HANNAH HANNAH shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Good morning HANNAH, it’s such a great way to kick off the day – I think our readers will love hearing your stories, experiences and about how you think about life and work. Let’s jump right in? Have you stood up for someone when it cost you something?
This past spring, I had the opportunity to participate in Austin Fashion Week on a larger scale. As the social media manager for the company, Fashion X Texas, I noticed a lot of our followers were drag queens, and members or allies of the LGBTQIA community. I am also an ally myself, and someone who has, in a bit of a different but not less difficult way, struggled with my identity.
So, I pitched a Drag Show for the season to the owner/CEO of Austin Fashion Week. He immediately loved the idea and gave me the go ahead.
This show was especially important yet equally exhausting for me to put on. I was designing Avant Garde Haute Couture for Drag Queens while running the social media and needing to coordinate all of the choreography and more.
The most important thing to me though was that the queens felt seen, appreciated and valued, especially during these difficult politically and socially times.
While difficult, we pulled it off! It was certainly worth all of the exhaustion and pressure. I can’t wait to continue to combine my fashion design with activism.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Formerly known as Art by Hannah Hannah, Cacophony Culture is a revolution in fashion.
Artist and designer Hannah Hannah is pioneering a new wave of Avant Garde Couture in the sustainable fashion arena.
Cacophony Culture is ultimately a platform for the artist and designer to showcase her environmentally-friendly collections in order to promote her altruistic artistic authenticity.
Cacophony Culture is a conscious art movement with a mission to uplift sustainability, model radical authenticity, and stand as a visual voice for human rights.
Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. What breaks the bonds between people—and what restores them?
In my experience, trust is the bridge between people, and to love and be loved is the purpose of human connection.
When someone violates trust, they intentionally or unintentionally create cracks in a relationship’s foundation. The tendency for the hurt party tends to be self-victimization, resentment and anger.
What is more painful yet more important in my opinion is to look at what is happening and how the other person is behaving as a mirror. Perhaps we too have contributed to the disintegration of said connection, and perhaps not.
The willingness, though, to choose happiness over being right is critical for the healing process, for creating new relationships. Some call this ego death, others have said that these rifts hold the truth, that the universe exists in the pause between breaths.
I certainly like to view life like this, and that’s my choice. Now, you get to make yours.
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
You know how some people daydream, mostly about bettering the world or living in a utopian universe? I’ve never really had those kinds of daydreams.
You see, when I was a very young child, about the age of seven, a caregiver moved into my home and committed unspeakable acts to me for many, many years. Nobody knew and I was groomed so I never confessed any of this until it began haunting me as an adult.
My daydreams were really night terrors and when I was eighteen I decided I couldn’t live with this agony anymore and that I would give up. Luckily I had a lot of helpful interventions and began wanting to LIVE.
I still go through waves of joy and depression, of willingness to be alive and of wanting to disappear. But art, yes, art has given me a life I could never have imagined and a platform for healing myself and others.
I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. What are the biggest lies your industry tells itself?
As you may already know, or will now learn, fashion is a brutal industry. Well, it’s not necessarily the industry’s fault, more so an insidious societal insistence upon being thin, creating perfect clothing so that we can then perceive the wearer as having the perfect life.
What the industry fails to do a lot of the time is to use fashion to enact change. It is a critical medium of which to take advantage.
Another harsh reality is the amount of human rights violations and economically damaging acts the fashion industry commits today. Shoutout to France for being the first country to create and pass legislation restricting the mass production giants like H&M.
Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
I want people to have learned something from me, to have been inspired by me to step into their authenticity, and to hold onto the love I shared with them.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Cacophonyculture.com
- Instagram: @cacophonyculture
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-tenenbaum-10505bb8?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
- Facebook: Cacophony Culture
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@cacophonyculture?si=9LYv_aMS6jbNeRfc
Image Credits
Madison Dee
