The Breakfast Club: An Editorial Project Where Archetypes Come Undone

Aaheli Roy, Head of Editorial

This is a love letter to the people we were before we learned who we are.

Stick to the status quo. The unwritten but gloriously outspoken mantra in every 2000s teen

movie that shaped our delusions. Be it Mean Girls, High School Musical, or Bring it On, the

social circles of the cafeteria were arranged before the bell even rang. You didn’t dress up

for yourself; you dressed up for the role you play. A role you weren’t born into, but rather

assigned to.

Jocks wear track pants and team hoodies.

Cheerleaders dance in skirts and pompoms.

The quiet girl sits with her notebook full of secrets.

Theatre kids chatter with their smudged eyeliner.

And the band kids rock with their Fender guitar.

'The Breakfast Club' editorial shoot

Fashion wasn’t an accessory but a necessity towards character development. But, as all

things do, time passed, and we grew up. Life stopped being cliques, and people swapped

their backpacks for Longchamps, their planned-out lunches for burnt toast, and picturesque

birthday parties for a flat rave where someone’s always crying on the bathroom floor.

Something shifted. As if we realised we were part of something bigger.

In university, no one cares who you were. They care if you share lighters at house parties, if

you dance till the crack of dawn on overplayed weekly songs the DJ shuffles, and who you

walk with in the freezing cold to a 9 a.m. The girl with the band tee pre-drinks with the shy

cardigan girl, the jock and the misunderstood misfit contemplate their group project in the

library, and the girl with the best thrifted outfits is sitting next to the academic machine in

their seminar. No one bats an eye. No one thinks it's strange.

Because the archetypes that we once embedded so deeply into our psyche become numb,

they’re still there, of course, if only someone looks deeper. It’s slightly blurred at the edges,

twisted and made into something new with friendship, a bottle of rosé, and slowly growing

into yourself.

To prove my point (like I always have to), I made “The Breakfast Club”, the first passion

project of the year, with many more to come, of course. A conceptual photoshoot where it’s

awfully visible that we carry those 2000s influences, the leather jacket girl, the girl with the

patchwork skirt and loose hems, the girl with the boots that pilot her into space. They would

always be inside us. But on campus, they aren’t categories, but layers. Adding depth to who

we already are and breaking down barriers of who we were.

Like Carrie Bradshaw once said, we’re older but none the wiser. Even if that is half true, we

finally grasp the idea that those movies and shows never truly showed what happens after

the “hierarchical chain” breaks apart. The realisation that there is life beyond what is

expected of you. That someone you would have never spoken to at 14 becomes your

soulmate at 20. That friendships grow stronger when you drop the masked act and embrace

the raw, sizzling, messier version of yourself. It’s taking those perpetual stereotypes and

making use of them so bad that it starts looking cool.

In this shoot, competing personalities clash, but blend like butter at the same time. There are

thrift store finds, vintage tees, skirts passed down and borrowed from friends that we would

never return and keep forever, and somehow it all makes sense. We’re not dressing for

show, but for the life and the family we’ve made for ourselves. Coming of age isn’t about

discovering yourself. It’s about moulding yourself into all the people who see and love you

for the person you are. Where every version of you feels accepted.

Here, evolution is perceived in a way of not shedding your old self, but dressing it up with

two different jackets and a scarf. There’s no obligation to pick a character, like in a video

game, and stay that way forever. We’re allowed to be all of them, sometimes in the same

week. I hope everyone reading this, whether it be a dreamer, a rebel, the perfect golden girl,

the band kid or even someone who’s all of them, finds a glimpse of themselves in this shoot.

And I hope you’ve found your people, too.

Aaheli Roy, Head of Editorial

We aren’t sticking to the status quo anymore, we’re rewriting it. Lose yourself