Tavi Gevinson first came into the public eye at the age of 12, when she started a fashion blog called Style Rookie that received almost 30,000 readers a day. Style Rookie became all the talk in the fashion world, and Gevinson was invited to attend her very first New York Fashion week along with many prestigious industry events afterward.
Over the past six years, Gevinson has become a prominent name in the fashion world, Editor-In-Chief of her own online website Rookie, and recently made her Broadway debut in the play This Is Our Youth.
Despite having quite the portfolio at 18, what makes Gevinson so unique is the fact that despite all her successes, she shamelessly admits how tough growing up is, and teaches us the importance of being confident in yourself and your interests, even if they don’t align with the rest of society.
“Once people got mad because I was physically taking up space (at a Dior show during New York Fashion Week) because I wore a giant bow on my head and whoever was sitting behind me said something about it even though I was really short at the time. So then that became a whole ‘she has no right to be there’ thing because I’m not a fashion expert or whatever. People got really mad about a giant pink bow.”
Gevinson was mocked and criticized by many, but believes that at that time, it was who she was.
“My heroes at that time were Iris Apfel, Edie Beale and Isabella Blow: women who were at an age when – I’m told – you kind of stop caring. So I thought, if I start not caring aged 12, then I’ll be good. I was trying to combat what I saw at school: girls feeling this pressure to look a certain way and sexualize themselves. Not necessarily for political reasons, but on a personal level, that wasn’t appealing to me.”
At the age of 15, Gevinson launched her website Rookie, about the trials and tribulations of teenage adolescence, through creative writing and photography. Rookie was created at a time where Gevinson herself was in high school, trying to figure out who she was and where she belonged. She describes her friends as “the art kids who smoked.”
“I think everybody should go to high school. It’s horrible and it unites you with other people.”
As our life experiences develop, and our circle of friends and acquaintances expand, it is important to always stay true to yourself and your authenticity. You must fully own what you believe to be right, wrong, funny, interesting, outrageous and appealing. We may not be in high school anymore, but the battle to be our true selves at all times is a constant one.
Image Credit: Huffington Post
