Rachel Tashjian C’11 Strips Fashion of its Frivolity GARAGE Fashion Features Editor and Penn grad Rachel Tashjian talks shopping in Philly, Crocs on the runway and the future of fashion journalism. BY JESSICA SULIMA PHOTOGRAPHED BY JIN MA
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was the first person to explain to me how to style clothing. She’d explain how just because a sweater is shaped a certain way doesn’t mean your arms have to go through the sleeves.”
A member of the class of 2011, Tashjian studied English and art history at the University of Pennsylvania. She ran the F-Word magazine and also took part in the Vagina Monologues. “That was like, the really chic thing to do at the time,” she says, tucking her bleach-blonde curls behind her ear.
Tashjian always loved clothes, but she did not grow up reading Teen Vogue or Seventeen, dreaming of becoming a fashion journalist. It wasn’t until she got to Penn that she discovered the possibility of talking about seemingly trivial things in really intelligent ways.
achel Tashjian walks into New York City’s Dimes Deli with a Supreme fanny pack and a fistful of elegance. “Well I guess the best thing about Penn was the fact that it made me want to move to New York,” she begins.
But even more chic was her regular visits to Joan Shepp, a luxury store located in Rittenhouse—the first high-end boutique she went into where she could “actually touch the Rick Owens.” “I would just go in and try stuff, figure out how to put a Commes des Garcon garment on,” Tashjian says. “There was this woman who works there named Tuesday. I knew clothing, but she
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Tashjian throws her head back and laughs, “And to top it all off, her name was Tuesday.”
“I started to figure out that academics write theses about Patti Smith and television and that sort of thing. And there are also people that write about Balenciaga or Givenchy,” she says. “That was very exciting to me, so I started reading about those things from an academic perspective.” It was around this time Tashjian began digging through the archives of The New York Times, reading through an entire history of fashion criti-
cism. She cites Cathy Horyn as one of her biggest inspirations. “I’ve always really liked journalism, but when I discovered that there was this person writing news pieces and criticism about clothing in the way that I read criticism about rock albums, that was really exciting,” Tashjian says. “The idea that people were thinking about these things in a deep way really inspired me.” Tashjian is drawn to the ideas behind the clothes. According to her, seemingly nonsensical decisions, like Balenciaga’s recent inclusion of Crocs on the runway, always have a story to tell. “It’s not some accident that Jeff Koons was like, ‘Oh, I guess I’ll put these paintings on a bag and people will love it’ or that Demna Gvasalia was like, ‘Yeah sure, we can put Crocs on the runway, that sounds cute.’ There’s a lot more thought behind it that people can appreciate,” she says. It was this astute perspective that carried Tashjian into fashion journalism, though a career did not come right away. After graduating Penn, Tashjian worked as a public relations intern for the creative director at Betsey Johnson for three months and gained a comprehensive understanding of everything that goes into building a fashion business. Then began her dark period, in which