Digital
Volume 5 | Issue 6
who’s on staff? editorial EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Liv Velarde CREATIVE DIRECTOR Paige Wilson FEATURES EDITOR Amber Mitchell PRINT FASHION EDITORS Elena Odulak Alana Valko DIGITAL FASHION EDITOR Alexa DeFord PRINT DESIGN EDITORS Katie Beukema Xinyi Liu
business PUBLISHER Serena Pergola ACCOUNTS DIRECTOR Connie Zhang
DIGITAL DESIGN EDITORS Aliya Falk Manda Villarreal
MARKETING DIRECTOR Christi Suzuki
PRINT PHOTO EDITORS Kenzie King Becca Rudman
FINANCE COORDINATORS Savannah Klein Ella Radice
DIGITAL PHOTO EDITOR Francesca Romano
EVENTS COORDINATOR Courtney O’Beirne
STREET STYLE EDITOR Evan Parness
OUTREACH COORDINATOR Ellie Benson
MANAGING PHOTO EDITOR Benji Bear
ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Claire Dickerson
VIDEO EDITOR Rosalie Li
DISTRIBUTION COORDINATOR Colleen Jones
DIGITAL CONTENT EDITOR Emily Benderoff
SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR Molly Shulan
ILLUSTRATOR MANDA VILLARREAL
SHEI /’sh(ay)/ Magazine was founded in 1999 as an Asian Pop Culture Magazine and became affiliated with University of Michigan Student Publications in 2013. Our Digital Magazine, known as SHIFT at the time, was launched in 2015. Since then, SHEI has grown to campus wide recognition as a publication that students can come to for fashion, art, and culture commentary and inspiration.
who’s on staff?
contributing members STYLISTS Cassidy Caulkin Rachael Curry Nick Farrugia Elizabeth Hayley Amreen Kanwal Krit Kosoltrakul Katarina Kovac Claire Manor Lily Marks Juan Marquez Lily McCann Paxton Peterkins Alexandra Plosch Jenny Ruan Jasmine Smith Abby Ziemkowski WRITERS Lauren Champlin Katherine Feinstein Jamie Schneider Sean Tran
PHOTOGRAPHERS Eliz Akgun Maya Ballester Katie Corbett Julia Dean Natalie Guisinger Alex Leav Juan Marquez Gwen McCartney Dana Papandreadis Robina Rranza Jenny Ruan Evan Russ Sirapa Vichaikul GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Eliz Akgun Carly Lucas Elizabeth Marics
in this issue
MASTHEAD 02 LETTER FRO R THE B W BLUE-L B STU
2 OM THE EDITOR 08 REFRACTION 10 WORD 20 DOUBLE TAKE 22 TERRESTRIAL CLARITY 38 LIGHT-BLOCKING IS THE NEW BLACK 52 BABY BLUE BLUES, BABY 56 CLEANSE 70 FORGET ME NOT 72 UDENT SPOTLIGHT: KAI MASON 82 BREATHE & FLOAT 88 20 YEARS OF SHEI 102
letter from the editor
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My favorite day of the year is that one random day in March when it feels like true spring for the first time. The air is moist and is filled with the smell of the dirt that’s been hidden under snow for months. The grass is still brown and there might even be a stray icicle clinging to icy life, but the wind and the sky have an entirely different quality about them. This day always prompts an instinctual, communal reaction in the people on campus. Each pair of trees in the Diag has at least one hammock strung up between them and every square inch of grass is covered by the people sitting cross legged and telling stories. The inevitable repetition of this day makes it easy for me to imagine how we all innately formed this tradition. This thought takes me back year after year, throughout the generations. The group of friends sitting on the grass shapeshift until they’re sporting big hair neon and then there they are again with bell bottoms and flower crowns. I know that they also smelled the shift in seasons and flocked to any open patch of grass in order to sit together. The excitement generated by this shift in season is inspiration for art, love, community, music. No matter how bad the winter was, we have these fragile days of life.
I’m excited to say that the photoshoots in this month’s digital evoke the joy that comes from that first spring day. On page 88, you’ll find the photos that grace the cover and feel the wind in your hair as the fabrics float off of the page and into the spring air. While “Breathe & Float” brings us into the sky, “Terrestrial Clarity” on page brings us back to the earth. The greens and see through substances evoke the feeling of being inside a terrarium and remind us of the growth soon to come. “Double Take” on page 22 takes us down to the Huron River and hints at the yearning for a time when the water will warmly welcome us. As this is my last Letter as Editor-in-Chief of SHEI, I wanted to include something in the issue to express how much it has meant to me to be able to lead this incredible team. In the Fall of 2019, it will have been 20 years since the staff of SHEI Magazine published their first print issue. I interviewed several people from the earlier days of the magazine and interrogated our archives to try to create a timeline for this organization that means so much to all of us. I hope you enjoy looking through the early days of SHEI fashion and photography and I want to say thank you for a refreshing year.
