written by SHAAD D’SOUZA
photography JACKSON BOWLEY
styling LULU BULLOCK
What’s your “tribe”? What an awful question to ask someone in this day and age. To quote Groucho Marx (via Woody Allen): “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member”—words to live by in 2025. Protect your peace by removing yourself from the abject horrors of the world, whether your personal hell is the plastic prison of the Temuverse, the ultra-surveilled wasteland of Liverpool Street Station, or the cloutsick half-mile between Time Again and The River.
Desire a simple life, wherein the only lines to worry about are the ones outside Target before a new Stanley Cup drop. The irony that one never truly leaves the matrix plagues the anti-clout crusader. They feel superior to DSM VICs and ALD hangers-on, but still have to live with the knowledge of what all those acronyms stand for.
What does the anti-facial-recognition femme fatale look like? Wouldn’t you like to know! Her slinky, oversized gorpwear, pioneered by the likes of Billie Eilish as a way to stash an enormous and enigmatic aura, is repurposed as armour against the cruel eyes of the surveillance state. Her scarf? A barcode that attracts attention, just as much as it repels it. Her bag? Portable dazzle camouflage. Her wig? Hiding more than you could ever fathom.
The only thing “trad” about this wifey is the natural fibre she wears. She sleeps soundly knowing she’s got that shit on—that shit that won’t leach microplastics into her future baby’s water supply whenever she runs it through the wash. The future baby, of course, is a hypothetical. She spends far too much time online reading about rebel canning, going on r/microplastics, and posting photos of her thin wrists to lock down anyone right now.
The subject is a total Carrie Bradshaw or so she says. In this context, total Carrie means unmitigated mess. At night, she curls up in a giant BuzzBall, and her morning hit of Galaxy Gas, she’s found, is even more effective than coffee. For her, life is about the three Ps: poppers, pingers, and pink … uh, actually, I don’t think we can print that.
model STEVIE SIMS AT KATE MOSS AGENCY
set design RORY MULLEN
casting director DEAN GOODMAN
styling assistants SIAN CUTHBERT DAVIS, ELLIOTT BULMAN
location YOYO STUDIOS