This is Harris Reed, the designer of Harry styles' fluid looks.
Por Julia Hobbs
Harris Reed's work is a stylistic fantasy and an engine of change.The designer (*) half British, half American, made the debut of him scheduled with a collection of six demi-conceure looks (accessorized with his large-scale artisanal headdresses);and subsequently launched a genre -free makeup line in collaboration with Mac.Reed tells us the incredible story of how he got here (including that first meeting, almost seismic sensation, with singer Harry Styles).
In this essay, written in the first person, the designer gives a series of tips to his 9 -year -old "I".The age at which he left the closet, while he overcame bullying and isolation, and he realized the power of his great creativity.
By eni rise
"Dear‘ Yo ’of 9 years:
At this time, our home is California, but you are about to start the first of about 30 moves in a tour that will make you go everywhere, from Seattle to Paris, and London.Be brave.You will receive a lot of hate, they will bother you and you will feel very alone.But you will be bigger, and you will always be genuine with your emotions.
I know you can't imagine it now, but you will spend all your weekends alone, fixing yourself to stay in your room;But one day, you will dress the biggest musical star in your generation (something you will tell a friend from the university, with disturbing precision, one night in your university bedroom).After your graduation from Central Saint Martins, in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, you will make the debut of your first collection during a quarantine, and this will be part of the first week of fluid gender fashion in the history of the United Kingdom.You will always fight for the beauty of the fluid because your main belief is that everyone should be able to represent themselves in the most authentic and real way of themselves.
The way to become the 24 -year -old Harris Reed will not be easy, but I can promise you, that you will never lose sight of who you are.(You must believe me when I tell you that he will be very great when you get there).There will be people who will not want to understand your story, but now what will import will be those who do want to hear you.One day, you will be telling your story to Vogue.
At the beginning of the fourth grade in Arizona, you will be labeled as the ‘gay child’ even before you can understand what the word ‘gay’ means.Some parents will tell the teachers who will take their children out of the class, for the fear of being infected with gay ’.You will not have friends and you will have panic attacks.But, Arizona will be the best place for you to become what you are.It is in that place that you will realize the power of clothes, and the power of your imagination.
There will be some days in the school where they will chase you to the bathroom, due to what you wear (most of the time, Havaian sandals with Swarovski crystals).When hiding in a cubicle inside the bathroom, you will feel totally alone, but you are not.Sometimes, you will hear that your mother defends you in the courtyard.She will always be the backbone of your life, and her adventures (from Tokyo to Paris) will show you what is out there, in a world beyond the bullies.
There will also be some imaginary friends.With them, you will love to dress, the hours you will spend creating looks in front of the mirror will reveal a facet of yourself that you did not know until that moment.Something will do ‘click’.This year you will confess your parents, in one afternoon, using two phrases that: ‘I like children, I am gay’.
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The clothes will play a fundamental role in your story from that moment.The following week, you will go to school with a pink shirt and feel how you recover your power.It will be a moment that you will never forget.Very soon, you and your mother will be directed to the pre -teenage girls section when visiting the Nordstrom store, for a saleswoman that will completely change your life by saying the phrase: ‘You can wear these clothes’.She will make you feel valid.One day you can open your own Instagram account and you will see that many people do what you have always wanted, but for now, there will be only few vital beings that will offer you a guide light.
In Arizona, you will realize that not only clothes have the power to change the way you feel, but this also changes the way others look at you (realize how children who make fun of you, begin to startUse the same things a couple of months later).
When it is time to move to Los Angeles, then Oregon, Seattle, France (and back to Los Angeles), as a teenager, you can condense your whole story in a pitch: ‘Hello, I am Harris Reed, and I love who I am’.You will have to work hard to achieve it, juggling with a 40 -hour work week, in addition to your last year of high school.In 2016, you will move to London to study fashion at the Saint Martins Central, the school where Alexander McQueen, John Galliano and all designers who have always admired, through the pages of Vogue, studied.CSM will be everything you always wanted and even more, because the people you will know, many of them children who also suffered bullying and who were also pointed out, also children who are trans, and now pour their sexuality into their work.
You will arrive at the University in Skinny jeans, black boots and a pointed blond bangs, you will dance all night in The Queen Adelaide, VFD and Loverboy, feeling all the time that is ‘there where you belong’.For the first time in your life, you will see the representation around you and it is then that you will learn to remove the disguise of what you once believed that it should be a queer person.
By Tish Weinstock
One day you will meet Harry Styles, next to his stylist, Harry Lambert, at the Hammersmith Apollo backstage.You will run for all London with silver and silk fringes and matching platform boots, with a sketchbook full of fantasy references of Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie and Mick Jagger.Almost immediately, he will have the kindness you imagined.He will ask you not to lower the intensity to what you do.At the University, you will work late to finish the blouses that will become part of the wardrobe of their tour, the pieces that you will use on the scenarios around the world, you will see when Harry becomes the first male star to appear alone in aVogue cover.You will see it carrying your designs in the pages of the magazine.
In 2021, you will measure 1.93 centimeters.You will have red, long and glamorous hair.But, your fundamental message will remain exactly the same: dress as you want, I know who you want to be.Don't let fluidity put you in another box.For a person this can mean a transparent dress of the 70s, for another it can be a pair of jeans and a shirt.
(*) Harris Reed prefers the pronoun he/male.
