Bailey Rose Quiñones is a mystic earth nun. She perches atop a soft cocoa suede couch, a cross mounted on the wall floating over her head so she looks like Mary Magdalene — if Mary Magdalene had a Flyleaf tattoo and a penchant for vintage Vera Wang office siren glasses. She’s in a vintage black linen skirt, with a top that’s also vintage black linen. The pieces come from different worlds, different timelines, but they look like they were meant to be together. This is how her Gemini Venus makes all of her multidisciplinary artistic practices coalesce into one cohesive universe. Quiñones, an artist known as @skullsqwat and stylist to It-girl supreme and rock-star newlywed Gabbriette (known to her as Gabi), dwells in many realms. From her dressing work for the likes of Ye and Don Toliver, to her brooding, textured paintings and sculptural vessels, she conjures beauty into something we can see and touch. The Los Angeles native’s cryptic social media presence is a gingerbread-crumb trail to the loveliest images you’ve never seen — but will, probably in your favorite magazine, in one to three months. A bird’s-eye shot of spike heel-clad feet framing an esoteric dress acquisition, a styling clip attached to soft fabric sitting lightly and low-rise, a dress-up session framed by whitewashed wood with the perfect patina. And all horizontal, of course. Her paintings, like her images, feel like moving through a fog made of glass and wood, chaos and restraint, Lilith in a Victorian steel mill. The gossamer thread holding the sacred feminine maelstrom together? Love in its purest form — friendship.
Bailey Rose Quiñones wears Jean Paul Gaultier dress.
Goth Shakira: It’s the full moon in Aquarius today, and full moons represent a culmination. What are you energetically wrapping up right now?
Bailey Rose Quiñones: My old self. [I’m experiencing a] rebirth of taking myself seriously and putting myself first. [Gabbriette’s] wedding is done, and I had a lot of reflecting to do. I wrote in my journal for, like, two hours, and just hashed it all out. I set some goals for myself to redirect my energy towards my own artwork and my own output. It felt like something you do on a birthday, or New Year’s. I just woke up and I asked myself a lot of questions, and I was really happy with the things that came up. It’s definitely time to refocus things, and it feels like the end of a chapter. I’m very excited about it.
GS: Writing is such a somatic exercise, proved to release emotions and aid cognitive processing through the act of holding and moving a pen.
BRQ: My handwriting changes depending on how I feel, and the things that I say. I think that feeling that I’ve captured with writing recently is what I’m constantly looking for — a newness in something that feels familiar, which I feel when I do sculpture and when I paint. I think that’s what I look for when I style as well, and building shapes and silhouettes and textures and colors. It’s a combination of all of the tools from every practice.
GS: It seems like you’re evolving as an artist through different mediums.
BRQ: [There’s] a similarity in how I paint and how I sculpt and how I style. There’s a flow state that happens. It’s kind of like when you are staring at something and you unfix your eyes, and your body relaxes. I definitely try to take the stress and the business part out of the styling before I step into the space where I’m gonna do the creative thing. Because a lot of times I’ll step onto the set and I don’t have anywhere to put my rack. Like, it’s just a mess. No one’s looking out for the stylist.
Fiona wears vintage hat, lingerie, pants and jacket.
GS: I feel like the jobs on set that have been traditionally “feminized,” such as stylist, model and makeup artist, often experience a lack of support that, say, an art director or a principal photographer wouldn’t always encounter.
BRQ: I struggle with it. I don’t really have an ego in any of the things that I do. But I do feel empathy for the people on set that have a really important job and don’t get the support. Styling is one of those things where I think I romanticized it, as I do everything in life. And then I got into it, and I was like, “Girl, this is not cute.” It’s a step towards whatever the next thing is, and even if I do it forever, I’ll always have other things that I do that relieve the existential crisis of being a stylist.
GS: What’s your relationship with your other creative outlets, like painting and sculpting?
BRQ: Sculpting is something I run to when I’m really not doing well, and it’s this relationship that I have with touching and molding. I hand-build big pots. I’ve never put it particularly on display. My life is very styling-focused right now. After my solo show [2022’s “GIMP” at Medium Exchange Gallery in NYC], I became very aware of other people and my relationship with my artwork. I saw this opportunity to [support myself by] being a painter. But I got nervous. I wasn’t ready to turn that into a business, it was too precious. I got so much love and so much support for that show, but I didn’t feel deserving of it. I didn’t feel wise enough to showcase it yet. I kind of just wanted to go back into a hole. I loved that I shared my work, but I didn’t want it to be the thing that people knew me for at the moment. And I always wanted to style. Something about styling felt like I could run a business without it being so personal. Painting felt like cutting myself open.
