TRACE: Season 35

season 35 armour.

armour.

Art, Style, and Culture. Since 2012.

TO OUR READERS: WELCOME TO SEASON 35.

When we gathered this summer to determine this semester’s theme, the three of us sought to identify where our ideas converged. Words like “iterate,” “gaze,” and “palimpsest” hummed in the air, inviting conversation, collision, and reflection. Ultimately, we arrived not at an answer, but at a question: when someone or something leaves a place, what remains?

From a scuff on a stair, the ghost of a poster on a wall, or a lingering scent as the door closes, a trace is a mark, residue, or sign that something was there before. Beyond being noticeable to the eye, a trace acts as a representation of the passage of time.

However, trace is also an action: we can follow the lines of a sketch, run a comb through one’s hair, or investigate footprints left in the mud. This season, we borrow the term to explore: what do we leave behind, what do we follow, and how are hints of the past inscribed in our present?

Each turn of the wheel looks different, but certain patterns persist. Seasons change, fashion trends resurge, and family heirlooms show wear and tear. This issue serves as a careful study of what endures — the imprints, the shadows, the scars, the seams, the timestamps, and the metadata — all offering a glimpse into ancient history. Across these pages, we embrace the very things that refuse to disappear, finally giving a voice to what whispers beneath the surface.

In an age where most stories dissolve at the swipe of a finger, publishing ours in print feels almost radical. A physical issue leaves a tangible record of our collective effort that exists beyond the digital present. Each page carries texture and intention, so we invite you to engage in the act of touching and turning through our editorials.

When we were invited to lead Armour this semester, we reflected on what the publication has always done best: producing innovative creative projects and cultivating a commmunity around art, style, and culture. However, learning from the

past helps to propel us forward, and staying true to that legacy also means allowing it to evolve.

This semester, we launched the Armour Mini-Mag — a new platform for playful experimentation with our shoots and coverage. We produced our first extended film project, which exclusively debuts in this issue. We also grew our membership by more than a quarter, solidifying our presence as one of Washington University’s most influential student groups. Each of these endeavors, like the print magazine itself, leaves a mark we hope is worthy of remembering.

To our Armourites: we are endlessly proud and grateful for your dedication, creativity, and patience throughout this semester’s editorial process. It takes a village to bring an issue to life, and your hard work is woven into the fabric of each page. Not to mention — you know how to throw a good party or two.

We would also like to extend a special thanks to the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, our friends in Student Union, our campus and community partners, and our Editor-in-Chief alums. Your support has enabled our organization to thrive since 2012, empowering us to reach new heights and challenge ourselves creatively.

With smudged fingertips (and so much love),

Seo-eun Kim

Max Selver Evelyn Pae Editors-in-Chief

I pull up to the house framed by the landscape, aware only that the same time that has brought me back is that which pulled me away.

The stomping, snuffing, snorting of horses that once was my earnest melody, once pounded against the skull to ease me to sleep, now feels empty, quiet, and still. The trees I would watch wave and whisper to the wind now pound with an eerie stillness that raises the hair on the back of my arms. The world is still and gasping, all inhale, forever, the Earth under my feet. And the smell. Up to the porch and by the door — the scent my aunt always noticed, sharp yet pulsing, all dirt and grit — stings my nostrils, a reminder of that which was once nothing to me, now everything.

When I breathe, my wet breath makes space before me, warm against cold, another sign I don’t belong here. The fog rolling from over the pond, the wind from me and my gut, all fresh and bright, so unlike the smog that has steamed into my lungs. Here, I am the freshest flower, the greenest grass.

I remember when I ran through fields until I grew too wild to hold my limbs. They flailed like a bird’s gasping, falling forward, bigger than life and smaller than anything.

The last time I stood here, my footprints were smaller, and my compass heart pointed to the dent in the trees that led to the path upstream. The hay bales swallowed me whole, and I stood dwarfed by a falling barn.

I go the path now, alone, for my horse is long gone to the mountains, and I must prove I know where to put my feet on my own. Four steps into the thicket and my heart beats itself into silence, knowing only footfalls and the wind in the brush. Winter has taken my leaves, tramped them into Earth, and given the trees life anew. But it is no longer my life.

I move through it all with my city’s impassivity, eager to learn nothing, touch nothing, heading toward my destination, unaware that this, here, is it.

I slow myself, listen to the palms of my feet meet the Earth, and reimagine the rust that crusted away my leaves. I will only ever see that fall if I can find a way to get away, but the longer I wait, the more time offers up grief, and the more I live, the more things there are to miss. The lights are going out on me now as I near the water and watch the boats nimble across glacial thinness, all paper-delicate and tender. Pinpricks through the fog, and a horse whinnies from a pasture over the bridge, echoes across the water.

