a vintage haul

I lucked out the other day, stumbled upon a treasure trove of vintage ornaments at a nearby thrift store. As I unwound one clump of newspaper (dated 1999) and then another, the owner offered to sell me the entire dusty bin for $15. Sold, I said, handing over three Abe Lincolns and picked my way carefully home. I netted more than sixty of these babies, some are already en route to excited family members, and I feel so lucky.

rest in power ALT

 This loss truly hurts. André Leon Talley was an iconoclast yes, and also someone I looked up to and even identified with. I too found transformation in the very white very privileged pages of Vogue. He was enthusiastic and gracious and made room for so many. Rest easy wonderful human. 

NPR's Sam Sanders, writer Saeed Jones and others discuss ALT’s success and precariousness in the white world of fashion. Also feeling like it’s time to re-watch “The Gospel According to André.”

wear the white shirt

A guy once yelled at me to start living in the now. He wanted to date and I didn't, because he was kind of creepy and honestly, I had a thing for a guy who lived on the opposite coast. The yeller got deleted from my phone while Mr. G.U. (geographically undesirable) did not. But, the thought stuck with me.
*
I adore white shirts, and have at least a half dozen in my closet. A couple of crisp white t-shirts. A polo with silver buttons. A long-sleeved white tee, great for layering.
And yet I haven't worn any of them in close to a year.
It's weird: I think about it, I want to, I try to, and yet I can't.
I don't want to get them dirty. Don't want to dribble spaghetti sauce on one or accidentally draw a jagged blue line on one with a ballpoint pen (don't laugh, I did this to some pants just a couple of days ago).
It's just--I can't bear to soil a white shirt. Too many wears-and-washes and the pits begin to yellow, the white fades, the shirt gets dingy and tired. Instead of enjoying my white shirts, the pillowy white against my fading summer tan, instead of rocking one with fresh jeans or this super tailored khaki skirt--instead they ride around in my dresser drawer, folded Gap-neat, while the lesser shirts, the ones with forgiving stripes or a frayed hem get all the action.
*
I hold back, I know this. I wait too long, I linger, I give things--people--circumstances--just a bit longer, perhaps too long. I don't go out in case someone calls. I punt on making plans hoping this elusive person I really want to hang out with gets back to me. I save my best writing for the next story.
Wear the white shirt, I tell myself.
Put yourself out there. Try. Fall. Try again. Wear it.

glama-vid

Video goofs with the glamazons last weekend checking out Georgetown--director's credit to Jilzilla.
(Best viewed in Chrome as Firefox is being a p00p.)

chloé

So my sis lent me the latest Vanity Fair and as I leafed through the ads--usually a source of enormous pleasure for me--instead, this time, I got angry. Page after page of supercilious looking models with perfect skin and posture, staring calculatedly yet blankly from the page. So posed, so lacking energy and motion and emotion. The opposite of style. Except--for Chloé. I snooped around online today and saw a pattern in the Chloé advertisements, two girls usually, thoroughbreds on the run, having improbably good times with their thousand dollar handbags. But, still, they made me believe.

no no no nooooo

nein

yes please

Listen up, gents.
I've been noticing a lot of y'all sporting jeans shorts similar to whats on the left. Long, loose, dark denim shorts, drifting past the knee in some cases, shirt tucked in (sometimes a polo, and sometimes belted), along with flip-flops circa 1997.
This is what I have to say about all of this.
NO.
No no no no no no.
Make it stop. Please.
And take a hint from the guy on the right. Those are some pants I'd like to get into.

sparkle

well I used to think nice people were soft pushovers, suckers.
now I wonder.
maybe the *h*a*r*d*-est thing is being cool when I don't much feel like it.
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Through -- thru -- threw

This picture's from a Ballard pizza joint I'm not crazy about so I won't link to it. I loved how the light came through the glass dividers in the bar.
*
A friend and I talk a lot about the qualities we look for in a guy or girl. My list is pretty short -- I've met a United Nations mishmash of people this past year -- but the ones I'm drawn to are funny, confident, and have style. Boy do I love a pal with style, sass, an urban sensibility, their own way of combining smart kicks and a hoodie, a pink polo with a track jacket, skinny pants with a tuxedo vest and tats. I'm about to head out into the second part of my day -- dinner with a pal, writing, later on drinks -- but first stop is my closet, to undress a little, reclothe, arm myself. In order to disarm.

Style vs beauty, round 2

I started this blog in October 2008 with thoughts on style, and Carole Lombard. I'm still thinking about style, especially as it relates to beauty. American culture seems confused about the two--everyone touts having their own style, when mostly they are attempting to achieve some bland bottom shelf of generic beauty.

Julia Roberts? Beautiful.
Chloe Sevigny? Stylish (and irritating as fuck, but there you are).

