laia is currently the senior fashion news editor at vogue runway. she has worked as a freelance print editor for interview magazine and dazed, where she was also an editor-at-large. previously, she was the features director at garage.

her first book, psychic taste, was published by von zos on february 2019. 


she has also worked as a stylist, and in 2017, she collaborated with hilton als on a james baldwin-inspired portfolio for the paris review.

you can find her on instagram.

born and raised in puerto rico, she now lives in brooklyn.

get in touch! geometricsleep at gmail dot com







Plum Sykes Loves Dead Party Girls

The Bergdorf Blondes writer revisits her youth for her new novel, Party Girls Die in Pearls.


Carly Jean Andrews.
"When you look at it in the cold, hard, light of day, you don't feel that much emotion. It's very strange." I am on Skype with the writer Plum Sykes and we are talking about dead bodies. Specifically, we are talking about the "absolutely disgusting pictures of people killed in the most horrible ways" that she saw as part of the research for her new murder-mystery series, the first of which will be out May 9. It's called Party Girls Die in Pearls.
"I've always thought, actually, a dead body or death is not as frightening as people think," she says. "The thought of a grisly death is much more frightening than an actual death, I suppose."
I remember reading Plum's stories in my mother's copies of Vogue when I was a teenager. I remember seeing her photos in the magazine's party pages. Unbeknownst to me, the fact that she often appeared in those party pages meant people did not take her as seriously when she eventually wrote a book, the deliciously funny Bergdorf Blondes. A party girl who is also a writer?, everyone thought, but like, hello, did they never read Eve Babitz? She released another novel after that, The Debutante Divorcée, which was one of the first novels I read after the election, when I was desperate to escape reality even if just for a couple of hours. Her novels always feature glamorous women flying around in PJ's (that's short for private jets, darling), so you can imagine that talking about "grisly deaths" is not one of the topics I would've ever imagined discussing with Plum. Yet here we are.
There's good reason for this, as Party Girls is about Nancy and Ursula, two girls who meet on their first day at Oxford University in the late '80s and become obsessed with solving the murder of one of the popular girls at school. I devoured it in two days.
A few weeks later, I talked to Plum over Skype about fancy fowl, It girls, and the one time she saw a dead person ("This guy died next to me on an airplane of a heart attack. I remember thinking, Wow, that man's dead."). It was an absolute dream.
When I suddenly learned about this job called being a fashion writer, I thought, I found what I want to do.
Laia Garcia: When did the idea for Party Girls Die in Pearls first come to you?
Plum Sykes: I went to Oxford University in the late '80s. I think even when I was there, I always thought it would be kind of a funny novel because the experiences were so extreme and amusing, and it was so cliquey and so silly. A little bit like Manhattan, actually. So I always had it in the back of my mind that I would love to write a book about Oxford.
Then, about four years ago, I wrote a Kindle single for Amazon.com which was called Oxford Girl. It was actually a nonfiction, 10,000-word download. I wrote that, and then my agent kept saying to me, "Why don't you turn it into a novel?" At the time, I'd just had my second child and I was feeling quite tired. I'd had very, very bad endometriosis.
LG: Oh, really?
PS: Yeah. I'd had like three operations. At the time, when they had said "Turn it into a book," I didn't have the physical strength or the concentration because of my two children. Then, a couple years ago, I took out that little bit of writing and reread it. I thought, What am I doing? This is so funny, of course this can be a novel.
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LG: I feel like you have a weirdly dark sensibility. I'm thinking about the attempted-suicide scene in your first book, Bergdorf Blondes, and now you've written a murder mystery. Where does it come from?
PS: Well, I do like a bit of horror, actually, but kind of fake horror. Do you know what I mean? When I was a child, I loved history — this was before I went off to study history — but you know the stories that I loved? I loved the princes in the tower, these poor little six-year-old boys being kept in the Tower of London, but wearing like frilly collars and velvet sailor suits. In my mind, I think they were suffocated. I love that story. I loved anyone who was beheaded. I loved Mary Queen of Scots. Marie Antoinette. Any queen.
I also love Agatha Christie and P.D. James, and those sort of mystery writers, but they're not really noir. Like, those books are kind of social commentaries with a murder. That was really what I was trying to sort of emulate. I think we all have a dark side, don't we?
LG: So you studied history at Oxford. Did you have an idea of what you wanted to do career-wise when you went to university?
PS: Well, you know, English people at that time didn't really have career plans [laughs]. We didn't do internships or anything like that. In the holidays, we went on vacation, we didn't do a job or anything. I definitely had this period of like a year and a half after college, I was like, Oh, fuck, what am I going to do? I hadn't done any work, I hadn't done any internships. I couldn't really work a computer or pick up the phone really in an office. I was highly educated, and I highly overintellectualized everything, which was absolutely useless for getting my first job. I didn't have very much self-confidence at all. I think that's a combination of English girls being a little bit squashed at that time and the '80s, it was still incredibly sexist. My book actually has this underlying theme — aside from the dark side and the comedy — about the sexism of the UK and America in the '80s, and how old-fashioned it still was. Even though people think the '80s was a modern era, it was very sexist. It was very male-dominated.