I can feel the space from home, the terrain so expansive I could never hope to know it all, and there is infinite life between here and there, forever between then and now, when comfort was in someone’s arms, and I knew they were going to last. I think how silly it is that I chose to love anything but this, the moon rising as the sun goes down.

When the grain of the wood was captured in my knees, and I would look up from my work to the dainty-white feather-edge of grandma’s dress, and reach out to touch it, rub it between my fingers like I could smudge it into nothing, and the boys would come in smelling of manure and damp grass. It was those evenings at the hearth, the kneading of dough in the kitchen, steady thump of grandma throwing it against the wood.

Sometimes, if I close my eyes, the moment is in my hands and over my ears, flooding with the hiss of the fire, thump of boots on the mat, and the snow that glitters against the darkness before the door slams shut. And the city flickers out, the last candle in the window, the tea light as it hits the tin.

Without the continuing exhale, the smell fighting the sour, the squeal, the sting. Without the underground, the grit, the grime, the gouge into the Earth. Without it I am young and at the hearth, young with fingers searching for texture in the lace, young watching the bootprints fade away into the snow.

towards the doorframe with growth carved out by my father’s pocket knife, and the baby shoes on the mantle an emblem of my unremembered past. Time is the floorboards hissing under my steps, and the low lights in the kitchen, my fingers the river running the countertops as if to awaken them. Time is the knock of my head against the banister, and the attic ladder as it sighs dirt from the pit of darkness to which I ascend. Time is my life in cardboard in the corner, with the doll with its mouth scrubbed out and the teddy bear with only one button eye. Dust sifting across sunlight so I cannot breathe anything in, and that must be the reason it smells like another life in here.

and somewhere, the waves lap against the shore

Time is the sound of a long-gone voice on the VCR that I know I ought to know, and the reaching of my heart to the sound. Time is the distance of cartwheels in the yard, the spraying of the hose and the rainbow it holds. Time is the cold corners of the house where I find old jellybeans, and the heartbeat of quiet as I turn with nobody to show them to. The breathing of curtains against the window as I crawl into the bed with the blue stripes. Now silent, instead of the din of a dinner I was once too little to stay up for.

and somewhere, the ocean rolls itself over into sleep

PUBLIC

RECORD

Names. They are a part of a legacy we hope to preserve.

Cave paintings capture our natures, our minds, our spirits. Captivated by our fingers, building language. Words of pure nectar, what makes one alive. We know everything we do, see, or hear, but do we know the true meaning behind our name?

Names are assumed in museums, dictionaries, and in stories. We make assumptions because they consume our minds. It allows humans to be logical, but what about our creative selves? The part of us who wishes to draw, feel free, and feel the color course more than within.

In 1967, Cornbread and his friends tagged buildings with their names. With something the world can see and remember, as bypassers go to their buildings to work. Bypassers who sometimes take an interest, spreading it through conservation. Through movement. Through subway trains.

Through the next decade, to the minds of New Yorkers like Taki 183. In the early 70s, he became popular in a New York Times article because of one thing he did: write his name. The majority saw the name as vandalism, but other young people like himself wrote their names. He saw it as a “waste of time” and he “only wanted everybody to know [him] as anonymous.” Seeing his name was his breath, but it beat and pulsed through the neighborhood. It became a means of expressing struggles, values, and, more importantly, community.

Graffiti started in marginalized communities like the Bronx, which were often ignored. Forgotten. Bound to survive through corruption and gangs. The world separated these communities, and the majority perceived graffiti as rebellious. Others were strong and willing to see graffiti as the artist’s canvas. A canvas fulfilling the four elements of hip hop, DJing, MCing, and breakdancing. Together, all of them worked to build a world where everywhere was a chance to have a voice.

Everyone called them wild. Wild for their vandalism, yet it was actually enough to capture Fab 5 Freddy. In the late 70s and 80s, this artist bridged the gap, and suddenly, more than just marginalized communities enjoyed their work. It reached a wider audience, gradually culminating in the largest event in the world: The 1982 NYC Rap tour.

A crowd buzzing with excitement. The b-boys — breaking boys — who never expected to be alongside their friends, moving their bodies in ways that defied gravity. Popular DJs at the time, Grand Mixer D.ST and Afrika Bambaataa (the main pioneers of DJing), were satisfied. With the funky beats, it was addictive and a joyful street party, now seen as the norm. Graffiti was now a riot of color. A mural of our story. It was a moment in history when everyone — breakdancers, DJs, artists — were recognized and finally met without confusion.

It was “The Message.” A powerful global force showed our unapologetic truth of survival and creativity.

