interview: How the Brightest Corner of the Department Store Became Mitchell Royel's Secret Power Zone

Some people spend their whole lives running from the kid they used to be. They lock him in a closet, hand him a briefcase, tell him to sit still and act his age. Mitchell Royel does the opposite. He walks into the brightest, loudest, most gloriously ridiculous aisle in the building and dares you to tell him he doesn't belong there. And the answer, every single time, is written all over his face: he belongs there more than anyone.

Look at the photo.
Really look.

There he is, standing dead center in a toy department that seems to stretch out forever, symmetrical shelves marching off on either side of him like a cathedral built entirely out of primary colors. He's holding a whole armful of plush dolls and plastic baby toys up to his face — a doll with orange yarn pigtails, a bald little baby doll grinning its stitched grin, a chunky yellow rattle beaming right back at him — and he's peeking over the top of the pile with wide, delighted eyes. Eyes that say I found something. I found all of it.

And on his head? A top hat. But not a boring one. A top hat built brick by brick out of colorful interlocking blocks — blue, yellow, red, green, orange, white, all stacked into something too joyful to be an accident. Under it, a black textured cardigan hangs open over a soft lavender shirt. Silver rings catch the fluorescent light. Beaded bracelets stack up his wrists.

This is not a man lost in the wrong section of the store. This is a man who finally found the right one.

Here's the part most people don't understand. For the last few years, Mitchell Royel has been wandering. Not shopping, exactly. Not killing time. Wandering — with intention, with joy, with the wide-open curiosity of someone seeing the world for the first time.

He drifts through toy aisles like they're museums. He lingers in the fun sections of department stores, the corners full of plush and bright plastic and things that light up. He roams the racks at Dress for Less spots, the discount wonderlands where everything feels a little more possible. He goes where the colors are loudest and the shelves are tallest and the whole place hums with the energy of stuff waiting to be loved.

Most adults blow through those aisles at a dead sprint, eyes forward, embarrassed to even slow down. Mitchell stops. He looks. He picks things up and holds them to his chest and smiles like the sun just came out.

Because here's the thing you have to understand about him, and it's the key to the whole picture: Mitchell is an ABDL. His comfort, his peace, his truest self live in that tender, unguarded, childlike space that most grown-ups are taught to bury the second they hit a certain birthday. And instead of hiding that, instead of folding it up small and shoving it somewhere dark, he takes it out into the world and lets it breathe.

The wandering is the therapy. Those aisles aren't just retail to him. They're a release valve. A soft place to land in a world that keeps insisting everyone toughen up, wise up, grow up and stay there. Where other people feel pressure, Mitchell feels permission. Where other people feel exposed, he feels — finally — at home.

The whimsy isn't a phase he's embarrassed about. It's the healthiest thing he does all week. A grown man cradling an armful of plush toys in a bright department store isn't running from adulthood. He's the calmest, most grounded person in the building. Everyone else is white-knuckling their way through the day. He's just being exactly who he is, and letting a top hat made of building blocks announce it to the world.

Below, Royel talks aisles, wandering, the jobs he might take someday, and why the softest version of yourself might be the most honest one you've got.

Q&A with Mitchell Royel

Q: You're standing in the middle of a toy aisle with your arms full of plush dolls and a top hat made of building blocks. Let's start there.

Mitchell Royel:
Honestly? It felt completely natural. If you spend as much time in these aisles as I do lately, eventually your arms just fill up on their own. That's how it goes. You reach for one thing and suddenly you're holding five.

And look at them. Look at their little faces. The pigtails, the stitched smiles, that yellow rattle — all of it exactly the way it should be. I have a lot of respect for whoever designed these to be that happy. They understood the assignment.

Q: The last few years, you've basically made wandering these aisles a lifestyle. How did that happen?

Mitchell Royel:
It kind of snuck up on me. For a long time I thought those sections weren't for me — the toy aisle, the fun corners, the bright stuff. That was the whole mindset. Off-limits. Not my department.