I went to British Vogue. I did an internship for three weeks, and I stayed for four years. I never actually had the plan to work for Vogue, but I was always very interested in fashion, and I was very interested in writing. When I suddenly learned about this job called being a fashion writer, I thought, I found what I want to do.
LG: Then you moved to New York to work at American Vogue, and you were written about as if you were a party girl. Did that bother you? Do you think people underestimated you?
PS: It was a very odd thing, because I went to the parties to report on the It girls. I knew I had to get to Vogue at half past seven the next morning after all these parties. I never drank anything. I would get a champagne glass and ask them to fill it with Perrier. It was so fun writing down what everyone said to each other and all the kind of catty comments and things. Then suddenly I was being reported on by other people. Aerin Lauder and the Miller sisters were like the leading It girls of that moment. They were generating entire magazines, and I had a little mention now and again in the New York Post, orwhatever. I was really flattered by it. I must say, whenever I was labeled an It girl, I thought, But I'm not an It girl because I have a job and I have to go to work. I wasn't offended by it exactly, but I did think, They don't know me, really.
I thought, God, no one's ever said to me, 'You should write a book.' Least of all Anna Wintour.
LG: You said you weren't sure that you could be a novelist. What made you want to start writing a book?
PS: What happened to make that change, going from being a magazine writer to author — although, I just call myself a writer, I think it's a bit pretentious to say I'm an author — was I wrote a column for Vogue called "Fashion Fiction" which was a fictionalized email exchange between an uptown girl and a downtown girl. This was when email was first coming in, and it was really, really funny, if I do say it myself. I remember sitting across Anna [Wintour, editor in chief of Vogue] eating her enormous steak, big and raw, as always. She said to me, just in a throwaway, "You know, Plum, that column could be a book." That definitely stayed with me. I thought, God, no one's ever said to me, 'You should write a book.' Least of all Anna Wintour.
LG: One of my favorite things about your books is they're almost anthropological. They always paint a picture of a particular moment in time. Do you think that's part of your history background seeping in?
PS: Definitely writing about Oxford in the '80s for this book, I researched it as if I was researching a historical essay. Obviously, I have my own memory, but I went back and talked to lots and lots of people who were there at that time and before. Then one of the other things I did that was very geeky, research-y, kind of history thing to do, was I went in and just sat in the libraries in Oxford and I read through all of those newspapers and all of their gossip columns. I just immersed myself in the time.
LG: How many interviews did you do?
PS: Oh my God! I don't know, actually, loads. I interview people continuously while I'm writing a book. I remember thinking to myself, Oh my God, I've got this book deal to write a murder. Oh, shit, shit, I've never done this before. I need to find a detective to talk to who knows about murders. I didn't know anything about it, Laia, nothing, nothing, nothing. Then I noticed that, on a round-robin email between a group of us who'd been at Oxford at the same time, that one of my friends who I had not spoken to for 25 years had become a police commissioner.
I sent this email to him, and I said, "Do you know any really brilliant murder detectives that I can speak to for my new book?" He wrote back immediately and put me in touch with this very experienced detective who had done some of the most interesting cases in the UK and had worked in the '80s. In the '80s, there wasn't any DNA testing. I wanted to set the book before DNA and before there was all this technical stuff. I wanted it to be more like us just figuring out the murder from stories and situations. Not from a scientific result.
The detective was brilliant. Then he introduced me to a pathologist, so I went and met this pathologist who basically became the character in the book because he was just so funny and so charismatic and had such a dark but humorous view of death. It was really, really good to go meet those people and find out what it really is like to do an autopsy.
LG: What is your writing ritual like when you are in writing mode?
PS: Well, at the beginning of the book, I think I write for about three to four hours a day, but as I get more into the editing, and there's much more volume of writing to be done, and I get nearer to the deadlines, then I would work all morning, and then I would try and do like an hour or two in the afternoon as well. But because I've got two adorable children and a lovely husband, that cuts into the amount of time. If you're a working mother, you've got to be very, very focused and cram it into that time and just not procrastinate. My thing is I don't spend too much time thinking, Oh, what am I going to write today? What am I going to do? I know when I sit down at the computer what I'm going to do already.
LG: What are your current obsessions?
PS: At our house in the country, I got really into chickens. Then the fox ate all the chickens, so that was a bit of a disaster. Then I discovered that guinea fowl — which are a kind of West African bird, are really beautiful, very chic, kind of look like they're from a fashion shoot — they would roost in the trees and they didn't get eaten. And now whenever I walk outside the house, they start chattering and following me around and stuff, which is quite funny.
Also, Stranger Things is incredible. We've actually been having a really, really good time with our TV because I've been able to stop working so, so hard with all the writing. Now I can enjoy myself and watch telly.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Laia Garcia is not so much a Bergdorf Blonde as she is a Real Real Brunette.
Originally published on Lenny, April 28, 2017.

