volunteer lyfe #3

Last week I helped the local Dress for Success set up for a sale.

When I say we have inventory: for three hours, with music blasting, a dozen of us moved boxes and crates, swept and organized and stashed, hiding the bras and boring suits and displaying sequinned tops and immaculate jumpsuits on velvet hangers. Another volunteer and I swapped out work shoes for sale shoes, arranging towering heels and swanky boots by size and shape.

Young sorority women came in for the day, the first group torn between helping out and trying on sale items to purchase later. One rocked a pair of white cowboy boots, each of us hooting and wow’ed as she sashayed through the shop. Another modeled the latest in Gen Z style, an eyelet festival skirt with a crop top and Chucks.

My co-volunteer found at least six cute work dresses, two blazers and some strappy gold sandals for less than a hundred bucks.

There’s nothing like the power of fashion.

the comfort of high fashion

Fashion at this year's Met Gala was enjoyable (despite the sickening supreme court news). It seemed like there were more provocative, risk-taking ensembles across the spectrum. Read Tom and Lorenzo's knowledgeable breakdowns, then start here with sjp wearing an incredible Christopher John Rogers gown.

ALT and the chiffon trenches

Thanks to SPL I just finished reading Andre Leon Talley's "The Chiffon Trenches."

It's an engaging heart breaker. While I adored the photographs and the stories, I wished so much that ALT had been treated with the love and respect he so clearly deserves. What monsters Wintour and Lagerfeld are and were. I know ALT raves over their largesse, but this Black man who speaks fluent French and lives for a divine sleeve and has encyclopedic knowledge of and adoration for the history of fashion deserves far better than petty slights, scoldings about his weight, and ignominious dumping from his livelihood at Vogue. 

By chance, I heard his mellifluous cackle on NPR the other night, and in turn was pointed to this video of ALT in conversation Diane von Furstenburg and the curator of the Art Gallery of Ontario. The topic was Studio 54, and it was such a treat, hearing and seeing about Carolina Herrera and Halston and Grace Jones. But even more, I loved the gentle caring friendship between ALT and DVF. 

True icons, both of them.

vogue was my escape hatch

Same.
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Check out this interview in the Guardian with the great Andre Leon Talley.
I've enjoyed his editorial missives in the pages of American Vogue and astute, loving, judging-slash-mentoring on ANTM ("it's gauche, darling").
Read about him finding his place in the fashion world:
"It didn’t occur to him to question whether he would belong in this crowd. 'I felt like I was included, because there were people I wanted to be like – eccentric, original, people who were artists, writers: Truman Capote, I so identified with him.'"
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Growing up homeschooled, religious and poor in the PNW, growing up before internet and cell phones and almost never allowed to watch TV, I relied on the public library as my peephole to the secular world. I wasn't allowed to bring home fashion magazines, so I'd plant myself in Periodicals with a stack. Vogue was my favorite; I loved the fantasy and aspirational nature of the ads and the fashion spreads. The beautiful ridiculous breath-taking clothes and shoes and jewels. Of course I couldn't wear Christian Lacroix, there was no place within 100 miles that would ever remotely even carry the label, but I could look at the glossy photos, the glaring models, the airbrushed oddities, and dream.

fashun

Style is on my mind a lot these days.
I don't know why.
The world is a raging dumpster fire and I'm intrigued by a sparkly bracelet?
And yet.
There is an undeniable power in clothing, particularly women's clothes.
And I've gotten a lot of mileage out of provoking, with my attire.
Not in a sexualized sense.
More in testing the boundaries of appropriateness.
One of my earliest successes was when I was a teenager. My father arrived at the Bellingham Public Library to pick me up, took one look at my fedora and tan corduroy skirt and plaid madras shirt, and send me right back out to the sidewalk. You look so--seedy. He drove off in whatever secondhand sedan we possessed at the time, and I was left to walk the 1.5 miles back to the house.
I felt bad, for the first few blocks.
And then I realized: I hadn't had to say anything. My look had said it for me. And my know-it-all abusive father hadn't liked it one bit.

aesthetic ghosts

Watching Yves Saint Laurent's 2002 retirement speech gave me life this week. Quoting Proust and Rimbaud, this remarkable artist said, among other things:

• I have lived for my work and through my work
• Fashion's role was to...reassure them (women), give them confidence and allow them to assert themselves
• Every man needs aesthetic ghosts in order to live. I have pursued them, sought them, hunted them down
• I have known...anxiety, fear and terrible solitude...I emerged, dazzled but sober
• The most important encounter in life is the encounter with oneself

Yves Saint Laurent's Retirement Speech, January 7, 2002 from ketty mora on Vimeo.