Looks like you made it to Calli's Copy and Content Portfolio- that's awesome!
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Find links to published pieces ranging from culture zine articles, to interviews with musicians and creatives, and SEO-driven blog posts for travel, fashion, and lifestyle brands;
Keep on scrolling and you'll find my travel and fashion copy; Or bop over to the warmly world at that button right down there! 👇 |
If you're kinda-sorta (or super-duper) curious about hiring me to write some content for your brand or publication, I'd love to hear from ya! Shoot me an email at [email protected]
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some blogs posts + articles I've written:
BROWSE THROUGH SOME OF MY COPY WRITING...
SOME ESSAYS :
ITTY BITTY WRITING SAMPLES:
On Style and Trends
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"Dick Mathews’ photos of the young Beatles playing at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, perfectly portray grungy, personal, rebellious side of Rock and Roll that was to come in the following decades. Maybe it’s the dim lighting on brick walls covered in tattered posters. Or it could the spirited looks in the musicians’ eyes as their caught mid jam on the electric guitars and basses. But likely, more than all of that, this quintessential rock and roll mood shines through in the band’s head to toe black leather.
If fashion is a language, black leather screams rebellion." ... |
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"While those who wear black throughout history may be tied together by a withdrawal from fashion standards, it is quite incredible how rebels and artists have taken a color used to show honesty, ethics, and authority, and made it into something edgy, warring, and even sexy." |
I sometimes wonder if young Americans’ draw towards astrological concepts is a buy into one of the systems we like to criticize the most: capitalism. Goods related to astrology and witchcraft are widely marketed especially by companies
catering to young adults. ... Maybe we are being exploited by our consumerist tendencies, but every industry needs a consumer to drive it. There had to be a need for these products in the first place...
I sometimes wonder if young Americans’ draw towards astrological concepts is a buy into one of the systems we like to criticize the most: capitalism. Goods related to astrology and witchcraft are widely marketed especially by companies
catering to young adults. ... Maybe we are being exploited by our consumerist tendencies, but every industry needs a consumer to drive it. There had to be a need for these products in the first place...
...Young people today are scared of our world and its future. For those of us who don’t feel they can turn to religion, it’s no mystery that we would want to grasp onto something else for answers.What’s more, we live in a world where “fake news” is a real thing. We can’t trust the multiple dozens of claims we will inevitably come across everyday. Our lines of science and pseudoscience are being blurred."
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"I realized I'd entered a world of luxury. And maybe it was meant to be politely exclusive. There was a dream I could understand, but was distinctly separate from. Perhaps that's what luxury branding is. Perhaps it’s intentional that I walk away wanting to be one of the customers who was offered water or champaign, wanting to be on the inside of the world they’ve created."
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"As many first ladies have done, following the lead of Jackie Kennedy, Obama often chose designers from the country in which she was speaking. But in this case, it went far beyond wearing Chanel in Paris and Prada in Milan. Instead, Michelle Obama reached for smaller names, living designers, with their artistic visions and a contemporary set of ethics. Some labels were well known; Obama appeared in London wearing Stella McCartney, and in Amsterdam wearing Ronald Van der Kemp. But among the standouts were a rusted orange set of silk blouse and pants designed by Fenoel. Or the nuanced salmon pink suit, embellished with embroidered metallic beads by the Copenhagen brand, Stine Goya. This, to me, is what it can look like for women in positions of power to express themselves in a way that corresponds with their ethics and values, and allows for an element of individuality."
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"There is something deeply soothing about the trend. Perhaps the airiness of it suggests a kind of letting go. As consumers begin to pull from the past by buying vintage pieces, I wonder if it may stand to last a while longer. Deep down I know that trends move quickly and the confused agnostic solution of astrology can’t last long. But still, a part of me wants to believe that as long as there are stars in the sky and Stevie Nicks is cool, it must be the season of the witch."
Abundant self care somehow seems to be the answer to everything. Just a scroll through Instagram can send one on a deep dive of ‘self care’ related content, the app is piled with aesthetic indulgences and colorful artwork that reads “self care isn’t selfish”. After a particularly stressful unnamed event in 2016, the steep rise of anxiety and depression among young people (I wonder why), fighting for justice, and setting a high bar for ambition, the idea of self care became powerfully revolutionary among millenials. Now, as we come upon 2020, people are starting to wonder where we draw the line. But of course, like most things, it isn’t so much a line as a blurry grey void. Is self care different for everyone? Sure! Can it mean doing whatever you want it to? Well, maybe not if what you want lands you broke, three seasons into a Netflix binge, with a terrible sugar headache. " |
"If self-care is, in fact a rapidly growing market, we might begin to ask who gets to participate. Of course we’re all incredibly stressed, but who gets to access the escape?
