Justice Allen's Multi-Faceted Artistry

By Anslem Joseph

Justice Allen is a multi-talented artist who always expresses herself through fashion, makeup, sculpting, making food, or culinary baking. We, at Find Your ID NYC recently sat down with Justice to discuss how she uses artistic expression to showcase her personality and talents to represent different sides of her personality.

When asked what inspired Justice to first join the fashion industry, she said it was because she grew up watching shows like America’s Next Top Model and Fashion Runway. She got inspired by the different clothing styles and special effects makeup the models would get dressed in looking like monsters in a movie. 

Justice says, “Things like that always really interested me. It made me realize that I can dress myself up in a certain way. When I was young I started off doing things like cosplay stuff. And that made me interested in wanting to create clothing and change it the way I could see it on myself or see it for a character. It’s just, it's just such a really fun thing to do, being able to mess with how your physical appearance is.”

As a child along with Justice's love for fashion, she also grew a love for sketching. Her main inspiration to draw came from her Uncle, who fought in the Korean War and Bob Ross. During the Korean War, her Uncle and other soldiers used paintings to cope with the PTSD of war. As a result, growing up Justice and her uncle would usually draw doodles and anything that intrigued her such as anime figures, sonic the hedgehog, and sonic versions of herself. Around 7th or 8th grade, Justice started to draw realistic figures and now she’s so experienced that she can visualize something that she would want to, sketch it, and see the outcome.

“I got some new palettes and stuff. So I sketch that out just to see how it would look on my eye. Because I mean, even if you see something online, you're like, Oh, that's, you know, that's nice looking, but it may not fit your eye shape. So I tend to want to sketch it out on paper first, and I'll sketch it out on my face using usually like a white eyeliner. And if that works out, then I'll go through with whatever I'm doing,” says Justice. 

Justice identifies herself as a pansexual and a person a part of Gothic subculture. She has been Gothic all her life and some influences of her Gothic style were Marilyn Manson, monsters like Herman Munster, and TV shows such as Billy and Mandy, Dragcula, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and even Elviro, the Mistress of Dark, who is like a gothic sex icon in the 80s. When advising people who want to add goth to their style, Justice urges people to not go out and buy expensive products but try cheaper alternatives like going to thrift stores, and do a lot of DIY (Do It Yourself) stuff, so you can jazz up your outfit a bit. This is what Justice uses herself to add more style to her outfits.

Justice also incorporates androgyny in her style. “I would wear baggy shirts and things like that, but then I would wear skinny jeans and makeup. I've always liked playing with that line of femininity and masculinity, especially now where I'm a grown-up. Now, me being who I am and identifying as a pansexual within the Gothic community, I like to change up my look where I may, one day wants to look more thoroughly or gentlemanly and other days, I may want to look very, like feminine fairy-like or something, look at drag kings and the things that they like to do makeup-wise or costume wise where they make them. They make their features look more masculine. So, I've always felt that you know, you can always play with those aspects and you don't have to fit into any bubble. I've just always done what I feel more comfortable doing, you know, with what's within my comfort zone.”

While talking about the Goth subculture, Justice cleared of many misconceptions people have of the Gothic culture. She says, “You get a lot of assumptions.that you're like a devil worshiper, you can’t wear color, and there’s other nonsense and none of it is true. There are tons of Gothic people who are Christian first of all. Second of all, I wear like pastels and stuff even like that! We all as a community, view death with respect. We don't view it as something that should be hushed touched upon, we view it as a part of life which is why you tend to see some Gothic people wearing souls and things like the classic Scotland Crossbones. People used to specifically in Victorian times, would use that on things like tombstones, and it's meant to represent mortality. It’s just to show people that you know, no matter what you do, no matter how great or how terrible life you live, you only get one life and after that, that's it.”

Justice even shared one of her favorite highlights in her career which was being a dancer for Marc Jacobs during Fashion Week. Carol, the director behind the choreography, thought that Justice’s look would be great for the show and wanted each dancer to do something unique during the show to show off their different specialty. Justice came up with an idea that puts a twist on the whole show!

She says, “Me being creepy, I basically started walking normally and then I got down like the girl from the ring and started crawling. They said, ‘Oh God, I love that. I love that we're gonna find somewhere to use that in the show!’ So it's like literally at the beginning of the fashion show they have where it's me, another girl, and the main guy starts crawling and then everyone that convincingly joins in and synchronizes!”

Along with Justice's clever and unique ideas, she advises people who want to improve their skincare and mental health. Justice recommends people to use a water-based moisturizer to put the hydration back into their skin. She also is a strong advocate for using and promoting cruelty-free products. She also encourages people to improve on their mental health during these troubling times to ask for help and do activities that will help them reflect on themselves.

Justice’s goals for the future is to buy a microphone to start doing voice acting, start exploring more, and doing more photoshoots to put herself out there to show that women of color are here and they belong no matter what.

“I want to show other people especially just show other like, women of color that are there, you know, anyone of someone of color that you belong, no matter who you are, what you are, you belong, and you should be able to feel good about how you visit yourself, whether or not whether you know whether you're Catholic or not, whether you're pansexual or not, things like that you should feel like you belong and you feel happy that you feel that way!” Justice says.

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