developed in the city, such as the laser cutting used for her Spring collection. “I would encourage anybody and everybody to understand a little bit better the processes behind creating clothes.”

Lai has an apparel degree from RISD, though she grew up studying music and has a diverse fine arts background. She interned for houses in London and Amsterdam and even designed jewelry in Rwanda before launching NOT right after school. “It was really important to me to experience the industry from a lot of different viewpoints, not just from the high-fashion side,” she tells me. “I didn’t feel daunted by the idea of starting my own business...I’m not learning on anybody else’s dollar, but I still feel this is my route.”

Lai describes a busy work schedule that requires a precarious balancing act: concepting next season’s collection while monitoring the current season’s production while maintaining a strong PR presence and trying to attend educational lectures and talks.

Production and manufacturing for NOT is entirely based in NYC, and all fabrics are sourced here as well. “It’s important to work with a very stable set of people that start to understand how you like your clothing pro-

“I begin by writing a lot and experimenting with tactile stuff, not necessarily fabric,” she says. “I’m always very present when I’m 26

from a brand.”

designing the collection. It’s a very personal thing that I’m hoping people will respond to.”

For young designers preoccupied with longevity and versatility, it can be difficult to find a foothold in the marketplace. “I don’t understand why something I created last season doesn’t have value now,” notes Lai. “For me, it’s just as relevant…I’m trying to create pieces that will always be relevant. It’s really timeless in the sense that it can always be reinvented.”

“I’m creating for a woman who’s very creative and versatile...like a million people in one,” says Lai. “Every collection is a new language or a new part of my personality.” Well I am no one if not a million women in one, so sign me up. We get to discussing economies of scale and the industry norm of quantity over quality. “The danger of following the seasons is that they come and go so fast, you don’t have time to question what you’re doing and why,” laments Lai. “Some of the big brands are coming out with 12 collections a year, which I guess is what people think they want

“What I strive for in continuing to design is that I want to be excited about what I’m doing or else I don’t need to do it…it’s really hard for me to make something that I don’t care about.” *FP

what theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re wearing on the street. 34

RICHARD HAINES

The illustrator extraordinnaire on drawing, dating, & why Bushwick is where dreams come true. 44

FP: So I’ve read a little bit about your background in previous interviews you’ve done, but it’d be interesting to see what you think the importance of blogging is and where you think it’s going. The internet is obviously something you’ve been able to kind of leverage, especially...later in your career [laughter/nervous giggle].

RH: I can’t say it hasn’t crossed my mind—I mean, I’ve seen people do amazing things with digital and the possibility of it is really wonderful. But there’s something that just feels incredible to me about a charcoal pencil and a piece of paper that I can’t really duplicate. What I do is very basic, it’s very primal. But I kind of like that. It works for me.

RH: The twilight years? FP: Well you’re not Tavi, or… RH: I’m 61. It’s been five years now and I usually do this thing on my blog where I thank everyone, but I forgot to do it this year because I’ve been so busy. But that says a lot. I mean, I think for me, because I really remember life before the internet, this is all still kind of astounding and mind-blowing. That I could just start a blog, really with nothing…I mean, I had a scanner and a laptop, just like everyone else. And I was at a crossroads with my career as a designer...I wasn’t getting the work that I wanted. I had a small business making shirts and that was really floundering and I just thought, well, there’s no overhead in drawing and posting it. And I remember the first drawing I scanned and put up. It was an amazing thing to just have that ability to have my voice, unedited and out there where people could respond to it. And it’s really been like that ever since. FP: I feel like five years ago in the blogging game is such a difference, it’s so dramatic. That’s the old guard, if you will. 2008 is worlds away. We have a girl at work who’s doing some illustrations and doing it all on an iPad with a stylus…the idea of drawing and scanning that in, I guess we may have done that a few years ago, but now? Have you ever thought about switching mediums?

