Ch'lita Collins

I meet up with Diya, and we, and her manager and bodyguard pass pre-teen boys wearing Mike Kelley Supreme, grey tracksuit bottoms and Uggs. They ask, "Hey, are you that nonchalant girl from TikTok?" She replies, "Yeah." I took a group photo for them. I have assumed the role of anonymous streetwear clinger-on. We visit Slawn's studio, where boys are begging to have pieces of cardboard, or the clothes off their backs, painted. There is so much in this world I don't understand, █████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████.

"We visit Slawn's studio, where boys are begging to have pieces of cardboard, or the clothes off their backs, painted."

I'm keeping a mental tally of people I don't like and this week it's the talent manager hounding me for an i-D cover for whoever they represent. Can't we just play nice and forget about business? I thought we were friends. Second behind the manager is the eager young clout chaser with a fake American accent; they would also love coverage for the local rapper they "manage". This day there was a lot of Japanese food, too. I imagine there's a significant crossover between streetwear people and Japan lovers. I have the udon carbonara from Menchirashi. Room is selling vintage sportswear, with prices like $250 for an old T-shirt. I understand that there is a market for this, I am not scared of blowing a bag on some old band tees.

Maybe it's the sunshine, or the super-fresh, varsity red Nike Air Bakin High sneakers I was gifted that afternoon, but I'm feeling really happy. There's something to be said for bouncy soles and proper ankle support for once. I start abusing my great British pound on streetwear. I want to go undercover. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Today Darlinghurst has been taken over by market stalls selling vintage clothes, books, magazines and streetwear from brands all over the world. I meet ████ who owns ███████████████ at the opening party. He looks like █████████ if he were a brainrot skater. I was completely enamoured with the psychedelic hoodie he was wearing. It's covered in a collage of memes, with the word "█████" dotted around in the print, and there's a double zipper mechanism with ████ symbols as pull tabs. I ask to buy one of his meme hoodies because I haven't stopped thinking about it. I hesitate when I see the price tag, and he simply says, "I know you got it like that." He's right. I do. I wear the size XL hoodie with thumbholes for the rest of the day.

"He looks like █████████ if he were a brainrot skater."

Constantin Stanislavski said that all it takes for an actor to fully become and immerse themselves in a character is to give them the right pair of shoes. The moment I slip the hoodie on, I feel like I belong. I run into Nick Mason from the skate brand Always Do What You Should Do. We grew up together in Wellington, New Zealand, where he was the coolest guy in town. I start having flashbacks to going to house parties with skaters in high school.█████████████████ plays menacingly in the background. I'm 15 years old and standing around a bonfire ███████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ Wellington is damp and cold, permanently windy. Salvador Dalí is from Figures which has a weather phenomenon known as the Tramuntana; they say these winds are what caused Dali to go mad. Wellington is statistically the windiest city on earth. I'm beginning to realise that this isn't exactly a fish-out-of-water experience. I know the references. I know the people. I know the clothes. I'm actually having fun—the most fun a girl can have in some trainers.

I stop by the ACG bouldering wall and see the beautiful girl from the femmes-only dinner. She encourages me to try climbing, but I'm not in the mood to humiliate myself in front of her. But I like the special shoes and chalk bags and lightweight cargo trousers the climbers wear.

Across the road we go and eat pizza at Scarr's again. Today I ate 1.5 slices, as opposed to yesterday's 0.5. I notice my face hurts from smiling so much, I'm genuinely happy hanging out with a bunch of uncs. I could kick it with literally anybody at this point. We're all wearing Supply Store x Nike TNs, which won't be for sale–friends and family only. People ask to buy them off my feet, and it is one of the best sensations I've ever felt. It turns out I actually do want to be part of a club that would have me as a member. We show up to the Breakfast Club too early, but they don't tell us to leave. We're encouraged to make badges out of old National Geographic magazines. It reminds me of my teenage years, making riot grrrl-inspired ephemera with my friends at lunch. There's something so absurd about silently cutting out pictures of pandas with my 40-year-old male colleague. There's bingo, and the previous night I heard they were doing karaoke. While sitting at the Breakfast Club, I'm trying to come up with interview questions to send off to a social shooter for i-D magazine to ask SINN6R while I head off to cover the Speed show. I open his Instagram to do some research (top-notch journalism here) and notice he's wearing a pair of Hood By Air jeans, eerily identical to the ones that have been missing from my wardrobe since my last break-up. You must understand, these are unmistakably my jeans—only I own these jeans. Flashback to university in Auckland, New Zealand. A boy who offers me a pair of ████████████ HBA jeans in exchange for a kiss and the promise of a date. I loved those jeans. I actually ran into him on the street at Surplus a few hours before this. Due to a hasty breakup, I had left the jeans at my ex-boyfriend's house, stupidly thinking there would be a hostage exchange situation where we would trade our skinny jeans (yes, we were the same waist size, you can infer whatever you want here) and peace would be restored. I've been trying to track them down for months. I'm beginning to think these jeans might be cursed. Now, here they are, on SINN6R's Instagram.

