It's the era of the outcast. Leading the pack as always is fashion icon and musician Jazzelle (AKA Uglyworldwide), who is reminding us of that fact in a new editorial called "DWEEB."
Since breaking into the fashion industry about 10 years ago, Jazzelle has felt like they’ve never quite been included. Still, they made a career out of it, despite how cliquey and how gatekeep-y fashion can be unless you're being tokenized. "Within my actual life, from the jump, I've been a little bullied kid my whole life — very nerdy, very dweeb-y, taking the fucking punches," Jazzelle tells PAPER. "So with this shoot, I wanted to shine some light and give some power to being an outcast. Hold strength despite all the punches and all the things that people can throw at you. This is for all the girls who called me ugly in high school. You were right."
Now, Jazzelle is focused on music with her band The Bad Manners, who debuted with two singles and accompanying music videos last year. And through the entire journey, they’ve brought their creative crew along the way. "It was also just a really great shoot with a lot of people that I love and respect who are also a part of upcoming projects with the band as well. Alyson [Cox] produced our first music video. Leanda [Heler] is working with us on one of our next projects right now, and the rest of the team also is floating in and out of this universe that the band is creating. I've always been very big on community and keeping people by your side and lifting up newer, younger talents and just supporting people, because that's the only way that I got to where I am."
Below, along with "DWEEB," PAPER caught up with Jazzelle to talk about finding a new voice with music, being othered in the fashion industry and what's to come for them and The Bad Manners.
Hi sister! Happy New Year! What have you been up to lately? Tell me all about your 2024.
Happy New Year! As you know, we've debuted the band, The Bad Manners, and came out with our first two singles. So I've really been putting all of my energy into that. Not that I don't care about fashion anymore, it’s just that in terms of my creativity, music is really where my heart is lying. I want to start to tell a story a lot differently than my visuals and fashion and creative direction. Music is a way of expanding the world that I've been creating over my career. I've been writing a lot; we have a bunch of new tracks I'm really excited to come out in the new year on a new EP, hopefully by early spring if all goes well. We just shot the cover of it in Puerto Rico recently and have like six or seven songs on the project so far, working on a bunch of new, really cool visuals and setting ourselves up for some big shows this year. A lot of exciting stuff is on the horizon.
What can you say with your music that you haven't been able to with fashion?
A lot of times within my career that I've just spoken very visually, I've kind of been gatekeeping my actual voice and what I have to say. What that story is you'll have to wait and see. But I've had a lot of turbulent times within my career emotionally and physically and spiritually, so it's just telling that in sometimes a fun way and sometimes a sad way. I'm a lot more vulnerable than before and diving deeper into the themes and jokes that I've been telling visually.
Are there things that you love about fashion, as well as things that you’re glad to leave behind?
My biggest inspiration always is rebelling against the status quo. That's been the main theme of everything that I've done in fashion. It's been quite a career that I've had. I think I started modeling almost 10 years ago now. Obviously there's been a lot of ups and downs, and I’m very headstrong and have put my foot down in a lot of situations. There's ebbs and flows when it comes to fashion worlds and cliques and how people work. I’ve been kind of outcast a lot. I’ve stayed myself, but then also found myself veering back into what's expected of me. There’s constantly that battle of staying true to myself.
What I'm leaving behind is that expectation of what other people want me to be, you know, and not even staying within the box that I've created for myself. Everybody really expects me to always be really loud and in your face, with my looks and how I act and how I move. I do have a lot of softness to me. I am emotional. Things do affect me. I've been very “I don't give a fuck” my whole career, but that's just not quite true. Everybody gives a fuck in some sort of manner, and I do too. It's not that I give a fuck particularly about what people think, but I give a fuck about what I think. I've done a lot of exploring within myself and what it means to be me, and there's a lot of multitudes that I've kept from the world. With the music and the band, I'm trying to give people a deeper insight into me and the stories. It is an inner journey, but it's also an outer journey and exploring what other characters come out of this, because I have done a lot of character work before so it's expanding on that and in more multitudes, if that makes sense.
It definitely makes sense. I feel like we're all craving real connection more than ever, and fashion often tries to replicate that but still in a superficial way.
Everybody's just so, This is my aesthetic. This is who I am, and this is the only part of me that I want people to know. It's only the good and the pretty. It's well-produced. It's all put-together. Everything needs to make sense, and that's something that I'm still actively going against. It doesn't make sense how we feel as people. I don't want anything to have a perfect explanation. There's just no way we could sit here all day and give people these explanations as to why we're doing what we're doing. I don't care to make sense to other people. I just want to understand myself and what I'm trying to do. That's not always something that's for everybody to know. That's kind of how I feel about my art. A big theme throughout is that I don't really care to explain myself or why I'm doing what I'm doing because that takes away from art in general. Art is everybody taking what they get out of it, as well. That adds more multitudes to the artist’s story and the story in general. Hearing how other people take it in is really important to growing. Art is not just artists who make it, but also for everybody who consumes it.
It’ll be exciting to see how people consume and interpret your new music.
I'm really, really excited to put it out there. I'm really, really itching. I'm in a band, so me and Robot MoonJuice, who’s been my best friend for upwards of 10 years, have been working on the project together for the past two years or so. He's been doing it for a lot longer than me, but it's been really fun to work with him on how I write, finding melodies and finding my voice. It's a real journey. Fucking pop star rock star era!
Creative direction: Uglyworldwide
Photography: Leanda Heler
Art direction: Alyson Cox
Styling: Dax Reedy
Set design: Lane Vineyard
Makeup: Kauv Onazh
Hair: Sean Bennett
Executive production: Alyson Cox
Production: May Lin Le Goff
Production assistance: Ha Chu Pa and Gabrielle Silva
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