Liv Velarde Editor-In-Chief
DIRECTOR ALEXANDRA PLOSCH STYLISTS KRIT KOSOLTRAKUL LILY MARKS PHOTOGRAPHERS JUAN MARQUEZ DANA PAPANDREADIS GRAPHIC DESIGNER MANDA VILLARREAL MODELS EMILIE HAJI-SHEIKH JANELLE MALLAK
REFRACTI
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Black Tank - Bear Dance Silver Tube Top - Ragstock Sunglasses - Fashion Nova
Ear Cuffs - Forever 21
Earrings - Givenchy Freak Choker - Dolls Kill
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As a longtime lover and consumer of literature, I actively seek to read new and popular releases, so when I heard buzz about a novel topping every online blog’s “best of” list, I was excited to get my hands on it. Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo follows an old Hollywood film star as she outlines her life story with a journalist hired to write her biography. At the end of her life, she is ready to share her journey towards stardom, the struggles she encountered along the way, and the secrets she’s kept hidden from the public for decades. Early on in the novel, the question that has followed Evelyn throughout her life and many marriages, the question of who is the love of Evelyn Hugo’s life? is answered, and that answer comes as a surprise: Evelyn was deeply in love with another woman. At the age of 79, Hugo decides to use her biography as opportunity to share the truth of her bisexuality with the world, and as a bisexual woman, I was ecstatic to see myself represented in the pages of a novel, something that is so rarely done. Beyond my excitement, however, I was surprised—surprised with Reid’s candid use of the B word and surprised with my own disbelief and speculation of the character I was presented with, a character who, from my previous reading experience, I didn’t believe could properly exist within the framework of fiction. Although bisexual individuals make up the largest percentage of LGBT-identifying people, representation of them even within the scope of LGBT literature is nearly nonexistent. In the realm of media and book publishing, the term “LGBT fiction” has become increasingly problematic. While the acronym serves to unite marginalized individuals and promote stories featuring their underrepresented voices, it unfortunately also blurs together distinct identities and erases some identities altogether.
a d e
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c The experiences of L, G, B, and T people are so different. When it comes to bisexuals, there are several issues around biphobia that are not faced by L, G, or (non-bisexual) T people. Bisexuality is commonly seen as a stepping stone between straight and gay, not an identity on its own, in addition to the stereotypes of promiscuity and deceptiveness, extreme sexualization of bi women in heteronormative culture, and distrust of bisexual partners in both queer and heterosexual relationships. The umbrella term “LGBT fiction” undermines the separate identities within the acronym when very few voices are actually represented. Why is it so difficult to write bisexual characters? Thinking about this required me to reflect on my own sexuality, and when I did, I made some interesting insights. Being bisexual doesn’t require me to do anything in particular. For me, it as simple as being attracted to both men and women. This, in a way, strips away the “coming out of the closet” metaphor for many bi people, complicating the narrative for bisexual representation in literature. Without blatantly outing the character to the audience, it can be difficult for authors to write a “bisexual” storyline into their works. It can be difficult to define what a bisexual character looks like. Many representations that do exist for bi women in media include flat, two-dimensional characters that lack complexity and only serve to perpetuate stereotypes. This type of “bisexual” representation actually works against its purpose and essentially
erases the existence of people who simply are bisexual. Reid’s portrayal of a bisexual woman in Evelyn Hugo is refreshing. Unlike other portrayals of bisexuality in media, the divulging of Evelyn’s sexuality did nothing to strip away the nuances of her character or flatten her into a caricature. She is a complex, determined, and passionate woman, and Reid’s use of the B word did not serve to define Evelyn as a character, but instead, to reflect Evelyn’s found confidence in her identity that she spent so many years having to hide. “Often, when people have a trait that is outside of the mainstream, the majority wants to define them by it. It’s just another method we use to ‘other’ people. We reduce them to the thing that makes them different than us,” commented Reid in an interview on the novel. “Evelyn is just a person...she’s also a loving mother and a loyal best friend and a liar and a master manipulator and a user. She’s a hopeless romantic and she’s also a cutthroat cynic. The fact that she loves both men and women is a big part of who she is, but it’s only a part.”1 Representation influences imagination, and being able to include diverse voices in media is being able to imagine diverse people existing in our real lives—because they do. Representation erases the possibility of othering anyone based on their differences, discrediting experiences unfamiliar to us, or diminishing people to one trait and ignoring their complexities, their quarks, their moving and evolving parts—all of the parts that make us human.
Zane , Zachary. “Writing Nuanced Queer Protagonists: A Q&A with Taylor Jenkins Reid, Writer of ‘The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.’” Bi.org, 16 Oct. 2017, bisexual.org/writing-nuanced-queer-protagonists-a-qa-with-taylor-jenkins-reid-writer-of-theseven-husbands-of-evelyn-hugo/. 1
WRITER LAUREN CHAMPLIN GRAPHIC DESIGNER ELIZ AKGUN
DIRECTOR NICK FARRUGIA STYLISTS PAXTON LEATHERMAN JESSICA PETERKINS PHOTOGRAPHER FRANCESCA ROMANO GRAPHIC DESIGNER MANDA VILLARREAL MODELS EVAN HAMMON LEVANA WANG
UODDOUBLE KATTAKE
Blazer - Nine & Co. Skirt - Salvation Army
Floral Jacket - Coldwater Creek Pants - Salvation Army
