Lindsey Hartman: People should be doing enough good to outweigh their bad
A conversation with the stylist, costume designer, and founder of Give A Fuck LA
Welcome to Human Pursuits, the column that features need-to-know names and stories in media and other creative spaces. Today, an interview with Lindsey Hartman, stylist, costume designer, and founder of Give A Fuck LA.
I’ve wanted to chat with Lindsey Hartman for a long time; I just wish it was happening under better circumstances.
In January, the stylist, whose clientele includes the likes of boygenius, Maya Hawke, Hayley Williams, Paramore, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Rico Nasty, and more, evacuated her Atwater home because of the Los Angeles wildfires.
As she waited things out at an Airbnb, she had the idea to do a styling clothing drive to help those affected. She made a Google form soliciting donations and shared it on social media.
She received more than 5,000 responses.
In the days that followed, she realized Angelenos’ need for clothing was less urgent than their need for cash. So she pivoted. The clothing drive became a charity auction: Give A Frock LA.
Closets across the city, and beyond, were flung open, as celebrities and other insiders rushed to donate clothing (Chappell Roan’s “HOT-TO-GO” unitard, Charli XCX’s SWEAT tour ensemble), jewelry (Billie Eilish’s earrings), instruments (guitars signed by Dave Grohl, Phantom Planet, and the Strokes), and other memorabilia.
You can find the full catalogue HERE.
Bids are being accepted until 10 A.M. this morning (Feb 25) with 100% of proceeds going directly to organizations supporting those affected by the fires, including One Voice, Altadena Girls, Friends in Deed, and Pasadena Humane Society.
Understandably, the auction has kept Lindsey busy. But after a brief back and forth we managed to connect yesterday.
Our edited and condensed conversation touched on her early days in the South, our shared love of The O.C. and the Beastie Boys, learning from styling icon Shirley Kurata, doing enough good to outweigh the bad, whether she’d ever run for office, and more.
ES: It seems like your life has gone from 0 to 100 in the past two weeks. Tell me everything. Is it just charity stuff?
LH: It’s literally all the stuff. I had been in Atlanta for three or four months filming a movie before Christmas and then I was home for the holidays. I came back to Los Angeles a couple of days before the fires started. I feel like my life has just been pure and utter chaos.
ES: Oh my God. Were you working as a stylist for this movie?
LH: I’m the assistant costume designer. I’m working with Shirley Kurata who is the costume designer. It’s a Boots Riley movie with Demi Moore.
ES: No way. Legends of the game.
LH: I know. We’re finishing with Demi next week, and then we have some pickup shots with the rest of the cast in April.
ES: That’s gotta be especially exciting given everything that’s happening with her awards run.
LH: I keep calling it the Demi-ssance. It hasn’t caught on yet, but I think it should. But yeah, it’s been literally the most fun project of my life. It’s been really incredible.
ES: You’re from Los Angeles originally right?
LH: No, I’m from New Orleans. It was nice shooting in the South because I was six or seven hours away from my family. I got to be home for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
ES: I have an obsession with the South, even though I’ve never been there. I want to try a boiled peanut at some point.
LH: It’s pretty incredible. There’s a lot of bad things about the South but there’s a lot of good things, too.
ES: When did you move to Los Angeles?
LH: It’ll be 10 years in May.
ES: And you still love it?
LH: I do. I grew up, not resenting Southern culture necessarily, but I knew that wasn't my life. I grew up on The O.C. and I romanticized all the happenings out here. Los Angeles was always my plan. A week after I finished school I moved here, and it’s been my home since then.
ES: You don’t know this, but The O.C. is a thread for many Friends of the Newsletter. It’s an invisible string connecting us all together.
LH: It’s crazy. People think that show is silly, and it is to an extent. But I remember watching it in 5th grade and it introduced me to all these indie musicians that I listen to, and the type of boy that would ruin my life til the end of time. It really was a major education on music and culture. I remember learning about Marc Jacobs because Mischa Barton’s character was talking about him.
ES: The first season is untouchable. It’s perfect.
LH: It’s unbelievable.
ES: Part of the appeal, I think, is that the show came out at a time when there’d be 30 episodes in one season. You were basically living with these characters for months on end. That changes a person!
LH: Literally. It’s the best. I still watch it all the time.
ES: Do you think season three is any good?
