INTERVIEW WITH STYLED BY TATI
Tati is a Los Angeles based fashion stylist whose work has ranged from e-commerce to editorial photoshoots to music videos. Known for her eclectic taste that touches every aspect of her life, Tati has made waves throughout her styling career. She even has become popular on TikTok for her out-of-the-box yet tastefully decorated apartment.
In the summer of 2022, Lonely Stoner sat down with Tati for an interview on her journey through her styling career to learn more about her as a creative (and as a stoner).
Jules: Thank you for being my first ever interview! This is exciting!
Tati: I’m excited!
Jules: Okay, to start off, what made you get into styling and what you do now?
Tati: I actually grew up dancing and that was my career path at first. I’ve danced since I was 3 years old doing all kinds of dance, all day, every day and because of that, I went to college at San Francisco State for dance. Once I was in my Junior year, I realized I was always skipping class and dance wasn’t giving me that feeling that I used to have. I was like, “Okay, I can either finish school in a year and just get a degree so I can get the hell out, or I can actually do something with my time that I enjoy.” I had to continue college to keep my parents involved, you know, FAFSA and everything. I could not survive without it so I was going to stay in college. So, because of me not being happy anymore, I pretty much just went to my parents and I was like, “Hey, this is wild, and I know I’m supposed to graduate in a year, but I want to go into the fashion merchandising major.” I have always been into fashion and every job I had up until that point had been in fashion. I used to alter clothes from thrift stores and resell them to the girls in high school. Fashion was always within me. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing though and I had no idea what I wanted to be. I actually wanted to be a buyer in a corporate setting and then I took one class and was like, “Fuck this, this is way too much math for me, I don’t want to do any of this.” At the time, I was with my most recent ex and he lived with two creatives and one of them, her name’s Barbara Rios, was a photographer. She and I started getting close and I always watched her do her photography thing. One day she tweeted that she needed help with styling. I was like, “Well, I have clothes at home, I work at Crossroads (Trading Co.) and I’m sure I could just figure it out. I’m always at your house anyways, I can just do it.” We did a shoot in September 2015 with our friend Nykole and I have never in my life felt something like that inside of me, even all the years of dancing, I’d never had that feeling before. From that night on, I just didn’t stop. I researched everything; what I needed to do, what I needed to buy and I just started working. That was on top of school, the job that actually paid me, and also trying to have a social life.
Jules: That’s amazing, the fact that you found that passion. I feel like with dance, when you’re performing, you have to style your costume to the dance so it was probably always within you.
Tati: Yeah, 100%. My mom went to school for fashion business so fashion was always in my realm, I just didn’t know it was my path. I think I was so instilled with dancing and when you do something for so long, losing it almost feels weird. It’s like, “Am I gonna do the wrong thing? I’ve been working my ass off for this and now I’m just going to drop it.” I’m definitely glad that I made that change, I’m grateful for Barbara and I’m so happy. I love what I do.
Jules: That’s awesome, I love that! Okay, now for a fun one. What is your favorite strain and/or way to smoke?
Tati: Well, as you get older, and I mean maybe this is just me, you don’t really care what you smoke as long as you can get high! But I will always have this crazy love for Candy Jack. That was when I was finally making some money, I was on FAFSA so I didn’t really have to pay rent, I was living life with my homies and we were all smoking weed in San Francisco which was such a good time. There was this place called The Green Door in San Francisco and we always used to go there and do our homework because they have a smoke lounge. They always had Candy Jack, and that shit… I mean just looking at it was like art! I know that sounds crazy but it smelled the same every time and it got me so lit. I would buy a $65 eighth - God knows I should not have been doing that - and I would have it alongside my $20 eighths that I would smoke all the time and I would be like, “It was a bad day, let me get my Candy Jack.”
Jules: Right, like as a little treat!
Tati: Exactly. It was a treat! It was that candy bar that you always wanted. It was so good, I’ll never forget that. I had to specifically from The Green Door because I would also get it from another place in SF and it just wasn’t the same.
As for how I smoke, I feel like it has changed so drastically over the years. I mean you start out doing little pipes that you can hide from your parents because you can’t smoke. Then weed became legal so my parents didn’t care - I mean I smoke in front of them now so it’s whatever. Then I was into glass because you move out and you’re like, “I can have this big beautiful bong now!” And then you’re like, “Okay girl, this is ridiculous, you’ve broken your sixth bong, we need a little bit more longevity.” I was dabbing for a long time and the rigs were super sick. Now I feel like just rolling up. Personally, I love a Backwood but also Backwoods get me so high, so I can’t always be smoking one. But I love rolling up. Just grinding it, putting it in, and then having it rolled after; it’s just such a good thing.There’s something about the classic rotation. There’s nothing like passing a blunt. It’s just so reminiscent of my times in San Francisco which were the best times of my life. Just to kiki with your friends and smoke the same weed and putting all our weed together. There’s a community around it that I love.
