فصل 10

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فصل 10

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10

Creativity in Everything

Every child is an artist. The problem is staying an artist when you grow up.

—Pablo Picasso At age three I was a speaker. When music played through our living room stereo, I stood in the corner like a statue with my mouth open, pretending the sound was coming out of me. At age four I was a camera. I took pictures with my eyes. I framed my photo within my vision and blinked my eyes to snap the shutter of my memory. Since that time I’ve been impersonating inanimate objects at every opportunity. But don’t call me a wallflower.

Early experiments in selfie photography and top hats.

My creativity began to crystallize as a teenager, when I got my first camera. At age eighteen I got hit by a car while riding a borrowed bike to dumpster-dive for bagels. That sucked but I got enough settlement money out of it to take myself to Portugal and Spain (I spent the rest on an electric guitar). It was on this trip that I became obsessed with seeing the world through a lens—and returned home with more excitement than ever for photography.

Armed to Bless

A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know.

—Diane Arbus

Soon after my trip abroad, I enrolled in full-time photography classes at City College of San Francisco, where I learned to develop my own negatives and expose my own prints. For our final project we had to shoot a series of some sort, and I decided on a Russian Orthodox Church down the street from my apartment. The building was tiny, and from the outside you could hardly tell it was a church at all. It was the architectural equivalent of a loner.

I felt a kinship to this humble outsider church in the middle of San Francisco’s metropolis, so I knocked on the door and asked Mother Maria, the nun who lived there, if I could take some pictures. I grew up Greek Orthodox and still have an appreciation for the sights, sounds, and scents of the faith, which I think helped gain Mother Maria’s trust. It turned out that she hadn’t grown up Orthodox but had chosen the faith. My conversations with her were pretty powerful—I knew so many people who had dropped out of society in so many ways, but here was a woman who had looked the world in the face and decided, in the purest way possible, that she wanted none of it.

Mother Maria was a badass.

The Russian Orthodox faith eschews any sort of luxury, which means the entire service is spent standing. In Mother Maria’s view, the world outside the church—which she called the “worldly world”—was a place full of gluttonous distractions that kept us from discovering our true spiritual selves. She invited my worldly self in nonetheless, allowing me to photograph her and the church. The photos didn’t turn out that great; I still had a lot to learn.

A few weeks later, though, Mother Maria called me. The old priest had died and she wanted me to photograph his funeral. When I arrived his body was near the altar in a simple casket handmade from a few pieces of wood with a white satin sheet stapled to the interior. Aside from me there were about eight other people in attendance. So many of the worlds that I had dipped into played at shrugging off modern society, but the priest was a man who had truly rejected it. In a city full of noise, he’d found light by living in the shadows. Holy shit, is that heavy.

My baptism by fire helped me to find comfort in many different environments. I photographed truckers, bartenders, and outsiders in Nowheresville. I had begun to feel like I really knew what I was doing with a camera. And I’d upgraded to my twenty-first-birthday gift, a Hasselblad medium-format camera. That camera, to this day, is the best gift I’ve ever been given. It was my mother’s last effort to help me find my way. I decided that I wanted to attend the San Francisco Art Institute. In order to do so, I needed to have a finished photography portfolio.

In order to fulfill this prerequisite, I chose to return to the church. Mother Maria introduced me to a priest, Brother Eugene, who lived on a small plot of land outside Santa Rosa, selling his vegetables at the farmers market on weekends. I spent the day with him and we talked about everything under the sun. He fed me trailermade borscht and I went on my way. I then set off to a Russian Orthodox monastery in Point Reyes.

The monastery was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. There was a shipping container where a young monk spent his days dipping beeswax candles to be used in churches and sold in gift shops. Some men built caskets. Some gardened. They were shut off from the world but they were open enough to let me in. I couldn’t help but think that when they weren’t wearing robes, I could have mistaken these guys for metalheads.

In the end I decided that I couldn’t stomach the $50,000-a-year tuition and chose to forgo art school. But my series, which I called Armed to Bless, was an education in itself: It was one of the first times that I had ever finished something that I set out to do.

