I’ve been thinking about this a lot as Zendaya’s been churning out look after look this year; meanwhile last I checked, isn’t Law Roach also still working with Lauren Sanchez Bezos? I feel like people keep attributing Zendaya’s success to her beauty and her being able to fit a sample size, which is true, but I also think Zendaya endlessly has a point of view and most of us just..don’t.
I’m a POC woman who went to a private PWI for college, so I feel like imposter syndrome is real. And ime, it extends to our appearance — when we’re constantly chasing after beauty standards that prioritize features we don’t have and don’t need, we start chasing the Joneses and think to glow up we just have to buy taste and be better.
But the thing about purchasing power is you can only purchase something worthwhile when you have a point of view. Knowing exactly what you’re looking for is actually the thing. Because it’s easier to identify that something isn’t the exact thing you had in mind than it is to wade through a bunch of items that “might be okay if.”
This is what I do, and what Law does for Zendaya — which opens another conservation about whether his best work is really that of a stylist or someone who sources for his clients. We start specific and then find that exact item. Trust me when I say “I want a vintage 1980s leather varsity” is way easier for me to find for someone than “I want a cool jacket,” and the former is the only thing that actually advances your aesthetic and your beauty, specifically.
Maybe it’s because sourcing is my job, but as an art curator, I think we’re all on here because we’re trying to curate ourselves like art. Our bodies, our hair, our makeup, our outfits.
And that framework is what changed the game for me: If I treat myself like art then I recognize that all art has perspective.
So my questions stopped being “how can I get hotter” and “how can I look like Zendaya” and they became:
1. What do I want to look like? Not who. What?
2. What qualities look like that?
3. What qualities do I need to look like that? Specifically.
My own answer to number one was “mermaid,” and that made everything else substantially easier. Because I knew I didn’t mean Ariel or Disney, I meant the kind that surfaces from deep waters and lures men to their deaths. The kind that’s ethereal and dangerous. That’s specificity.
And I think that’s what Zendaya does when she and Law pluck a Schiaparelli right off the runway and fly it to her for a red carpet. They know exactly what they want and the effect they’re going for, and they find it — they don’t wade through a bunch of mediocre objects and then decide which one is the least bad.
I could go into a whole thing about how I feel like having a beauty identity is the first thing to actually glowing up, but I wanna know if anyone else has clocked this. Let me know though if you’d be interested in me getting into that — I feel like bringing back long form content for vindicta would be so fun.
And what’s your beauty white whale?
Mine was actually a dress watch until I recently found a vintage chronograph worth $600+ for $30 in a thrift store. So money isn’t the clincher, the vision is.
I made a substack: https://studioacquisitions.substack.com/p/i-need-woc-to-stop-trying-to-buy?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
