I love that. That kind of brings us neatly to my next question, which is the link between your beautiful new book, Future Fashion and Our relationship with clothes.

So Future fashion is the first physical project under the umbrella of Our relationship with clothes. It is a book of images of stylish older women generated using AI. It came about because I was thinking a lot about my values in relation to clothing and I realized that I want to own and wear my clothes for a long time. So, I’ve started collecting pieces now that I'm going to keep for years and years. And so naturally from that, I started to think about my older self and Future fashion basically arrived.

How did you come to the decision to generate the images using AI? 

It was a beautiful combination of accidental events that led me down the rabbit hole to AI. I found myself creating these images of older women that felt so joyous. I felt so connected to them even though I knew they weren’t real. Because so much of my career has been about documenting real people’s style on the street, I had to really think about why these AI images felt so important.

Through a lot of self-reflection, I realized that I love older women. I find wrinkles very attractive. But over my 10-year career, I haven't been able to photograph women over a certain age because when I've asked to photograph them, they say no.

Why do you think that is?

I think it comes down to a lack of confidence and not wanting to open themselves up to criticism. But AI gave me this opportunity to imagine my future and the future of all the women around me - you included - all the women that I photographed for the last 10 years, what are we going to look like when we age? I think of it as a love letter to our future selves.

That’s such a sweet and beautiful sentiment. Especially given the pressure we feel around ageing, or to not age, as we have spoken about before.

My hope is that we're looking at the photos of these women and going, that could be me. I think it’s aided by the knowledge that it’s literally a fantasy. There's nothing real about the images. They’re a point of inspiration. So, if you think all the women in this book are beautiful, or five of them are beautiful, or one is beautiful and she has wrinkles or she's wearing a tutu or whatever it is, it might encourage you to age as you would like to.

I do think it's a very interesting moment in time for ageing or avoiding ageing. Now, often when I'm in certain parts of the city or at a particular kind of event, it feels like everyone is starting to look the same…

I'm so glad you have connected these dots. I wasn't sure if anyone would. As fashion and beauty standards have become more global and modern medicine has allowed us to make changes to our appearance - we can seek the 'perfect' nose, jaw line, face structure etc. The more we lean into this as a society, the more similar we are starting to look. I believe Future Fashion and AI accidently reflects this, with women often looking like sisters or mother and daughter, though that’s not necessarily intended. 

Though there is a wider issue and limitation with AI diversity in general, I’m also interested in this project from a social commentary standpoint. I think this reflecting on the homogenization of society is really interesting. And something I hope to explore in future iterations of my AI work. 

I know that a really important aspect of both Future fashion and Our relationship with clothes is building a sense of community. How have people responded to the images?

I've posted seven images on social media and three of them have gone viral. By viral I mean over a hundred thousand likes, and over a million views for a single image. The reason I think they've gone viral is because of women tagging women, and writing things like, this will be us in 50 years. It says to me that we are craving this connection with our friends and with the women around us.  And a lot of that connection between women comes through clothing. First, our mothers dress us when we're little, and then our sisters steal our clothes. And then when we're teenagers, our friends borrow our clothes. And then we might find our tribes and our girlfriends based on the way we dress. The connection through clothes happens throughout our lives.

So, it’s about so much more than fashion?

We're trying to frame this as not a fashion project. It's a clothing project. This isn't just for the girls who end up in Vogue. This isn't just for people who buy clothes all the time. It's for everyone because clothing can affect everything in our lives. It affects how you feel about your body and how confident you are. So, the more people that we can reach and the more people that we can potentially take on this journey the better.

So, what’s next?

My intention in 2024 is to continue connect to as many people as possible, through both the art and conversation sides of the project. 

In art, I am taking Future Fashion on the road, while also exhibiting a new documentary at INI and working a larger body of portrait work.

In conversation, I am going to start hosting small in-person events to connect and talk about our clothes offline. Through this project I have made so many like-minded friends and I want to create space to cultivate these relationships.

I am also going to be in-residence at different locations across Melbourne asking people to participate in an anonymous Q&A series that collects written answers on physical cards. In 2023 I collected hundreds of these, creating not only moments of self-reflection for the participant, but also objects that will inform art and conversation projects in future. 

And personally, I am completing a new consumption challenge, which you can read more about here. Creating real change is really important to me, and all I hope is that others will join me on this journey.