A Return to Form

Notes on the fashion foibles and frenetic energy of moving back to New York City.

Hi! No header photo today—feels bizarre. Let me know if you’re screaming at me through the screen right now, otherwise I can’t hear you!

I went to the On Running store because my step count has increased an exponent of five or ten within less than a week of returning, and my labral hip tear, shin splints, and arthritis-riddled knees and ankles, though currently buoyed by adrenaline, are bound to run out of gas sooner or later, and I don’t want to spend the summer bed-bound. I had tried on my stepmother’s pair a few weeks earlier and been impressed by the lightweight, controlled springiness of the running shoes, though frankly disgusted by the trademark honeycombed undercarriage of each pair.

I liked the way the shoes I tried on, Cloudmonsters, propelled me forward and steadied me at the heel, but upon hearing the $170 price point after being surreptitiously informed by a chatty sales agent that a pair *ideally* lasts eight months, my credit card debt and airy bank account looming in my mind, I passed. If they looked good, I would have gotten them. Fuck it—I’m at a rock bottom of sorts, at least financially, and what’s so wrong about being at rock bottom with a healthy stride? Unfortunately, my New York-specific vanity took hold.

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The instant I stepped off the plane at JFK, I remembered what I’d known for the seven years I lived here before my stint in Argentina: people are fucking stylish here, even (or perhaps more so) the people who don’t have extensive or luxurious wardrobes. I’m loathe to take photos of strangers, if I do I keep them to myself 99% of the time just as inspiration or I try to edit very thoroughly and respectfully to conceal their location and identity—even then, still feels weird (and I’m confounded with the feted fashion editors who unabashedly post full-frontal, unedited pics of strangers ON THEIR GRIDS… seems uncouth to me…).

All that to say, the old men who seem to be physically fixed in front of various Brooklyn hardware stores with jeans that sit so perfectly on their hips and fall flawlessly at the cuffs it makes me actually boil with envy, the nannies in tracksuits with cuffs shoved ingeniously into thick socks and tiger-striped tanks that give Bed-Stuy Fran Fine, the self-conscious twenty-somethings who blossom on the Mood Ring dance floor after a drink or three, L Train Vintage midi skirts twirling around their calves.

I’m about to offend so many people, but in general, Buenos Aires and Orange County are, fashion-wise, absolute deserts of aesthetic inspiration (I’ve written about some of the Argentine exceptions!), and I spent maybe 80% of my time indoors and alone for two years, wearing a screen printed t-shirt my friend Cata made with my way-oversized, broken in to sweatpant-level comfiness (I wore them on a red-eye flight!), Nelle Atelier jeans—wearing jeans felt like dressing up to sit in bed and get rejected from every single job I dared apply to. I tried to only bring garments to NYC that I felt like I needed to have access to, and yet, as I sit on my lovely friends’ couch, the second place I’ve crashed in less than a week, I’m staring at my splayed-open suitcase spilling anime tees and wrinkled Collina Strada pieces from five seasons ago, feeling absolutely dismayed. I have “nothing to wear”—every combination I try feels frumpy and/or contrived.

This yearly phenomenon, unfortunately, leads to violently impulsive buys—a vintage Marithé & Françoise Girbaud jumpsuit from back before it was the most boring label in existence, kind of like this one, fit me so perfectly when I tried it on I panicked and purchased it.

See that screen in the back? That’s you <3

All the fashion people I talk to about it cutely declare “Sometimes, you just gotta do what you gotta do! It’s worth it.” I know that they have no idea how desperate I am to be so blasé. I feel like I am the only fashion writer/editor, if I can even call myself that yet, in this city who’s so fundamentally unmoneyed—I come from privilege, and still have a safety net via my father that I am thankful for every day—I’ll never go hungry or unhoused. Ever, and I do not take that for granted. But it’s rare for me, after paying bills and, since losing my insurance, medical fees out of pocket, to have more than $100 in my bank account on any given day. I’ve borrowed money from friends and family, and I’ll pay them back when it feels like the rug isn’t being pulled out from under my feet as I run like a hamster trying to stay on soft ground. In the meantime, every time I make a fashion purchase, I feel ashamed. Disgusted with myself for allocating even a tiny bit of the money that they’d entrust me with toward something so inessential.

