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Getting Dressed With a Fashion Clown Is a Hoot

Meet Hester Sunshine in ‘Dress the Part.’

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Hester Sunshine into berets, clown fashion, and generally making the people around her smile. And yes, that is her real name.

“The world is a pretty dark, depressing place, and I realized that my place in it is to bring as much joy possible to people,” says the New York native, who runs an online accessories shop full of her own colorful designs. Her designs and her own eccentric style, which she calls “clown-core” or “fashion clown,” bring that joy and curiosity out in people.

“I’ve always used fashion as a way to get people’s attention and to kind of speak to someone who maybe I was too shy to talk to in the first place,” she says. But really, her wild style is mostly about expressing her own authentic self.

“Who do I feel like being tomorrow? Do I feel like being a rainbow secretary or do I feel like being Miss Frizzle? Do I feel like being a Valentine heart?” says Hester about her dressing process. “What’s going to make me happy about facing the next day?”

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