TO STYLE IS TO RESIST
07 July 2025 My thesis reframes styling as a sustainable, political and relational practice. Often associated with trends, image-making and status, styling traditionally refers to how clothes are arranged on a body or in a frame. I ask what else it can do. How we can truly work with what we already have.
I chose to create a magazine that brings together two years of research. It became a space to think through ideas, gather voices and experiment with language and method. It hopefully is something you can keep returning to.
What's underneath?
Like most things I do, this process started with something I already had. An old fashion magazine lying around at the free shop. It became the starting point of my layout. I began collecting all the texts, images, and references that make up this multilayered project, Material Matters — and started putting them together, day by day.
It is a relational process, meaning it’s shaped by encounters, by availability, by care. Every decision was influenced by the materials around me, the people I was in dialogue with, and the questions that kept returning. And so the form emerged through context. It was important to me to create a hub of shared knowledge.
Ans I’ve been working like this throughout my studies. Responding to what’s around me. Following materials, conversations and asking questions. Most of my projects didn’t begin with a fixed idea and none of them were final. They are in-between steps that shape how I think and how I work. This magazine holds traces of all of them. And it has hands on methods.
This magazine brings together personal writing, theoretical reflections, interviews, collages and styling exercises. It explores styling as a practice shaped by access, repetition, re-use and relation. Some texts reflect on specific projects. Others collect voices that have influenced me. There are conversations about refusal, performativity and self-styling, alongside practical methods developed during the last two years. The structure is non-linear.
The digital version is only available for one week due to subscription policies. Productiob on demand <3
the democratization of styling: a poem.
Styling was sacred, reserved for the few
if you had the money, the mirrors, the crew.
But what if it started with what you’ve got now?
A shoelace, a fabric, a hand-me-down.
To style is to claim, not to own, but to frame.
To say: This is how I see it. This is who I am, today.
Not fashion for sale, not power through spend
but styling as gesture, as an amend.
We don’t need permission, we work with what’s there
to wear it reversed, to style out of care.
To democratize style is to hand it around,
to swap it, to share it, to pull it from ground.
To call it a method, a tool with no end
to borrow and lend, not break but bend.
Some of us learned it with no other way
style as survival, as armour, as play.
Not aspirational, just practical art
a patch on the sleeve, a stitch in the heart.
It’s uneven, the right to explore.
Not everyone’s safe when they walk out the door.
I hope dreaming together can tear at the seam
of who gets to sparkle, and who gets to dream.
It starts in the margins, it grows in the gaps
on the streets, in free shops, and messenger apps.
It’s not what you own, but what you remake,
a gesture of freedom with every mistake.
To democratize style is to shift how we see
to loosen the thread of who gets to be.
It’s choosing what we have, again and again,
beyond every fitting room, filter, or trend.
It’s showing what’s possible, worn into form
a dream made of fabric and slightly worn wrong.
Styling was sacred, reserved for the few
if you had the money, the mirrors, the crew.
But what if it started with what you’ve got now?
A shoelace, a fabric, a hand-me-down.
To style is to claim, not to own, but to frame.
To say: This is how I see it. This is who I am, today.
Not fashion for sale, not power through spend
but styling as gesture, as an amend.
We don’t need permission, we work with what’s there
to wear it reversed, to style out of care.
To democratize style is to hand it around,
to swap it, to share it, to pull it from ground.
To call it a method, a tool with no end
to borrow and lend, not break but bend.
Some of us learned it with no other way
style as survival, as armour, as play.
Not aspirational, just practical art
a patch on the sleeve, a stitch in the heart.
It’s uneven, the right to explore.
Not everyone’s safe when they walk out the door.
I hope dreaming together can tear at the seam
of who gets to sparkle, and who gets to dream.
It starts in the margins, it grows in the gaps
on the streets, in free shops, and messenger apps.
It’s not what you own, but what you remake,
a gesture of freedom with every mistake.
To democratize style is to shift how we see
to loosen the thread of who gets to be.
It’s choosing what we have, again and again,
beyond every fitting room, filter, or trend.
It’s showing what’s possible, worn into form
a dream made of fabric and slightly worn wrong.
Acknowledgements: Anna Laederach, Aydran Cook, Billie Madrigal, Cait Pöthke, Diego Cremonini, Eileen Campbell, Eva Katherina Bühler, Fair Fashion Factory, Finn Hasenmann, Flurina Kühne, Fynn Martens, Gioia Ceravolo, Houssam Zaroual, Jael Rickenbacher, Jo Arndt, Julia Maria Taras, Larissa Salome Klarer, Lamine Badian Kouyaté, Lou Tschumi, Lotte-Mo Berkhan, Luana Capaul, Luisa Later, Marija Milovanovic, Miguel Adrover, Nils Niederhauser, Noëmi Gutzwiller, Noémie Prod’hom, Ntando Cele, Priska Morger, Ronja Buser, Sagil Md. Amin, Sibylle Meyer-Pardo, Sofiia Shymanska, Sofia Achoukhi, Susanne Suss, Tale Lyam Burger, Tenant of Culture, Valie Export, Vanessa Scheidegger, Yasmina Nyffenegger.
I’m one voice among many. Others have been doing this work for years, even decades. I see myself as part of that. This is my contribution to a fight that belongs to all of us.