Shopping for Gifts from the Universe

How buying vintage designer clothes from your teen years can make you feel like you're living your best grown-up life.

Kelly Abeln.
I've always joked-but-not-really that I know I am living my best life when I am doing the things that teenage me wanted to do but never got the chance to. For example: seeing the Spice Girls live (they never played in Puerto Rico, but I saw them in my 20s), traveling to Japan and playing a drinking game with a geisha in Kyoto (OK, my teen self never actually wanted this, but trust that if she knew it was an option, she would SO be here for it), or finding a purple and green dress from my all-time-favorite Prada collection from spring 1996, for under $100, and wearing it to my 30th birthday, a full 18 years after it was officially declared "in."
It retailed for $960, back when I spent most of my time singing about Walking into spiderwebs and secretly wishing I could make it the message on our answering machine. But I wasn't even paying attention to the prices. These clothes, this whole business of fashion was so incredibly out of my reach that it wasn't even "out of my reach," it was just an interest I had, the same way I had an interest in outer space, but knew that I would never witness the beauty of the Andromeda Galaxy firsthand.
In any case, sticker shock has never kept me from lusting after a piece of clothing, because I know one day it will be mine. I don't mean "Wait until it goes on sale," although sure, that's a thing you can do. What I mean is, wait years and years, and eventually you will find your dream garment on eBay for a small fraction of its original price. The bonus of shopping like this is that when you finally find what you have been looking for, that one item that just happens to be available in your size — and usually for verrrrrry cheap — it feels like a little gift from the world. (There is also no risk of having buyer's remorse.)
It might seem like a weird way to buy clothes, depending on privileged people to throw out things they don't have any use for, but that you're still thinking about two seasons or five seasons or even a decade later. Yet that is usually what I spend the most time on when I am pissing around the Internet. I used to go on eBay every couple of months, and maybe once or twice a year, there was a treasure waiting for me: silver-foil Mary Janes from Marc Jacobs spring 2005 collection, purple and white plaid pumps from Miu Miu spring 2001, a floral-print skirt from Balenciaga's spring 2004 collection (which I later traded to a friend for a very-sold-out and hard-to-get Christopher Kane dress with a gorilla on the front). These pieces always end up becoming part of my power-dressing outfits, because I assume there is a bit of magic in the fact they made their way to me in the first place.

I love the ephemeral quality of fashion, that clothes exist only for a specific window of time, and that our closets are an active trove of memorabilia from our everyday lives. If I see a woman wearing a jacket from J.W. Anderson's latest collection, I think, There's a woman with great taste and a bit of expendable income and keep walking, but a woman wearing a horse-print dress from when Stella McCartney was designing for Chloé back in 2001, it's more of a Holy shit! Amazing, and I will want to talk to her because in her look, I see that we have a shared history.
The year I turned 30 was not a very good one. I was mostly unemployed or "freelancing," depending on my audience. I didn't shop the entire year, because even spending $24.90 on a top at Zara would have left me unable to eat for a week. But when I found that purple and green vine-print spring '96 Prada dress — a holy-grail dress if there ever was one — for $59.99, I knew there was just no way I could let it go.
I wore it a few months later when my then-boyfriend took me out to a birthday dinner at the same restaurant where we had had our first date. I was depressed about my job prospects, and our relationship had a looming expiration date that we were both ignoring for the duration of the meal. Later that weekend, we would break up (for the third time) and get back together within the span of a couple of hours, but wearing that dress I felt like at least I was failing while actively following my dreams. In New York!, wearing the 20-year-old Prada dress I had fantasized about for so long.
And the truth is, if you gave me the option to own a new Gucci dress or the red velvet suit that Tom Ford sent down the runway in 1997, I will always, always, pick the red velvet suit. Despite the fact that I've never met this suit, I have loved this suit, I have a relationship with this suit. When I was figuring out what a woman should be, what me as a woman would look like, I imagined myself in that sharply tailored velvet suit and a baby-blue button-down shirt unbuttoned down to there, attending some sort of business function where an exposed décolletage is not frowned upon. This particular suit won't be popping up on any resale website for "a couple hundred dollars" anytime soon — it's one of those iconic looks that will be in a museum in a few years, if it's not already there. But I know that one day, it too will find its way into my wardrobe. Because me and these clothes, we go way back.
Originally published on Lenny, April 6, 2016.

