Many of us have heard about food deserts and food and housing insecurity, but are you familiar with clothing insecurity? For people experiencing barriers to employment and independence, clothing insecurity is real. It can mean not having anything to wear or not having the right thing to wear. Both are barriers to advancement. Fortunately, we have an amazing organization here in Philadelphia helping to combat that problem and many others. The Wardrobe, an organization that has many ties to the LGBTQ+ community is a clothing shop, and beyond. There is clothing for sale in the shop for those of us who love a good bargain, but it is also offered free to anyone referred, along with a wardrobe consultation. They have a program that through a partnership with Helpsy, allows them to recycle the equivalent of more than 200,000 pounds of clothing each year and they also offer a Wings for Success Coaching & Education program to help people build confidence not only through their clothing, but through workshops and 1:1 coaching to support employment and financial independence. Resume-building and interviewing skills are also taught. I have been asked to speak on a panel for them on March 27 as part of their “The Power of And” discussion. This week, we took a moment to speak to Persephone Ulysses, Education & Coaching Coordinator at The Wardrobe. Some responses have been edited for length or clarity.
Where do you hail from?
I was born in Bronx, New York, and left there at the age of seven when we moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I grew up there, but have always had a consistent connection with New York, going back and forth.
I’m originally from North Jersey, and when I first found out we were moving to Pennsylvania, the only thing I knew about it was that Amish folks lived there. I remember saying to my mother, “I am not wearing one of those silly bonnets!”
I think that’s the common perception of Lancaster PA, but there is a huge, huge amount of different communities there and all over PA, that all work with each other. It’s a melting pot of its own.
And yet we also have the largest number of hate groups in the country, so a little bit of everything. What’s a fun memory from your Bronx days?
My mother was a single mother, and she had a chosen family around her that was so supportive of her and of each other. My mother is not queer, but basically from birth, she showed me this concept of chosen family and I’m very grateful to have seen that. I want to have that around me, to have a chosen family around me.
Are you an only child?
I am an only child.
[Laughing] I’ll try not to give you that “one of those…” looks.
No, I am an only child, and it definitely shows!
One of my closest friends growing up was similar and I used to call her a SPOC, single parent only child.
That’s it exactly, perfect. I want to steal that!
You’re welcome. What were some of the things you liked to do as a kid?
I had a love for music at a very young age, classical music specifically. So I started studying voice and composition around middle school.
Who got you turned on to classical music?
Me! Myself. I think I just developed an immediate interest for it.
And do you remember the first piece that made you perk up and say, “Wow, what’s that?”
I think the first piece of classical music that I was sincerely moved by was “Agnus Dei” by Samuel Barber. It was an arrangement called the “Adagio for Strings” that he wrote. He put lyrics to the melody, and I think it completely changed the meaning of the song. I saw the power in lyricism at that point, and I was very moved.
Did you play any instruments?
My voice is my main instrument but I also play the harp. I started composing, maybe four years after learning how to sing, and I realized that I had talent for that. I’ve been producing music of my own ever since. It’s my main art form. I use my classical practices and infuse them with contemporary alternative sounds. I didn’t get into visual arts until I started college. I am definitely still trying to find my voice as an independent producer/artist in Philadelphia, and I wish that there was more of an accessible community for trans, gender non-confirming and women producers and performers in Philly with music and film.
True. What was a favorite performance of yours?
I’d say when I did FringeArts a few years ago with the Late Night Snacks show. I have done gigs before that, but when I did that, it was my first gig that I had where I felt like I was making noise in Philadelphia after having been here for a few years.
How long have you been here?
Since 2019.
So you came just in time to be shut in for the pandemic
[Laughing] Yes! But I did get to experience a bit of Philadelphia before that.
What brought you here?
Temple University. I got a BA in Art Therapy there.
An unexpected class where you thought, “Oh, this is interesting!”
That was my ceramics class. I had a professor who was of an indigenous tribe in the Northeast area. She shared her story very often, and intertwined her personal narrative with her art. It just always bled into her teaching, and I really admired that. I think that’s what made me realize that I could have space in visual art even after not studying it, compared to everyone else who had been there before me. And it made me realize that what I want to do is as important as how I can do it.
I like that.
My second answer to that question is the cinematography class that I had taken with my professor, Alex Smith. She showed me a film, I think it’s called the “Manhattan Minute” or “Midnight Manhattan,” and it’s an art installation that plays all over Times Square for a brief moment, like, three minutes. I think 12 a.m. to 12:03 a.m. She had done some work on it. Seeing her do that, I felt that I could create too and I could be a part of that world.
Did the teacher who did the three-minute pieces in New York get you interested in film or art in general?
So the class, itself, got me interested, but I think that presentation of art is something I never wrapped my head around until I got into the cinematography class, and then I just learned different ways to present my art through film. You know music comes with a visual aspect that I think is not really spoken about a lot in the music industry. It’s why I studied visual art. Art Therapy is what I got my degree in, but I studied visual art in general, because I needed to understand how I wanted to present myself through my art.
Have you had a chance to use the art therapy aspect of it?
If we are artists, we therapize ourselves through our art, that’s for sure.
True, but I was thinking of your work with kids.
I did. I was a behavior tech for a bit before this, and I also did some art education.
What was the most challenging part working with kids?