LH: Three, yes. Four, no.
ES: Not to change gears too drastically but how are you feeling post-fires?
LH: I mean everything with the auction and the Give a Fuck LA benefit concert started from me and my friends sitting in an Airbnb in Joshua Tree. We made a Google form because I wanted to do a styling clothing drive to try and help people affected by the fires. Over 5,000 people replied. Like, “Oh, shit.” I truly did not expect that level of response. It was a silly idea that I posted to my Instagram story, that suddenly took off.
Shortly after, though, people started coming forward explaining that a lot of people had nowhere to put clothes, they needed money and other essentials, which obviously made sense. So I tried to think of something else I could do with stylists to raise money and I settled on an auction.
A good friend works at UTA and she connected me with Julien’s Auctions, which is one of the biggest auction houses in the world for this type of memorabilia. They were so stoked on the idea; just so cool and down for whatever I threw at them. They were fine with the ridiculous name that I came up with.
At the same time, I had evacuated with Hayley Williams, and she was like, “Why don’t we make this into a concert, too.” She kind of just took the idea and ran with it. She posted on her Instagram story with her agent’s email, and everything snowballed from there… I was involved with it, of course, but mostly focused on the stage design and the art, and running the auction upstairs. They handled all the artist relations and the booking. I have no business booking a show. I have no desire to book a show!
ES: The multi-week aspect of this is something I find really clever. Like, the show was at the start of the month but people can still help out because the auction gives them that longer window. It’s a cool counter to the donation fatigue that we sometimes see with these big tragedies, where the media and society move on after one week.
LH: I even saw that doing outreach for donations. Week one it feels like everybody in the world wants to contribute. The next week it’s crickets.
ES: That’s gotta be really eye-opening.
LH: I mean, I should give the disclaimer that I was doing all of this during Grammys week, which was really to my disadvantage. No one replies to you then, everyone is in their own bubble. I think we would have gotten a lot more involvement had it not been the most chaotic time in music and award shows.
That said, I’m really proud of what we were able to accomplish. I think of someone like Charli XCX, who was the Grammys this year. For her to back us and support us and donate and post about it, I was like, “Damn imagine what we could do under normal circumstances.”
The chance to own three original Beastie Boys tracksuits is different than throwing a donation into the ether.
ES: Totally. Not that it’s about you, but it's also cool that you know you have been in Los Angeles for 10 years, and can pull something like this off during Grammys week. It’s like playing on expert mode.
LH: It felt really weird. People keep asking me how I feel about it, but things have been moving really fast, I’m kind of disassociated from the whole experience. I threw myself into the process, and it’s been so intense. I really do need to sit back and reflect on the whole thing. Like, why did people want to help me to the extent that they did? So many people were organizing fundraisers. The fact that so many of the people I asked came through and delivered is crazy.
ES: Really crazy. These are multimillionaires who easily could have done nothing, or just cut a cheque and not given it much thought. For them to donate their time and put so much thought into their donations is wild.
LH: Totally. I really wanted to find these iconic things that people would treat as an investment as a way to counter that donation fatigue we were talking about.
People put themselves first in any situation, no matter what, so if a donation can translate to something tangible that they have, and can also be an investment for them, that they can carry into the future, or sell, that can work. The chance to own three original Beastie Boys tracksuits is different than throwing a donation into the ether…
ES: And so many of these pieces are rooted in Los Angeles.
LH: Yeah, I mean, I personally love the Beastie Boys and they love Atwater, which is my neighborhood. I just feel very connected to them, and it’s special to include something of MCA’s, who has passed away. It’s crazy to see his jacket with his handwritten name inside of it. Adam Horovitz’s wife, Kathleen Hannah has also been involved–
ES: The best.
LH: Literally my queen. She raised me. She’s everything. She donated her custom dress that she made herself for the “TKO” single. She told Ad-Rock the boys needed to donate something for this auction, which is how we got the tracksuits. I thought they were donating a signed setlist or something. Like, “What are you doing giving these to me?” They’ve never sold them before. No one has them. Only their management and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
ES: You alluded to it earlier, but I want to clarify: you don’t have any sort of background in non-profits, or charity, or anything like that?
LH: Literally zero. I created Give A Fuck LA because everyone was saying we had to have a name. It needed to be rooted in something, and I didn’t want it to just be my name.
