- Can you talk about how you feel right now?
- I feel quite nervous, actually.
I didn't expect it.
I'm 23.
I'm born in a blonde, long body from Holland,
from privileged background.
And talking about big world politics, or, in general,
inequality, is quite hard when you're
coming from a space where you're very, very privileged.
It puts me in a position where people could judge me
like, "Oh, there's another blonde girl
"trying to save the world."
- Can you maybe place your bag on the ground?
- Yeah.
I grew up in a tiny bubble in De Hague,
where everybody was wearings Uggs and jeans.
You're kind of taught by society to look at a certain woman,
and for me that woman, like the epitome of, "oh my God,
"this is what I want to be" was like a blonde
lingerie model, although I had brains.
And then I got scouted as a model,
and then I moved to New York.
And coming from this kind of dream and being so insecure
and thinking okay, the only way I get confirmation
of my existence or of being a woman is by fulfilling
this idea of, yeah, being a supermodel (laughs).
And of course the opposite happened
and I saw a side of the fashion industry
that was just disgusting.
It was like a classic story.
I had to lie at customs.
They get you there without a working visa.
You're 18.
You're incredibly insecure,
and you want to fulfill the dream of becoming a model.
It's like there's no other job in the world
that would take advantage of women like this.
Went into model apartment together
with four Russians in bunk beds.
We had to pay $1,000, although they probably
only paid like $1,000 for the whole apartment.
And I worked seven days a week,
and I went to all the castings.
And I had black hair at the time and weighed nothing.
- Were you eating or did you have to--
- No, no, no, I wasn't eating at all.
No, they wanted to place me in this really fashion-y side
and for that I needed to have a 34 hip, and I had a 36 hip.
So I'd go on lemon juice diet,
and then I would gain a centimeter and my pocket money
wouldn't be there because I gained a centimeter.
And then at one point a friend of mine and her mom,
they came to New York, and they invited me to lunch.
And I just had this black outfit,
and I was just looking like this, like uh-oh,
staring, having a stare down with the bread.
And then the mom told me, "You need to get out of here."
Afterwards, I went back to Berlin.
I arrived in Berlin because everybody told me,
"You need to go to Berlin right now."
And I arrived here in summertime,
and it was this beautiful creation where you could be
and do and see whoever you wanted.
I really lost myself in the party scene here.
And it didn't last too long but it lasted long enough
for me to look at New Year's Eve again in the mirror
and be like, "who is this person?"
You left Holland two years ago being happy and blonde,
now you have black hair
and you're trying to hide your pimples with glitter
and you weigh nothing.
And I was just looking horrible.
I was like a ghost.
And then I booked my ticket to Nepal,
and that's kind of when everything changed.
- Can you take off your jacket?
- Yes, please, so hot.
And then I met this beautiful girl from the south of India,
and she was in a women's rights legislation project
against the factory owners.
And she kind of opened my eyes on what was happening
in the fashion industry.
Genetically-modified cotton start point,
then the factory workers who have to work there
for 14, 15 hours a day, and then it goes back to Europe,
and then a blonde girl like me
is going to sell other insecure blonde girls,
or whatever kind of girls,
shitty polyester clothing made by these women.
It's like, I saw this side of exploitation,
and then I heard this side of exploitation,
and was just like what is this?
And when I was dressing, when I was wearing in India,
I was wearing a sari when I was in a rural area
and that created kind of like a bridge;
like I want to connect to you and I want to get to know you.
It completely makes sense that
when you travel in these areas,
but also when you are in these areas
that when you wear something like this, it's like, oh, okay.
I understand this person.
- She gets what we're doing.
- Yeah.
- She's not like an outsider.
- Exactly, yeah.
It was so weird because I had
all of these female connections in these countries,
and I came back, and I got this beautiful set of bindis
by this Gujarati girl that I met in the salt desert.
And then, everybody always puts bindis on me,
and I'm there, head-to-toe sari.
And then I came back to Berlin, and there was this girl
in America like, "You cannot wear a bindi."
Last Christmas, I was crying in my parents' home
because there was this woman that kept on attacking me
on Instagram saying that I was exploiting other cultures
and I had no right because I was white.
And she would put me in her Instagram stories
and say, "Please bring this bitch down."
And then I was just like, "what do I do?"
And I just spent days crying with my family.
- Had you already started your company?
- No, I started my company last summer.
I work with a lot of different families,
one from Uzbekistan, one from Mongolia,
one from Afghanistan, and a few from India.
From every product basically that I have, for example,
with the dresses, 30 euros goes to the woman that makes it.
The poverty level in India is 3,000 rupees,
which is around 40 euros.
So from 40 euros, they can at least
get their children to school
and have enough food to not be anemic
and make sure that they develop
on a personal level enough to stay alive.
