Suitcase Series: Audree Johnson

Welcome back to the suitcase series, where I interview my friends about their relationship to clothes and creative work. I am so fortunate to have a variety of brilliant creative friends who work in different fields to make a better world. I met Audree in college where she lived across the hall and was always listening to fun joyful music. She dressed in creative looks and was never ashamed to be excited about the things she loved. I remember her in English classes pushing back on assumptions and making interesting connections between modern culture and the literary canon. We met up in Dallas recently with a common friend (coming soon) and I got to catch up with them both and learn about what’s going on in their lives. Audree is wearing the new Friday Jumpsuit in purple multi.

Addie: Tell me about your work. What does your typical day look like?

Audree: I'm a Freshman English Teacher. So I'm around teenagers all day, walking around the classroom, moving around, and I'm on my laptop, and unloading books, and I'm helping kids and I'm leaning over kids to help them with stuff, and I'm doing my hallway duty, and stuff like that.

Addie: When you wake up in the morning, how do you feel like you want to show up? W

Audree: Mornings are hard for me. I'm not a morning person. I'm not really a night person. I think I'm just a sleepy person, so it's been hard for me, I think, the last few years to want to dress up for work. I've just defaulted into an easy thing. I've only recently been like, Okay I need to show more personality. So I want to start showing up more expressive, so my kids can get to know me, visually, through what I'm wearing as well. That's what I want to do.

Addie: Do you have a dress code that feels restrictive to you, or is it pretty flexible?

Audree: Considering that we're professionals, I feel like it's pretty lax for us. The kids feel differently, they get mad about it all the time, but they're pretty good with us. They let us wear jeans pretty often. There used to be stricter rules, like, no open toed shoes, women had to wear hose, and men had to wear jackets, but now it's much more casual and chill, which I am appreciative of, because moving around all day you get hot and sweaty, and in all of those close you'd be miserable.

Addie: My sister and Stacy are art teachers. I wonder how much more they get away with than an English teacher.

Audree: I think you can be pretty outrageous as an art teacher.

Addie: Do you have things you do outside of work for a creative outlet?

Audree: Yeah, I have a podcast that I am running. I've been editing all summer. I've always wanted to have a podcast, so I just started doing that this summer. It's about a tv show that me and my friends like to watch. That's been really creatively fulfilling this summer, because usually this summer I get kind of depressed, like it's hard not having a schedule. I know that sounds ungrateful, because I have the summer off as a teacher, but I like to be around people, so that's been really fun to have something to focus on.

Addie: I've been just having to kind of make up for myself how to interview someone, and represent well what they said, but write it for flow.

Audree: Yeah it's interesting. Kind of like a puzzle. Like, how much of her inflection is this, or how many umms does she need me to take out.

Addie: My last interview was with my sister's best friend, that we have been close for over 20 years, and so the text from her interview was so different. I couldn't have just typed it up as it was, we got really rambly.

Tell us some of the things you've covered on your podcast that you like to talk about.

Audree: So I had a podcast that I started in December, that I'm not doing currently any more. It's hard to get engagement, because I'm just a stranger, talking about things, but we covered everything like music countdowns. I had Stacy on and she talked about, how long we'd been friends and our divorces and going through that together. I had like a true crime story, just a little bit of everything. The one I'm doing now. It's already got 14 episodes all coming out is just a rewatch podcast about Supernatural.

Addie: Do you feel like your interest in pop culture is separate from teaching English?

Audree: It's absolutely part of how I teach. Of course the younger the kids get, away from me in age, the harder it is to connect, because they're so different now, but it really helps, especially with English to be able to connect to the pop culture that they're interested in. It's absolutely part of it, my classroom is filled with like movie posters.

Addie: Do you have clothes that you just know never work for you?

Audree: Yeah, and I am like a lazy shopper. I don't want to go and try shit on, so often I just buy stuff online and just eat it if it doesn't work, because I don't want to do the work. It can be so exhausting, it can be so much work, you know. So I'll just go, well I'll make this work because I purchased it. It's a certain type of, I have a lot of v-necks that I don't love because they're not the best fabric, but I have to wear them because I bought them. Recently I've learned that I need to wear high waisted pants. I used to wear skinny jeans, and I don't wear those any more. It's been weird as my body has changed as I've aged, I've had to switch over in fashion. I used to just know what works and never think about it, but I got on anti-depressants and gained like 25 pounds, so I had to re-figure out silhouettes and garments that worked for me. I've done a lot of closet purging.

Addie: You said you're a lazy shopper. I think that one thing that's good that we have going on lately in culture is learning that we all have different capacities for things. It's not so much what you're good at and what you're bad at, but you have a certain amount of time and energy, this is worth giving it to, and this is not. There's no shame in that. In holding back what doesn't work for you , so that there's more left for what matters.