Sweater Vest - Geoffrey Beane Purple Coat - Old County Pinstripe Shorts - Chic Blue Coat - Patagonia
T E R R E S T R I A L C l a r i t y
DIRECTOR JASMINE SMITH STYLISTS CASSIDY CAULKIN RACHAEL CURRY JASMINE SMITH PHOTOGRAPHERS JULIA DEAN ALEX LEAV ROBINA RRANZA GRAPHIC DESIGNER MANDA VILLARREAL MODEL OLIVIA JOHNSON
Overalls - Levi’s
Necklace - Star Laces
blu is t In 2019, it’s pretty much impossible to avoid a daily dose of screen time. From lecture slides, to office jobs, to treating yourself to a Handmaid’s Tale marathon, our professional and personal lives are becoming increasingly more digital. While there are positive effects that occur with technology, as digital platforms lead to more voices and more perspectives in society, our obsession with all things digital has shown to have adverse physical repercussions on our bodies and minds. However, technology’s effects on our health seem to be rather ambiguous, with preliminary scientific journals and clinical trials asserting that technology is slowly killing our attention spans and causing poor eyesight. The influencer endorsements for blue-
light-blocking lenses and anti-bluelight sunscreens claim that these products are magical, quick-fixes for our screen time addiction, and the cynic in me wondered if companies were simply trying to capitalize on our electronics anxiety. But when I noticed that Tom Ford recently released an eyewear line called the “Blue Block Collection,” created in order to combat blue-light induced eye strain, I realized that this trend was transcending the passionate testimonials of Instagram and entering the luxury fashion market. 2019 seems to be the year for a function-meets-fashion wardrobe, and eyewear seems to be no exception. Recent studies have shown that our love affair with screens not only causes emotional strain on our per-
ue-light-blocking the new black sonal relationships and conversational skills, but also causes a physical strain on our retinas and sleeping habits. According to Harvard Medical School, the blue-light emitted from our beloved screens— from computers, to phones, to our TVs— affects our brain’s melatonin levels and interferes with our circadian rhythms. Ever realize how a nightly Netflix binge turns into insane grogginess the next morning? That’s because our bodies aren’t used to interacting with blue-light while it’s dark out, so they associate this light coming from our screens with daytime, which makes it harder to fall asleep. This interaction with bluelight “pushes our internal clock later so that it’s harder to fall asleep and harder to wake up in the morning,”
Cathy Goldstein, an assistant professor of neurology at the University of Michigan Sleep Disorders Center, told New York Magazine. Perhaps the best way to help our circadian rhythms revert back to those pre-streaming days is to purchase a pair of glasses with bluelight-blocking lenses. According to New York Magazine, a study in 2009 found that people wearing blue-lightblocking glasses three hours before going to bed had better sleep quality and overall mood than those who didn’t. In response to these studies, the blue-light glasses trend has practically conquered Instagram, with influencers such as Bachelor alum Lauren Bushnell, and Glee star Jenna Ushkowitz commending brands like DIFF Eyewear and Quay for tak-
ing the step towards adding bluelight-blocking lenses to their stylish frames. Felix Gray, an eyewear brand specifically made to block blue-light, is popular for their modern selection of glasses that help combat eye strain without breaking the bank . With Tom Ford’s new “Blue Block Collection,” it looks like the trend has covered all of its consumer market bases. However, because most of the strong blue-light we interact with actually comes from the sun, our everyday technology might not really be affecting our eyes that much, unless we’re trying to sleep. Most people associate blue-light from that blue hue that illuminates our faces while watching Netflix or scrolling through Instagram, but we actually encounter most blue-light from simply being outside. “There are studies that have shown that sunlight, just standing outdoors in the daytime, is like 200 times more intense an exposure to blue-light than any screen for eight or 10 hours a day,” Adam Gordon, a clinical asso-
ciate professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Optometry, said in The Atlantic. According to Gordon, there aren’t any eye strain issues from interacting with blue-light during the day, no matter how many hours of the day you’re slouched over your phone or laptop. In fact, the slouching itself could be the real issue here in terms of health, the effects on our posture much more detrimental than bluelight’s effects on our retinas. In terms of blue-light-blocking sunscreens and skincare products, the phrase seems rather obvious, since a large fraction of blue-light does come from the sun itself. However, that doesn’t stop brands from marketing their products towards individuals caught up in what’s become a sensational blue-lightblocking movement. Supergoop!, for example, launched an “Unseen Sunscreen,” and swears by the red algae’s capabilities in absorbing bluelight and protecting the skin, while one of the specific perks of Murad’s City Skin Age Defense Broad Spec-
trum SPF is to block the blue-light from our devices, according to the product’s description. Personally, I believe it’s always a good idea to apply SPF—even on a particularly gray, wintry day— so although the reason to purchase blue-light sunscreen strictly for using technology may seem a little off, I see it as a win-win for skincare routines in the long-run. Overall, it looks like your bluelight-blocking glasses aren’t exactly necessary during a busy workday (apologies to those, like myself, who were desperate for an excuse to invest in a chic pair of specs), but wearing them at night could greatly benefit your sleep patterns. So don’t write off those Tom Fords just yet— for a midnight movie, a late shift at the office, or for a dreaded all-nighter study session, these blue-lightblocking glasses might just be your circadian rhythm’s high-fashion best friend.
