Bright Eyes, “Lover I Don’t Have To Love”: I picked up my first NYLON magazine in the Reagan National Airport in February of 2005. Our group was finishing lunch, perusing the stands and shops that were dispersed between terminals, waiting to catch our different flights and head our separate ways when I saw a familiar face staring out through the glossy covers. Conor Oberst—Mr. Bright Eyes, Mr. Omaha—was on the cover of a magazine in D.C. I was dumbfounded. I paid the three-odd dollars for the rag and flipped the pages frantically. My friend from Maine was curious about my interest in the magazine and its interviewee, and I told her proudly that he was from my home state, I had friends that actually knew him. Looking, back it’s funny how much I really knew about Conor Oberst. I had only heard one of his bands’ songs, the one featured here, and had really only heard about him through my much cooler friends from Omaha. Truthfully, I probably only identified with Conor and the song because they were what I wanted to be: edgy, angst-ridden, slightly jaded, and effortlessly cool. But, I’m glad that I acted on that feigned connection because I quickly became obsessed with NYLON. It was an unsettling relief from the polished, bubbly pink pages of other magazines. The models were awkwardly posed, the pages matte, the words explicit, much like the stagnant, straight-forward music video for the song which inspired me to pick up the magazine in the first place.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Date With The Night”: I definitely had an enhanced perception of myself during my first half of high school. I thought of myself as a bad-ass, the too-cool-for-school type; wearing black nail polish and pretending to be aloof, writing painful poetry about isolation in my English class simply for the shock-value it held. In reality, I was blessed. I was a cute girl who came from a good home and truly liked pink cardigans more than black studded belts. Through NYLON, I quickly discovered that the real bad-asses, the truly obscene, were not sitting on their flowered comforter writing about teen anguish. They were out rolling around on a stage, throwing their middle fingers in the air, screaming at the top of their lungs. For me, seeing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in action was not a corrupting agent so much as a realization that this obscenity was not me. While I could not relate to the morbid scene being flashed on the television screen in front of me, I could find inspiration in it. I began to find beauty in things off-kilter and traditionally “ugly”, things as grotesque as museum exhibits of human body parts, or as simplified as gapped teeth, at the same time realizing that they didn’t define me. Ugly became beautiful, and beautiful became undesirable. I would constantly cut apart my NYLON mags, and if an image didn’t cause me to double-take or make my stomach churn slightly, it was left intact between the binding. NYLON embraced all different kinds of ugliness and bad-assery, showing me that “cool” didn’t mean one thing; a person could have that edge whether they were wearing head-to-toe leather, floral, or frills.
The Streets, “Fit But You Know It”: This realization that I didn’t have to be tough to be cool came a bit of a shock and had my world all topsy-turvy, but it came at a crucial time. Because of this redefinition of beauty I had acquired, I started to discover the art of fashion and the fun of reinventing oneself. With this weapon of reinvention in my arsenal, my confidence grew. Not only had I begun to establish an identity, boys were beginning to play a role in my life which, admittedly, they hadn’t before. I was not used to getting invited to parties or turning boys’ heads in restaurants, like the girl in this song was. With my new look and new confidence came the receiving of new attention. I began to flirt, to date, to get a reputation. Finally, when I stopped trying to be such a hell-raiser, I got a little devil in me. I learned more from NYLON that could be applied to the dating scene than I did from any silly quiz over what kind of “back-to-school crush” I might have in CosmoGirl. NYLON taught me that a raised eyebrow and high heel would get me farther than some canned expectation of how the opposite sex thinks. And it did. I had more steamy, serious, and meaningful relationships than many of my contemporaries. I also—with my assertiveness and meticulously undone appearance—had more of a power over the opposite sex than they. I was better able to command a room, communicate verbally with the opposite sex, and wordlessly convey and interpret emotion with others. Truthfully, this all went to my head. I began expecting the invites and recognition that I had come to accustomed to. I finally realized I was fit, and god damn did I know it.
M.I.A., “Galang”: Quickly, my mind began to expand as well as my confidence and closet. NYLON, with its global focus, had me more conscious of what was happening in the world around me. Although the magazine’s focus is on art, music, and fashion, more than politics and editorials, it places huge emphasis on presenting different countries’ adaptations of those artistic expressions. It is clear that out of all the years I have been reading the magazine, one artist in particular jumped out of the pages at me, proclaiming all of NYLON’s aforementioned ideals. M.I.A. dressed in paint splattered, wildly patterned, neon clothing and brought forth unique music and lyrics that had not been attempted by many previous artists. All the while, she was very vocal about her opposition to the War on Terror and the plights of the rest of the world. As an artist, she did an amazing job of being strong musically, politically, and physically, but did not let any one of those individual strengths define her. So I strove to live out my life. I developed an eclectic musical taste and began building my collection with the tribal stylings of M.I.A., the lo-fi buzz of Death Cab, the bubbly melodies of Hilary Duff, the rhymes of Kanye, and the crackly snarl of Johnny Cash. I versed myself in political issues both local and foreign, becoming an advocate of public radio and service organizations. I also refined my fashion preferences and began to expand my knowledge of the industry, looking into off-the-radar designers, innovating silhouettes, and reinvented clothing trends. My life became a juxtaposition of variety of interests; mashing together mathematics and agriculture, debate and art, fashion and politics. Soon, my world expanded into one as colorful, eclectic, and jumbled as the world M.I.A.
