Fashion Neurosis with Honey Dijon

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1:10Hi, come in.

1:17Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Honey Dijon. Hola. Can you describe what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes? I'm wearing what is known as a Canadian tuxedo, which is pretty much head-to-toe denim. I just wanted to wear something that really felt like how I like to move through the world, which is simple, but a nod to the 70s and specifically New York in the late 70s. And I've always loved that combination of denim and leather and a cowboy boot. It just reminds me of being in the urban jungle in New York. And all of my actual style inspiration comes from New York at that time.

1:58So I just chose something that really is what I pretty much wear every day. It's some form of denim, either baggy denim, slim denim, a denim jacket. But it's what I most feel comfortable in. Denim and leather and diamonds. There's tons of diamonds, but you can't see the diamonds. Lucky I've got a diamond. And I've got denim. The whole ear is a diamond situation. we were talking a minute ago about our love of Cher and channeling that kind of you're beautifully channeling her some of her greatest look my favorite era of Cher my favorite Cher image is by Norman Sef and it's her in a black silk shirt with jeans and that image just speaks to my soul And so now, with the availability of so many hair options, you can have your inner Cher every day.

3:01Pretty much. But yeah, I mean, Cher, Diana Ross by Scavullo, when she's wearing the Henley and Gia Karangi's jeans. There's nothing sexier than a great pair of jeans. And it's the hardest things to find. Actually, I find the simplest things are the hardest to find because it needs to really fit your body and it needs to really be lived in for it to have authenticity. So, you know, there's nothing better than a great ass and a pair of jeans as far as I'm concerned. Too right. Yeah. Well, you're one of the most successful DJs and producers in the world. Oh, thank you. How was fashion growing up in your household?

3:43Who influenced you? Well, like many, So I come from a pretty middle-class African-American family in Chicago. I was born and raised in Chicago. And, you know, a lot of my parents are post-war, you know, grew up in the 60s and 70s. And like a lot of black people, when your humanity is stripped from you, you express it through dress. That's how you give yourself courage and self-worth. And you value yourself when you're being oppressed or marginalized. And so fashion was always in my house. I read a lot of, there was Ebony and Jed, and if you know about Ebony Fashion Fair and things like that. And so fashion and how you presented yourself was so important.

4:26It was where you communicated to the world. So that was my first introduction was through my family. My second introduction was through music. I was really fortunate enough to be born at the beginning of house music culture. and like a lot of subcultures how you dress spoke to your tribe or what the community that you wanted to be a part of so I learned about a lot of fashion from going to clubs because you had so many different style codes and house music you had the preppy and the punk and the new wave but you also had you know the house dress code which was riding boots and jodhpurs in some form of either Jean Franco for Ray or Versace sweater.

5:06And so you would bring all of these images. Kids would come to school with Vogue and they would come to school with Luomo Vogue and they would come to school with all of these high fashion magazines. And these were the codes that you use to speak to people in house music culture. So that was my first real introduction, second introduction besides my parents was the community of househeads that I grew up in in Chicago. And we had a department store called Marshall Fields. And they used to have everyone from Willie Ware, Westwood, Gaultier, Montana. And so I used to go, I mean, of course, I was broke.

5:46I mean, you know, I was a kid. I had no money. That was my connection to fashion and clothing. And fashion to me has never been about aspiration. It's always been about inspiration. And I was always inspired by album covers and, you know, nothing was separate. And that's how I sort of have based my entire career, this intersectionality between music, fashion, nightclubbing, nightlife, sex, those were all intertwined for me. And so I would have to say that my introduction to music was through my family and that vocabulary was expanded upon by my peers and house music. And you talked about album covers.

6:32What was the first one? What got into your... The one that changed my life. And today that still I can sit and look at it. Nightclubbing by Grace Jones. Because it was art directed by Jean-Paul Goude. So you get into that world of graphic design and image making. And then the jacket was Giorgio Armani. So you had that connection between fashion and music. And then the hair top was by the hairstylist Christiane. And so you have all of these things swirling. And so I used to read the credits and listen to the music. And that album also changed my life because she covered Libertango, which is this beautiful song.