Find Your Framework

Applying to SFAI gave me the framework to be free within a set of rules in a way that school and jobs had not allowed me. Armed to Bless was an accomplishment beyond just taking pictures. It taught me that when I do things because I want to do them, and not because I have to, I can accomplish a lot. This type of framework is all around us and it also exists outside applying to or attending school. When it came to starting my own business, I found the framework that I needed on eBay. I probably could not have built a website of my own at that point, but my ambition grew with each crack of opportunity. The framework of eBay presented me with a series of easy-to-complete tasks (take photo, upload photo, write description) that eventually added up to a business. Starting it was as easy as picking a name and uploading the first auction. That instant gratification would never have come had my first step been to write a business plan. And without that instant gratification I might not have kept going. If you’re dreaming big, #GIRLBOSS, don’t be discouraged if you have to start small. It worked for me.

Putting the “Art” in Sandwich Artist

Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.

—Leo Burnett

Anything you do can be creative. If, when you make a smoothie, you try to make the best smoothie the world has ever tasted, it’s a creative act. If you throw a frozen banana and some yogurt in a blender and hit puree, well, not only is it uncreative and boring, but I also feel really bad for you.

I was always looking for ways to make my job creative, no matter what that job was. At Subway I loved the giant spray nozzle that hung above the dishwashing sink. Blasting mayo off of the spatula was uniquely satisfying. I liked making bread, spacing out the little twisted sticks of dough into perfect patterns on trays before sliding them into the oven. I learned the secret to the perfect doughy center in Subway’s cookies: slamming the tray down on the counter, causing the cookies to spread out while the pan was still hot. And any job that pays you for slamming things . . . well, consider yourself lucky.

None of the jobs at Nasty Gal are shitty to me, and I know because at some point I’ve done almost all of them. Whether it was styling, directing models, steaming clothing, or shipping an order—they were all creative. And when something got really boring, I turned it into a game to see how quickly, efficiently, and accurately I could get the job done.

The Venn Diagram of Creativity and Business

Access to talented and creative people is to modern business what access to coal and iron ore was to steelmaking.

—Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class

I would never have accomplished what I have had I felt forced to choose between my creative talent and my business acumen. At Nasty Gal, I’m the CEO and creative director, two titles that are rarely on the same business card—but what no one seems to talk about is that business is creative. I’m as creative when I’m choosing an investor as when I’m reviewing collection samples. I have as much fun hiring people as I did with a camera in my hand.

Keeping the Nasty Gal brand consistent as we have grown has been one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced. I’ve gone from being a solo artist to one part of a killer band. Our C-level team is the rhythm section, the rest of the team is playing guitar and keys, and I’m just scatting. Be-bop a doo-wa . . .

It wasn’t too long after I’d launched the eBay store that I started to recognize how important the thumbnail photos were. Thumbnail photos are prime real estate in e-commerce—they hook your customers in while simultaneously informing them about what they’re looking at. These thumbnails can’t be too messy or too bland. They must display the items clearly so that as prospective customers zoom quickly through the catalog page, they know what they’re looking at and also find it interesting. I saw that when the shape and style of an item was clearly visible in even the tiniest photo, it inevitably went for a higher price than a thumbnail where the silhouette was obscured or confusing to look at.

To this day I blur my eyes when I edit photos. I load all my photos on Bridge, shrink them down super-small, then cross my eyes like a goofball and flag the images that still catch my eye. This allows me to edit quickly without getting distracted by the details—if the composition or silhouette sucks, it doesn’t matter what the model’s face says. The DNA of a successful image, and brand, must be encrypted into its tiniest representation while gracefully telling the same story in its largest incarnation. My thumbnail photos were the postage stamps to Nasty Gal’s success.

I was used to making dozens of little creative decisions every day, but designing the first Nasty Gal website was my first macro “branding” project. Though once again, I didn’t see it as a branding project—Nasty Gal just needed a website, so I made one. I had no formal graphic design training, but knew what I liked and what I didn’t, and had spent so much time observing and talking to my customers—through eBay and MySpace—that I was confident I knew what would appeal to them.

Block type was really big in 2008, so I found some clunky font on a German graphic designer’s blog and downloaded it for free. I smashed the letters together, making one solid shape, and the first Nasty Gal logo was created. I went through a million iterations of the site, but it was always a fairly simple design. The color scheme was always pink, black, and gray because I didn’t want it to be too heavy. I used a close-up shot of my friend Dee’s face in the navigation (Dee was an early eBay model and now works for Nasty Gal as an apparel designer) and it was up there for years. The main tenets of the navigation were “Shop New” and “Shop Vintage.” It’s not as if I invented the English language here, but Nasty Gal was definitely one of the first websites to sell both new and vintage and position it as such.