GS: It’s a spiritual process, expressing yourself creatively in such an artistic and personal way. When you work in a creative capacity alongside someone who is so visible, that same vulnerability isn’t there, because they absorb the intensity of the projections of the public gaze. The stakes are higher because your work is so visible, but also lower because you don’t have to open up emotionally in the same way to do that work.
Vintage jewelry and belt.
Vintage hat, lingerie, stockings and jewelry.
BRQ: Some days I’m so happy that I’m doing this the way I’m doing this, and some days I can’t see it, and I’m like, “What am I doing?” But I think what I’m building is the foundation of a bigger thing. And for painting, I didn’t want it to be this well-oiled machine. I think that would take away from it, and make me really sad. I’d rather bust my ass doing this thing, and suck the little bit of meat out of the crab leg. Like, the meat of creativity in styling is small, but it’s succulent, and it’s enough to get me by. I’m gonna eat it, and then I’m gonna have to throw out the leg, and the leg is most of it. That’s how it feels. It’s a beautiful thing to be a stylist. But sometimes I feel like I’m washed away at sea, and the shore is my art and I’m getting farther and farther away from it. But I have to be reminded that [styling] is an expression of that art.
GS: As an Aries woman, it’s so important to keep expressing. The inner child is strong. What did you dress like as a kid?
BRQ: I remember the day that I started liking dresses, because I spun in a circle and the dress billowed and flared and swirled around me, and I was like, “Hell yeah.” But I went through phases. I denounced the dress and cut my hair in the fourth grade. I wore basketball shorts and T-shirts and I wanted to skateboard. I came into my femininity again in the seventh grade. I was a scene kid. I was, like, super emo. But I stayed pretty gothic within it. There’s a photo of me in the fifth grade with black lipstick and fishnets. I had a bluntly cut side bang. I would cut girls’ bangs in the bathroom at McKinley middle school in Pasadena. I would put eyeliner on my friends, and I would turn them into little punk girls. I was a Christian Episcopalian girl, so my favorite band was Flyleaf. I have a Flyleaf tattoo now. Sometimes when I feel like I’m losing it, when I want to recenter myself, I will look up photos of [frontwoman Lacey Sturm] in her little dresses, with the pants and the Vans, and I’m like, “Remember who you are.”
GS: Remember who you are, Christian emo girl.
BRQ: My uniform was fishnets with Ugg boots that went up to my knees, shorts and two layered tank tops or a collared shirt with a tank top underneath and the collar open. The only color I would wear [other than black] was pink, and then I went through a finding God/Buddha moment, and I wore green. My blue hair washed out to a mossy green, and I just went with it.
GS: Diva lore. How did your family feel about your style evolution?
BRQ: My mom, Donna McKenna, allowed us to make decisions for ourselves. She’s an Aquarius. She’s a style diva down. Growing up she was skinny brow queen with big curly hair. Loves an open-toe heel. Her taste is impeccable, and it’s just become more and more refined. She is so chic. We used to grow up going to tea a lot. It was what we did for every birthday, and so it was tea hats and lace. She’s the queen of the thrift store, and knows good silk when she touches it. She could have been a stylist. Our home burned down in Altadena [during the 2025 L.A. wildfires], so anything that I have of hers is priceless. Everything she has given me, including a nude pink Donna Karan pantsuit, is precious to me.
GS: Building upon that iconic style foundation, what was your look when you started styling professionally?
BRQ: I went through a breakup and got a pixie cut. Then I went through another breakup and shaved my head and bleached it. That’s when I started hanging out with [Gabbriette]. I was already friends with our best friend Indiana [a.k.a. @indiana420bitch, the creative director and photographer], and our other friend David [a.k.a. @davidenth, the multidisciplinary tattoo artist]. I gave myself the opportunity to re-meet myself completely. I painted my walls white and was like, “Let’s see what you can do.” I started painting and I got discovered by Kanye. I worked with him for a few years, and that’s when I started calling myself a stylist. I was lead stylist at Yeezy, but I was very afraid of not painting at the time. I left to do my show in New York, and then it was really popular. I was floored. I was, like, borderline embarrassed. Both of my parents came. They’re divorced. They were in the same room for the first time in over 20 years. I was terrified. So I stopped [painting], and I was like, “OK, I’m gonna freelance style in L.A.” And I moved back. That’s when Gabi was like, “Will you style me?”
