This series comes from my own experience...

a recollection drawn from everything I’ve lived through over the past thirty years, as I step into this threshold. Looking back, I feel the dulling of impulses, the quieting of desire, and a growing stillness within my body. I part with my past — with madness, naivety, love, and hysteria — carrying anxiety, fear, regret, helplessness, and a strange sense of anticipation. Still, I hold onto the hope that their traces won’t disappear completely, but remain — faint, persistent, and alive beneath the surface of what comes next.

Thirty: With All its Heartbreak and GloryThirty

It unfolds across seven stages, fragments of time before turning thirty:

Childhood (5–10)

Adolescence (13–17)

Adulthood (18–20)

Adulthood (23–25)

Adulthood (26–28)

Adulthood(27–29)

And finally, a farewell to thirty.

Each stage is not a fixed moment, but a blurred emotional state — where memory, sensation, and imagination overlap. They are less about chronology and more about how these years continue to exist within me, layered, unfinished, and unresolved.

Childhood (5–10) Heroism, dreams, and nightmares:

It is the only time when love for the world feels unconditional. We believe we can save it. We set out on imagined adventures, turning everything we touch into vessels that carry us toward somewhere beyond reality. The world exists through our imagination — and, for a brief moment, it allows it.

Trench Coat: 8on8

Boots: Vintage Balenciaga

Coat: Vintage Dolce Gabbana

Shirt Dress: Vintage Vetements

Adolescence (13–17) Love, fantasy, first desire, and the confusion of becoming:

What is first love? It is the moment you begin to believe in something eternal — something that feels as if it could belong to you forever. It lives like a secret, hidden deep within a private cavern of the heart, guarded in silence, untouched by the outside world.

Total look from Praying @praying

Adulthood (18–20) Intoxication, escape, and the soft collapse of boundaries:

Alcohol becomes the first tool we use to dissolve misery — a way to blur the edges of the world, of time, and of ourselves. In this state, everything loosens. Reality softens. It feels like sinking slowly into the sea, while a distant voice calls from the shore — unreachable, yet persistent. Sounds, fragments, and passing objects begin to weave themselves into something gentle, almost narrative — as if the world, for a moment, is willing to hold us in a story of our own making.

(Main character on bed) Latex Dress: Moniquefei @moniquefei

Characters in tank, from left to right:

1. Full Look: Moniquefei @moniquefei
2. Top: Moniquefei @moniquefei
3. Bra Top: Vintage Dolce Gabbana, Trousers: Vintage Alexander McQueen, Latex Inflation Neck Pillow: Moniquefei @moniquefe
4. Full Look: Moniquefei @moniquefei

Adulthood (23–25) Acceleration and impulse:

A restless energy takes over — a desire for intensity, for risk, for something that breaks the rhythm of an already forming structure. It is the urge to go out of tune, to push against order, to test how far the world can be bent — or broken. The body becomes a force in motion. Riding at full speed, the line between control and loss begins to blur. It is no longer about escape, but about collision — with the world, with others, with oneself.

Red T-shirt: Praying @praying

Trousers: Praying @praying

Waist Band: Nutemperor @nutemperor

Adulthood (26–28) Loss, confrontation, and the slow acceptance of death:

As time moves forward, death begins to enter life more frequently — no longer distant, but intimate. At first, it feels impossible to accept. The absence is too sharp, too abrupt. But gradually, repetition reshapes perception. What once felt unbearable becomes something we learn to carry. We begin to understand how to say goodbye — not all at once, but in fragments, in gestures, in silence. Each farewell is a quiet passage, marking not only their departure but a shift within ourselves.

(Devils) Full Look: Pet-Tree-Kor @pet_tree_kor

(Angel) Dress: Hengdi Wang @hengdiwang

Adulthood (27–29) The fear of marriage:

I have never seen marriage as a promise. From the beginning, it has felt uncertain — a structure that appears stable, yet carries the possibility of collapse. And yet, under the pressure of external expectations, I find myself stepping toward it. The boundary between intimacy and threat begins to dissolve. What is presented as closeness carries an underlying tension. Love persists, but it is no longer pure — it exists alongside doubt, alongside fear, and alongside the quiet awareness…

Dress: Nocturne Key @_nocturnekey_

Lace Boots: Vintage Balenciaga

Suit: Stylist’s Wardrobe

Farewell (30) To All Its Heartbreak And Glory:

This is a ritual of farewell — to turning thirty. It is a letting go of what once defined us: dreams, fantasies, impulses, and the quiet unrest that moved beneath them. With the arrival of thirty, they begin to recede — not abruptly, but as something slowly stripped away. What lies ahead is another stage, one we step into with a sense of inevitability. There is reluctance in this transition, a resistance that cannot alter its course. And yet, even as they fade, I hold onto the possibility that traces will remain — subtle, persistent, embedded somewhere beneath what I become.

(Girl) Full look: Poster Girl @poster_girl_official

(Boy) Top: Nutemperor @nutemperor

Credits:

Concept & Creative Direction: Cvalda Xie @cvaldaxie

Photo & Edit: Jp Bonino @jp._.bonino

Styling: Cvalda Xie @cvaldaxie

Fashion: 8on8, Hengdi Wang, Monique Fei, Nocturne Key, Nutemperor, Pet-Tree-Kor, Poster Girl, Praying, Stylist’s Wardrobe

This fashion story appears in TUNICA Magazine Issue No. 10. Get yours here.