OpEd: 'As we honor his life beyond just the glamour that I loved so much, we should also speak truth to the very real and enormous pains he had to take on to do this.' - ZachStafford
. “I wake up and think about it almost every day.” This quote was in reference to the fact that many of his closest friends, such as Karl Lagerfield and Yves Saint Laurent, were now gone and he was partnerless living upstate. And this is where he, for me, began to make it clear that his life was a beautiful warning to boys like us.Jemal Countess/WireImage for CHANEL
Don’t get me wrong: A.L.T. was loved and he also loved himself. This warning doesn’t diminish the love that was his life. Rather, it is one that tells us we can, and we should, have even more love than he felt. But capitalism, the patriarchy, and even fashion are systems that can’t and will never love us back.
A check will never hold you when you’re sad and a piece of clothing will never be the thing you call for words of encouragement in your darkest moments. And when you’re Black, these systems were never built to hold you in the first place. Even just existing in them doesn’t radically change them. To borrow from what Audre Lorde once wrote in 1984, “the master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house.
What A.L.T.’s life now shows us is the ways in which we as Black, queer folks existing in these spaces can be a constant contradiction. That you must acknowledge how your life, your body just being at the upper echelon of fashion can be a revolutionary act, but how that also isn’t always enough to truly change the entire system. Or that the system will ever fully embrace you for more than a season.
When I look back at my younger years when I overly romanticized the life of A.L.T., I realize that it was me hoping that my Black, queer body could find some space in the world where I could just be. When the world rejected me as I grew up, I somehow told myself that success or work will prove to them how worthy I am – that if I just do more, go bigger, make even more money, that they then will love me like I love them.