Portrait of an Artist: Nikole L. Naloy ’21

Donning a chic grey blazer and a pair of white bedazzled cowboy boots on a cloudy Sunday afternoon, Nikole L. Naloy ’21 sports confidence, fun, and style. Earlier this year, she founded Fig., Harvard’s first fashion magazine. The inspiration for the name came from the use of “figures” in texts, journals, and writing — and, of course, her love of fresh figs.

The Harvard Crimson: What piqued your interest and got you involved in fashion in the first place?

Nikole Naloy: Let's say that I always liked dressing up. My birthday is around Halloween, so I always had a costume party. I would dress in something extravagant and over the top. In high school, I really started getting into just expressing myself through my outfits. It was a good way to build. I always liked to paint and create art and in that respect this was something that was daily and something that was like a constant work in progress. It’s really a phenomenal way of expressing myself.

And it has a lot to do with moods. I remember sometimes I would stroll in to high school and be in a terrible mood, and I knew my outfit could change how I was feeling and the goals that I was setting for myself. It’s always just been a lot of fun for me. In respect to finding pieces — or going into my mom's closet — my mom is a huge inspiration. Phenomenal style as well.

THC: How did you come up with Fig.?

NN: When I came to Harvard last year as a freshman, I kind of pushed my interest in fashion or any career goals in fashion aside. It's like, “Oh, I'm at such an academic institution, I should be thinking about more serious things.” And I even saw a shift within my own personal style, as I was dressing down a little bit more, not playing around with as many items as I had been in high school. Coming into sophomore year, I said, “You know, there's something that keeps on itching.” It's like that desire to get back into reading about fashion, getting back into my crazy outfits. I'm bringing that back to campus. I found that a lot of the reasons why I wasn't into fashion my freshman year at Harvard was because I had no viable outlet.

So I said, “Why don’t I start my own thing?" I want to bring it here. Just talking with my friends about it, I found that there was a lot of interest. People were enthusiastic about the idea. My friends freshman year, the people I started connecting with my sophomore year, they all have a personal story related to the way they dress and their fashion. So I found that Harvard isn't Yale, it's not Brown, it's not “artsy” in that sense. But there are so many people that I was really fond of the way that they dress.

THC: For you, what is the relationship between fashion and art?

NN: I think that the clothing you wear on a daily basis is fundamentally a form of expressing yourself. To label it as art would be to define art, which I don't want to do. So I think it honestly depends on the person. For me, I take it as an art form. Like these cowboy boots are my art. They're like my fun, creative, over the top self, especially with the dazzle.

THC: You mentioned being interested in going into the fashion industry. Are you more interested in the design side or the editorial side, or in general?

NN: I would love to work in fashion. I have the Harvard education behind me and all these opportunities that Harvard bestows upon us. But it's very hard. I guess my internships after college will kind of determine it. I'm open to anything, and I love editorial. And Fig. has showed me how much fun it is, but also how much work it is — the incredible energy of producing a photoshoot, and then seeing it come to life. I'm so excited for the print issue to come out and to get to really hold it and see it that way. But I might even dabble in design sometime in the future.

THC: Do you see a lot of overlap of fashion within the VES and HAA departments here?

NN: I think the VES department has a more eclectic way of dressing. If you were just to do a visual survey, you'll find a little bit more eccentric outfits in the VES department. Just because I think artists are a little bit more conscious about what they're wearing. I think they try to image themselves a little bit differently. I think then again, fashion is not taken seriously within academia. It’s not frequent that you'll have someone who wants to enter the fashion industry and then commits to study in college — obviously you'll have that more at Fashion Institute of Technology or Parsons, but not at Harvard.

THC: You mentioned fashion not taken seriously in academia. Do you also think that fashion is not taken seriously as an art form?

NN: It definitely was not seen as an art form by any means earlier in time — if anything, it was advertising, especially in the ‘50s and ‘60s. I think now with conceptual and contemporary art there are so many more intersections. More contemporary artists are starting to work with fashion clothing as a medium. So I think that it is veering in that direction of being more appreciated. There’s still the commercial element of fashion though. Essentially, art is going to be sold but it's not necessarily made with the intention of being sold. The first thing that we might think in our creation of fashion is something like, if I'm making a shirt, I probably could sell it rather than display it in a gallery. So I think that tension still exists. But generally looking at the trends within Fashion Weeks, every show is its own art.

—Staff writer Lucy Wang can be reached at lucy.wang@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @lucyyloo22