I created my second clothing line, “Stay Noided,” reflecting on my freshman year of high school, which was easily one of the worst years of my life to date.
“Stay noided” is a quote from my favorite experimental hip hop trio Death Grips. A lyric from one of their songs in their album “The Money Store,” goes: I’ve seen footage… I stay noided. This means “I’ve been through shit, I’ve seen shit, therefore I stay aware and paranoid and you should not mess with me.”
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My freshman year was the complete inspiration for this clothing line, and for this shoot. The aesthetic of the shoot was very anti-establishment, anti-you, anti-me, anti-everything. I had my models pretend they were on a field trip and simply did not want to be there. They were pissed off, angst-y teenagers. |
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I felt paranoid walking through the halls of my high school. Having a lunch period felt like a curse because I had no one to sit with and nowhere to go. I could have conformed and chose to hang out with my old friends and disregard all of my morals and throw out all of my beliefs. However, I chose to stay who I am and that sucked because in the end I had no one and was at times bullied for who I was. I was bullied a lot, actually.
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All of my close friends left me for other friends that they considered “cooler,” or “more popular.” We’ve all heard of the phrase “social climbing” but I never knew it was a legitimate action people decided to take. I went through a mini depression that year, I could never sleep, and these things resulted in bad grades, which made my mother mad, and only created a cycle of nonsense.
I made a few of the garments to reflect the way I was backstabbed by distressing them and adding a knife on the back, but of course the front says “Stay Noided” because that is the motto. That particular design is a literal narrative of my freshman year and how I got through it.
