TWENTY TWENTY MEEEEEEE
*lana del rey voice* hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have....BUT I HAVE IT
It’s a new YEAR!!!!
That means EVERYTHING is going to change drastically in every aspect of our lives!!!!! I’m a believer in new year lore….. something metaphoric shifts once we enter January and it’s fun to spend the first month reflecting and moodboarding…. Who will we be in the new year? What are we leaving in the proverbial past and carrying in our Santa sack into the new year like that meme of the girl stepping up those stairs?
I haven’t settled on any solid resolutions but I’m throwing feelers out there for what my new year might look like. After a year of pure survival, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for some possibility of glamour in my future.
I think my most controversial plan is to rejoin Instagram in 2023. Now that it’s a barren wasteland of reels and ads, I wanna exploit it for what its worth. It feels like the almost 2 years I’ve spent off of Instagram didn’t make it just disappear from my brain as I wanted but rather taught me the ways it’s ever present in every social interaction we have. More than anything, it’s a calling card to keep in touch with the random people you meet. I’ve given half of Brooklyn my personal phone number and it can be hard to build friendships with every random person that you wake up to their number in your phone.
I miss the silliness of parasocial relationships…. I miss knowing too much about my crush…..being invested in the drama of someone else’s life……having the person you met at the club once 3 years ago be the first person to watch your stories every day…….
Ive spent enough time away that I feel I can return as an entity, NOT a real person. As stability and happiness creeps onto the horizon for me, I’m preparing to lay down the building blocks for OACHAVEZ the Business…. and honestly an internet presence is a necessary evil. Being the elusive chanteuse was exciting for a while but I can’t help but wonder…. What if that stylist I met in a blackout 2 months ago had a way to keep up with my work outside of the texts that I sent at 3 am that they didn’t respond to… I’m thinking of the random opportunities that came to me solely by being visible on the internet…
I also need to go blonde this year……but that’s a different story.
SAMPLE SALE
In the mindset of new year new me and the clear headedness of Capricorn season, I’m getting rid of all my scrap fabric in the wake of a move at the end of this month. I will move apartments with 95% finished hair spray cans and loose sequins but I draw the line at scraps!!! So I cut em up, patchworked, and made due with the oddly shaped fabric pieces I had left and *Tim Gunn voice* made it work!!!!
I usually save patchworking as an activity for when I have c*vid because there’s something fun about making things with only the supplies in a 10 foot radius. But packing up your home and deciding what is worth it is kind of the other end of that spectrum. I was able to make multiple patchwork pieces and made some fun new pieces in different sizes. I’ve been expanding my size range by making things for people in my life, which means each pattern is basically a model of one of my friends. I wanted to document each friend in the piece made from their measurements but logistically getting that together while prepping to move was too much to process and I just needed these pieces done and out of my life!!!
This small collection of objects has gotten the gears turning for future documentation and is helping me as I work toward streamlining my clothes making process to eventually explore developing more organized collections……but first I need to let the chaos of my life settle!!!
In my year of survival I was able to utilize resources in New York to get free fabric and materials so these works are truly #upcycled and made from textiles I might never find again. This has been a fun way of working for me, both developing designs I can reproduce while also creating silly samples that allow me to explore with materials I sourced sustainably. The one of a kind piece always held importance to me, but moving from painting to clothing shifts the context of that idea drastically. As my own primary customer I often make something with the intention of selling it and realized I want it……and sometimes I just need to give it a test run to understand it’s function and get it out of my system. Some of these works I’ve created for this sale and some I had to give a test run before committing to allowing them to go out in the world.
THE CASE FOR SKETCHBOOKS
Every January 1st I have a tradition of documenting a State of the Union in my sketchbook to have a marker of where I’m at. This includes writing down where I’m working, who I’m dating, what my favorite article of clothing is at the moment…
This usually brings me to looking through my sketchbooks of the past year and tracking my influences, obsessions, and breakdowns. I have the past 5+ years documented in small sketchbooks I make monthly that I consider prized possessions. There’s immense value in laying all of your recent thoughts on the floor and trudging through your subconscious with a baby blue gel pen and the wisdom that comes with time. Everyone approaches self reflection in different ways, this discussion has come up in different circles in my life, and finding your own is a process. Do you record yourself speaking? Do you keep a daily diary? Do you post a photo dump?