Audree: Yeah, spoons theory. I can give this many spoons to that, and save the other spoons for that. I finally found a brand of pants that I know fits, so then I can just buy them in every color. So there's that at least. So while I'm figuring out which shirts are most flattering, at least I have staples. But I have to ration my shopping fatigue because I hate it.

Addie: When I was growing up, what women did when we got together was just shop.

Audree: I think in the 90s, the mall was like, where to go, and as we aged into high school, it was where we could drive, but now… I think I'd rather jump off a bridge than go to the mall.

Addie: Yeah, and the places we'd go when I was a kid, because this is where you pay a little more, but it's good clothes, it's a good buy and they'll last. Those places do not have those kind of clothes any more.

Audree: No, fast fashion has ruined a lot of that, and I used to believe I could go to Express, because they at least had sturdy stuff, and now they have drunk the kool-aid of fast fashion, and they're stuff is falling apart. I don't even know where to buy stuff any more that's actually like a staple. And I guess it saves me from having to go to the mall, but I got kind of sad about Express.

Addie: How do you find the places you do shop?

Audree: This is bad, but targeted ads on Instagram. I do my research because I don't want another SheIn situation where there's like lead in your clothes, but Halara was a targeted ad, and TikToks I kept seeing with these cute dresses, So then I did some research to make sure it wasn't fast fashion and thought, I'll just buy one pair of pants, and see what it's like, and go from there. So if it is a bust I didn't waste too much money.

Addie: We just have better things to spend our free time on. It's great as you get older to learn what's really worth your time, for yourself.

Addie: Are there any other roles you need your clothes to play for you?

Audree: I think just feeling confident, supported is a weird way to say it, but I haven't felt great about my boobs in a while, and I just put that on and felt really confident, showing my cleavage. That's what I've been searching for, something to feel pretty and sexy in again, in an unknowable phase. I'm in the middle of it.

Addie: I think what took me so long to start a fashion business, even though I've been designing and analyzing clothes my whole life is this idea that expressing yourself with clothes meant making some kind of a statement. I'm learning now, that expression just means, these clothes are the costume of the person I want to be.

Audree: That's so funny. I was just thinking. I just want to be Busy Phillips. She has a new little show now called Busy This Week and she does a fit check every episode, and I just love her, but the way that she dresses is just so cool. When she turned 40 she through herself a wedding, like a party. I just want to be that way. I want to be as exuberant and confident, and as vulnerable and honest as she is.

Addie: What kind of music do you listen to when you're doing different things.

Audree: I guess pop, like girly pop. I've taken a break from Taylor Swift. I haven't listened to her since like February, but I'm into like Chappel Roan, and Noah Kahan, and Hozier, I've been consistently listening to all of Kenrick Lamar's rap beef songs with Drake, that's my favorite thing right now, but generally it's like queer and girly pop. In my classroom I have to find music that doesn't have cuss words in it for the classroom. I make a playlist and we'll listen to like, the Killers, or like Elton John.

Addie: What books do you just love?

Audree: My favorite book is Lord of the Rings. It's why I'm an English teacher, easy answer for me. I know everyone has like a lot of books they love, but I teach literature for a living, I"m reading year round, and get a little burnt out, but if I were to pick like a memoir I love, I love Busy Phillips memoir. I like to listen to the audiobooks for her, and then I love anthologies where lots of people can put their stories together and then there's like a unifying theme. Also Lane Moore wrote How To Be Alone, and it's basically her memoir, but it's also like, if you don't have a support system, or if you grew up with support, but find yourself in a position where you no longer have a support system, how to love yourself, and stand on your own.

Addie: One aspect of this age that I wasn't expecting was this coming to terms with the paths you didn't choose, or changing paths.

Audree: That's definitely true. I mean I started my entire life over. I was with my ex-husband for 11 years, and then I completely started over in my thirties. He's genuinely a wonderful person, and we just weren't happy together, and went our separate ways amicably. I do think that's something that our generation is experiencing more than other generations. We started realizing in our twenties that we could just change course. It's one of those things; what could I have done, and now what do I do?

Addie: I love how that can be okay. We were taught that divorce was the worst thing that could happen or that it was a failure, as if that time was wasted, but you can stop at any point and continue on from where you are, and none of it is wasted just because it doesn't last forever. So many of us are finding out, maybe late in the game, that we followed someone else's script for us, and now have options to figure out who we are all over again.

Addie: Are there creatives that you've been finding inspiring lately?

Audree: Yes! Of course. I mentioned Lane Moore. She is a comedian and has a podcast, and she writes books. I think if I had a different career, I wish I could have a career like hers, and Busy Phillips, who I also mentioned. I love her. And my boyfriend is an artist. He's a tattoo artist, and he's so bold and fearless and he just makes things happen for himself, so I think that's really inspiring. I'm always afraid, but that's one of the reasons I just put my podcast out there finally, because I've wanted to do that my whole life. I used to record myself as a kid on cassettes. Watching him just make things happen made me decide, "Okay, I'm just going to do it."