FP: I think it’s good that you have something that’s so...not off the grid, but offline. That’s so disconnected from constantly looking at a screen. A lot of photographers and people who are blogging constantly... it’s just incessant screen to face time. To be offline and to be disconnected is probably very healthy. RH: I mean, it’s healthy for me. I started drawing as soon as I could hold a pencil. Now the idea of scanning something and writing a caption and downloading it is just like, oh my god, that’s so much time, you know? I just want to shoot it and Instagram it. It’s amazing. And when I first started to blog, people would come and leave these lengthy comments and I would go to other people’s blogs…and that’s how it started, it was really viral. I would say, “I see you like fashion blogs, I just started a fashion blog, here’s my link.” And now the idea of people even leaving comments is this kind of charming and old school. Now it’s just like, ‘like.’ The attention span is really changing. FP: I think it’s because of the way people can have those conversations on social media now and connect online on so many platforms. You just don’t need to be leaving a blog comment anymore, it’s just an endless stream. RH: I think Facebook changed that with the ‘Like’ button and Tumblr changed it

because if you like it you’re just going to repost it. It eliminated a comment.

RH: When I was a kid there were very few ways of getting information. There was no internet and the easiest books to access FP: Do you think that it’s harder to start were books on Toulouse-Lautrec and Mona dialogue, per se? Or have you found over et and Picasso…especially Lautrec, for me, the years that your feedback has changed at was kind of everything. When I was 10 and all? 11 I was just obsessed with the flat line and the graphicness and the idea of posters. It’s RH: No, people don’t leave comments on still a big influence for me. the blog but people still have a real need to connect. So now people connect with FP: And now you’re going to fashion week me through Facebook chat. People from all every season? over the world talk to me through Facebook chat. It’s really amazing. Other illustrators, RH: Yes, yes. It started like, “Oh this is theor students, or just people who like what I ater, I want to go and sketch this”, and then do. I don’t think people have really stopped it just started building. Now I go to most of connecting...or... the men’s shows...women’s is kind of harder to break into, though I’d like to. And then I FP: Reaching out? was just in Europe. RH: Yeah, reaching out. Communicating. It’s just the format is different. If anything, contacting someone through Facebook chat is much more immediate than going through a blog.

FP: And your bags are just filled with paper and charcoal everywhere you go? RH: Yeah. I mean, I always forget one thing, and it’s usually like...paper. Now I just buy Moleskine books. There’s an interview on Mr. Porter where they asked all of these different people, well what do you bring? And it’s like...anti-depressants and charcoal pencils. Then for the rest you can just wing it.

FP: And with your drawings, were you doing them as a designer? Do you think that kind of informed and directed your approach to this? RH: Everyone is a culmination of what they’ve done, and so my drawings I think have information in them that comes from having worked with pattern makers. You know, I would give them flat sketches and say that I want the pocket here, and the button stance is there...so I kind of know that as an exact science, even though my drawing is certainly not exact. But I can kind of hit that with that precision.

FP: Were you going to shows when you were designing? RH: A little. I was going more to fabric shows, like Premiere Vision in Paris, and all of that stuff kind of developed my eye over years and years. Then in the early eighties my best friend was the fashion editor for NY Mag and then he was at the Times for awhile, so he would go to the shows in Paris and a couple times my boss at the time sent me with him. It was Claude Montana and Thierry Mugler...these incredible shows. So

FP: I like that your style is more impressionistic.

I saw that and that was great. At the time it was really exciting...but now I look back and it’s like that’s fashion history.

of the beauty of thirty. I just do what I do, and I don’t really think about it. I really love what I do and the fact that people seem to enjoy it. It’s one of the best times of my life right now. It feels very vibrant and very alive. And my daughter, I think she’s proud of me, but she has her own life. And my attitude towards dating has changed. I approach it now the way I approach work, which is none of it’s personal. So it’s actually easier. The rejection or the whatever...the weirdness has kind of evaporated, because I don’t take it personally.