Lit Thursday: "The Girl Issue"

Lenny recommends magazine articles of yore.


We're trying something new for Lit Thursday: Instead of recommending books every week, we're going to be recommending some memorable magazine articles by and about women. This week, Lenny's deputy editor, Laia Garcia, writes an ode to Spin's entire "Girl Issue" from 1997.
It is not unusual for a person to describe a book they particularly identified with, or learned something from, as "my Bible." And although at different points I have definitely done the same (Catcher in the Rye in my teens, I Love Dick in my late 20s, etc.), the one true constant publication that actually functioned as my de facto guide to the world was the November 1997 issue of Spin. The one with Fiona Apple (of course) on the cover. The one dubbed "The Girl Issue."
I very clearly remember buying this issue at our local Walgreens. It was Fiona's relentless, "over it" gaze that attracted me like a moth to a flame, and I am still so glad that when I brought the issue to my mom, who was standing at the check-out line, she agreed to buy it for me.
In 1997, much like today, there was a surge of feminism, except back then it was called "Girl Power" (thank you, Spice Girls!), and this issue is pretty much a collection of articles, interviews, and lists on the state of Girl Culture at the time — starting off with Ann Power's essay about the state of feminism now (the '90s), titled, very aptly, "Everything and the Girl." Reading it again this week was a wild ride, as I simultaneously felt all the same things I did when I first read (and read, and reread) the magazine that I did when I was thirteen years old, but also because I realized how much of it could've been about the state of feminism now, even though it's two decades later.
There's, of course, a profile on Fiona Apple, with iconic photographs that I was disappointed were taken by Terry Richardson but remain too iconic to be damaged by his trash-ass self (she is burying herself under a couch cushion). It's funny because now I am older than she was in those pictures, but when I see her, she still seems like a strong woman to me (as opposed to when I see pictures of a young Kurt Cobain, and all I can think about is, Aww, he was such a baby!). It's weird to read all the adults' takes on Fiona and see how much they differed from my view of her as a kid.
The real pièce de résistance was "Girls! Girls! Girls!," a piece edited by Maureen Callahan and Kim France (who later founded Lucky magazine). It became my literal guide on what things to seek out and get involved with. Reading back through it, I now realize the list was a little tongue-in-cheek, but also, it wasn't wrong? And growing up in Puerto Rico, with spotty access to whatever rudimentary Internet existed back then, and no older siblings to guide me through the world of what was cool, it really didn't matter if they were snarky about shit.
Among the most important things on the list were: witches, Kurt Cobain, Daria, bare midriffs, Drew Barrymore's lower-back tattoo, Jordan Catalano, body glitter, and snowboarding; a list of books every girl should have on her book shelf (The Bell Jar, Go Ask Alice, Weetzie Bat, Scum Manifesto); a list of CDs every girl should own (Elastica, The Breeders, Salt-N-Pepa, Stevie Nicks); a sidebar on important moments in girl history (Nadia Comaneci scores the first perfect ten at the Olympics, Amy Fisher commits murder); and a sidebar on important movies (Clueless, Times Square, Heathers). It remains the most formative listicle of my entire life.
Elsewhere in the issue, there was a fashion shoot with Chloë Sevigny, an exposé on the weird trend of young girls who were murdering their newborn babies, an article on a young model whose reputation went to shit after her image was used next to an article titled "I got trashed and had sex with three guys," a look at the other all-lady festivals (including Michigan's Womyn Music Festival, which definitely introduced me to the word womyn). Finally, there was an essay about the allure of the teenage Lolita, and a photo shoot with up-and-coming female artists — the blurry photo of Mary Timony remains a favorite.
I have read this magazine so many times in my life, that even the ads, and the photos for other articles that maybe I was too young to understand, remain heavily laced with nostalgia (did I love Kids in the Hall when I finally watched their TV show years later because of the tiny picture of their movie Brain Candy on an article about the overmedication of Americans? I'm not saying yes, and I am not saying no).
This issue remains so important that it survived all my collaging adventures of high school and college. A couple of years ago, I bought a copy on eBay to give as a gift to one of my friends, and a couple of months ago I bought another copy, because I decided that I needed to have the physical object of it again, despite the fact that my original is still at my mom's house, in a plastic bin that she knows holds all my sacred items.
It seems weird that one magazine issue could be responsible for so many facets of my life and my personality, but "The Girl Issue" was a window into so many different worlds that I may have never known about (or at least would've taken me a lot longer to find out about). I also wonder if my love for magazines and decision to work in media came from knowing the direct impact it can have on just one person, how it can be a little lifeline. This magazine was, and will always remain, my Bible.
Laia Garcia is the deputy editor at Lenny, and she really loves magazines from the '90s.
Originally published on Lenny, March 9, 2017.

