my brother is dead and now no one will overthink fashion with me
i lost my brother, tahmid nurullah, exactly six months and one day ago today and now i have no one to talk fashion with. which sounds ridiculously trivial to anyone else, because anyone else is not my brother. only he would recognise the complexity of what a loss that is.
to us, fashion wasn’t just an expression of identity. clothes were an embodiment of our values; shoes were a representation of our histories; accessories were a manifestation of our collective pasts and idealised futures. everything we donned concretised our cultures, interests, hopes, dreams, desires, fears, and beliefs.
and the thing is, only a sibling understands those things. and only a sibling who overthinks their style as much as you do - in addition to sharing the same damn genes with an identically trauma-bonded approach to life - would even care to listen as you rant, rave, ramble, and debate it all.
both of us approached style in the same way because we suffered from identical afflictions of being self-conscious to a fault, AND narcissistic about our own esoteric bullshit. we knew each other better than anyone, so it was like our inner monologue was a different gender who always texted back.
i don’t have that anymore, and that fucking blows. so i’m taking it to substack.
because while i have a million and one beautifully reliable shoulders to cry on, countless outlets for my grief, and a kick-ass therapist - i no longer have tahmid. he, who understands why it’s completely valid that i now weep in public at the sight of wingtip bluchers, is no longer here and it’s making me weep in public at the sight of wingtip bluchers.
while i’m secretly hoping no one ever reads this and i get to have a liberating corner of the internet to ramble into, someone might and if you do then hi.
i’m nabs. right now i’m very sad and i think i always will be, but i also still really like to look fly in a niche dumb way that makes sense to only me and the best man i’ll ever know, who is gone. i’ll write about both.
may he rests in peace