1) How did you find Justin? Darian Darling
2) What did Justin inspire you to buy? Camouflage everything.
3) What's the first thing you remember from your shoot with Justin? How drop dead his own jewelry line is and and how much he owns his masculinity and femininity.
4) At what point during the shoot did your jaw drop to the floor? Why? When he told me how he had so little money during his early days in Brooklyn, that he had to walk over the bridge, in his heels, to go to a party.
5) What personal quality/character did Justin make you admire or aspire to have? His wholehearted acceptance of and reflections on human nature, despite the prejudice he himself has faced: "The contradictions in people. I love really beautiful people who are really fucking smart. I love really ugly people who are really fucking dumb. I love contradictions. I love anything that’s just a huge contrast."
6) What did Justin inspire in you? To understand that "positivity comes in a certain way from your understanding of the negative," one cannot exist without the other. I find this concept makes so much sense as it relieves the shame associated with negativity.
7) What is your favorite thing about style? How bold he is, how what he wears is what he lives, not a costume. The layering, the eclectic mix of leggings and glitter boots with flannels, fringe and iconic leather jackets and the details of tattoos and chunky jewelry.
8) What style tip did you personally take away from your interview with Justin? To cut hosiery and make it a spat over your boots, to buy flannel shirts at K-Mart and how hideous combinations can turn into something that looks right.
9) Emotionally, what has stayed with you since your interview with Justin? His attitude that "the least rock and roll thing you can do is to live by the rules". I am rooting for him to get the full scale headline tour that he dreams of.
10) What was the most covetable item in Justin's wardrobe? His red leather handmade jacket.
11.) What was your favorite thing Justin said or did during the interview? "I think the big thing for me that really gave me confidence is that I’ve always been blessed with an amazing family, that supported whoever I wanted to be…. I’ll never forget I was walking through Greenpoint Brooklyn with my mom one day, and we had just come from working out together. So I was literally in sweatpants and sneakers with my mother, and some asshole starts screaming like the weirdest things ever- normal ones like 'faggot and this and that'. And then he starts screaming 'you’re a transgender.' I had no makeup on, I had no heels on, and I was literally in fucking sweats and Nike sneakers-really ugly, not even cute ones. So no matter what I wear, people get the femininity and blurred lines in no matter what I wear. I might as well wear what I want to wear, because I’m gonna get shit whether I wear it or not." "When I was third or maybe fourth grade, for Halloween, I went as a half man/half woman. And I had my aunt make me up, we took one of my mom’s tennis dresses and cut it in half. And I had one heel on, and it was literally half man/half woman. She sewed the outfit together; and made half of a mustache, half of a lip. So that was one very distinct memory, and I actually won Most Creative Costume."
12.) What was your favorite thing about Justin's house/Apt/? His piles of makeup on his bureau and the fact that he has moved to a house in LA to work with Tricky Stewart, the producer he is so excited to be collaborating with.
Questions answered by Co-Founder and Editor in Chief, Elisa Goodkind.
Video edited by Gregory Pescia.
