Filed under: Uncategorized
Photo from Mandate of Heaven’s Spring ‘08 American Dreamers collection. Will you look at that vintage lace?
Surprise, another random jumble of pictures and thoughts blog post. Or, in other words, the only type of post I know how to write. Now that the weather is dreary again and the sun is only around until noon, I can’t stop dreaming of short shorts and halter tops and bared midriffs and sunglasses and peep toe sandals. Whenever I start feeling this way I always end up spending way too much time ogling the clothes on Mandate of Heaven’s design blog. I first heard of Mandate of Heaven when I went to the–are you ready–WARPED TOUR in 2008 with my brother. I promise you I wasn’t there to see the bands: The Devil Wears Prada, Gym Class Heroes, or Me and You and Everyone We Know. I was there with my brother so that he didn’t have to go with my mom. (Love you, mom!)
My brother didn’t want to be seen with me at all, understandably, so I spent eight hours walking around, staring at fourteen year olds wearing shirts that said, I LOVE EMO BOYS or, HATE EMOS LOVE METAL GRLS, which made me giggle/feel depressed all at once. My only savior was waiting to see Gil Mantera’s Party Dream (one of the best live bands ever and here’s the evidence) to come onto this tiny little stage next to the skate rink. I was maybe one of five people there who had actually heard of them. (Hey Gil Mantera’s Party Dream, how did you end up at the same Warped Tour as me?) Gil Mantera was a mindgasp of goodness, of course, but even more amazing? The posse of girls in adorable rompers dancing to the band that played before Gil Mantera. This one girl was wearing a cornflower blue romper with a HUGE hood, and this other girl was wearing an accordion pleated silk pink romper with a tiny halter and green chucks. I was only able to get a back shot, but don’t they look wonderful? I found out later that they were wearing Mandate of Heaven.
(Photo credit: me & I’m sorry for lecherously taking a photo of your outfits!)
My favorite fashion blogs are the ones that focus on pretty or extra cute vintage clothing, or blogs that feature high street and affordable brands remixed with vintage, but it’s rare to find a (good) fashion blog that showcases–should I use this slightly gross word–sexy clothing. I kind of love over the top, obscenely revealing clothing, and it’s not that I like dressing that way all the time, or that I have places to go in such clothes, but I just love the idea of stepping out and baring your legs/arms/shoulders/midriff/butt cleavage/regular cleavage for no reason, or going out in a pair of flimsy shorts that might accidentally fly up when you’re running errands, and not in a sad, planned, trainwreck celebrity type of way, but in a joyful, it feels fucking good to wear what I want kind of way.
I think that’s why I love Mandate of Heaven’s clothing so much. I love their flirty, generously short playsuits (all made from recycled vintage fabrics!) Like this gorgeous long-sleeved playsuit with a floral Peter Pan collar from their Winter 08 collection:
I love the materials they use. I never thought burlap, feedsack and old bedsheets could be so lovely:
Right: Burlap, cotton and nylon tulle minidress with boned bodice and removable straps; left: Cotton feedsack and iridescent cotton recycled bedsheet playsuit with removable grosgrain straps.
I’m also loving the stop motion videos on their blog, like this one, which begins with the Neutral Milk Hotel song that, ever since Meggy’s wedding last summer, will always remind me of the double doors opening and seeing Meggy dressed like a dream maiden in her wedding gown, walking down the aisle towards Chris. These stop motion videos have such a homemade, endearingly flawed quality to them that I can’t help but adore them. Although, I’m also equally charmed by the beautiful video Rhiannon recently posted on her blog, which contains the perfect symbiosis of impeccable professionalism and surprising whimsy.
I’m blister-crazy for the new Mandate collection. Will you just look at this!
(All photos from Mandate of Heaven’s Spring Ten Opiate collection, which according to their website was “produced in a fair wage environment in the USA from fine organic fabrics.” YES!)
When I checked my email this morning, I reconfirmed that my daily Refinery29 emails are kind of useless. Their 19 Holiday Party Dresses list was so uninspiring to me. And that’s how I often feel about fashion magazines and a lot of the really big fashion/style blogs (too wimpy to drop names here!) I’m just bored by how expected all of the photos and outfits and ideas and inspirations are. Even though these are three steps above polished turds, I would never really covet or desire anything like these dresses:
(From refinery29)
I’d so much rather wear a tiny playsuit constructed from vintage blue eyelet with a velvet peter pan collar, the shortest shorts, and a crown of flowers on my hair for the upcoming holiday parties.
