Oyster #99: Tavi Gevinson x Petra Collins
The founders of Rookie Mag and The Ardorous contribute to our All Woman issue.
Since I've been interested in fashion I've organised different colours, motifs, references, songs, movies, books, types of weather, etc, into different sorts of worlds and characters, using my blog, my outfits, collages, zines, the playlists I make for the week — so that I plan on living in a specific world and being that specific character. For some reason it just gives me a great deal of satisfaction. I like that I have different parts of myself that I can channel and tap into creatively, depending on my mood. I like drawing parallels between something going on in my actual life and the kind of aesthetic world I'm into at the same time. It means the actual life stuff makes more sense.
It gets a little obsessive and I am embarrassed about all the times (before I realised how annoying it was) that I forced my friends to watch a different kind of movie, because I was currently into Carrie and that simply could not mix with Heathers. Thankfully, I have my friendship with Petra! I love her as both a friend and collaborator because we share enough of the same references that we're able to communicate accurately. But we also have enough different references that we're able to each bring a bunch of ideas to the table, and combine our worlds instead of creating photos that just look like reproductions of vintage ones.
During my spring break, she visited the suburb where I live to take these photos, and the houses and buildings I was used to passing every day were charged with a different kind of energy. The most mundane parts of our town became exciting. Using this fantasy world to improve the way I see reality has become a really important part of trying not to be an angsty teenaged brat; and getting to share it with Petra to make something we're proud of makes it even better.
Photography: Petra Collins
Tavi Gevinson
