Culture
Darkness can be disguised as order, and memory and truth become our most potent weapons. Resistance isn't always a loud battle, but a quiet refusal to break, a commitment to human connection, and a conscious choice to stay on the right side of history.
Updated 01:25 pm EDT, August 21, 2025
Published 01:25 pm EDT, August 21, 2025
Fashion Designer: Julietta Guerra
Models: Fang Fang Ruose, Mena Lombard
Hair & Make-up Artist: Delfina Garcia
Photography: Flávio Iryoda
Styling Assistants: Mariana Jiménez, Isaac Echavarría
The Quiet Power of Resistance: Darkness Disguised
This isn’t the first time darkness has tried to dress itself as order.
Sometimes power doesn’t arrive with violence or sirens. Sometimes it comes quietly, adorned by promises, draped in laws and delivered with a smile. It speaks the language of safety while taking away what makes us feel safe. Freedom rarely disappears all at once. It usually slips away in pieces: rules rewritten, meanings blurred, familiar things made strange. And by the time we realize it, the forced silence has already taken hold.
But history has a pulse…
It beats. And it remembers.
We’ve seen what happens when fear becomes policy. When books are banned, voices silenced, and difference treated like danger. We’ve seen what follows the quiet restructuring of truth. First come the edits. Then the erasures. And then the rewriting begins. The setting of narratives. The bending of reality and truth. If this feels familiar, it’s because it is. These are not new tactics. They are recipes of the darkest playbook. They are echoes of regimes dressed up in modern clothing.
Even in the face of growing fear, there is always someone who holds steady, standing their ground. Someone who notices the shift and chooses not to look away. Because fear doesn’t get to shape everyone. Some still choose for themselves. They see what others ignore, and they hold their shape when fear tries to change it. They kept showing up, even when the cost was high.
Resistance is not always loud. It doesn’t always carry a sign or goes to the streets. Sometimes it’s a quiet act. Sometimes it is the choice of thinking for oneself. Or simply choosing to stay true to yourself, to stay human, even when the world around you is built to erase it.
Some things hold steady,
even when the pressure is at its worst.
Not everything bends.
Not everything gives.
We become monuments of memory in spaces meant to contain us. To resist is not only to push against something. It is also to protect what must not be lost. Dignity. Memory. Connection. The ability to speak your truth, the right to discern, and the ability to live by your own values. In a time when power tries to rewrite reality, one of the most radical things you can do is to remember.
Because memory is dangerous,
mortally dangerous to systems that depend on forgetting.
It is hugely important to keep in mind that we don’t look back to get stuck there. We look back to make sure we don’t end up walking in circles. We look back to honor and remember the movements that began with whispers. The truths that were smuggled across borders. The underground groups that met in kitchens and basements, not only to defend what was precious but also to stay alive. We carry the memory of what they lived through. What they stood for. What they were willing to lose so others might win.
In remembering we inherit not only their suffering, but also their strength. This is not history repeating, this is history warning. And it’s asking: what will we do with the truth we carry?
So now, it’s our turn. To respond. To hold the line. To speak even when our voices tremble. To love one another as a form of resistance. Because that’s part of it too. In a world built to isolate, to dehumanize, to divide; connection becomes a weapon. Joy becomes protest. Holding space for each other becomes sacred.
We live in a moment where being informed can feel exhausting. Where headlines don’t give us answers, only more fear. And still, the question remains: who do we want to be in the face of this?
Sadly, we don’t have the ability to choose what happens around us, but we have the power to choose how we show up inside it. What we do with it, who we are in it, what we become through it. We can decide to not become hardened. We can decide to stay tender without becoming weak. We can build something stronger out of everything they are trying to break.
The point I am trying to make here is that resistance doesn’t always look like battle. Sometimes, it looks like staying when the world tells you should leave. Sometimes it’s raising a child to be kind in an unkind system. Sometimes it’s telling the truth when lying is easier. These acts don’t make headlines. But they create foundations.
And foundations are what last.
So when fear starts to rise, we must remember that courage does not mean we are unafraid. It means we move anyway. It means we speak even when our voices shake. It means we stay rooted in our values when everything around us is asking to abandon them.
So now, it’s our turn. To respond. To hold the line. To speak even when our voices tremble. To love one another as a form of resistance. Because that’s part of it too. In a world built to isolate, to dehumanize, to divide; connection becomes a weapon. Joy becomes protest. Holding space for each other becomes sacred.
This is not about victory. This is about refusal. Refusal to forget. Refusal to bow. Refusal to become what we are fighting against.
It is the act of standing, not just for ourselves, but for each other. Of holding the line when everything around us is yelling at us to let go.
These lines are not light sketches; they are drawn from memory, from conviction, from sacrifice.
And when we hold them, through speech, through silence, through kindness, through creation, through the simple act of staying, we make it clear: this ground, the one we are standing and holding on to, is not up for negotiation.
Hope, in this context, is not soft. It’s not decoration. It’s endurance. It’s what remains when everything else is stripped away. It’s the will to keep going. To keep creating. To keep connecting. To keep believing that something better is not only possible but worth working for.
There will always be those who try to silence. Who try to control. Who rewrite the rules in their favor and then punish you for not following them. And still, people rise. People find each other. They build networks in the shadows. They teach. They feed. They protect. They document. They create. They outlast.
Because what is rooted in truth cannot be uprooted by force.
We are living through a moment of reckoning. And what we do now will be remembered. It will be told in our shared history and in the lives we touch. In the communities we build. In the things we protect. We are responsible for the stories we carry forward. The ones we leave behind. The ones we choose to tell while we still can.
Every time I get to talk to people who support what is currently going on, I ask them: On what side of history would you like to be? It is important that we think about this. Because what we chose and say now will live forever, tied to our name and our memory. Our decisions should be based on our collective good, one that follows, respects and defends human values. That is what I honor every time I speak up, whether it is out loud or in writing.
I am honoring the side of history I want to be part of. I am honoring the decency and values that where present and defended by those before me. Those who also decided to be on the right side of history. And whether you are on the right or wrong side of it, let me tell you, it doesn’t just happen. It’s chosen. Because it is a choice. Yours.
There is not only responsibility in that choice, but also power in it. And that power lives in each of us.
We are still here.
Still creating.
Still remembering.
Still resisting.
And most of all, still refusing to break.
Fashion Designer and Professor, Mena believes that fashion completely transcends the surface and the most important is how one feels rather than anything else. Fashion is really about how empowered one becomes by it. She channels vibrant flares of vintage fashion and dreams of contemporary twists, inspired by her own life and travels.
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