Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: blog love, mount eerie, outfit of the day
The weather is so good! Warm weather makes me want to read about depressing things like the depressing similarity of situation in all of the short stories in Last Evenings on Earth. I’d rather have the shivers when it’s warm out. Today, I’ll probably stay in and be good and work like a husk of corn trying to wake up. Even though, I went nuts a few weeks ago and bought myself ‘back-to-school’ clothes (a justification for shopping that shouldn’t apply to me) I’ve only been wanting to wear this one dress. I got it from White Rabbit, a second-hand and indie designer store in town. I love the iridescent buttons and the sailor inspired collar and shape. I’ve been wearing non-stop my loafers that I bought from Etsy seller Lisazain, but this weekend I pulled out my favorite boots that I bought in San Francisco, almost three years ago, after I decided I needed to leave San Francisco and change my life (uh, did I do that?)
I’ve also been carrying this one bag around like crazy even on days when I have to carry my big honking geeked-out bookbag that breaks my back every time. I got it from an antique and secondhand store in town and it has the most amazing tooling and the most amazing (raised) horses on one side. I clearly don’t have the vocabulary to describe this bag so I’ll show you a close-up soon and maybe you can help school me.
Michael has been taking all of my photos for me, except on days when I pile a stack of French, Chinese, and English dictionaries on each other and try to use it as my ‘tripod.’ (I desperately need some better gear.) I think it was his idea to have me plop down here. This is the parking lot for one of the three churches I’m surrounded by. Sometimes, I feel the tiniest bit of envy when I walk past one of the churches at night, and I see a bunch of people eating and chatting and kids running around. But mostly, the people who park in this parking lot have bratty kids and sometimes shout loudly about Iowa football games.
Blue dress (White Rabbit in Iowa City); Embroidered campus boots (BCBG); Tooled handbag (Artifacts in Iowa City); Rainbow bracelet (gift from Michael bought from a street stall in Lisbon); teardrop earrings (garage sale from the days when my mom and I drove around Flushing looking for cheap baubles and jewels)
I went to the Mount Eerie show last night in a basement underneath Subway Sandwiches, and it was transcendent. My camera ran out of batteries before I could take pictures, but Phil Elverum had these two gongs onstage, and I kept thinking they would make a lovely necklace (in a smaller size so you don’t have to break your neck and spine for fashion.) You can listen to the whole album here (scroll to the bottom.) I pretty much have to listen to the last three songs with my eyes closed.
Lastly, our 200th post is coming up quick quick quickly! Even though I feel really shameful about the quality of my blog posts and I feel so new to blogging, it’s been the most fun co-blogging with Meggy on FFW. The best part, just as everyone says, is the community and the love and sharing. An example: reading this crazy-intelligent-perceptive-astute-right-on post (and part 1, part 2) from Threadbared warmed my heart (& also thanks for the props!) It hit on so many important and difficult questions and issues about the world of fashion/style blogging.
Stay tuned for our 200th post–there’s some sweet and spicy stuff being cooked up right now. I think you’ll like it lots.
Love, Jenny
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: books, minorities in publishing, publisher's weekly, sexism, sexism in publishing, tony tulathimutte, top 10
This post is a guest post from Tony Tulathimutte, our friend (and writer) who has some thoughts that we thought would be worth sharing about this year’s Publisher’s Weekly Top 10.
I kind of hate this picture. -mw
I wrote this in response to my friend Vanessa’s request for my take on this article, which is about the outcry over this year’s all-male PW Top Ten Best Books list:https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:CampaignPublic/id:1401285.6538198957/rid:5f69f4e1bec8e463e35aefa189df62cb
——
First I want to make it clear that it’s clear: the publishing industry is sexist, as all industries are sexist, as America—Home of the Whopper—is sexist; and then the rest of the world, by and large, is even moreso. I don’t think anyone should be surprised by now when this kind of brazen thing happens in public forums, so the main question is, What’s the proper response to a purely gestural inequality?