7:15and then La Vie en Rose by Ida Piaf and then Nightclubbing by Iggy Pop. And so you see how all of these things, I'm starting to piece them together through that image. And so that was the first album cover for me that literally changed my life into today. She's My Shaman and North Star. I had that with Marvin Gaye, What's Going On? And I saw that when I was five or something and thought, this is just so, this is everything. It's so intense and distilled. I love what he's wearing, the Mac. Yeah. He's so, he just looks so great. And it just went into my psyche and album covers have been a big thing.

7:58Well, music and fashion. I've always loved this quote by Malcolm McLaren. And it is, the look of music and the sound of fashion. That sums it up for me. That is like the best thing I've ever heard in my life. Oh, that's wonderful. Because you talked about your love of the scene in the 70s and 80s. Yeah. Before your time, obviously. I mean, I was on the planet, but I wasn't hanging out. What did you wear to the first time you DJed? What was your look? The first time I DJed, wow. Well, okay, so the first time I consider myself a DJ was when I was eight. and now they call it a music selector but my parents used to have basement parties which was pretty normal in african-american households and so they would have basement parties and the first thing i wore when i dj were my pajamas because my mom and dad would let me play music before my bedtime at the beginning of their parties and so that was like eight or nine o 'clock and then i would go to bed but i would never go to sleep because if you know anything about basement parties, they become boisterous and loud and the music and the laughter and the clanking of the glasses and like you can smell the cigarette smoke coming up the stairs, wafting up the stairs.

9:16And I think that was when I fell in love with the joy and celebration and liberation of the party and the community and the communal spirit. Professionally, when I started DJing in New York, what did I wear I think so this is a true story I've never told this story because I was so broke but I had a Macy's credit card and I was eligible for a Macy's credit card so I used to go to Macy's and charge the clothes wear them out make sure the tags were still intact wear then dry clean them and return them please I hope no one still does that because I'm giving away my secret but Anyway, I used to go to Macy's and I was really, what was I into at the time?

10:09Let me really like think back to what I was into. I've always been a huge fan of Norma Kamali. Oh, yeah. So I think my first thing that I wore was Kamali that I charged and then I took it back. You know, there was Barney's and then there was, so I had a Macy's card and then I got a Barney's charge card. And then that was, forget it. That was game over. I think my dry cleaning cost me more than outfits. I could have bought them eventually. But you had to always have a look in New York so you couldn't be caught dead in the same thing twice. Are you kidding? New York is brutal for that. That's the one lesson that I took from New York about culture.

10:50It's like now we live in a culture where we have social media and the internet, right? And it's all about, I find it to be particularly, Literally, everyone is speaking, even though there's tribes, everyone's still speaking the same language. And it's been a flattening of individual style for me in a lot of ways. But one of the things about New York, you had to have something to contribute to the party. And you weren't popular because of how many likes you had. You were popular because you were unique. You had your own voice. And you contributed to the party by the way you dressed, how you talked, your sense of humor, if you could withstand shade or anything like that.

11:25I know I'm going far away from what I wore when I first DJed, but I digress. But anyway, Kamali. Yeah, Kamali. And that's what I used to do. She's still going. And I used to wear Kamali as well. She really gave you a good figure. She gives everyone a good figure. Kamali is... She's incredible. To me, she's one of the most... She should be in the Pantheon with the greats. Yeah. Because, I mean, she's really done so many innovative things. swimwear denim the sleeping bag coat I which by the way the sleeping she was dating Ian Schrager and she created that coat for Steve Rubel to stand outside to pick people to come in so there's that history of the sleeping bag coat that she made for Steve I've gotten to meet with her in the last couple of years and connect with her and I just love it's so interesting when you talk to women designers or female identified designers because they take so much more into consideration about how women actually live and feel in clothes.