As fast as it spread, it eventually reached St. Louis in the mid-to-late 90s. Graffiti jams were made, where graffiti writers could meet one another. It drew way more attention than an average meeting, and it became a local beauty. By 1997, the Underground Superfest of St. Louis drew graffiti artists from across the country to paint the flood wall.

This became an annual gathering of music and breakdancing, which the local graffiti writers named “Paint Louis.” A real reminder of how graffiti was always bold, expressive, and practical from the start.

These events happened decades ago, but what happened? Is it still the same? Did we change a few rules? And the answer to that is no. It only adapted. The clothing styles are a strong adaptation, as today, baggy and comfortable clothing is freedom. Everyone likes a nice pair of jeans that gives them the freedom to move and create.

Bold colors, patterns, and staples like sneakers, baseball caps, and snapbacks. You can find them among many artists, past and present, but the focus centers on urban areas — the urban life. Once considered a struggle, it is now seen as everyday fashion. While artists lived in the same community, they wanted to show their individuality.

Their roots. Their spirits against the mundane.

The question of what constitutes a graffiti artist remains complex. Some say it comes from one’s darkened past. Of having a culture that is always judged for and still not seen as enough. Coming from the “hood,” or perhaps a low-income neighborhood. Maybe it comes from the way they stride with the retro (wait, now graphic tees are considered retro?) set of a nice shirt and baggy jeans from a long time ago. Some easily say it is the beauty of having the freedom to be you.

But, really, what makes a graffiti artist a graffiti artist is their heart. The heart to change things. To shape the world as a testament to how vibrance arises from graffiti artists — those who have left their mark, not only on the East Coast and Midwest, but across future generations waiting to tell their own stories. And so today, the St. Louis Mural Mile stands as an emblem of what graffiti was always meant to be: a medium for connection and enjoyment, where people can freely express themselves and continue to participate in a living, breathing tradition.

a subversion some deem

the old stain of a past life,

our skin’s conversations with itself the canyons that drive through earthen flesh

EXHIBIT

PHOTOGRAPHY:

CREATIVE DIRECTION:

STYLING & MAKEUP: EMILY ZHU

WRITING: EVAN GUYER

LAYOUT: EVELYN PAE

EVIDENCE OF BIGFOOT HEIGHT: 10-15 FT.

FOOTPRINT: 24 IN.

DESCRIPTION: HAIRY, HUGE LIMBS

SOUND: LOUD SHRIEKS, HOWLING, GRUNTING SMELL: FOUL, LIKE ROTTING VEGETATION

It’s November 23, and I am certain that I will find Bigfoot today.

02/28/2025

07:43 PM

Nearly every (reputable) source that tracks his movement knows that, statistically, he is nearly 4 times more likely to be seen on a day with a new moon than on a day without one. Today is freezing cold, and the moon is absent. There is a presence here tonight, I can feel it. Just after the wind dies down and all that remains is the tingling on the back of my hands… my nerves continue to numb like I’m bracing for an impact that can’t be consciously perceived. That is Bigfoot — swift and hyperaware. A predator so effective that few humans even believe he exists. I brought Ella and Justin to prove that this is real, that all my “delusions” are based in fact, and I have not been chasing a myth. Tonight is the night I prove that I have what it takes. I entered the woods an outcast, ineffective and out of her mind. I will leave something different, I am completely sure of it. After all, legend is written by those who escape with their lives. History is written by those who come back with a head on a stick. Tonight will be historic.

My friends are utterly incompetent. Ella just asked how many legs a tripod has and then promptly disappeared. It is a bit colder than I had planned, and the lack of light from the moon has reduced our line of sight to the illuminating halo of our hand-crank flashlights. Things are a bit eerie in the dark, and, admittedly, I am trying not to look up. Though I would never say it out loud, there is something terrifying about the network of gnarled tree branches looming overhead — it’s as if the trees clawed themselves out of the ground and are praying to the heavens for some kind of release from the relentless cycle of the seasons. It must be excruciating to be one of these ancient oaks, experiencing the slow decay of death every winter. So… yeah, I’d really like to not lose our light source. But it will be okay — I planned for all of this. We can use the emergency flares for light if necessary, or the glow sticks I have been leaving behind to eventually point us back out of the woods. If Ella has any brain cells left, she’ll spot them and make her way back to us.

