When I was a kid and I was in crazy outfits that I picked out myself. I would go like shopping with my mom a lot. I'm an only child so we just like would go shopping because she loves clothes too. I was like, I was obsessed with pink. I still love pink like it's my favorite color, but everything was pink and I would always wear pink outfits. It was very sparkly. I called myself fancy. I was obsessed with Hannah Montana. I think Hannah Montana was a big inspiration when I was a little kid. I loved her clothes and her closet and wanted to be her. Also I was a competitive dancer. I think that's a little bit of where my love for fancy things came from too, because we would have costumes and do makeup and do hair, you know. And so I learned how to do that at like a really young age.

I think in middle school, I was very into Tumblr. So I started getting a lot more edgy then, like band t-shirts and wore more black and dark eyeliner and stuff like that. After that, in high school, I had like a period where, I don't know, so I was really shy growing up, so I had a period where like, I got insecure about my outgoing fashion. Because people, I wouldn't say that people bullied me for it, but people would always say something about it. Just like how outrageous it is or how different it is. And I took offense to that as a kid, now someone said that to me I wouldn't care, but as a kid, I took offense to that. So I had a little period where I was very like plain like a shirt and pants. I had, some pretty toxic friends, I would say, in middle school, and then after that, I kind of, was really nervous. I was just scared to speak in front of people and talk to people, and I was scared people would think I was weird or, I don't know. I was in a group of like, like four to eight girls. And I think some of them were just very judgmental of people and, of like each other, and, they cared a lot about their looks. Starting to like, wanting, wanting to be attractive to boys also. With Tumblr, and being my age and not having any, any censoring on what I watched, so I would watch shows like rated R, when I was like 11. There's like a lot of eating disorders and a lot of like mental health issues and the romanticizing of that was a big thing. With like the Tumblr type of era, I don't know if you've seen the show Skins, that was like a huge, it's a British TV show, but that was a huge thing in my friend group, and it's just romanticizing of mental health issues and eating disorders and wanting to be skinny, sexy at the same time. There was a lot of that. I feel like my friends projected onto me that I hadn't thought about myself before. I felt like my friends would leave me out. And that was a lot of why I was like, “Oh my God, they don't like me, they don't want to hang out with me,” you know, stuff like that. So I, I was really sensitive. I was sensitive before that but that's when it was kind of like, I felt like it was like an attack on me, like who I was, and after that, I was really shy for a little bit. So I was starting to get into more streetwear and stuff like that. I would wear a lot of vans, things like that.

After graduating high school, I moved to New York City. My freshman year of college, I was shocked by like the amount of men that would like cat call me. You know, like, they say something, “Hey, baby, how you doing?” Or, whatever. Because I never experienced that in Ohio, like, like, people didn't do that. I mean, I lived in the suburbs. So like, there's not men on the street waiting for a girl to walk by. I was definitely put off by the amount of creepy older men that are willing to hit on younger women. My own personal work in school was all really based off of my experience as a woman in the world. Just my sexuality and yeah, I think going back to moving here and being like cat called by men and stuff like that. There's a lot of sexism and misogyny in the media in fashion too, and in every aspect of the world, you know, and I feel like I've really been affected by that as a woman. I mean, I was, like I said, I was super into pink and then I kind of got I kind of got a little bit. And then I was like, “Oh, it's too girly.” You know, like people, people just didn't really take me seriously. I didn't feel like, cause I was like a girly girl and people didn't think I was as smart as others or as strong as others, because I was girly. If a woman is showing too much, a bunch of skin that doesn't make her a slut. So I think that's gotten into my work now. I love micro mini skirts. I love sheer, I love, I'm loving the girls are wearing no bras and a sheer top. I just think it's everything, I love it.

It was my research seminar class and it was supposed to be research to inform our thesis projects and it was second semester junior year. I had a professor and we were talking and I was telling her like I'm interested in feminism and all of this. It was like the trend, bimbofication was a big trend on TikTok and stuff like that. And we just like had a conversation about that, and then I did a project on that whole idea of bimbofication, like, trying to look like a doll and trying to look oversexual, and just playing into that. That is what really inspired, my thesis project, and everything came together. Also I took a sub culture class and my professor was a riot girl, which is like in the 90s, like the punk, when women started making punk music, because before that, rock and punk was all like very male dominated. And so then women started making that and it was very sexual. So, then my thesis project was called Grrrlhood, but it was G R R R L. Which is how the Riot Grrls spell girl, cause it's like “grr”, If that makes sense.

What I make and what I sell at my store now, I try to kind of make things that are kind of pushing that boundary. It's more provocative, she's challenging the people when she wears that, she's challenging the people on the street, the men on the street. Kind of just changes the norms in society of what we think is acceptable, or what people should wear. Definitely, a lot of it, comes out of my fear of being judged by people. I've found that if I'm in control of what I wear, and I choose to wear something that's more eccentric and not what most people are wearing, I'm able to control what people think of me a little bit. And I'm making it okay to be for people to have opinions on me, you know? Now I'm at a point, I'm not going to be hurt by people's opinions. I'm like open to it. So it's definitely come out of, all of my experiences in life being a, a girly girl, being super into pink and sparkles and fancy things not being taken seriously, so then I changed myself a little bit. I kind of suppressed that part of me got more like edgy, more masculine, more like Skatey Street. But I've found that's not who I am.