Robin Givhan

You know, it's kind of a combination of happenstance and a little bit of intent.

I mean, I never really thought that I would be someone who was writing about fashion.

I sort of fell into that as a young journalist who just wanted a beat that I could call my own.

And that sort of happened to be the one that opened up.

And I thought, I wore clothes.

This sounds interesting.

Maybe I'll explore this.

And I started thinking about fashion sort of outside of the bubble that is the fashion industry, in part because I was someone who was coming to the subject not as a fan, but as someone who was just sort of curious about it.

Having spent so much of my career at the Washington Post,

In Washington, politics and identity and power and sort of the struggle for power and respect, and you can't sort of help but think about that, regardless of what subject you're covering.

Yeah, I mean, the thing about fashion is that, you know, it is...

It's inherently an interesting industry, right?

Because it's full of sort of creative people who are trying to also navigate a global business.

But it's also extraordinarily intimate because no matter who we are, we can't really opt out of it, right?

I mean, unless we sort of dedicate ourselves to a nudist colony, we all have to sort of think about what we're going to put on in the morning.

And I find that even people who have this sort of attitude of I am beyond fashion or I don't engage with fashion, they're still in some way reacting to this sort of outsized importance or impact that fashion has and how we perceive people.

And so when people start talking about

you know, identity and, you know, and saying that it's not something that we should focus on.

To me, that says you've never been in the position of having your identity questioned or having your identity judged.

or having your identity devalued.