BToday is freezing cold, and the moon is absent. There is a presence here tonight,

03/01/2025

03:04 AM

I saw him. I saw Bigfoot. He leapt from the forest floor up into the canopy with a startling agility. The blood rushed to my head so quickly that I had to sit down. My heavy winter coat was suffocating me. My skin was hot too. Justin saw him and ran off into the woods, leaving me hyperventilating. Which is fine. Writing this is helping me gather my thoughts and my breath. Ella is still nowhere to be seen. Taking off my coat helped. I am going to set up the camera and stake out here for now. My hands are too numb and shaky to do much, so the flashlights won’t work. It might be time to take out one of the flares. I’ll just use one, though. I should save the other one in the off-chance we get lost.

I’ve been alone for an hour. I lit the final flare because I heard him again. Shadows are tearing through the endless collage of tree trunks, violent against the flare’s impassioned red. The wind has picked up, too, and it is whipping my face so hard that I think I feel tears crawling down my cheeks. I took off my wool sweater, too. My body got so hot, and my skin still feels itchy and raw. All the layers were only making it worse. I don’t even feel cold, though — I feel jittery and alive. It’s weird, I tripped over one of the legs of the tripod a second ago and bit through my upper lip. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I accidentally stuck my finger clean through the hole in my cupid’s bow. But it doesn’t even hurt. I kind of like the salty taste of my blood — it makes me feel carnal — this is how he must feel. I could stay here forever.

Their bodies are hung up in the trees as if handplucked by the knotted branches. Ella’s mouth has been split open, hanging agape and stuffed with twigs. On the other tree, Justin stares at me wide-eyed and with a haunting absence. I see now — his eyelids are torn off.

My body is shutting down, and I can barely write. The wind is a hundred voices, all screaming like a choir of lost children. The leaves dance at breakneck speed, as if desperately attempting to complete a haphazard ritual. My heart is pounding through the gaps between my ribcage as if it might burst through. This is all I can do right now: observe.

I saw him, I saw Bigfoot. He lept from the forest floor up into the canopy.

03/01/2025

05:22 AM

There is a third tree between Ella and Justin where I will surely be hung up, my heart finally torn from the confines of my tight chest. I imagine what he will do to me. I hope it’s thorough and brutal. I hope it makes the news. I hope the pictures are shown to audiences that can only observe for a moment before their eyes are forced shut.

To all the people reading these journal entries, I hope this is the proof you need.

STUDIO SGRAFFITO

Creative Direction:

Photography:

COLE HARMON

The figure, the form

The world keeps its breathing — a drum — and the hands meld shape out of the air, take the heave and flow. The sound clenches its fists against silence, and silence snarls back in the battle between inside and out. Carving life out of space and breathing it back until bloated.

Tumble under the surface, fingers running the texture to find the rivets, dig in and pull, stretching apart by the seams until it shatters. Scooping the leftovers into the palm to be tried again, reworked and rewired until meaning is the colors bleeding into each other, and nothing else.

Like a globe in the palm, like the head of a baby too soft for pressure, like a melting puddle of ice, like a slip in the gutter that splashes against the world. It is impossible to know what can be made until it is, and then it cannot be forgotten.

MACY IYER

When the fog rolls over the hills and mists the eyes, the rock starts tumbling. Teeth sunk into the moss of the stones, an idea held like a fish in the bear’s maw.

When the gulls sweep the landscape and silence the sound, the acorns drop. Mind cracked like dry earth open to receive them as they fall at the feet.

When the sun filters from the lowest river to the arching evergreens, the bird stretches awake. Hands held out and hungry at the nest for whatever gift she produces.

When the glacial mind releases its rivers, holding eons of the bacteria of the world, motion starts moving and refuses to stop.

HELEN IVES

abstract

Throwing brains against the wall, thoughts running down like soap scum,

heart beat, head back, hands covered in color reaching out to touch everything.

A film between the fingers stretched across a wooden frame, a spill like oil across the darkness, reaching into it all the way down to the elbow.

Interwoven vessels expanding to breathe, blood behind the eyes pumping vision, raw hands figuring the world without knowing, alive and awake, and alive.

TEMPORAL BLUES

TEMPORAL BLUES

TEMPORAL BLUES

TEMPORAL BLUES

TEMPORAL BLUES

CREATIVE DIRECTION: VIOLET HOLAH, MARGO OGROSKY PHOTOGRAPHY: MARGO OGROSKY, ERICK TIBURCIO WRITING: KEELA BOND STYLING: VIOLET HOLAH, MARGO OGROSKY MODELS: CLAIRE ACKLEY, AMANDA ROMAN, MAYA RYU LAYOUT: VIOLET HOLAH

CREATIVE DIRECTION: PHOTOGRAPHY: MODELS: LAYOUT:

INCEPTION

Plants, bodies, and botanical textures. Each touches and informs the next, embodying movement and change meant to be captured. The cyanotype is not a static moment, but seconds, minutes, and hours pressed into existence. Across the unification of moments, our bonds accumulate into a visible record. An archive of our communal connection.

