What What I Want Says About Me
Now that Cyber Week has left me a husk of my former self, I am back to lusting over items that I can’t justify purchasing in a glassy-eyed fugue state of sale-induced mania. This has left me thinking more about what the items that I can’t quite get out of my brain, even now, say about who I am as a person.
Breaking this down may be a self-indulgent exercise, but a) this is my blog and b) I would LOVE to see your iteration of this. Please blog/notes app/PowerPoint about what your wishlist says about you and send it to me at hr@humanrepeller.com or on Instagram, and then we’ll be in this liminal space between pride and shame together.
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I want these boots because I love silhouettes that bulge, that bloat, that have to be restrained. Before this veers too far into fetish-sounding territory (no judgement, just not my thing), I think it has more to do with my simultaneous terror and aesthetic awe towards body horror: think Junji Ito, Cronenberg, CDG’s Lumps and Bumps, Michaela Stark‘s proportion-fucking lingerie. I like when parts of the body seem empowered by their own sentience. These boots look like captive alien forms, tied up slipshod while waiting to be examined.
I also love a huge shoe, perhaps in resistance to the Cinderella myth of small-footed supremacy—I am a size 6, so bulky footwear is a necessary tool in this small rebellion. I instinctively balked at Moon Boots proper, as their overt branding and seemingly flash-in-the-pan trend status turned me off, but after seeing a few images such as this fit by Ruby Redstone, I was enamored.
What this says about me: Has body dysmorphia but in an artistic way, aesthetic feminist, would consider the Michelin man beautiful, has Reynaud’s disease (perma-cold feet)
Yang Li is an underrated, understated designer, one who makes me feel cool to know about, and this coat shows off his talent for making simple and special garments. I love the caramel-chocolate sheen of this coat, its asymmetrical buttons, but most of all, I love that it’s wrinkled. Wouldn’t it be funny if that was unintentional and TRR was just shilling a coat that had been wadded up in someone’s dresser drawer for five years? I’m into wrinkly/scrunchy/heavily textured clothes because I am a horrible custodian of my wardrobe and everything ends up wrinkly anyway, so having a piece where that’s a feature, not a bug, is convenient for me.
What this says about me: Shoots for “understated” and lands in “Oliver Twist,” typically appreciates the aesthetics of food more than the tastes, can’t conceptualize material value, eyes too big for my closet
My friend Erin asked if I’d ever had these clogs. I had never even heard of them, and now I am cursing Erin for bringing the possibility of them into my life. The camo version looks like Mater from Cars’ redneck cousins and would match my Lizzie Kidd dress p e r f e c t l y. If I were able to get my hands on the clogs and this puffer, it would be over for all you hoes (if you hoes happen to be deers in a forest. You’ll never see me coming. I would never hurt you but I’m DEFINITELY getting a selfie).
What this says about me: Vegetarian with bloodlust, secretly loves driving a car but knows it’s horrible for the environment, craves the power of invisibility
Something about the shape of this beanie really gets to me, perhaps the awkward little lip between the sides and center stripe, the boxy, conical shape… no, it’s mostly the color combo. The creator is a color savant. I would never in a gatrillion years have thought to pair stark red with chilled-out denim and perverse chartreuse, but now I want every outfit of mine to be color-coordinated by Sasha.
What this says about me: Sometimes still has the urge to chew on crayons, went to art school, insecure about roundness of face, in awe of people who can actually commit to and finish a knitting project
This one’s quite simple: I own these perfect pants, and I want to have the option of styling them with their perfectly matching skirt layered on top as per the brand’s suggestion. I’m not usually one for copying styling directly from a brand, and I don’t love the skirt on its own (not enough texture, shape, or dimension), but they’ve kind of cornered the market on this look, as this is deadstock fabric and I’m sure they monopolize it—there’s just something nice about the two layers being the exact same pattern, as opposed to other, more duplicable looks where the sameness isn’t such a factor in their potency.
What this says about me: Willing to copycat when the original conceit is worthy, easily bored
In my mind, this is the platonic ideal of a loafer. The shape is sturdy but sleek (the soles look resilient without being lug-thick), the color is rich but nuanced, the throat has the classic penny loafer slit which I believe is the supreme form of loafer decor. And, boy, am I a SUCKER for the pseudo-pragmatic cuteness of tucking an actual penny into that slit, and boy, did Miu Miu twist the knife by shilling these with a special, branded penny in tow. In toe? Anyway, I desperately want them.
What this says about me: Not above a well-executed gimmick, has picky ideas about what certain objects “should” look like, read the All-of-a-Kind Family books as a child and still craves one of those one-cent pickles
This coat was recommended by Beth Newman in Magasin’s what’s-in-their-Black Friday-carts investigation, and it’s not my typical style (a little more… uh… “mature” and feminine than my style tends to skew), but it looks so durable and extremely *dramatic.* The removable hood and the haphazard tie at the front of the neck sold me, and I am usually NOT a fan of bib- style collars, but this one’s thick lace, in the black colorway at least, read more goth than goo goo ga ga to me. Where’s my Pulitzer for that sentence?
What this says about me: Jonesing to stunt at an enemy’s funeral, more mature than I think I am, don’t need to watch Wednesday because refreshing the page with this coat to see if it magically goes even MORE on sale is probably just as good
The super-cool Sarah Brown has been absolutely assassinating the accessories game over at Sandy Liang this year, and their hair accessories do break my heart a bit as someone who compulsively shaves their head at minimum once every two years. Thankfully, Sarah steered me towards this headband, which is agonizingly sold out in black but also looks magical in powder blue. I think this would actually look… best on people with really short hair. Like sparse bow extensions. I usually hate headbands, but the placement of the bows over the ears, the almost-to-the-butt length… it’s just so magical!
What this says about me: Femboy, deep-seated disgust/jealousy/fear of ballerinas, hair-rooted neuroses, hopeless romantic
I regret, deeply, not grabbing this jersey while it’s on sale. I’m on the restock email list.
What this says about me: Has an anime problem, would join the Psycho Helmet cult if possible
This is potentially the most humorously constructed skirt of all time. Now, THIS is a skort. I will follow Comme to the ends of the earth (er, unless the ends of the earth look like that “PLAY” mess. I won’t follow that), and I love clothing that conceives of its relationship to the body in ways that eschew the imperative to be “flattering.” I want to look like a broken doll or a cannonball casualty, not a fucking model.
What this says about me: Likes to look confusing, pragmatically perverse, doing exposure therapy for a thigh insecurity
In summary, my wishlist tells us that I am a crayon sniffer with unconsummated bloodlust, a weeaboo romantic, and a lover of body horror who can sometimes barely stand to look at their own thighs. Good to know!
I would really, really love to see more blogs where people talk about their personal relationships with fashion, their own desires and meaning-making, and their own idiosyncratic influences. In a vast market of fashion projects that are primarily moneymaking endeavors (they can, of course, be cool and necessary too, there’s just a lot of them), I want to see more self-indulgence, more impulsive and non-strategic writing, more going off the rails a little. I hope I sometimes provide that to you, and DM me on Instagram if you have any other publications I should check out that are along these lines. Or if you want to buy me any of the above items!
<3 HR
The post What What I Want Says About Me first appeared on Human Repeller.