GOOD MORNING MIDNIGHT

aka #anothergratuitouspostofmyfriendsbeinghellapretty

REST AFTER THE JUMP

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Um, no commentary needed on this post other than EPIC WIN FOREVER and why did I ever throw out everything I owned in the fourth grade because I would wear it all right now always forever and ever NO SERIOUSLY she almost makes me want FLORALS in my life.

Okay, so I lied about the lack of commentary: again, so obsessed with the heavy saturation, x-pro fetish, intense film grain, and above all lack of uber-slick photoshopping in 90s images and editorials. OBSESSED.

More after the jump!

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Sometimes we are working on so many things (documentaries with old friends, long phone conversations with old friends, taking 839173 photos with rented lenses over which we cannot stop creaming our photographer-pants, attempting to find new cost-effective processing labs in the city or by mail who will not screw up both our photos and our bank account DEAR READERS PLZ RECC, becoming very disgruntled that we had to stand in line for half an hour for the Oak sample sale when we do, in fact, write for their magazine and abandoning that wait in a self-righteous huff for whiskies with The Rejectionist with whom we are sort of half-planning a bunch of extremely excellent posts and apparently occasionally adopting her Royal We, half-planning features and interviews and other things with all kinds of lovely folks like Nicolette Mason and many more (are you NY based? are you into fashion or are you a homo or a smartypants or have nice hair or something? Do you want to Let Me Take Photos Of You and maybe also Talk About Yourself? EMAIL ME NAO), making and freezing dozens of all sorts of dumplings from all sorts of countries because WE LOVE DUMPLINGS/PIEROGIES/RAVIOLI, chewing out CVS for screwing up our film yet AGAIN why on earth did we take it there to begin with, slowly but steadily winning the war against the extremely persistent mold that came with our very cheap Brooklyn apartment’s bathroom [we find that half a bottle of red wine makes bathroom cleaning quite pleasant!], day trips to Coney Island, and so on and so forth) that there really is nothing to do other than post a few photos of what our past few weeks in this rainy spring, including, but not limited to, cats we have recently met, cute internet friends from Canada, and unexpected surprises from rolls of film leftover from this summer!  

More after the jump, you know how it works.

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I can’t explain it: whether it was that week on the west coast, my sudden weird habit of listening to Rilo Kiley from circa 2003 on nonstop again (dude, it was so good), some hint of vague kitschy western trends returning, a growing obsession with really serious hats, or the desire to work more with the brown leather and sheer white and lace in my wardrobe rather than piling on the black again all summer, it seems that all the images I’ve been saving to my hard drive lately have been about some sort of nostalgic Americana: an eerie half-imaginary pastiche of tall tales and faded photographs, American Gothic meets Greil Marcus’ “old weird America.”

Whatever it is, it’s somewhere between noir and stylized visions of the Victorian-era west, a little bit witchy and a little bit wild, reserved but still a little bit punk, with anachronistic mixing of period styles, luxe details mixed with distressing or deconstruction, and everything about texture: lace, crochet, leather, pleats, embossing, cable-knit, all in a vaguely sepia-toned or grey palette.

More images — old, new, street style, editorials — after the jump.

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As of today, the French ban on the burqa and niqab has gone into effect (and boy, internet, have we been having feelings about it for months or what! )  One part of the law — the part designating that forcing a woman or child to wear a niqab or burqa is punishable by fine or even prison — can be seen as reasonable, as something enforcing one’s own right to their own body, clothing, appearance, and presentation.  But fining those who wear the garments at all and banning the items entirely based on the fact that “The French Republic lives in a bare-headed fashion” (quoth the Prime Minister) is more than a bit problematic. 

Granted, French and American politics differ, as do their social traditions and cultural situations and histories of relations with Islam nations. But in any context I’d argue that there is something absurd or at least slightly off-base about attacking a religion for its “misogynistic dress”  when we have issues legislating in favor of women’s healthcare (readers! I must correct myself! not even issues legislating in favor of! issues with not legislating against! FFS, people!) or even discussing the wage gap (problems, I may note, that are not limited to America.)  Is targeting the dress of an already targeted, highly profiled religious group already subject to prejudice and mistreatment as a result of that dress the best way to fight for women’s rights?  

Folks accuse those criticizing the ban of internalized misogyny and of using liberalism to defend a cruel tradition, but this disregards the entire other level on which this ban is truly operating.  Because, let’s be honest: this is not actually about women’s rights, or the right of all French ladies to wear cute striped teeshirts and cigarette jeans and ballet flats with their hair down or whatever French ladies are supposed to be wearing. This is about xenophobia and prejudice and anti-Muslim sentiment worldwide based on the actions and beliefs of radically overrepresented extremists.  Is it really necessary to legalize prejudice like this? As a legal decision in the name of civil rights, in the name of women’s rights, is this most logical path?