WRITER JAMIE SCHNEIDER GRAPHIC DESIGNER CARLY LUCAS
Baby Blue Blues, Baby DIRECTOR ABBY ZIEMKOWSKI STYLISTS ALEXA DEFORD AMREEN KANWAL PHOTOGRAPHERS MAYA BALLESTER GWEN MCCARTNEY GRAPHIC DESIGNER MANDA VILLARREAL MODELS DIVYA SABU NATALIE SANGKAGALO
Scarf - Vintage Bandana - Free People Skirt - Free People
Gold Earrings - Melrose & Market
Gold Rings - Topshop & Urban Outfitters Chain Earrings - Halogen
Blue Skirt - Thrifted Striped Shirt - Topshop White Shirt - Charlotte Russe
Blue Pants - Nordstrom Rack Lace Up Sandles - DSW
CLEANSE
cleanse Coming home at midnight and having work at 8 am the next morning means actually going to bed at 1:00 and waking up at 7 to do my skincare routine twice a day. Like going to my job or classes or even the gym, a skincare routine becomes exactly that: a routine, something that must be habitually completed. Instead of business casual or an apron tied at the waist, my uniform is an oversized, overly-cutesy headband that I use to push the silvery strands of dyed hair away from my face. The line between skincare and self-care becomes indiscernible, not as blurry as it is translucent, like toner or essence. Achieving clear skin is an unclear process. Unlike makeup, skincare represents a rather approachable alternative to improving your appearance. Cosmetics tend to be negatively viewed by much of society, especially from the point of view of those who don’t actually wear makeup themselves, to the extent that those who enjoy doing so are labeled as “fake” or “tacky” rather than simply partaking in a harmless activity. While using makeup is perceived as hiding one’s flaws or almost deceitful, skincare is seemingly about improvement of one’s natural appearance under the commercially palatable name of “self-care.” “Self-care” is how these products are marketed. “Self-care” means that you’re spending your money and your time to buy these products for you, and that’s so great because you are actively making a positive decision in your life. “Self-care” rids individuals of guilt by transforming their capitalist pursuits into purchases that seem as internally beneficial as they are externally so. This is how the skincare routine starts. Yet it is not so easily stopped. Despite my awareness of the fact that I’m consistently spending my money on skincare products, I have and I will throw another $40 at a moisturizer from Sephora because I want to….which sounds an awful lot like I’ve internalized the exact process that I just described. And to be honest, I very well might have subconsciously accepted this. However, my skincare routine is unlike the other tasks that I’m faced with on an everyday basis. It goes beyond my skin. I choose to do my routine, day-in and day-out, for all of the basic reasons: to rid my face of oils from a day’s worth of work (or the inevitable nature of my skin that produces excessive oil, regardless of what I do), to treat the bulging bullets to
my self-esteem that are otherwise known as pimples, and to ultimately become beautiful enough to pursue my inner plan of becoming a K-pop idol. All of these entirely valid reasons aside, I choose to do my routine because it somehow is self-care. “Self-care” is a term that I’ve come to despise as it is so often reduced to the comical idea that doing something like washing your face will suddenly reunite your divorced parents. A skincare routine, if you do it like me, involves many steps. Many steps means a whole lot of money spent that you should’ve saved for perhaps, anything else. But it also means having both the time and space to just… ...think. Newly nineteen years-old in my second year of undergraduate education, thinking is a way that I relax. With the amount of routines that regularly weigh down my life, the time that I do get to think about something other than my tasks involves sacrificing time that I could’ve spent to actually complete those tasks. This isn’t relaxation. It’s distraction. In contrast, my skincare routine allows me to think while still making me feel somewhat productive. A skincare routine, especially one as intensive as my 10-step procedure, involves commitment—constant work to reach a long-term goal through small daily routines and even smaller steps from there. “Self-care” occurs as I am able to use the time it takes for me to complete this routine to find a sense of unity within my life. As the impurities leave my face, so do the built-up stress and worry. I can organize, prioritize, strategize. Each step only furthers this. Slowly, I come closer to finding a sense of contentment that I’ll carry from tonight until tomorrow. When we look at skincare not as a site of instant gratification as the common perception of “self-care” suggests, but rather as a process that facilitates longterm progress, the positive potential of a skincare routine can be more fully realized; the translucence can be seen through. Still, the ways in which the greater skincare culture gains their profit cannot be denied. Skincare companies ultimately benefit off the immediacy of truth untold that “self-care” entails. In terms of my own self-care, I believe that every single step of my skincare routine helps me towards finding personal contentment, or at least, I think I do. Better put on a sheet mask while I’m at it.
WRITER SEAN TRAN GRAPHIC DESIGNER ELIZABETH MARICS
DIRECTOR JUAN MARQUEZ STYLISTS ELIZABETH HAYLEY CLAIRE MANOR PHOTOGRAPHERS ELIZ AKGUN EVAN RUSS SIRAPA VICHAIKUL
GRAPHIC DESIGNER MANDA VILLARREAL MODELS RACHEL BANKS ALEXIS LOWE
Forget Me Not
STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: KAI MASON I’m no fashion or beauty guru, but I try my best to get product and style inspiration from all the top Instagram models and the like. However, I often find myself out of reach of this lifestyle marked by exuberant jewelry, hair and makeup, designer brands, and a homogenous model culture. The contemporary fashion industry can be extremely alienating. Kai Mason, a student at UofM, feels similarly, and was frustrated by the restraints that the fashion industry put on her as a person who loves fashion and her own style, but is also a middle-class, mixed race student. This inspired her to start an inclusive magazine for the 2018 optiMize Social Innovation Challenge. The magazine, which ended up winning the Social Innovation Challenge, addresses socioeconomic disparities in the fashion industry, while also giving readers a space to find their own identity and style through the relatability and variability of the fashion content. Kai’s publication also works to integrate diversity and conscious consumerism into fashion in order to re-connect the industry to the “real world.” Kai serves as a voice for the underrepresented as she creates a space for the unique, and economically and environmentally “conscious consumer” to establish their unique style. Her passion for contemporary issues coupled with her love for fashion shines through the pages of her magazine and I eagerly await the launch of her magazine this April!