Growing up I felt like an ugly lump; my middle sister was blonde and radiant and sweet (everything I was not). When my father said I looked attractive, I was pretty sure it was code for "despite your moustache, crooked teeth and surly disposition, you are not entirely disgusting." A family friend even told me, "You look handsome--not pretty. But handsome."

Sexist jerks aside, I had such a passion for style. I couldn't get enough, collecting ESPRIT catalogs and devouring fashion magazines, snipping out photos of outfits that appealed to me and pasting them into little notebooks. My part-time job at the Mission Thrift Store was an addict's dream--I scooped up vintage dresses and a cloisonne brooch and a black wool toreador sweater with rhinestones that I am wearing as I type. I slouched around town in a man's fedora and raggedy brown Keds and was delighted when I was pronounced too seedy to ride in the family car.

I continue to study the stylish. At Sartorialist, which you know about. And here. And here. Oh here too. I absorb the images of Wallis Simpson and Sofia Coppola and (sometimes) Kirsten Dunst, and Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis. None of them classically beautiful, but so powerful and compelling that you can't look away.

Maybe that's the difference. Beauty is, and it is pleasant but it does not invite reflection, where style is elusive and variable, and you may not like it but you can't not look.

How very

Last night I pondered the similarities between the movie "Heathers" and the TV show "Gossip Girl." "Heathers" predates GG by 20 years. "Heathers" could be GG's alcoholic stepmother.

When bike gangs roam the earth

Finally figured out the deal behind the bike gang I saw two weekends ago. I was walking up Ballard Avenue and these guys in t-shirts and porkpie hats rolled by on pimped-out bikes--some with oversize frames, seats towering six feet off the pavement, others low and laid back. Bringing up the rear was a guy with some massive speakers pumping out house music. The civilians on the sidewalk--me among 'em--watched open mouthed as they pedaled coolly by.
So anyway it was the night of the Dead Baby Bike Race.
No idea how the Ballard crew did but I give them style points, anyway.

Beautiful street people

I visit The Sartorialist web site a couple of times a month.
The candid shots of street fashionistas never fail to inspire me.
Or depress the hell out of me--how can 60-year-old Italian men have more style savvy in their sockless loafers than I'll have in two lifetimes of trying?

The unpromising staircase

On a nice afternoon earlier this week, I had a few minutes to kill so I walked down a set of unpromising wooden steps to an Antique Mall. Having just come back from the Midwest and an extremely satisfying expedition to the I-70 Antique Mall—thousands of square feet stuffed with treasures and junk, most at laughably low prices--I entered with fairly low expectations. And then walked around in amazement. I’d descended into thrift store heaven.

There were vintage lidded Pyrex dishes and jazzy Fifties plates. Plywood serving trays. Floor lamps with topstitched waxy shades, simple low tables with Deco curves and glasses dusted with the kind of gold trim you can't put in the dishwasher. There were old shoes with graceful heels, and new-old hats, big enough to sling cool and low across my brow. Sure, there was junk, too, Smurf dolls and piles of dogeared Life magazines and old baking powder tins and enough salt and pepper shakers to season every table in town.

Twenty dollars later, I made it out of there with a battered green enamel serving tray and last night, with some toothpaste and some elbow grease, I made the black scrapes disappear. I'm now the happy owner of a smart, retro piece of usable art.

Call it what you want—vintage, secondhand, thrift, used—but thrift shopping is the ultimate intersection of penny-pinching and recycling.

New camera, old magazine

Who is your style icon? (And why this is not a silly question...)

One of the silliest things I've ever seen was an entertainment reporter (oxymoron?) asking some flava-du-jour starlet, "Who is your 'style icon?'"
Let's think about this for a minute. You're asking this question of an insipid twenty-year-old with a handbag budget larger than the GDP of some foreign countries. You're asking the star of "Scary Movie" and a grainy sex tape who she looks up to in the style department.
Mmm-hmm.
It started me thinking, though. I'm an old-fashioned girl. Sit me down with a black-and-white movie and a champagne flute and I couldn't be happier.
Jane Alice Peters -- you might know her as Carole Lombard -- is one of my style icons.
Sure I'm a Hepburn fan (Katharine, mostly but Audrey too) -- and I love Bette Davis, and Isabella Rossellini before her Prince Valiant haircut, and I'll watch Cary Grant and George Clooney any ole time.
But Ms. Lombard is in a category all her own. Maybe because she left us so young, I don't know. But I could watch her in "My Man Godfrey" daily for the rest of my life and never stop admiring her style and wit and grace, the way she gazes at William Powell or glowers at sister Cornelia, somehow managing to both sparkle and smolder against the Art Deco set.
You can watch this 1936 classic movie any time you want, on You Tube. I recommend that you stick with the black-and-white version.

Today is in color. But yesterday, and forever, is in black and white.