It’s completely appropriate to lament the clear imbalance, and to point out certain things about the biases of the PW as a hidebound establishment et cetera, but if anyone’s making the assertion that the whole system is this intractable phallolith under whose shadow women and minorities just can’t ever get a fair shake, then what should we make of last year’s list, which includes five women (still only a fifth of the 25 total honorees, but still better than zero) and five minorities (ditto)? That the biases are always there, but wax and wane? That there were more women on the committee that year? And what connections can we make—as make them we must—to the Obama Effect? The critique of “the system” loses a lot when you’re obliged to limit your critique to the handful of people, including at least one woman, who made the call for a particular list in a particular year.
I have an inherent (probably kneejerk) distrust of any measure whose primary intent is to shove the pendulum of public taste in a certain direction, even for purposes of rectification. A bias is a bias, after all, and I don’t see how the outburst of reactionary blogging and counterlisting (the top ten writers—all female!) is supposed to be any fairer or more clear-sighted than the original list. I personally must consider that, when I’m being honest with myself, my own personal top ten consists of nine white men and a white woman (Nabokov, Bellow, Tolstoy, Coetzee, Sontag, Norman Rush, Martin Amis, David Foster Wallace, Alasdair Gray), and don’t think that that doesn’t cause me any discomfort as a non-white writer.
Not enough weight is being given to this acknowledgment that taste is subjective, and that list-making, as an unnuanced and inherently exclusionary form (not enough women! Not enough minorities! Not enough genre fiction! Not enough poetry! Not enough translations! Not enough small press! Not enough criticism! Not enough science writing!), is incredibly subjective. Those who are in charge of giving out the award aren’t under any obligation to dole it out in any way that anyone considers fair, and the writer of this article herself admits that “best” is deeply subjective, so I wonder why anyone should be so surprised that subjectivity would carry with it the deep gender bias that you can practically inhale whenever you open a window. Wherever it is that artistic taste comes from, it sure isn’t the spirit of fairness. Nobody’s arguing, anyway, that it’d be a good thing if Publisher’s Weekly gave out awards based on what it thought the public would find most demographically pleasing; and so then what is the alternative? Purge the sexists from the editorial committees? But what if the committee appointers are sexist, racist, literary chauvinists, et cetera? You see how quickly this becomes hopeless.
Suffice it at last to say that I think it’s idiotic to let someone else dictate your tastes to you. Books, in particular, are experienced individually—who cares what they think? The only function a Best-Of list serves for me is as a crib-sheet on the listmaker’s inclinations; if I trust that listmaker, I may be inclined to look into some of the books, and even then only to see whether or not I’d like it. But why would I trust Publisher’s Weekly? Why do I care about this list? I don’t even know those people.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: etsy store, kathleen hanna, my beautiful best friend, not laughing at what other people laugh at, permanent vacation, sunny day, toots and maytals, white dress
It’s seventy degrees out! I need to get my poontang outside. I’m so grateful for this sunshine, especially knowing that I have five solid months of winter ahead of me. I’m talking about days when I’m giddy if the weather forecasts highs in the single digits. This isn’t the outfit I wore today to dilly dally in the sun today, but I wanted to post my fixation with white dresses in the form of this perfect cotton dress from Permanent Vacation (there is a very chill picture of a nice horse on their website right now.) Here’s another dress I wore a few weeks ago when it was in the 70s.
I think I look angry because sometimes, I’m angry! I got the dress from my favorite vintage thrift store in San Francisco. Sometimes, I have dreams that someone placed a burrito with extra guacamole and extra spicy salsa from Mariachi’s Tacqueria in San Francisco and also four heaping tacos with extra cilantro from the outdoor taco stand on 24th and Treat Street that no longer exists, and in the dream I keep trying to shove the burrito into my mouth, but because dreams are assholes, I never get to taste a single bite, and sometimes in my dream I go into my favorite thrift store in San Francisco and I see racks and racks of beautiful white sundresses and I try to pull a dress off the hanger but the dress falls to the floor or it won’t budge or whatever, but no matter what, I can’t seem to get the dress into my hands. Anyway, that’s how much I love the tacos and vintage dresses in San Francisco. All of this is to say this white dress is from the vintage store of my dreams, and it ties in the back and has really pretty embroidery on the bust. Here’s a close-up:
All of this white makes me think of John Berryman’s pessimism (or is it just flip optimism) and the line, “It was wet & white & swift and where I am/ we don’t know. It was dark and then/ it isn’t.”
