Nature, Fashion and Tony Shalhoub

Nature, Fashion and Tony Shalhoub
By The Hemline

Our Fashion Inspirer:

UMASS Amherst Student

Blush G.

Double Major: BDIC - Radical Survival, NRC

Minor in SustComm

What role does fashion play in our identity? Did you know that clothes can reveal a lot about us? Dresses and fashion trends can communicate intricate details about our personalities. Fashion and trendy clothing are universal desires, or are these desires only inherently associated with the upper echelons of society? The Hemline brings you interviews featuring various individuals who speak in depth about subcultures and their life background influence on a person’s personality. Nature is filled with mushrooms, they are ephemeral, ethereal, they appear and disappear, with colors and textures that are all around us.

Human connection and who we are based on our fashion and what we love

Nature has plenty of hidden worlds that surround us. Through the animal kingdom, plants and trees are an ecosystem of sorts, a feedback system that predates the monetary world. It needs flow for health. They are widgets built for sharing, for community recycling, building and innovation. This is life. Similar expressions and thoughts we all share with one another, weaving, morphing, becoming new flashes of inspiration. The Stories we hear about people different from us or similar to us provide perspective and keep us from thinking only about ourselves. During the course of human history, ideas have been communicated from one generation to the next in many different forms - from knowledge to emotions to creative metaphors and puns. The web we live in is interconnected and unbreakable.

The Hemline: What makes you feel alive, happy, fulfilled?

BG: Everything. Mac n cheese, dogs, and depression, [it] gives me an appreciation for life. Also Tony Shalhoub. God, my idol. I have started adopting some of his habits from shows and movies, mainly from his character in Monk. Initially I did it as a personal joke, touching poles as I walked down the street, using my hands to think, and just taking my time in the world, but it has given me a different appreciation for how my mind and body move and think together.

The Hemline: What do you love most about yourself?

BG: From the time I was a kid, I’ve been able to make people smile. Seeing that little spark of joy, even if it is repressed, is always comforting. So much tension builds up within us, throughout our daily lives of constant pressure and stress, it’s too easy to let it pool and build without recognition. I feel like I can relieve some of that stress and make the world a more comfortable and inviting place for all.

The Hemline: What is one thing you have done for yourself recently?

BG: Theorized sensory garden, I skipped a week of class to slow my mind down, focus on my health and assess where my energy has been placed. We all have the power to decide what we will do with our life’s energy in these very moments.

Description of Blush’s Outfit Idea

In focusing on ethereal creatures, fairy tales, and magical symbolism, it bridges the gap between childhood and adulthood. Nature is synonymous with childhood adventures in the woods, and books. As nature clothes both our lives and the land, so too are we a reflection of our environment, life experiences, and beliefs.

The Hemline: Describe your style?

BG: A reflection. It is a collection of all that I have experienced and felt. I have a connection with everything I own, whether it’s a casual experience at the thrift [store] or a personal gift.

The Hemline: What is the nature of your home and city environment, growing up, and how does this show in your outfits?

BG: I was always walking as a kid. My body kind of went nocturnal when I was pretty young and that usually meant walking until my feet led me back to my bed. All my clothes must fit the standard of, “can I walk in this for hours?,” “can I lay down in the woods and be comfortable?,” “how easily do these shoes slip on and off?” Washington DC. It seemed like everyone was always occupied with something else. Walking around the streets.

The Hemline: When you choose the outfit for the shoot, what feeling does it create? And why did you choose it?

BG: My choice was that I feel closest to the earth in the forest. Walking in the forest with the same colors and moving make me feel connected and merged with it. Flowy. I feel like the breeze. Literally like the album cover for the John Mayer cover of “Call me the breeze” where he’s wearing a loose heavy poncho in the field with the dog as he stares lustfully off into the mountainous distance. That’s me.

The Hemline: Who is your fashion inspiration and how do they impact you?

