Normal Was Never the Goal

 

Normal Was Never the Goal...And That’s Kind of the Point

By Rose Baxter

I’ve never understood why “normal” gets treated like a compliment.

Normal clothes.
Normal houses.
Normal jobs.
Normal opinions.
Normal everything.

At some point, somebody apparently decided the goal was to get through life without making anyone look twice.

I’d rather give them a reason to look twice.

That probably explains a lot about Kunts Live Forever.

I like strange art. I like dark humor. I like things that are a little uncomfortable, a little ridiculous, and occasionally make you wonder who the hell approved them.

Sometimes nobody did.

Even better.

Boring Is Already Overrepresented

Walk through almost any store and you'll find plenty of things designed to be perfectly acceptable.

Acceptable colors.

Acceptable graphics.

Acceptable slogans.

Nothing particularly wrong with any of it.

But nothing that makes you stop either.

I've never wanted KLF to become another rack of clothes that could have come from twenty different brands.

If we're putting something out into the world, I want it to have a personality.

Maybe it's funny.

Maybe it's creepy.

Maybe it's obnoxious.

Maybe you have to stare at it for a second because you're trying to figure out what the hell you're looking at.

That's okay.

Actually, that's better than okay.

Because you noticed it.

You Don't Need Permission to Wear It

Alternative fashion has its own weird problem.

For a group of people supposedly celebrating individuality, there sure are a lot of imaginary rules.

You're not punk enough.

You're not goth enough.

You're too old.

You're too young.

That's not how you're supposed to wear that.

Apparently there is an application process nobody told me about.

I missed it.

Wear the damn shirt.

You don't need permission from a stranger on the internet to like something.

You can wear workwear one day and something covered in neon monsters the next.

You can like skulls without dressing head to toe in black.

You can like punk without proving you discovered every band before everybody else did.

Your closet doesn't need a mission statement.

It Doesn't Have to Match. It Has to Belong.

That idea has become increasingly important to me while working on KLF.

I don't want every collection to look like somebody changed the words on the same design.

Strange Days should be weird.

Halloween should be able to get darker.

Workwear should feel like workwear.

Veteran designs deserve their own personality.

And occasionally something should exist simply because it made me laugh.

Those things don't necessarily match.

They don't have to.

They just need to feel like they belong in the same strange universe.

I think of it like a house.

One room has neon everywhere.

One looks like an abandoned factory.

One probably has a monster living in it.

Another contains a government sign politely asking you not to feed whatever is living beside the highway.

Nobody knows what's happening in the basement.

But somehow it's still the same house.

That's KLF.

Make Something Worth Looking At

There's another reason I don't want everything cleaned up until it's perfectly safe.

Art gets boring when you're terrified of somebody disliking it.

Not everything I make is going to appeal to everybody.

Good.

It shouldn't.

I'd rather have one person look at something and say, “I need that,” while another person wonders why anybody would wear it than make something both of them scroll past without noticing.

You don't build personality by sanding every rough edge off.

And KLF has plenty of rough edges.

I'm keeping them.

Normal Isn't Bad. It's Just Not Mandatory.

That's probably the distinction that matters.

There's nothing wrong with normal.

If that's genuinely what somebody likes, have at it.

But normal shouldn't be the admission price for being taken seriously.

You don't have to tone yourself down because somebody else thinks you're too old for something.

You don't have to pick one aesthetic and stay there forever.

And you certainly don't need strangers deciding what belongs in your closet, your house, your art, or your life.

Wear what you like.

Make weird shit.

Mix things that aren't supposed to go together.

Put horror art in the living room.

Wear the skull shirt to the grocery store.

Let somebody look twice.

There are plenty of people willing to blend in.

I'm not particularly interested in joining them.

Rose Baxter