WRITER KATHERINE FEINSTEIN PHOTOGRAPHER NATALIE GUISINGER GRAPHIC DESIGNER MANDA VILLARREAL
KF: Where are you from? KM: I’m from the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. KF: What is your family like? KM: My family is really diverse. My dad’s side is from Jamaica and my mom’s side is from Japan. I have a brother and two half sisters. I think we’re all really close, but I’m extremely close with my brother. KF: What influences your style? Any fashion icons or role models you look to? KM: I really like what Rihanna and Dua Lipa wear. I feel like they’re edgy and they can be very feminine at times, but masculine at times with the way that they dress and I think that’s really cool. KF: What are some things that have made you want to be a part of the fashion industry? KM: I think growing up reading fashion magazines like Vogue and Elle and not really seeing myself represented in them- like seeing all these really famous, rich, conventionally attractive people represented in it and being a regular, middle-class, mixed person- made me want to put myself in that area and be able to tell my own story in fashion. KF: What are some things about the fashion industry you want to change? KM: I think I really want to change the idea that you have to be really rich to be a part of or participate in fashion. There’s a lot of racism and ableism in fashion in that you don’t see diversity that reflects the world that we live in. We see a lot of surface-level interpretations of diversity, like we might see a lot of white people and a couple
black people but nothing past that. There aren’t models with different sexual or gender identities or disabilities, or even mixed race backgrounds. I’d like to make fashion a place for everyone. KF: What does being a “conscious consumer” mean to you? What are some things you do in your own life/fashion choices to embody this? KM: I think if we aren’t conscious consumers starting right now then fashion can’t be a sustainable thing because there is so much ecological and environmental destruction in making clothing and through companies and manufacturing. More specifically, material resources such as water and the process of manufacturing and the people who make that clothing who aren’t always compensated well enough to live a decent life. And so, I think we’re not at a point where we can’t not think about those things. I try to perpetuate that in my everyday life through sustainable brands like thrifting, upcycling, and exchanging clothing. There’s a way to participate in fashion without necessarily buying new clothing all the time. Obviously you can’t always get clothing from someone else, but there are better ways to do it than always shopping and spending money at big stores. I actually think the alternative, more conscious ways are more fun. One of the sites that I look at a lot is “Heroine.” It may be more on the expensive side, but it’s a marketplace for used designer clothing. I also try to go to thrift shops a lot which is hard in Ann Arbor, but I look to those as best as I can. There are also a lot of sustainable brands that are “good” about manufacturing, like they make their clothing from recycled clothes- like Reformation and Everlane- but they are expensive. I think what I want to research is a brand that’s both environmentally conscious and affordable, such as for low income people who can’t afford anything but fast fashion.
KF: So, would you want to start your own sustainable, cheap brand in the future? KM: Honestly, maybe. That’s a really hard thing to do and I think that’s why these brands are more expensive. You’d have to pay workers more and pay more money to find more sustainable ways to process and manufacture clothing. But, maybe! KF: What inspired you to start your magazine? What are some steps you took to start the project? KM: So I’ve had this idea since I was really young, maybe 12 or 13 years old, but I never really thought it could be a reality. And then I heard of Optimize randomly, and I thought “wow, why not try to apply to this and see where it goes?”I actually applied on the last possible day and it actually went really well and I’m grateful for that opportunity. Optimize is really great for preparing you for the ultimate pitch which is kind of like a “Shark Tank”type setup with investors and evaluators. Up until then we have bi-weekly sessions where they bring in Optimize alums and entrepreneurs that tell you strategies and tips you can use in your presentation. Ultimately, I ended up pitching some prototype pitches of test-shoots and article drafts as well as told my story of where I come from and why I wanted to do this conscious magazine. I basically just said, “ here are some pictures that supplement where I come from and what I believe in.” Also, I think this process really helps because you get to know the Optimize team who end up judging your project and they all help you work up to that point. You know almost everyone in the room and they’re so passionate and are all rooting for you. KF: Who is your target audience? Would you say that you shape your magazine to reflect your own style and background? KM: Our target audience is hopefully anybody who picks up the magazine, but I think the magazine itself is for people who don’t typically see themselves represented in those fashion spaces. The goal is to express and encourage that they can be a part of fashion as much as everyone else
and to push them to be their best selves. I also created it in hopes of influencing people towards this type of thinking and inclusivity I don’t think it necessarily does represent my own style. I’ve brought in stylists who dress completely different than I do and they’re so much more talented than I am but that’s the point: to create an outlet for people to create their own styles and be able to establish what they want fashion to be for them. Like, I went thrift shopping with one of the stylists, Michelle, and she picked out things I would have never thought of. Everything she picked out looked really good and I never could have done the same thing! KF: What are your next steps/goals for your magazine after Optimize? KM: Actually, right now I’ve been really lucky to be able to do this for my Honors Thesis. After
Optimize, I’ve struggled to find the motivation to find what to do next because it was a lot to balance with school, so I’ve been able to link it with school and was lucky enough that now I can do both. Mid April I’ll be doing my project presentation for the Honors program and that will be when I can talk about where it comes from, why I started it, and where I want it to go. I won’t be publishing the actual magazine online for its initial release, but as of right now I’ll actually be publishing it in print and it will be available online for purchase. Keep an eye out for the release! KF: Tell us a fun fact about you :) KM: I can pick things up with my feet. I think feet are better than hands, I don’t know why anyone on SHEI would want to know that, but that is my fun fact!
