Dispatches from a second story bedroom

your generation sucks

I had a really great conversation last night about the 90s and Prada and schizophrenic boutique buyers versus medicated megastore buyers and it all interrelated and was great and I came to a few conclusions.

1. There are a lot of girls out there in skinny jeans, bitch shoes, and sloppy tops and they are running boutiques. There's enough out there for that many-headed cliche to bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan, so I shouldn't worry about my various aspirations and why they will not work. America is a horn o' plenty and I need to take a bite. 
2. I totally get Prada S/S 2011 now, thanks Missy. This needs to happen again, its time is due. Why isn't Da Brat's blackberry lip making a comeback as well as Missy's aubergine lipliner. So essential. I like that small sliver of the 90s when lady rappers were transitioning from MC Lyteism into whatever real doll rapper is popular now. Nicki Minajism? They all look like sex toys, so whatever. I know chickenheaded hoes existed back then, but they weren't so yielding to a generic male fantasy. Foxy Brown was sassy and had a slight muffin top. Awesome. And also, the dance moves. I can't stop watching those super louche robot leans. "REMEMBER THE TIME" - MJ                                                                                                      
     
3. My aspirational 90s and the current aspirational 90s look are two completely different things. I stopped reading teen magazines in 1992 and subscribed to Bazaar just as Liz Tilberis came on as E-i-C. What was available to me for purchase back then wasn't dreamy, it was a lot of affordable thrift and pilfered from my parents college wardrobes. I didn't even dream of owning real Miu Miu, but a resonable vintage facsimile of the new facsimile of the original vintage. I developed the sense to recognize that fashion is the biggest Ouroboros through the reading and studying of fashion magazines, and tapped the trend at the source without the internet telling me how to do it in three easy steps.  And while that democratization is great, it sidesteps the old gatekeepers, so you have to deal with a lot of shitty micro-trends like pantlessness and shredded t-shirts. And then the olds get worried about not remaining on top of fashion and Carine and AdR are running around, panties on parade, even though they're 50ish and dancing as fast as they can. It's heartbreaking to witness. I'm sure Gavin would tell me to shut up and stop being old about it, but it's there and transitory and gets a platform before it even knows what to do with itself. Everyone is a cultural ambassador for a brand nowadays and it makes everything less special. Also young rich girls dressing up in expensive clothes is such an epic snooze to me. I am staking my claim in old Vreelandia, thank you. Vive la jolie laide.

for my one and only P-i-C

Maybe save this for your Saturday crafternoon? I dunno, sometime when you've got an hour of down time and/or you aren't listening to This American Life? It's a little James Lipton-y but it dispels a lot of myths about how fashion gets made. Which is nice. Hey-o business skills!

that name

 

 

I found the first issue of The Gentlewoman on the rack at Barnes and Noble. Is that going to be a regular thing for them? I thought it would be impossible to track down but as it turns out I just needed to go to the mall. What?

I love love

Prada and Bertelli are in love. I am in love with their love. 

Ted Leo and I are in love, it's sort of a one way thing. You might love him too after this.

sugar walls

Really Ghost Whisperer? Like I even need to imagine what this means. Do you think Catherine the Great explained her equine exploits to the Russian royal court with a similarly horrifying lack of judgment? 

P.S. "Vajazzling" is even worse than "jeggings" and I didn't think a worse portmanteau was possible. 

P.P.S. We all talk euphemistically when talking about our vulva/vagina/clitoris and that's fine, I'm fine with discretion. But when you're on a cable talk show you're talking to a live audience and at least 400 (What, like you watch George Lopez?) home viewers. If discretion was ever to be used, wouldn't it be during a televised interview with a stranger? But if you're gonna go your route shouldn't you own your body and the accompanying terminology?  Especially if you're bragging about how fucking empowered it made you feel to cover your genitals with crystals. Va-jay-jay is not empowering, it's Oprah's beef curtains getting pinched by a harness. Oh, what? Now you're shy? How about being shy with those ivory ankle boots and never let them out of your closet again? Them shits is dross. If you're gonna be stupid on TV at least have the decency to do it in good shoes.

spun out by the Fates

Maybe it's my own issues about aging that makes this 25 minute long interview with Isaac Mizrahi seem undervalued. Really? Less than 4600 people in 8 months have watched it? No one sits down and listens to speeches or symposiums on minutia anymore, to the detriment of our entire species. Everyone is now dumber for lacking the patience to take in knowledge properly and not just get the Cliffs Notes. Continued and applied interest in any one thing is now is passé. 

I can't twitter/facebook because this shit is still way more interesting than anything I've ever encountered on either of those sites. Ever. This is the internet we were promised, a cultural library, not the Forever 21 of 140 character musings it has become. If that opinion makes me stodgy then I am unapologetically so. Why must twitter be so ugly and visually hard to scan?  I feel like I'm reading texts from last night.  I hate them, they make me feel dumb and make people I like in real life seem deplorably shallow and stupid.

I will not dance as fast as I can to keep current like other aged bloggers vampirically sucking the life out of new media and baby bloggers as though they were a pagan feast. Get thee to a nunnery you Lady Bathorys. I'll stay over in my corner watching BBC2 panel show uploads on youtube whilst y'all are twittering about Rodarte or whatever alienating new trend you kids have latched onto with a lampreyish zeal this week only to discard it a week later like you do with everything in the entire world. Kids are the worst.

spike lee and phillip glass and stephen hawking and the dazzling jerry ohrbach

Why hasn't someone put the Mike Douglas show on DVD? I'd buy that for a dollar.

