good morning midnight

I guess “witchy ballerina vibes” is kind of a thing...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:34:05 -0500

I guess “witchy ballerina vibes” is kind of a thing I get behind once in a while?

shirt free people
skirt zara
boots surface to air

We’re going to take a moment for a highly political...

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 15:57:00 -0500

We’re going to take a moment for a highly political interlude and talk about the fact that, like, legalization of gay marriage on a federal level is obviously necessary due to the fact that when the hell else would I ever get to wear this entire situation? Like, from the lipstick to the jacket to the pleated half-sheer maxi skirt gown thing and all. Unless “motorcycle bride with vampire makeup” is a thing I can rock on a daily basis, which I guess I might have to start doing.

In further complications, it turns out that this thing of glory and all the other things of glory above are in fact from the AW2012 show of Christian Siriano, who has not once ever made a thing unruffled enough for me to be interested in it putting on my body, and then this happened. I’m totally stealing this one-liner from Hilary since she said it earlier before and I laughed so hard I spat my lunch out on my computer because I am A Classy Lady, but so many of those jackets and sheer things and boots and all of it are — dare we say it? — fierce.

tee that sharpied YSL thing I made and can never take offskirt...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:39:32 -0500

tee that sharpied YSL thing I made and can never take off
skirt from urban a billion years ago, whateva
hat also have been wearing it for months, oops
creepers underground, which I also wear constantly

OUTFIT POST OVERLOAD CONTINUES. But seriously: I told y’all I was dressing super chill all week. None of this is even new — see all those links to the times you’ve seen it all before — which I think is probably some sort of NYFW crime. Oops! Plus, how great does my awesomely dirty hallway look? Way too cold and dark for the roof still!

What you can’t see here though is how snazzy I did my nails this week — a dull khaki green with orangey-pink stripes randomly on some of the nails:

aaaaaand the latest permutation of the various shades of blonde-silver-purple-grey of my Mermaid Hair Manic Panic Adventures:

In entirely unrelated material, I leave you with Werner Herzog reading Where’s Waldo, in case you had forgotten this existed or not yet encountered it, as well as…. snowtoro!

2K12 STYLE VIBEZ INSPIRATION PHOTODUMP TIME Y’ALL WHILE...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:43:00 -0500

2K12 STYLE VIBEZ INSPIRATION PHOTODUMP TIME Y’ALL WHILE WE’RE ALL AWOL FROM TUMBLR RUNNING AROUND TOWN FOR NYFW

More of the usual, I’m predictable by now, aren’t I? WHO CARES, GIANT CURLS AND TRASHY FUR AND WEIRD HAIR COLOURS AND 90S VIBES AND DRESSING LIKE THE INTERNET PERSONFIED 4E

dress complex geometriesboots h+m (the lisbeth salander...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:12:00 -0500

dress complex geometries
boots h+m (the lisbeth salander collection, don’t tell anyone i bought them. i’ve superglued the wedges back on to the boot body twice now, ughck)

NYFW DAY 1 (TUESDAY) a.k.a. 2K9/10 fashungoth throwback vibez a.k.a. “this dress is honestly the most comfortable thing I own and my almost-stylish equivalent of wearing pajamas to work,” since I can’t imagine anything more comfortable than a giant hooded sack of uber-soft worn-in jersey that I’ve been wearing a few times a month since I first got it. Totally fine with that.

This NYFW is the first one in a while where I opted not to have any responsibilities for other publications, which has honestly been kind of nice: I’ve wandered around to a few things, gone to all the shows I’ve been somehow involved with, but mostly I’ve been hella laid back instead of frantically cabbing it back and forth from Milk to Lincoln Center fourteen times a day. And rather than shooting 400 photos per hour on my digital camera, I’ve been shooting film, which is kind of awesome and a totally different approach than the OMFG PUT IT ON TWITTER RIGHT NOW steeze I’ve gotten so used to. (So you’ll see the best of them once I develop it all next week!) I guess I’ve been dressing lazier too, or at least just more like myself: all the silly hats and polka dot suits and Litas galore running around Soho are great and all, but I feel way better in my worn-in favourites and go-to basics topped off with my epic leopard coat.

