Day 2: Hari Nef

fashion and the trans aesthetic
by harinef | part ii: current runway

j.w. anderson fall 2014 menswear
look 20

i couldn’t resist that bucket bag. last fall, i tracked it down: a birthday present to myself. soho girls with phantoms, spies, and ps1s chase me down and demand information. i oblige, giggle, and confess i’m carrying a men’s bag. faces crack! 

jonathan anderson comes up in just about every published riff on “gender” in contemporary fashion. his clothes are deemed “androgynous,” his ethos “subversive.” okay, sure–but how “subversive” was my bucket bag to the girl on the street before she learned the gender of the model who carried it down the runway?

look 20 deals in the subtlest gender trouble. you don’t see a lot of nipples in menswear, especially not through a knit. when my breasts began to grow and show through my sweaters, i was shocked and thrilled (my mother dragged me to victoria’s secret over thanksgiving break). look 20 presents a men’s sweater that is quietly chic, and nothing short of mammary.

i’m friends with a male model or two, and i’ve heard you can’t book j.w. if you can’t walk in heels–or platform brogues, as the case might be. attitude and poise are essential. anderson is not out to emasculate, as some have claimed.

but then again: i’m not so sure he’s catering to “men” at all. 

fashion and the trans aesthetic
by harinef | part ii: current runway

hari nef
hood by air spring 2015
look 38

maybe i’m fresh for analyzing a photo of myself, but i’m not sure i could talk about shayne oliver or hood by air without addressing my relationship to the house. hood by air spring 2015 was my runway debut.

one night last summer, shayne and i were dancing in the basement of open house, where ladyfag hosts her weekly 11:11 party. it was past 4AM. the details are hazy. “hey girl,” said shayne, “i’ve got an idea.” i ask him what. “i want you in the show,” he replies, “i wanna show them that the trans girls are out here running things in the hood.” i told him i’d be honored. “i want you topless,” he said, “that would really be a gag.”

at the fitting, in-house stylist akeemsmithstudios​ put me in an open vest. i was six months on hormones, and my breasts were beginning to show. i felt sexy and dangerous. i wondered if my breasts would comprise the first trans nudity on a major runway.

on the day of the show, i found a new look beneath my comp card. they had tested it on nadja–one of the more classically beautiful women cast–but switched me in at the last minute. at first i was confused, and a little disappointed. look 38 is quite masculine; i felt a sharp pang of dysphoria when i looked at myself in the mirror. i began to sweat. before i hit the runway, casting director kevinamato whispered in my ear: “kill it, bitch.”

i turned the corner. i don’t remember anything until the moment i got back. “i saw you on the monitor,” said kevin, “you tore that.”

then, an epiphany: to send out a topless trans girl would have been shocking, but expected. to put a male model in menswear would have been too on-the-nose. but a trans girl in menswear–her bouncy walk in rigid clothes–maybe that was right. maybe a “dissonance” between clothes and attitudes (identities?) paves the way for new aesthetics, ethics, and poetics of dress to emerge.

i blew the dust off some of my old “boy clothes” when i got home. 

fashion and the trans aesthetic
by harinef | part ii: current runway

misty pollen
vejas fall 2015
look 9

i met vejas kruszewski on tumblr. the self-taught canadian designer is not yet 20, yet i number him among the most fascinating young designers (he is also one of my best friends). his fall 2015 collection–shown in an intimate gallery space to an audience of 30–felt like a triumph. i can’t spill the beans, but i will say that i’m so excited to see where vejas is headed in the next few months.

vejas made headlines this season for his inclusion of trans and gender-nonconforming models, which included trfkrm, serena-jara, gogograham, misty pollen, and myself. perhaps look 9 comprises a vivid poetics for gender which might “shock” the average new york show-goer, but that’s not what vejas is trying to do. he approaches casting with what i can only call innocence. vejas’ models are his friends: perhaps in part because of financial necessity, but also because they fortify his inspirations.

vejas described his muse for fall 2015 as “the final girl:” a feminist film concept built around “the [one] girl who survives” at the end of the horror movie. “she’s been through shit and hell,” he explained, “it’s about resilience.”

i’m not sure anyone could embody the “final girl” better than a trans woman.

fashion and the trans aesthetic
by harinef | part ii: current runway

gogo graham
gogo graham fall 2015
look 3

gogograham is a friend of mine. her work signals a great and terrible future for the trans aesthetic in fashion. she is the only openly transgender fashion designer i can think of–living or dead. her work emerges at an interface between kitsch, body horror, self care, and good old-fashioned chic.

graham’s fall 2015 lookbook, lensed by serena-jara, implicates the body of the designer as its sole model. gogo graham fall 2015 is by gogo grahahm and for gogo graham. i hesitate to analyze her imagery too thoroughly, as it is she who holds the shutter switch and not i. lace stockings, bondage ties, a deconstructed kimono: look 3 combines eroticism and tradition, then obliterates them. largecoin’s makeup adds a sublime sense of the grotesque.

look 3 stirs something in the pit of my stomach–something trans and female. to reconstruct your body is gorgeous and terrifying. to seek your womanhood is thrilling and dreadful. transness hovers over the trans woman–everything she makes, does, and says. i look at her work and think: “this is gogo grahahm.” perhaps she’s the only designer in the world to whom such a statement applies.