Sleepover!!! with Amy Merrill
A guide to Burning Man fashion from someone who's attended 5x.
Gen x Taste is a lifestyle blog and newsletter for those who still don’t know what they want to be when they grow up (even if they’re over the age of 40).
Beauty and fashion are super personal, and of course I realize not everyone shares the same taste as me (or has similar hair/body/skin types). That’s why every now and then, I’ll feature someone else’s favorites and recommendations.
I’m pleased to highlight Amy Merrill — someone who, the first time we met, I did a double take at her outfit. I could not stop staring! Amy is one of those people who radiates effortless style. She’s a true artist, musician, creator and just a fantastic human being (she is also an incredible web designer and the co-creator of Plan C Abortion Pills by mail).
Also, she and I once sang a duet of “Hold On” together at karaoke (and as you now know, anyone who will sing Wilson Phillips with me is a friend for life).
Is it any surprise she’s a Burning Man veteran? I feel beyond lucky to have her guide us all through a fashion tour of the event, which is coming up soon! Make sure to follow Amy on IG so you can see what she’ll be wearing.
Name: Amy Merrill (she/her)
Generation: Grandmother Millenial
Sleepover Essentials: cozy throw blanket, non-dairy ice cream to share, caramel/nut/vanilla & dark chocolate varieties, over-ear headphones for falling asleep
I have always had an intuitive relationship with clothing and style: starting in high school I’d paw through secondhand racks, feeling something akin to an electric jolt as an unusual item would lean out its hanger’d shoulder… or slipping into a light trance while layering pant under skirt under jacket, revealing new angles and textures to my body as it catches the light.
As a young person I often felt guilty about fashion: it was an indulgence, was mostly unnecessary and cost money and sometimes ended up in the landfill, and I couldn’t reconcile my love of it against the other things wanting my time and attention: like math, or activism, or finding work that would keep me sustained and fulfilled. Later I learned that because fashion brought me joy, it could have a place in my life: as wearable art, a chance to model radical expression and freedom, and potentially inspire this state of being in others.
One of the most inspiring places I’ve found for radical expression is the Burning Man festival, which I’ve attended five times since 2014. If you don’t burn, you know the stereotypes about this weeklong city in the desert: glittery influencer selfies, orgy domes and LSD, 24-hour EDM dance parties and Zuckerberg in a decked-out airstream. While there is truth to any stereotype, these are by no means the defining qualities of the event, which is based on 10 Principles or ideals that drive how the mini-society works. I find these principles more beautiful than our current society’s agreements, and watching them in action that week gives me hope for the world. Radical Self-Expression is one of them, and it leads to some of the most fantastical fashion I’ve ever seen.
I’m going to start with two elements that most inspire me: transparency and negative space. Below is one of my favorite everyday tops, very SFW I think but also incorporates some hefty panels of sheer, including all across the back. You can’t tell from the photo, but it usually means I wear a neon or blue bra just to play it up. I like showing the bra in this way, to remind people that yes, many of us have mechanics underneath that we use to keep ourselves together and it’s okay if others see them sometimes. A bra does not have to be sexual, and if you show it overtly enough you can blow off some of its steam: it becomes just a thing I’m wearing, to hold my body close.
A lot of negative-space clothing is structured and more likely to be expensive or couture, but I also like to find secondhand or vintage off the rack that was made with layers; snip out the layer underneath and you’ve got yourself a transparency piece. This was a blah Banana Republic skirt that I cut shorter and removed the underskirt to make into a layering piece:
Swimwear is another obvious area to explore negative space: I found this Karla Colletto suit on Poshmark for $20 (~$350 retail) a few months before a dreamy European trip I took with my partner in fall 2021. He was accepted into a month-long artist residency to write music in a castle in the south of France (the stuff of fairy tales, truly) and I joined at the end so we could travel through Italy. This trip came about during a really really hard time at work, and I felt guilty dipping out, but it also felt so important to take advantage of the moment and be a person, to soak up beauty and simple pleasures. I will never forget a beach day like this one:
The next piece I found in a Buffalo Exchange in Hollywood, also $20. My overall experience of that store is pretty hit-or-miss, but this one immediately caught my eye for its oddball-ness and I couldn’t pass it up:
I don’t normally like to brag but just last month, a good two years after I took this photo, I spotted the Queen Bey in a version of the same hand-print concept. And as a self-identifying futurist (my concept band takes place in the year 2069) I like to see fashion as an outward expression of where we are and a nod to where we’re headed next: it can help us visualize what hasn’t yet been done, what excites or challenges us, and can represent a feeling of nowness. I like the hands because they push us past a conversation of consent and safety into something else… whatever’s next (because there is always a next). Beyonce is of course a fellow futurist.
