Digital shots for Maven A/W 2016

Model: Jade Goodwin for Hollywood Model Management

Co-styling: Alexandra Hall

All clothing and accessories available at www.mavensd.com

Scorpio

Dear Joel,

I'm going to call you Joel in this post. Alex comes naturally. But I met you as Joel, that day we were in queue and you wore a breton striped long-sleeve and huarache sandals. I think we shook hands. I think I immediately admired your radiant spirit. And I think that I have never felt so rewarded in my predetermined assignation to any other friendship.

This September, we spent less than a handful of days with each other; abbreviations of some warm afternoons with fragmented sunlight, where I cannot recall anyone bringing out laughs from me as consecutively as you still do. The past and present momentarily shake hands.

I cannot recall:

Of anyone I can welcome into the detached spread of my own space, that one I call home. I unlace all the places where my heart belongs, and cry when I explain why it can't palpitate in a town like this.

Of anyone whose waves follow the same currents as mine; an artistic trial we run with voltages of inspiration but at times a fractured base.

Of anyone who left, then surged the need for me to gather all your leftover pieces because they're the last scraps that persuaded me to continue writing not long before this post. You somehow brought out a forgotten denomination of my better parts.

I cannot recall of anyone else who has done this but you.

In my mind, time with you has ascribed to it the same effect as always. I like how it has not changed. We rediscover our similarities and refresh the idea that the sky isn't that far. Then we wear the thought where ever we go. Until our next time, we expose the rips or alterations of its seams.

The last night I saw you, you hesitated, voice shaking as you read the words from your journal out loud despite encouragement from cold glasses of white wine. You didn't want to sit while you read, so we watch you standing near the soft gold glow and the silence.

We try to get you to say something.
I secretly hope you say more.
We try to pull you out of the shadows.
I suddenly see myself in the dark.

And I hope you know that it meant something to me. I hope you know that it wasn't just a spectacle, because your writings are eager with power. And writing is the place where my means of safeness has slept uninterruptedly, but where your emotions have drifted exponentially.

I wish you had not left back to Santa Cruz.
I wish one of my better parts had not left back to Santa Cruz.

But you re-introduced it to me in the limits of a bleak suburban coordinate. Did you know you carved out unrecognized roads from a map I know too well?

We romanticize possibility and sentimentalize creativity.

Scorpios are of a particular brand of humanity.
And in between all our temporal gaps,
it's never the last time I feel like your friend.

- Al

Slub Series : Soft Ideal

Model: Jacob Hurt

Styling: Andrea Franco

Photography: Alana Ocano

One of my mains

Georgia Proskauer in Salvation Mountain.

Slab City, February 2016.

Dress by Rambler Vintage (ramblershop.com)

Jewelry by Georgina Treviño (georginatrevino.com)

Unlayer

My nights are uniformed in wishful thoughts about rolling over during any time of the eve and finding you there instead of a message. Loud thoughts are always quieted when I hear your voice echoing tenderness, or your eyes unwrapping the idea that maybe I bring light to them. Warm displays are the most cruel. It's just that tonight I don't feel like going to sleep without it.Without somehow unraveling those storytelling words I used to need on an impulse of total recall, or attempt to reinterpret.

We follow a cautious method when it comes to ensuring the fondness of each other's affections. It's like drinking a glass of wine. I've come to know hands that are all too familiar with the addicting shape of a bottle and the sound of its clinging against the last. But the method following a glass is fragile. I've enjoyed our evolving procedure that somehow manages to involuntarily settle beneath the exception we are to each other. A slow dance composed of opportunistic actions, powered by heavy longing and a little bravery.
This is how we drink our wine.
I'll down an excess if it means I can stay jovial from hearing you talk a little longer. I'm sure you'll hear me smiling across the phone.
I'm crushed by how much I like your unconstrained remarks, something about the way you use language to touch me in places your fingers cannot reach.  Sometimes I can't help but feel like our story sits on the edges of illusion: during some other late summer, some other year that we met, where my concealed habits didn't wander atop sensitive and transitory grounds.

One thing that T said is relevant: "You're naturally a radiant person and there will be people that react accordingly." I just can't seem to forget. Strong words stay with me, and what a strange thing it is to be attached to this statement. I wasn't ever looking for it, but I welcomed you because I didn't want to know what it would be like without you.

I sought you in a dark confined space, past nightfall, persuaded by my own advancements that would have otherwise remained ephemeral. Now I  replay my favorite December night with you, that one where your lips matched the color of my velvet dress. They looked like they had been bitten all over, rather than smeared by my crimson hue. You seemed to not mind much, and whether they had been bitten or smeared wouldn't have made a difference once we woke up with our limbs braided to one another. After Ruby's you threw your cigarette on the ground. You bandaged your arms around my quivering body while the cold city buried us deep.

So it's late again, the feeling is now too familiar, and it's terribly wonderful.
I'm not burdened by having a lot to say and not really knowing how. I think this effort in itself to try to accommodate my words is already a clear sign of what you do to me.

All I really want to tell you is that I've been missing you.

But you already knew that.

- A

Don't carry me back home

I've been dreaming of you for so long.

Tivoli lights in Copenhagen, Denmark. 

December 2015.