For me this feels like the most tangible way to capture a moment in time. The crust of daily life embedded into the nooks and crannies, the remnants of glue and food stains that this paper interacted with. There’s so much context that can trigger memories outside of the formal content that goes inside. I spent some time at my local library hogging the scanner to share excerpts of these moments and ruminate on the idea: Whats the point?
Lists
Do you make to do lists? Do they bring you a clear headed sense of serenity or stress? Lists to me are never finite, they exist for the moment but can be repeated in new iterations over and over. For me the repetition can create prioritization and it adds to the relieving feeling of crossing that task off the list. The best part of repeating a list is that I go back and cross it off EVERY time it was written!!!! I’m letting myself know that I completed a task no matter HOW long it took!!!!!
Personal Emotional Mapping
How are you feeling? What is inspiring you? How are you coping?
Writing down your mental and emotional state in its rawest state can be a cathartic process. Setting it onto paper can help cement a moment in your psyche or it can just be a fleeting brain fart that you laugh at later.
Some of my favorite passages are from being a drunk 21 year old in the back of an uber trying to figure out why my crush didn’t like me back and feeling absolutely CRAZY. Reading them back now makes me chuckle and seeing the bumpy penmarks with a sticker from the event I was at brings the moment back so intensely. This has been a great process as time goes on to look back at moments that felt chaotic and unprecedented to re experience them with more life experience that makes them absurd. I hope all of my writing and personal processing seem absurd at a future point because that means I’ve worked past them to a point that they’re not a black abyss of confusion.
Everyday Ephemera
One thing about me is that I WILL take that random flyer someones handing out in the street. I collect random papers, photos, trash that I see in the street to a fault…but there needs to be place to collect these things. That’s why I love business cards so much! Yes i WILL take your information and I will store it somewhere where I know I’ll find it if I ever need to contact you! Or cool stickers, advertisements, packaging….Why not keep the everyday things that inspire you!! Then you have it forever and it can serve you inspiration for the future. There’s something time capsule-y about it…. you secure this object into a book and store it away to not be seen for months or years. I especially love this for photobooth pictures, when I’ve aged out of my clubbing era I love that I’ll be able to see my me and my friends all trying to pull our nipples out on camera throughout the years.
TREND REPORT
Wearing random things as necklaces is……IN!!!
Some of my recent favorite jewelry moments have been rummaging through my (mostly broken) jewelry drawer and throwing a random chain around my neck and hitting it for the day. Take that broken wallet chain and clip it to a choker! Break the chain off your bag and clasp it around your neck!!!!! I had some extra chain from the patchwork armpit bag strap and you already KNOW i threw it around my neck and clasped it together with a jumbo safety pin.
Cropped winter coats are……OUT!!!
Cover your ass!!! Look, I’ll be the first to admit I’m always trying to cosplay Emily Ratajkowski but this version is too boring for my liking!!! I’ve seen too many hands-in-pocket black puffer coat with big sunglasses clones walking around lower manhatan….. what happened go a flowy coat that you throw over your scoochie outfit?? Where’s the drama and mystery?
Pigtails are…..IN!!!!!!!!
I’m back on my journey of growing out my hair and I’m in my awkward pig tail phase. As far as hair accessories go: the sillier the better! I’m taking cues from Lana Del Reys new album cover and tying satin bows in my pigtails while wearing a fuzzy sweater. Also according to the Tik Tok sociologists, there is a connection between female servers wearing pigtails and getting better tips……. Despite the unfortunate eroticization of infantility, I think pigtails are a fun way to make your look go from hot and cool to completely silly, which is a win in my book!!!
The colloquial term “Trad” is….. OUT!!!!
No real reason….. It just sounds ugly to me….. Maybe I’m just a traditionalist when it comes to shortening words…..maybe it sounds too much like Chad…..
WELL, we’ve made it through another months musings... By next newsletter I should be in the beginning stages of building back the structure of my life that has fallen apart in the past few months! Let’s hope that means it’s fun and colorful!!! TTYL <3
Genius
Obsessed with you, your sketchbook, and this newsletter!