Hollis Hamilton is a fashion designer and optician based in Seattle.  Their current label Nox Fashion House has specialized in dark fashion and evening wear since its inception in 2017.  However, as a result of the pandemic and unforeseen developments, the line has been placed on hold.  In its stead, we’ve witnessed the reemergence of a creative artist and skilled technician whose personal victories rival their professional ones.

Born in Seattle, Hollis spent most of their developing years in a small town in Eastern Washington.  From backyard battles against imaginary dragons to high school victories in honors classes, there was little Hollis couldn’t overcome.  But an understated, nebulous feeling emerged, hampering each new development and marring victories with an anxiety that brought forward momentum to a crashing halt.  Despite encouragement from friends and family, as well as the fashion community at large, nothing, it seemed, could quell the voice of doubt that gnawed at their peace like a splinter in the mind.  Until one day, when the damming of emotion could bear no further restraint, Hollis finally uttered the words they had waited decades to say aloud.

HOLLIS HAMILTON

BORN : Seattle, WA
RAISED : Eastern WA
EDUCATION : Art History
EXPERIENCE : DESIGNER, Dressmaker
LABELS : 1
FOCUS : Bridal | BESPOKE Services
STUDIO : YES
LOCATION : SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

“When I was little and learning to dress myself, I was very bold in my choices.  I’d have a tutu over the top of snow pants and a bib over a tie-dyed shirt.  I loved all of those things so why not throw them together?  I was big into dresses and large skirts because they were great for twirling around, so my mom would make them for me.  But then I went into this tomboy phase where I just didn’t care about how I looked.”

“I was born in Seattle.  My parents moved out to Eastern Washington when I was about two years old and I didn’t come back until after college.  But I was always excited to be in Seattle.  My hometown where I grew up was very small, and Seattle felt like this place with all these possibilities.”

“I grew up pretty sheltered from a lot of things.  I think there might have been one queer person in my entire town.  Didn’t know any trans people at all.  Spent a lot of time with my stay-at-home mom.  I was always outside playing with my brother and the neighborhood boys building forts in wooded areas.  I remember trying to skateboard, but ended up with a broken leg.  But I just loved being outside, did a lot of hiking, tried team sports, was terrible at basketball and swimming, but was okay at soccer and lacrosse.  But mostly I was a big nerd, as in math club competitions, geography club, honors classes.  I might have even done the school newspaper in middle school for a time.  I was just always trying new things, seeing if I liked them and if they would resonate.”

“I think I was always interested in art.  I might have taken classes in school, but there wasn’t a lot of that available to me then.  I honestly only took the art history intro as a freshman in college because all my other electives were booked.  But to my surprise, I really loved it and just kept taking more [classes] because it was super interesting.”

“I think it was most interesting to examine art and tie that into a historical narrative.  History books that you might have read generally focus on explorers who did a thing and we end up with a propagandized version of events.  But looking at history through the lens of art is more focused on average people, cultural concepts, why [those concepts] were valuable to them, and how other cultures can interact and influence each other.”

“In college, I majored in Art History, so I approached art from a more academic angle.  But I didn’t study fashion or design.  Instead, I really gravitated towards Japanese art, specifically woodblock prints.  I wrote my whole undergrad thesis on them and the cultural exchange happening between the East and the West during periods of Japanese history, and how Eastern artists were influencing Western artists and vice versa.”

“There are a lot of different creators and artists that I find really inspiring.  I recently picked up a book on Charles James who was really the first American couture designer.  He was most active from about the 1920s through the 60s.  But he had many interesting voluminous shapes, played with drape, fabric, and tried to eliminate seams in garments and created some really interesting silhouettes in the process.”

“I also find Alexander McQueen’s work incredibly inspiring.  I saw that movie that came out a couple years ago.  Every time I watch it I start crying.  And because he didn’t know the parameters [of art history] he wasn’t constrained by them.  He was just pure creation.”

“But after I graduated in 2013, I moved to Seattle and worked a hodgepodge of jobs to get settled here.  I worked as a barista, selling home furnishings, and was an executive assistant for a while—which was the first and only job I’ve been fired from, mostly because I was under qualified for the role and have no idea why they hired me to begin with.  At the time, I got super depressed but in hindsight it was a blessing.  So I took some time off and eventually found work as an optician via a friend of mine in the fashion scene.  Didn’t know anything about being an optician at the time, but I was like, Sure I can sell glasses!  Let’s do it!  And it worked out really well, I think because it’s that mix of technical and creative that I’ve always been interested in.”

Selections from Nox Fashion House’s first collection at Chance Fashion runway event, November 2017.