For just one moment, please, let us disregard all of the possible arguments about “modest” dress and the various types of hijab — is it misogynist, is it religious, is it empowering, is it degrading, is it comfortable, is it the woman’s choice, is it subversive, are the women happy, are the women unhappy, what even is it, what does it mean, what are the different types, why do people do it, etc, etc, ad nauseam.  Regardless of all that, the fact that it is legal to penalize someone for their clothing feels on one petty level a lot like that time when “baggy jeans” were banned at my junior high school except with, you know, the tiny additions of racism, prejudice, hatred, terrifying legalized local enforcement of questionable international politics, and that little thing about everyone ever feels entitled to police women’s bodies in whatever way they please.  If we are, truly, concerned about the fact that these women’s bodies are subject to regulation by their religion, is adding another level of body police and body politic really the way to help them? Regardless of whether they even need or want that help at all? They have voices too — I would like to hear more from them.

And, really, let us again bring up one small point: how different on a conceptual level is the slut-shaming of “Western society” — essentially an implicit, unspoken order to cover up or face the consequences — from the contested burqa itself? If we are truly discussing misogyny — why not discuss misogyny directly, rather than by targeting a specific garment and a specific group?  Why not pass laws teaching men to not abuse, harass, rape, and kill women, rather than letting men regulate the bodies of those women in the name of “their best interest?” 

Loved this lookbook for recent CSM grad Sorcha O’Raghallaigh shot by Saga Sig — the irregular webby knits, metal accents, and that pop of emerald green somehow still looked fresh and eerie amidst a market oversaturated in sheer black post-apocalyptic deconstructed ‘quirky’ ‘goth’ designs.  

So. I may or may not be spending inordinate amounts of time (like, hours? daily?) watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer on Netflix lately.  Maybe I’m making up for lost time during my actual teenage years, when I was too focused on The X-Files and my own high horse to pay too much attention to anything involving blondes that was marketed to teenagers? Maybe it’s just Roxie’s fault? EITHER WAY, hours.  Let’s not judge me for this, because there is something really important to talk about here, something about which I am having a lot of feelings. Which is: THEIR CLOTHES HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS.  

Gratuitously terrible special effects, rampant continuity errors, and hilariously unrealistic dialogue aside, I can’t turn away:  I anxiously await every scene change for wardrobe alone.  It’s a veritable Pandora’s box of everything that made the mid to late 90’s unspeakably amazing:  The long skirts! The awkward boat-neck and ballet-neck tank tops! Ill-fitting leather pants! Skorts and spaghetti-strap tank tops! Zig-zag parted hair! Unfortunate mixed floral prints! Oversized button-downs in polyester and gruesome raver prints! Wire-frame glasses! Overalls! Tie-dye! Twinsets! Those weird striped ribbed mockneck sweaters that were sold en masse at whatever the teenage boy version of Contempo Casuals was!  Bucket hats! Blow-dryed Jennifer Anniston hair! Center parts with clips! Skirts over pants! Chokers! In short: be still my heart!  This, I knew, was going to be a blog post. This was going to be a great blog post. I could feel it.

I was so totally fucking amped as I embarked on my journey into an internet k-hole of Buffy style, anticipating the hours of screenshotting to come, the bad puns I could make, the moments of faux-critical insight, the nostalgia for outfits I wore to junior high school dances.  Imagine my dismay when I started googling — “Buffy leather pants” for one, or “vampire slayer style fashion willow” — and realized that it was all — all! all of it! every idea I had! — already done, to great and ridiculous lengths, and a decade ago.  

There is an entire universe of Buffy The Vampire Slayer fashion fanatics, o readers. I expected fanfic, compulsive detailing of quotes and plot lines, you know, the usual.  But the clothes! There is a Willow style tumblr. There are lengthy forum threads of favourite Buffy looks on both fansite and fashion sites. There are wiki and eHow pages on how to look like Buffy.   There are blogs ranking the fashion sense of various characters per episode. There are dress up games and candybar dolllmakers. There are Polyvore collages. There is even a 12 page academic essay by some college professor about the semiotics of the Buffy fashion aesthetic.  

Seriously. Seriously.  How can I beat any of this? More internet treasures after the jump — I need to go buy a skort, a spaghetti strap tanktop, and a leather trenchcoat, stat.

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i went to los angeles to be a bridesmaid when one of my bffs from college got married, here are some of the pictures.

in retrospect one begins to notice things that initially you didn’t realise you were photographing: something mysterious and strange about the cult of girlhood and what it means, collectively, to be a twenty five year old american woman; something about vague connections of childhood and adulthood and rites of passage; probably something about feeling my viewpoint as somehow some kind of outsider (these things now forbidden to me, even in california, by law); the routines and ritual of high heels and makeup and curled hair and silk dresses, the quiet and serious way that women do these things behind closed doors for the planned photos of the event later; the way we remember things versus they way they are photographed formally; the alien and beautiful colours and light and geography and plants and water and sky of the west coast

heidi you looked beautiful and i’ve said it a gazillion times already but i am so happy for you and i hope you and zach are happy forever and ever

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