The Lenny Interview: Lisa Yuskavage

The iconic artist on inspiration and why "bimbo" is the wrong word when it comes to her figures.

LISA YUSKAVAGE BONFIRE, 2013–2015
(COURTESY THE ARTIST AND DAVID ZWIRNER, NEW YORK/LONDON)

The 20 or so minutes it takes me to walk from my apartment to artist Lisa Yuskavage's studio in Brooklyn are pure agony. I am the most nervous I have ever been. Why do I do this to myself?, I repeatedly mutter under my breath. I've loved her work for a long time. I have a vivid memory of looking at her work in the pages of a magazine as a teen. Even then, I knew her work was controversial to many people. Her paintings of naked female figures catch your gaze, while you're probably distracted by their bare breasts. Even the ones whose eyes are looking away from you still make you feel guilty because you're gawking. Weeks before we meet, I am organizing a pile of magazine tear-outs from God-knows-when when I find an image of her iconic work Little Day, Little Night among old tax forms and cut-out fashion editorials.
You should never meet your idols, I think as I approach her studio.
She greets me at the door, asking, "Would you like some tea?" For some reason, this puts me at ease, and my fears dissipate. Soon after, it's just the two of us talking like this isn't the first time we've met. She walks me to a table full of her childhood memorabilia, which is part of a massive archival project of her own work. She has put a lot of that work on her website already: you can search by subject, by year, by dimensions, even by color. It's remarkable, all the more so because it seems rare for an artist of her stature to have such a robust website.
Lisa picks out a junior-high report card from a messy bunch of papers on top of a folding table in her studio. Her grades are all satisfactory, and there is a note from the teacher: "Lisa needs to talk less in class." She also shows me a special report she wrote around the same time on the overpopulation of pets, which is hysterical in its seriousness, especially because she collaged the folder with images of things like dogs in outfits and advertisements for pet-cemetery plots (the undeniable proof there's a pet problem). The irony, she says, is that when her dogs recently passed away after a long illness, she told her veterinarian, "You just lost your best client."
Finally, we walk into her main workspace. It is bright and airy, and there are three paintings in various stages of progress, all on opposite walls. The studio is glamorous in that it's so bare-bones. The middle of the room is mostly empty. There is enough space to have a party, maybe roller-skate a bit, but there is an unremarkable black office chair and a stool right in the middle of it all, and that's where we sit to begin our formal interview. We've already been talking a mile a minute, but I haven't yet started recording, so it feels like it doesn't count. We talk about going to an all-girls school, discovering feminism through dream prophecies, and Madonna songs, all with the constant hum of the aboveground train in the background. It's a beautiful day.
Laia Garcia: What did it feel like when you made the first painting where you realized you had found your point of view, the thing that made your paintings special, like, "Holy shit. This is it"?
Lisa Yuskavage: It was so specifically "Holy shit. This is it." It was a painting called The Gifts. I did everything against the rules, and it made me really happy. I decided to take on a different persona to work, sort of like shift persona. Blue Velvet had just come out in the theaters. There's this character, Frank, the guy who sucks gas and says "Show me your pussy" to Isabella Rossellini. I was frightened by him, but I thought he was funny.
I decided to just make a painting where I was pretending to be Frank and scare the image, like, "Show me your tits." It was a funny conversation, and the paintings started to talk back. I felt so engaged for the first time. That was probably 1991. It was the first time a painting truly came alive and got up and almost walked around.
LG: This was about five years after you finished grad school?
LY: Yeah. I'd done some work before that. I got to grad school as a young woman full of bravado. I graduated from Tyler School of Art, and I was not a special student in any way. Not extraordinary. Nobody would have noticed me. I [did my] third year in Rome. I had a hard time settling down. I was mostly chasing boys and stuff. I was a somewhat serious student, but the minute there was a really nice, smart, talented, also cute guy drawing next to me, I was distracted. I think that's the struggle a lot for girls, is to know how to harness your seriousness and not worry that you're never going to have a life with a family. "What's to become of me?" was my constant refrain.
In Rome, I got even more distracted and got even more lost, because then I was wandering around looking at masterpieces like, "I'm never going to be an artist if this is what art looks like, because I'm so bad." I felt much more diminished. I thought I'd be an art teacher, which would be a perfectly great thing. I did not plan on being what I am in this studio here alone all day making big paintings.
I went to bed one night, and I had this dream that I was at the Mercer Museum and I was hanging back behind in the crowd. The tour guide said, "This expression on the staircase is in Latin, and I don't speak Latin so I don't really know what it means." In real life, it's all in English. It says stuff like "A penny saved is a penny earned." All of a sudden, a spotlight came on me, and I said, "I know what it means." Everybody turned around and looked at me. I said, "It means 'She conquers who conquers herself.'"
I woke up. I was bathed in sweat and hyperventilating. It was like my subconscious called me. Many years later, I realized that the phrase I saw on the staircase, Vincit qui se vincit, was my high-school motto. I went to a high school called the Philadelphia High School for Girls. Of course I never paid attention to it, never. I was too busy getting high or fucking off, doing the bare minimum. I was going through my old yearbook, and I just was like, "Oh crap. That's where I got that." I was like, "How do I know Latin in my dreams?" The expression "She conquers who conquers herself" was my call to feminism, which was "Rather [than] point the finger at anyone else, begin with yourself." That was what I started to do that day.
LG: How long did you go to the all-girls school?
LY: Four years. I wasn't one of the top students. I was kind of muddling through for a long time. I think that's the interesting thing.