BG: Bi-girls with shaved heads. I mean they are just so cool. My brother too– when I was twelve wearing neon Nikes, turning up on my sock game he decided to have intervention and introduced me to color palettes

Mushrooms and Environmental Impact with Fashion

Fashion designer Stella McCartney recently created a sustainable idea that is a remarkable renovation for the fashion industry. McCartney constructs her clothes with the use of “mushroom leather,” which is a more eco-friendly form of leather.

Journalist Sarah Braner’s A Fungal Biologist Explains Why Mushrooms Are Everywhere in Fashion Now, describes how fungi are being incorporated into the fashion industry for environmentally friendly purposes.

“Fungi are being used to produce various different types of material. You can build building blocks and boards out of fungal mycelium [the “roots” that support a network of mushrooms], and you can make textiles out of fungal mycelium— leather-like textiles. Different companies produce it in different ways. The samples I’ve seen have looked and felt like animal leather. There’s enormous promise in these materials. You can grow fungal leather on agricultural waste, cornstalks or wood chips that will otherwise be discarded.”

Furthering this account on the waste we productive green resource alternatives for clothing, her article, When fashion is fungal, Jessica Wolfrom elaborates, textile and leather production, as well as their disposal, pose environmental problems.  “Fast fashion, which frequently uses oil-based textiles and is designed to be worn for a short period of time, has only exacerbated the problem.

The statistics are clear on how damaging over production of clothing can be and the rise of fashion fashion. The Environmental Protection Agency reports, Americans disposed of 1,710 tons of textiles in landfills in 1960. In 2017, that number rose to 11,150 tons.

The Hemline: Earth day has passed but there are various causes for the fight of environmental awareness and impact. What can we do in order to be more environmentally friendly?

BG: Kiss the ground! Go outside, get a bit of fresh air, find a space, and read a book. Everyone asks what can we do, what can we do to make this world happier. Sit there without interruption for a while and listen, if you’re lucky maybe a bird will shit on you. Perhaps try to focus on the balance and flow from gravity and energy to find your place and effect in it.

The Hemline: Anything you would like to add?

BG: I am working on developing a sensory garden on campus. I have contacted professors and some people who have made one on college campuses. Any suggestions and input from the actual people who will be using the garden are much appreciated.

The Pandemic

There is a remarkable similarity between the beauty of nature and our own digital communication system as a result of the global pandemic, in that they both mirror each other quite strongly. As a result of the pandemic, we have become more aware of our own fragility. An increase in environmental awareness and mental awareness reveals the connection between mankind and the planet.

The Hemline: How has the current landscape of history with the global pandemic impacted your mental health and your fashion?

BG: There are so many arbitrary lines and expectations created to stigmatize this world.It sounds kinda silly, but I have been able to discover myself through clothing. Once I realized women’s clothes fitme better, my definitions of gender and sexuality shifted drastically and so did my understanding of how my world is shaped. Every interaction has become a give and take–whether between people or items– everything to some effect changes who I am, and I change it too, blending together our unique pasts. So everything I wear or have in my possession is a gift, a thrift, or found. It’s a ‘muddy sea of you and me.’ One of my fondest memories is being in Costa Rica trying on wedding dresses with my friend, and failing to speak any Spanish. She translated for me, and the woman selling the dresses could not have been happier. Every time she brought me a new dress or talked about plans for the wedding, we made up stories and it was so wonderful. A funny but beautiful moment made me realize how much love is shared around us and how fun it is when expectations are exceeded.

       We are reminded of sustainability and our life experiences similar to what is much like mycelium and mushrooms. Susan Stryker -historian and writer quotes, “If this is your path, as it is mine, let me offer whatever solace you may find in this monstrous benediction: May you discover the enlivening power of darkness within yourself. May it nourish your rage. May your rage inform your actions, and your actions transform you as you struggle to transform your world.” There’s a whole subterranean network of fibrous connections between things and as it proliferates and grows, that’s the life-sustaining part. A foundation of earthly life, able to communicate with all sorts of other subterranean life, is what’s vital to the entire ecosystem, and it lives on much like we do, in memories and thrifted clothes. May we remake the world into the image we desire.