It’s summer and while fashion might seem superfluous to most, everyone wears clothes. Fashion is just as corporeal as shitting; buy the clothes, wear the clothes, take off the clothes. God, life is relentless. Or, if you like, it’s the Netflix of aesthetics, a fixture in your life that you say you don’t need but spend 80% of your time abusing.

Photo: RNZ / Becki Moss

And like Netflix, fashion is a good place to shift through your own desires; you start blurring the lines between protagonist / model / they / I - and start dreaming a little bit. Where do you want to be? What do you want to retreat to? What does the future ‘you’ look like? Future me is halfway between a lady-in-waiting and one of the waahine from Becs Arahanga’s film, Hinekura; dewy like a freshly caught fish, smelling of taramea. Or a half-caste Robin Hood pageant hero/ Māui-tikitiki-a-taranga in full May Fair garb, dressed in green, to blend in with the rahurahu on the forest floor. Basically, cottagecore for stuffy Victorian society. And it’s never been a more perfect time to randomly select an era to embody, right when we’re all too guilty to make our wardrobes completely newly made, and have to sift through the preloved, reworked vintage pieces every Instagrammer in a 5km radius is pimping.

So, I choose Greenwood, and it’s convenient for me that our current zeitgeist delights in manifesting the collected imagination through modern renderings of old vigilantes passed down from generation to generation. It feels kind of nice to know I’m not the only one desperate to flee back into the woods; bustier laced, barefoot, Maid Marion-length skirts brushing the dirt under our feet. I also admire iterations of the revitalisation of Wild Wild West in cowboy boots, chaps, wide brimmed cattleman hats, which have the undercurrent of breaking out and being among the brambles. I’m not Ngaapuhi so I can’t stand horses but I love braids. Fashion is a good place to channel your urge to travel and, since Covid, I do all my travelling in Red Dead Redemption 2.

Photo: RNZ / Becki Moss

But back to my Greenwood obsession, I’m on a current mission to find the perfect corset top for summer. If you’re someone who checks TikTok as frequently as I do, you’d see that every E-Girl has one. And they come in so many different shapes and sizes; the 90s corset top is flat, has a faint glimmer of boning. It’s a good mixture of nostalgia for a time none of us ever knew, and nostalgia is on the rise; how many period pieces are they going to pump out? Enough to make you start searching ‘bulova watch vintage’ or ‘rococo 1998 john paul gaultier’.

Anyway, I’m looking for a court neck top, diamond cut on the bottom hem so I can show off my chubby lil waist. A good corset top is bombastic in a full ensemble or flashy on a casual fit, I prefer sleeveless they’re so good for hot summer nights / cold spring days but you can get cap sleeves, ballooning sleeves made of lace, satin, gossamer but I want people to see my tattoo.

Corset tops are not for the faint of heart because it’ll transmit ‘this one's a baddie’ on sight because you’re wearing underwear in broad daylight (you’d think people would be bored of this by now but conservatism is also in this year). I’ll pair it with some dangling pounamu earrings and rub myself down with kawakawa to cover the smell of fear for the coming months. A good outfit to wear while you’re in a circle with your five best girlfriends, crowing to Te Marama - at a safe 2m distance of course.