One look at Tessa Barton’s Insta feed, and it’s hard to imagine that the sartorial ace was once a gangly girl with little penchant for fashion. Her first foray onto the gram took place in college and was more of a diary format — “Throwback photos with my little brother from the first day of school,” she says with a laugh — than a singular, stylish vision. Fast-forward to today and it’s a whole different story. With more than 200K followers, the blogger and musician (check out her soulful performances on YouTube and you won’t need us to convince you she’s a woman of many talents) has made documenting her life her full-time gig.
With a decidedly hippy-meets-glam vibe, Barton approaches style with a more-is-more attitude — piling on necklaces, rings, and textured layers — and relies on jackets to pull together a look on the fly (she’s currently obsessed with the new series of designer collaborations from Bloomingdale’s).
And when it comes to navigating the reality of being a social media sensation, she’s always happy to offer advice from her own experiences with the goal of inspiring people. “I love to share not just my photos but also my editing process, because figuring out how to make a picture feel like a piece of art is very important,” she explains. Below, Barton opens up about her meteoric rise and what it takes to master the art of a standout shot.
These Graphic T-Shirts Are Man Repeller-Approved
The street-style star dreamt up two T-shirts for the brand, which will be available online and at the Man Repeller pop-up in New York through March for $65 a pop. Each style bears the website’s logo juxtaposed with vintage food photos: one is of a fruitcake, and the other is of a pair of hands holding silverware. “Originally, we had the idea to have completely unrelated inanimate objects on the T-shirt under the words Man Repeller,” Medine told Refinery29. But then, the team stumbled upon a series of archival photos that resonated deeply with the brand’s mission. The fruit cake, for one, is a textbook welcome gift for new people in a neighborhood, she said, which “seemed really on point for Man Repeller, because we are constantly welcoming people to join our community.” The meaning behind the knife-and-fork graphic is even cheekier: “We’re expressing the action of eating up Man Repeller [content],” Medine noted. Touché.
According to Lisa Mayock, Monogram’s co-founder, the Man Repeller founder walked into their first meeting with a plan: to design “a bright pink T-shirt with a mundane object on it” — and she already had an outfit to style it with in mind. Eventually, they discovered they shared a mutual appreciation of ’70s food photography. And, thus, the capsule was born.
“T-shirts are like a blank slate,” Mayock explained to us. “As a category, they’re the perfect vehicle for someone to voice what it’s like to be in their own skin.” Back in the early aughts, our graphic T-shirt collection was among our most prized possessions (along with a velour tracksuits, of course). But Mayock noted that given the strange climate we find ourselves in today, many are looking for new ways to express how they feel — and what better canvas than what you wear? Thus, the brand hasn’t shied away from topical slogans: In September, Monogram released a sophomore collection that featured an election-themed top that read, “The Stakes Are Too High To Stay Home.”