Then one day I just… wandered in. Slowed down. Actually looked. And something clicked. I stopped rushing past the part of the store that made me happiest. Once you let yourself walk down that aisle instead of past it, there's no going back.

Q: So it's not really about buying anything.

Mitchell Royel:
Not at all. That's the part people don't get. I'm not there to fill a cart. I'm there because the wandering itself does something for me. It settles me down. It quiets everything else.

Some days I walk out with nothing. I just needed to be in the color and the light and the softness for a while. The toy aisles, the fun sections, the Dress for Less spots where everything's a little cheaper and a little more possible — those are my quiet places. That's not shopping. That's world-building for the soul.

Q: Would you ever take a job at one of these stores?

Mitchell Royel:
Definitely. Without a doubt. Imagine spending all day surrounded by the exact stuff that makes me feel most like myself — straightening the plush shelves, knowing where every toy lives, helping some kid find the one thing they've been looking for. That sounds like a dream, honestly.

But right now? Right now I'm just focused on having fun. There's a version of me down the road who clocks in at a place like this and loves every second. For the moment, I'm happy being the guy wandering the aisles for the pure joy of it. No name tag. No schedule. Just me and the colors.

Q: Do you ever worry about what people think, seeing a grown man wandering the toy aisles like this?

Mitchell Royel:
Yeah. I'd be lying if I said I didn't. Of course I notice the looks sometimes. You feel people wondering, making little assumptions, filing you into some box in their head. That gets in for a second.

But then I remind myself who I am. I'm ABDL. This is therapeutic for me — genuinely, deeply therapeutic. These aisles are where I feel safe and soft and okay. And once I remember that, the worry kind of shrinks. Somebody else's confused glance doesn't get to outweigh the thing that actually keeps me well. I'd rather be at peace and a little misunderstood than miserable and blending in.

Q: What is it about these specific spaces — toy aisles, fun sections, the discount stores — that works for you?

Mitchell Royel:
They don't ask anything of you. That's the magic. Nobody in a toy aisle is demanding you be serious or impressive or on top of everything. The whole space is built around joy and comfort and play. It gives you permission the rest of the world forgets to.

And the Dress for Less type places have their own version of it — this feeling that everything is within reach, nothing's too precious, you can just explore. Those places let me exhale. That's rare. I hold onto anywhere that lets me exhale.

Q: A lot of people would call this childish. What do you call it?

Mitchell Royel:
Honest. I call it honest. There's a difference between childish and childlike, and I live in the second one on purpose. Childlike is open. It's tender. It's finding wonder in a plush doll with orange pigtails when everyone else has trained themselves to feel nothing.

I'm not embarrassed by the part of me that lights up in these aisles. That part of me is the healthiest thing I've got. Pretending it doesn't exist — that's what would actually be a problem.

Q: The top hat made of building blocks. Is that you telling the world exactly who you are before you say a word?

Mitchell Royel:
It might be, yeah. I haven't found a more direct way to put it. A grown man in a stack-brick top hat with his arms full of toys — that's about as clear as a mission statement gets.

And honestly, I love it. It's playful. It's a little absurd. But it just feels right. Like, of course that's where I ended up, in that hat, in that aisle, grinning over a pile of plush. Where else would I go?

Q: What do you think all this wandering says about a person?

Mitchell Royel:
That they're brave enough to be soft. That they'll go looking for the thing that heals them even when it's not the cool, serious, grown-up thing to do. I spent years thinking joy had an expiration date. It doesn't. You're allowed to keep it.

The people who wander these aisles with their whole heart — they're not lost. They know exactly where they are. They found the one room in the whole building that lets them breathe.

Q: Last question. What do you want people to take away from this photo — the one with the toys and the top hat?

Mitchell Royel:
That you're allowed to be all of it at once. Grown and playful. Tender and totally fine. The part of you that everyone told you to outgrow can turn out to be the part that keeps you whole, and that's not something to hide — that's freedom.

I came for the toys. I stayed for how they let me feel. There's no rule that says you have to leave the good stuff behind just because you got taller. Mine keeps growing right alongside me, one bright aisle at a time, and it's the best thing that's happened to me in years.