‘Girlhood is theft.’ I love this one...with Gabriella Karefa-Johnson.

‘I love this one...’ is a regular series where we ask leading names in the industry to share their favourite fashion moments, buys and inspirations. This week, Gabriella Karefa-Johnson.

Fashion show soundtrack
Impossible to pick just one. John Galliano’s Autumn/Winter 1997 show for Christian Dior is probably up there—the dominant refrain in that one is John Williams’s ‘The Imperial March,’ aka Darth Vader’s theme from Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

My favourite fashion show soundtrack, which I was a part of, was for Matthew Adams Dolan’s Spring/Summer 2020 show, which, borrowing from his ‘anti-prep’ aesthetics and beachy predilections, involved isolated snippets of speech from Laguna Beach and The Hills. We made hyper-platform Tevas for the show… it was blissfully nostalgic for this SoCal native.

Matthieu Blazy has also REALLY been tearing it. From Paula Cole to the trailer for The Hours. He’s doing something really sonically major at Chanel.

Fashion show I didn’t attend
I do wish I had attended any of Alexander McQueen’s shows, but the one that really comes to mind is his last, Plato’s Atlantis. I experienced it to a degree because it was just at the dawn of live streaming. I was a senior in high school in a tiny boarding school in Ojai, California, tucked in my little cabin of a dorm room, trying desperately to refresh the link to watch the show and totally freaking out over the armadillo shoes. I thought, ‘God, I can’t wait to get outta here and over there.’

Substack that isn’t mine
Cultural Production by Rian Phin.

Thing I learned on Substack
That Toni Morrison kept journals in which she vocalised her aspirations. They are visually rich and beautiful. At the time, I imagine they were also quite delusional. I like being reminded that great success is borne from delusion. No Marty Supreme but ‘Dream Big.’

Fashion look from a movie
It’s hardly a question! Donyale Luna in Skidoo from 1968.

Person I go to when I need creative inspiration
I speak to my twin sister, DoNormaal, who is my favourite rapper and creative mind.

Note I saw on Substack
This really killed me for some reason.

Investment piece I purchased
I bought two incredible Spring 2016 Prada dresses from a sample sale that I had Frankensteined together to fit me. Anything from Mrs Prada is a worthy investment. But I love this dress more than anything—I still get a thrill when I find a runway piece that got away when I was too broke to buy it!

Irl shop
Bart’s Books in Ojai is one of my favourite stores on earth. Obsessed with the indoor-outdoor concept that is definitely considered a design innovation by tourists but is just a function of a beautiful and trusting society. It’s all about discovery there, and that’s my favourite part of any store. I know where to go for what I want; I like a store that shows me something I didn’t even know to look for.

Online shop
I am pretty addicted to Live Auctioneers. I don’t know if that really counts, as it’s more of a hosting platform for auctions from across the country. I’ve used it to furnish and decorate my homes over the years, and I adore the thrill of a bidding war!!

Fashion item I stole
One of my best friends, Modesta, let me borrow a denim duster made by the darlings of the British fashion scene at the time: Marques Almeida, around 2011. I still have it. Girlhood is never giving a borrowed item back. Girlhood is theft.

Fashion magazine story
This is, admittedly, quite pedestrian. But ‘Grunge and Glory’ from the December 1992 issue of American Vogue, shot by Steven Meisel and styled by Grace Coddington, did something to my brain chemistry.

I guess when I discovered it much later in my teens, it was the first time I saw high fashion trying to emulate normative youth culture and approaching success. It felt like an honest story, or even a portrait, rather than a fashion fiction. It wasn’t… but I was impressed by the facsimile. I still am.

Fashion Instagram account I follow
I really appreciate Boring Not Com. I’m not super into the dragging that happens there, but I do not see how it is any different than the perhaps slightly more skillfully sheathed dragging of fashion journalists and critics who do the same in papers and on websites, or worse, snarkily at a dinner party.