PHANTOM THREADS

“I started modeling in 2015.  I’m not really sure where that interest came from.  I’ve always struggled with low self esteem and thought [modeling] might be a way for me to get out of my comfort zone.  I thought maybe I could embody a more confident persona, and it sort of worked.  But the longer I kept modeling, the more I was embodying this heightened form of femininity that was so far away from who I thought I was and the way I wanted to present myself.”

“I originally used a stage name for my modeling career.  At the time I wanted to separate my artistic endeavors from my more conservative professional life.  But as time went on and I explored more things, I started to like the name and what it came to represent, especially as it pertained to gender identity and feeling non-binary.”

“So I started to try as many different genres as I could.  In the Seattle market, most models seem to have one niche they excel at.  For some it’s high fashion.  Others are more into boudoir.  And I enjoyed a lot of what I experienced.  Some projects didn’t work out, and some personalities didn’t mesh.  But they were good learning experiences.”

“My first modeling experience was doing runway with Chance Fashion.  And so it was with Chance that I sent my own designs down the runway for the first time in 2017.  I just remember it was a really fun and rewarding experience.  Even the excitement I felt watching other people get excited about what I had made.  I was on cloud nine, truly grinning ear-to-ear.  My face hurt from smiling so much!  So I think it was the energy coming off of that show and having conversations with people who were really encouraging, who wanted to see more of my vision that [helped me continue].”

“I remember going to stores and not seeing anything that suited my tastes.  So I thought, maybe I could make clothes that I would want to wear that were more interesting and dramatic.  I remember coming home after working ten hour days, sitting down at my kitchen table, sewing until midnight, going to bed, then getting up and doing it all over again the next day.  My first collection was maybe six or seven pieces.  I didn’t really say a lot about it to anybody, mostly to show people I could do it.”

“With my first collection, everything was black.  At the time I was wearing all black clothes—and mostly still do—so that’s where the label’s name came from.  Nox meaning night or darkness.  So it was really about making things for myself and how I wanted to express myself.  They had drama.  They had presence.  It was something different.  Even if you don’t care about what what you wear, you’re still saying something with it whether or not that’s your intention.”

“As a creative, sometimes we can get so focused on the details.  Sometimes I’ll be stressing over a garment that I’m making, trying to get every detail perfect, that I feel like my creativity suffers.  And I think that’s part of the reason I haven’t put much [fashion] out there in the last couple years.  I’m still asking how I can take something I see in my head and bring it into real life, and if it doesn’t look perfect, then it’s not worth making.  It can just live as an idea.  And it’s so hard to get past that, embracing the learning process, and being okay with that.”

FASHION IS ART

“I was talking with David Bailey [CEO of Fashion District NW] about the [Fashion Is Art] show in 2019, and he really wanted to take everything and blow it up times ten.  I brought some drawings to the very first meeting and he was like, Yeah that’s nice, but it’s boring.  So I threw those sketches to the side and really went back to do something different.  I came up with these three looks.”

“Celestia—or the Starry Night dress as it was called—originally I designed stars that would actually light up but I bit off more than I could chew.  I wanted it to be a reflection of the night sky with a really beautiful peacock-blue satin and hand painted stars.”

“The idea behind the second dress, Ephemera, was to have a column of smoke like the kind you see when snuffing out a candle.  So I asked David if the art museum would allow me to do that and they would not.  So I had to approximate the concept with fabric.  But I was literally like, Can I just put a smoke machine inside of a dress?”

“The third dress, Viscera, everyone sees as a flapper dress.  And I think that’s because of the fringe and [the length] was more of a daring mini than I had intended.  When I saw the sheath on the dress form, I thought, Nope, too long, and I took the scissors to it.  But I was using those different shades of red to make it look like guts—like actual viscera.  I was literally using a brush and twisting 3-foot fringe in place to make it look like intestines.  I just thought, What if guts were a dress and it was beautiful?  But it didn’t quite translate.  Still, beautiful.”

THE WAY OUT IS THROUGH

“During the pandemic, I was able to take on a couple commissions here and there.  One woman found me on Pinterest—I don’t know how that works but it’s amazing.  So I was able to make her the top portion of her wedding dress and someone else made the skirt.  I told her it might be best to make a body suit based on her ideas, so she took her measurements, sent them here, and I made it for her sight unseen, shipped it off, and thankfully everything fit perfectly.”

“Being an optician by day is honestly great.  It provides stability, health insurance, and enough money to keep the roof over my head.  Doing fashion full-time would be a lot more stress for little stability.  I’ve just never really felt the tipping-point where I thought I was ready to make that leap.  And honestly, it doesn’t quite feel like an inevitability for me at this time.