The process becomes its message, a procedure embodying meaning. A linear burn of exposure. A duration. Time. It is dependent: every second, with a ticking sound, an arm shifts slightly, slowly completing its full rotation. And so we trace back to the first quiet motions which define our eventual collective convergence.

Inception. A balanced volume of ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide smelt in the crepuscule. Chemical intimacy awaiting… anticipating… asleep. A held breath, nearly choking on the impending transformation. We stand at the threshold of a direct and continuous inscription of being, and of becoming. Stillness lingers over a dormant potential, sensitive to illumination. The elixir is coated on a surface and abandoned to dry. The treated canvas grows hungry for radiance. Shriveled, barren, dehydrated… we wrinkle, crack, and break. Veins — verdure and flesh alike — slide beneath transparencies, pulsing parallel.

pulsing parallel. pulsing parallel. pulsing parallel.

pulsing parallel. pulsing parallel. pulsing parallel. pulsing parallel.

THE TRIGGER

The tiered formation is fed a UV glow. Exposed for differing intervals, imprinting at varying strengths. Showered in luminance, we hiss through the scorch, only to be interrupted by the layers of our memories muffling over the sting.

The trigger. An elemental slip from III to II discharges the chemical binding like a lethal weapon. Iron state reduced, a helpless reaction spreads across a diagnosed anatomy of Prussian Blue. Overlapping densities inform a layered impression of time. Skin alters moment by moment, and the residue of our pasts clings on to display. Tracing a temporal length of existence, we grow an appetite for continuity, carving ourselves into permanence as our delicate negatives fuse and intimacy ignites.

With transparencies removed, the composition bathes, allowing the water to dissolve all that was left unaltered. We mark a new presence, leaf and lifeline deepened blue. Our differing textures become electric, the resulting friction blurring our new existence, smoothing the overlap like sandpaper. The image never still, we darken and breathe. Etched in indigo, our linear burn of exposure remains a record of touch, a testament of time. And so we dwell in these blue depths, drowning in the imprint, immune to the erasure of a cyanic permanence.

cyanic permanence. cyanic permanence.

cyanic permanence.

cyanic permanence. cyanic permanence.

cyanic permanence.

DOT

What a great verb:

That’s all I wanted to do:

take one of those big rubber bricks, the fancy kind made in Germany or Japan that illustrators use,

breaking each bridge between those neutral moments

until I just had a fistful of disconnected marbles,

I returned to the mental aquarium.

That night, in those ethereal moments before drifting to sleep,

My thoughts were separated from me behind an aquarium window. 18

I could observe them floating,

and voices muffled under the thick buffers of water resistance and glass.

The memories swam about intrusively,

MEMORIES SWAM

24 now an invasive species to my coral reef,

but I was armed with a harpoon and armored with scuba gear, and I went to work among the bubbles.

START HERE

CREATIVE DIRECTION: CLAIRE GWAK, ANDREW WANG, JACKIE WANG

PHOTOGRAPHY: TYLER HANSON MATHUR, ZAHRA SARWONO

WRITING: JA

Red THE

POST-PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR: GAVIN STEVENSON-COMPTON

I can feel your heartbeat over the telephone line.

I hear not your words, only the shape each movement made sloping through mountains and oceans, over the space between us as it sank

Bits of you have followed me across the world

It’s the little in betweens I remember most: bleached eyebrows and red ribbon, worn hair and muddied shoes

They come to me like little gifts in my sleep

There was ash on my tongue,

A red hum in my throat I couldn’t place –light cinders that clung to everything, as soft as breath

I can only recall when you were a crescent in the flame, half-shadow, half-glow

I watched fire flicker across your face In the most magnetic way:

gilded and sober, something I could never hold

My heart breathes through harsh bone

Late summer clinging to my skin

holding its breath along with me

As warmth folds over a dark night

but just distant enough to catch your silhouette

I keep getting closer to your voice, close enough to reach you, slipping a

WHISPER

Anamnesis

Fashion survives on memory,

on collective nostalgia, and on cultural déjà vu that we half recognize even when we cannot place it. Memory is fashion’s first textile, the fabric from which designers cut before they ever reach for wool, silk, or mesh. A garment does not emerge from pure invention, but from the lingering residue of what came before: the outlines of forms that have traveled across centuries, the muted remnants carried through paintings, sculptures, and objects preserved long after their respective makers. Every garment, borne from art, is a channel through which we smuggle the emotional energy of another era into the present. The parallel between art and fashion is not merely aesthetic.

Art preserves a moment by fixing it in pigment, marble, or glass; fashion preserves a moment by letting it move.

