“It’s been really crazy to feel everything out and see where it’s going to take us,” says Aria Olson, a 19-year old Missouri native who conceived of the event and brought on the other 10 women as collaborators. “We’re hoping to take the concept and expand it out to something larger where we can make an impact because we love the work that we’re doing. We love that aspect of the Met Gala the most, the pure love of fashion.”
Since the May 4 event, the organizers have been contacted by two documentary film crews and a number of fashion brands. This follows a partnership with Oscar de la Renta on the night of the HFTMG event and Thom Browne dressing Olson in look one from its fall 2020 collection for the occasion. The team is also working on a partnership with the closet-rental app Wardrobe, based in New York City.
But as the adage goes, “With great power comes great responsibility.” When I first met the HFTMG team, they spoke about how the HF Twitter community was an important place for its open-mindedness and its position outside the fashion industry proper, which allowed for criticism of the fashion industry’s missteps. Maintaining that independence of thought and practice is much harder when borrowing clothes from designers.
“I feel like I’m still opinionated, but I’m also more intentional with the things that I post. Now that we have built up this platform, I want to be able to use my personal platform and our joint platform to do things that are more progressive and can actually incite change within the industry,” says 19-year-old Chloe Kennedy from Houston, Texas. “I still make my opinions known. One of the great beauties of High Fashion Twitter is that you’re allowed to have your opinion, and you’re allowed to have critical conversations on certain topics. That’s not something I want to sacrifice because we are a bigger platform.”
“I think it’s part of what we stand for actually,” adds Sofía Abadi, 22, from Buenos Aires, Argentina. “It would be amazing to see people like us being able to make change within the industry.”
As a group, the HFTMG team is integrating their beliefs into their future projects, starting with an e-book released this week. The 170-page book designed by Abadi and Alejandra Beltrán, 21, from Bogotá, Colombia, mimics the structure of the Costume Institute’s catalogues, with spotlights on collections that fit into the “About Time” theme and a selection of looks—in this case user-submitted from Twitter. As for that change Abadi was talking about, it also includes an essay on “Race and Representation in the Fashion Industry” and another on “Gender Fluidity in Fashion.” To receive a copy, followers had to make a minimum donation of $5 to the International Medical Corps. By last week, the HFTMG had raised more than $1,000.