{shortcode-3511c0f1657ac24987b6e7fe5de778ed4358eda5}
{shortcode-8c0dd475ea3269f67b1a4d37d27db5cc232a1fc2}hen they open the Dudley Co-Op door, Primo S. Lagaso-Goldberg ’25 is wearing a burnt red-orange plaid button down under a pea coat with wide-legged black pants — bought in Japan. It’s a sleek combination, pulled together with a set of earrings featuring pearls and red gemstones. This outfit is one Primo will never wear again. That’s part of the challenge. Every new day means a new outfit.
When asked what their aesthetic is, Primo explains that, though it has been described by friends as akin to the “graffiti or stickers on the side of a subway car,” their style can’t be pinned down under one label. They pull together items from dark academia, gorpcore, and any other aesthetic they find pleasing at will. And their style isn’t done growing and changing yet.
Last year, Primo says, their style was more edgy. They used to wear eyeliner every day, and their wardrobe had (well, technically, still has) an abundance of black clothing. Nowadays, you might not see them sporting black eyeliner everyday, but they always stay true to what they “feel good wearing, no matter what aesthetic that borrows from.”
To Primo, the way you dress isn’t just about how you look; it’s also about how your clothes make you feel. They don’t believe in the old adage that “beauty is pain.”
“You should feel comfortable, at baseline,” they say. “Sometimes I make sacrifices about being comfortable to look good, and I’m okay with those sacrifices, but I don’t think that they’re necessary to look good.”
According to Primo, part of that comfort comes from personalizing the way you wear your clothes.
{shortcode-e30fa26df5649424c7ea7e4cbbc6612232f725f0}
“Get to know what proportions you like, where you like things to sit on your hips. Because it’s little things that I think are so interesting. Where if you pull the pants up five inches, it changes the proportion of the outfit completely. Where if you wear a skirt at your hips versus at your waist, it completely changes the whole vibe of the outfit,” they say.
They further explain that taking the initiative to wear what makes you feel good can also make you look good.
“You can pull off something that’s really crazy, if you’re confident in it,” they say. “If you feel good in what you’re wearing, then that gives you an automatic, I don’t know, like 20 percent of what you need to be ‘stylish’ or ‘fashionable.’”
Primo’s relationship with fashion has a long history. Growing up, they would help their mother choose earrings and shoes to go with her outfit.
“It kind of implanted in me the idea from the very beginning that before you leave the house, how you look is very important, and you have a lot of choices about what you put on your body,” they say.
From those first experiences with their mom, Primo’s style continued to evolve. Primo has lived in Hawaii and San Francisco, but it was their brief stint living in Japan that left a durable impression on their style. They refer to this time in their life as “a huge turning point.”
“Baseline aesthetic is completely different there,” they say. “I felt more comfortable exploring and wearing crazy shit. And then that helped me push the boundaries and expand and find my own aesthetic.”
To Primo, clothes are imbued with a certain power. This power ranges from the sublime, like presenting yourself professionally for a job interview or dressing nice for a date, to the political. “There’s a lot of potential for clothing, fashion as a tool for empowerment and for resistance,” they say.
And that power of expression even extends to identity for Primo.
“For me, it has been a lot about gender and exploring being trans and being non-binary and having a lot of control over my gender presentation through my clothing,” they say.
Primo later circles back around to the subject of self-expression of gender identity through appearance. This time, they bring up an interesting point about tattoos.
“Tattooing on the queer body is sort of this radical reclamation of both tattooing as an art form and of the body,” they explain. Primo is covered in a host of over 50 tattoos that they have been accumulating since they were 18. For them, tattoos are akin to accessories, and they enjoy shaping the clothing they wear around displaying those tattoos in the summertime. The designs range from centipedes, to poppies, to one designed by their mom and inspired by Hawaiian quilting.
At a recent conference, Primo tells me, they presented an argument about the “compound othering” that comes from tattooing — a physical marker that often carries negative associations, especially in professional settings — on the “queer body,” the body of a person that has been socially “othered” by their sexuality or gender identity.
“Because you’re already othered, and you’re choosing to other yourself again, it sort of flips everything around, and it becomes an expression of diverse sexuality and gender,” they say.
Even if you don’t have a specific reason, Primo believes it is worth embracing the different ways you can dress.
“You have that power over how you present yourself every single day, to every person on the street,” Primo says. “That’s not to say that everyone has to dress to the nines every single day, but I think people underestimate and forget about the power that clothing has.”
— Associate Magazine Editor Jem K. Williams can be reached at jem.williams@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @jemkwilliams.
