Gogo Graham returns to New York Fashion Week with He Covets

After a two-year hiatus, Gogo Graham returns to New York Fashion Week, aiming to tear down Hollywood and their depiction of trans women in He Covets.

Graham, known for story-driven collections and creating truly unique one-of-one garment, takes tropes created for transwomen and recontextualizes them to “beat them at their own game.” Finally, allowing trans women to be who they truly are, not just how they appear on the big screen. He Covets asks the viewer to rethink tropes often given to trans women in film. Be It a woman who passes along her dysphoria onto others by violent means, or a transwoman who is not quite woman enough, growing hateful and eventually seeking revenge. Achieved through the use of hidden faces, hastily applied red lipstick, and a variety of brightly colored wigs Graham creates a caricature true to Hollywood’s idea, ultimately pointing out the fact that transwomen are not the monsters they have been told they need to be.

“She is always the same character,” Graham said in the show notes, “an evil tortured cross dressing predator who projects her gender-dysphoria-induced pain onto cis women specifically and in sexually violent, murderous ways while wearing a poorly installed synthetic wig in a bright red lip with striking blue eye shadow applied in the most inept way you’ve ever seen. Opaque beige stockings and a figure-obscuring trench coat are a bonus.”

Graham’s collection He Covets is another target of hers to ultimately create a world more inclusive to trans women. Graham, as a trans woman, got started in fashion when she found there was not a lane for those like her. Through her collections, she has been able to create what she thought was missing in fashion, as well as tearing down old beliefs regarding what being trans meant, and instead introducing the world to what it really means to be a doll. – Bennett Thyren