Fashion Forward: Roski senior expresses himself through dress


Brian Dinh, a senior majoring in fine arts, found his identity in fashion as a teenager. Today, Dinh sells vintage clothing as well as personal paintings on the internet. (Photo courtesy of Brian Dinh)

A glance at his LinkedIn includes positions such as office administrator at the USC Fisher Museum of Art and former content and communications director for Roski Mag. His profile is fitting for a fine art major at the Roski School of Art and Design, but Brian Dinh is much more than a typical Roski student. 

Outside of his drawing and painting coursework, Dinh’s focus has shifted his focus past his artistic roots to a new aspect of the creative world. 

“There’s definitely been like a loss of passion for me in terms of my own art endeavors here,” said Dinh, a senior majoring in fine arts, on his four years at Roski — but, as he puts it, “one door closes, another one opens.” 

He’s referring to his growing interest in the fashion industry. After being featured on Man Repeller’s blog and Instagram — a Depop account with 10,000 followers — and an appearance in an ad campaign for the peer-to-peer social shopping app, there is no question that he takes fashion seriously. 

Dinh is a serial thrifter who uses sites such as eBay and Depop to find vintage clothing and rework them for himself or resell them to the highest bidder. His Depop account @koredoko features everything from lavender pointed loafers to custom pieces that feature hand-painted cherub by Dinh. 

Earlier this year, Starling Irving of the independent fashion and lifestyle website, Man Repeller, raved of the Roski senior’s style. 

“On the Venn diagram of unique outfits and timeless outfits, Brian sits square in the center,” Irving said. 

To Dinh’s friend and muse, Zoe Mills, a senior majoring in cinematic arts, film and television production, there are hints of his personal style in his work. 

“He paints the way he dresses,” Mills said. “His paintings are very indicative of his style overall.” 

Mills has been the subject of two of Dinh’s finished works, and through their collaborations and friendship, she describes  his style in both worlds as “soft but very defined.”

Outside of Mills’ perspective, “Tagging vintage,” “IRL Miyazaki,” “tagging watching one medieval TV show,” “tagging prairie” and “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”; are just a few ways he would describe his own eclectic style. But it wasn’t always this way. 

“I didn’t dress myself until I was 17,” Dinh said. “I’m an Asian American, but I’m raised by Asian parents,” who forced him “to wear a lot of like Abercrombie & Fitch.” According to Dinh, they wanted to exert a certain level of control over his life because of the sacrifices they had made coming to the states. 

Even with his parents’ firm hand on how they wanted him to appear aesthetically (in Abercrombie & Fitch, Dinh explains), his love for art was undeterred.

On Sundays, the Anaheim native would attend Mission: Renaissance art classes, and when the time came to transition into middle school, his art director at the program convinced his mother to send him to the Orange County School of the Arts. He auditioned and was later accepted into the visual arts program. 

Zoe Mills, a senior studying cinematic arts, is the subject of some of Dinh’s portraits. According to Mills, Dinh “paints the way he dresses.” (Photo courtesy of Brian Dinh)

Though Dinh’s focus may have shifted to fashion from his roots in painting, his OCSA classmates see a synergy between Dinh in high school and Dinh today. 

Julienne Dawidoff, a senior in art history who has known Dinh for 10 years, recalls waiting in line for a Spanish class and seeing him with a painting similar to some of his current works.

“It was this beautiful Rubix cube of faces and facial features,” Dawidoff said. “He’s come full-circle with artwork.” 

OCSA is where Dinh locates the birth of his style. 

“Going to art school, growing up in Anaheim and Santa Ana, and having those people around me dress in thrifted clothes that are often vintage anyways made me really like the silhouette of vintage,” Dinh said.  

At OCSA, dressing up was second nature to Dinh. 

Thrifting was a popular after-school activity among Dinh and his friends, and although the “1890 period pieces” he wears were nothing out of the ordinary, he believes this level of expression doesn’t translate well to USC and the world beyond. 

“People in college may look at you differently because you dress, not better but differently, in a way that isn’t usually reserved for the classroom setting,” he said. “I think to other people, I’m presenting as someone who’s overdressed at times.”

This summer, Dinh left California for the first time to live in New York City and intern for womenswear brand Orseund Iris. It was there where he really started to grapple with the negative ways in which people can see him. 

“I’m still insecure about a lot of things, about the things I personally wear just because the world is extremely violent on minorities,” Dinh said. “I’m also queer, Asian and bi. I’m afraid of how I’m representing my body and how that’s received in spaces such as the subway at 3 a.m … A lot of my clothing presents as feminine on my body, which is visually male.”

Though his fears of violence were a constant  throughout his time in New York, it was also where he linked up with Starling Irving of Man Repeller to take over the blog’s Instagram story for a day and go shopping throughout Brooklyn. 

“It’s very cool that as a person who sometimes gets dirty looks, shit on, or just assumed that I’m incompetent for dressing the way I do, that I’m also recognized for this act of self-expression and almost bravery,” Dinh said. 

His summer in New York provided him with lessons contrary to what he’s been taught at Roski. 

“Behind the walls of this institution, it’s really apparent there’s a certain form and formula that artists have to follow,” Dinh said. “There are so many avenues for people to learn more about their passions that don’t require any of that … The Man Repeller showed me like a path you cannot find through no matter how many talks you go to from people from Apple visiting on campus.”