By Jussara Da Silva
It is easy to believe that our wardrobes begin with shopping.
A coat catches our attention. A pair of shoes feels like us. A particular colour slowly begins appearing in our wardrobe until, one day, it becomes part of how other people recognise us. We often imagine that personal style is built through these visible decisions, as though our closets are simply the result of what we choose to buy.
I have never believed that to be entirely true.
I think our wardrobes begin long before we ever open them.
They begin with the things we choose to admire.
Every creative person eventually arrives at the same question.
Who taught me to see the world this way?
Because none of us begin with original eyes. Before we create anything, before we develop a personal style, before we even know what we find beautiful, someone—or something—has already been teaching us how to look. The process is so gradual that we rarely notice it happening. We simply assume our taste belongs entirely to us.
Perhaps it never has.
When people ask why GTWJ looks the way it does, they often expect a practical answer. They ask why the colours are quiet, why the photography feels restrained, why I rarely make myself the centre of the work, or why fashion is spoken about almost philosophically instead of through trends and shopping.
The truth is that none of these decisions appeared suddenly.
They were accumulated.
Every creative project is, in many ways, a collection of everything its creator has admired.
I have spent countless afternoons walking through art museums, often standing in front of the same paintings far longer than most people probably would. Mark Rothko’s work has stayed with me for years. At first glance, very little seems to happen. There is no obvious narrative, no spectacle demanding your attention. His paintings ask for something that has become increasingly rare: patience.
After a while, you realise something remarkable.
The painting is not changing.
You are.
Perhaps that is what great art has always done. It does not simply give us something to look at. It quietly changes the way we look.
I think fashion is capable of doing exactly the same thing.
This is why I have returned to certain designers again and again throughout my life.
Martin Margiela did not influence me because I wanted to dress like Martin Margiela. What stayed with me was something much deeper. He showed me that work does not need to compete for attention in order to matter. That ideas can speak quietly and still leave a permanent mark. That creativity does not become more meaningful simply because the creator becomes more visible.
Years later, I realised that lesson had shaped far more than my wardrobe.
It had shaped the way I wanted to build GTWJ.
My wardrobe has also been deeply influenced by Martin Margiela’s years at Hermès. Not because I wanted to recreate those collections piece by piece, but because they taught me a different understanding of elegance. They demonstrated that simplicity is not the absence of thought. More often, it is the result of extraordinary clarity. Every unnecessary detail removed leaves only what truly matters.
That philosophy eventually found its way into the clothes I wear.
But it also found its way into the words I write.
The same has been true of Phoebe Philo. She taught me to look beyond clothing itself and to ask who clothing exists for. Her work shifted the conversation away from appearance and towards experience. Beauty was no longer something performed for an audience. It became something lived.
Pierpaolo Piccioli offered me something entirely different. His collections remind me that fashion still has the ability to move us emotionally. In an industry increasingly dominated by products, algorithms and consumption, he continues to create moments that ask us to stop and simply experience beauty. His work reminds me that fashion is not only something we wear. It is also something we feel.
Even my collection of old fashion magazines has shaped me in ways I only recognised much later. I return to them not because I wish fashion would become nostalgic, but because they belong to a different rhythm. They were not created to be consumed in eight seconds before disappearing beneath another image. They expected readers to stay. They believed fashion deserved time, reflection and conversation.
I sometimes think those magazines planted the first seeds of what would eventually become GTWJ Essays.
Looking back, I realise something that feels almost obvious now.
None of these influences taught me what to wear.
They taught me how to see.
And perhaps that is the real purpose of inspiration.
We often imagine that inspiration gives us ideas.
More often, it gives us eyes.
It quietly reshapes our perception until the things we create begin reflecting everything we have loved, admired and returned to for years. Eventually, our wardrobe becomes a visible expression of an invisible education.
This is why I have never been particularly interested in copying someone else’s style.
You can buy the same coat.
You cannot buy twenty years of looking.
You cannot buy the museums someone wandered through, the books that challenged them, the collections they returned to every season, or the ideas that slowly rearranged the way they understood beauty. Those things cannot be purchased because they were never products in the first place.
They were teachers.
Perhaps we ask the wrong questions when we talk about personal style.
We ask where someone bought their jacket.
We ask which brand made their bag.
We ask how they styled an outfit.
Rarely do we ask something far more revealing.
What has taught you to see beauty this way?
I suspect the answer to that question tells us much more about a person than their wardrobe ever could.
Because admiration is never passive.
Whatever we return to repeatedly begins quietly shaping us. Every painting, every book, every conversation, every building, every runway collection and every photograph leaves behind something almost invisible. Alone, each influence seems insignificant. Together, they become the architecture of our perception.
And once our perception changes, everything else follows.
Our work changes.
Our homes change.
Our wardrobes change.
Sometimes even our lives change.
We are often told to be careful about the people we spend our time with.
I think we should be just as careful about the things we choose to admire.
Because admiration is a form of education.
Every object we return to, every artist we study and every idea we allow to stay with us is quietly teaching us how to see the world.
The question is not whether you are being shaped.
You already are.
The real question is far simpler.
By what?
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