LG: I went to an all-girls school too.
LY: Where?
LG: In Puerto Rico, where I grew up. It was an all-girls Catholic school from seventh grade to senior year. Our school motto was "Strength leads to honor." Do you think being surrounded by all women during that time had something to do with your approach to art later on?
LY: The fact that I made so many paintings of women?
LG: Not so much that you're painting women, but painting without caring what men think.
LY: I think that was a big part of it. Also there's a series of watercolors I made called Tit Heaven that directly come from my high school. [The girls in my] high school were from all over Philadelphia; everybody was slightly nerdy because you had to be smart to get in. [We had] Ukrainian girls that would come to school dressed in their Ukrainian national garb a couple of times a month, white girls from South Philadelphia that were Italian. It was very multicultural.
We were obsessed with Playgirl, and everybody thought we were crazy because we were reading the sexual fantasies in the magazine. We were so anxious to grow up and to become sexual creatures, trying really hard not to be embarrassed by penises, and to understand what was going on. We would read the sexual fantasies out loud to each other and we were completely hysterical.
I started this project, it was called "The Tit Papers." I tried to get everybody to draw what their boobs looked like from every possible angle. We were just obsessed with bodies, and we were like, "What do your tits look like when you lay down? What do your tits look like when you're kneeling?" Of course people were, like, just being silly, and they were drawing crazy boobs, but there were variations on all different sizes and shapes and things.
Many years later, actually very close to the time I made The Gifts, I made these watercolors called Tit Heaven, and they were loosely based on my memories of that kind of play, with disembodied breasts having adventures. I thought it was funny and kind of a great subject. It also had art-historical roots, like this surrealist sculptor and photographer Hans Bellmer. Anyway, you can probably find some sort of fictional or historical roots for pretty much everything, which is usually what I try to bring together. I think that [going to an] all-girls school gave me a sense of solidarity, a feeling that smart women are my people.
LG: Your first work in the '90s was very controversial, but it seems that with this new show that's now at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, which gathers your work from the past 25 years, the critics are starting to "get it." Do you think it's because the audience has changed, or that now that they have a large body of work to look at, it makes more sense to them?
LY: I think it's a bit of both things. My husband, who I have known since graduate school, when I get negative blowback, he says, "Lis, you're still not Muzak." This is the kind of work that is in some ways intended to be problematic. I understand that people are not used to hearing my voice. At first it probably sounded really bad, and I just kept on going. I've had people say that they used to hate it and now they're addicted to it.
LG: You always want to have those strong emotions either way.
LY: Yeah, and if people are open to change or being open to change themselves, that's really an exciting thing. I have felt that way myself about certain people's work. I went from not liking it to loving it and being really absorbed by it. If you find yourself hating something, be on the lookout for the possibility that you might actually find yourself loving that thing, because there is no such thing as a strong emotion without it relating to you somehow. We're so flooded with information that if somebody has a feeling, that's amazing. I don't feel bratty about that.
I had a long period of time where nobody was responding to my work and nobody was looking. I do intend them to be little troublemakers in some way, in the sense that I'm not going to back down if there is something I want to say that people don't like. I always just want to tell some sort of a story that seems relevant and truthful to me. It may not be the most pleasant story. I'm not here to glorify 100 percent of the time, and I almost get the feeling that some of my sisters out there hold me accountable for the fact that I [don't always] glorify women or tell the nicest story about them. I just tell a story that is partially true; it's not the whole truth.
There was this one period where I decided to work from models. I had been painting, inventing a figure, which I was calling Blonde This, Blonde That. When it came time to rethink how I was going to approach the paintings and I decided to try working from a model, I didn't just go out and hire any old blonde. I decided to get in touch with my best friend since grade school, KK. She lives in Philadelphia, drives a local train, but she's this really profound person. In my imagination, she was always the ideal blonde. In high school we always have, like, "Who's the pretty one? Who's the smart one? Who's the funny one?" She totally got what I was doing. She intuitively understood why it was important for me to use her. It's as if she was the person I had learned what a certain kind of character was like and the complexities of her character.
There were people who wrote about those paintings and called her a bimbo, called the paintings, "Lisa Yuskavage paints bimbos, bimbos this." Once a person says bimbo, then everybody starts saying bimbo. I got really offended by that because I never called her a bimbo, and I don't think about her as a bimbo just because I said blonde and a nude woman. A lot of that was like that Madonna song, "Don't lay your shit on me."
LG: "Human Nature."
LY: Yeah, "Human Nature." Don't lay your shit on me. That's part of it. People were really projecting a lot of their feelings about blondes. I was like, "Lordy, I did not say bimbo, not once." In talking about those paintings, I said, "Listen. This is how I feel about them. I feel that if the figures are low, they are not, like, lofty. I am painting a girl who came from a low place like me and I'm painting her not as a goddess, but say I'm making her seem much more accessible. If she's low, the way I paint her is that I get down into the ditch and I'm digging us both out of the ditch together. I'm trying to get us out. Through painting it, my real attempt is to bring us both up not so much through glorification but [because] once something is made into an artwork, it is raised because a spotlight has been put on it."
Originally published on Lenny, February 12, 2016.