I knew how to use Photoshop from editing photos, but I did not know how to use InDesign, so I designed Nasty Gal’s first website entirely via Photoshop. Also, as I was self-taught, I didn’t know any shortcuts. I moved everything one pixel at a time. I must have spent hours hitting the arrow key, like doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo . . . okay, now that box is halfway to where I want it to be, so . . . doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo . . . You get the picture. When Cody, who helped with the site development, showed me that I could hold down the shift key and move something like ten pixels at a time, it was as if the heavens opened up, the angels sang, and I got back several hours, maybe even days, of my life.

I have always been an observer. When I see music live, I like watching not only the band but the crowd as well. What are their favorite songs? Who’s a fan and who has never even heard this band? Where’s the obligatory fifty-five-year-old man with no rhythm who arrived alone and is louder than anyone else in the room? Currently, I am always trying to imagine things from the customer’s point of view. Now that Nasty Gal’s creative decisions are made by our creative team, they have to look at things from three views: their own, the customer’s, and mine. Thank God I hire brave people, because the inside of my head can be pretty weird sometimes.

Nasty Gal is now at an inflection point where we have to institutionalize the magic, as I like to say. That means that everyone’s job, to some extent, is to pull out of my head what has made Nasty Gal successful for the past seven years. When the brand was an extension of just me, I never had to stop and ask myself whether or not it was “on brand.” Today, our team is constantly working together to examine what has made us successful, what of that we want to keep around, and what newness we can introduce to evolve the brand. We then have to communicate that and share it. Our creative team is learning how to think like I think and I’m learning how to think like they think. Brains everywhere, all the time. Cue air drums. PORTRAIT OF A #GIRLBOSS:

Leandra Medine, Manrepeller.com and author of Seeking Love, Finding Overalls

When I was a kid I really thought I was going to be a ballerina, but then I realized I suck at dancing. So by the time I was in college, I wanted to become a reporter. I hoped I’d get a fact-checking job at New York magazine out of college, but instead I started Man Repeller.

I was a junior at the time and started the blog because I was writing so much content that was not funny at all and I just felt like I needed a place to inject a little bit of humor. What I wanted to do with my life figured itself out. I did not by any stretch of the imagination think that it was possible to take my blog anywhere that professional stuff happens. Sometimes I still feel like the universe is playing a trick on me. Since 2010, I have since grown Man Repeller from a one-person blog (here’s hoping, fingers crossed) to a website with staff writers and graphic designers and ad sales people and bikini waxers on demand! Just kidding. Fuck waxing.

I remember when I was younger that every time my mom wanted to buy something expensive, she had to run the purchase by my dad. I knew I never wanted to have to ask anyone to appease my indulgences, so that was a point of motivation to work hard. If you’re working, you’re working hard, and if you’re not doing that, what are you doing? I also think you age a lot quicker if you can’t keep yourself busy and under the right, healthy dose of stress. Too much of anything obviously isn’t good, but as my dad always said: Overwhelmingly busy is a much better state to be in than overwhelmingly bored.

Fashion has always informed the way I approach life. It’s also helped me manipulate my moods: I could be having a shitty day but the right pair of shoes can sometimes change that—which is powerful. I make a lot of jokes about fashion, but I love it. And on the topic of style, I think clothing will always look good—no matter how outlandish or ridiculous you might think it is—if you wholeheartedly own it. If you feel equally as excited and comfortable in a fruit-silhouette head contraption as you do in a pair of jeans, the rest of the world will watch. And likely in admiration. There are no apologies necessary for being you.

It sounds incredibly platitudinal, but no one will ever be able to love you if you don’t love yourself. What’s beautiful about it is that if you love yourself enough, you don’t need the validation from anyone else. My advice to #GIRLBOSSes is to get excited about the mistakes you’ll make. Own Your Style Like You Own Your Used Car

When you don’t dress like everyone else, you don’t have to think like everyone else.