Now, a note on nudity as it inherently relates to transparency and negative space in clothing. I am drawn to transparency and negative space both because it feels like an edge (like I mentioned above, sometimes everything else feels… done already?) and also because nudity is overdue for examination in modern culture. Nudity only works with some agreements, including a shared value of body autonomy, the ability to choose who we share our body with, when and why. But we are up against some deep programming left over from puritanical and religious leaders, which continue to show up in today’s culture wars. This programming tells us that every time a body is revealed, it automatically becomes sexualized and scandalous. We secretly love it, but we also love to shame it. Such a mixed-up charge around the shape of the body leads to confusion and stigma, and ultimately engenders a culture of repression and control.
And yet, we all have a body and bodies are beautiful and gentle and organic. I’m interested in ways we can deprogram ourselves from our moral puritanical roots and practice reclaiming our bodies. Sharing them then becomes an act of vulnerability anda practice of trust in the people around us: that they won’t shame or harm us if we reveal our true nature. We become more em-bodied, in and of our bodies, and clothes become both the practical and artistic interface with the world.
I also want to be clear that an exploration of transparency is not about having a model body, as much as it is about creativity of designs and the “strategic reveal.” Some people are not comfortable with the shape of their body or don’t feel safe revealing it, and that’s 100% okay. We’ve also been led to think that if we don’t have a perfect body, we shouldn’t be sharing it. This is a topic for another time, but there are multiple industries that directly benefit their bottom line when people don’t feel comfortable in their current bodies. Wearing transparency and creating negative space doesn’t have to be about getting uncomfortable: it’s about finding lines, shapes and layers that feel exciting and new on your unique form, and this comes by experimentation. This for example, is a pretty revealing dress but potentially could work for many shapes. I wore a black bodysuit underneath, and threw a green cotton coat over top for a cold spring morning.
Ok! Let’s slide into Burning Man fashion: starting with an outfit that I would not call my finest, but contains multitudes of gentle sheer and fringe layers.
If I did it again I would choose a higher-cut bikini bottom, and skip the black thigh-high fishnets. Too much interference with the line of the leg, it distracts from the fun of the sheer pant and iridescent boot. Or I would use the pannier (see photo below) to give it some hip width and break up the rectangular shape of my body. But the joy in my smile as I wore all these creme-colored sparkly flowy layers is priceless. And truly anything goes on that playa, where the point of the expression is not only to share your innermost being but to delight the person you encounter with what you’ve chosen to hang on your frame.
There are a few parts of this outfit that I can easily translate back into default world / real life: the iridescent Doc-style boots are great with cuffed jean, the tasselled bra top would go great with some wide-leg resort style pant, and the heavy necklaces can always work on a simple black sack dress.
Let’s move on to hips + lights. Here’s another Burning Man moment, which I pieced together as I found some fun elements last summer:
The top is a long-sleeve sheer with ridiculous rainbows over the boobs - not my usual vibe, but I thought it was funny and fun. The eyeballs on the skirt are a little much but in this lewk why go small? The lit pannier is obviously the star, an etsy find from years ago that has become a mainstay of my band costume, where my shapes are inspired by many things including Gaga and the pinterest search entitled “retro future space couture” (beware, you might get lost in there; it is a glorious feed). These hips are a very satisfying feature for so many reasons: it breaks up that rectangle of my body, shows off my legs underneath but pushes my silhouette out wide. It also subverts something that for so long was an emblem of femininity by constriction: corsets, hoop skirts, contraptions that would contort female form into unnatural but traditionally beautiful silhouettes. My LED-encrusted pannier asks, has anything changed? Did *I* decide this was beautiful, or was I told long ago? To what degree am I in control of my body?
No answers here, only questions. The most outrageous and satisfying ensemble was this next one, in which the LED hat (inspired by etsy but my own creation, a regular felt hat in which I sliced the brim in a spiral and then threaded the point through the hat’s band for a witchy front peak) complements the pannier and the bike in a three-hit circus of lights:
When I saw this pic a week later, I was delighted. I hope I don’t live to navigate a post-apocalyptic world, but if I must, I hope I can wear this when the time comes.
So there you have it: new reasons to get those gams out, show off that infrastructure, celebrate those shapes and lines, place your silhouette against the horizon. Our world has a lot of old threads in need of unraveling, but you can start by finding the sheer, letting the light in, and being radically you.
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