Yves Saint Laurent’s Mondrian dresses from 1965 remain one of fashion’s clearest demonstrations of this relationship. Drawing directly from Piet Mondrian’s strict compositions of black lines, white voids, and primary colors, Saint Laurent translated the De Stijl commitment to geometry and balance into the structural form of a dress, choosing the body rather than the canvas as his medium. Instead of printing the paintings onto fabric, he engineered the garments from panels of jersey and wool so precisely that their seams dissolved into the grid. The person donning said dress becomes the missing dimension the canvas never had—introducing how humans contradict stillness in art with motion and breath.

A garment can feel haunted:

not in a Halloween morbid way, but rather intimately. It carries traces of gestures, postures, and emotional states. Clothes become repositories for sensations: the thrill of a first night out, the absurdity of adolescence, and the steadiness of an old photograph. Clothes are physical manifestations of days passed. Even when the wearer or the arbitrator is fictional or long gone, the garment remembers: the body slipping into it becomes a temporary custodian of someone else’s emotional cargo. And that is why fashion, like art, transforms a museum space. Museums are designed to preserve memory, yet they also mediate distance.

And together, art and fashion reveal that memory is generative, as it returns in new skins.

The rope, the taped line, the cold, controlled air;

they remind you that these objects survived other hands and other centuries. And yet, when you move among them, the garments behave like artifacts. The models drift between sculptures almost as if they, too, were archaeological finds temporarily reanimated. The clothes feel like objects unearthed, dusted off, and carried between eras, and their silhouettes behave like ruins — the hopeful reconstruction of something once whole.The clothing does not present itself as newly invented but as newly reawakened, as an object that has been waiting to be born from a culture already existing. It invites you to experience familiarity through patterns of recognition. There is a moment when a look feels unsettlingly familiar, as if you have encountered it in another life or another gallery.

This is fashion’s memory work: time collapses time.

A modern garment should behave like a relic yet feel strangely contemporary when placed beside a living body. The distinction between then and now dissolves in the folds of intentionally placed fabric. Because fashion is at its most powerful state, it reveals that time itself is a material. Designers stretch it, wrinkle it, drape it, and tailor it. They choose which eras to illuminate and which to let fade into the background with the whispered promise of an awakening — not now, but soon. And because fashion is worn on the body, it becomes the most intimate archive available to us.

Unlike untouchable works of art, clothes invite a kind of intimate remembering, a way of thinking with the skin. They carry the memory of our bodies just as we carry the memory of their histories.

While at work, it gathers traces of us: forever creases at the elbow, loose threads at the hem from anxious habits, and the casual imprints of daily movement.

Creative Direction: Somya Dave, Olivia Leigh

Styling: Aaliyah Malhotra, David Schantz Makeup: Saivee Ahuja Production Assistant: Iniya Swaminathan

Shelf Lives

1,50 R$

I miss your dumplings.

Under the folds of her wrinkled, tired hands, she worked under the fluorescent kitchen lights, wrapping the meat-and-chive mixture in a delicate dough paper, holding onto the dumpling’s stomach as she pinched at the seams. She delicately folded the pieces onto each other as she cooked to the rhythm of her heart.

Thump, rolling the dough with the pressure of her palm.

Thump, pushing her body’s pressure to each fold.

Thump, tossing the dumpling down into the boiling water.

Thump. Thump. Thump, as she watched her daughter in excitement try her dumplings.

I watched my mom working in her single-woman assembly line, her rhythm echoing as starch, and remnants of pork filled the kitchen air. She shuffled on her bamboo slippers and delicately placed each uniform dumpling on the china.

Mom’s dumplings: folded and worked by the woman who only knew love by food, and made with ingredients she bargained down with her Shanghai-practiced skills. $1. 89 PRODUCE

Now, I stand in the frozen dumpling aisle in the nearest Asian grocery store, unsure which bag of cookie-cutter, mass-produced products to eat for dinner. I’m going to air-fry them — a delicacy in college.

Along the way — from eating dumplings under the yellow kitchen light, following the sound of boiling water and wooden thumps, to eating dumplings in the dark with a single desk lamp illuminating my half-frozen microwavable Bibigo dumplings on the plate I stole from the dining hall — I drift far from her rhythm.

I wish we could wrap dumplings in Mom’s aprons again.

I wish we could go back to the lazy suzan, fighting for the last fried dumpling as Chinese aunties and uncles fought over the last bit of white wine.

I wish we could compare our crumpled folds as we prepared to boil our creations.

I wish we could go back to flour-ridden hands and the struggle to close the seams of our overstuffed dumplings.

MADE FOR SHARING

In the familiar aisles, I’m reminded again of Mom’s dumplings — her simple recipe, her little ingredients, her rhythm.