12:26And she's just the bathing suit. And bathing suit is outerwear. You could wear a bathing suit to the club. I mean, so all of this, you know, we were talking earlier today about, you know, packing for travel and fashion. And I tell you, you know, I wear body suits and jeans because as much as I love so many conceptual ideas, you know, I don't have the lifestyle to pack all of these things in luggages. You know, I have to, I'm normally in five cities in a weekend and different climates. And I can't even wait for a bag. So I have to, you know, pack lightly. And I realized that a bodysuit can be dressed up or down, jeans, a skirt, leather jacket.

13:01I mean, you can get away with murder in a bodysuit. I think that's the one must-have item. And it doesn't matter what gender you are, but you can get through life with a bodysuit. That's my two cents. That's a very good tip. Yeah. Do you think hang-ups and insecurities about our bodies are catalysts for being inventive about coming up with a good look? You know, I think that's a really interesting question. Because do you think the insecurities about our bodies, we come up with looks? Is that the question that you're saying? Yeah, it's like sort of, I've had so many insecurities about my body, almost kind of eclipsing that I can see myself as a total person rather than a series of bits.

13:48And it's part of, I think, maybe why I became a designer, because I, that was a way of... Acceptance? No, I don't think I'll ever have that, but a kind of way of handling it. And then also I sort of understood that if you have a good look going, it stops you or it can free you from being overly self-conscious. So that's kind of what I'm thinking about. So that sounds like liberation. Fashion liberation. Well, you know, the things that I've come to realize is that, you know, I call myself fashion adjacent, basically. And I was terribly bullied as a kid, you know, a queer black kid on the south side of Chicago and not really having formed my identity and trying on different expressions to find out who I am.

14:47And I think having a look sort of gives you courage to navigate the world. And it can also be a form of armor as well. So I think we're so through advertising, especially post-World War II advertising, a lot of us are shamed if we're not a certain body type or if we don't have certain features. And especially someone like myself, being a black trans woman of color, I've never had. I call it mirrors of affirmation. And so you can't see what you can't, you can't be what you can't see. And so I, for so many years, tried to be so many different things because I wanted to be seen. And at the end of the day, I really realized that through a lot of trial and error, who was I dressing for?

15:49Was I dressing for the male gaze? Was I dressing for protection? Was I dressing for self-expression? But I found out a lot of my insecurities were actually my strengths. The things that I were bullied for or laughed at or not accepted for were the things that made me unique. So I just decided to put a fucking gold star on it. And also your insecurities shift. Your body shifts, your taste shifts, your eye shifts. What I liked five years ago, I wouldn't be caught dead in. I've also learned to edit the longer I walk the planet it seems the more clarity I have of my shifts if that makes sense it does make sense because you said a lot of beautiful things come from oppression and resistance yes what have been your what doesn't kill you makes you stronger moments that's a very layered question because there's so many intersectionalities that I navigate on a daily basis.

16:56And walking out my front doors will form a protest no matter what I'm wearing. But, you know, being oppressed for race or gender or sexual orientation. And so I realized that I wasn't going to make everybody happy. I couldn't make everybody happy. So the only person that I could make happy was myself. and to focus on that love affair and focus on that energy because someone's not going to like me because of the color of my skin. Someone's not going to like me because of my gender. Someone's not going to like the music I play on a certain night. And another thing too, being in romantic relationships.

17:40And I think we do all of these things to attract the right partner or someone to like us or whatever. and I realized that people fall out of love with you. People's attitudes towards you change. And the only person that you should be getting dressed for or the jurist dressing is for yourself. And if someone else likes it, great. I love this quote from Paris is Burning. If you shoot an arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you. Because you also talked about The Artist's Way, the self-help book. Oh, I love The Artist's Way, yeah. And I wonder who introduced you to that. Who introduced me to that was my friends that were into the leather community in New York and they did sex work.

18:23Oh, really? Honey, wait till the book comes out. I have so many stories and I love my sex worker friends. They're like, I learned the most valuable lessons about life and sex through my sex worker friends. And so they turned me into two books, The Artist's Way and The Four Agreements. Oh, yeah. The Four Agreements is another great, great, great book. I read some of that because I saw it in a gangster film where one of the gangsters was saying, I can't do this because in the four agreements. Exactly. Do you remember that? It was so funny. But with The Artist's Way, what was your favorite exercise?

