Dispatches from a second story bedroom

tl;dr: parts 1& 2 AKA L.A. Nadir

Alright, briefly, in pictures here's how it breaks down.

I have to wonder who is buying a 1500GBP jacket on the internet assuming that sizing is consistent season to season. I know, free returns, (thanks Zappos! for your incredible business model.) but Jesú Hache Cristo, get out of my fucking face YSL cotton jacket. I am not waiting up to 2 billing cycles to get reimbursed 3Gs iffin' and whenin' you don't work out. But that's me, I'm sure there are thousands of women who don't care about the cost. Rich people aren't more tasteful as the city of Los Angeles will attest. People there pay for class. Salespeople in high end stores seem to take the responsibility of offering class to the classless very seriously.

How can you feel annoyed with people wanting to ogle the goods that you yourself cannot afford? Not without your employee discount you can't. It's sad to see so many sales gals in H&M jumpsuits giving you the up and down for no reason other than they feel they're tied to a moneyed class in a way that you as a window shopper are not. We are the same, you and I. We both love clothing, so put those tired classist notions to bed, we're in America and it's a fucking sunny 72 god damned degrees and breezy. What are you being so fucking sour for?

On a related note, I bummed around Opening Ceremony in LA for over an hour touching and pulling at all the garments last week. I've got to say, there is absolute shit finishing to many new exciting CFDA noms' garments. Just sayin'. Unfortunately it seemed to be a problem with the Americans and less so with the Europeans. Some shoes from some collaborative brands were so chintzy that I wondered who would ever buy them because they weren't luxurious looking. They looked like little plastic toys made in China.  My brain can't wrap itself around spending 1200 dollars on unfinished organza hems. It makes my heart race in the bad way, like my dreams where people are breaking into my house.

I had this fantasy that the most charismatic and coolest salespeople somehow filtered through the bedrock in some sort of filtered pure form of salespeoplry at the best stores but this is not the case. I had a shit ton of Pretty Woman moments at a bunch of LA places. I can't take snobbery from an idiot in a thrifted denim jacket and Z. Cavarriccis seriously. How do you reconcile yourself with this stuff? Because it frequently brings me down and keeps me from staying interested in the game. It makes everyone here in Portland seem that much cooler and makes me less interested in leaving for LA. I've also noticed that LA always wants to call another store for you but they want to look bored and annoyed while doing it. Mixed message! Don't offer if I have to look at your shitty face!  The bakery staff at Ca'd'Oro were the most helpful of all the places I went and they only sell wholesale bread. Seriously everywhere else in LA, take a page out of their book. Carbs and service!

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. 

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? 

i'm going to hit you so hard

Rochas S/S 2011

Rochas was kind of all over the map but there was plenty for me to like anyway. It was less cohesive than last season and I can't say I'm in favor of black knee high stockings in most instances but it's not like anyone is going to buy those (fingers crossed). I'm worried about how Prada will translate for the Forever 21 buying masses. How are we going to democratize Josephine Baker monkey smocks? Is that something the world at large knows how to handle? Answer: No. I always worry with styling that people are going to focus on the easily duplicated pieces and lose sight of what the collection was about. What was this collection about? It was about a lot of things.

There was a lot of thrifted vintage Amanda De Cadenet/Courtney Love/Winona Ryder red carpet moment dresses. You are in my heart and soul, you trash cans! I love anything with a bias 30s cut and these were formative images for my adolescent brain. 

Then there's that Biba-esque jumpsuit. I think the secret to this little number's success is having Lindsey Wixson inside of it. That little budgie face, I want to smash it.  Seriously though, spring palazzos, think about it.

I don't know why I love that raw silk Carol Burnett coat so much. It's a hausfrau cliche, and I love it. Just add a small handbag to pull your look together. Don't bother removing your cleaning kerchief either, just leave it. In this instance I can totally understand the need for a knee stocking but I feel that it will turn the blogosphere into Clueless in about 3 months. Y'all can't handle the hausfrau, you're all going to fuck it up halloween style by turning every outfit into a "sexy school girl" outfit.

This third look has me confused, I love it and I can't figure out what it exactly reminds me of. Part Chloe Sevigny when she was all JNCO-ed out, interning at Sassy, part Julian Schnabel. There's a rave element, but it's like Marchesa Casati at a rave. It looks like the first time I tasted an oyster.

This last look also has incongruous elements that add up to something, perhaps only my brain enjoys, so symbiotic and good that I don't expect anyone else to care or get what it is. Disco Rumspringa. 

