Memory can latch onto odd things. Sometimes the endeavor of a moment’s glance can burn a lasting impression.

He remembered her face for awhile, but that image faded over time, overpowered by the starkness of her get-up, all that boxy contrast, a somehow delicate squareness. Against the hazy sky, she looked like she was placed in a light box for viewing. Her clothes moved herky jerky smooth, like a long-form modern dance, alone on stage, out there on the street. The world was changing; cold war to glasnost, malaise to ambition, downers to amphetamines.  It was beginning to look different as well.

Walls come down, trends evolve from muddled to clean, people open their eyes anew.  Freedom can mean everything, and sometimes, it can be just the littlest thing. The loose proportions of a new design that is worn on the body, an intimate artistic display, can mean freedom in a small but not unimportant way. The breeze between the garment and the body, the freedom of movement at the joints, the respectful limitation of palette, all of this can elevate the feeling, embody a new era, and by hyperbolic extrapolation, generate hopefulness.

He had no idea if she knew anything about the heaving sociopolitical changes that gave him vertigo, or if she cared that there was still apartheid in South Africa, troubles in Ireland, and a plague of homelessness, disease, and unemployment here at home. What he saw in her was the seed of hope. She looked different, so times may be different, and things might somehow be getting better.

-Danny Grosso