Jules: Yeah, the community aspect! Love it.
Jules: What is your goal with your styling career, if you have any?
Tati: You know, I get asked that question a lot and I feel like as time goes on, I’m still figuring that out myself. I mean, if you asked me when I still lived in the Bay if I would be doing e-commerce stuff and all of that, I would have laughed in your face, but now I love it. There’s something about precision and I mean, I’m a Virgo and I was a ballet dancer for a really long time so to have something be close to perfect is a feeling I love, and to have the fashion side of it where you can be imperfect and crazy is also something I love. So I don’t know? I think I just want to keep touching every aspect of styling. I know that’s kind of vague but I feel like a lot of people would typically say to be a celebrity stylist and see their stuff on the red carpet. It’s dope and of course I want to do that and I’m open to that, especially with the people that match my style and energy, but I want to be the “jack of all trades”. I want to be the person that you hit up for anything and everything styling. I don’t want to put myself in a box, I don’t want to stop myself. If that was the case, then I wouldn’t have the amazing clients in e-commerce that I do now. I was also like, “Fuck those long days, I just want those short shoots” and now I’m like, “Give me a music video, a three day music video, I love it!”
I’ve just evolved. I think when you love what you do, it’s all relative, it’s all something that you are excited to do. I don’t think I’ll ever say, “No, I don’t like this,” because I just love what I do so much.
Jules: Right, and why would you want to pigeonhole yourself?
Tati: Exactly. Everyone is a stylist, especially in LA. Not that I’m ever looking at other people and what they’re doing in terms of competition but you just have to be realistic and you have to do it all. Especially now with social media and influencers getting free clothes, they’re basically getting styled and blowing up because of it. I feel like stylists definitely don’t get the credit they deserve, especially out in LA where there’s so many people with status around us and they don’t dress themselves. I mean, if I can be everyone’s everything, then I’m okay with that.
Jules: Okay, another fun one. Tell the story about the first time you smoked or tell a crazy story about a time you smoked, if you have one.
Tati: I do! I always go back to this story if anyone asks a question like that. This was when I was in high school. I graduated high school early and had a gap year because graduating at 16 and going to college right away was really scary to me. I still wanted to be with my friends who were in my technical class. I started smoking weed at 14 years old and it kind of progressed from there and the people I hung out with smoked a lot of weed. I was smoking weed at the time, but not bongs. I lived at home. I can’t just have a bong. So, my cousin Alyssa went to my rival high school and there was a guy that went to her school that “distributed” weed and he would always supply for the seshes. He had a fat bong and at the time, I was a Wiz Khalifa girly. I still am, but I was totally “the weed girl.” He asked me if I wanted to hit the bong and I think it was my first time ever. I don’t know why I thought that it was smart to do the entire bowl off the bat, and when I say the entire bowl, I mean that shit was yellow. I inhaled it and immediately just coughed all the smoke out, I could not stop coughing. I think I literally coughed for what must have been 20 minutes straight. I went to the bathroom and was staring at myself in the mirror, I was hyperventilating, I was like, “Okay girl, you might have to go to the hospital tonight, like you could die, you might die tonight.” I couldn’t catch my breath and was really hyperventilating and no one knew what was happening. Everyone was still smoking and I was in the house, alone, fighting for my life. All I remember is laying on the couch and the whole room was just- I don’t know what, that shit was crazy. I woke up the next morning and my shoes were on, my clothes were on, everyone was gone, my cousin was asleep upstairs; I was gone, I was out of this world. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that high since then.
Jules: It’s always the high school years where you make those mistakes.
Tati: Oh yeah, totally. You grow up after a while.
Jules: Who are some inspirations for your work?