The Decemberists, “Sixteen Military Wives”: One of my first vintage buys was a navy Ralph Lauren blazer, quite similar to the ones worn by the prep school students in this video. I found it on the racks of my local thrift shop, the Second Closet, for only eight dollars. It was tailored but slightly baggy on my adolescent frame and has a gold crest on the left breast pocket. It was kicky and slightly offbeat and probably looked more than a little out of place roaming the high school’s halls amongst sweatshirts and sports tees. But I loved the way it made me feel—the slight scratchiness of the fabric and stickiness of the lining felt mature and daring, the gold thread and brass buttons alluring and glitzy. I even wore it in one of my yearbook pictures. I had an odd shag haircut and nerdy glasses, but damn, did that jacket look good. The coolest part about it was that it went against convention. No one in my school had anything like it, and not everyone necessarily liked it, and that was okay by me. Unlike so many of my peers, I was drawing inspiration from a different, underground culture. NYLON was teaching me the importance of individualism, and the simple fact that not everyone’s style can be the same or even fit into separate categories. The girls who read Seventeen had options like “wild,” “classic,” and “girly” to express their individuality, but for the NYLON readers, their options defied categorization. No style guru stood over them suggesting the perfect fit or match of lip color, leaving mistakes inevitable and creativity unhampered. I often made those mistakes in the form of things like floral dresses and legwarmers, but they lead to discoveries like the Ralph Lauren blazer, and never once subjected me to the iron hand of social conformity.
The Rocket Summer, “Brat Pack”: I’ve been living the small town life for the last eleven years. I know all about the empty streets and hometown cafés that the band inhabits in this video. For so long, I just wanted out! I found that escape in my magazines and their stories of posh parties in New York, Milan, London, and the like. I yearned to experience these luxuries, to live the life of my idols. Each step out of my hometown became a venture into a world so more creative and fantastical than the one I was used to. Even Omaha became a mini fashion capital for me, with residents who took some fashion liberties and were at least partially knowledgeable of current designers. At this point, it’s pretty apparent that I was aching for some sort of change of pace, some shock of culture in my humdrum life. What NYLON gave me was better. Yes, they supplied me with the basic happenings in the grander fashion world, but more importantly, they taught me to adapt to my situation, to play the hand I was dealt. The magazine catered to the suppressed small-town reader, gracing the local Barnes & Noble shelf every month. Inside its pages was a plethora of resources for my deprived senses—colors, shapes, textures. But not only was I able to witness these extreme fashion statements, I also learned how to deconstruct and reinterpret those ideas to fit my lifestyle. NYLON successfully brought high fashion to my small world, making me almost grateful for the fact that I did not reside in some fancy loft in SoHo—almost.
The Shins, “Pink Bullets”: Through this whole process of self-discovery and definition I was surrounded by people: classmates, friends, family, community. I always had love, support, and feedback readily available to me. This was something that I admittedly took for granted and it took a loss—like the one touched upon in the slow, wandering, song “Pink Bullets”—to lead me to reality. After my mother’s death, I lost a good chunk of my support system and the figurative glue that held my household together dissolved. I was left with a house, but no home, a stepfather and siblings, but no family. This loss strengthened some of my other relationships and demolished some. Eventually, I was spending a majority of my time alone. I wasn’t used to this lack of lending ear. Soon, the thoughts, ideas, and beliefs colorfully concocted in my mind that I would’ve usually shared with my mother began coming through in my clothing. I started spending extravagantly on pieces that reflected my ever-changing tastes and whims. Soon, I was spending more on clothing than I was on food in the efforts to lose my feelings amongst the rows of fabric in my walk-in closet. My life was morphing into the life of the girl that NYLON geared to: the life of the lone-standing, slightly askew fashion addict. But, despite the fact that I was definitely not happy, I had become self-reliant and self-sufficient. The means that occurred to get me to this independent state were not ideal, but the transformation was necessary for me to stand on my own feet. There was a melancholic sense of empowerment in the results of my mother’s death—my isolation lead to the assertion of my independence, the creative expression of my thoughts, and the embracing of my past defeats. I was once again employing the beauty-in-the-ugly theory that NYLON had instilled in me, finding solace and even advantages in the disadvantageous situation that life had provided me, keeping memory of my tribulations and my past experiences as “warm light on a winter’s day.”
Tilly and the Wall, “Sing Songs Along”: Soon, my dreary disposition did lift. My musical taste shifted from the somber, acoustic type to the danceable, twee-pop genre. My baggy, dark clothes gave way to more vibrant, bright, revealing hues and slowly my hemlines, like my spirits, rose. As I changed, so did my magazine, shifting their preferences from Interpol to Kiiii, from the dull greys and blacks of DKNY to the Technicolor trips of Jeremy Scott. Shortly after hearing about the Omaha-ian band Tilly and the Wall at camp, NYLON featured them in their neon-hued glory on its normally less chaotic pages. The band’s songs were light and playful, while their lyrics usually dealt with the gritty indie scene of their hometown. While their outward appearance often contradicted the messages embedded within their lyrics, neither strove to mask the other. It was when I saw the band live at Sokol that their message as well as NYLON’s finally clicked in my mind. Fashion is not idle, it is not material, it is not even accurately described as expression. Fashion is celebration. It is the celebration of beauty of destruction, of breathing and dying, of the human spirit, of the human form, of color, of art, of science and economics, of all things that set us apart and link us together, of everything in this world. So too should music, and art, and parties, and every aspect of human existence be viewed. Life is a never-ending celebration of all things yin and yang, and only we, the individual can decide how to carry out that celebration for our selves.