For more information/access to the magazine check out their social media: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter: @thefreemag
Breathe & Float
DIRECTOR JENNY RUAN STYLISTS KATARINA KOVAC LILY MCCANN PHOTOGRAPHERS KATIE CORBETT JENNY RUAN GRAPHIC DESIGNER MANDA VILLARREAL MODELS MICHELLE LIN
Earrings - Dolls Kill White Pants - Taobao White Crop Top - Taobao
Pink Dress - Ta
Taobao
Yellow Dress - Taobao
This past September, I was rummaging through the cramped space of SHEI Magazine’s office, which we share it with the advertising department of the university’s newspaper, and which is about the size of a dorm room. I think I was looking for business cards or the box of SHEI logo nail files, but in my search, I stumbled onto an unassuming white storage container that held every issue of SHEI ever printed. With only ten minutes until our editorial board meeting, I didn’t give them more than a cursory glance. The only thing that immediately caught my eye was the issue from fall 2010. Its cover photo was so guilty of Native American cultural appropriation, complete with feathers in the model’s hair, face paint that was intended to look tribal, and faux furs against a green field completed the insincere tribute against a green field that my sincerest hope was that this particular magazine never got dredged back up. I put the lid back on the box and walked into the conference room where the rest of the editors were waiting, and scanned the agenda that I had created for that evening. There was a little itch in my brain that was telling me what a wealth I had just stumbled upon, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it. It was overwhelming, all of the history and hard work that had been put into the magazine for the past 40 issues made me distinctly aware that my Letters from the Editor would soon end up in this forgotten box as well. I started off our meeting with some announcements about new partnerships I was working on with the rest of the executive board and then delved into adjusting deadlines and getting prog-
ress reports from the 16 people sitting around the table with me. I joined the magazine my sophomore year as a general staff member of the fashion team and was elected Print Fashion Editor the following year. In those roles, I conceptualized and executed fashion photoshoots for the magazine which included sourcing clothing, finding models and a location, and directing the models and photographers on site. After the launch party of my first magazine as a print editor, I went home to journal and cry while the rest of the board went out to a bar. I was exhausted with fashion but the validation from seeing my name on that masthead fueled my decision to move to a more administrative, big-picture role as Editor-in-Chief. On a Sunday in October, I attended a student publications board retreat held at an Irish Pub on Ann Arbor’s Main Street, during my first few weeks as Editor-in-Chief. I looked around the dim room at the nine adult members who were supposed to be our mentors and guide our growth as a publication and I was impressed by the lineup, albeit a bit annoyed that the agenda said we would be there from 12-7PM. We were the newest publication under their umbrella, we’d only been added five years ago, and I felt like our production had stagnated since then. I wanted to show them the potential that we had, and the work that we were willing to do to progress our magazine. When it was time for SHEI to present our plans for the upcoming year, I detailed standard procedures that needed to be updated, like
charging $6.50 for our magazine and requiring that members pay dues. I was also honest with them that our advertising sales were dismal and we never met our projections, but that interest in our org was increasing tremendously every year and our brand name recognition on campus was not only growing quickly, but we had plans to grow it even more. From the way that the room was listening to me raptly, I could tell that SHEI had never been pitched to them quite like this. I couldn’t sleep the night after the meeting because I was thinking of all of the ways that SHEI could be so much more than it currently was. I thought about how our different branches should have specific purposes so that we became a more cohesive media company. Our newsletter would be lifestyle-based to bring relevant content to students and drive them to our site, our Instagram needed to have creative content created specifically for social media, and our digital magazine needed to consistently get shared like crazy. More than anything else, I knew that SHEI needed to be a free publication. We work so hard on a print magazine that less than 200 people see each semester, most of those being staff members and their family members. Another decade from now, when staff members think about the transitions SHEI went through, they would point to this upcoming semester when our circulation quadrupled because everyone on campus could easily get a copy. As much as I love SHEI, after that meeting, I saw that it was imperative to step back and view it as an institution. I want to examine it thoroughly without
pride or ego getting in the way. It was the only way to grow. Institutions don’t exist in a vacuum. They become the way that they are because of the aggregation of small decisions made daily. I couldn’t think about the future without also thinking about the past and the present. I was driven back to the archive in that white container by a desire to understand how far the magazine had come so that I could fully understand where we might go. I started to go through the box and I was really impressed by the talent of the editors that had come before me. I was searching for answers about the mission and goals of SHEI and how it has transformed from an Asian-American pop culture magazine in 1999 to a fashion media organization in the present, but the best part of this search was simply being able to understand the tradition that each masthead full of people had left behind. They contain stunning photoshoots that rival and remind me of the work that my current editorial board does. My favorite shoot was from 2005. The color scheme is all shades of red, white, and black. The photos are double exposed over the top of each other and it gives off this aura of intrigue. It’s such an expressive set of photos and I understood their appeal partly because we coincidentally strived for a very similar feeling in photos from my last semester as Print Fashion Editor. We did a shoot with a full length, red, intricately beaded, slip dress that I had thrifted from the ‘90s. We shined a red light on the model and zoomed in close to her face. The wisps of her hair and low angles give a strikingly similar effect to the mood of yearning from 2005. The first two issues of SHEI Magazine, released in winter 1999 and spring 2000, don’t have letters of dedication or even a list of board members. According to Khang Tran, one of the first Creative Directors of the magazine whom I spoke to over the phone, it was just something fun that they wanted to with their friends. He said many of his friends were interested in fashion and photography and
