Dear Reader,

Welcome to this Spring edition of Hoot, where we are tending to the practice and process of getting dressed. Inspired by the friction of play in our Editor-at-Large’s personal style manifesto, this issue focuses on taking pleasure in the practice and how to find it.

In an age of identity, accessories of the everyday become something hyper-meaningful and surreal. Before you is a symphony of seven style stories, each textured by their own fictions, desires, aesthetics, and histories. This issue welcomes you with “Bound”, a love letter to pleasure, and critique on the hypersexuality of race. Exploring the antithesis of getting dressed. “Morning After” is a comedown of the primping and plucking, relishing in smeared makeup and heels in hand, while “Dressing in Mushrooms” is a collaborative organic art and fashion project that rethinks the meaning of decomposition and celebrates the beauty of decay. We turn to cooking as an act of affection and communion in “Convivium”. Closing this issue, New York’s queer nightlife takes flight in “DRAGged”, a celebration of the camp.

Getting dressed is the final outfit and all of its fifteen drafts; the pile of clothes littered across my bed, and the alchemic brilliance of sporting that belt as a necklace. Against the world’s harsh rhythms, there is comfort in knowing that I can begin every day with an exercise of agency and self-hood. To be a part of Hoot is to take part in a community that understands style as both the medium and the message. A surrender and reflection.