Join us

Celine S/S 2011

If you are not with us, you are against us.

one way ticket on a westbound vein

Words cannot express how much I want to see this. But like everything I like, I have to shit on it first. I'm not sure if that's some pathological desire to keep others from wanting it or assuaging my own guilt about wanting it. Probably both!

I went and saw Easy A yesterday and this was one of the previews for it. I feel that some of my excitement stems from the fact that the internet doesn't understand statistical outliers. There are about 6 of my statistical outliers all crammed into this film. The internet did not present this to me in any form before seeing it on a 40 foot screen. It was so nice to be organically introduced to something in this age of everything-as-soon-as-it-is-available. Viral marketing be damned, I like an old school surprise and to be reminded that the internet doesn't know everything about me.

At any rate, in the movie  Stanley Tucci essentially played Nigel as Emma Stone's dad. He's sadly fallen into some gay Hollywood sidekick mobius strip of casting. There were an awful lot of jokes about being a confused bisexual for a teen movie. None of them were funny. The whole movie wasn't funny? Emma Stone is better than that movie? Stanley Tucci is definitely better than this movie. Having the Vans Warped Tour redo all the songs from every John Hughes movie you ever loved does not get the beneficent blessing from Sir John Hughes up in heaven either. Having some generic indie folk duo that went to college with Zach Braff on your soundtrack doing a Thompson Twins cover is a total boner massacre to one of my formative filmic fantasies. All I'm left with is an angry inch. But back to my point, Stanley Tucci needs to broaden his range or he'll forever be known as the toothless George Sanders of the early 21st century. Think more Big Night and less, "I'm redoing my kitchen." Maybe it's not his fault? Wait, did you see The Lovely Bones? Nice wig dude.

Ok, I love Cher movies. Name one you don't love. And while I don't actively listen to Christina Aguilera or own any of her albums I do appreciate her pipes. I love that someone else is in charge of her make up application for a good solid 90 minutes too. They dial back the spackle to the "Genie in a Bottle" days. She looks a decade younger. Hello 1999!

If those three weren't enough reason to see this movie, Alan Cumming pops up reminding us of his Cabaret revival days too. Kristen Bell must have a voice double because there's no way anyone who saw this or this thought she could stand up to Xtina, three plus years at Tisch or not, bitch please. I love you Veronica! The whole thing is directed by an Antin that is neither a hair dresser nor a Pussycat Doll. I know it looks a little too McG-y but it is modern burlesque, it's supposed to look over the top, right? No one is doing fucked up retro perv like Fosse these days, everything looks like a plastic playboy pictoral so when there are a bunch of things that you love involved and only a couple that you actively hate, a girl has got to take what she can get.

xoxo, Gossip Girl

LUGZ

      

Jeffrey Campbell Stem $200

I know that this is officially the year of the clog but for me, it has been the year of the LUG boot. I did a purple suede clog over a year ago and haven't been excited to revisit. Wearing clogs 8 hours a day, five days a week takes away any sort of fashion cachet (fachet?) they might appear to have. It's so gross to see people in fashion Danskos, enough to put you off the whole clog enterprise entirely. Forever. No one needs your personality expressed via uniform. Do these sorts of shenanigans pass as professional in any other place than a veterinarian clinic? I digress.

Back to my original thought! Am I profoundly in favor of gold hiking boots? I highly doubt these will be purchased but they gave me serious (not 200 dollars serious) pause. These have to go on sale, there's no way people want these. I am at one with the me that likes ugo shoes. My L.L. Bean coat came and even though it gives me douche chills to wear it like a vest I sort of like that I can. Wearing these gold boots with my burnt umber rain coat immediately flashed in my head as a possibility. I desperately need bright and shiny things in February when the SADs hit. Is that enough of a justification for these should they be on super sale in January and I'm not getting out of bed because the SADs are telling me not to bother? Isn't one pair of gold shoes in a closet enough? Isn't one shiny boot in a closet enough? Nina makes a compelling pro argument.

hits just keep on coming

 

Alright inner nerd, where do you put this in your house? This seems like a kitchen picture? 

Gay Talese's Choke Out

 

I'm not the type to ironically enjoy wolf shirts but I am loving this hanging ID case for its grungy groupie Coachella going, headband wearing, misguided shirt as dress charm. I think I love the homoerotic Greco choke-y logo medallion zipper pull the most. Stefon would agree, purses are so two thousand and late.

kept my heart in a tree for all the world to see

DO NOT SEARCH THE INTERNET FOR BROOCHES. YOU WILL FIND ONES THAT ARE COST PROHIBITIVE BUT AWESOME.

 

 

Marjan Pejoski Monkey Face Brooch $193