Thump. Beep. Thump. Beep. Thump. Beep.

My dumplings are ready from the microwave.

I miss your dumplings.

Age Appropriate

Near the ocean surface, drifting between giant stocks of kelp and a collage of vast biodiversity — urchins, sea lions, leopard sharks, and endless darting fish — sunlight dances in a twostep pattern with the oscillating waves. You would have to look very closely to catch a glimpse of the Turritopsis dohrnii, donning a clear, bell-shaped medusa with a deep cerulean stomach and 80 hairlike tentacles. It is only four millimeters in length, after all. And yet, it harbors an ability that markedly differentiates it from the hundreds of other species that flutter about. It is ageless and will outlive every living thing by multitudes — if it desires.

Rather than traversing the life cycle linearly, these organisms revert to earlier stages when necessary. After sustaining damage or suffering a period of starvation, they consume their tentacles and float aimlessly until they shrink and revert to an earlier life stage. Because of this gift, they have become colloquially known as “The Immortal Jellyfish.”

While humans do not exhibit these traits biologically, much of our current definition of age is purely conceptual, constructed by fashion trends and fad after fad. But like the Immortal Jellyfish, if we allow ourselves to consume our current form and become something new, we, too, could exist outside the linear confines of age.

Susan Sherman does not drift aimlessly, although she is welltraveled. She splits much of her time between St. Louis and her new apartment in New York City. Her husband’s side of the family owns an antique store in Louisiana that she often frequents (to keep her jewelry collection in good shape), but she grew up in Jacksonville, Florida. It should come as no surprise that she considers travel an art form in and of itself; she enjoys recounting the locations that have influenced the many facets of who she is today. The locations of her adventures bathe her stories in color as she weaves the frenetic bustle of Paris with the dewy warmth of Jacksonville. Her life story comes together like a garment of its own.

There is no age here, only tethers

to previous states of mind.

Right now, she is perched on the hood of a navy-blue Porsche, arm draped over the side mirror as if she might just drive this car home. This confidence is a rare one, radiant and weatherworn — she has fought for the right to feel good in her own skin. She’s layers of humility and taffeta and pride and faux leather. She laughs maniacally when asked about the concept of “age-appropriate” clothing, swiping at the air as if tossing the question off into the distance.

Her closet is a “living archive,” she explains. It carries tales of the brands she worked with, the interpersonal bonds she created with designers as they chiseled ideas into something sharp and stylish. There is no age here, only tethers to previous states of mind — perhaps some more naive, but all carrying something worth holding on to.

She explains her experience as the co-founder of the St. Louis Fashion Fund. A very small amount of research reveals that she has single-handedly shaped and elevated the fashion scene in St. Louis. She does not explain this directly, but her stories hint at the true power that her dedication has given her access to.

She mentions her dog and her husband and a million other little things that one would wish they could commit to memory, her hands gesturing in a grandiose manner as if she is holding something immense and bulky. A ray of sunlight bounces off a silver bangle that hangs loosely about her wrist, catching her eye and reminding her of the small boutique from which she acquired it. She reminisces fondly.

With fashion, we are immortal.

This is the whole point. She urges us to collect — to access the undying power of fashion and to don a new memory when we need it. Remembering is hard, and reliving is even more difficult without a touchpoint. But our style, our archive of past connections and former friends, can light the way. So let yourself be born new every morning as you get ready — experiment with every phase of your being.