KEEPIN’ IT CLASSY FOR #NYFW NOW AND FOREVER BRING IT ON,...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:09:00 -0500

KEEPIN’ IT CLASSY FOR #NYFW NOW AND FOREVER

BRING IT ON, FASHION WEEK, I CAN HANDLE YOU

IT'S ABOUT TIME

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:47:47 -0500

“Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently. Because under California statutory law, same-sex couples had all the rights of opposite-sex couples, regardless of their marital status, all parties agree that Proposition 8 had one effect only. It stripped same-sex couples of the ability they previously possessed to obtain from the State, or any other authorized party, an important right — the right to obtain and use the designation of ‘marriage’ to describe their relationships. Nothing more, nothing less. Proposition 8 therefore could not have been enacted to advance California’s interests in childrearing or responsible procreation, for it had no effect on the rights of same-sex couples to raise children or on the procreative practices of other couples. Nor did Proposition 8 have any effect on religious freedom or on parents’ rights to control their children’s eduction; it could not have been enacted to safeguard these liberties. All that Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same-sex couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation of “marriage,” which symbolizes state legitimization and societal recognition of their committed relationships. Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples. The Constitution simply does not allow for “laws of this sort.””

— United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [via Autostraddle]

SASHA FRERE-JONES: MIA SHOULDN'T HAVE APOLOGIZED

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:19:00 -0500

SASHA FRERE-JONES: MIA SHOULDN'T HAVE APOLOGIZED:

In the lull between Lana-gate and NYFW-death, MIA flipped America off during that big sportsball game the other day and the internet can’t stop talking about it, but thankfully Sasha Frere-Jones already said everything that needs to be said so now we can move on, right? Cool.

The outrage is tiresome and deeply hypocritical, in all the tiresome ways you’ve been tired out by before. M.I.A. was illustrating her line, acting out the attitude of the words: performing. Fine, it may not be legal to flip the bird on television, but that’s simply a remnant of the fifties we haven’t shaken. Unless somebody was handing out Xanax with the foam fingers, Lucas Oil Stadium was ringing with the music of profanities last night. More to the point, television viewers were submitted to ad after ad that likened women—negatively—to sofas, cars, and candy. Mr. Winter didn’t have anything to say about that, so I’d like to raise both of my middle fingers to him and anyone who thinks profanity is somehow more harmful to our children than images of violence and misogyny. (My two sons, fourteen and eleven, thought the Fiat ad was corny, so I guess they will be safe without Mr. Winter’s intervention.) I say we get out of The Pretending To Be Moral game altogether and use the Internet for important things like posting pictures of cats looking at croissants and PDFs of sensitive government documents.

We Need To Talk About Planned Parenthood Again

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:59:00 -0500

This whole Planned Parenthood/Komen thing keeps irritating me again at random points throughout my day, which is pretty crappy because it’s seriously ruined basically the past seventy two hours of my life in a pretty major way. Right when I think I’ve forgotten it or managed to distract myself, some little part of me flares up in rage again (“But what the FUCK! It’s like they’re TRYING to PROVE that Planned Parenthood is only a baby-killing machine by taking away some of its other super valuable services! And like they only care about curing breast cancer in rich white ladies who will give them more money! What the fuck is humanity COMING TO? This is HORRIBLE!”) I think I physicallycannotstop being pissed off about it, and so instead of writing nine thousand more words on how utterly infuriating this entire situation is, here, instead, are some links!

• Lest we forget, a year ago when that whole defunding debacle happened I wrote a thing about how much and why I love Planned Parenthood, and none of my feelings have changed.

• Salon has a great piece with a good analysis of the Komen Foundation and how it’s actually symptomatic of wider problems with the org:

It’s worth noting that while breast cancer rates are dipping, an October report from the American Cancer Society warned that they are declining more slowly among low-income women, and that “Poor women are now at greater risk for breast cancer death because of less access to screening and better treatments. This continued disparity is impeding real progress against breast cancer.” You know who loses when Komen backs away from Planned Parenthood? Probably not those nice, pink-clad ladies who attend Susan Komen wine-tasting events.

• This post does a great job of explaining the insidious ways in which pro-lifers are not so much anti-abortion as anti women’s freedom and anti-sex in general, which is an excellent point

If pro-life activists really cared about public health and stopping abortion and saving the precious widdle babies, if they were truly pro-life, then they would support policies and scientific advancements that prevent abortion and, you know, actually save lives. They would promote the use of contraceptives, and fight to make them as cheap and accessible as possible…………. They would support financial assistance for women who cannot afford pre and postnatal care. They would support organizations like Planned Parenthood. But they don’t. They virulently oppose all of these things with a vicious, fiery passion because it’s not about the babies and it’s not about health - it’s about the sex and the women who have it.

• The Planned Parenthood Saved My Life tumblr is full of stories from women who received excellent and often life-saving care at their local PP, which is nothing knew but really serves to drive home the point that, you know, it rules?

