Adam Falik

Behind the velvet rope, all teeth sharpened. Camera cocked and loaded. The beat, furious. A step onto the runway, the crowd explodes.

Arin Black

Fashion for me is about re-invention. Fashion offers the opportunity to make a work of art everyday, to become someone different, to change the texture of the day or of an experience, to play. From the time I was two (and for my birthday, asked for a dress that no one else had worn before), I've been hooked on the possibilities infinitely presented in fashion.

Carey Clouse

Seeking smarter alternatives to our current consumer practices, specifically those solutions that involve social justice, environmental stewardship and intelligent design.

Elijah Bradshaw

Fashion, no matter how pretentious it can be, is an art form. Your body is the blank canvas and everything down to the underwear you choose is a statement of your individuality. It is used in every medium, everywhere in the world, and is as important to some of us as the air we breathe. I believe that there is a new generation of men and women for whom looking their best is essential and doesn't necessarily require a thousand-dollar price tag. Turnstile hopes to contribute to that ideal. There are many artists, designers, jewelers and stylists who beat their own drum, who work hard and are hardly noticed. This magazine is for them, and for you. We are fighting for the underdog, the designer just starting out or the designer attempting to be noticed for years with very little help. Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Chanel... If you think about it, they started where you are today. It's a lot of work and at times it can be very stressful, especially with the economic decline and our environment around us drastically changing. Now is the time to put your creative projects our there. Start a movement. A revolution. We are not trying to change the World, we're just trying to make it easier for your to do so.

Jenelle Davis

You can never have too many sequins.

Katie Kimball

We know clothing and shelter are basic needs required by (most) humans to survive. But what is fashion? Fashion is an unbridled, irrepressible branch of the basic human need (especially in civilized society) for practical, physical shelter from exposure. This branch offshoots in countless directions. In some cases fashion is a practice, an instinctive habit, appearing perhaps as a humanistic expressive textures. Others are simple, whose intrinsic vibrations are more fully materialized through minimal dress. Of course there is an expansive grey area between the two. Fashion can not be limited or labeled; fashion is an art, a playground for experimentation with the body, mind, and Spirit. It is a tool, a ritual, a message, a freedom."

Kyle Gundlach

Fashion is the collection of garments one uses to cover up.

Libbie Allen

Fashion is a specifically human invention. Fundamentally personal and wholly man made, fashion is an avenue for explanation, enjoyment, recognition, camouflage, and utility. It is our attempt at a tactile representation of our fleeting conditions, influences, and imaginations. It is an ongoing experiment with our control over who we may or may not be in our own mind and in the eyes of others. Through our desire to design a "self," and for our own pleasure, we create walking, talking pieces of art. Part fantasy and part function, it may be frivolous, but fashion is always fun.

Melanie Dizon

Fashion is something that goes beyond the dress. It's become, at least in my eyes, a bridge between self expression and satiation. It's become a language of its own, chapters in a story. It's individual and Collective, Maniacal and Contrived, Passé and Reborn. Fashion insists on an audience, yet imagines by itself. I see Turnstile as a forum that will convey this dichotomy from and to all corners of the world, which has become quite a small one these days.

Olivia Hill

An obsession over physical appearance is pretty much the definition of superficiality, but there is a human need for adornment that has been alive for as long as we have walked the earth. The desire to flaunt and boast bright colors is a natural and ancient desire, and those who have found a way to make a living off our insatiable appetite for personal decoration are clever, indeed. I find fashion magazines to be not only irresistible eye-candy, but a fascinating study of culture, society and even psychology. There is a direct correspondence between what is happening in our time - globally, politically, sexually - and what appears draped about the willowy bodies of our iconic fashion models. The impractical body-defying women's fashions of the Elizabethan era defined a time when godliness and chastity were of the utmost social importance, and dresses masked and bound the female form. Styles from the 1920's reflect a time that was all about art and music and a farewell to the conservative values of the past century. I appreciate fashion because of its powerful ability to transform an individual on the inside and out. When browsing a magazine I try to detect who the designer is trying to lure and to what emotions the designer is trying to appeal. If your ideal life is on a boat in the Turkish Riviera, fashion cannot give you the boat, but can make you feel like you've been there. Fashion can make you feel as elegant as Grace Kelly, as mischievous as Bonnie and Clyde, or as slinky and sultry as Veruschka circa the 60's. High fashion labels promise these kinds of transformations for a price, and for this reason, fashion maintains its association with the elite. Fashion, at its most superficial, is the women decked out like a Christmas tree in the latest designers labels, but try style comes from a self-confidence in the individual that can't be bought.