HINDSIGHT

We were way too stoned on this trip, almost to the point of exhaustion.

I was taking a roadtrip up to Asheville to finish my sleeve before my artist moved up to Connecticut. Somehow, I convinced Nijah that taking almost a week off of working and joining me on the journey was the right thing to do. We were idiot best friends, so any chance we had to get stoned together and listen to music was one we took.

Asheville was cold and rainy most of the days. When it was sunny, we hiked and drank expensive coffee and kicked leaves on the side of the road. We had pre-rolled like, eight fat joints for the trip, and started smoking about ten minutes into the drive.

THE IDEA:

How did this idea spawn? You guessed it — thrifting. We were lucky enough to be staying with Nijah’s friend in Asheville, so one of the days we took him out on a thrifting adventure (a very classic Bee move). It was one of those Goodwill’s that have giant free-for-all bins, where you pay by the pound. After about an hour of hopeless digging into musty denim and stretched tees, I stumbled on this shirt — a men’s button down with the most beautiful colors I had seen. Nijah and I, both pretty stoned, geeked over the shirt and said, “we could use this for photos!” without having an action plan. After getting back to Josiah’s house, we realized that the orange couch and the wall of sunlit windows would pair well with the top, and we decided we were going to shoot it right then.

THE OUTFIT:

Aside from the top, I knew I wanted to maintain an almost ‘Austin Powers’ energy — that being said, I kept the bottoms extremely simple with white cotton underwear. The shag rug was a rug sample that Josiah was considering for his new flooring. I kept all of my rings on (at the time, I refused to shoot without all of them, all the time). If you pay close enough attention, one of my pointer fingers is missing an acrylic — it had come off at some point on our drive, and I manipulated all of my poses to try and be hiding it, if at all possible. Lastly, the socks were borrowed from Josiah, who happened to have a collection of intentionally mismatched socks. Pretty big flex, if you ask me.

THE STYLING:

Fun fact: I had actually gotten my eyebrows microbladed like, two days before this. They were extremely thick and dark and raw, and because of that I couldn’t really put any makeup on my face. I told Nijah I wanted to keep my face out of the shots because of it, but in the end the thick brows didn’t end up taking away too much from the overall vibe.

THE SHOT:

We were stoned as fuck and didn’t have an end goal, necessarily. There was no shot list — we were just hoping we would make some pretty color shit happen. The window directly to my right had to be diffused with a thin yellow sheet, but was our only source of light. The joint added a nice haze in the air. I started posing upright but quickly fell over the couch and played with depth (a quick tip for sets with few props to work with!) The stunner shot for me ended up being the one above: identity removed, vibe created. I love art pieces that have me in them but that don’t have me in them.

Total cost to execute this vision was like $30, and that includes the weed. Nijah and I have gotten pretty good at getting crafty with the shit we have around us to set a vibe, and thanks to Josiah’s retro-y house and cool socks, this set came out really fucking cool. One of my favorites to date.

What piece do you want me to deconstruct next? Let me know!