Arabelle Sicardi
I'm a fashion and beauty writer.
I write about beauty, fashion, feminism and identity for a bunch of different places.
PROJECTS
them.us
This Body Modification Exhibit Is the Future of What Fashion Can Be — If You Want It
The first thing you see when you walk into A. Human’s Mercer Street showroom is a Black man buried neck-deep in a glass box of soil, in a dark and windowless room surrounded by plants. He is facing you directly, unmoving. It will take you a second to register your confusion and categorize it as a mixture of mortification and curiosity. If you have ever seen an episode of the now-defunct television series Hannibal, the scene will distinctly remind you of one of the cannibal’s victims.
Nylon
How I Learned That Beauty Was Worth Paying Attention To
Arabelle Sicardi explains how they explored their love for beauty while attending an academically rigorous high school.
reallifemag.com
Seductive Doom
The architecture of public baths is about statecraft as much as wellness.
The Huffington Post
I Tried Costco’s Korean Beauty Kit To See What The Big Deal Is
Korean skin care has truly changed my skin for the better. Having tried an entire drugstore aisle’s worth of acne products and multiple dermatologists’ recommended brands, the most helpful products I’ve used come from Seoul.
So it piqued my interest that Costco had launched its own Korean skin care kit, The Case Full of Seoul, geared toward people who might be new to the 11-step Korean beauty routine that involves cleansing, toning, moisturizing, applying serums and masks, and more.
The kit r...
them.us
Sephora Is Launching In-Store Beauty Classes for Trans People
A lot of the most tender, intimate moments of my life have happened in the aisles of Sephora. I’ve met girlfriends on first or second dates there as an excuse to bond with them over perfumes and serums (if only so we can hold hands while we “test the products”), I went with my best friend’s mother for her 70th birthday to help pick out skincare for her retirement era, and I later went with a friend who had recently begun transitioning to help pick out her first full-coverage foundation. Sepho...
Racked
Depression Takes My Body Away
As a depressed teen, I used clothes as a lifeline to pull me out of the fear that I was insubstantial. They made my body into a fun experiment I could control. As long as I had or could work toward the clothes that I love, as long as I could fit into them, take up their structures as my body’s own, I’d pull through.
lennyletter.com
Addie Wagenknecht Wants Us to Be Alone, Together
Addie Wagenknecht knows what the void means. By this, I mean she’s an artist who plays with absence and the inheritance we leave behind; her works are clues into the world of technology and feelings that make up her brain, but they aren’t explanations of it.
Allure
11 Things I Learned After Shaving My Head
If you are reading this, you are considering shaving your head. Congratulations and welcome to the coven. Everyone has different reasons for wanting to buzz it all off; for me, I wanted a fresh start after gradually (and accidentally) making my undercut so drastic it was inevitable I would have to restart my hair growth all over if I wanted it to grow out in a non-bizarro way. It was a decision years in the making, and I don’t regret it one bit.
I shaved my head by myself in my bathroom on a ...
melmagazine.com
Why Women Love to Wear Men’s Deodorant
I remember watching the women I’ve loved most vividly create themselves in front of me — curling their eyelashes from bed, gelling their hair back or spraying themselves in a cloud of dry shampoo. Or I remember them by the cloud of fragrance they summoned when they moisturized after a shower: coconut oil or baby powder, tea tree oil and lip gloss with that fake strawberry smell or the clean musk of Old Spice and the slick pop of the top as it slides on and off in two beats.
ssense.com
Dress-Coding
Fashion’s relationship to coding is ever-growing and Arabelle Sicardi is on the case.
shondaland.com
Ellen Ullman on the Future of Tech and Why We Need to Save Net Neutrality
In a world in which many of the stories we hear about Silicon Valley show us a grim dystopia stacked against women, I’ve always found solace in the work of software engineer and all-around badass Ellen Ullman. Ellen is — and always has been — an atypical programmer. Her first memoir, "Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents," was a lifeline for me, and proved that it is possible to thrive in an industry that frequently puts women at a disadvantage in order to push them out. Wit...
hazlitt.net
The Year in Ugliness
I knew this year would be strange when it started off with my failed kidnapping.
@smakasmaka
7 K-Beauty Subscription Boxes, Reviewed By a Discerning Skin-Care Critic
7 K-BEAUTY SUBSCRIPTION BOXES, REVIEWED BY A DISCERNING SKIN-CARE CRITIC
damnjoan.com
Sex, Death, and the Smell of It All
Can your fragrance ward off death? Arabelle Sicardi investigates.
hazlitt.net
‘The Bonds of Power Are Diffuse’: An Interview with Jenny Zhang
Jenny Zhang’s descriptions of bodies are grotesque and explicit: they are often insomnia ridden, resplendent with open wounds, flinging off roaches with a dancer’s grace, sweaty and fumbling from childish and codependent explorations into sex and humiliation.