Going Out in Public as a Man in a Dress? 👀

I'm glad you found your way to this post. In the next few lines, you'll get a bit of dreaming and a little bit of backstory. Above all, though, you'll get the answer to a question: how did this project actually come about? I want to give you some insight and understanding that life always turns out differently than you think it will.

The first three weeks of this project went in a completely unexpected direction. If you'd predicted these kinds of developments to me beforehand, I probably would've called you crazy. Which developments am I talking about? I'll happily walk you through them, step by step, in this post.

Using reach — but how?

After the first three weeks, I'd already broken 10,000 views on Pinterest. On Instagram, I'd nearly hit my first hundred followers, and reach there had climbed past a thousand accounts too. A steep start, considering I began at zero on both Instagram and Pinterest. My partner and I could barely believe it, and we'd already started musing about where the project might be in another six months.

And if you've followed me on this journey all the way to this post, another month has already gone by since then. I actually wrote this post on December 12, 2021, and scheduled it for mid-January.

I'd love to have one, that famous crystal ball. Where will I be in a month? Where will the project be in six months? In a year?
Wherever it ends up, I'm grateful for this starting point, and for all the support and positive energy it's brought me.

The decision

Right now we're in the depths of winter. Snow is falling, and the temperatures are dropping right along with it. It's slowly becoming harder to keep my artistic ego satisfied. The same old hotel photos and shots against a gray wall just aren't going to cut it anymore, not after this kind of early success. But I still lacked the nerve, at times, for appearances outdoors in broad daylight. And then there's the warm clothing on top of it. So together we decided that come spring, my outfits should add even more color to an already blooming, colorful landscape. Which also means my outfits need to make it onto the international stage. Because in this quiet little town, everyone knows everyone within one or two connections — and far too superficially at that.

I want to create photos in locations that are at least as inspiring as they are fitting for the overall picture. Hotel rooms and gray walls are undeniably nice, but they get pretty monotonous when they're always the same ones. What about a photo blog across European cities like Berlin, Rome, Paris, and Barcelona? Beaches and botanical gardens too. Bars and restaurants, alongside picturesque natural scenery. I want to show you the world! My world, out there in the big wide world.

Because here, in this particular German town, I run into a "small" problem: everyone here knows everyone else, one or two connections removed. Someone as unusual as me would make the rounds pretty quickly. And that really doesn't need to happen. One step at a time! My coworkers don't know, and neither do my friends. Every now and then, in a different city, I'll let a comment about all this slip in conversation — but I haven't actually shown myself yet. And even those conversations only happen because I'll probably never see that person again. Well, as long as the project stays at its current stage, that's exactly how it should stay within my own little microcosm. But how much longer would it stay that way?

Now, I'm an absolute dreamer. And I get excited and swept up in new ideas extremely fast. So of course it would be incredible if I ever made it in front of (inter)national camera lenses, with someone photographing me and my outfits professionally. Just fulfilling a teenage dream, for once? Could that actually happen? Is that what this is? Could social media and this very blog actually lead me there?

I don't know. That was never the goal, and it still isn't. I wanted to find an outlet — to document myself, express myself, and stay largely anonymous. To help other men live out this side of themselves, or even give women a chance to get a glimpse into the mindset and reasons of a man who wears women's clothing and still isn't gay. And it seems to strike a massive nerve. The nerve of tens of thousands of people every month, in fact.

Every beginning is hard?

And the actual beginning of all this isn't even a month old (sure, you're reading this post later on, of course) — it started when the two of us were driving home on the highway. We were, once again, deep in conversation about things like tolerance, politics, and fashion. Naturally, we ended up talking about my fondness for this, and possible ways I could live it out a little more publicly while still keeping it a bit of a secret.

The name came together quickly. We checked the domain right away and registered it. Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest hadn't even crossed our minds up to that point.
The first publicly shareable photos were quickly taken with a tripod and my smartphone. Then I just needed an app to edit the photos right on my phone, and off we went.

Your beginning?

And what about you? What brought you here? How did you find this blog, and which topics interest you most?