19:03Three pages of journaling every morning. And I still do it to this day. Do you? I still journal. I still journal. I don't feel like my day is complete without me writing down. dreams, hopes, fears, insecurities, but also documenting my life. And I'll go back to those journals and I realized, you know,

19:29it's great to see how far I've come. It's also areas that I still, my blind spots that I still need working on. And it's a documentation of me, for me. So I still write my three, I have a couple of journals. I have my creative journals about ideas. And then I have the Artist's Way journal where I write my three pages every day. And I combine that with the four agreements. I think the hardest thing about the four agreements is not to take anything personal because it's not about you. But also be careful with your word because words are very powerful and we're all languished into experience. And so, yeah, I love the Artist's Way.

20:13I recommend, this is not a plug, I'm not getting a kickback, but the four agreements and the artist way are the two books you should definitely have. And by the way, never fuck anyone that doesn't have books in their house. Good tip. That to me is a deal breaker. I used to like in the artist's way, the artist's date when you went to see something on your own and kind of, you know, just had to concentrate and focus and be connected to some kind of creative thing. Yeah. It was a really good lesson. It's a great lesson. I loved it. Yeah. I'm so interested that it was sex workers who were practicing the artist's way.

20:54It's like just such a wonderful story. Yeah. Well, I find, you know, there's a lot of argument about how soul culture doesn't exist anymore because of the Internet, right? That we're all so globally connected. But I was recently, I went to Folsom Street Fair last year. And I have to say the last frontier for me of soul culture is body autonomy. The trans community gender is the last frontier because people are mixing up ways of dressing and expressing body autonomy. And the kink community, I mean, you know, there's a lot of great style ideas with body modification and sexual expression and leather and fur and latex and just how people dress to express themselves sexually, but it's also liberating.

21:52So I'm all about, and especially a lot what people aren't talking about are trans women and how that has had such a powerful influence on culture, especially the body modification, the big asses and the big tits and the lips and the hair and the nails. And all of that was super, when you did sex work, was this hyper-sexualized version of femininity. Sometimes I like to call it toxic femininity, just like you have toxic masculinity. but this super pumped up version of femininity. And, you know, that went from trans sex workers to the strip club, which is also a form of sex work. And that influenced hip hop culture and hip hop culture afforded rap culture.

22:37Rap culture is now mainstream. And so there's this lineage of that going on. And literally what happens in the street always ends up on the runway in some form or another through nail culture and lace fronts and all the things that we're doing now. I mean, I'm really great friends with Amanda Lepore. And 20 years ago, that was a radical thing. And now she's like, that's the nail tech at the salon. That's the grocery store. I mean, that's just so normalized. Or even Pete Burns was so ahead of the curve. You know, that has influenced culture today. And so there's so much intersectionality between sex work and pop culture and trans culture and queer culture.

23:23None of it is separate. It's interesting what you were saying about how the kink culture is coming into. And all like the things I really like are those pet masks and the ears. Yeah. And there's this brand called Fleet Ilia. Have you ever? I love Fleet Ilia. Oh God, it's so gorgeous. Yeah, it's amazing. She's amazing. I mean, Fleet Ilia is incredible, and she's been doing that for so long. It's really, really elegant. I mean, it's just the most beautifully designed. I'm dying for one of those ears things. I mean, they're so great. I mean, there's no different between, I guess, pop play in Berlin.

24:04I saw a lot of pop play in Berlin. It's very cute seeing people do that. You know, why not? I love the diet and a real quote, why not? Yeah, she certainly got it. And you described walking into a club in New York for the first time and another trans woman saying to you, you belong in a skirt. Yes. And what happened with your wardrobe after that moment? I mean, it's such a big, amazing deal. What wardrobe? I was broke. I didn't have a wardrobe. I had clothes, but I did not have a wardrobe. Like a lot of people when I first met in New York, this is a true story. So before, I've always been a DJ, but there's been a life lived before Honey Dijon, okay?

