Aimee Haraf was walking downtown searching for inspiration for sketching.
You are carrying a Teddy bear! My Teddy also doubles as a purse, so he gives me somewhere to put my keys and Ventra pass when walking the streets of Chicago. Plus, he’s super cute, which is an added bonus. His name is Usagi-chan, since usagi is the Japanese word for bunny and he came from a Japanese lolita clothing company.
Why are your socks so bloody? I chose to layer the bloody socks to give a pop of color and create contrast with my lacy knee socks. They help to maintain some of that classic edgy feel that people expect when they think of gothic fashion.
How do you juxtapose gory and cute? I often do that since it reflects who I am as a person. Here I am, a petite blonde girl with more than a few tattoos and piercings. I love cutesy, twee things and keep a whimsical outlook on life. Yet I also have a dark, sarcastic sense of humor and I swear like a sailor.
Who and what inspires your style? I like to use nature as a major source of fashion inspiration and stick to a color palette of whites, creams, black and soft pink. I also like to look at retro fashion statements and find a way to update them.
Journalist Isa Giallorenzo was born in São Paulo, Brazil and has elected Chicago as her beloved home since 2009. She runs the street-style blog Chicago Looks and wants to see this town become one of the fashion capitals of the world.