I primarily taught kids from 8th grade to 12th grade, and I was entering these spaces being super scared as to how these kids were going to perceive me. But then I would go into these spaces where that was the least of their worries. Or if they tried to figure out what kind of person I was, it was only for a very brief moment, and they were able to look beyond that and engage with me, and with our therapeutic art practices. I do miss it.
So tell me a little bit about your journey to queerdom.
And that’s another thing. There are queer kids that are in these spaces that relate to me. We have conversations, and their perception of how to identify as queer is very different from how mine was. In Lancaster, I never had the opportunity to be in the closet. I was just always out. I was very feminine, so I never had a guise to fall under. It can be intimidating for youth to be around another youth who presents that way. So I always felt ostracized, and being an only child, I always had these moments of isolation to think about what and who I am. So my journey has been my whole life. There was never a moment of “this is who I am.” It was more like, “How do I present who the hell I am to people?” I know who I am, but I don’t know how to present it. And the lexicon of like, third gender and nonbinary was non-existent. So it was like, “I can’t say who I am in one pronoun. It has to become a conversation. And that’s what I mean by figuring out how I had to present myself. Figuring out who is worth having these conversations with, or who is worth spending my emotions and internal thoughts on. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Actually, the person who I interviewed last week, Bex Claire Hamell said something similar. They said, “If I haven’t corrected someone about my pronouns, does that mean I’m back in the closet? I think it just means that I don’t always want to talk about my gender with random people when I’m trying to talk about something else.”
Exactly. But now in my mid-20s, I’m having a journey of romance as a queer person, especially being an “othered” queer person. Romance as a queer person is very singular at times, so I’m just trying to figure out my way around that.
Tell me the background of your name?
Starting as a kid, people often ask you what you want your child’s name to be. Mine was always Persephone. So once I started my name-change journey, I knew immediately, that’s what I wanted.
Persephone is an unusual name. How did you come across it as a kid? It’s not something you would read in the “Dick and Jane” books.
[Chuckles] For sure! It was her story — the dissonance of her being this typecast virgin character that gets kidnapped by a horrific man, and she is still able to hold this demure femininity in this really dark place. I thought that was so cool. And then she tethers that with her mother in a different realm and they communicate with each other through their feminine power. So sick! At a very young age, I thought that was really cool.
Nice! So let’s fast forward a little. You’ve done a number of things, including running a small handmade clothing company?
Yes, it was called Water Lines but I’m working on restarting with a new name. I started it during lockdown, I’m just a novice crocheter but I was making these bags, just cute little things and I raised a nice amount of money that I donated to a nonprofit supporting queer youth in Philly. Then I started playing around with fashion and crochet. There was this random TED Talk that I came across, it was this crocheter who I think was an art professor, and her sister was a professor in some sort of science, and they teamed up to make these coral reefs through crochet. They talk about the hyperbolic function involved with crochet. How there isn’t technology to mimic crochet because of the hyperbolic function, and how crochet can make lines that create circles. You should watch it. It’s fascinating. And they found the way to communicate that through imitation coral reefs, and then started inviting several female crocheters to make them with them, and they would fill art spaces with these imitation coral reefs. I aligned that with my love for Vivienne Westwood and Betsey Johnson and was like, “I need to start making my own clothes, and I need to start finding a way to express how I feel through an art form again.” I’m doing that with crochet. When I have a gig for music, I will make part of the garment for it.
Well, that’s a perfect segue to The Wardrobe. What is it that you do there?
I’m their Education & Coaching Coordinator. I offer our education services to our clients who use our clothing services. That can involve one-on-one coaching or doing workshops, presentations on sustainable fashion or job readiness. It could be resume building or just searching for a career path in general. I think my background with art therapy and the work that I’ve done with kids and several other groups aligns perfectly. It has prepared me to work with the various diverse groups that we serve, but in this unique fashion way.
You’re an artist and a singer and a teacher, and now you’re tutoring and doing all this stuff. What haven’t you done?
I just like moving around, and I like just occupying my mind. Because when I’m not, I feel a kind of stillness and I want to occupy my time with something creative or constructive.
I feel the same. When people ask me what I do, I ask, on what day? But I know what I’ll be doing on March 27! I’m honored that you’ve invited me to be on the panel of a workshop at the Wardrobe.
Yes, I’m so glad that you’re participating in our Smart & Sexy Open Wardrobe “The Power of And” discussion. This year’s theme, “The Power of And” highlights the strength and complexities of women — exploring intersections of identity, confidence and diverse experiences of being perceived as a woman in modern society. You and the other panelists will talk about topics like redefining confidence beyond visibility, the cost of authenticity, identity as performance versus truth, power dynamics and perception, the concept of code switching and more.
That’s going to be a lively discussion! OK let me pull up some totally random questions. What song do you want playing if the world ends?
Probably “The Disintegration Loops” by William Basinski.
A talent you don’t have that you would like to have?
Dancing! I don’t know what the style is, but the one where they move their bodies like…
Modern dance?
Yes! I think there’s just this fluidity of the body that is really sick and really cool.
People are always telling me I need to stop…
Being so in my head.
If you could make a remake of a movie. What would you choose?
“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” Have you ever seen that movie?
That’s one where there’s a dance competition right?
Yes, I saw an Alexander McQueen runway show a few months ago. He was inspired by that movie. I watched it, and I thought it was really cool. A book/movie remake would be “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” by Tennessee Williams or “Giovanni’s Room” by James Baldwin.
Good choices!
For more on The Wardrobe, visit careerwardrobe.org.