Genesis Webb hardly sleeps these days. The 26-year-old, who is best known for her work as Chappell Roan’s stylist, is Zooming in from a garage in the Highland Park neighbourhood of Los Angeles, which she has converted into a bedroom-cum-workspace. The backside of the garage door is plastered with magazine pages, moodboards, and photographs, like a peek inside Webb’s mind. (With her long black hair, bleached eyebrows, and throat tattoo, Webb looks right at home in the dimly lit gothic tableau.) Despite the questionable legality of her set-up, she is delighted by her space. “I don’t sleep very much or very well, so when I do, I need full shutout, black, no noise, just very dungeon-esque,” she says.
Given her strong aesthetic, it’s no wonder that Webb found her first taste of fame on Tumblr. “I got weirdly popular on Tumblr when I was 14. I just knew what to do,” she says. It was on the platform that she tapped into the culture and films that have inspired some of Chappell Roan’s looks—from the drag queen Divine in Pink Flamingos to the film Party Monster. “I started selling thrifted clothes in 2014, and I made that a career. Within a year or two I was fully freelance, and then I started a jewellery brand from that,” she says.
After ending a bad relationship, Webb left a yearlong cross-country road-trip with her ex for Los Angeles in February 2020, where—in the midst of the pandemic—she quickly found herself isolated and out of money. “I moved to LA alone and the whole world shut down within a month. I was on my last leg of money, fully in credit card debt, and I was like, I have to pivot,” she says. Thanks to her innate sense of style and the knowledge of fashion she acquired from thrifting, many people had encouraged Webb to become a stylist. “One day I closed all the other doors and I was just like, I’m doing this. I followed every stylist in the world on Instagram, and then I had my first job within [a] week with Davey Sutton.” A month later, she was on set with Lady Gaga, assisting Nicola Formichetti.
Webb was born in Phoenix and moved around as a kid, though she considers Oklahoma City home. (“My mom just liked to move,” she says.) It’s that Midwestern sensibility that helped her connect with Missouri native Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, better known as Chappell Roan. Or, as Webb puts it: “The trashiness is there with us.” She and Amstutz first met on set for an editorial Formichetti was styling, and connected over their shared interest in vintage, thrifting, and their Midwestern roots. One week later, Webb officially joined the team as Chappell Roan’s stylist.
Webb and Amstutz have challenged each other to think beyond their personal tastes. “She obviously loves drag and comes from a more glam drag background, where I loved the club kid scene. Coming from a punk scene is just a little harsher,” Webb says. “She taught me just that glam and colour and glitter can be just as avant-garde and just as high fashion as anything.” Webb originally dreamt up a much punkier vision for Chappell Roan, but seeing her perform live brought about a change of heart. “The first time I ever saw her perform was at The Wiltern in LA, after I’d already done a tour,” she says. “It was so important for me to see a couple thousand people in full dress-up costume to go and hang out in a very queer space together and watch someone that gives their all for the performance and then also cultivates the space of safety.”
It’s that tension of opposing aesthetics that’s lead to some of the duo’s most recognisable work. For Chappell Roan’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert, the singer wore a saccharine fuchsia Betsey Johnson dress with a red beehive wig, which Webb festooned with cigarette butts. “At 6am at the hotel, I was outside like a gremlin, lighting Marlboro Reds, just chain smoking,” she says.
As Chappell Roan has catapulted to fame, Webb has taken on a bigger role, too. “I sit as fashion creative director. We choose concepts together. I make decks for everything including make-up and hair inspiration,” she says. Another landmark moment for the two was Roan’s performance and interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, for which Webb coordinated ornate white and black swan looks with accompanying feathery glam.
Webb originally had different plans for Fallon. She shares an exclusive unseen look with Vogue: a sheer white GCDS long-sleeve top over a matching white bra with a white and cream Ottolinger skirt, which they had planned for Chappell’s exit. “I wanted it to match the white swan in a way,” she says. “I like the illusion of the big billow of the skirt that makes it almost look like a sitting duck.”
While Webb and Amstutz are both relatively green in their careers, they’re strapped in for the ride together. “I couldn’t think of anyone better to have [as a client] because she also just loves pushing the vision and pushing what we can do. I feel like she feels like a vessel, too. [We] feel like vessels together, creating whatever we can,” Webb says. And beneath the make-up, glitter and tulle, they are also just two young women experiencing the world together for the first time. “Coming from such a small background with not a lot, and seeing the spaces that we’re in now – we’ve only seen in movies and just in dreams and things – you almost have to not take it so seriously. I feel like the whole world is watching right now, and it does feel a lot more pressurised… but I am getting calmer, because it’s out of my control now.”
This article was originally published on British Vogue.