"You must understand, these are unmistakably my jeans—only I own these jeans."

I know they're mine. I inform the work group chat that I'd like to do the interview myself. I devise a plan to stage my own little coup. I send his publicist my most milquetoast questions, no mention of what I'm planning to really ask him. I pull up pictures of myself wearing the jeans, complete with timestamps, screenshot. I screenshot the image of him wearing them on Instagram. I'm left standing outside Oxford Arts Factory for an hour. Embarrassment bubbles inside of me as I shake the door handle trying to get into the venue in front of kids lined up for the show. The PR neglects to collect me, so I use the time to interview the fans lined up outside. I show them the pictures of us wearing the HBA jeans and ask what they think about the fact that he's ██████████. They tell me it isn't a crime to "be fly by any means necessary". I couldn't help but sort of nod in agreement. I guess I used to shoplift, I feel rather empathetic to the cause. But imagine how I feel when I finally walk into the green room and see SINN6R's friend wearing my jeans. My fucking jeans!

They tell me it isn't a crime to "be fly by any means necessary".

It's so much worse that he's pawned them off on his friend. Not only does SINN6R actually have them, but he's apparently been circulating them. My lost property has become part of the community. I interview SINN6R in a calm, professional manner, but I'm seeing red. Those jeans are right in front of me while I robotically ask him what his favorite açaí bowl toppings are. I finished the interview with a cool "nice jeans" as I stared into the velcro HBA knee patches. Do these boys know they're wearing █████████████ denim? There's a zip with a long tail that goes from ███████ to ██████ I'm probably never going to get them back—in fact, the desire to repossess my belongings is gone after seeing they've been passed around like a blunt. My very own sisterhood of the travelling pants has formed. They tell me they like my Balenciaga purse, I say "you can have that too" while staring at the exit sign. We exchange numbers and I tell them we'll hang out later. At the police station. I tumbled over to the Speed show at the National Art School. It looks like a prison—the inmates are wearing black T-shirts with white, bold graphics. The makeshift stage is placed in the centre like a panopticon. I realise I've been here before, many years ago, when I came to have my portrait drawn by a boy who had a crush on me. Why have I lived so much, seen so much, in all different corners of this earth? In the words of ███████████: I just wanna feel everything.

From the rap show to the hardcore show. I feel whiplashed from all the different activities I've done that day. I stand there, mouth agape, watching all these bodies fling themselves around. I want to join in and feel the crowd catch me, experience the bliss, then a woman stage-dives and lets out a blood-curdling scream. The whole concert stops and the medics rush in. She's snapped her leg in half. They take her away. Speed does an impassioned speech about taking care of each other, it's rather saccharine for my jaded self, but in the moment, I feel it. The show goes on. I abuse my media pass privileges and make my way into their greenroom to peek into their icebox ████████████ but it's just water and protein drinks. █████████████████ ████████████████████████████████ When the singer takes his shirt off during the show it all made sense, he was fucking YOLKED. █████████████████████

Something about witnessing so much harshness (music and crowd) and kindness (band and crowd) leaves me feeling warm and fuzzy. I think of TS Eliot: "Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table" I end the night outside Scarr's, non-verbal and staring at Cristiano, the hot pizza guy. He has a cowboy boot on one foot and a Nike Moon Shoe on the other. There's a party playing techno music above the pizza shop. Remember that throughout all of these days I am suffering from jet lag, so, I go home.

"Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table"