Fashion is a Feeling

To Savannah Eden Bradley — journalist, editor-in-chief at HALOSCOPE, and soon-to-be author — the fashion magazine is a doorway to elevated experience; personal taste is a moral framework. Art is an invitation to experiencing the deepest stirrings of emotions. It’s the dramatic interplay of light and shadow in a Caravaggio painting; Rothko’s regions of color. It’s the radical glamour of a cape draped around André Leon Talley’s shoulders; the dark glasses shielding Bob Dylan’s gaze. It’s the cadence of a sentence; a revelation easily articulated. It’s the potency of passion, the jolt of revulsion, the surge of delight.

Here, the interviewer becomes the interviewee: we discuss the current fashion media landscape, personal style, her writing process, and her forthcoming book, Ladies of the Canyon.

The fashion industry is notoriously exclusive – how did you navigate your way into the field?

I spent my teenage years interning and working at different magazines, freelancing and building a portfolio, and studying and shadowing editors. I started writing because I wanted to understand what I was looking at and what it all meant. I was young and green and pitched fast and loose, constantly. And I had zero connections – any success came from working hard and being audacious enough to ask. To abridge a Rei Kawakubo quote: “All the rules are in your head.”

What role does the fashion magazine play in the current media landscape?

We tend to think of the fashion magazine as a mirror – something that both endears and inures us to every cultural moment. That made sense 20-odd years ago, but now our phones do that. So the modern fashion magazine has had to remove the mirror glass and quickly become a door. Fashion-as-subject is very much like music-as-subject in that it allows us to build funny little communities of taste. Go to a party and the fashion people will herd together, like sheep. The best magazines understand this and approach fashion as a close-knit, communal exchange of ideas that doesn’t merely reflect tastes but instead serves as a doorway to those tastes.

How does the role of the independent magazine differ from that of the mainstream publication?

The independent magazine is, by invention, going to be more experimental. The people making it are hungrier. At a mainstream publication, you tread lightly, especially when you’re trying to maintain brand relationships or secure advertising. The indies get to really shock and awe and be a little more unsympathetic. That’s one of the reasons why, at HALOSCOPE, we decided to start rating Fall/Winter and Spring/Summer collections. That’s the standard in music criticism, but in fashion, we still believe the work is so nebulous it cannot possibly be rubricated. But good criticism is very healthy for both artists and audiences, and I think we owe it to ourselves to stay true to our principles and demand more from this work that we love – at both independent and mainstream publications.

You maintain that fashion is a feeling – can you describe your earliest memory of fashion eliciting a powerful emotional response from you? How did that experience shape your understanding of the medium?

So much of my love of fashion came from being lucky enough to come from a family of artists and educators who took that love seriously. Fashion was not a joke. It was not flippant. It was pure art, which was life-giving. I remember being very young and seeing André Leon Talley on television, in the beautiful coats and sunglasses and regalia, and my mother saying, “You know, he’s from North Carolina.” That was formative for me – the idea that garments could serve as a kind of visual language and be manipulated to form a thesis, and, too, that someone from where I was from could be so successful and sophisticated. The South continues to be a very overlooked fashion landscape, and ALT spent much time trying to change that.

For me, looking at a garment is not dissimilar from looking at a Rothko or a Frankenthaler. If fashion is art, and art demands us to feel, then fashion demands us to feel. I’ve held my breath looking at a Caravaggio up close, and I’ve held my breath looking at a Jean Paul Gaultier up close. When you shop thinking of fashion as a means to a personal end (“Would I wear this?”), the whole world opens up.

As a trend forecaster and fashion journalist, what are your thoughts on the interaction between fashion trends and personal style?

We can’t act as if trends are wholly purposeless or wholly determinative. They certainly change and influence our personal style, but they can’t fundamentally strip that style of its foundation. And personal style is so malleable. We can’t act as if trends can’t affect it or as if style can be perfected. Personal style will always change and be colored by the trend cycle. Accepting that – and that we’ll have seasons of our lives where we’ll dress nicely and seasons where we’ll look hideous – helps us recognize and shape our broader tastes, and, too, decide which trends are worth keeping around or discarding.