Two years ago, I was obsessed with wearing one of the playsuits from Mandate of Heaven’s American Dreamers Spring ‘08 collection. Like maybe a ruffled button-up silk playsuit with pink scalloped tap shorts?
Or what about a low ruffle-back playsuit with mustard yellow booty shorts?
Or maybe just a simple tuxedo-front black and white playsuit with a Chaplin hat?
I never got one (didn’t happen to have hundreds of dollars at my disposal,) then freaked out the day of prom, had no idea what to wear, and ended up digging out this pink dress I bought ages ago at a vintage store in San Francisco.
(Photo taken by my friend Keija. Thanks lady!)
Anyway, could the whole point of this post really be to tell you that I finally ended up buying a Mandate of Heaven playsuit? You know, since winter in Iowa is just starting and in about a month this place will transform into a frozen tundra.
Love, Jenny
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: fashion is fun!, kurt cobain, kurt cobain in a dress, nirvana
Yes, this post is about Kurt Cobain; no, it’s not about how grunge is coming “back in vogue” (and no, I don’t actually believe in that trend, either) or how it has been coming back in vogue or how the 90s are the new 80s; no, this is not about the story I wrote for my Advanced Fiction Class in undergrad called “KC,” about a woman who had a teenaged boy, and how she was afraid that her fey son was gay and in love with Kurt Cobain and how the boy ran away on April 8, 1994, and the trials and tribulations she goes through trying to find him; no, this post is actually about something that come up from the dark recesses of my mind, which was my once-fascination with the idea of finding photographs of Kurt Cobain in dresses, and the strange sartorial choices he would sometimes make when wearing said dresses.
I’m not going to get into Kurt Cobain and his proclamations about feminism and gay pride and how his wearing dresses was supposed to be a statement towards those ends, which is a post for another blog and also would require access to materials that I don’t have access to right now (e.g. all of my Nirvana stuff, which is at my parents’ house), but I will start this post by saying that Kurt would sometimes go to interviews or photo shoots wearing dresses. And some of them were definitely better-looking than others.
This one is probably my favorite out of all the dresses I’m going to show you. Not so keen on the massive amounts of eyeliner, but I would definitely wear this one; it’s girly and reminds me of some of my 40s dresses in a good way, plus all of the cute red buttons put a smile on my face.
I actually used to have a video tape of this interview, which happened on “Headbanger’s Ball” (MTV, remember?). Wearing this dress is like being eaten by a giant yellow flower, but it is kind of awesome in its ridiculousness. And no, it would not be nearly as awesome without the satiny peacock-tail thing going on in the back.
Is this a wedding dress? I also can’t tell what decade it’s from. But it does seem to fit him pretty well. Look at that I’m Wearing A Wedding Dress Grin! Happiest day of his life! Etc.!
Okay, so this isn’t a dress, per se, but COME ON. I had to include it. Tyra would be proud.
xo, mw
Filed under: Uncategorized
Evening (or morning afternoon middle of the night) to you all. I’ve been a shut-in and there’s always the temptation to be more of a hermit crab than I already am. An eternal part of me wants to live on my own magic mountain cabin a la Aleksander Hemon.) I already missed last week’s Brenda Hillman, and seeing as there’s ten minutes to get to the Eileen Myles reading, I’ll probably end up missing that one too.
I still have last week’s Mount Eerie show in my head. The setlist consisted of every song on the new album, Wind’s Poem, which is a very apt soundtrack to these past few days. I wake up and drink coffee and feel frantic about the day’s to-do and then it’s dark and the wind outside sounds like a person with tape over their mouths trying to tell me something.
The band that opened for Mount Eerie was kind of awful. Maybe I was just embarrassed for the band because they reminded me of bands I used to like in high school like Jejune and Christie Front Drive and the Promise Ring and Jimmy Eat World. (I loved the song Lucky Denver Mint because a boy put it on a mixtape!) It’s embarrassing to admit that I still like those bands a lot, which might be the reason why I was slightly repulsed when the opening band for Mount Eerie ended up playing a set that was the hokey dollar bin sister to all of the already hokey bands I loved in high school. (I’m paranoid now that this band is going to read my blog post and send me a vitriolic email!) We ran out midway through the show and wandered through the halls and found a room with some cute art. Michael and I have a little debate over cute versus cutesy, and while we both think cutesy is always bad, he thinks sometimes ‘cute’ is also bad and often has insulting connotations when used to describe a work of art.