• Here’s a link where you can donate to PP, or if you aren’t able to donate, you can always actually support them by, you know, utilizing their services — go ahead and book yourself a pap smear or whatevz like, right now, since you’ve probably been putting it off anyhow. You can also add your name to the letter declaring that you still stand with PP, or you can check out the PPAction site for more news and updates and calls to action.

AND TODAY IN 90’S EDITORIAL GOODNESS, we bring you more...

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:53:00 -0500

Steven Meisel for Vogue Italia 8/97

Steven Meisel for Vogue Italia 8/97

Steven Meisel for Vogue Italia 8/97

Steven Meisel for Vogue Italia 8/97

Paolo Roversi for Vogue Italia 2/96

Paolo Roversi for Vogue Italia 2/96

Paolo Roversi for Vogue Italia 2/96

Peter Lindbergh for Vogue Italia 5/99

Peter Lindbergh for Vogue Italia 5/99

Peter Lindbergh for Vogue Italia 5/99

AND TODAY IN 90’S EDITORIAL GOODNESS, we bring you more 90s-pop-feminism-influenced fashion-androgyny by which I mean “Stella Tennant and then some nakie models with messy hair,” plus the last time that neon opaque blue and yellow lipstick was a thing!

Previously: Arena Homme eds by Stevens Meisel & Klein, the Self Service archives, and more Arena Homme from ‘96. It’s okay if you go ahead and print it all out and paper your walls with it, ‘cuz I was thinking about that too.

[Via the TFS vintage magazines thread, which I could obviously spend weeks browsing.]

skirt gretchen jonesshirt nudie jeansjacket wilsonboots surface...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 12:05:00 -0500

skirt gretchen jones
shirt nudie jeans
jacket wilson
boots surface to air

One of the perks of working in fashion is that when, say, you’re wearing a leeeeettle-bit-too-short-skirt and your stockings suddenly bust open in a giant run, like, an unforgivable totally not-cute underwear-baring gaping nightmare run of horror and shame, not that these things happen to me ALL THE GODDAMNED TIME, WHY, WHY TIGHTS, WHY DO YOU HATE ME, there’s usually a rack of samples somewhere in the office to come to the rescue for the rest of the day before you steam them and return them safely to their rack with a sigh of relief before running home to hide from the universe and bemoan your ability (or lack thereof) to ever be a real grownup. Anyhow!

This Gretchen Jones skirt saved me last week, and, goddamnit, I think I’m going to have to get it for real now because I kind of love it. It was one of those things I’d really liked on the rack but never thought it would work on me — it just seemed a little more girly and boho than I usually roll, and I tend to have a hard time with prints. But it worked fortuitously well with the outfit I had on that day — which originally had included a black wool mini instead — and fit in oddly well with my otherwise chains-and-leather-and-grungy-beanie steeze.

We may also notice that I bought another pair of those Surface to Air wedges that we saw me covet and eventually buy here like in 2009 and after wearing the old ones to three separate deaths, each time resurrected by a shoemaker with a little less vitality until finally they were beyond hope, they popped up on Gilt for, well, cheap. SO I JUST BOUGHT THE SAME PAIR OF SHOES AGAIN. Which feels sort of stupid, but whatever, I’m way psyched about it.

IN DEFENSE OF THE HOT MESS / A CALL FOR LADY ANTIHEROES

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:10:22 -0500

Lately I’ve been really into weird concepts of something like failed, desperate, self-conscious deliberate performative femininity? Part of this is evidenced by the fact that I’ve been doing my hair in big curls with my kinda-crappy-blonde-dye-job and wearing a ridiculous faux-leopard coat with ripped tights and messy eyeliner, and part of it comes together more in at least 47 different e-mail conversations about books and movies with “unrepentantly fucked up” lady characters that I’ve been having with at least 5 different people of late. Some of these ideas have been written very eloquently by other folks already, and some of it is obvious and some of it is still vague, and all of it is definitely not “complete,” so, like, go at it in the comments, y’all, I wanna know what you’re thinking.

It begins, I think, with my ongoing frustration that when we are presented with male characters (or personas, or even real persons) who are basically bad people with one redeeming quality (still sleeps with a teddy bear, is a brilliant filmmaker) we let that one redeeming quality, you know, redeem them, and are collectively charmed by their fucked-up-ness. But I have a really hard time coming up with similar female examples: all of the ones I can think of we have opted to either lambast or concern-troll instead. And we always need to redeem them. They always need to learn something or be rescued, which we all know is basically the opposite of how the world really works. Kids, I am a hot mess, and almost all of the women I admire and love and am fascinated by are also hot fucking messes, and I so rarely see that represented in a real, nuanced, and fascinating way. To simplify: I am eternally tearing my hair out over the fact that I desperately want more female antiheroes. In books, film, pop culture personas, whatever. And I’ve been seeing this idea come up again and again lately.