–Iris Apfel

As much as I would like to say that photography was my first love, I think my first real creative effort was getting dressed.

Mom, and me, with her “punked” collar. 1987.

Both my parents were well attired, but my mom especially had great style. Before she headed out the door, she put the finishing touch on her outfit by “punking” (better known as popping) the collar of her ’80s polo shirts. It was always in my blood to care about what I wore and how it fit. At age six, my one true love was a pair of acid-wash jeans with an elastic waist. In sixth grade I became obsessed with the Sanrio crew: Hello Kitty, Pachacco, Kero Kero Keroppi, and the lot. My look could best (or worst?) be described as suburban mall Harajuku girl through a Northern California lens: baby T-shirts, barrettes, and white Walgreens’ knee-high socks that I wore with my Converse One-Star sneakers.

Before I knew that real punks don’t wear polo shirts.

When I was fifteen I liked a pair of bedraggled brown Levi’s corduroys that I found at the Salvation Army by my house so much that I wore them at least five days a week, until they met their untimely demise in a gas station parking lot (I’ll spare you the gory details, but let’s just say that it involved a really upset stomach, lack of a nearby public bathroom, and me crying in shame). Even when I was in my Abercrombie & Fitch phase (yes, even I have succumbed to peer pressure), I washed my jeans after every wear so that they still fit exactly the same as they did when I bought them.

A staple look from my boring-ass Abercrombie phase. 1998.

I was a ’90s teenager, so of course I went through a grunge phase, donning bell-bottom flares that dragged on the ground and an equally shapeless men’s V-neck sweater. My clothing choices were in line with my contrarian nature. As I mentioned earlier, my mom begged and pleaded with me to buy clothes at the mall, a typical teenage girl’s dream; we spent hours there only to leave empty-handed as store after store failed to usurp my preference for the corduroy and threadbare T-shirts I could only find at the local thrift store.

After that, I went through a couple of different iterations of skater girl: the cute type, with tiny board shorts, a tight tank top, and skate shoes; and the not-so-cute type, when I cut off all my hair and paired those skate shoes with baggy Dickie’s work pants.

At age seventeen I was a crust punk who refused to change her all-black clothes. At eighteen I was goth, which still involved all-black clothes, but at least now I changed them. That was when I lived in Seattle—and the goth suited the gloom. After that, when I moved back to San Francisco, I became a rock ’n’ roller and that stuck for a long time. I hooked my thumbs through my belt loops and did honky-tonk scoots across dance floors. My long hair parted in the middle and I wore exclusively vintage T-shirts with high-waist jeans that practically grazed my boobs.

I’ve always been willing to throw myself at the wall and see if I stuck when it came to general life experiences, and my approach to my personal style hasn’t been any different. I was always willing to try something new. As soon as I was over it, I moved on. And thank God I moved on. The whole pick-a-decade thing doesn’t really age well—you get to a certain point where it just ages you. Your style is a representation of who you are, and trying to pick your identity as an adult (anime? cowboy? new age?) is just not a good look. I think that now, depending on my hair, I dress closer to my Tim Burton–character roots than I have been in a long time—and I’m comfortably rock ’n’ roll with a disco soul.

W&H Instead of T&A: The Nasty Gal Look

Even though Nasty Gal is still in adolescence, when it comes to trends we’ve already been through many phases. This isn’t because we’ve been trying to figure out who we were, but because evolution is the name of the game when you’re in the fashion industry. And we don’t just want to stay on top of that game—we want to stay ahead of it. We want to lap our competitors and leave them in our dust.

Christina and I always did this by shopping with a focus group in our heads. At trade shows we held up different pieces and asked each other, “Can you see anyone in the office wearing this?” The office has always been populated with girls who are style-obsessed and Nasty Gals IRL, so if the answer was no, we just didn’t buy it. I remember in 2009 we bought a whole lot of all-black everything. Rick Owens and Alexander Wang ruled the runways; under their influence girls were obsessed with asymmetrical draping and lug-soled combat boots in black black black. If anything was adorned with metal studs, then it was almost too hot to handle. If we sold studded underwear, I’m sure it would have flown off the site. By the time girls could walk into Forever 21 and snap up studded booty shorts and platforms, we figured it was time to lay off the studs. This was about the time when the fashion world started to get a little preppier. Our customers loved short sets, button-up pinafore shirts, and ice-cream pastel colors, so for a while that was what we sold before we inevitably moved on to something else.