they thought the best way to showcase that was with a print magazine and it was mostly circulated throughout their friend group. The third comes out strong. It’s a thin volume, maybe 30 pages and 5” x 6”, a pensive Asian woman appraises the viewer out of the corner of her eye in a color scheme of denim and forest green. There’s a letter of dedication, a mission statement, and the explanation of the name: “The title of the Magazine is trilingual. ‘SHEI’, along with the Chinese character, means ‘who’ in Chinese. In Japanese, the character spells out ‘dare’ and in Tamil, an Indian dialect, ‘SHEI’ translates to ‘do’. Who dare do?” The name of our magazine had been something I’d taken for granted the entire time I had been a SHEI member. I say the word “SHEI” at least a dozen times every day and it has become a catchall for so many things. It refers to what has become an unpaid full-time job, the passionate community of people that has been built around it, and the actual publication that we produce. The founders had clearly spent a lot of time thinking of a name that was so central the mission of their magazine as an Asian-American culture magazine meant to elevate and unite Asians on Michigan’s campus and to highlight the innovative spirit of SHEI. I had always known from Student Publications lore that the magazine began as a purely Asian one, but I never gave the implications of this origin much thought and it seemed that no one else did either. It’s not easy to pinpoint SHEI’s transformation into a neutral fashion magazine. It’s fairly clear when the magazine had a singular Asian voice, but it quickly gets difficult to parse the two interests. The first four or five issues were clearly centered around Asian American culture, featuring Asian models, Asian artists, and Filipino recipes. The twelfth issue, titled “Journey to the West”, seemed visually different to me and the title can’t
be coincidental. They began by highlighting issues pertaining to “Eastern” culture and they’re moving to speak to the general “Western” population on campus. The cover features a blonde woman, who also leads the models in the photoshoot that lent the issue its name. The issue still has a mostly Asian American editorial board and an article highlighting an Asian musician, but the main photoshoot “Journey to the West” strives for a Gossip Girl tone. They succeeded in that, mostly because someone on board had serious connections in the fashion world. They styled the shoot with items from Donna Karan’s archive of vintage clothing and accessories. Every ill-fitting button-up shirt and mid-length silk skirts are either YSL or Donna Karan. Today none of our editors have these kinds of connections, but we do work with many designers local to Southeast Michigan. Last year, we introduced a new section to our website that documents Street Style of people on campus and the Ann Arbor area. This has been a huge hit amongst students and the biggest driver to our site since I’ve been a part of the organization. Posting the photos on social media is perfect because we can tag the stylish individual and propel them and their friends to our other platforms. Everyone wants to read something if they think themselves or their friends might make an appearance. When the Print Photo Editor introduced the board to the idea of Street Style, we all thought it was so innovative, but the first four issues of SHEI had street style sections as well. Looking at those sections made it abundantly clear to me just how much current fashion trends explicitly reference the ‘90s. The original innovators we reference today were photographed in these issues wearing fanny packs and puffer jackets. The flat lay from 1999 included a pair of Nike Air Max’s that are almost identical to a pair of sneakers that I bought over the summer. Our flat lay in the
most recent issue was titled “90’s Revamp” and the spaghetti strap slip dresses and dad sneakers were out in full force. The nature of fashion, and of SHEI, is that it’s cyclical. Something else that struck me while flipping through the old magazines was how easily institutional knowledge slips through our fingers when the turnover of the editorial board is so frequent. When we’re discussing what our fashion photoshoots will look like, we always make sure to reference past issues so that we don’t repeat concepts or shoot locations. Looking through Issue 26 from 2013, I saw two locations where we’ve shot in the past year, a parking garage on S. Forest Avenue and the same exact locations in Nichols Arboretum for one of our main beauty shoots. This was only five years ago. We aren’t materially affected by this repeat because we’re not worried about someone remembering our shoot locations from five years ago, but it demonstrates how quickly people forget about these things. When people graduate, knowledge goes along with them. I wanted to decide when the transition to a fashion magazine occurred and pinpoint some semblance of a SHEI identity. I could only gather so much from looking at the content so I went through every early issue and made a list of all of the people that I would try to contact through LinkedIn. Traversing through the masthead, I thought about how unique SHEI was as an institution. There is constant turnover, and some names, Wei-Pei Cherng, Pamela Yung, Joanna Gau, became familiar to me but they lasted three years at the most. The masthead that had so deeply validated me during my first semester on board was beginning to reveal itself as highly impermanent in nature. I was successful in reaching Jessica Corbett, the EIC during the 2007-2008 school year, a decade anniversary year much like the one SHEI is about
to enter. As a Black woman, she was the first EIC who wasn’t Asian-American and it was clear to me from looking through that issue that her term was a shift away from centering Asian culture in SHEI’s content. There was more specific fashion content and it’s clear that editors were trying to reach an audience that was campus wide. When Jessica was on board, she said there wasn’t much discussion of their Asian culture origins, even though all but three or four members of the board were Asian at the time. The year that Jessica was EIC, they only published one issue, in the spring of 2008, with a whopping 124 pages, 40 pages more than we currently print. According to her letter from the editor, they were dedicated to focusing on “creative diversity, where diversity has no boundaries”. The cover that came out 4 years later was the one with the cultural appropriation of Native American culture, which not only shallowly used the aesthetics of the culture but also perpetrated stereotypes in the actual photoshoot which depicted models running wildly around a field. A magazine founded on ideals of cultural inclusion had come some way in the wrong direction in terms of multicultural understanding. With Jessica’s leadership came the first year of sheimagazine.com, which has been obviously crucial in the past decade, as publications feel pressure to become more and more digital. They reflected on the past with a photoshoot about fashion icons and movie stars throughout the decades and articles about sustainability in fashion, electronic tattoos, and a fancy new Polaroid digital camera. Jessica said that her job was actually fairly easy, she was mainly in charge of the events that they were holding. She oversaw all content to make sure that it was cohesive, but she never felt that it was her place to tell the creatives on her team how to create since she came from a more administrative, business approach to leadership. When I
compare the work that I do on a daily basis with her recollections of her job, I’m struck by how much our role has changed in the past ten years because SHEI has grown. We have a monthly publishing schedule, along with web and social media content to oversee. I am constantly working, overseeing logistics, fostering partnerships, and editing content for a multitude of platforms. One change that Jessica made that has lasted throughout the next ten years and dramatically shaped SHEI’s image is that she wanted it to look like a coffee table book. The 7”x10”, 100 page, stiffly bound magazine defines SHEI today. This format is not something that editorial board even questions at this point. Under Jessica’s direction, the board of 2008 landed on the canvas on which SHEI would be created for the next decade. Every change can have powerful ripples, even without intimate knowledge of the process leading up to that change. After lugging the archive home in an Uber, I laid the first 20 issues on my bed in front me and made observations on sticky notes about the changing nature of each issue and tried to quantify the teensy transitions. The trends of the past two decades were clear. The muted casualty of the early 2000s gave way to the vibrant colors of the middle of the decade and then it quickly became the publication that I was all too familiar with. The articles about Asian identity stopped appearing around 2007, but the interest in diverse voices on campus and the surrounding area never really faded. The interest in fashion was always present and regardless of its mission as “pop-culture” magazine, it was obvious that these were stylish people up to date on what was happening in fashion. Each subsequent editorial board saw the publication as an opportunity to do something different, that much was clear from the Letters from the Editors. An overwhelming majority of the Ed-