Wild Women of 2016

A primer to cultivating new looks in the New Year.

Grace Miceli.
Usually at the beginning of the year, I make a big list of resolutions. Resolutions for work and for life and for relationships and for fun stuff like vacations and books I want to read, and, of course, fashion resolutions. Maybe you've heard the phrase "Dress for the life you want, not for the one you have." And although this phrase seems like one of those fashion-magazine tropes designed to entice you into purchasing a pair of Céline flats, I find "Dress for the life you want …" helpful. Sure, depending on what you do in real life, you may be limited on how much of yourself you can indulge. But there's always weekends, and you can always dress up at home and parade around your living room, or glamorously lie in bed with a glass of Champagne — if that's what you're into.
When it feels like you've exhausted all your usual sources of inspiration (1960s issues of Bazaar, Rihanna's Instagram account, old episodes of 3rd Rock from the Sun for Dr. Albright's '90s-minimal looks), it helps to search around in unusual places for a little power-up dose of spark. Maybe you see a woman on the street wearing a jaunty little wool beret, and it makes you think, Wait, maybe I can totally wear a beret. Or while you were deep into a marathon of Making a Murderer, you were totally inspired by Special Agent Debra Strauss's Ramones–meets–Jane Fonda–in–Klute hairdo, and off you went to the salon. Or maybe you saw a picture of North West wearing the perfect winter outfit that's just one or two steps removed from the way you dress every day, even though you are a 31-year-old woman and she is a two-year-old power-baby (OK, that last one is definitely me). 
These are my style resolutions for 2016. They are not about becoming a different person — they're about drawing inspiration from some wild women of the last 100-ish-years to bring from inside yourself what makes you memorable. Consider 2016 the year you ride or die for your instincts, with a little help from these women who made their names doing just that.
Commit to "the Look"
Sarah, Victoria, Isabella, Grace, Naomi, Mary, and Dora, a.k.a. The Sutherland Sisters, were seven women who lived in New York in the late 1800s and performed as a choir in circus sideshows and other venues. Their musical talent was adequate, I'm sure, but their real appeal lay in the fact that at the end of their performance, the sisters would turn around and let their hair down. Their ridiculously long hair, so long that it added up to 37 feet of hair combined. The secret to their long hair, they said, was a smelly concoction, made of witch hazel, bay rum, salt, and hydrochloric acid, that their mother used to put on their tresses, and like any other celebrity would do, they bottled that stuff up and became millionaires selling it – along with other products like dandruff shampoo and combs. 
They built a mansion with marble baths that all had running water (please do not forget this was the 1800s) and picked up weird habits along the way, like leaving their dead relatives in a room in their house, unembalmed, until the authorities had to step in on account of the smell and just its being plain unsanitary. Most of them never married, presumably for fear that they would lose their fortune, but they lost their fortune anyway. In part because they were not exactly thrifty (marble baths aren't cheap) and in part because bobs became the cool haircut of the 1920s and their long-ass hair lost all its allure.