We always listen to what our customers want, but we don’t buy into every trend that comes along. If the silhouette du jour suddenly becomes that of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and fashion tells you that you should be wearing egg-shaped sweatshirt dresses that obscure your waist and emphasize your butt, well, you can buy that someplace else. Nasty Gal doesn’t want you to look like a marshmallow.

Selling vintage is a really good exercise in learning to recognize what people want right now as well as what they’ll always want. Nasty Gal always participates in the dialogue of the fashion industry, but there are core things that we talk about even if they’re not gracing the pages of Vogue at that particular moment: a rock tee, a motorcycle jacket, red lipstick, biker boots, skinny jeans, leather pants, a white lace dress. You have to know what looks good on you personally, and we have to know what looks good on us as a brand.

The epitome of style has always been the chic French woman: an Alexa Chung–looking gamine with simple, elegant clothes, such as loose shift dresses, and an overall effortless, understated cool. Yet if I may quote Bob Dylan, “it ain’t me babe.” I’ve got hips, and as soon as I got to a point in my life when I started to dress according to what actually suited me, I realized that if I didn’t wear something that accentuated my waist, I looked like I was toddling down the street in a refrigerator box.

When I started the eBay store, my only styling experience was getting dressed in the morning, so I dressed the models as though I was dressing myself. That meant that if a garment didn’t have a waist, I gave it one. I also learned that while hints of androgyny worked for my favorite models, it didn’t work on eBay, where the thumbnail photo was pretty much the size of, well, a thumbnail. Thus, if my models had short hair, or even long hair pulled back into a ponytail, they might as well have had shaved heads. We always went with a look that was either a strong lip or a strong eye, which is now a staple of the Nasty Gal look. My most iconic model was Nida. A towering Thai girl at five foot nine, she was as bold as they came. She did her own hair extensions and wore false eyelashes as part of her everyday routine. In the photos she looked like a bombshell with hair down to her waist. This really stood out on eBay, where most of the models at the time were still dress forms or hippies in sandals. From this amalgamation of things the Nasty Gal look was born. For us, it’s never been about boobs and butts, but waists and hips (W&H instead of T&A . . . Get it?) and the styles that show them off: high-rise pants, cropped jackets, fit and flare, bandage dresses. Nasty Gal shows a little bit of skin somewhere—like a thigh-high slit in a maxi skirt—and if it’s not, it’s making up for it with a whole lot of attitude. I believe a #GIRLBOSS should have a sneer and a smile in her back pocket, ready to whip either out at any moment.

Nasty Gal has always paired vintage pieces with modern styling. Anyone who’s spent some time in thrift stores understands that part of wearing vintage is to know that you can’t always expect it to come right off the rack looking perfect. You must be able to see past that sad sack dress on a plastic hanger with a price tag stapled to it and imagine the myriad things you can do with it. I’ve belted muumuus, hacked hems, and rolled sleeves on the regs, and learned that sometimes the perfect oversized sweater or shrunken jacket is only as far away as the men’s aisle or children’s section. On eBay I sold a lot of children’s coats because, when they were styled right, they looked like the perfect cropped jacket. One of my own favorite pieces of vintage is a light pink child’s peacoat that looks straight off a Marc Jacobs runway. Eventually, I got to a point where I’d dressed so many models that I could look at something on a hanger and know exactly how it would fit on a girl. I could even look at a model and know what her measurements were and all of this helped make me a good buyer because it helped Nasty Gal avoid stocking stuff that was cute in theory but awkward when you put it on.

Despite the fact that I’m wearing YSL platforms as I write this, I have always believed that it shouldn’t cost a lot of money to look good. When Christina and I started buying new brands, we experimented with some more expensive offerings, and $300 dresses simply didn’t sell. Our customer works hard for her money, so it goes without saying that she’s going to be careful with how she spends it. That also highlights the difference between fashion and style: You can have a ton of money and buy yourself all the designer goods you can stuff into the trunk of your Mercedes-Benz, but no amount of money can buy you style. Having good style takes thought, creativity, confidence, self-awareness, even sometimes a little bit of work. And there you have it, folks: A little bit of skin + attention to silhouette + an attitude + a vintage piece or two + a decent price tag = Hello, Nasty Gal.