EXECUTIVE BOARD

Editor-in-Chief

Editor-in-Chief

Editor-in-Chief

Director of Layout

Director of Finance

Director of Finance

Director of External Events

Director of External Events

Director of Internal Events

Director of Internal Events

Director of Social Media

Director of Social Media

Director of Photography

Director of Copy

Director of Styling

Director of Recruitment

Director of Recruitment

Director of Web Development

Project Manager

Project Manager

Project Manager

Project Manager

Seo-eun Kim

Max Selver

Evelyn Pae

Violet Holah

Jakob Shenfeld

Jackie Wang

Robin Pyo

Andrew Wang

Claire Ackley

Aashna Sahejpal

Madison Morris

Reid McVey

Sofia Huitron

Josie Blough

Abby Hahn

Naomi Chao

Mia Hurtado

Eileen Kim

Saivee Ahuja

Lauren Speicher

Jialing Sun

Nora Silvergleid

STAFF AND CONTRIBUTORS

Claire Ackley

Saivee Ahuja

Faduma Ali

Lexi Azrin

Rachel Bai

Anna Bang

Mia Bell

Josie Blough

Keela Bond

Sophie Bongiorno

Ellie Budde

Ashton Burgess

Wyatt Byers

Nicolas Cevallos

Kyle Chang

Naomi Chao

Tony Choueiri

Grace Chung

Nogoye Cisse

Ethan Crandall

Somya Dave

Chloe Dehn

Zyla Dhillon

Hannah Dorval

Nicole Farnsley

Charley Farr

Ja’la Fuller

Mia Galpern

Gabriella Garcia

Jared Garelick

Cléo Gauthier

Reese Gittleman

Evan Guyer

Claire Gwak

Abby Hahn

Jenna Halberg

Elise Hanna

Emi Harstad

Chelsea Haye

Ryleigh Hill

Bram Hoffman

Violet Holah

Lucy Hong

Robin Hong

Eva Horvath

Owen Hotra

Serina Huang

Sofia Huitron

Mia Hurtado

Anastasía Ivanova

Victoria Jackson

Natalia Jamula

Maddie Jeans

Huili Jin

Sean Joyce

Yash Karki

Eileen Kim

Ethan Kim

Hera Kim

Seo-eun Kim

Ria Kohli

Edward Kombe

Carmen Kossakowski

Chelsea Lee

Christine Lee

Phoenix Lee

Priscilla Lee

Olivia Leigh

Eden Levi

Jaden Lim

Emma Linden

Chenrui Liu

Rose Liu

Sam LoGerfo-Olsen

Allison Loudenback

Jiaying Lu

Courtney Lucas

Jessie Luo

Andy Mai

Aaliya Malhotra

Xavier Mason

Tyler Hanson Mathur

Nayah McDonald

Reid McVey

Riley Meltz

Ella Meshoulam

Anna Miller

Julia Mills

Ana Mitreva

Talulah Monthy

Morgan Montoya

Harper Moothart

Lindsey Morris

Madison Morris

Reed Mueller

Sophia Musante

Genebelle Mynn

Amaris Ninah

Margo Ogrosky

Evelyn Pae

Cameron Parker

Grace Pindel

Robin Pyo

Anny Qiu

Cordelia Ramsey

Abigail Rhee

Grace Robvais

Natalie Rodriguez

Maxine Roeder

Ava Gray Russell

Hana Rust

Aashna Sahejpal

Zahra Sarwono

David Schantz

Gray Scherma

Jonas Schwab

Max Selver

Sharon Shen

Jakob Shenfeld

Carrie Shi

Riya Siddabattula

Nora Silvergleid

Seth Skiles

Olivia Slemmer

Justina Smith

Isabella Solorzano

Irene Son

Lauren Speicher

Addy Steinberg

Gavin Stevenson-Compton

Mel Stockwell

Orly Stulbach

Jialing Sun

Margaret Susovica

Iniya Swaminathan

Wyatt Tait

Kate Talbert

Elise Taylor

Harlem Taylor

Ashlyn Thitibordin

Aliana Thompson

Erick Tiburcio

Selayni Toribio

Mimi Tran

Esme Tublin

Naomi Turk

Kwame Tuva

Mira Ugwuadu

Noé Umana-Ramos

Jordanna Boxer Wachler

Andrew Wang

Jackie Wang

Sophia Weinberg

Sophie Weiss

Tayari Woods

Jillian Wu

Sarah Yan

Nathan Yap

Alyssa Yim

Ryan Yin

Jennifer Yoo

Jackie Yoon

Kara Yoon

Coco Zhang

Iris Zhang

Mico Zhang

Emily Zhu

This issue was produced at Washington University in St. Louis.

A special thanks to the Season 35 layout team:

Violet Holah, Naomi Chao, Sofia Huitron, Seo-eun Kim, Madison Morris, Evelyn Pae, Ava Gray Russell, Hana Rust, Max Selver, Jialing Sun, Wyatt Tait, & Naomi Turk.

Executive Board Credits:

Creative Direction: Mia Hurtado

Photography: Zahra Sarwono

Styling: Ava Gray Russell

Design Credits:

Layout Direction: Violet Holah

Cover Design: Evelyn Pae

Copy Editor: River Alsalihi

Post-Production Supervisors: Seo-eun Kim, Max Selver

Typefaces Used:

CoFo Sans Mono Variable DIN Condensed

DM Mono

Edwardian Script ITC

Ernie

Gridlite PE Variable HanziPen TC

Helvetica Inter Kings Caslon

Neue Haas Grotesk Owners Tiny

AGE APPROPRIATE ANAMNESIS

BEAUTY MARKS

DOT 2 DOT EXHIBIT B

PHANTOM

PUBLIC RECORD SHELF LIVES

STUDIO SGRAFFITO TEMPORAL BLUES THE RED CABLE OF FATE WHERE SIGHT AND SOUND FALTER