i16 Editors Note

We're addressing today's issues, beginning in New York City and extending worldwide.

For our 16th issue, we lay everything out. We look at the things that keep New Yorkers on edge, from the rise of AI and growing violence to, cultural influences changing the music and fashion sectors. We're also looking outside our city's borders to a country on the verge of collapse, where dysfunctional institutions are destroying communities and politicians are more concerned with ego than the people they serve.

We are criticizing, we are forcing accountability and, we are calling out the decisive speech and policies that continue to tarnish America’s potential. We are disrupting the regularly scheduled program to bring you our honest thoughts, feelings, and judgments.

At 47Magazine & Media, we’re here to report, analyze, and challenge the current quo. Here's to the artists, activists, and everyone who refuses to back down.

Let's get loud. It’s time for a 47Defiance. 

-BARK

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As we sit on our phones and watch political, legal, environmental, and personal turmoil- many of us ask ‘What can I do?’.

What is a step I can take to help something, to live by my moral objections and reference this pain in a productive way for change, rather than desensitizing and ignoring what is happening around us? Living in New York City allows us to start locally and make a huge impact. That was the inspiring spark for this issue. 

As the 47 team, Mark, and I learn and grow we realize this platform can be an outlet for our writers, staff, and readers to voice their opinions and outrage. This issue takes note of the surreal juxtaposition of living in post-modern NYC, where the imperfections of our system slap us in the face every day, and yet we live on, and yet, we find beauty and joy through cracks of despair and exhaustion, and yet we make art. 

I hope you all find refuge in the love, effort, and emotion put into Issue 16. 

-Sophia

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Illustration by Nico Diaz

Trash Bandit Turns Trash into Treasure

The more society evolves, the more impatient we seem to get. It’s a bit ironic if you think about it. The more time we have on our hands, the faster we want everything. We want our food fast and our cars faster. However, the quicker we demand everything at our fingertips, the quicker we’re sentencing our planet—and those on it—to death, leaving conditions worse for those who succeed us. Take a look at fast fashion, for instance—it may be cheap, but every dollar we spend on brands like Shein is spent on someone else’s dime. 

Valeria Celon, the founder of Trash Bandit NYC, is helping the world go round—figuratively and literally—with her very own line of “trashion” (an amalgamation of the words “trash” and “fashion”). Celon turns trash into treasure with Trash Bandit and is here to tell you all about it and the price you really pay when you buy fast fashion.

Lucy Geldziler: What was your inspiration and business model for developing trash bandit?

Valeria Celon: Trash Bandit started out as a school project while I attended FIT and eventually evolved into my full time job. I majored in fashion business management and almost dropped out until I joined the sustainability minor program. After learning about the alarming amounts of textile waste the city produced, I knew that I wanted to work with textile waste and also saw an opportunity to make some money on the side while I was still in school. My mother taught me how to sew over the Covid lockdown and I eventually started designing my own patterns and opened my online store. Because I am working with textile waste and deadstock fabric, a lot of my pieces are one of a kind or have very limited runs which make the brand feel unique. I handpick all the fabric I use and make everything myself in my East Harlem apartment, so I am very invested in every piece I make. 

LG: What’s your favorite product you’ve ever made?

VC: My favorite piece I’ve ever made is a burgundy nylon tote with monkeys embossed on it. It was the first bag I made that was “selling quality”, I ended up keeping it because I became too attached. 

LG: How will a Republican presidency, house, and senate affect the fast fashion world? How do you plan to tackle any hurdles that might impede upon your business? 

VC: I think there are a lot of misconceptions about domestic products and the biggest one is that they won’t be negatively affected by tariffs. All of my pieces, and a lot of small brand’s, are cut-and-sewn domestically and I think that leads people to think that it is 100% made in USA. In reality most, if not all materials are made abroad. For example, I source my materials from Fabscrap, they source fabric waste from a studio based in New York, but that studio likely sources from a factory abroad. I think tariffs will still be damaging to small brands and businesses despite fast fashion prices increasing as well. There is already such a large price gap between fast fashion and slow fashion that consumers who are not interested in sustainability will still choose the cheaper fast fashion option, especially if this decision is exacerbated by the cost of other essentials rising. 

I’ve always tried to keep my pieces affordable because I think sustainability should be attainable to everyone. I grew up in a working class family in a low-income neighborhood so I understand that sustainable fashion can genuinely be unaffordable to a big part of the population. So even if costs do go up, my hope is that I can keep my pieces affordable while being able to meet my needs.

LG: What is something you wish people knew about the world of fast fashion?

VC: I wish people knew that one of the reasons fast fashion is so cheap is because the industry is filled with human rights violations. We often only think about the environmental damage side of fast fashion and forget the ethical violations that occur along the supply chain. Millions of garment workers don’t make a livable wage even in countries where the cost of living is significantly lower than in the U.S. They are exposed to dangerous contaminants and have to work in hazardous conditions and that’s what allows us to buy $4 shirts. 

LG: How is fighting fast fashion by making trashion helping us combat societal/systemic issues?

VC: A lot of brands are now working with textile waste, which helps address the tons of perfectly usable fabric that gets discarded by bigger brands each year. Also, I feel like it has sparked its own creative sector that shows consumers that sustainable fashion can still be fashion forward and colorful, not just neutral pieces (no shade to those brands!) I think self-expression through clothing is very important to many people and even better if it’s sustainable. Many big brands are also taking note of consumer’s interest in textile waste/repurposed materials and are reusing their own waste in specific collections as well. 

LG: What is something people don’t realize is connected to/directly impacted by the world of fast fashion?

VC: In order to compete with foreign companies, many U.S. companies that manufacture domestically cut corners to save on costs. Even in the U.S, garment workers face many violations like wage theft and unsafe workplaces, with many of them immigrants, they are afraid to speak up. We often think these are problems that only happen in foreign sweatshops but there are plenty of sweatshops in the U.S. 