It’s Not Hot. It’s Not Cold. It’s Cool.

I like to say that Nasty Gal is dressing girls for the best years of their lives whether a girl is eighteen, twenty-five, thirty-five, or sixty. At a recent meeting, when several of us were locked away in a war room, strategizing for the future, someone asked an assistant if it would be difficult for her to relate to me if I were older. “No,” she replied, “Sophia’s a badass bitch and she’ll always be a badass bitch!” That I’ve managed to build a company where an assistant feels comfortable calling the CEO a badass bitch in a room full of senior executives is pretty amazing.

The heartbeat of Nasty Gal doesn’t exist in one style, trend, or article of clothing. It’s in the way we talk, the way we carry ourselves, and the way we see the world. If you scroll through Nasty Gal photos from the early days, this is obvious: The styles have changed, but the attitude is the same. The Nasty Gal look has always been that hard-to-nail-down, you-know-it-when-you-see-it quality; the ultimate babe who’s one-third girl-next-door, one-third genius, and one-third party monster. She’s cool. It’s this combination that has made casting models especially challenging for us—it’s not enough that a girl is tall, gorgeous, and fits the clothing—she has to be cool on top of it.

My definition of what’s cool may be a rare one. It’s not about being popular, or waking up with a pizza spinning on the turntable like an ’80s teen movie. Being mean won’t make you cool, being rich won’t make you cool, and having the right clothes, while it may help, won’t make you cool. It’s cool to be kind. It’s cool to be weird. It’s cool to be honest and to be secure with yourself. Cool is the girl at a party who strikes up a conversation with you when she notices you don’t seem to know many people there. It’s that vibe that I always wanted Nasty Gal models to have. I want our customer to look at Nasty Gal and see someone who could be her friend modeling the clothes. Or even better, I want her to project herself into the lifestyle and attitude, soaking it up to add to her arsenal of amazing qualities of which having great clothes is only one small part.

Own Your Style

The last thing I’d ever subscribe to are fashion rules. However, I do think that you should put effort into what you wear. Clothing is ultimately the suit of armor in which we battle the world. When you choose your clothing right, it feels good. And there’s nothing shallow about feeling good. Owning your style, however, is much more about your attitude than it is about what’s on your back. But don’t underestimate the transformational possibilities that getting dressed can afford you.

While I have the freedom to wear whatever I want at work, I dress the part. In fact, everyone at Nasty Gal does. When I’m confident in what I am wearing, it makes me feel more confident throughout the day. Granted, I could probably negotiate a deal in my pajamas, but I’m a lot more dangerous in a pair of leather pants and boots that could hurt a fool.

Some girls can pull off a trend as though they just rolled out of bed, grabbed the first thing they saw, and skipped out the door without even giving the mirror a sideways glance. When I try to wear too much of a trend, I end up looking the opposite—like I spent way too much time in front of the mirror. It’s important to know which trends are for you and which ones you should watch walk down the runway and right on by.

We’ve all seen girls who constantly tug at the hem of their dress, readjust straps, and mess with their hair. If you’re not confident, no dress, no matter how smoking-hot it is, will solve that problem for you. If I see you in a club hobbling like an injured baby colt, I want to push you over. I will push you over. And, if I can push you over, you’re not owning anything; and that’s what I want you to do, #GIRLBOSS: Own your style like you own your used car. This means wearing what you like and what makes you feel good. And it means getting dressed for yourself—not your boyfriend, not your friends, not your parents. Here’s one thing the fashion industry probably won’t tell you: Confidence is more attractive than anything you could put on your body.

And that brings me to my other point: Owning your style sometimes takes effort, and it’s okay to expend effort on how you look. For a long time women wore only dresses and spent hours on their hair because that is what society mandated. But now we don’t have to do it—we get to do it. Being a girl is fun. We can experiment with our look as much as we want. I remember being a little girl and watching with fascination as my mom used an eyelash curler. The key is making sure you’re doing what you want, not doing things because your boyfriend can’t stand to look at you without any makeup on. If every other girl you know is wearing a push-up bra and you do not want to wear a push-up bra, then by all means, do not wear one. But they’re there if you need ’em.