And we try to get at least double,
plus a fundament for actually building up
their own business aside from making my dresses.
- Can you take off your vest?
- Almost forgot that we were doing the changing thing.
(laughing)
Yes.
From moment you're born, you're told
that you're not good enough and you need to be like
the really slim, blonde ladies on the television show
that would run the catwalk in America one time a year.
And this is what every girl in my high school worshiped.
This was the girl that the girls wanted to be
and the boys wanted to be with.
And this is like, okay, I need to be like this.
I was really smart.
I was getting science prizes at 16,
but when somebody asked me,
"Do you want to be a model in New York?"
It was just like I dropped everything and I was like,
"Oh yes, please!"
(laughs)
I would link everything to my body.
Oh, I just dropped a plate,
"Oh, bad body."
Or like, oh, this thing just went wrong with university,
"Oh, I have a horrible body."
Life will be better when I have a good body.
Women wouldn't worry about our bodies all the time,
we could change the world like this.
Yeah.
- Can you take off your necklace?
- Yeah.
- Is there any area in your life
that you feel shame around?
- I used to feel really ashamed of my,
I think my Berlin bad time.
- How so?
- Drugs, oh just any drugs.
I would, I explored pretty much all of them in Berlin.
72 hours awake or 50 hours awake and this used to be normal.
And then, I had some negative experiences,
and then at one point--
- What were they?
- There was one guy that put bad stuff in my drink,
and he tried to take me home being half-unconscious.
- And what happened?
- Oh, no, I'm getting really emotional.
- It's okay.
- Yeah, he tried to take me home.
And the next morning, I think nothing happened,
but I'm still not sure, and I left with a lot of disgust.
Yeah.
And then after that, I went to Holland.
It was New Year's Eve, like 2013.
And I remember I had like 1/2 a gram of cocaine
or something like this,
and I snorted with myself on a Wednesday evening.
And I looked into the mirror, and I was just like,
who are you?
And I was so disgusted.
And I cried so much.
And that was the moment I also really realized
all this needs to change.
I had so many insecurities coming from New York.
And I wanted to get confirmation of my existence.
And what do you get confirmation of?
I think it was, in a way, by your sexuality.
And it was the first time exploring my sexuality in this way
and thinking like, okay, if I take these powders
and I put myself on this stage and wear a sexy outfit
because it's all fine in Berlin,
I get this confirmation that I'm a worthy being.
When I think back, I'm just like,
what are you doing little child?
Two months later, I went to Nepal
and I was there and my whole clothing closet was black.
No woman dresses black there
because it's not seen as a good thing.
And then I just remember the first day
there was this beautiful older Nepali lady.
She looked at me like, "I don't understand.
"Your eyes look like celebration, but your outfit says no."
And she put me in this bright red sari from the 80s,
this Bollywood glitter sari.
And I looked at myself and I almost cried
because it was just the first time I was like, duh!
This is fashion.
This is amazing!
Wow, the power of this simple moment that you have
with another woman that sees it
and through a piece of textile you can transform.
And we went to these amazing matriarchal tribes in Gujarat
and they have these t-shirts.
Women are on top, and they have
these embroidered mirror boobs.
And seeing this can be fashion.
And I was like, that's great!
This is-- - It is fashion.
- It is fashion!
- Because it's soulful, and that's how it should be.
- It had a soul.
It had a story.
What we do right now in the fashion industry
is cultural exploitation
because two billion garments are made a year.
80% of the people that make these garments are women,
and it's basically Western companies
that go to developing countries and exploit another culture
just because they can, just because they have the power.
I cannot judge people for shopping at fast fashion things.
I cannot judge people because I used to do it myself.
You cannot judge people for what they're conditioned
to believe, and you can only inspire them with positivity.
(unzipping)
- When do you feel most beautiful?
- When I'm talking about my ideals
and how I want the world to be
because it gives my body a greater purpose.
It's like you're in this body
not because you need to hate it,
not because you have, I don't know, anything else,
but because you're put in this body
because you need to experience this world
and you need to take from it,
and then you need to create a better place out of it.
- Last ring, last question.
- Take it off?
- Yeah.
Why, in your body, in your skin, in your journey,
why is it a good place to be?
- Because it made me understand the point, which is love.
I don't know, it's not more complicated than this.
- Awesome.
How do you feel now?
- So weird because there was so much coming up,
also really stuff that I did not think I would tell,
a lot of insecurities and, but I feel really liberated.
Like at the beginning, it was like, ooh.
But yeah, it feels really good.
- Good.
- Yeah.
- Thank you so much.
- Yeah, thank you, that was really beautiful.
Incredibly beautiful, and if I wasn't sick
I would give you a big hug.
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