Week 5: For the Gram

Talia is a friend of mine that I really wanted to show off to the world–or at least my writing 340 classmates–because she’s hilarious, beautiful, and creative. Last semester, Talia decided to launch a fashion-oriented Instagram account separate from her personal page. Personally, I’ve always admired her minimalistic yet funky sense of style from afar, so getting to see it on my Instagram feed is a real treat.

I asked Talia to come over and talk to me a little bit about her interest in fashion on a Saturday morning, to which she showed up excitedly in her pajamas. That’s exactly what I love about her. Yes, she loves to put together cohesive and expressive outfits, but she also knows that pajamas have a time and place, too. I find sometimes that when people are “into” fashion, there’s no off-switch. They feel this pressure to be dressing cute or fitting an ‘image’ at all times, even when they’re just lounging around. I think that’s nice for them, I guess, but to me it seems ingenuous.

As we sprawled out on my couch, decked out in groutfits*, she shared a little bit about her experience working sales at Aritzia. “I learned how to be confident,” she told me. She reminisced on her day-to-day tasks of pulling outfits for customers and trying to understand their styles in order to create personalized looks for them. “Sometimes they’d like them and sometimes they wouldn’t, but I would start getting customers coming back and asking for me. That just feels so special.”

Clearly these people are going to come back asking for Talia–her clothing taste is impeccable. Even if it’s just a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, she manages to put it together in a way that looks polished and fun at the same time. It’s hard to describe what she does with clothes, but she definitely has a vibe.

Instead of me trying to put her fashion aesthetic into words, just take a look at her Insta: @taliasimon.e. As someone who was always into fashion, Talia was pretty excited when she started working at Aritzia and got to ball out on clothes with that employee discount. Soon after, she began receiving more compliments than usual, often followed with a suggestion to start a YouTube channel. “A YouTube channel is so much effort,” she says. So instead, she created a second account on Instagram, this one solely devoted to her clothes.

“People were so supportive… I only got one comment that said it was weird,” she laughs. Outfit creation is to Talia is the same as painting or sculpting to an artist. Fashion acts as a creative outlet, one that allows her to assemble specific pieces to form something bigger than each of its parts. It’s a passion that comes naturally to her. She notices that when she preemptively decides to shoot videos or take photos on a certain day, it never turns out as well as when it just comes to her organically.

Besides giving her a platform to express herself, her Instagram account has also done wonders for her self-confidence. Going out and taking photos of herself is something she takes pride in now, no longer a source of embarrassment or discomfort. When she first posted on the account, she was nervous of what the reactions were going to be, but she’s found them to be overwhelmingly positive. “People will come up to me, surprisingly a lot of guys–and I was expecting a lot of guys to be like ‘WTF is this’–but instead they’re like ‘it’s really cool that you’re doing this.'” Her friends and classmates see @taliasimon.e for its true value–a showcase of her artwork.

“Fashion and art, they’re one and the same,” she said. “You’re putting something together to show how you feel to someone, and I think that’s so cool.”

*groutfits=grey outfits. (GWTP-get with the program).

quick questions

who is your style inspiration?
i have a few… Allegra Shaw. she’s a canadian fashion blogger and i love everything she wears. and the Hadid sisters, obviously.

what’s one article of clothing you can’t live without?
mom jeans. i love mom jeans. i just got a new pair and the fly is diagonal.

heels or flats?
okay, the practical in me says flats. i don’t feel like i’m old enough to wear heels very often, but i’d choose heels.

if you could only shop at one store for the rest of your life, where would it be?
aritzia. oh, but if i had all the money in the world, alexander wang.