As a brief list of some of what I’m referencing: There’s this Lana Del Rey album review, which is kind of the most astute thing I’ve read on her yet, and which hit the nail on the head of my bizarre, obsessive preoccupation with her and her aesthetic — though it condemned her where I obviously am fascinated instead. There was that Marie Calloway brouhaha, and the fantastic response to it all from Kate Zambreno, which also lead to The Rejectionist’s interview with her here. There were a bunch of folks over at Emily Books who managed to somehow misread a lot of lesbian moralism into Eileen Myles’ Inferno, when I thought it was just a book about, like, someone very funny and intelligent and unapologetic, who also lived a life that reminds me an awful lot of my life now. There was Charlize Theron in Young Adult, who would have been way fascinating if not for Diablo Cody’s frustrating insistence on de-nuancing her characters in favor of twee trope-tastic banter. There’s Cat Marnell at XOJane and the no-nonsense-it’s-okay-to-be-human writing at Rookie. Sarah’s and my Rayanne Project (which sort of fizzled out probably partially because I am a little bit too much of a whacked-out womanchild to coordinate and motivate folks to write me things like that, but the stuff that’s up there is still amazeballs!) The Amy-Winehouse-inspired couture collection that Gaultier showed yesterday. Courtney Love, like, in general.

I am really into this, you guys.

I feel the need to clarify that this isn’t like the “It’s okay if you don’t text him back right away” pages of ladymags, because it’s not that kind of screwing up. Nor is it the Manic Pixie Dream Girl either — look, guys, maybe Zooey Deschanel has shiny bangs, but I’d rather hang out with or read a book about Courtney Love any day, who is more of like a Manic Troll Nightmare Beast than anything else. I actually sort of want to see it as an inverse of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, though I know my character I’m describing here is also easily reduced to male fantasy. But I want to insist that it doesn’t have to be, and that she shouldn’t be, which is half the point, that the drunk sloppy girl in the corner is definitely not any more broken than anybody else and definitely not there to be taken advantage of. She’s a failure of male fantasy, and she knows it, and more than that, she flaunts it, because the point wasn’t the goddamned boys to begin with.

The kind of ladies I’m talking about are flawed, but not damsels in distress in any way. So I am totally cool with being a Manic Troll Nightmare Beast, because in my experience, that is basically just a symptom of “the human condition.” I am totally cool with being a human, and I am totally cool with other women who are okay with being humans and not gentle ladies, too. And humans are a lot more interesting.

There are problematic interpretations of it, too — a lot of it verges on nauseating, hackneyed and racist “Carefree White Girl” style fantasy, and it’s easy to slip into tropes of “glamorizing drug use and prostitution” or whatnot. (I’m already anticipating 3-7 comments criticizing me with that straw man, it’s cool, y’all.) I also keep wanting to describe things as “trashy,” because please, kids, I am from New Jersey, lord knows I love trash, but I know that is often read as both classist and misogynist. There’s also another frustrating version of this which involves things that have always felt like myself — you know, the messy girl who has made a ton of mistakes and isn’t quite pretty and is a little bit sad and a little bit nuts and lives a little bit too hard sometimes, but keeps it together — being recycled and spat back at me in a distorted and fetishized way. (Do we want to talk about my disgust for Sasha in A Visit From The Goon Squad? Like that.) But I am still going to be a sucker for anything even verging on this image of the screwed-up girl who’s getting it half-right but doesn’t give a damn if it’s also half-wrong because she’s trying and because she’s having fun. I am still going to want more of it, because there isn’t enough of it.

On a more personal note, in some ways I think this a weird core of my own “identity” or whatever, if we want to talk about those things. When you are coming out it sometimes takes years to bridge the gap between “I like girls” and “Wait, I don’t actually have to date him, I don’t owe him that. Wow! I don’t have to!” and then suddenly you exist in this entirely new bizarre world where every page of every ladies’ magazine doesn’t apply to you at all and you feel so much better about a ton of things because you have given yourself permission to not worry about men anymore. Or at least that’s how it worked for me. What I am saying is that frankly I feel like I spent an awful lot of my life trying real hard to be straight and getting real sad when it didn’t work the way it was supposed to, and I basically feel the same way about Doing Ladylike Shit. And I’m having a ball with it, and I really dig seeing that in other places, too.

