Tag Archives: Fashion

Lazy Sunday: 23 March 2014

After proof that a full moon can take a wrecking ball to everything you think you know, it’ll be nice to just sit around and read today, right?

  • I have lived and will continue to live in places at the periphery of reliable smartphone coverage, so this is excellent news for me, a chronically lost person.
  • Haven’t gotten through all this yet, but Guernica’s American South issue has a ton of great pieces to explore at your leisure across interview, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and art. Enjoy.
  • I am very excited about the new Wes Anderson because I love artists with obvious signatures, and he was really influential on the development of my personal style. I welcome any and all looks inside the little dollhouse of his mind.
  • Interesting quick read about the black press during the Civil War.
  • My friend sent me this thing about the tulip stock market and whoa, plants are so crazy! I’m reading a book about flowers right now, so it feels like everything is about this. WAKE UP SHEEPLE.
  • Let’s have a talk about fast fashion and all that entails.
  • Oology is the study of bird eggs, and this is a long read about tracking down people who steal them from nests. I know this sounds so boring, but it was every bit as compelling as The Wire.
  • Basically every woman in the known world is sorry you aren’t Idris Elba, too. Also, these are HILARIOUS and it’s impossible to know who’s mad and who’s just saying funny stuff.
  • Hey, this is a really nice story about a guy who tracked down the guy who talked him off a bridge.
  • So far, I’ve only ever been to four of these, and I’m optimistic to visit all of them! Looks like there is great coffee to be had the world over, including in Antarctica!

You Should Know How to Do This: Wear a Hat

There’s no reason to be modest about this: I look spectacular in a hat.

I mean, COME. ON.

This is a 7 a.m. car selfie, even. This is the power of the right hat.

Hats occupy the uncanny valley of clothes: they have all the aspects of things one might put on one’s body (softish, cover something up, come in sizes), but a vast segment of the population feels somewhere between uneasy about and repulsed by the idea of actually integrating them into their lives. Whenever I venture out of the house wearing a hat, someone says, “I love your outfit! I wish I could pull that off!”

I bought this last week when I had a bad day.

I bought this last week when I had a bad day.

Can I tell you a secret? There’s no such thing as “pulling it off.” You don’t have to have amazing bone structure or a certain haircut or be between 18-22 or anything at all. The reason you think I look good in a hat is that it’s novel (if you don’t know me) or you’re used to seeing me in one (if you do).

When I was 15, I was at Dot Fox, talking to my style mentor Sally Bird (I know we’ve talked about Sally), and admiring this big, black felt hat. Since I was 15, I said something like, “I love this but I couldn’t ever wear it! I’d feel so silly about how weird I’d look because I am a teenager and think everyone is looking at me all the time and actually no one cares but I think they do.”

Sally said this: “You know what the trick to pulling it off is? You put that sucker on and don’t take it off until everyone is telling you how goddamn stunning you are.”

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One Leg at a Time: Spring Weddings

One of my readers emailed me the other morning to tell me she has approximately 35 weddings to attend in the next few months (exaggeration mine). She was feeling a little weird about trying to figure out her wardrobe choices and asked for my help. I am extremely excited to provide said help, since I plan weddings for a living and also because I fancy myself a contemporary Amy Vanderbilt.

katwedding

This is my beloved friend Kat’s wedding at her gorgeous church here at home in Kentucky.

At approximately age 22, all your friends will start to get married. It’ll start with one or two, and you’ll be able to explain it away. Then, at around age 24, people will begin to get married without explanation. At age 26, you are suddenly awash in wedding invitations. Please feel free to +1.5 years to these numbers if you’re from north of Maryland or west of Dallas, but really, the point remains thus: once that tide starts, there is not one damn thing you can do to stop it except buy a bunch of things from Crate and Barrel. You’re an adult. Adults do stuff like get married. Calm down, okay? Weddings are super fun! You get to buy a new outfit, drink other people’s drinks, and try to make out with a cute gal/guy you may never see again. It’s like fraternity parties for older people. BUT WHAT DO YOU WEAR?

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Everything I Like

And all in one place. Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola did this sexy, cute, fun, compelling commercial for Prada in three parts.

I.

II.

III.

Tres…something, non?

You Should Know How to Do This: Packing Like an Adult

I have zero- and I truly mean zero- patience for bad travelers. Like picky eating, I consider it to be a stain on your good name. The worst subset of these people are the ones who keep the Rome Olive Garden in business, and the second-worst are the ones who can’t figure out how to be on a plane (DO NOT EAT TUNA SALAD), but the third worst is the group that can’t pack at all. I am here to help you, bad packers.

Behold: a carry-on with the things for a 10 day trip to 3 radically different climates. You can do this.

Behold: a carry-on with the things for a 10 day trip to 3 radically different climates. You can do this.

Help me help you. Your life is about to be so much better. Continue reading

Fantasy Life Update: Deadstock Raybans

Y’all, look what I found when we were cleaning out my grandfather’s closet.

Image

My mom let me borrow them when mine got stolen, and I just haven’t gotten around to giving them back. The man was an optician and a pack rat, and that just paid dividends for me.

Places I’d Like to Move Into: Get Smart

As I mentioned last week, I was obsessed with Get Smart as a kid. For the uninitiated, this is a late 60s Mel Brooks spy comedy starring Don Adams and Barbara Feldon. Here’s a full episode I found on YouTube.

If you loved Inspector Gadget, you will adore this. Maxwell Smart, the titular character, had this amazing, colorful, very mod apartment in New York that really informed my sensibilities. While the time period in which this show is set is contemporaneous with Mad Men, it’s a lot more exuberant and expressive than you see on those sets, probably because it’s supposed to be a joke about the 60s. I dreamed of an apartment like this when I was little, and even though I now know I can’t have the exploding telephone or the bullet-proof invisible wall. Sigh.

And patriotic.

And patriotic, too.

The whole show is just an explosion of color blocking, sharp lines, fake eyelashes, and Cold War-era humor. It’s a big winner. Fun fact: Agent 99 and Max Smart get married in the fourth season and have kids, and she became the first working mother on television. Like I said: this show was hugely influential for me. Let’s move into the Smarts apartment after the jump.

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