It’s not a Keeping Up with the Joneses mentality that lures me in to this bad place time and time again. I cannot keep up with the Joneses. The Joneses win. The Row’s Margaux, a “bag of the summer,” costs 6x what I could afford to pay for rent. As a luxury fashion writer and a person now, I’ve long since accepted that I have to live within this frictive space, and I understand the value of well-made and smartly-styled clothes (hence the purchase of the jumpsuit—it really is great), not to mention slow/er fashion and artisanal work.

I have specific feelings about brands like The Row and Margiela that make pieces so marked up they’re probably making about 1000% profit margins, if not more, for brand names only, but that’s a polemic for another day. I do not think appreciating, buying, or wearing luxury clothing is evil—it’s just another cog in the machine, and as long as it’s done with that awareness and ethical priorities, I can totally appreciate a Deiji Studios set (on sale, and if I get this gig that’ll pay me more than enough to make rent next month and support an important GoFundMe for a friend, you might see me wearing) or fall to my knees over Tigra Tigra’s always-flawless wares. My style, luckily, tends toward mid-range ($200-600, in my mind) pieces, which I typically can’t afford, but one day might be able to, unlike, say, a Birkin, which I never will and wouldn’t care to.

So if it’s not pressure to keep up with my peers and colleagues, what is it that makes getting dressed in NYC feel so specifically desperate and demoralizing? I’ll be unabashed and admit that I want to be magnetic. I want people to be inspired by my outfits, making notes on their phone for future reference. I want to make friends at industry events, not always being the first to give a compliment, having the opportunity to be the approached by virtue of how sick my outfit looks instead of always the approacher by virtue of my eagerness to connect and expand my world. I want to be the person on the subway who you fall in love with in between stops on the A train.

Basically, I want New York to love me enough to grant me the life I want here, with trustworthy friends, an amazing partner, inspiring industry connections, and a general air of positive feeling about me. Every time I go outside, even to the bodega, I feel audition energy—I never know who I’ll meet where, and when, and I don’t have resting model face to lean on while I dress in pilly thrifted Adidas sweats and a Messi jersey.

I know this isn’t a unique feeling, and you could argue that it’s rooted in self-consciousness, but to me, at a time in my life where I’ve never felt prouder of myself, my work, and my comportment, my desire is to translate that into an outward appearance that can be internalized in the brief moments between train stops: I want to dress to make material my values and visions. Vain, perhaps, but other people have different tools to the same ends, their doctor’s uniforms or muscular arms or freaky-cool makeup creating the setting for serendipity: if someone can look at you for five seconds and see an example of your passions or skills, it makes spontaneous connection 100x more likely. As I said, that’s not tied to fashion for everyone, but to me, it’s one of the few facets of my life I can make visible to the world.

I recently went to an industry event, and it was surprisingly great, but as I talked to a lovely woman I met at the function, we commented upon how the two of us were some of the tiny fraction of the room who hadn’t adhered to a VERY specific dress code. I’d like to think we were drawn to each other (platonically!) by that deviation, and felt happy I’d successfully courted the kind of attention I’d wanted that night.

I guess what I’m saying is that I do care a lot about how I look, but not to look “hot” necessarily (not always, at least—if you see me in an almost-indecent velour leopard print camisole dress this summer, YES YOU DID), or even “good” but compelling and interesting and approachable. That’s basically the heart of Esque: the fact that fashion is the closest thing in my arsenal to a calling card (or a business card, if you’re thinking American Psycho), and I create outfits, curate pieces, and, ideally, dress myself in accordance with an expansive desire for connections of all types. T

his puts a lot of pressure on my wardrobe. I hated my entire “look” today, and it might be a few weeks (and possibly some… hand-me-downs? Hello my NYC brothers and sisters???) before I can feel normal about the way I dress again—and of course, we all know pragmatism is important to me. Until I try a trypophobia-bait sneaker and can’t even pretend that I’d reach for it on a daily basis. Sigh.

I’m working through this all, live, and I appreciate that you were here to witness this moment.

Also: what do you want to see, now that I’m back in NYC? Any questions or ideas for me? And, in the tone of the immortal Freckle phrase (you know the one): DOES ANYONE HAVE A GODDAMN JOB FOR ME??? xo

<3 ESK