As “The Accidental Icon,” New York-based Lyn Slater is known for her sharp glamour, and highly intellectual approach to fashion. A professor of social work and criminal justice at Fordham University, not to mention former director of the Child Sexual Abuse Project at Lawyers for Children, Slater’s abrupt turn into the fashion world was, as the name suggests, entirely accidental. After being photographed outside a Fashion Week event in a Yohji Yamamoto suit, she caught the attention of tastemakers and avid street-fashion admirers internationally. Presently, her weekly blog posts read like urban philosophy, tackling various aspects of womanhood, ageism, and sustainability.
In this exclusive interview and photoshoot produced by Posture, Slater delves into her lifelong fascination with what she calls, “identity driven style.”
Photo by Kate Owen
What are some of your earliest memories or associations with fashion? Where did you spend a lot of time, growing up?
I’ve always had, what I call, a very performative relationship with clothes. I always wanted to be all of these different people, and I would dress to suit that. When I was young, I met a woman in our building who lived very far away from her own grandchildren, and she kind of took me under her wing. She was a brilliant seamstress; she would make costumes for me. My mother has this photo, from when I was about four, alongside my best friend, who was a boy — and this woman had dressed me as a groom and him as a bride. Which, at that time, we’re talking the 1950s, was very crazy.
Essentially queering style for you, very early on.
Yes! My love affair with androgyny has been happening for a very long time. It’s interesting, the various people who inspired my fashion. In Catholic school, the nuns all wore very elaborate habits. Long gowns, wide leather belts — a lot of pleats, a lot of drapes, and veils. When I was in high school, and doing my thing, I was able to go into New York City. You know, by myself, on the train, with my friends. That was really the beginning of my urban love affair. Like, MacDougal Street and the whole of West Village was really happening, at that time, both fashion–wise and politically.
Photo by Kate Owen
As a queer-run magazine, social justice is something that Posture is passionate about. I’d be interested to hear how you developed an interest in criminal justice and social welfare?
Well, I think, part of that does come from being involved in Catholic education; there was always a community service aspect to it. You were always raising money for people overseas, going on service trips. So I think my sensibility and social justice came from that, as well as the fact that I was becoming an adult in a time of massive social change. You know, the women’s movement, free love, everybody smoking weed, demonstrating against the war. During that time, the government was scared of youth movements, and they actually listened, unlike now.
It was the Cold War. It was still very close to World War II, there were a lot of fears, about nuclear holocaust, war, and social upheaval. I guess, for me, one of the ways that I dealt with those fears is that I have a super strong intellectual defense system. Instead of being frightened by something, I would try to understand it; I would really dive into it. I would try to find out everything about it. In that way, I sort of mastered whatever emotions were happening for me, and I felt more control.
I think, the more mystery you take out of something, the more you know about it, the less frightening it becomes.
And I think it takes away moral judgments. When you have that approach, you try to really witness the lived experience of others. That process allows better understanding of life, at a very complex, and deep level — you see that it is both horrifying and beautiful.
Photo by Kate Owen
Can you talk a little bit about the Me Too movement? What has your response been, as somebody who’s worked within the field of social work for so long?
Well like everything else, I think there are positive aspects to it, but I also think there’s negative aspects to it. I was actually talking about this recently, with my students. We were deconstructing it, and the reality is that it’s still a movement for privileged women. So many of the clients that I have worked with, and that my students are currently working with, have said, “Well, their slogan is not for me.”
So many women are still living in very precarious situations, where they don’t have power. For me, that was the biggest error of the first and second waves of feminism. It was made for privileged women. That’s why it never did the job it needed to do. Institutionalized structures created the context for this event.
You’ve said that you feel like your style is something that counteracts the ‘invisibility of age.’ The conversation around visibility has become extremely important in recent years. What’s been your experience of this?