Or how about, from Dreamsong 14:
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatedly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have noInner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
Whenever I read that poem, I always think of the Le Tigre song, “The The Empty.” I remember being so moved by that song when I first heard it. I probably listened to it twenty times a day for half a year. There’s a lovely interview with Kathleen Hanna in Index Magazine where she talks a bit about the impulse behind the song lyrics:
I’ll watch Adam Sandler movies, I’m not above it. But at the same time, I couldn’t get into it. I felt like I had no sense of humor. And I didn’t even see American Beauty, because I knew it was going to be about this middle-aged man and this woman who, because she has a career, she’s like cutting off his penis, and therefore he is forced to have fantasies about this 16-year-old girl. It was the same with Election. I kind of like Reese Witherspoon, and she played a really interesting character who’s this control-freak, perfectionist person, but then it was overlaid with all these adult men fantasizing about adolescent girls. And I was like, it’s the same in every fucking movie. The fact that people like this stuff makes me feel really alienated, so I don’t feel like a part of popular culture ever. In our song “The The Empty,” that was the point — “I went to your comedy club and I didn’t laugh at any of your jokes” — feeling that sense of alienation and thinking we have to make something that we think is funny.
Thankfully, right now my heart is pretty full. I’m really excited about the items I just posted to my Etsy store, and also the items I’m working on uploading today. These two long-sleeved dresses are my favorite right now:
Crazy beautiful bell-sleeved velvet burnout cocktail dress from the 60s/70s.
Crazy cute peter pan collar long-sleeved plaid dress (to open presents in!)
The 30s/40s blue silk dress I showed you guys earlier this week.
My favorite skirt this week. And also a pink ruffle shirt and mustard cardigan that I couldn’t help wearing out just once (to buy groceries!)
And guess what else has been at the source of my full heart? I have a new model for my vintage store! She’s one of my best friends, and one of the finest, most supremely talented writers I know. The cherry on top of my awesome blossom flotsom sundae? My vintage dresses love her so much. The evidence:
Lipstick red 80’s dress. I’m pretty sure Kelly Taylor wore something like this at some point in the first season.
I made her wear all of my flirtiest cocktail dress. Here’s the backside of an off-the-shoulders, 80’s lace cocktail dress!
This lace dress and all the other dresses are available at my Etsy store: Unhappybarber’s Vintage
I’ll try to show less of my mug and more of hers as I keep adding things to the store. I’m bursting at my badly thought out metaphorical seams to show you the rest of the photos, but I’ll try to restrain myself and only give you this sneaky taste, for now, of my beautiful friend and the clothes she modeled for me.
Also, if you are in a sunny place (internal or external,) you’d be a fool not to listen to the Toots and the Maytals.
As Meggy would say: You’re welcome.
Love, Jenny
Filed under: Uncategorized
Do you think that this dress will fit me? Can I wear it to my reading in February?
The Getup Vintage (215 S. State Street, Ann Arbor; 734 327 4300) has the best vintage in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I say that not just because people Googling “best vintage Ann Arbor” will come upon this blog post and discover the wonder that is The Getup, but because it’s totally true. Part of me cringes at sharing this information because I worry that someone will swoop in and carry out all of the totally affordable 30s day-dresses, but I guess that’s just part of the risk of being a fashion blogger with a heart of gold, y’know?
If you’ve ever checked out my Outfit of the Day posts and I’m wearing some sassy dress that makes your heart sing, it’s probably a dress that I scored at the Getup. When I’m stressed out after teaching or when my heart hurts or when my brain hurts, a common salve to my ails is to head there and just browse. Kelly, the co-owner (see below for an adorable photo of her), never gives me trouble for trying on a million dresses, even if I don’t buy anything on that particular day (though I often do). One terribly sad thing about returning to the San Francisco Bay Area after I graduate this year is that affordable vintage is way scarcer, if not impossible, to find, back where I’m from.
