I will say my grandmother, my mother's mother, she would always have this month's copy of Vogue sitting in kitchen or something. So I was always kind of surrounded by the idea of fashion. When I was younger, I would go to the mall with her when she was going to go shop and go look at handbags or something. There's a certain level of, for somebody in a small town, Kentucky, you know, Southern America, which is predominantly more conservative, a young boy go and look at purses has a certain effect. Not a negative effect, honestly, like at all. It was like the effect that it was possible that I could go look at that and not feel shamed about that, or not be like, "Oh, you know, what are you doing looking at these, women's purses?" It's like, "Oh, you can, you can, it's just a bag." It's just a piece of clothing. I think that because I'd grown up with parents who were very open to things, there wasn't a lot of feeling that, there wasn't guilt, because I wasn't conscious of it yet. I just wasn't there yet, but I liked it. I liked the idea of fashion and, you know, in a certain sense, beauty within the things that we are adoring our bodies with, and it seen as an expression and there was beauty within these things that we could wear. I didn't feel in any negative way. I just felt truly positive, I guess.

I would consider my style avant-garde, I would consider it ironic. I think that my style within fashion is not, it's not there to please. It push people's buttons fully. It more falls down to just experimentation. And that's all that I do is just experiment. My favorite, my favorite thing. Specifically, honestly, when I'm wearing an outfit in my own personal style, I like to wear things that make people look twice. It's not about an attention thing. It's more about a, perhaps in a way, getting them to notice, because it's so absurd. And a lot of people just don't care about fashion and they don't look twice. So they don't look at all. But when you're wearing something that's so absurd, like I have Rick Owens Kiss heels, which are the crazy heels platform with a clear heel, and every time that I wear them that somebody looks at them and is like, "Whoa", and, it's a certain sense that I love that, but not for the attention of it. Moreover, the interest that people could spike with them fashion, if they see somebody wearing that. And I guess that would be my personal style. It is that my goal is to make people a little uncomfortable. Not so uncomfortable that they hate it, but just pushing the the level of discomfort a little bit. It's at a certain extent, not making them uncomfortable with a negative connotation, but making them see something that they never thought that somebody could wear, or somebody likes them, or looks like them,

When it comes to design style, I've been kind of currently messing around with things that revolve around my childhood. So I've been working, right now I'm working on a collection, for example, that's based fully out of upcycled military clothing. And mixed in with that is kind of a series of Americana, themes like the military and, American flags and, camouflage and police. It's interesting, when I was a kid, I always loved camouflage and I wanted to wear full army camouflage when I was a kid. It's funny. He was terrified because he didn't want me to go to the military. My father's kind of a peaceful writer that doesn't want anything going on. And he was like, "What is my seven year old doing, wanting to wear all camouflage?" And now it's now he's like, "Oh, I see why, you just liked camouflage for the sake of liking as a pattern and the clothing."
So I'm working on this kind of collection because I am queer, and I'm gay, and I've always thought the military also is kind of funny and inherently gay, just in the sense of, in my opinion. It's a boys club, and it's a "don't ask, don't tell" system, and I just think it's funny. That revolves around, like, the kind of homophobia within the military as well. And then I'm working on this collection basically that's all upcycled military, and when I'm going to cast it, I'm trying to show it in September of this fall fashion week, I'm basically going to cast it as very androgynous girls or boys, and put them all in like drag makeup basically. Kind of have this, harsh contrast of this upcycled, weird aesthetic of military and army and, Americana and, and the things, these groups especially in America. Right now is a very, it's a touchy subject, because it's a very split country. There's a lot of people who are like, "Woohoo America." And then there's a lot of us who are like, "What's going on?" It's just creating a conversation out of it, but I'm also pulling these things from my childhood and these motifs are things that I liked.

That wasn't great. I was, first of all, the gay guy in a small town at a school where there was maybe one or two other gay guys who were out. And so there's that element. And on top of that, there's the element of I'm dressing crazy. And so what does that, what does that mean? And that started, I started kind of getting into fashion in kind of conservative populated rural high school where all the kids would say certain things or do certain things. Growing up, it was like, it was kind of felt me against the world which made me feel comfortable just being myself. Even though in the moments where I struggled there, it felt like it was me against the world in a sad dire way, it then in retrospect, it was kind of just me against the world in the way that I was going to figure it out and do my thing.

Especially with the more controversial creation or fashion, if somebody really hates a certain element of it, my approach is always thinking about. So if the feedback is this, and it's received this way and everything, my thing is about analyzing people. My biggest thing is like, "what does this say about us?" You know, as a society, as a culture, as, as a group of people, if there's a certain thing that's too pushing it or receives a certain way, it's like, what does that say about us as a culture and society in the 21st century? And, what can then I conclude from that and explore out of that? I think that there always needs to be, at a certain point, I always a conversation. And it has to be the right format of conversation. I think that like in the fashion and arts industry, sometimes there's not enough of those why questions asked in my perspective.