Lauren Sanderson On The Art of Character

“I just put out a single called Smoking Section,” Lauren Sanderson told me, “I didn’t think I’d ever heard a song about a smoking section, and I really wanted to channel that freedom feeling of being sweaty in a club. When you have on high tops and tights and you’re dancing, and you don’t know what time it is, you don’t know what day it is. And you don’t really care. I was writing, and all of a sudden it just came out of my mouth, ‘So I’m at the club, right?’”

That sentence is the first line of Sanderson’s latest song, and it is absolutely a banger, a mix of the singer songwriter’s clever prose and an undeniable, infectious-in-a-great-way beat. I have very real confusion about why this song isn’t everywhere. It is sexy and witty and it demands that anyone listening get up and move. It is an expression of joy and I wanted to know everything about how she created it.

“I think of music as a time capsule, Sanderson said, “and that felt like it was a moment in time to note. It felt like a cool pinpoint on my timeline that I should bring to the real world.”

An artist like Sanderson is drawing from her own life in her writing. Her lyrics are her perspective, and all of this happens live on stage or is recorded. The transmutation from a personal and internal experience into a performance based art form makes the distinction between clothing and costume murky, and the places without definition beguile with possibilities.

How exactly does a musician go about capturing a song, the all important single in an era of streaming, in a single square image above the button one can press should they decide to purchase or download? The thumbnail representing any artist’s song is an example of a place where the clothing does work we might not always see.

“It’s honestly one of the hardest parts,” Sanderson told me. “I try to really go somewhere in my brain, to a physical location where that song would be, and what I would wear to that thing. A thing that I like about pop music, no matter how weird it sounds, is that there is an intelligence behind it, in the cleanness and the winks to the audience. Sabrina Carpenter is such a good example of someone who, in a zoomed out way, it’s this all-American, easily digestible artist. But when you really listen to the lyrics, or hear her thought process, or even pay attention to the details, like the kiss mark on her tights or something, it shows how much thought is truly put into it.”

All of us are a culmination of a lifetime’s worth of experiences, pieces of which we cannot help but wear around. It’s a human phenomenon, not something specific to artists, but looking at the ways an artist uses what they wear as a piece of their work as a whole, it can help us see similar patterns in people closer to us. Seeing each other feels very important right now, as does listening the stories, perhaps especially if the stories are not familiar to our own.

“I grew up as a tomboy,” Sanderson told me, “and I feel like I’ve always related more to men’s fashion. To me, I genuinely think that a really well crafted, baggy nonchalance in fashion is a true art form. I think there’s something incredibly cool about that look.”

“When people talk about the 2000s fashion or Y2K, or even Club Fashion or the Myspace era,” Sanderson continued, “people always seem to think of mini skirts and black eyeliner. And I think about something totally different, because what I thought was cool at the time was more people that didn’t care what they looked like. To me, when you’re sweaty, and your hair hasn’t been brushed and you have on those Shutter shades, those sunglasses with the plastic lines across the lenses for no reason and bracelet stacks. I think there’s something really cool and freeing about honestly embracing imperfections, of what society would say would be a flaw; like sweating,or messy hair, or having your shoelaces untied and rips in your pants.”

I asked about her influences, who Sanderson looked up to once she understood the art form she wanted to use to tell her own stories.

“A lot of my musician inspirations as a kid came from the clothes they were wearing,” she told me. “I I really liked Pink and Gwen Stefani, I really liked Missy Elliott and Ciara. I really liked alternative women’s style and hip hop style. Then, as I got older, I think I drew a lot of inspiration outside of music, from really baggy skater fashion. Still to this day, I’m shocked that you don’t see that look more in music, at least like in the women-world and in the Queer world, because it’s mostly men that I see dress that way. And that look has definitely been a big part of my brand.”

I asked if the thought process for a music video was similar to the way she’d plan or style the image for a single, what considerations mattered most when preparing to release new work.

“In a music video,” Sanderson told me, “the more honest I feel, the more authentic I can be. I’ve had videos where I show up and there’s a stylist with a whole rack of things that I am not going to feel like myself in. And that doesn’t feel like a character, it feels uncomfortable or inauthentic. Then there are the videos that I feel best about, where I wore an outfit of things that I actually really loved and accessories that I would actually wear. There are great stylists that can really hone in and emphasize your specific style, but I also think there’s a world where when you just show up in something you feel best in, I do think that’s when your performance is the best.”

No matter the medium, making art is personal work. Music is an incredibly powerful way of telling stories, sharing experiences, and what an artist wears to make their art, how costume and character can be wielded and welded into tools, I wanted to know how Sanderson felt clothing helped her to communicate. Because there are times when words are not the right way to say something, and a poet like Sanderson knows how much fun it is to play with prose.

“My costume is supposed to represent so much of me,” the songwriter explained, “and I do have a lot of different sides of me. I’ve had to get over this fear of being confusing. But I would say that it just shows how much fashion really does matter in a musician’s life. When I go to the studio, I have to wear the outfit of the character of that song.”

“Even when I’m on stage,” Sanderson continued, “style is definitely part of it. I’m trying in this chapter to emphasize it more. Because I think that there are some really cool ways to express yourself through costume. And I feel like I’ve never really asked about style or fashion. But it’s as important as the music.”

Going back to her recent single, Smoking Section, which I maybe (definitely) memorized long before I felt brave enough to ask Sanderson if she’d be interested in talking about clothing, I asked how the look came together, how she was approaching things differently now with a new and specific goal.

“I wore a black corset with these pants that I have that are pretty sick,” Sanderson told me, and she literally showed me the pants. They were silver and covered in buckles and straps and everything about them was absolutely fabulous.

“The corset was an experiment,” she explained, “because I’m trying to find what is going to be that combo for me, like Gwen Stefani had her bikini and the saggy pants. Like, what does that look like for me? I think I’m realizing it is baggy pants and a small shirt or a bra. But that picture, the cover, it was about how the feeling of an outfit and a moment has to match the feeling and the moment of the song.”

“With a song or a video or a social media post, you can only really like hone in on one vibe. That picture, which I took back in March, I actually was in a smoking section. I could go shoot cover art, but for me, sometimes it’s just best to pull from the actual experience, not try and recreate something. That was the only picture I got from that night. Because my friend just happened to pull out her little camera.”

Those moments, sometimes chance, are often beginnings, and strung together chronologically they make lives and careers. I asked Sanderson if she had any particular definition associated with the word ‘iconic,’ because when I think about the people who inspire that title, they are often musicians and almost always exceptional storytellers who understand that clothing and costume are tools for communication.

“Iconic means free,” Lauren Sanderson told me. “Like, someone who’s really truly not thinking about how they’re being perceived. To me, it is someone who’s so in their body that they are not anywhere else at that moment. Someone who shows up and is just selfishly themselves. I’ve never thought of selfishness as a bad word, and I think it’s because of how I was raised. Both of my parents were always like, don’t ever feel bad for wanting to do what you want to do.”

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