This month, for a special Valentine’s Day treat, we are featuring Aaron Woods for SLUG Style and his boyfriend Lukas Robin Hood from our Creature Feature. Their distinctive high-fashion look caught our eye, so we met up with them and had a chance to ask Aaron a few questions, including whether one can ever have too many layers (no). After reading this, head over to Creature Feature to see Lukas get expressive as well. Photo: Tyson Call (@clancycoop)
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This month, for a special Valentine’s Day treat, we are featuring Aaron Woods for SLUG Style and his boyfriend Lukas Robin Hood from our Creature Feature. Their distinctive high-fashion look caught our eye, so we met up with them and had a chance to ask Aaron a few questions, including whether one can ever have too many layers (no). After reading this, head over to Creature Feature to see Lukas get expressive as well. Photo: Tyson Call (@clancycoop)
Woods made this bowtie from a solid piece of selenite, a crystalline mineral not usually used as neckwear. He was inspired by local Carrie Wakefield of Metalhead Jewelry. “You are very much a product of what you see,” he says. “If you don’t spend two seconds researching or looking at things, you are only going to see what you see in the windows. You are never going to break outside the box.”
Aaron Wood’s style is clean. Drenched in white and black and influenced by the big names in high fashion, one might mistake his everyday street-wear for something that was on the runway a few months ago. He doesn’t do it because people know the name of the hot-shit designer influencing him—he does it because it feels good to be intentional about the way he looks. We here at SLUG can dig that.
Woods’ look is always changing, so it would be impossible to define. If there was one word that could sum up his style, it would be “clean.” All of his looks are deliberate and thoughtful. “It’s an artistic release for me,” he says. “It’s a hobby. It’s something to be passionate about. It’s your own uniqueness. Sure, other people can copy exactly what you do—and design and style is for everyone to have—but you have your own preference. I value the time I have had to research that, and now I know what I love and what I prefer, cherish, and want to be inspired by.”
Woods first got seriously into fashion while volunteering at the UMOCA as a way to pay off a hefty traffic fine. During downtime, he was able to look at fashion websites. About his research, he says, “I saw what designers I loved and what I connected with. In a way, I could mimic similar looks and get inspiration from those designers, because I’m not going to spend $5,000 on a Givenchy T-shirt or shoes … I’m not in that league. Maybe someday.”
Woods loves asymmetry in cuts, sleeves and hems. He feels that it adds a little something extra to clothing pieces that might be average in other ways. Notice his right sleeve, which is longer than is traditional, offset by a normal sleeve on the other side. The shirt’s length is long, worn over skinny jeans. “It takes research to know where to find the things you like,” he says. “In a way, I’m still a consumer. I’m not sewing. Someday, I would love to—that would be great—but I don’t really desire to be a designer. There are things I have created, like bow ties or a culotte to give a different look—to give my own take on it. I don’t even know where to find some of these things that I have in my head.”
“I love monochrome,” he says. “People have said to me as I have progressed in fashion, ‘You’re wearing one color palette. You are wearing one color and all these different shades of it.’ I mean, all black except one piece. I kind of default to that—I don’t know why. I used to wear a lot more colors than I do now.” Woods doesn’t focus on brand names, choosing instead to wear what he likes.
“I’ve always had some sort of magazine subscription to keep with things,” he says. “I would go and get the actual print of it because I just love the magazine—I love what I’m seeing. I was in New York last January and I went to St. Mark’s bookshop and picked up a copy of Fucking Young. I love the texture of magazines and the photos in them.”
Here, Woods wears a sweatshirt that he has cropped himself, over a leather tank top, which adds texture and sheen overall, added to with diamond-stitched shorts worn over leggings with high tops. He isn’t afraid to modify pieces to fit his preferences. “In a way, it is kind of street style,” he says. “I have added my own one-of-a-kind pieces to my wardrobe that no-one else will have. They can do their own thing, too, because I was inspired by something to begin with.”
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