Queer Creators Collection: Introducing Hester Sunshine

Hester Sunshine is an apparel innovator based in New York City. From freelance to corporate, to then building their own Hestaverse, the fashion world has felt Hester’s creative imprint as they continue to redesign what heights queer fashion can take. 

Hester, a native New Yorker, told GO that a big inspiration of theirs was Vivienne Westwood’s part in enforcing punk rock and creating a style that goes for more than just the clothing itself. Spending formative years in a small town in New Mexico and being interested in alt culture and punk rock was a struggle for them at an early age. “I ended up leaving that subculture in my early 20s because it was very cis-male and heterocentric … and so after that I got really involved in drag and queer culture, but that still felt very cis-male centric and felt like a gay boys club.” As Hester got honest about alt, punk rock, and drag culture in the early 2000s, they shared, “Throughout my youth, and trying to navigate subculture and queer culture, it always felt like no matter how far I got from mainstream, it felt like there was this air of old school misogyny build behind it.”

The journey of coming out and understanding their queerness is core to Hester’s creative fashion work. They told GO, “I didn’t really feel safe to explore who I was until I was in my mid-20s,” expressing that the sapphically lesbian spaces they entered tended to be more exclusionary to gender non-conforming people in the early 2000s. “Hiding my inherent masculinity was such a priority that it didn’t give me a lot of space to think about why I was hiding it, and so it was a slower journey for me.” 

Fashion, to Hester, has been a vehicle for expressing their queerness. “My clothing has always very much mirrored who I am inside, and what I feel like. When I was more femme presenting, I was making more femme clothes.” They also gave us insight into how their experience competing on Project Runway, where they placed second. “On Project Runway, where I was presenting very high femme, seeing myself on TV was what really caused me to understand that I was not existing in the way that felt true.” They added, “It was so hard for me to watch myself, and I couldn’t figure out why. It was filmed a year before the pandemic, so I was sitting at home staring at myself, being like, ‘I hate this version of me.’” It wasn’t until watching, and after Hester’s breakup with their non-binary partner, that they were able to “decode likability politics and gender presentation” to then identify as trans-masc. 

Hester’s ability to bridge comfort, sustainability, revolutionary ideology, and gender presentation in their apparel creations is what has made their work so unique to the fashion world. “I really sat down to navigate why things were uncomfortable, and how to better move materials. How to make pants grow in the waist, so you can eat a big meal, have a change in stomach size, and still be comfortable.” In addition to the unanimous dire need for comfortable eating pants, they ask a crucial question that not many creators have, “What does a gender non-conforming or masc-presenting person wear on their underwear that’s like, ‘sexy,’ that you want to take your clothing off for?” As they work to question the traditional binaries of sexy underwear and address the need for clothing that fits you, not the other way around, they pave the way for fashion as a vehicle for self-acceptance and self-exploration.   

“It’s so cool to see how much space we’ve developed into the world for gender expression and gender freedom, and clothing is so important in finding that, because it really allows you to be who you are, present, how you feel inside.” They added, “I feel like queer fashion is the most exciting fashion, because it’s the only way to truly built out. There [are] no parameters, and no real precedent for direction … It means that anybody can kind of be their own person.” 

Hester highlighted, that in our current political climate, there is an urgent need for a movement towards community building in a world where existing as a queer person is a threat, and comes with great uncertainty. They told GO, “Now we’re in this place where all of those kinds of revolutionary ideologies and fashion as a form of protest and community building are so necessary. For me, it’s really about fashion as a revolutionary expression. Fashion is a form of community building. Fashion is a form of resistance, and also a form of joy and hope. Right now, we need it in every way.”

 As they talked about their future plans, Hester put forth a precedent that is incredibly inspiring. “Right now, what’s really important is giving people something. Some kind or form of hope and some kind of pride that they can have. So what I’m trying to do is find other ways to sustain and exist so I can offer more to the community than just selling clothes, though I plan to keep doing that. I also want to do community building events, and have small local club meetups, and do things that can offer some kind of assistance.” 

To shop Hesta, visit their site to directly purchase, and be sure to stay updated with their newest creations and projects via their Instagram @besta_hesta