Origin Stories: @Av

@Av describes their experience trying to find their tribe, first among the vintage menswear guys, and eventually in a more kink-oriented space.

From the time I was a kid and I barely knew anything about my own sexuality or gender (I’m gay and non-binary and just to give you an idea, I was raised in a fairly liberal area and born in 2004 and yet I didn’t even know what being gay was until I was around 9 or 10) so most of my earliest fantasies were just about me all dressed up in a suit since I rarely wore them and it felt like a world away from my daily clothing. I would usually just get all dressed up in the few pieces of dress clothes I wore to bar mitzvahs and stuff (the first suit I ever got was for my bar mitzvah). Around the age of 17 (as of writing this, I’m 20) I discovered the suit fetish communities and vintage menswear communities (both sexual and non-sexual) online and it just felt like I had been searching for this for so, so long and I finally found it. While most experiences I’ve had have been welcoming, such as the Alfargo’s market menswear scene in New York City near where I live which is full of queer/trans and people of color or people just not from an Ivy/formal menswear background and just reclaiming these clothes that were seen as weird for us to wear. My bad experiences have more or less been stuff in the vintage menswear community like finding accounts where people and their outfits looked cool and then later seeing them posting racist, homophobic, transphobic, antisemitic, Islamophobic or other bigoted shit and just feeling disgusted with it and wanting to quit menswear scenes entirely. I also enjoy wearing 1990’s-early 2000’s clothes as well as long skirts sometimes and because some people in the vintage fashion community almost have a mentality of wanting people interested in vintage fashion to look like that all the time (another similar thing I’ve heard from people in goth spaces is cishet guys being like “oh I want a goth gf” and acting surprised when their GF doesn’t live up to their expectations of looking like that 24/7) so that’s also contributed to me feeling alienated from those spaces.

But regardless, lots of other menswear spaces, both suit fetish related or not sexual, have welcomed me and others who have been left out of menswear for a long time with a big hug and I’ll be forever grateful for that. And lastly as I enter my 20’s I just want to create a wardrobe that alternates between the 90’s-2000’s clothes I love wearing and then looking like a 1940’s dad. Thanks for letting me share my story!