The Road More Traveled

If New York Magazine Can Have A Look Book, So Can I

The Look Book: Jessica Joffe, "Writer"/"Socialite"




















What are you doing right now?
I am modelling for my good friend Holly Dunlap's "Hollywould" collection. Perhaps you've heard of her? She has many celebrity friends! She selected me because I am "beautiful, albeit in an unconventional, unfussy way," and because I have a "quirky, unique sense of style." But of course, I am modelling ironically, and I am actually engaging in a subversive act of resistance by placing myself within a societally-constructed concept of "feminine idealization" and then tearing down the very structure that I have helped to build. I am an intellectual, as you might have noticed. Did you know that I'm writing a book?

I see how you are operating within those constructs, but how exactly are you tearing them down?
Is it not obvious? I tear them down by dating the scion of a multi-billion dollar corporation and then a rockstar, attending numerous benefits, wearing expensive clothing, and adopting an upper-class British dialect despite my American childhood.

Perhaps a Cockney accent would have been slightly more subversive?
I have been featured in Vogue. Isn't that fascinating?

Where do you live?
Inside the vastly inflated hype that surrounds me. On holidays I visit my delusions of grandeur or spend a weekend with my affectations.

What do you do?
Sometimes I read aloud from various Greek philosophical texts while wearing vintage Ossie Clark, legwarmers, and a John Deere trucker hat. On other occasions, I crank up the Wagner, pour myself a glass of black market absinthe, and reenact Millais' "Ophelia." Did I mention that I'm writing a book?

How would you describe your style?
It would take me a while to translate the nuances of my conceptual framework into layman's terms. But I'll begin by pointing out that Zac Posen is my friend.

Tell me about this outfit...
I think that would be Holly Dunlap's job. I was only the model, and since I was not at liberty to select the physical garments, I could only control the "wardrobe" of my attitude. For that, I chose a neutral shade of "smug" and layered it with a bias-cut "self-important" I picked up in a little store southwest of Bangladesh. I am also wearing an embroidered, Chinese silk "jaded" that I found in my mum's closet, and I top the whole thing off with an adorable little "pretentious" from Barneys.

posted by She-Ra, Princess of Power @ 4:03 PM