Fiona wears vintage jacket, stockings and bottoms.
GS: Entering into a professional relationship with a friend can be inspiring and fulfilling, but also complicated. When you’re working with a friend, how do you honor and tend to the friendship?
BRQ: The business doesn’t matter. The business is like the fifth, sixth, 10th thought. That’s probably irresponsible, but I’m so painfully empathetic. Above all, I care if Gabi is OK, if my client is OK. What matters to me the most is having real, true, deep friendships and relationships. Gabi and I are best friends. There’s no shyness, there’s no awkwardness. I take a lot of pride in that relationship, like the comfortability and the vulnerability of trusting someone with your image, trusting someone with how things are going to fit you. I would be a monster client. I don’t think I could let anyone else dress me. I remember being an assistant on sets and a client would not like the pants, and the stylist would push it. You can feel that they don’t love the pants on them, and the stylist would not care. It was [about] pushing the brand, pushing their image. I don’t [do] that. I am so sensitive that if I get a read for a second that someone doesn’t like it, we’re starting over. Even if that means fittings go longer, or whatever the case may be.
GS: Personal integrity in your work is so important, and that comes down to what you value as an artist. Since you highly value friendship and creativity, what was it like to style your best friend’s wedding, when your best friend also happens to be an icon?
BRQ: Gabi is very attuned to what she likes, and what she wants to look like. Matières Fécales had just had their first couture show, where they had all of these insane silhouettes, and we were like, “Duh.” With Gabi [and our friend group], it’s almost like this group chat of ideas constantly swirling, and I can never take [sole] credit. When Gabi and I do projects together, typically Indiana is also shooting, so it feels like we’re this creative studio. Gabi is our muse and Gabi knew what she wanted. We had found the Margiela nightgown while we were shopping in London — we shop all the time, save and pull for events so we can tailor. She brought it to the designers and was like, “Can we cut into it?” They were really hesitant, but she was like, “It’s my dress.” And she wanted their touch.
GS: What a Leo woman wants, a Leo woman will get. Where did you come in?
BRQ: I joined her for fittings. Our references were “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” and ’80s “Phantom of the Opera.” For me, there’s no better reference. And Gabi and I, we are one brain now. If I like something, the girl’s gonna like it. She brings something to me, she knows I’m gonna like it. It’s one brand. So a lot of [the job] is just support, and that’s where the friendship matters 10 times more [than the business]. I don’t know if Gabi would have a stylist at all [if we weren’t best friends]. At this point, she does not need one. She knows exactly what she wants. So it’s more dressing her, helping her put the dress on, the logistics of it, which is where the friendship comes in. That’s the trust. Who would you trust to put you in your very precious wedding dress, that’s your vision for your wedding day? That has to be a really close friend.
GS: So what was it like getting the dress on?
BRQ: It was actually a double corseted dress, and it took hours to put on. We practiced multiple times. She was actually quite faint at the final fitting, where we did [the] Vogue [interview and shoot], because it was so tight. We had tocut it off of her, and then she corset trained to have the dress fit her. The lacing of the back was so extensive, and I had nails. Indiana suited her up in it while I was holding it together. It took so long to do, it was borderline suspenseful. She was a trouper, but the first time, it didn’t look [perfect, so we had to] redo it all. She’s faint. Take it off. Third time. Now we’re late. We gotta walk down the aisle. So yeah, it was suspenseful.
GS: But you prevailed.
BRQ: And it was breathtaking. I could still cry. We’re forever changed. We tear up talking about it. That’s why I had to journal for two hours after. I think we’ll cry for a while. It’s very emotional. [Our friendship] is so precious. We can’t go a few hours without speaking. It just feels so special, and [that’s why] I safekeep it. And I think that, above all, is the most important thing.
Vintage lingerie and skirt.
Styling Bailey Rose Quiñones
Videography Aaron Curry
Talent Fiona Nunez