Tati: You know, that’s always hard because I think we’re so overstimulated with so much now on the internet and how social media is crucial to creators now. It’s hard. I’d love to say Rihanna but I think I just admire her in general. I mean, I love her style, I think she’s amazing and I think she has amazing fashion, but it’s hard to say. I’m inspired by a lot, I’m inspired by everything around me. Especially being with creatives so often now, I feel like that really inspires me. Like Christiano (Hermoso, photographer), every time I see him pump out new work I’m just like, “God, that is just so sick, that is so inspiring,” and he doesn’t even style. I guess other people also achieving their dreams and other people using their power to put other people on is a huge inspiration for me. I don’t think that any of this is worth it if I can’t have everyone around me eating too, you know? If I had to pick one person, I would like to say Doja Cat’s stylist, Brett Alan Nelson. He just transformed her. She is the true epitome of how important it is to have a team and how important it is to invest because I’ve rocked with her since like, middle school and she didn’t have a team, you know, you start from the bottom. When she got Brett on her team; that woman was wearing shit that I didn’t even know existed. She is a star now because of how she presents herself and how creative everything is around her. There isn’t one music video that I’ve seen her push out that isn’t revolutionary. I don’t really assist people just because I’m so busy with my own stuff, but if I had the opportunity to assist or just to even see Brett’s process, I would be so thankful. Every detail of his styling is so important and so crazy. He is an inspiration for sure.
Jules: I love Doja Cat, she is unreal.
Tati: Yeah, even when I saw her at Coachella, I was like, “Damn, she’s got like seven outfit changes and this is like a 20 minute set, she’s crazy.”
Jules: What changes would you like to see in either your industry or the cannabis industry, if any?
Tati: I think it can kind of go together. I mean obviously it’s so amazing to see cannabis come into the world the way that it has and to have it be not as stigmatized as it used to be and not be the substance that is looked upon like other hard drugs. I’m glad that we’ve gotten to this place. But obviously, the incarceration rate is unreal. I feel like there still is a stigma around a white person with weed vs. a black person with weed, and any POC really. I would like to see that change because at the end of the day, when you walk up to a dispensary, there is every kind of person there. There’s a man in a business suit, there’s a mom, there’s me, there’s just every type of person and it’s such a neutral ground and I wish that neutrality was everywhere. There’s no reason that anyone should be in jail for weed, there’s much harder things that we need to care about, there’s other things to focus on. It would be nice to see that go away because it’s ridiculous. I guess that kind of goes into the fashion industry too. I feel like there’s always going to be colorism and fatphobia and sexism. It’s like, why can’t every person just represent themselves and be themselves and thrive? The whole reason that fashion exists is so that we can express ourselves and what we put on our bodies is so important, whether it’s a hoodie or a designer gown. I feel like what we put out for other people to see is so important for others to understand us, and for fashion to have any limits is like- we’re already down enough. Let’s use something that can be so beautiful and keep making the world beautiful with it.
Jules: Well said, very well said. To close it out, do you have any advice for new and/or aspiring creatives?
Tati: Yeah! I will always remember this one thing that a stylist that I look up to said, her name is Jourdan Kadow. She had an interview and she said that everyone has a place in what we do. This is a very oversaturated industry, especially in places like LA and New York. This industry in general is oversaturated in all positions, but there’s room for all of us. I think that’s something to keep in mind because with social media, you look at everything and you’re like, “That person has so much success, I want to be like them, I want that opportunity but I don’t deserve that opportunity.” We all can win, it’s so crucial to remember because the second you start comparing yourself and wondering why that’s not where you’re at, you’re only going to bring yourself down. And that goes into my next piece of advice. I feel like for a long time, I allowed myself to be in a really shitty situation. Even though I moved to LA and that was amazing and styling was blowing up for me and it was so fantastic, there was still one large portion of my life that was bringing me down. If you don’t allow the universe to give you those amazing things and you keep telling the universe that you deserve this shitty thing as well as this good thing, it’s going to counteract each other and you’re not going to be as great as you could be. The second that negative energy got out of my life, everything changed. My career blew up, I’m living in a home that I could never imagine I’d be living in two years into living in LA and at the age that I am. I feel like you just have to let go of any negative energy, whether that’s a relationship, a job, a relationship with your family, it’s just that hardship that you have to throw out and it’ll just release the floodgates. And never give up! There’s been so many times that I was told that I wasn’t going to amount to anything, and maybe I did believe it at the time too, but every single thing that I’ve wanted in life, I’ve gotten. And that was because I knew I could, and I knew that I would, and I did. The moment you just immerse yourself in yourself is when it’s all going to come, and if it doesn’t now, it will later, and if it doesn’t later, another path will happen. Literally anything can change at any moment and everything can be taken away from you and if that’s going to happen, you at least have to be proud of what you’ve done.
You can find her on Instagram and TikTok @styledbytati and view her full portfolio on her website.