FP: But how relevant can it be in this age, when everyone has instant access, to be showing on a runway? Depending on who you are it is relevant to see that in person, but otherwise… RH: I think that a designer needs that platform to create and experiment and share their point of view. So I think that’ll always be valid. It’s amazing to watch.

FP: I guess that’s partly life in the city though. It would seem to me that taking things personally in NY...it’s not gonna...

FP: I wonder if the shows have become watered down then? Maybe there’s just so much going on and so many people presenting that it can start to feel like we’re not having such heightened experiences.

RH: It’s devastating if you take it personally. Every person I talk to outside of New York is like, that is the hardest place to date. And I think that’s true, because there’s such an abundance of eye candy that it always seems like there’s something better around the corner.

RH: There are still amazing presentations. The brands and designers feel the stakes are really high to make something memorable and something that’s recordable. The Raf Simons’ show was in this Gagosian space outside of Paris, an old airport hanger with a huge Calder the size of this room hanging there. And Kenzo was total theater...you know, the need for theatrics hasn’t diminished.

FP: Yeah, I’ve heard that before, too. That when it comes to dating in new york, gay men are always like...if they have you, they’re wondering what’s next. What’s the upgrade?

FP: I’m wondering about your experiences as a gay man in that world. It’s especially interesting for me to see someone who is gay and a father in fashion and I wonder what that experience is like.

RH: Yeah. Who’s better? What am I missing? I just have this vision of busloads of really adorable gay men being shipped in every day and like, dropped off and disseminated throughout the city. One of the other really great things about getting older—I hate that expression—is that there’s a lot of acceptance, like self-acceptance. It’s just like, ‘I don’t know, maybe this person is ok for right now.’ Theres not that striving, which is a really great thing to let go of.

RH: It’s always evolving and always changing. I think the biggest thing is to be a gay man and to be 61. That’s got its own set of challenges that no one who’s thirty thinks of, nor should they. You know, when I was thirty I didn’t think to myself, ‘What am I going to be like at 61?’, because that’s kind

FP: And how long have you been in the 47

â&#x20AC;&#x153;You ju an idea balls to

ust need and the o do it.”

city? Your whole career? RH: I moved here Christmas of ‘75. This morning I was looking at this video, a photographer documented Bushwick in the late seventies…there was a blackout in ‘77 and the city was just a shitshow with fires and looting. Bushwick was basically a pile of rubble after that. And I was looking at it and it was a jolt, because I remember New York like that. I remember parts of Manhattan like that. So, yeah, it’s really kind of... it’s very humbling to know I’ve been here that long and I remember what it was like. FP: And is Bushwick particularly special? RH: I lived in Manhattan up until...I’ve lived here for like, four years. As the economy unraveled and my work unraveled I just couldn’t afford the city. And a friend of mine let me sublet this place. So I came out here and it was like, “Where the fuck am I? Why is the train above ground? Where can I buy French candles?” And then the first weekend I was here there was an all day concert on this empty lot. It was amazing and it was like, now I know why I’m supposed to be here. I’d stumbled upon this amazing art scene and this creativity and I felt like I had the opportunity to draw it. FP: And that was around the same time you started blogging. RH: And because I was just starting out it was easier than in Manhattan. All you need is the urge to do something. I love the people here who’ve started coffee shops, or galleries, or a restaurant, or a yoga studio. This guy who opened a yoga studio once said to me, “Bushwick is where dreams come true.” And we were kind of laughing, but it’s kind of true! He opened this amazing place and I’m sure on a shoestring. So you just need an idea and the balls to do it. *FP 49

BOW DOWN, BITCHES

The perks of being a wallflower? Not so much. Fashion blogging only really takes off when you’re willing to do whatever it takes to get the shot. Here, a selection of my favorite looks from the last year—don’t worry, no #fbloggers were harmed in the making of these images. 51

FIN. 68