As Chau the Curator—a model and “multiple-jobs-to-pay-the-bills” creative—navigates Chicago’s fashion scene, she finds herself creating in the in-between: between shifts, between gigs, between moments of burnout. And in that space, she finds friendship that brings the fun back into making.
Everyone wants to move to New York these days. The usual reasons: no one claps for you in Chicago, it’s not big enough, you can’t “make it” here. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe Chicago isn’t meant to be mainstreamed. Maybe it’s not meant to be consumed.
The truth is, Chicago doesn’t run on fame. It runs on grit. On second jobs and side gigs. On after-hours fittings and impromptu shoots. And that’s exactly what makes the underground scene here more interesting, more alive, and more worth paying attention to than any self-promoted feel good projects.
“The truth is, Chicago doesn’t run on fame. It runs on grit.”
grit.”
I’ve spent the past two years working and creating inside this city’s fashion spaces. I’ve watched people come in full of energy, eager to be known for something. And that’s fair—Chicago’s so diluted that it’s actually easy to stand out. But eventually, the “look at me” energy runs dry. Because what are you actually saying with your work? What are you actually building?
At the small vintage boutique where I work at, I see the crossroads of cool and wearable every day. Chicago fashion lives right there—in the tension between what sells and what speaks. That’s where I met my creative soulmate, stylist and photographer Isaiah Luat. Early twenties. Default Instagram profile photo, feed curated but chaotic—strange in the best way, deeply authentic, and not a single face in sight (@lovewhoyoucan). And somehow, his work lodges itself in the collective memory more than most with ten times the reach.
Isaiah and I have spent late nights styling at the shop, pulling up to his second job and turning it into a set. We didn’t have the budget for studios—and honestly, we didn’t need it. By building looks from what was already in our hands, we created something that felt honest. We really created.
Fashion needs community. In this game, you don’t win by going solo. You build with who’s around you—across shifts, across group chats, across late nights and second jobs. You share what you have. You make space where there wasn’t any. And when the city doesn’t give us a third place, we bring it with us—in our hearts, in our work, in the teams we choose to play on.
Not everything will be perfect. But it will be real.
And that’s the game I want to play.