Vintage dress from Roulette Vintage, Marc Jacobs coat, Alexander Wang oxfords, Hansel from Basel tights, & vintage horse bag.
Some random thoughts throw into a short list:
+ Sometimes I feel really susceptible to other people’s opinions and even though that’s vague, it’s something that makes me feel trapped in a sad way.
+ Aurelia is a sad and frustrating book.
+ A lot of books are self-masturbatory but you aren’t supposed to point that out.
+ I got these beautiful velvet green bow clips (bottom left of my terrible collage) from the lovely Etsy shop: Little Red Fox, and totally stole the idea from the always lovely Gina and her always thoughtful and beautiful blog.
+ I wish I had upper body strength so I could play gongs for Mount Eerie. Don’t you think they are cool? (Bottom right, photo from Librarianguish’s flickr.)
Love, Jenny
Filed under: Uncategorized
My mom in front of paper dragons / Autumn in Shanghai
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!
Today, I want to say happy birthday to my mom! Not only because I love her so so much (so so much,) but also because, as I’ve already mentioned, my mom has always been and will continue to be my fashion inspiration. Without her, I would have never been the only fourth grader playing tag in a five tiered plaid skirt with a two layers of crinoline underneath. Without her, I would have never worn a cap sleeved orange denim jacket with snap buttons all the way down with royal purple velvet suspender shorts! Without her, I would have never developed the habit (or got up the nerve) to wear dresses and high heels to events where everyone else is sure to be in jeans and sneakers.
I know for certain my love for secondhand and vintage clothing comes from straight from my mom, who worked two, sometimes three jobs the entire time I was in elementary school, including a brief stint as a fashion model, (I can’t wait to go home and scan in the very very 80s photos of my mother wearing off the shoulder sweater dresses!!! (!!!!)) and came to America with a suitcase full of pots and pans and even a broom that my grandmother managed to cram into her suitcase, and yet somehow managed to always look stylish and beautiful, and what’s more, always managed to buy me beautiful dresses and skirts that she found at garage sales and thrift stores and various channels of hand-me-downs.
Most of my pictures of my mom are in New York on my dad’s computer or stashed in drawers somewhere, but here are a few vintage and recent photographs for your viewing pleasure.
My mom & I in NY somewhere about to eat ice cream (my mom’s wearing an F21 dress that I gave her!)
From left to right: me, my mom, & my mom’s friend (oh hello, socks with sandals and blue embroidered skirts!)
My beautiful mother, probably younger than I am now…
Thanks for being the best mom and the most fearless fashion icon I could ever hope to know.
With love, Jenny
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anthropologie, lei, photo post, yellow flowers
A different take on the lei, perhaps — a little bit of summer as the temperatures drop and the trees let go of their leafy burdens. I’m planning on kidnapping Lydia and making her do a bunch of photo shoots with me for my book, and maybe for this blog, too.
xo, mw
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: fashion nostalgia, faulkner, ghosts of fashion past, mothers, punk, riot grrl, skinny ties, wardrobe remix
Jenny and I have had some massive email brainstorming sessions about how to play out this 200th post, and this is what we’ve come up with for your reading pleasure: remixing clothes from our pasts that we haven’t worn in ages (and should probably be donated somewhere, if not for Sentimental Value) and having STORYTIME about said clothes. Which is all the more fitting for FFW, because my very first post was about my clothes and their happy/sad stories.
Could I look any more scowly in this photo? I think it’s because I’m dissatisfied with the pseudo-phallic crotch-knot.
No crotch-knot this time. The dress in its full glory.