Is that a fur headpiece I spy?
Hello, cutie!
And yes, they carry bro-clothes, too. Tough as nails.
Could Kelly be any cuter? Anyone? No?
xo, mw
P.S.
Couldn’t justify doing a separate Outfit of the Day post. Boots (Getup), dress (Liebemarlene Vintage)
Filed under: Uncategorized
This is me in my office. Yes, it is a mess, and no, I didn’t create any of the mess; it was like this when I got here. I share this particular office in the English department with two other young women. I barely see them. Note the crooked shelves and the computer that I don’t use. On my desk is the leather backpack I scored from Etsy at a very reasonable price; it stores way more than it should. I fear for its skinny straps.
I received my “new” camera in the mail today. Unfortunately, it seems to be giving me a semi-regular error message, and I’m afraid of having to return it to the seller. (If anyone out there is a Canon 5D expert, please contact me.) My brain has been hurting lately from all of my late-night writing, so it was a thrill to use a different part of it with picture-taking this morning.
As soon as I exited my apartment, I witnessed the following:
Anyway. What I really meant to talk about in this post was my gray uniform as of late. Gala Darling spoke recently of the fall-to-winter uniform, and I’ve hit upon mine. Take any vintage dress. Throw over it a Dunderson gray cardigan-dress. Wear tights or leggings. Wrap a scarf around your neck. Voila! Considering how little sleep I’ve been getting lately, having a gray uniform is a rather lovely concept for getting dressed in ten minutes or less.
shoes from etsy, cheap gray tights, bcbg secretary dress with a ruffly collar, dunderson gray cardigan-dress that goes with anything at all, borrowed chloe sevigny for opening ceremony scarf from lydia, lipstick queen red lipstick
xo, mw
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: appropriation, aswang, cantonese opera, claude levi-strauss, dior, female badasses, florals, galliano, kumiho, kwishin, maximalism, outsider art
Collage by Adolf Wölfli from here
Watercolor of an Aswang, a Filipino baby-snatcher who swoops into houses at night and drinks your baby’s blood with her entrails flap flap flapping behind her(!) Lynda Barry is always writing about Aswangs, so they must be the shit. This watercolor was painted by the astounding Hellen Jo, available for purchase here!
Claude Levi-Strauss passed away a few days ago, and in light of some of the things crisscrossing the blurry patterns of my days and weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about questions of primitivism and sophistication–the beyond messed-up ways those terms have been constructed and applied. I’ve been thinking about the different forms of rage and insanity (Artaud’s raging and his insanity, at best, amuses me, but when I was a union organizer +/when I was a homeless organizer in San Francisco, the rage I encountered always broke my heart (to the dismay of my friends who probably thought I was a complete downer),) the idea of outsider art and how it privileges the outsider individual and excludes more meaningful notions of outsider-ness. Reading amazing blogs like Mimi & Minh-ha’s Threadbared always awakens the part of me that wishes my undergraduate days didn’t nauseate me from pursuing further academic study (ps, hi my MFA program, you aren’t a place of academic study, and you’re located in a freezing place,) so that I could better articulate myself on things that matter to me. Reading about the passing of Claude Levi-Strauss, especially this thoughtful obituary and this not-so-good whatever obituary, makes me yearn a little bit for academic institutions, or maybe just the 1% of the people who make academic institutions inspiring.
It also reminds me that a good amount of my fashion inspiration comes through contact with other cultures, other art forms, other ideas and images that are not necessarily generated from the terrain of fashion. Hopefully my inspiration does not come in the form of icky appropriation–Madonna, DIE, Gwen Stefani, your awful bindi and actually using Japanese girls as props for you, please die at least a little?
I’ve been watching Cantonese opera at my school library and online. Will you just look at these costumes?