itors-in-Chief talked about innovation, pushing boundaries in art, photography, and writing, and introducing the changes that they made to the organization that year. Before starting this research, I thought of this inattention to the past as disrespectful. That we would look to the past for what not to do instead of showing reverence to the people that came before us, but now I’m starting to see it as something that the previous members would be proud of. As Miyako Tomimasu wrote in the mission statement in issue 11, “We constantly deliver new angles of who we are; maybe because that is inevitably necessary, for there is no one view, and there is no one right view”. SHEI has maintained this mindset even though we don’t talk about it in explicit terms anymore. This attitude has been so ingrained into the content that we make, the staff members that we hire, and the way we collaborate as a team that it’s no longer necessary to consider it as an approach, but rather as the identity of the magazine itself. In the Letter from the Editor of the fifth issue, Wei-Pei Cherng wrote, “Every living person has the responsibility to become more educated about their community and surrounding controversial opinions such as abortion, hate crimes, affirmative action, or negative stereotypes. Sooner or later you will be asked for your stance, or your vote, and the end result will affect you personally”. We’ve lost the distinctly multicultural focus, but it wasn’t out of disrespect or the idea that an Asian perspective was no longer useful. It was a slow transformation because every editorial board in the past twenty years decided to strive for innovation above all. Today, we mainly want to compete on the level of a professional fashion publication, but we haven’t lost the drive to innovate in a socially progressive way. Diversity in model casting and recruitment has always been a big focus of mine and we
never put an issue out that doesn’t represent that campus at large. Last year, our two print themes were Gender, where we highlighted a transgender student activist on the cover and Radical Self Love which is often falsely portrayed as a selfish way of living in mainstream media. We use monthly photo essays as a place for highlighting student protests and rallies, like the one to support Dr. Christine Blasey Ford during the Supreme Court hearings and survivors of sexual violence that occurred on campus earlier this semester. Although the origins of our organization are important, what’s more important is passion and the conviction that we have to push ourselves to do more each year. It doesn’t necessarily matter what that “more” is but I think the board members that came before us would be proud that we do things not because that’s how they’ve always been done but because there is room for growth. After going through this archive, I am, more than anything else, grateful to the person that bought this white box and knew it would be important to keep all of these issues. We’re missing issues 8, 9, and 14 and without serious investigative work, there’s no getting those back. They’ve been lost to time and I’ll never be able to know who poured their heart into a feature discovering their identity or what clothing defined the year of 2003, or how fashion was pushed to the limits in the Editor-in-Chief’s favorite photoshoot. In some ways it doesn’t matter that the staff members of SHEI in twenty years won’t remember my name or the changes we made in the year 2018, what’s important is that we continue to imbue every photoshoot, feature, an event with the spirit of innovation. In some ways, the print form is extremely permanent. Holding a glossy, full-color magazine in your hands feels like you’ve really done something.
WRITER LIV VELARDE GRAPHIC DESIGNER PAIGE WILSON
Flipping through those pages is something that can’t truly be replicated digitally, even though we use Issuu.com that tries its hardest. On the other hand, the nature of an editorial board of a university publication is that it’s constantly rotating. By necessity it is impermanent. This requires board members to make their mark while they have the power because there’s no guarantee that the following members will agree with the vision that they set in place. Rather than this being a disadvantage, the tradition of SHEI suggests that the best material is created when editors have looked at the past and asked themselves what they can do differently. In the Letter from the Editor in the twelfth issue in 2004, the EIC proudly announced a goofy SHEI logo that didn’t last longer than a semester. Against a deep teal background, a large block “S” is overlapped with a garish yellow “he” in cursive and an accompanying yellow dot over the “i” which is in the same white typeface as the first letter. The EIC writes, “In the last eleven issues, the SHEI logo was mainly based around the translation of “shei” from Chinese, meaning “who?”. The new logo… answers the question of “who” with a creative approach and our response: he, she, or I”. The meaning of the name shows it influence again, coupled with the board “inviting each and every one of its readers to push the boundaries of creativity and artistry”. SHEI was a place for everyone on campus to come together to innovate. Even though their logo didn’t last very long, the important concept behind the logo was that it was innovative in itself. No one was afraid to try, to push their work to its farthest possible outcome and make daring bets about what might be the best course of action into the future.
On a bitterly cold December in October, we drove down to Detroit to shoot floral evening gowns paired with reflective sneakers and wanted an imposing building to do it in. I went down early with the Creative Director and two models so that we could scope out our options. The Detroit Free Press Marathon had taken place earlier that morning so the city was buzzing with people in silver emergency blankets and families carrying poster boards supporting their runners. We parked in front of the former Michigan Theater that had been converted into a parking garage and it was exactly what we were looking for. Each of my team paid the five dollars entrance fee and we rode the elevator to the top floor where parts of the once grand theater are still visible. The vaulted ceiling was white with purple floral motifs and small alcoves containing mirrors clouded from age and grime. Every once in a while there was a recessed octagon where you could still imagine an intricate, crystal chandelier. As I was walking around the hybridized building, I thought about the summer that I had worked in Detroit and the thing that I loved so much about wandering around downtown. There are so many beautiful buildings that retain their character from the heyday of the automotive industry. These facades are from another time and were never torn down for reconstruction because there was no development happening in the city for a long stretch of time. What has stayed is beautiful, but without the new innovations and changes each year there might not be anyone to see it. We’ve chosen what to keep and what to remake each year. What we have now might be unrecognizable from what it started out as, but we’d never be where we are without the work that came before us.
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