In 2019, I interviewed John Waters for The Big Issue. We talked about lots of things that didn't make it into the final piece (music discussions: we talked about Frank Ocean, Tierra Whack, Amyl and the Sniffers). One of my favourite bits is this brief exchange we had about fashion. Enjoy!
JOHN WATERS: Well, you know, I can like insane clothes... I did a photo shoot the other day for a magazine, and the stylist brought me all these clothes where I'd say, "I'm not wearing them! I would look like a fool in those." You know, I can wear ludicrous fashion outfits, but there is a limit. If I was 21, maybe I would wear culottes, but I'm really not gonna do it at 73. But if you're young and wanna be stylish, you go to the thrift shop, and you buy the one thing that nobody would wear. Nobody would wear. The one that's left over. The one where, when you put it in a Goodwill box, it throws it back out at you. Wear it militantly, and then it becomes fashion. I mean, in America now, they have 'normcore', which is just a code word in the fashion world for dressing like regular middle-class working people that don't care what they look like [laughs], so anything can become fashionable as long as people originally react against it. I think no young people should pay lots of money for designer clothes. Later in life, you need all the help you can get, but when you're young, you should invent that, and try to wear clothes that cost nothing, really - that are free in thrift shops. And you'll look the cutest and sexiest, I think, that you possibly could.
Note: This written transcription could never capture the audible disdain with which Waters said 'culottes'.