Screencaps from this youtube clip
My Chinese isn’t good enough to tell you the name of this opera, and I don’t understand a lick of what’s going on, but how chill are those ladies standing stiff as trees with the amazing yellow tassels and the blue silk floor-length robes? Look at the shape of those lines created by the yellow against the blue, the intricate embroidery, the amazing flags behind the main gal’s head. I’d really like to go around wearing trembling flags behind my head and also I’d love to own some dresses in that shade of blue. I’m really into the idea of wearing something as insanely frilly and extravagant as the gowns these three are wearing and also holding a sword upright against your shoulder. Maybe because it reminds me a little of Qiu Jin, the Chinese feminist and revolutionary:
Or maybe it reminds me of my grandparents’ wedding photo:
They got married I think somewhere up in Heilongjiang, the coldest province in China (how many layers of clothing do you think they are wearing in that photo?) My grandfather is dressed up in his soldier’s uniform here, and my grandmother is also wearing pretty standard garb for women. She was active in the national feminist movement, and I like to think of her wielding a DAGGER like Qiu Jin.
I somehow have it in my head that there was a collection by Dolce & Gabbana many years ago (maybe in the late 90’s) that was very similar to the costumes worn by Chinese opera singers. This brocade coat that Claire Danes is wearing here (with the impish Leo!) at the premiere of Romeo and Juliet might be from the collection I’m thinking of:
from Life.com
Can anyone ID this coat or have any idea what I’m talking about? Of course, there’s so much to explore when it comes to Western designers appropriating ideas from the rest of the world. It distresses me that Western designers can have as many influences as possible and still be original, but fashion from the rest of the world is always ‘borrowing’ or ‘imitating’ or ‘deeply influenced by’ or ‘learning from’ American and European fashion.
I’m way too clumsy to lay out my thoughts on that topic, but this blog post by Mimi is a super good treatment of the issue of ‘influence’ and ‘inspiration’ when it comes to fashion. I especially like this statement:
Whatever the “controversial” garment or pattern in question –harem pants, kimonos, Indonesian batik– it circulates throughout political, social and cultural discourses that precedes the designer, that the designer does not author and is not their point of origin.
That statement shares a beautiful cosmic kinship to Strauss and his proclamation: “The ‘I’ is hateful.”
Does anyone remember the Pocahontas Collection by Dior in 1998? I think it was generally poorly received and taunted. This collection makes me want to turn into a punch factory so that all of my working arms and limbs can lay down the smack. Galliano! What the rotten egg splat is wrong with you!
From www.thefashionspot.com, more here
On a more positive note, I’m loving maximalist tendencies and florals upon florals. Maybe I’m suffering from some sort of horror vacui…
Another drawing by Adolf Wölfli from here
I visited Istanbul two summers ago, and I was really struck by all of the florals and blue tile mosaics in many of historic buildings. I wish I had some good photos to show you, but all of my photos came out terrible as usual. Here are some from flickr:
Blue tile mosaic in the Topkapi Palace harem in Istanbul, Turkey from geo boy’s flickr
More blue tiles from Chris Alsup’s flickr
And I’ve been feeling inspired by violent, vengeful (aka awesome) female spirits like these ones from Hellen Jo’s Asian ghost watercolors series:
The Kwishin spirits who sit on your chest while you sleep and paralyze you when you wake!
The man-eating Kumiho inspired me to write a poem making fun of Western male mystics
The white robes of the Kwishin are very much in line with my desire to wear white all the time. And um, foxtails on naked female spirits feasting on the guts of a man? Pretty neat.
Love, Jenny
Filed under: Uncategorized
I feel like a turtle! I should not be writing a blog post right now. I used to go around calling my short story collection, I Was a Turtle. Last April, on the day my MFA thesis was day, I ran into the Graduate College at 4:49, a minute before they closed the doors and I dumped my entire manuscript on the office lady’s desk, and she gasped and then I gasped and said, “Oh my god, did I do something wrong?” because there are at least 2342 rules that you have to follow in the formatting of your MFA thesis in order to graduate and I have a bad history of messing up big-time on all things formatting, and also I have a history of waiting until the last minute and then something goes wrong and then it’s too late to fix it, and I was standing there with the sweatiest, most gaspy face ever and then it turned out this women had only gasped because it just so happened she had always wanted to be a turtle and also all the other theses were titled, “The Wan Meadow,” or “A Study of Yak Yak Yak in Yak Yak Ya Field,” or you know, things like that. “I want to be a turtle. Did you like being a turtle?” That was her way of joking with my sweaty face.
