Editor's Letter

Whenever something ends, there’s an instinctual drive to seize any last opportunities and make whatever last minute proclamations you can before it’s fully over.

I, like a lot of people, was taught from a young age never to talk about money.

April has begun. The seams of March have ripped apart, and as I write this the temperatures have climbed all the way into the low 80s. Even individually, things are picking up after a March slump. I j

When I took on the position of Editor here at Iris, I felt very hesitant to use phrases like “editorial vision” when referring to my goals for the magazine.

As anyone who’s turned on the TV or opened twitter in the past 6 months knows, “gender” is the new buzzword, the new culture war.

Compared to the fall, the spring season carries with it a palpable shift in tone. Especially speaking as a fourth-year student here at UVA, I haven’t been able to go a single week without suddenly being ambushed by a wave of “it’s almost over.”

It is my firm belief that all writing is, at its core, about community. Anything worth writing about will find its most powerful moments centered around the people who care for us and the ways we care for them in return.

This issue, we delve into all the ways we use clothes to communicate.

That is what ghosts are to me–evidence of previous existence. These echoes and artifacts are the subject of this week’s issue, in honor of Halloween and all things spooky and scary. 

This issue, we step back from the “everything, all the time” mentality to hone in on what makes a trend compelling, dangerous, ubiquitous and everything in between.