The inspiration I plan to take from these iconic businesswomen and Kardashian precursors is to fully commit to the version of me that exists in my brain. Sometimes when I'm getting dressed I have completely formed outfits in my head, but when I look in the mirror I think, This is too much to take the train in. Better change. That's dumb as heck, because what do I care who's judging me on the R? I shouldn't let phantom shame from train riders, men, or changing trends influence my idealized version of me. The Sutherland Sisters were committed to their long hair, and nothing could change their mind. Sure, they were stubborn and ill-advised, but there's still something remarkable about their devotion to the cause. 
Embrace Feminist Narcissism
In her S.O.S. Starification Series, made in the 1970s, the artist Hannah Wilke posed for glamorous black-and-white portraits, her bare skin covered in chewing gum shaped like tiny vaginas. From afar, her body seems covered in scars or maybe warts, in stark contrast with Wilke's obvious beauty. But up close, the small vaginas on her body are at their most basic interpretation, symbolic of the objectification of women, of our second-class-citizen status. It's also quite funny, in the way that things that ring so true can often feel. 
You could describe Wilke's work, at least during the '70s, as "feminist narcissism," and as we go into 2016, I want to keep this attitude as a secret weapon. I am both completely serious but also not at all about this. It will be OK for me to give in to those things that society thinks I should give in to  because I am a woman — expensive face creams, Brazilian waxes, and high heels — just as it will be OK for me to wear the same sweatshirt/jeans/sneakers combo for five days in a row, fully knowing that I will almost always choose the latter because I don't care that much. If my body is a battleground, then maybe I can turn it into a weapon. Envelop myself in the things that give me the most power in the moment, indulge in the things that make me feel good without guilt. How could the results be anything short of ideal?
A.B.W. (Always Be Whitesnaking)
OK, I'll admit this isn't a new one for me — my obsession with Tawny Kitaen in Whitesnake videos has been going on for a few years now — but it's done so well for me that I want to make sure to keep it for 2016. It involves being ready to roll around on the hood of a random car at any moment, sure, but also lots of white lingerie, and gauzy white layers that you wear during summer nights, when you're just feeling a little loose. Tawny so wholeheartedly embraced her sexuality, but unlike other music-video girls whose bodies become just another prop in the scene — a lamp, a guitar, a fast car — she was just having fun, showing off her gymnastics abilities on top of a car, or out the window of a car, or generally in close vicinity of a car. 
I've never been one to embrace the body-conscious part of dressing, partly because growing up, Gwen Stefani's tomboy style became my obsession, but also because my lack of boobs as a teen never did much to feed any sort of sensual lifestyle I may have had in mind. On Tawny days, I don't think about how flat my stomach is, or how close to a wardrobe malfunction I might be (I am never really close to a wardrobe malfunction but sometimes get scared by a deep V-neck), and I just accept that this is me, that this is my body, that this is what I look like, and there's beauty in that. So, often I look in the mirror and say to myself, "Well, this is what you look like" before walking away, but there's no time to think things like that while you're lying across the hood of a car with one leg carefully bent and the other gracefully extended. 2015 turned out to be a solid year, and I'm ready for a better, more positive, kinder-to-myself 2016. Like some dudes in a band once said, "But I've made up my mind / I ain't wasting no more time / Here I go again."
Laia Garcia just discovered that she shares a birthday with Tawny, which means it's, like, cosmic.
Originally published in Lenny, January 6, 2016.
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