Today I got so little done even though I was non-stop working. And now I have so much to do still! I only managed to get four things into my Etsy store tonight, but they are four of my favorite things. I have so many more fancier frocks that I can’t wait to put into the store. If your heart didn’t melt even the tiniest bit at the sight of the green jeweled sixties shift dress, or the amazing linen turtleneck dress with diamond cut-outs, or the super glamorous 30s/40s style silk cocktail dress, then your heart is clearly not made of mozzarella cheese! (Mine is, by the way.) Here’s a close-up of the green dress:
Here’s a super sweet nautical sweater that I was finally able to load into my Etsy shop:
And a houndstooth jumper and a shirt/dress with a Peter Pan collar!
And finally, inspired by Meggy, I made a little video of a 50’s party frock that I was going to put into the store but I love it too much to let go! I despise being so greedy.
Also PS, unlike Meggy’s video, mine is not classy–even though the dress is!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: edith frost, interior design, living room
Untitled from meggy wang on Vimeo.
A video of my living room, and an Edith Frost song. So this is how, in part, I spent my Halloween.
xo,
mw
Filed under: Uncategorized
Six notes, with accompanying photos, about writing a blog post about the simple, high-quality, and relatively affordable In Fashion Co., Ltd:
1.) It is exceedingly difficult to do a Google search about a brand called “In Fashion.” Consider this problem if you ever start your own fabulous clothing label. The same rule applies to: band names, book titles, etc. — I’m wondering if the title of my novel is going to send people to porno sites.
2.) Increasing the difficulty of this task is the fact that the In Fashion Co. website does not make for easy right-click image saving. Even my CaptureMe! software can’t keep up with the quick-flashing pictures of serious-looking ladies.
3.) In Fashion Co. has the most amazing sewn-in clothing labels I have ever seen, as I can attest to because encountering their store this summer in Taiwan was like happening upon a sartorial gold mine, and I ended up leaving the country with not a few pieces, all of which had a giant tag sewn inside that reads:
In the long history of modern tourism one element is changing
They leave and create to remain the emotion
To create a piece of clothing
Is to create a piece of art
Design is your passion
carry you to success.
My mother, who turned me on to this particular brand, thinks that their labels are the ultimate in poetry. As a non-native English speaker, she asked me (several times) what the clothing labels meant.
4.) I have no idea.
5.) The best clothes that In Fashion Co. makes aren’t on their website. Still, I find the blue-and-white dress (not pictured) especially inspirational. Is that the semblance of four sleeves I see?
6.) As far as I can tell, In Fashion Co. is only available in Taiwan. List of stores here.
All photos from http://www.in-store.com.tw/.
xo, mw
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 80's dresses, apollinaire's cloud, brenda walsh, buckle boots, cage crinoline, etsy store, kelly taylor, meg march, vintage dresses
Shoes from left to right: booties with cut-outs on the sides, double-strap mary janes, high-heeled oxfords, red suede ankle boots with ties, knee-high buckle boots, vintage Dexter riding boots, blue ankle strap heels. Most of these are only for picture-taking purposes, but the buckle boots are going into the store.
I’ve been very, very slowly organizing my studio into a space for my Etsy store. (There’s nothing there yet, and also is it absurd that my shop is called ‘Unhappy Barber’s Vintage’? I know the answer already.) Not everything in these photos will be for sale (the sailor dress I’m keeping!) But I had to hang up some dresses as quickly as possible because the white walls and bare bulbs in that room were making me feel squeezed from all sides.