You’ve written, “i know who i am – and what i love and loathe – very deeply.” In what ways does your sense of personal taste help you define your identity beyond the realms of fashion and media? How does it inform your values?

That’s a good question. Fashion is inside baseball, and there are so many factions of study and inquiry that the layman isn’t privy to. You can’t know all things. For instance – I read a lot of business news, but I’m never going to understand the minutiae of, say, LVMH’s business dealings in the way a strict and seasoned and salaried business reporter would. I know the fundamentals, and I like to keep up, but I’m not forcing myself to learn a whole other language. I think we should all be reading and learning as much as we can, but it’s okay to focus your vision on just a couple of those factions. Personal taste is not just about what we wear or how we define ourselves through fashion but what we pay attention to. Taste informs all of my values, including fashion and media, because it forces me to be more discerning with the things I like and more empathetic with the things I don’t.

You launched your newsletter because you “always longed for a space where cool people talk about cool things, especially when it comes to fashion.” Are there any other “cool places” you’ve discovered, whether online or in real life?

Oh, I certainly love are.na as a place for knowledge-building, and I love going back to old fashion forums of the 2000s and reading through threads. USB Club is producing interesting work – in print, the same goes for Dirt, Blackbird Spyplane, and Rachel Tashjian Wise’s nouveau-classic Opulent Tips. IRL, I’m in love with the indie multi-brand shops popping up, like Lucky Jewel and Everything Store, which is how I’ve discovered some of my favorite emerging designers&makers&brands like LOVETHANKS.

Take me through your writing process, from the generation of a new idea to the final draft.

I’m a scribbler. I have document upon document of grafs, usually inspired by something I’ve read on the wire or via a conversation between friends. Sometimes writing is an act of pure assembly; sometimes those grafs start to swell up in the middle, so I move them to a pan and watch how they grow. I type very fast and research obsessively. Unless it’s a long, long, story, I prefer writing in one requisite chunk of time. And I can write anywhere. I’ll write on the floor, on a train, in the passenger seat. Final drafts are an exercise in killing my darlings. I once had a fiction professor make us take X-ACTO blades and strike every superfluous word from our stories. I’m not precious about the final language as long as it’s coherent and potent.

What initially sparked your interest in the intersection of 1960s-70s rock music and fashion? What about this subject made it more suited to the format of a book than an essay or article?

The 70s are, selfishly, my favorite time in music, from the emergence of the nouveau singer-songwriter to punk’s beginnings. And it was really a period where fashion was being used by musicians to communicate and make silent statements. In the 60s, only country musicians (and Elvis!) wore stage costumes; look at any performer on The Ed Sullivan Show, and they’re most likely wearing a suit or a modest dress, though ocassionally a dress shirt or turtleneck could suffice. And I kept looking at what Bob Dylan looked like in 1964 and what Bob Dylan looked like in 1979 and thought, “God, there’s a whole book in that.” There’s so much research and history involved that can’t possibly be relegated to a single article.

What advice do you have for emerging creatives?

Thinking and doing are two different, though essential, acts. Be generous with your time. Read everything you can get your hands on. Download weird PDFs and print them out and write in the margins. Keep working knowledge docs. Talk to people. Search for answers. Learn everything you possibly can. But you have to also do. Planning can only accomplish so much. Try, fail, try again. Send something out before it’s fully baked. Throw your art out there with no expectations of acclaim or applause. The practice is the reward.

What’s next for you and HALOSCOPE?

We’re always thinking of ways to properly serve our audience and nurture our community – that’s our main goal in 2025. We want more two-way discussions, more opportunities to connect, and more projects made in collaboration with artists and brands and thinkers. At HALOSCOPE, we’ve always led with the idea that the people who love fashion are deeply thoughtful and deserve projects that honor their intelligence. I can only hope that, in the next year, we can grow our audience and invite them into our little world.