The Politics of Punk and Plaid

For Olive, fashion transcends beyond just aesthetics; It is a personal tool of identity exploration, resistance, and taking pride in being different. Growing up mixed race and queer, Olive felt that she didn’t fit into the molds of society, and turned to fashion as a way to protest the establishment of gender norms. Androgynous silhouettes, clashing patterns, and bold textures, Olive says, are a celebration of her otherness.

“I think because my identity is inherently subversive, it has made my personal style, design style, and just my aesthetic approach to life subversive. Why do we have to wear dresses and heels? I don’t understand why this is a norm, so I’m not going to adhere to them.”

Olive first became interested in fashion after receiving a punk fashion book when she was 10 years old. Vivienne Westwood, the brand who popularized punk fashion, quickly became a source of inspiration.

“I got my first pair of Doc Martens and a little plaid skirt when I was like 11 years old,” says Olive. “ I remember wearing it just because I wanted to embody Vivienne Westwood.”

The brand was iconic for redefining fashion as a political tool: a form of rebellion. Her implementation of details like ripped fabric, safety pins, and androgyny were direct acts of defiance against the conservatism of British society in the 70s.

Olive, now an established designer, aligns herself with these values: “Clothes can be a tool for political change. They can tell a message, they can tell a story, and Vivienne Westwood has always been at the forefront of that. This idea is what got me into fashion.”

Like many of us, Olive used Tiktok to cure her boredom during the pandemic. She had always enjoyed dressing up for class, and decided to share her passion online. She started sharing videos of herself casually getting ready in the morning, layering on tasteful combinations of long plaid shorts, avant-garde blouses, colorful ties, and gingham vests. To her surprise, one of her videos went viral, and she started gaining followers rapidly. What started as online experimentation turned into a platform - the start of her brand. Olive now has over 500,000 followers, and continues to post regularly.

For Olive, her presence on social media was a form of validation: “It was fun to be able to experience a fashion community and people that were interested in my style. I had never really experienced that because I was dressing very ‘out there’ for my town.”

After moving to New York to study fashion at The New School, Olive has never felt more at home. It was the perfect place for her to bring her online authenticity into everyday life and build meaningful connections with like-minded creatives.

Olive just recently graduated with a BFA in Fashion Design. It was during her education that Olive refined her technical skills, but more importantly, where she found a niche passion for knitting.

“I didn’t know how to sew until I came to Parsons. I felt like a blank slate, a complete sponge just absorbing every single ounce of information that they could possibly give me,” she says.

A lack of knowledge of garment creation allowed Olive to explore her identity as a designer. She took classes in a variety of mediums, but was drawn to the world of knitwear. Olive taught herself to handknit a few summers ago, and later took a machine knitting class at her school to refine her technicality. As someone with ADHD, Olive found the knitting process to be extremely therapeutic. It helped ease her fidgety tendencies, but also resulted in functional, wearable art. She started by creating small pieces which gradually became larger and more complex as her technical skills evolved.

Olive’s experience in the fashion industry cultivated in her senior thesis entitled “This is Our Art”, which debuted at The New School in May. It featured five core garments, each paying homage to a different garment-making craft; quilting, felting, knitting, weaving, and embroidery.

Because these methods of garment making require a very “go-with-the-flow” process, as Olive describes it, she began designing her pieces months in advance, and still wasn’t sure exactly what they would look like until a few weeks before the collection was finished. Every piece is handmade from ethically-sourced fabric, whether that be from thrift stores or close friends, with each outfit taking hundreds of hours to bring to life.

“I always say that my process of making things is like a conversation between me and the material,” she says “Whatever the fabric wants to do, I just let it do.”

The collection, like Olive’s personal style, is undoubtedly attention-grabbing - marked by bold, yet childlike-silhouettes, pattern clashes, and the technical mastery of various mediums. At first glance, there’s a whimsical, care-free charm to each of her designs. But beneath their physicality, Olive loudly confronts the ethics of modern fashion powerhouses.

At the core of Olive’s collection is a statement against fast fashion and a celebration of women’s labor. Every stitch is a critique of what our fashion industries have become; a wasteland of consummation and disposability. Being a garment maker herself, Olive has always featured sustainability as a recurring theme in each of her pieces, but it was a simple question that inspired her entire collection.

“There’s a big lack of knowledge surrounding fast fashion. People have this twisted idea that there’s machines that just pump out t-shirts. There is so much human labor that goes into garment making that is completely forgotten,” she explains.

Knowing there was a lack of knowledge, Olive wondered why people are so unaware of the time and effort that goes into garment creation.

“The answer is, really, misogyny,” she says. “Women and women of color are mostly the people working in fast fashion garment factories. People don’t respect their labor.”

Inspired by this disconnect, Olive aimed to create a collection that recognizes traditional women’s work like sewing and knitting as an artform rather than a simple “hobby”.

This theme is recurring in each piece’s motif symbolism, particularly the inclusion of bonnets, lambs, stuffed animals, and other child-like iconography. Olive explains that these motifs are inspired by the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s in which women took a stance against misogyny in the art world. Like the dismissal of women’s work in fast-fashion practices, fiber work and various women’s “crafts” were excluded from fine art during this period. As a response, women reclaimed motifs of traditional fiber art like lace, animals, and bows, and repositioned them in fine art spaces.

“That was one of the first times that anyone had ever challenged this idea,” explains Olive. These things are art; they're not just crafts or the work of women at home who are bored, and so I really wanted to pay homage to those artists who were at the forefront of this movement originally.”

Now a proud graduate, Olive is excited to continue her passion for garment creation in the professional world. She plans on returning to Tory Burch, but doesn’t wish to stay in the world of corporate fashion forever. Instead, she hopes to dedicate time to her own brand (@olivethe0ther) and promoting her values as a designer.

Olive says, “It’s hard for me to imagine my brand as a big design label. How do I even do that without compromising my ethics? At least for now, what I would love to do is just sell individual pieces and do limited drops. We’ll see where the wind takes me” Olive also expressed interest in sharing her knowledge of sustainable garment creation through hosting workshops about zero-waste weaving and upcycling materials.

Just like when she’s knitting, Olive’s channeling her go-with-the-flow attitude when it comes to her future plans. Whatever the future has in store for Olive, she reminds us that fashion is not just aesthetics, but a powerful catalyst for storytelling, self-expression, and most importantly, change. With just a needle and a passion, Olive proves that creativity is essential to shaping the world around us and helping us walk through it with confidence.