As self-care gets adopted by a capitalist world, it needs to separate into the categories of need vs luxury. The problem arises in the belief that it is both at the same time- businesses could very probably profit from sending the message that these luxuries are needed for people to feel okay." |
On Art
"When I left my building to see the show on a Sunday morning, I was immediately overwhelmed by Warhol’s world. The things of Warhol’s wonderment were inescapable in my everyday life. Could this eccentric artist really have been some sort of clairvoyant genius?"
As I crossed 5th Avenue, I imagined Warhol in his untamed platinum wig walking along side me laughing into his high cheekbones. He might have pointed out the craze of advertising- how we are told what we need and define ourselves by what we own. I would’ve told Andy that today, the problem isn’t just the shallowness of human nature. Where he looks at soup cans and soda bottles and sees junk, I see waste." |
The Meatpacking District seemed to open itself up to the sky. I walked past the SoHo House fantasizing about it as a space for creative intellectuals. It is so effortless, and so out of reach. The imagined artist, still beside me, explains, “...if you see a person who looks like your teenage fantasy walking down the street, it's probably not your fantasy, but someone who had the same fantasy as you and decided instead of getting it or being it, to look like it, and so he went to the store and bought the look that you both like. So forget it. Just think about all the James Deans and what it means.” So, I forgot it." |
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"One of the most striking things about entering The Whitney is the way that sound changes as you rotate from Gansevoort Street to the museum lobby. One second it’s street vendors and highway noise. Then the sound of your feet on the glossed cement floors, and you’re in this big, open room brimming with quiet conversation. The world outside the glass wall is incorporated into the space in that strikingly exclusive way."
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Walking into the David Zwirner gallery in Chelsea, dozens of 11x14 grey rectangles on large white walls invite viewers to come a little closer, peeking into the window of each frame. These rectangles are photographs by Roy DeCarava, and they make up the gallery’s current exhibition, Light Break, which celebrates the photographer’s influential body of work throughout his career. "
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"This is the thing about photography though, DeCarava didn’t paint this scene onto a canvas, he just saw the art in what was already there. It’s spectacular... to think that maybe it’s the street photographer’s job to find art in everyday life and freeze it so the rest of us can see the art in it too. " |
There is a sort of honesty and integrity of what was there in the moment the shutter opened. I am not shocked that DeCarava came upon these images during his day to day life in New York City, but I think that is what makes the viewer feel closer his works. These photos don’t seem staged or suspended around disbelief." |
On New York City
"Sometimes I’ll walk around boutiques and art galleries on my own with no intention of buying anything. I notice what I’m drawn to without paying much attention to those around me. I smile at people for the hell of it and intend to eventually make it to a park or a body of water. Noticing how I act and feel when I am alone in public has a strange way of reminding me who I am. I’ve found no clearer path to true self esteem than enjoying time this way."
The bench gives you the options to stop and sit or slow down and go around. In a chaotic city built around a point A to point B mentality, this is bench designed to slow us down. Actually… the whole park is.
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"I often compare walking in New York City to driving. There are no laws or licenses for walkers, but there are still rules. I draw parallels through what I call “sidewalk rage”. I can’t stand being tailgated, cut off, or stuck in traffic regardless if I’m walking or driving. I thought these rules of the sidewalk were applicable in the park until a friend told me that at one point, there actually were streets in place of the park we know today. She explained that the streets of Washington Square were gridded, like most in Manhattan, with no obstacles to choose-your-own-adventure your way through. The change from gridded streets to curved paths was one made strictly for a space without cars. So really, comparing these pathways to streets is unfair to their essence. That’s not the point, and perhaps my crossing the park as a way of commuting is really even a misuse. At the very least it was designed to gingerly suggest that maybe, for just a moment, I don't need to think of myself as a car on a highway."
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"This park has a greater responsibility to its people- it must persuade and inspire leisure. Maybe we can even go as far as to say it must force it. How curious is it, by the way, that New Yorkers would require such a thing as “forced leisure”?"
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On The Free Spirit
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Penny Lane was a self proclaimed “band aid” who goes on tour with a 1970s rock band and falls for the band’s lead guitarist. She is immediately enchanting. It must be her wild blonde hair, or her smile that’s equal parts welcoming and mischievous. As the story goes on, she becomes more irresistibly spontaneous and stylized, finding beauty in everything and everyone. But soon, we begin to see the hurt in Penny Lane and all of her insecurities. During a powerful scene, we see her stomach being pumped over a bathtub in The Plaza Hotel after an almost deadly overdose as Stevie Wonder’s My Cherie Amour plays in background. It’s as beautiful as it is nauseating. " |
"Free spiritedness often comes from some sort of brokenness, and if not it leads to it."
"Her nail polish had chipped into tiny island continents on the sea of each fingernail."
Many female musicians today take note of Nicks’ ultracool persona. Most notably, perhaps, Florence Welch of the band, Florence and The Machine. Welch’s lyrics allude to magic and spirituality quite frequently including the track, Which Witch. Her outfits and graphics always glow with a moody, celestial, free spirit. Lana Del Rey recently released a cover of Donovan’s Season of The Witch. Latest on the roster is Maggie Rogers whose Heard It in a Past Life sticker pack features celestial iconography and defines her as a “Witchy Feminist Rockstar.” Each of these talented, creative women have often reached for those 70’s Stevie Nicks silhouettes, billowing sleeves, lightweight fabrics, long skirts, and star-studded accessories. It’s one of those lovely instances where femininity and feminism coexist in fashion."