I believe there is a truly revolutionary spirit behind embracing anonymity in a world where everyone wants eyes and attention and invites and BFA Photographs at events. I also think having an opinion that is informed by experience, if not expertise, has become an incredibly undervalued thing… I also like that it doesn’t give two shits about being validated or well liked by establishment fashion and how much establishment fashion HATES IT. I mean, there are countless articles from journalists talking about how much disdain they have for this anonymous account. It’s quite funny, actually.

Perhaps my enjoyment is reactionary to Style Not Com which I have always found to be quite sycophantic and useless for an audience member while being immeasurably valuable to the brands that pay him to post about their shows– I don’t need another press release in my life– certainly not one that is fawning, and, even worse, one that simply presents the facts that we can see with our own two eyes, in the most abbreviated version imaginable. I just think if you’re going to be online, you should be saying something with a point of view. I also think if you’re going to take money to publish content, you should be required to disclose that. FTC compliance is an important tool in supporting transparency in this landscape.

Fashion Instagram account I follow
Dr Qin, my ultimate obsession.

Person that inspired my teenage style
'Tie-Dye girl’ from The Parent Trap was formative for me, personally, in both look and attitude.

Music I listen to when I need to get work done
Let me tell you something: nothing will get you locked in like Trent Reznor’s score for The Social Network. If I hear ‘In Motion,’ I’m finishing the task at hand. But scores in general do the trick. I’m a big Johann Johannsson fan. There is one track on the score for ‘Arrivals’ that is eerie but beautiful and feels like discovery itself– it’s called “First Encounter,” then there’s ‘The Beast’ from his score for Sicario. A bit droney and doomy, but sometimes I need the suspense, like I’m motivating myself towards a crescendo. This is all sounding weirder than I intended…

Person that inspired my current style
Mrs Roper from Three’s Company and Erykah Badu.

Person whose closet I wish I could raid
I would risk a lot for a crack at Diana Ross’s coffers.

Outfit I wore recently
I really dug my look for the Chanel couture show this summer. The shirt I’m wearing reads ‘fashion needs more Black women,’ which is crazy true.

Outfit that made me fall out of love with someone
When Aurora James made a dress for AOC to wear to the Met Gala with the phrase ‘Tax the Rich’ written across the bum, it was actually a really illuminating moment for me in terms of seeing how intoxicating wealth and power, but also fame and attention, are and how easily an addiction to these things can corrupt intention. It was just one of those moments of fraudulence where the vapidity becomes crystal clear, and the trust dissolves.

Fashion lesson I learned
We’re not curing cancer. We are not fixing the world. We are serving a minority population with the luxury of engaging with style and aesthetics “formally” and consumptively. Nothing we do here should feel existential. It will be okay.

Fashion subculture
I am obsessed with Japanese Rockabillys. In fact, they inspired the story I shot for Vogue Magazine with Theo Liu starring the inimitable Devon Aoki!

Vivienne Westwood had died that year, and we saw all these odes to her punkish spirit across the runway. I could think of no better place to capture that essence– that renegade spirit– than Tokyo. It is my favourite shoot I have ever done and took up a big old chunk of centre-of-book real estate in the September 2023 Issue. Really proud of that one.

Also, this isn’t a fashion subculture per se, but it’s an ethnic identity and cultural group whose inherent visual language and modes of dress have deeply impacted my view on personal style and community/collective style.

I spent some formative childhood years in Long Beach, California, very close to a neighbourhood called Hawaiian Gardens. It was home to a vast pacific islander and Latinx community. I would look out the window on the way to school in awe at some of the Chicano style. To this day, the Cortez is my favourite Nike shoe, and I lose my mind for a Dickies work shirt and pants.

Outfit that feels like my signature style
Dirt bag shorts, a t-shirt (likely with words or a face on it), a Chanel slingback or other hyper femme heel, tons of jingle-jangles (FKA jewellery and asymmetrical earrings).

Item I always have in my bag
The question is really more about items I never have in my bag. To which I would answer: any of the day’s necessities, always including, but not limited to, my house keys.