25:01You know, I worked, I was a hotel phone operator. I got fired from that job because, well, I was always late because I worked the midnight shift and I worked the midnight shift specifically so I could club so it wouldn't change my algorithm. But I was always late. Every job I had. I'm a disaster in corporate environments. So I got fired. And so then I took the money that I had. They gave me severance pay and I moved to Washington, D.C. for a year. And I lived in D.C. for a year and I used to manage the mental health benefits for the city's employee. Can you believe it? It was middle health. So what that means is I used to negotiate inpatient and outpatient rates for people of the city of D.C.

25:47And I used to take the Greyhound bus up to New York City, 40 bucks each way because I was broke. And I used to sleep on a friend's floor. And the best days of my life, I wouldn't change the whole world. And that was my introduction into New York. And like a lot of trans women, I was a drag artist before I transitioned. And so when I was performing, I walked into a club and my community saw me before I saw myself. And what that meant was you belong in a skirt was basically saying you're one of us and we see you and we love you and we appreciate you. And back then, before we had all the trans visibility that we have today, you know, just think it's only been 10 years since Laverne Cox was on the cover of Time magazine, The Tipping Point.

26:33And I've known Laverne for years. You know, we came up in New York. Like, you know, we all went to Stingy Lulu's and Patricia Fields and Lucky Chang's. And so it was still pretty underground. And the girls told you where to go get your first shot, where to go to Mexico to get your surgeries. Because then unlike today, where there's all of these practitioners that do all the facial feminization surgeries and all the trans confirmation surgeries, I'm literally Frankenstein. because you would try to find people or health practitioners that weren't transphobic because there's a lot of transphobia in the medical world.

27:09And so my community really saw me and helped me. There was also this place called Lee's Mardi Gras in the Meatpacking District, which is now Gucci, on the corner of 14th and 13th and Washington. Girl, we could go, this part, usually it's only an hour. I have stories. Lee's Mardi Gras was where you went to get things. And so my sisters told me where to go, what to do, how to do it, and they saw me. And that was the beginning of me becoming... I know this might be a controversial thing. I think the word transition is kind of controversial for me because we're all in transition. None of us stay stagnant in life.

27:58So I always like to say walking into your truth. Right. And so I think for all of us, walking into our truths is the most important thing that we can do. And so when my community saw me, that was the beginning of me getting a wardrobe. It must have been such an exciting moment, like just to be almost an ingenue and someone seeing you like that, telling you something, and then having this this kind of epiphany yeah awakening yeah it was it was it was great and so that's when I started to um do you remember what sample sales you got sample sales sales sample sales friends and I was really lucky because you know how I got into fashion was through music and through DJing and at that time in New York you know you know it was so many fashion designers went to clubs that I played at.

28:51And I started DJing with Visionaire, Stephen Gann and Cecilia Dean and James Kiliardos. And they used to invite me to DJ the Visionaire events. And then, you know, I became really great friends with Narciso Rodriguez, and he would invite me to DJ his events. And then I would sort of do CFDA awards. And then I met Kim Jones in New York through the designer Andre Walker. And that was the beginning of my relationship with Kim. And And we all know that he's gone to do some incredible things with Louis Vuitton and Dior. And so he invited me to start working on the soundtracks with him. And then Ricardo Tichy invited me to DJ his after parties when he was at Givenchy.

29:30And so club culture for me has never been about entertainment. It's always been about a laboratory of creative exchange and ideas and community, creative communities through art, music and fashion. And so that was how I sort of became a part of the fashion world was through these incredible people. This is a paid advertisement for BetterHelp. We are always hearing about red flags and the traits we should be on the lookout to avoid. What about green flags, the qualities we want to enjoy in a relationship or friendship, like kindness, listening, not jumping to conclusions? therapy has helped me break some of my old patterns and embody some of the qualities that I long for in another person I can get trapped in negative fantasy and talking to a therapist has helped me become less wary and guarded and communicate my feelings better with over 5 ,000 therapists in the UK already better help can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise in mental health.