“Still, during the pandemic there was just a lot of uncertainty everywhere, a lot of fear not knowing what was going on or how long it would last.  I just thought, Am I going to get sick?  Will I lose loved ones?  And I think that squashed my creative spark for a long time.  Around the summer of 2020, I started working with Madison Leiren and we did fabric masks together.  I thought just doing the physical action of sewing would get me into the [design] process.  It wasn’t a creative outlet, but I was doing something helpful during a time when we felt so powerless and helpless.  And I thought maybe it might unlock this creative spark that feels very dormant.  It didn’t work, but we still made a lot of masks which was rewarding in its own way.”

“And to be honest, so much of 2020 felt like I was just in a cocoon, both personally and in my creative endeavors.  My partner was the first person I came out to in 2019 and I was extremely nervous.  I told him I wanted to take testosterone and be more masculine and just started crying.  And he just bundled me up in his arms, gave me a kiss on the head, and said he would love me no matter what.  He was even like, “Do you want me to change my pronouns now?” Which made me cry more, of course.  He was just that sweet.”

“So I blurted all of this out on Thanksgiving before the pandemic and reached out to a therapist.  Then, when my concentric circles of activity kept getting smaller and smaller during the pandemic and I had all this time to think, [my therapist and I] were able to talk through all these feelings and what I could do if I wasn’t afraid.  I got to figure out who I was on a level that I never really got the chance to before.  I learned that all of this discomfort I felt wasn’t coming from any of these external sources—it was gender dysphoria, which was an incredibly difficult revelation to make in the midst of everything.  So we slowly worked through all these things together.”

“And I think it was finally meeting people who were gender variant in some way, especially through the internet and the greater community, that became such a lifeline for me.  Obviously, growing up in a smaller town, there wasn’t really any representation of that.  I just remember growing up thinking I wasn’t any good at being a girl.  I spent so much time trying to fit in but never really made friends with other girls.  And even later in life with modeling, a lot of it was just trying really hard to be good at being a female, trying to be pretty and glamourous.  But I was always really nervous about [modeling] because I never knew if I was doing it right and you’re always under so much scrutiny.  It just felt awkward to me one hundred percent of the time.”

“I feel very lucky to have a supportive partner in my life.  From what I’ve learned from others in the community, especially those who’ve struggled with coming out to long-term partners, my experience is a special one and not very common.  A lot of people who’ve come out as trans-masculine who are with straight men have partners who are no longer interested in being with them.  To me, that’s heartbreaking.  If you love someone, why wouldn’t you want them to be the best, happiest version of themselves?”

“My transition wasn’t easy, for sure.  It was about nine months of talking back and forth with my therapist, like, Am I really going to do this?  What happens when X-Y-Z?  Oh my god, I have to tell my parents.  I have to tell my brother.  I have to talk to all these people.  I don’t want to have to talk about all of this!  It was just so much.”

“Thankfully, I began testosterone in August of 2020 and was able to do the more awkward stages of transition away from the public eye.  And as it turns out, I started seeing a lot of this kind of conversation online with others who felt these amorphous feelings suddenly having all this time for introspection [during the pandemic].  We were able to get to a truer understanding of ourselves when it wasn’t under so much public scrutiny.”

“But the clothes I had been making weren’t what I wanted to wear moving forward.  So that meant Nox would have to change shape as well.  And I’m still trying to figure out how that looks right now.”

BEYOND AFTERGLOW

“I had the opportunity to go back to my hometown recently.  It was weird, and not in a good way. Got a lot of dirty looks from people.  They see me and my partner as a gay couple, which should be fine, but apparently some small towns aren’t a fan of that.”

“After the 2016 [presidential] election things in my hometown changed a lot.  Things have leaned more to the far right—way more than they used to be.  Part of it might be that, as an adult, and someone who is not cisgender, and someone who is queer, I’m more aware of these things.  But it’s hard remembering my hometown being a place where everything seems great, when now I represent something a whole lot of them don’t like.”

“But throughout this process, probably the most helpful thing for me was just having other people to talk to who were going through a lot of the same experiences, having the same doubts, feeling the same fears and knowing I wasn’t alone in this.  I have people in real life that I know and see regularly who are also trans and non-binary.  But having a greater number of people online with diverse experiences was really nice to see.  And some of the best groups I’ve been in have been very supportive of each other.”

“Honestly, I think my biggest fear was that I wasn’t going to recognize myself when I looked in the mirror.  Turns out that wasn’t the case.  I’m a slightly more masculine version of who I already was which was all I really wanted.  But anxiety can play up small fears into very big ones.  So having other people to talk to and ask, Am I crazy? and they’re like, Yeah a little bit, and then follow it up with their experience, made me realize it wasn’t so bad.  I could do it.  There wasn’t anything to be afraid of.”

“I think my best advice for anyone who feels this way is making sure that you have a good support team around you that you can count on, that loves you and cares about you.  Stay curious and inquisitive.  Try to get to the heart of what you really want out of life.  What would you do if nothing was holding you back?  How would you live?  If you can answer that, then you’re well on your way to living your best life.”