I think there is a lot of deeper work that needs to be done. Fashion is still obsessed with bodies, instead of the people within them. Within these categories they like to create, are tons of difference in individuals. Until people start talking to the real people, inside the bodies, I don’t think they are going to truly understand experience. They’re having these counts now, after Fashion Week — okay, we had X amount of models of color, three transgender models, and once in a while, the odd ‘old person.’ Now, we’ve done our job!
Photo by Kate Owen
I think it’s pretty transparent, too, especially for people who live those experiences, how tokenizing that mentality is.
Right. Just an example, for me there’s a really big disconnect between who I am internally, and my physical body. That’s what age is. Inside of my body, which has changed, is someone who was 18, was 20, was 30, was 40, and who retains all of those ages, right inside. I might wake up one morning, and hear a song, and I am 19 years old. That my internal state. That’s how I’m thinking. That’s how I’m feeling. That’s how I want to behave. So, when I dress the way, that way, even though I am 64, for me, it does not look like a costume, it looks like me, because I’m always dressing from the inside out.
Definitely. I mean, for you, does that relate to the concept that you’ve spoken about, on Accidental Icon, about intellectual aesthetics?
I have gotten, throughout my life, such an enormous pleasure, and feelings of creativity, from how I dress. When you are still making fashion about the body, you are taking away the creative pleasure that clothing, as a method of expressing unique identity, can provide.
Thinking about aesthetics as detached from the physical?
Yes. I think that the underlying truth of all of these different positionalities is they’re very fluid. They can change, from one moment to the next. People will always ask me, in interviews, “Well, how would you characterize your style?” The reality is that I can’t, because it changes all the time.
It’s like being asked to characterize yourself, essentially.
I have always experimented with the different styles. I think it’s just something that allows you to keep progressing, and moving, and learning, and being, and introduces you too many new experiences. I think we’ve known all of these things, at least, postmodern theorists have told us about them. I think this is a moment that, with the right kind of collaborative structures in place, things could really happen.
I think we’re starting to see certain elements of that fluidity peak its head out. It needs collaboration, like you said. What’s currently exciting you, in terms of like silhouettes, pieces, designers? What’s in your wheelhouse, currently, that you’ve been really excited about?
Well, one of the things that I’ve been interested in sustainability. I am really interested in the whole notion of up-cycling, but in a really avant-garde kind of way. A couple of seasons ago, Viktor & Rolf did a whole couture show that was upcycled pieces. I think it is a really interesting way to support identity driven fashion, and style, and sustainability, at the same time.
I also have a lot of relationships with young, emerging designers, and many of them are from China. As a matter of fact, I recently judged a fashion design contest at the China Institute. I think that their clothes are really unique and modern. I respect that there’s always an element of respect for tradition, and at the same time they’re focused on the future.
What the process of dressing like for you? Do you feel ritualistic about it or does it have that same fluidity of position?
It’s funny because I have been approached by a couple of literary agents to write a book. I’ve been playing around a lot with a notion I’m calling “identity driven fashion and style.” It’s about expression. So, my process is really based on these questions — who is the person that I am today, and what are they going to be doing, and what is it that they want to achieve? I think you can actually put together an outfit that can get that outcome for you.
I’m seeing young people saying to editors, to the industry, “Don’t tell me what to wear.” I am going to wear what I want to wear. I’m going to buy from brands that are doing something good, as well as making nice clothing. I think that they are really championing this notion that we’re going to dress who we are — not what you tell us we should be.
For more information please visit accidentalicon.com.
Editorial Credits
Author: Maya Harder-Montoya
Photographer: Kate Owen
Creative Director: Morgan T Stuart
Sr Photo Director: Asher Torres
Set Designer: Mo Pepin
Stylist Assistant: Paris Roman
Hair: Muriel Vancauwen for Exclusive Artists using Indi Hair Paris and Hot Tools
Makeup: Slater Stanley
Location: Beyond Studios NYC
Join the Posture community and become an official member! Membership includes our special annual print edition ($20 value), free and/or discounted entry to all Posture events in NYC (including upcoming mixers, panel discussions, and networking opportunities), special offers from our partners, personal updates from the Posture team, and more. Learn more here.
