OTTOLINGER A/W ‘20

The stark white room in which the conversation took place also doubled as a showroom for the clothing. Cow print jackets, butterfly sandals, bell-bottoms, and stone-washed slogan tees with the campaign’s tagline, “Born to Disobey,” splashed the walls with color. Various mannequins sporting Wilson’s signature rapunzel-like locks were styled in statement chain belts and tasseled purses overflowing with Y2K influence, making them seem like Steve Madden bobbleheads come to life. 

The actual Vivian Wilson was styled indistinguishably from the mannequins, and across from Odell, also in Desigual, but in a nearly floor-length ombre orange dress, the youthful aims of the collection became quite clear. Having Odell as a moderator seemed to present a picture of womanhood for Wilson to grow into. When asked to describe the campaign in one sentence, Wilson quipped, “We do a little bit of looking camp right in the eye.” 

The campaign features Wilson entangled with a robot. She walks it like a dog, operates on it, and tells it that “some things aren’t meant to be fixed.” The story is injected with Wilson’s bubbly public persona, something that is refreshing compared to the rigidity of the fashion world, but that’s what makes her so appealing to the public in the first place. 

Her online humor and outspokenness is what’s pushed her into the public eye, regardless of any familial ties, and yet in some ways her affect reflects a young girl who's being pulled along by the whims of an industry. I asked Wilson what drives her to this kind of work, after she spoke to Odell about getting into acting while she continues to model.

 I wondered whether this hyper-visibilty is something that’s been thrust upon her or something she actively chooses to move towards. She thought for a moment, then responded, “I mean it’s a bit of both, it’s a lot of fun.” This was followed by a bout of laughter that I had gotten used to throughout her conversation with Odell. She continued, “Obviously my introduction to the modeling industry with Teen Vogue was unconventional, but I’m embracing it.” Succinct and charming, I wished she had gone just a little bit deeper, if only to show what lies beyond the veneer of sudden celebrity. Before the Teen Vogue article, Wilson was making waves fighting the right, and by extension her father Elon Musk, on the internet. Since then, she’s appeared in a Katseye music video and debuted with Gucci at Milan fashion week, walking the same runway as Kate Moss and Emily Ratajkowski.

Sudden fame and the glamour of being a campaign star is always something that people on the other side want to know about, but for Wilson it seems like just another line through the bucket list. As a young trans woman myself, I was especially keen to hear what she had to say about appearing so publicly. However, Wilson was more keen to talk about the military-industrial complex, and encouraged people to “be cringey, be wild, be a little bit unclean!” She seems to take her positioning in the social landscape seriously, and spoke about the need to “[question] the societal expectations placed upon you, where things come from… having a sense of your own morality.” From someone else, these words could be read as platitudes, but her subjectivity as a young trans woman laughing in the face of immense public scrutiny gives them weight. Then, about thirty seconds later, she pointed at her pants and said, “these are a bit topsy-turvy, what’s going on?”