Leave it to me to make a curse word the name of an organization helping people.
ES: I love Los Angeles so much, but it’s not exactly known for banding together or being a tight-knit community. Do you feel like the name was trying to speak to that? Is it you telling people maybe they need to give a fuck this time?
LH: Definitely. My forever inspiration for everything is Vivienne Westwood. She created the Vivienne Westwood Foundation and everything that she did had a layer of politics and activism to it. She’s the queen of shock. She put crazy things on t-shirts just to make a point, and I think I tried to channel some of that.
The word fuck is not shocking. We say it 50 times a day. But it signals that this is not a corporation, because a corporation would never put “fuck” in their name. I’m not shitting on corporations who have been donating and helping Los Angeles at this moment in history, but this thing is ours. We’re the little scrappy punk one that is for the real people of Los Angeles.
ES: Do you plan on doing more after the auction wraps up?
LH: I’m kind of sorting out my life and trying to see what comes next. This is something I never considered up until a month ago. I’m trying to see how I can bring it forward and continue to do things, though probably on a much smaller scale.
I’m in this sweet spot where I’m part of music and fashion equally. I want to keep trying to bring those two spheres together in some way to raise money for people, especially in the current political climate… We need to be backing all of the trans wellness centers, and we really need to be riding for our people right now.
People should be doing enough good to outweigh their bad, because we’re all fucking bad at the end of the day, and that is what unites us.
It’s horrible that all of this crazy shit is happening but… there’s so much momentum to fight back against the powers that have taken over. I’m thinking about how to do that. I’m not going to throw huge concerts all the time, but are there little ways that me and the styling girls can give back and work with our artists?
So many of these clothes and costumes go to waste. Putting aside the fact that they can raise money and that fans will buy anything from their favorite artist, there’s also a sustainability aspect. These iconic moments happen, and then they all go into storage. They’re never seen again.
ES: We don’t have the Hard Rock Cafe anymore! There’s nowhere to display this stuff.
LH: Laughs. It’s just really sad. I see how long it takes to get a look made, the work that goes into it, and then it’s gone after a two-hour show. I’m interested in the idea of keeping clothing alive and redistributing it.
ES: So what I'm hearing is, you're not necessarily running for mayor, but you are going to keep doing something.
LH: I will be running for President, yes.
ES: You mentioned working with Shirley Kurata, who you were a big fan of growing up. That must be pretty amazing.
LH: I idolized Shirley. She was styling Jenny Lewis and Rilo Kiley and all those bands that I was discovering at the same time that I was watching The O.C. I call her my mentor even though we work together and are best friends because I think that she’s a legend… She’s on a pedestal. A stage, even.
I first met her at the Universal costume house in L.A. She was prepping for a job, and I just introduced myself and said “If you ever need anything, I’ve always loved and respected you.” And she was so cool and so nice and she got my info. We worked on a short film together and had a blast. We stayed in touch. During the pandemic, she was the costume designer on a show called Generation and she called me to be a shopper on it. We’ve been inseparable ever since. We’re not shiny celebrity people. We’re not fancy people. We just like cool things and cool people, period.
ES: You always hear “Don’t meet your heroes” but when you meet them and they’re actually sick, there’s no better feeling.
LH: She’s changed my life. Working with her is so special to me. It’s been sick to see how she worked on that TV show, and now this movie. She’s so specific. She doesn’t over-pull, she’s very focused. She’s a good person for me to learn from because so often, as a styling assistant, you’re taught to get as much as you can. Maximalism.
It’s been nice to have a really clear vision, and direction, and to focus on developing characters and a story rather than just making someone look hot.
ES: I could pick your brain for hours, but I just wanted to say how exciting it has been to chat with you. I’m such a fan of your work, and it’s reaffirming to hear how you’re pulling this off.
LH: Thank you. As hard as it is, I think we have to stop being so divisive and focus on the good instead of the bad. People should be doing enough good to outweigh their bad, because we’re all fucking bad at the end of the day, and that is what unites us. We need to help each other.
ES: I totally understand that you are probably sworn to secrecy but I have to ask: is there any new Paramore music coming?
LH: I cannot tell you a damn thing.
Lindsey Hartman is a stylist, costume designer, and the founder of Give A Fuck LA. She lives in Los Angeles.