"I have always felt that in change, there is not only a thrill, but a sense of clarity."
On Nature
The rain has a way of awakening the ground in the desert. The rocks redden, and the silt invites itself to dance with the little pools of water. Romantic as it sounds, our water filters couldn’t filter silt.
Independence Pass was named for a settlement established there on July 4th, and before that The Ute tribe called it home. Today it’s where tourists go to gawk at views. It’s also where high schoolers in my town go to escape cell service and indulge in a mountain playground. The historical significance of the name was lost to the metaphorical one. “The Pass”-the cliffs we jumped, the trails we hiked, and the rivers we floated- felt like our space. At night we could see so many stars. It puts things in perspective when you take the time to look up. We would feel a sense of our tininess and question everything." |
"It was the morning of September 14th, somewhere in a Utah canyon. There’s no way to be sure exactly when or where. Nobody really cared, and that simplicity made it beautiful. We ate when we were hungry, slept when we were tired, and used topography maps to see if the surrounding rock formations could give us a clue as to where the hell we were. But I had been keeping track of the sun as it rose and fell, and I knew it was September 14th, my 18th birthday."
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It’s funny, how little we think of things when we don’t have to. I hadn’t thought of my experience filtering water until I saw an open fire hydrant on a street in New York City. Tons of water shamelessly spilled into the street, and nobody gave it a second look. I remembered my 18th birthday, and how I earned and cherished every drop of water. I wish I could say it changed me, but sometimes I still let shower water pour on my head for a few minutes extra when I’ve had a bad day. 
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Nature is an amazing thing. Although we describe it as the wild, it has a sort of order to it. Human societies are always striving to build that utopia where order and chaos can collide. To me, nature proves itself to be perfectly imperfect in a way that I’ve always envied. It wasn’t often that I venture out into the wild, but I find that allowing myself to coexist with my mountains gave me an unparalleled pleasure in times of pain. |
It’s hard to know why we go up mountains. They go up as much as they go down, and sometimes we end up on the same level that we started on. Sometimes we go up for the people we’re traveling with, or for the view at the top, or the animals we’ll see along the way. And sometimes there’s just no other way to get around.
On Females & Feminism
"There’s a fire in her heart as she marches confidently on eggshells, forcefully approaching the edge of something. "
As we go through life feeling attraction it can sometimes feel as though our own heart is deceiving us. Sure, there’s something nice about a perfect situation, but it’s nothing in comparison to the charm of something or someone that’s broken. Think Jenny Holzer’s neon lights that read “protect me from what I want.” It is this romanticization of insidious things that Kristin Dombek digs into in “How to Quit”. Dombek seems to use this essay to grapple with her own story of attraction and addiction. In doing so, she uses gentrification as a metaphor, telling the story of a neighborhood she used to live in. |
“With ideas in place that have been around for so long, sometimes it takes a bit of digging even for me to see that “lewd” and “dissolute” are adjectives that should be used to describe the look on that man’s face... not my outfit.”
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"...from its hand knitted material, to its color, to its name, the Pussyhat doesn’t conform to the typical aesthetic of political power and candor. Just like the movement itself, the Pussyhat challenges ideas of gender that are rooted in society. With the Pussyhat, feminists are no longer forced to masculinize themselves to be taken seriously in their activism. Rather, this hat is a total embrace of femininity and a kind of strength that is uniquely female."
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The problem with Nina McLemore is that she’s trying to work with misogyny rather than against it. Her brand functions off of a “this is how it is” attitude. In ignoring fashion’s role in politics, we are accepting that. As this brand and other similar designs become the norm for female political candidates, we have to start putting it into question. Are women really going to be told they have to “say fewer words in a lower voice” or to “accept” and “work around” patriarchal biases? Personally, I won’t, and I certainly don’t see that philosophy as a productive foundation to build female leadership upon." |
"Women wear Nina McLemore because nobody will say anything of it. They cannot cannot call it cheap nor impractical; unnatractive nor sexy; mundane nor extravagant. It all suggests that fashion is a distraction from policy- it is frivolous and needs not be heavily examined. But this is simply untrue. Fashion is everything that Nina Hyde and Dana Thomas have written about. It is economics, globalization, and sustainability. It is communication, development, and social sentiment. Especially right now when the industry is finally beginning to align with ethics, dress is colliding with politics more than ever. Fashion is policy. And if this is true, if it can’t be silenced or detached… what are we saying when we accept the monochromatic fitted suit as the uniform for women in politics? Use “less words”; be strong but “not too strong”; we will “accept and work around it”; Why? Because… “that’s just how it is”. "
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