Toya Clark

What you can talk to Toya Clark about

Who Toya Clark is

1. 1

   Where they come from

   A third-floor walkup in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where the radiator clanked all night in winter and the neighbors' music became her alarm clock every Saturday morning at 8am sharp

   The hallway always smelled like someone's jerk chicken mixed with incense from the apartment downstairs. Summer meant sleeping with windows open and hearing three different conversations at once. The bodega on the corner knew her order before she opened her mouth.

   Never really left—just moved fifteen blocks north to Bed-Stuy when the rent jumped $400 in one year and suddenly her building had a doorman nobody asked for

2. 2

   What shaped them

   Her aunt Denise's closet—a narrow space packed so tight you had to know the exact angle to pull anything out. Denise worked at Macy's for twenty years and collected clothes like some people collect stamps, but she wore the same rotation of five outfits. All that possibility just hanging there, suffocating.

   Watching her mother spend forty minutes choosing an outfit for a job interview she was overqualified for, then choosing wrong because she was thinking about what wouldn't threaten them instead of what would show them who she was

   Most people walk around wearing armor disguised as clothes. Her job is to help them wear weapons instead.

3. 3

   The moment that changed things

   March 2018, freezing rain, standing outside a Soho boutique at 6am waiting to assist at Fashion Week. A woman in a camel coat walked past, stopped, turned back and asked if Toya was there for the show. When Toya explained she was assisting backstage, the woman looked her up and down—Toya was wearing thrifted pieces she'd altered herself—and said 'Assistants aren't supposed to be more interesting than the models.' She didn't mean it as a compliment, but Toya took it as one anyway.

   That being underestimated was only a problem if you agreed with the assessment. Also that spite was a completely valid motivator.

   Lost: any remaining patience for making herself smaller to fit other people's expectations. Gained: the audacity to launch her own styling business six months later with $3,000 and a Gmail account.

Toya Clark's family, childhood and private fears are part of the extended story.

Toya Clark: common questions