Flaunt What You Got to Get What You Want

“I HAVEN'T A THING TO WEAR AND I ONLY HAVE $5 TO MY NAME”

Does this sort of hyperbole regularly afflict you like it does me, every time I have to try to look nice in public? Imagine the catastrophic spiraling that threatened to overtake me when it was time to gather wardrobe for my music video. Even between fundraising (shoutout to some of the most generous and kind people to have ever existed!)  and sinking a lot of my own money (and debt) into this, the production was still on a shoestring budget. When it finally came time to start making moves on hair, makeup, and wardrobe, my brain felt FRIED.

Enter my good girlfriend Caitlin Monahan, a professional wardrobe stylist, working between New York and Los Angeles. 

Challenge: she was in New York during pre-production, and wouldn't be in town for any fittings, or for the three production days. 

Solution: good thing we live in the 21st century!

Over two Zoom sessions and several bullying texts that I absolutely deserved, she pulled together all the looks for this production with her resourcefulness, her encyclopedic knowledge of my own closet, and an understanding of the characters I was representing on screen. Ideal circumstances? Not at all, and I hope I never have to do this like this again. I've now paid my dues. But I cannot deny how much I love how we came together to meet this challenge, in a sustainable way. Because everything you will see me wearing in the video, I still have in my closet, rocking them at important events, on auditions, and more.

For this project, there was always the option of renting, or putting wardrobe on a credit card and then returning them later. Productions with budgets both micro and macro do this as a matter of practice. But considering the overall budget, I liked our way of handling character looks. It met several challenges:

• keeping wardrobe spend to a minimum by sourcing directly from my own closet, freeing up cash for the overall production budget

• keeping in mind my energetic bandwidth: without an assistant, returns were too much of a labor intensive process for me at the time

• any additional accessories and pieces I acquired had to be easily integrated into my current wardrobe, reflecting my current style, because I was sorely in need of some upgrades

It just goes to show that you don't need a million dollar budget to look like a million dollars. What you need is a healthy respect for craft, talented collaborators who respect their own craft to the utmost, vision, healthy communication, and a willingness to push your creative problem-solving skills.

I'm so grateful to everyone who worked on this project, especially my friend Cait. “Oh Rosie!” Will be live on VEVO/YouTube on March 8th! Subscribe to my YouTube channel to get the notification as soon as it's live.