Dispatches from a second story bedroom

Party Over

Hey...what's up blog? I have been lazily tumbl'in' my life away because it is so much easier and does not involve so many words.

But check this out, I kept handling the Céline "Medium Box" bag in all its permutations while on vacation and was struck with the thought, "Why are you so heavy in every sense of the word?" I even held the Tom Ford "Carine" bag and couldn't get over its weight and sheer stupidity of its clasp. Even the simplest things are ruined by things like leather weight and difficult closures. I cannot stand bags that hang open or require two dedicated hands to close.

Then I saw this. It's priced right and has all the pocket elements I require in a bag and I'm looking to downsize from my usual laptop-friendly type bag. I'm growing up. It's time to be a lady.

It doesn't make me want to tear my skin off like my-imagination-of-not-the-actual Céline but even the real thing proved not as advertised so one must adjust their search. It's nearly identical inside and has a less frustrating closure. Bags are so hard. Why are bags so hard? I kind of wish this wasn't just in basic black but what're you gonna do when you're satisfied with everything but the color? Can I get this in oxblood, Raoul? 

onemorethingypsythief

You might never be able to afford that Céline Resort 2012 rubber raincoat but there's another option:

A more feminine silhouette, classic trench details, guaranteed rainproof and it's cheaper. What's not to love? Get one here.

Mi hijacita

Céline Pre-Fall 2011

I feel like the most boring girl in the world for loving Céline. But this feels a bit different. It's not as tasteful as past seasons and seems a bit like grandma dressing in the dark, no? I mean these are color combinations that are giving me vivid childhood flashbacks of my grandmother. I never knew a woman to so fearlessly pair oxblood with everything. Oxblood was her neutral.

She lived out in the country so white wasn't necessarily a wise footwear option for her but she did have plaid sweaters y ribbed turtlenecks in every color. She shopped her colors without knowing that she was a straight up autumn. She was buried in grayish-mauve and oxblood. A fan of the color until her death. Oh man Phoebe, you don't even know how personal this is for me. Even the denim was full on abuela steez but these four in particular are "ouija likes abuelita at night". She calls to me from beyond the grave with through this collection. 

It gets really really bad...

Jenni Kayne Pre-Fall 2011

Hey, remember when I was yammering on about luxury sweats? Well how about luxury slippers? I keep seeing the walking dead ambling in public wearing fleece pajama pants and slippers like the entire world is their bedroom. I wonder if most everyone is using just their brain stem to get from home to the McDonald's, to work, to the Redbox in front of the 7-11 and back home.  No one seems to be owning it, they all seem resigned to sweats as a consolation prize in the game of life. What a total bummer! Own that shit!

They're always in front of you at the dollar store when you're there buying cheap ibuprofen using a maxed out EBT card to buy gallons of window washing fluid for their minivan. My reality is not their reality and we probably cancel each other out in terms of our shared existence on this planet but all I'm saying is, "I see what you're doing over there and I will totally give a shit for ALL of humanity since you can't be bothered." I will wear the fuck out of some slippers with a mini dress and leopard fur scarf to. Cancel You Out. Instead of wearing it like I've given up, I'll wear it like I'm totally louche roué and saying yes to everything that feels good.

Why can't laziness and hedonism work in tandem? Aren't they facets of the same ideal? Looking good and feeling good are not mutually exclusive as the woman in front of me at the Dollar Tree would have you believe. LUX TO THE MAX. I'm not gonna play bunion city, yeow. Slipper steez. To. The. Max. 

Pancakes

Jil Sander Pre-Fall 2011

Jil Sander is doing things that I like once again. I am not sure who has made the return. Either I have come around and gotten back into minimalism or she's currently doing minimalism in a way that I like. Maybe a bit of both? I cannot emphasize enough how modern matching coats and dresses looks right now.

I know it is not new, but it has fallen out of favor for so long as to have been banished from fly-over-state-Stacy-London acolytes. This shift renewed my interested in matching shoes and bags. Most people can't color theory for shit, so why not make it easier for the dum dums Stace? Some mother of two still struggling to lose 50 lbs of baby weight doesn't need the added stress not matching but coordinating her shoes and bag along with the of wearing pumps and boot cut dark denim in her daily life. I'd like for them to check in with these women 18 months later because they are most certainly the fashion equivalent of Katrina victims in still living FEMA trailers once their 10 piece wardrobe falls apart. And also whoops, and also fries. 

Still, Jil Sander is speaking to me. Slightly boxy shapes. Various sizes in the world's most boring/awesome handbags/dopp kits. It all looks so scratchy and great like the best thrifted wool skirts. It makes you have to think about underpinnings because an old acetate lining is not enough. It takes me back to high school in the best possible way. I wore a lot of wool in high school. 

Mme. Bop

Gucci Pre-Fall 2011

Every time I look at this collection I start to hear a certain song in my head. This doesn't lessen my desire to look like some ne plus ultra pétasse bourgeois, because I totally do want to look like that, at all times. Even in spite of this unfortunate childhood memory. 

buckets of blood

Margiela Pre-Fall 2011

I wish more designers used Pre-Fall as a capsule collection of reinterpreted basics for the label. I remember Isaac Mizrahi and/or Lazaro Hernandez saying they always do a plain black pant that goes into department stores but that never really gets shown in any shows. I like the idea that a label has a specific customer that they continue to serve beyond the evolving runway seasons. 

