Sissy Misfit’s Guide to Being Too Much

Words: Misha MN

Sissy Misfit is just too much! Whether the London-based Turkish performer, DJ, visual artist and producer is living the high life as a muse for Rick Owens or working relentlessly in her world of hard-edge electro-pop-trash futurism, she is always the place to be.

We were lucky enough to find a break in her busy release schedule to sit down and have a chat about what it really means to be the loudest bitch in the club, how to create iconic fashion moments, and why you should always embrace being too much.

Make An Entrance

“The way to make an entrance is by being so sure of yourself, being your 100% unapologetic self. You can be ostentatious, or it can even be just a silent little walk. I really believe your aura, your spirit, it has a sound, it has a wave, it has a vibration that can be felt in a room, so if you just walk in as 100% yourself, you will gather the attention.”

Timing Is Everything

“I don’t believe in being fashionably late. I am rarely late because I have this really specific ADHD trait; I get ready for something very early on, and then I’ll wait in my room, killing time in my full look just feeling it become part of me.I don't know where this comes from. I think I am always so scared and afraid of wasting someone's time. I can't pinpoint if my parents taught me this, or if I learned this in later life. I want to be very on time. I'm usually going to be early or on time.” 

Be The Loudest Bitch In The Club

“I am always the loudest bitch in the club. The loudest bitch in the club doesn’t even need to speak, your presence speaks for itself. Your voice can be in a room when you are not even there. I really am a firm believer that everybody, especially my fellow dolls, should live as their most extravagant selves at any given moment. There's just so much silencing around us, especially in today's world, when it comes to art and expression, politically and economically. You should enter a room so loud, so yourself, so sure of yourself, that your existence creates this huge echo. To me, that's being the loudest bitch in the club. When I walk into a club, I know everybody's looking at me. Even if they don't, my delusion is telling me they are, and that's the noise I need in my head. That's being loud.”

Find Inspiration In Community

“There are so many amazing queer and trans artists that came before me and made it possible for me to be a musician in Turkey, and I’m so thankful for that. I'm also so inspired by people younger than me and the way they do things, specifically the younger generation of trans girls who are in nightlife in Istanbul. They are building a community in this really harsh political climate which is a completely different set of monsters - the economy is shit, the clubs are down, the space is limited. Watching the new girls, the new artists, their tenacity is inspiring to me.” 

Know Your References!

“To create something visual you need to have strong references. I don't believe in originality. I believe in the unique touch to something that you do, of course, it's all about your own unique combinations in life. I am visually really inspired by people like Grace Jones, Lady Gaga, Alexander McQueen, Gareth Pugh, Rick Owens, but this is my combination. You can be inspired by Elizabeth Taylor and Lady Gaga, and your combination will be different. So when you mix your set of references with your life experience, it creates a unique vision rather than a sole, original idea. I think pop music and pop culture is a blender. Everyone has their mood boards. I'm inspired by like, 2010s fashion because that was my teenage years, right? So I grew up when everything was so loud. Pop music was really loud, gender didn't matter, even the male pop stars were really loud, with colourful outfits, big shapes, lots of glitter, neon special effects, and it just looked like confetti. I am really inspired by the loudness and unapologeticness of that era. 

But also I'm a huge goth punk. I grew up with so many 80s, 90s references to things like the Bat Cave, punk music, punk fashion, Bauhaus, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nina Hagan, that, to me, is very parallel to the 2010s. The hair is teased, you have big, spiky shoulders, the makeup is big and everybody looks like a drag queen. The sound is loud. These two worlds of visuals were my biggest inspirations, but the way I do things is really dark and with a brutalist edge. The aesthetic I create is always so sharp, I never use flowy imagery, you will never see me in a silk gown or frills or curls. I just want to make a sharp, really clean, brutalist expression of harshness. Growing up, all I wanted to be was a mixture of Joan Jett, Nina Hagen, and Lady Gaga. I think extravagance really drives me, I love extravagant, flamboyant people and imagery.”

Embrace The Too-Much-Ness

“To me, being too much is being yourself, and there is no bad thing about that. Our society teaches girls to water themselves down, to perform a certain way, but when you are fully yourself people accuse you of faking it. The public is not used to seeing somebody so sure of themselves and so comfortable. Maybe that perception is the bad side, but I don't mind it. Most of the time, people think I'm acting, that I'm putting on a persona, but I just feel really sorry for them because I actually am really just an unfiltered version, a true, organic version of myself. I feel sorry that they can't even believe somebody can be like that, that I'm putting on an act. I think my attitude comes from growing up in punk circles with this need to prove your authenticity. I’m not acting. I’m never acting. Western society, in my honest opinion, isn't accustomed to this kind of expression, unlike Turkey. When you meet my friends, if you just spend the day with us, you will see that everybody is such a character on their own, everybody is truly themselves. Nobody is putting on an act, everyone is just living fully.”

Break Out Of The Box

 Men in this industry can do and say whatever the fuck they want. They can get cancelled five times, and still be able to find a job. They can still be in nightlife, working with people. But from an early age I realised as a trans woman, my existence in this world is so fragile. Any word I use, any move I make can be taken out of proportion to erase me from the map in a single day and no one is gonna believe in me. I'm an easy target already. I'm a loud, Middle Eastern trans woman who speaks her mind. I can’t survive in the box they put me in. Now, I’m breaking out and being as vulgar and expressive as I want, so that when I go to sleep at night I know that I did not play by anybody's rule book. I do believe true punk right now is to be trans. To be trans in this world, you can't be scared. You can't live only online. The world hates you, but it’s constraints are so fragile. You need to break out too. Be unapologetic. Be loud. Be yourself. Be too much.