LG: What do you hope to see for the world of sustainable fashion in the future and how do we get there?

VC: I love seeing the increase in sustainable small brands but I think it is also extremely important for multinational companies to move towards sustainability. It is understandably very difficult (some say impossible) for companies of this scale to ever achieve sustainability since their existence promotes overconsumption but I think the appearance of smaller brands is slowly forcing them to make changes. I think  increased awareness coupled with available alternatives are allowing people to make the switch.

Thanks to brands like Valeria’s that are making sustainability affordable, you can have your cake and eat it too. Be sure to check out trashbanditnyc.com or @trashbanditnyc on Instagram for a slice of the future. Whether it comes to donating a dollar to charity, eating less meat, voting, or shopping sustainably, by pretending individual actions don’t matter, we are only further enslaving ourselves. 

Written and Interviewed by Lucy Geldziler

Photography by Mark Bluemle

Styled by Katelynn Herrera

Talent: K Pereira, Chrissy Palmiero

Cunt-Serve-ative: Thoughts on Aesthetic Patriotism

Give Betsy Ross her flowers, because after 247 years, the American flag still hasn’t gone out of style. Whether it is a carefree Lana del Rey in her Born To Die era in her nostalgia-fueled music video for Ride, to the preppy timelessness of Ralph Lauren’s iconic flag sweater, the American flag is multi-purpose for any aesthetic, tacky 4th of July merch notwithstanding. Yet, as Conservatives adopt the American flag and its colors (red, notably), patriotism is decidedly out as a motif amongst Progressive Teens of Today – the Conservative Party has won this battle (and unfortunately, given recent events, possibly the war). 

Yet, you have to give them credit; when the category is Americana Realness, conservatives get a 10/10. Whether it’s due to an overflowing, cultish love of their chosen candidate, or just as a bid to get featured in a news article, conservatives step it up at Trump rallies. They can be seen in bedazzled red-white-and-blue cowboy hats, “Make America Great Again” rhinestoned on denim jackets. It’s overzealous (camp if you will), but it’s not just conservatives that still embrace patriotism. As Americana is favored by the right, even progressives (or those who call themselves progressive, at least) adopt right-leaning aesthetics. 

For the past few years, everyone has wanted to be a cowboy. Nearly every sorority girl has a pink rhinestone cowboy hat in their back pocket, and cowboy boots were the It Girl Shoe before moto boots took over for the season. Not to mention, as people wonder where “the scene” has gone in New York, it has sprouted in the South and the Midwest. Previously overlooked areas have produced artists inspired by their upbringing while giving their work a decidedly queer flair. You have Ethel Cain’s Southern Gothic aesthetic for her Preacher’s Daughter rollout, marrying her Baptist background with layered storytelling. There’s Chappell Roan’s loving pastiche of a beauty pageant contestant on the cover of The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. Americana as an aesthetic may not be as on-the-nose as a flag in the wind, but it still exists. 

Picture this: you’re on Knickerbocker Avenue. You spot Bushwick mullet queers in a camo baseball cap stitched with “Midwest Princess” in orange (one of Roan’s staple merch items), a muscle tank, worn blue jeans, and cowboy boots on the way to their barista shift. They look nearly indistinguishable from a blue-collar worker that pays decidedly much less rent on a house in Nebraska (see what I did there?). But that Bushwick queer, who likely grew up in liberal Northern New Jersey with an NPR-listening mother, is still willing to poke fun at red states (particularly lower-class areas) while appropriating a working-class aesthetic. 

This is just a minor annoyance, though; in some scenes, the adoption of a conservative aesthetic can quickly slide into actually purporting right-wing talking points. I’ll spare you all yet another think piece on Dimes Square, but what cannot be ignored is the transition from their reputation as the “dirtbag left” to ironic conservatism. This “scene” has sprouted creative directors with infected stick-and-pokes wearing a MAGA hat as a fashion statement, and overhearing him drop “gay” and “retarded” like a middle schooler playing Call of Duty. It’s the romanticization of Catholicism, of skinny white girls in slip dresses and rosaries smoking cigarettes and joking about becoming trad-wives that secretly dream of the day they’ll be swept away to Greenwich, Connecticut by a Man in Finance. It’s Dasha Nekrasova, host of the Red Scare podcast, having a photo op at a shooting range and fashioning the target to look like a caricature of an Arab terrorist during the height of Gaza’s genocide. This irony bears more resemblance to the modern-day incarnation of the Republican Party than I’m sure the Dimes Square crowd wants to admit; namely, the disregard for people different than themselves. 

Of course, it’s not all bleak; many people have reclaimed conservative aesthetics for their own, finding comfort in familiar motifs but putting their own spin on it. Country, a decidedly American genre, has always been revered by the queer community, from Dolly Parton to Kacey Musgraves. Recently, it has been overtaken by a small, but growing number of artists in the LGBTQ+ community. Whether that be alternative artists like Orville Peck, drag queens who step outside of the usual electronic bitch track like Trixie Mattel, to even mainstream artists coming out like Maren Morris, they all bring a perspective outside of the standard straight musician usually upheld in Nashville. These trends also allow queer people in red states, whether they move to a big city or build community within their small towns, to embrace these roots while bringing a progressive viewpoint to it. 

Trends will always skyrocket when New York takes notice. But they aren’t only found in big cities; it’s a sunburnt uncle in his pick-up or your sassy Southern grandma, and their descendants who are building their own identities from where they came from. 

Written by Ava Sharahy

Photographer: @_.rubbertoe

Director, Production Manager: @dreamingofceleste

PA: @_.amanddaaa

Talent: @katieschieble & @chloe.kaleah