The Muse and the Dream: Dara's Story

• Growing up in San Diego with a creative mother and a pop-culture-obsessed father, Allen recalls watching Disney movies, writing in cursive, immersing in arts and crafts, and wanting to be an animator.  
• She describes herself as a child being in her own “little world,” a feeling that contributed to her strong sense of self as an adult.
• With a level of conviction required for creative pursuits and an early interest in image-making, Allen cherishes the performative aspects of both modeling and styling.
• Her career in New York took off quickly, through connections to Candy magazine, the VAQUERA label, and stylist Ian Bradley.
• Allen says the unique thing about her generation’s access to information—and noise—is “this real emphasis on understanding your history and the context and everything that kind of surrounds what we’re doing.”
• Allen became fashion director at Interview magazine, thinking of the role as writing with clothes and writing with photos.
• She recognizes a sense of absurdity in the fashion world and emphasizes the performative aspects of everyday life.
• When asked what’s contemporary now, Allen says, “optimism; levity,” and speaks to enjoying even the challenging parts of the work, and fluidity.

Notable Quotes:

• “I guess I always felt a little bit like an island.”—Dara Allen
• “I always had this kind of confidence in my ideas for some reason.”—Dara Allen
• “I really believe that life is a little bit of a performance, but I never felt like I was on stage or in the audience; I feel like I’m in the wings, like watching both.”—Dara Allen
• “I think I always felt more comfortable speaking to people through images or through how I looked.”—Dara Allen
• “You like to do it. So just do it. And that’s as much reason as you need to make anything.”—Dara Allen
• “Images, to me, allow a little more fluidity in interpretation. And it’s so much up to who’s looking at it to see what they want. Whereas words define themselves in this way that I never really felt comfortable with.”—Dara Allen
• “We don’t need to put a parade on every time something cool happens. We just have to do cool stuff and make it right.”—Dara Allen
• “I also have total confidence in the fact that really, at the end of the day, what this is, is documenting the world. And I know how to do that.”—Dara Allen
• “To me, performance is a service.”—Dara Allen
• “Fashion is like a creation of desire and glamour; this kind of persuasion and argument you’re making and hoping people agree with. And I think a lot of the time how you do that is as important as what you say.”—Dara Allen
• “It’s the work that is also an image of glamour to me. If the whole day isn’t the point, then I’m just like, that sounds like torture. This would be torture if [the work] was not fabulous to you.”—Dara Allen
• “Fashion is torture unless it’s fabulous to you.”—Dara Allen
• “I’m always talking about how like trends are simply messages from the muse. And if you’re just listening, you can hear them.”—Dara Allen
• “I think I’m a little bit too scrappy for the glamorous classic uptown ladies. And I think I’m a little too uptight for the edgy, cool kids. I don’t know. Like I always feel a little bit like I’m neither-nor. . . but that tension to me now I realize—that is actually what I love and what I want to develop and cultivate, and those are the seeds I want to water.”—Dara Allen