This is so great, Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera doing some proto-Chicago dance numbers and then Barney Miller walks in and then Mike Douglas talks to them about theater. Gwen's lookin' pretty rough to be playing an aging ingenue but I'll give her a pass because she's got great taste in men and clothes.

Have Love Will Travel

Hey, this documentary is amaze-balls. It's just the thing to watch after all that holiday bullshit. It four hours of proof that we're sheep taught to want things we don't need and justify it for the ego boost it provides. It's makes my brain say "no shit Sherlock," but then there's that lasting nagging dread in my stomach that makes me assess every latte purchase like it was the last 3 bucks in the entire world. If every purchase was put up to that amount of scrutiny then I'd never buy anything. Although it's hard not to feel like you're playing into some giant manipulation for even wanting the latte in the first place even before viewing this. It's too long for anyone to actually sit there and watch it like I did but it puts all the hype about Mad Men in perspective. Mad Men came 40 years too late and wasn't nearly as groundbreaking as we are led to believe by Mr. Weiner. Edward Bernays was Don Draper without the panty-dropper charm. He was molding the public's perception of everything from presidential candidates to soap as early as 1917. Gross. On a similar tip, Dan Ariely wrote a book called Predictably Irrational a couple of years ago about how consumer decisions are made. (It's a quick read, I read it on a plane ride.) This documentary worked in tandem with the book by explaining how the consumer is manipulated and how the consumer in turn manipulates the market with emotionally unpredictable reactions.  I recommend both but I know that you will do neither because there is shit to be bought and photographed for pure pleasurable blogissism!

The documentary faultily credits the hippie movement with being immune to consumer culture but boomers always do that, they always pat themselves on the back for everything they've ever done or not done, whatever the case may be. Keep sucking your own cocks you big bunch of assholes, I can't wait for you all to die.

Superior VC

I love this duo. This interview finally shows what Sophie Buhai is bringin' to the Vena Cava table. She seems more introspective about her inspiration. A fellow believer in granny fashwon, finally! 

Tell us how you came to own this precious object. 

"After cleaning her house a few years ago, my great aunt gave me my great grandfather, John L. Brown's, custom-made alligator shoes. She told me to 'never let any of my boyfriends wear them' for fear I would never get them back. There is something very personal about someone's shoes, especially a custom-made pair that have been worn for years and years.

John L. Brown was the kind of man who wore a three-piece-suit every day, smoked a pipe, and, in his later years, used a cane. He had emigrated from Poland at the turn of the century and worked his way up as a stock broker in Detroit during the 1920's. 

When the stock market crashed, a client who owed him money gave him a bowling alley to pay off his debt. He spent the rest of his life, until the very end, running bowling alleys throughout Michigan. He was a wonderful great grandfather and took me to work with him whenever I would visit."

How do you live with your heirloom?     

"The shoes sit in my bedroom on a wood bench with a few other pretty objects. They remind me of some sort of Joseph Beuys sculpture. Also, I like that they are well-worn and were stitched by hand to repair the seams."

Who in your life has most influenced your personal style and taste? 
 

"I used to watch my mother get dressed to go out in the 1980's and it totally influenced my aesthetic. During the day, she would wear khaki pleated front, high-waist shorts, and black off-the-shoulder leotards, a French twist, navy bandannas, and Betty Davis clip-on sunglasses. It was sort of a 1940's glamorous camp counselor look. At night, she would always wear red lipstick, a French twist, a black cocktail dress from Loehmann's back room, opium perfume, and Mexican silver jewelry from the 1930's. 

My grandmother and her sisters were also big influences. They were early pioneers of minimalist fashion in the 1960's. Everything was oversized and in brown and black. They were big on modern jewelry and the fiber art movement of the 1970's. I loved their dark, eccentric style. I always try to copy their outfits and taste in jewelry. That kind of style looks really amazing on younger women."

[Fill in the blank] Whenever I look at __"really old people"    I can't help but smile. 

"They always have the most intense personal style that has been refined after years and years of getting dressed. Even if it's bad, they are confident in what they like. I like people that have seven pairs of the same shoe. I enjoy the way the old women on the Upper West Side in Manhattan dress. They wear the same clothes they've owned for the past 30 years mixed in with orthopedic shoes and jewelry from exotic trips."

What's the best part of your day? 

"I like meeting a friend for lunch. I don't do this every day, but I enjoy sharing a Bánh Mi Vietnamese sandwich on a stoop, with someone I know well, talking about T.V. shows and Netflix queues."
 
What was the most memorable gift you've ever given or received? 

"My dad took me to an RV show for my birthday in the early 1980's. It was a completely random outing and ended up being utterly fascinating."

What was your last purchase that you believe (or hope) will mean something to you 10 years from now? 

"I bought my first piece of art a week ago. It's a black and white watercolor that looks like some sort of mystical totem pole. I got it from artist Denise Kupferschmidt's studio in Brooklyn. The painting makes me feel like an ex-pat living in Paris who has just discovered a young artist on the verge of fame. I'm trying to stop buying clothes and start buying inexpensive art that friends of mine are making."
  

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Erudite--brainy ladies.

What we need is more of this:

 

 

 

 

The Vena Cava girls are fun, even when talking to Anne "I eat air for breakfast" Slowey. They're engaging and weird and not so desperately interested in being sexy all the time. Who wants that pressure? 

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