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SZA wears a snug satin top outfitted with a colourful rococo-esque top. It’s paired with equally snugly-fitting pants. Complimenting the lurid patterns of the top, the pants feature a hazy print that invokes the sensation of staring at milk sloshing around in a cup. Atop the pants are red Adidas shorts and a band of pearls, wrapped loosely around her waist. Her hands are planted on the sides of her face, as if to call attention to the red, translucent glasses she wears; they look like a relic from the early 2000s. Sierra Rena, a 23-year-old wardrobe stylist based in New York, is the architect behind this look, and this picture of SZA looking gloriously luxuriant is the first image that appears on Rena’s website.
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The picture aptly captures Rena’s aesthetic sensibilities. In describing it, maximalist is one word that’s frequently invoked. And while this is sufficiently accurate, it doesn’t quite describe the full scope of what her work aims to accomplish. Shimmering across her work is a palpable appetite for risk, for pushing the limits of eclecticism and iconoclasm without falling into disarray. Organised chaos seems an apt characterisation.
In her hands, formal and street wear seamlessly blend into each other, creating pastiches that feel refreshing and otherworldly. Sport gear: the Adidas shorts SZA wears in that picture, for example, is another motif that she generously deploys. It’s this relentless predilection for pushing rules to their limits that has earned her clientele that ranges from artists like SZA, Tyla, and Ryan Trey, to brands like Adidas, Nike, and Givenchy.
What’s most fascinating about Rena’s foray into fashion is that, considering it retrospectively, it seems to be at once the likely and the unlikely career path for her. On the one hand, she comes from a family of avowed fashionistas. “My grandma’s been a seamstress her whole life... I think fashion is in my blood,” she says in an interview with Flaunt Magazine. On the other hand, however, she had been on a track to a career as an aerospace professional, interning for NASA, when she chose to jettison that path for a career in fashion.
In 2020, she moved to New York City, from Silver Spring, Maryland, for college, and, as she describes it, the stars started aligning for her. “I sort of just started being in the right rooms, getting invited to brand events.” Her experience styling artists in a friend’s record label and making fashion content on social media culminated in a casting call for streetwear brand Bstroy’s collaboration with Givenchy. The dilemma? At 5’4, despite her sharp sense of style, she eludes the height requirement for models. “I was like ‘I’m not a model, I’m five-four!’ But my gut said, ‘Sierra, just ask to style-assist the shoot.’” Recalling the experience of working with the other stylists, she says, “It felt natural to me.”
Since then, her career has grown exponentially. Despite her success in the traditional fashion world, she continues to invest in creating social media content. In addition to Instagram, she now regularly streams on Twitch. This, for her, is a kind of creative release, a way to engage with her passion—fashion—without the strictures of the traditional fashion world. But it’s also a way to peel back the layers of herself to her growing army of fans. “I think it’s really important to humanise myself, people have these parasocial relationships with the influencers they follow. I want to market myself, my ideas, my style, and the natural things I go through.”