Pre-Fall in my mind, should work as a thesis statement and not spin out of control into 45+ looks which weakens Autumn/Winter and always edits down to around five absolute looks that can tie the 21st century woman over for three months. More is more is more though, and no one ever says, "No thanks, I'm not interested in shopping for clothing every week of my life." Which is a whole other ball of wax that needs to be discussed at a future date.  Stick a pin in that, we'll get back to it. 

Margiela! That red, fuchsia and maroon combination is making me ride the crimson wave of female genital mutilation that is known as menstruation and I love it. As in, this collection brought on my special lady times as some sort act of female solidarity. Is that gross? You bet! Is it also real? You bet! That knife pleated dress is so my mother circa 1985 but with slouchy Nanookian boots and oatmeal colored winter tights that move it from the past and take it somewhere into my not too distant future.

Hot pink and greige is a colorway only a European from a certain latitude could have thought up. You have to live above the 49th parallel before you even begin to contemplate this sort of thing. It's true, think about how devoted the Scandinavians are to primary colors, it keeps them from going crazy. And also booze. Booze and Marimekko.

The black ensembles were more just a projection of what I imagine was going on in those shapes and folds.They may prove to be nothing like I imagined but what I imagined was something like: Victorian cape sleeves. Tiny bar pins on scarves. Nested collars in alternating colors. And also trousers. I think a trouser is always important. Everyone gets all bent over those strange Margiela jacket but I always always love the trousers. They're the real secret luxury.

sneaker pimp

Balenciaga Pre-fall 2011 (all mods c'est moi and MS Paint)

As I looked over this collection I couldn't shake the feeling that everything looked best with sneakers. What is wrong with me? I'm sure is a subconscious rebellion against the tyranny of shoes that hurt women. More sneakers and less slut shoes. Slut shoes are so over. 

On a personal continuum from last season: all pattern all the time, all the same pattern. Keep this coming, I love it. The Philophication continues unabated like the Plague sweeping Europe in the 1300s. I'm not complaining exactly, it's just weird that everyone is so casual about it, like why wouldn't you plagiarize? Duh. I guess pretty much the same thing happened when Marc Jacobs was officially on drugs and soft and white like a grubworm and everyone loved him. Remember that? The Huffington Post, Regina George of online journalism sure does. Boo to you too, you whore.

I am for 90s minimal revival but if I start seeing square toed Pradaesque Iady pumps from the 90s before men's shoes phase out that awful shape and I have to contemplate a world where men will wear clown shoes in perpetuity, I will kill myself. I have to see it every day I manage to will myself out of the house 20 years later.  Yay your foot looks like a desiccated plank of beef jerky. Now I am thinking of your feet and beef jerky in the same thought. Happy? It goes great with Dockers. No it doesn't. 

a week late and a dollar short

I remember not seeing Tron as a child, even when it came out on VHS and we had to rent a VCR with our videos because we lived in the dark ages. Even then I understood that most realities were not going to live up to my imagination of them. I'm too afraid to watch it now because there is no way it is not going to look hokey to my overstimulated post-Avatar-Ativan eye. I am filmically superstitious. The ideas of the thing in my head is more precious than whatever the reality is and why ruin a good thing?  

Now that they're making a new Tron, I remain superstitious as ever with a 90% surety I will not be seeing this one as well. I am enjoying the supremely overreaching Disney cross-promotion though. I never understand how these loss leaders actually work. A $600 Threeasfour bag is not going to change my general disdain for The Wizards of Waverly Place. But this Tron Legacy/Opening Ceremony collaboration is what would happen if Zara decided to do Jil Sander and Pierre Hardy instead of Chloé and Céline. I kind of love it.

   

See? Good right? There are not enough neoprene dresses in the world, I say.

pendulum dumb

I've been feeling dem autumn blues again and vacillate between expecting the new school year vibe to wash over me and make me want to care about dressing and conversely wanting to give up. Then when I think about it I want to do both. And why can't I do both? Mostly because my ultimate desire is to be some curled up in bed watching Fassbinder movies until I fully (read: never) believe in my Teutonic hag potential. Mostly I've been watching the first season of Damages if you want the real God's honest truth and that's what's been keeping me from entertaining any notion of changing the program. 

I am very into the idea of making a printed pant and shirt combo a la Miu Miu S/S 2010 in this crazy Peter Woodward for Liberty of London fabric, but also a little like the A.P.C. ads and all those crazy Texas tuxedos that kept popping up for S/S 2011.

A.P.C. had a brilliant shot of one in the new Gentlewoman, which I'm too lazy to scan but it looks like this. Note the disgusting poly blend chambray that is probably too lightweight for a proper pant but is exactly what I love about it. It might also be my own BSC throwback love that I'm not ready to admit because I'm not some dummy living in Bushwick.

Peter Woodward's print looks like some weird manga pajama print. Normally I hate unicorns but when tempered with leaping celestial lions and dragon dogs they are made ok somehow. I think it'd work for an ensemble.

Remember how I said it's all about the cut of the cloth, the cloth itself can be anything, at least in my mind. Realistically this needs to be made into a dress, a Shelley Duvall type apron dress. Or curtains. Both? But those feel like a cop out to the original idea. This print is full on Tsumori Chisato weird but cost prohibitive in terms of going nuts without knowing exactly how much fabric you'll need so you'd need to know an exact amount before beginning. Damn you Liberty for being so expensive and far away and for selling fabric in meters. The Stonecutters and I have something to say about that.

p.s. is The Gentlewoman just getting better and better or what?