Here’s a shy taste/look at some of the vintage dresses I’m selling and a blurry photo of a candy-achy sweet sailor sweater. (I apologize for these terrible photos! It’s my low-rent camera and ne’er do well techniques.)
tiny flowers babydoll dress + dark brown knee-high boots with buckles for the swashbuckling lady around town
40’s style blue polka dot dress + feather earrings
the first non-blurry photo: 80’s black cocktail dress with white satin tie-front (I’m wearing it backwards, it’s meant to have a scoop neck front)
and back to blurry: nautical sweater, sailor dress, button-up dress
There’s tons more, but I think I’ve already damaged myself from washing fourteen loads of laundry, handwashing a bunch of dresses and sweaters, and ironing for the first time. My problem is that I have a rickety ironing stand and I was born to trip and drop things. While I was ironing, I kept thinking I was going to drop the iron on my foot and then in fifty years, if I have grandchildren and they ask why my feet are so mangled, instead of having a bad-ass story involving backflips and one-punch victories, I’ll have to tell them about ironing vintage dresses for my etsy store.
I actually have two black and white cocktail dresses for the store (the other is shorter with a white scoop collar) that totally remind me of the episode of 90210 when Brenda and Kelly wear the SAME BLACK AND WHITE DRESS. Egads! But they work it out by yelling at each other and then flanking Donna and her amazing off-the-shoulder big poofy red ruffled dress with CAGE CRINOLINE for a photo. I think the writers of 90210 might have been channeling Meg March when they put Tori Spelling in that dress. Remember the one chapter in Little Women when Meg goes to some fancy ball and then Jo accidentally singes Meg’s hair with a curling iron and then Meg complains about having a plain dress and then her Super Rich Friend loans her a ball gown?
They laced her into a sky-blue dress, which was so tight she could hardly breathe and so low in the neck that modest Meg blushed at herself in the mirror. A set of silver filigree was added, bracelets, necklace, brooch, and even earrings, for Hortense tied them on with a bit of pink silk which did not show. A cluster of tea-rose buds at the bosom and a ruche, reconciled Meg to the display of her pretty white shoulders, and a pair of high-heeled blue silk boots satisfied the last wish of her heart.
If that bit of fashion smut wasn’t enough to turn you feral, here’s a description of the accessories, “A lace handkerchief, a plumy fan, and a bouquet in a silver holder finished her off.”
Wouldn’t it be so fun to show up to a dance party holding a plumy fan?
Some person: It’s too warm in here.
You with the plumy fan: Here, let me fan you with my plumy fan!
Some person: Thanks, you’re a great lady.
You with the plumy fan: (Fanning furiously.)
I remember seriously coveting Meg’s ballgown when I first read Little Women. I had a really lovely illustrated edition that my mom gave to me and sometimes I would skip school and hide in the bathroom (both my parents worked during the day but we shared the house with another family who had an elderly nanny and she sometimes came downstairs to use our kitchen) so I could reread Little Women unfettered. I’m pretty sure flipping through the illustrations of Meg in her ballgown marked the first time I truly appreciated cleavage. When Meg confesses to Jo that she’s been shamefully waltzing around and flirting and flashing her ample bosom at every swinging bachelor, I thought, ‘What’s the big deal?’ I’ll have to scan some pictures when I go back home to New York so you all can appreciate Meg March’s cleavage as well.
Little Women aside, I’ve been spending all my time preparing to open up my Etsy store (and also: translating poems from Chinese into English, dropping huge blocks of cheese on the floor more than three times in one hour, working wretchedly and slowly as a drowning turtle on my writing, throwing out hundreds and hundreds of pages of old manuscripts–sorry trees, sorry world–reading more than 150 pages of student writing–sorry myself–listening to U Ba Than and wishing I had a great skill, like say being astounding at harp, and um, trying to learn 8,000 years of Chinese history–hello three walls of books in the school library, volumes 1-161 of which I’ve read the first ten pages of volume 5.)
I learned a new word today: shambolic. I think it means to be in shambles, which is what I am. I still have to sit down with my Chinese word processor and dictionary and finish translating some poems, and it’s already so late! And get going on a pile of clothes that need ironing. (And also learn how to iron!) My hands are chapped and I’ve been listening to Nico while ironing.
Do you want to stare at Nico’s face while she wonderfully exaggerates all of her syllables? Here she is:
Tomorrow or the next day, I’ll share with you: two white dresses, two dresses I’m lusting after, cross-dressing opera singers in layers and layers of silk sleeves (!!), and maybe maybe maybe my etsy store will be up and running by then.
Love, Jenny