BUT. Back to the point. We know that girls aren’t supposed to go out and get drunk and let their makeup get messed up and screw the wrong people and show up late and swear and have breakdowns and get pissed off and make noise and take up space and have delusions of grandeur and mood swings and panic attacks. We are supposed to contain all that: we are supposed to contain our messy, loud, crazy bodies and estrogen-addled minds and comb our hair and iron a dress and show up with a smile, at risk of becoming a broken, dirty woman – the demimonde, the floozy, the washed-up starlet, the old maid – if we do not.

I am not into that. I will lose my mind if I do that, and probably half of my existing crazy is from trying to do that anyhow, and I am eternally charmed by the evidence of other ladies who feel the same way. I would so much rather see someone else screwing it all up than someone doing it right or being saved. And I admit that I still am trying to convince myself — this blog post is evidence of that, for sure — that it is okay for me to be a hot mess like that, that it is okay for me to be a real human too.

MESSY CHOPPY BABY BANGS I WILL RESIST I WILL RESIST I WILL NOT...

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:09:49 -0500

freja like duhhhh

ysl ss2012 ads

patti smith

LEELOO MULTIPASS

fuck lisbeth

shannyn, who cares if this is old

house of holland ss2012

john galliano ss2012 hair

more ysl ss2012 ads

john galliano ss2012 hair

MESSY CHOPPY BABY BANGS I WILL RESIST I WILL RESIST I WILL NOT CUT MY HAIR I AM LETTING IT GROW I JUST BLEACHED IT ANYHOW I CAN GROW OUT MY BANGS I CAN DO IT I WILL RESIST I WILL RESIST HALP PLZ SEND HELP DON’T LET ME DO IT DON’T LET ME PLEASE

For whatever reason I’ve been sort of not super jazzed up...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:47:32 -0500

For whatever reason I’ve been sort of not super jazzed up on fashion lately? Maybe it’s winter blues (no snow but I still have to wear tights and 47 layers every day!? what is this!?) or maybe it’s that I’ve been busy with 18 other projects — but the good ole “fashion blogging universe” has just sort of been not keeping my attention super well this past month or so.

But! Let’s not be depressing! So instead of talking about my irritation at this (lies, I’ll just talk about it parenthetically! check it out! a bunch of old white dudes and a few token black guys and a lady or two! how interesting! and by interesting I mean “god how depressing is everything ever” but ANYHOW) let’s feel enthusiastic about lady photographers and how much I love New York, right?! As if I don’t post about these things enough! But these people seem obvious to me but maybe you have not encountered them before, so. Berenice Abbott!

Berenice Abbott’s “Changing New York” — her exhaustive collection of photos of New York in the 1930’s, the archives of which now live over at the NYPL — is awesome for all of the reasons we always love photos of New York in ages past, right? It’s part “Oh snap! That’s the Starrett Lehigh building! Once I totally bombed an interview at a studio there!” and part fascination at the things we don’t recognize; something both familiar and bittersweet about the things that are both the same despite the things that are different, like the persistent stark contrast of poverty and wealth, of new and old, that seems in so many ways to define this city.

There’s also the fact that while Abbott was known primarily for her photographs of New York (and a bunch of boring science stuff, like photographing balls in motion yaawwwwnnnn) those of us in on the joke can deduce pretty quickly what “lived with Djuna Barnes in the Village for a while” probably means. (Unsurprisingly, some of her photos are in that Hide/Seek show at the Brooklyn Museum that I still haven’t gone to because I suck but I’m going Thursday I swear!) Abbott’s portraits — of herself, of Barnes, Janet Flanner, Gertrude Stein, Edna St Vincent Millay, Betty Parsons, and more — can be read also as a not-so-subtle but still-unspoken record of queer identities in her era in New York and Paris. Cool!

albieats: my grandmother’s drawings. circa 1930’s. THIS IS SO...

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:31:01 -0500

albieats:

my grandmother’s drawings. circa 1930’s.

THIS IS SO COOL

zomg the last one is like a dog version of

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:45:47 -0500

zomg the last one is like a dog version of

Sudden cathartic realization of THE FASHIONS and AESTHETICS: I...

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:16:00 -0500

oh, Leo, and that gun holster and tie!

Sudden cathartic realization of THE FASHIONS and AESTHETICS: I basically just want my entire life to look like the hypersaturated pop-religion floral sequinned over-the-top faux-branded clusterfuck of the 1996 version of Romeo+Juliet, forever all of the time. Which I hated at the time — I was what, in junior high school the first time I saw it? and not particularly interested in liking anything, let alone Leonardo diCaprio, ew, that was for dumb girls — but have become oddly re-obsessed with in the past year. And a bit of googlin’ revealed that the costume designer was the same lady who did the costumes for The Matrix. Of course!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:34:34 -0500

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Photo

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:39:23 -0500

Photo

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:37:54 -0500