There are certain common themes that I hear when I talk to Nasty Gal customers all over the world. “I was the only girl who didn’t shop at the mall,” a lot of them say. “My town was so boring that just putting effort into my look was seen as crazy.” And to that, I always say, “Hell yes.” Putting in effort is exactly what you should be doing. You should get dressed for your life. I don’t care if the only place you have to go is the post office: Get dressed, #GIRLBOSS, and let your freak flag fly. PORTRAIT OF A #GIRLBOSS:

Ashley Glorioso, Senior Stylist at Nasty Gal

When I was younger, I hated being in school. I hated everything about it, so I knew that whatever I did wasn’t going to involve any extra schooling past high school—I couldn’t get out of that place fast enough. I thought I was going to work with animals, but then realized I was too emotionally attached to them, so needed to work with something that couldn’t get hurt or die. Clothes. Perfect!

I’ve been pedal to the medal ever since and I have no intention of stopping! I started working retail in high school to earn some cash of my own, and I realized that there was so much to the retail world. I worked for small boutiques at first, and for pennies, but learned so much about the industry that it made my time there priceless. I worked at a small store in Westlake Village, California; I was only sixteen but running the store. I was comfortable being in charge at such a young age. Baby boss lady!

I learned about everything from merchandising to receiving, and even made sure I learned about stuff that I wasn’t even interested in. I felt as if the more I learned about retail, the more options I would have later on. I think it’s good to have more than one skill set in the fashion industry. A lot of companies require you to wear many different hats, so the more experience you can gain, the better!

I started styling for fun on a friend’s lookbook shoot when I was eighteen, and thought, Wait, I like this! And I’m decent at it! I was shocked people did this for work. That was when I started to pay way more attention to what was going on in fashion—delving into every season of shows and every magazine I could get my hands on. I studied the makeup artists, the hairstylists, the photographers, the clothing stylists . . . I learned how everyone had a different eye, and how it was all art.

I think fashion is the ever-undulating industry, and style is something that a person has inherently without really trying. I went through so many weird phases throughout my life. I was never a great vintage shopper, but now I am well versed in the magic of a good tailor, so I don’t hesitate to buy vintage because I know that I can rework that baby into utter perfection. Nowadays my style is all over the place and I try not to fit into any one category. Some days I feel very gypsy and wear a long skirt with a weird top, a long vest, a furry vest over that, and 2,056 necklaces and rings. Other days I wear my boyfriend’s ripped T-shirt and some huge jeans and do not give two fucks. Sometimes I wear a frilly dress with socks and Mary Janes, and other times a suit. So be it. I like to keep people guessing. Hell, keep me guessing!

Above anything, I think clothes should make you feel good about yourself! I can’t imagine anything worse than a girl trying to fit into a certain trend and then feeling uncomfortable with what she’s wearing. What’s the point!? Who cares if everyone is wearing boyfriend jeans? If you feel like a chunky dude with poopy pants, take them off! You should walk out of the house and be thinking, Damn, I look good.

I’m super lucky that I can do what I love every day, so that keeps my creative juices flowin’ like wine. I also keep myself busy with freelance projects on the weekends so I never feel as if I’m not creating something. Sometimes I need a creative break, so I lie on my couch for hours at a time watching Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. This usually happens after I have styling dreams where I keep saying “cute” over and over again.

I never assisted anyone; I just gave it my all. I always networked with anyone whom I met in the industry, I believed that I could do it, and people believed me. Get your hustle on. My uncle always instilled the importance of work ethic in me from a young age. I asked for things and he always said, “If you want something, you have to earnnnnn it!” I thought it was the most annoying statement ever. Yet the older I got, the more I realized I could get a job, make my own money, and not have to ask for things. So I did. And it was so satisfying!

Obviously, the older I got, it wasn’t just about buying things, but not wanting to be the girl living paycheck to paycheck, as in, “Can I pay my rent this month?” I wanted to live comfortably and not be stressed about finances. I also wanted to be able to do nice things for my family. I knew that they appreciated even the small things, like my being able to pick up the tab at dinner. The more I accomplish in life, the more I realize that I am not a complete and utter failure, and I’m actually proud of myself! I had no idea what I wanted to do out of high school, so to be where I am now . . . that’s somethin.

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