In high school, I wore this dress all the frickin’ time. I’d bought it at Crossroads Recycled Clothing — which is where I also went and bought some boots during a bomb threat at school — and it appealed to this pseudo-vintage-loving self buried deep inside my outward self, which was often more invested in dressing “punk/riot grrrl/zine kid,” etc. Often my memories are interpreted through the lens of memories of photographs, and the photograph that this dress reminds me of the most is a class portrait of my Calculus BC class. I had big, curly hair (I guess that much hasn’t changed about me, but my choice of stylists has improved a lot) and had that sort of stick-thin figure that rapidly disappeared in my first year of college, and we were all standing in front of a board that depicted some sort of equation or proof — maybe about Riemann sums or the proof of a derivative/function/integral? (I’m sorry, Mrs. Rachtman!) As soon as I tried to remix this dress, I realized all over again why I NEVER wear this dress anymore. It just feels dowdy to me in a bad way, and my sad attempt at showing the underslip only resulted in failure.
Kova & T t-shirt, nostalgia skirt, UO scarf
This particular skirt is from my mother’s wardrobe when she was a young woman. May I also add that she was a young woman with a tiny waist. The tiny waist has prevented me from wearing this pleated and spotted pastel skirt in public, but I’m nostalgic about it because my mom didn’t keep many of her old clothes, and she gave this one to me a long time ago. It’s been in my possession/closet for ages, and I keep thinking I’ll wear it, but there are a lot of things that aren’t so much in its favor — it’s pastel pink (not “my color”), it’s too small, it’s an awkward length. Still. I refuse to donate it.
xo, mw
.
I’m glad Meggy ended her post on a skirt that once belonged to her mother because all of my nostalgia outfits are completely entwined with memories of my mother. One of my first memories of vanity is standing outside of the bathroom and crying while my mother was applying make-up because I didn’t want her to be more beautiful than she already was. I also remember crying on an outdoor walk after my mom bent down to admire a flower, and like the brat that I was and still am today, I said, “You think the flower is pretty but not me?” I must have been four or five at the time. Anyway, after a lifetime of watching my mom getting ready and wearing beautiful clothes on her tall, swan-graceful frame, and her asking me to come into her bedroom while she tried on outfit after outfit (there was the all white silk pantsuit, the jewel toned ankle length floral skirt with lace-up boots, several 50’s polka dotted dresses with cinched waists, the red silk jumpsuit with matching neck scarf, the seafoam green silk qipao with slits so high she could only wear them to events where she didn’t have to sit down)–is it any wonder that my style has always been and is still greatly influenced by my mother? It’s my mom’s birthday tomorrow and my heart is full of love and gratitude to her as my fashion debt to her (not to mention all the other more spiritually taxing debts) keeps growing.
Scintillating blue skirt handmade by my mother, H & M black top, incredibly heavy vintage hammered belt (reminiscent of a belt my mom gave me 12 years that I lost 7 years ago)
Same shiny skirt but in silver, mom’s silver necklace, mom’s earrings
My mom used to work as a seamstress for a tiny fashion label run out of this lady Lisa’s apartment. Sometimes, she took me over there and Lisa’s mother, who we all called ‘mom,’ would make me sandwiches, which was amazing to me because my parents never bought sliced bread, had a toaster, or owned more than 2 forks until I was 15 (and actually we only had 2 forks in our home until I was 18 and a family friend donated their old IKEA silverware set to us.) I loved going to work with my mom because Lisa wore big jewelry and went to Italy in the summers for inspiration. Lisa was incredibly generous. She hired my mom even though my mom barely spoke English. In the mornings, she came down to help my mom parallel park our car because my mom was too scared to do it, gave us gifts all the time, and at one point, she hired my grandmother, who was newly arrived from China and living with us, to help with sewing and construction. The silver necklace I’m wearing in the second photo (which is having its last gasp before all the beads fall off) was a gift Lisa picked up for my mom in Italy. Up until a few years ago, she still sent us Christmas cards and sometimes little earrings in the mail. In the past few years, we’ve fallen out of touch. (Lisa, if you ever happen across this blog: my mom and I love you!)
Both of those skirts are Lisa’s designs. We used to own dozens of skirts and dresses and jackets in this fabric. I’ve never seen that fabric anywhere else–it’s so iridescent and shimmery, but not at all in a gaudy way. The silver skirt has a very wide cummerbund like waistband. My mom wore these two skirts all the time until I started begging her to let me wear them. I wore both skirts pretty much every week in high school after I got over my I’m a badass punker who only wears wide leg jeans phase. (I wasn’t as cool as Meggy to know about riot grrl yet.) I wore both skirts all year round. During the summer, with sandals, and during the winter, with clunky combat shoes and sometimes with a scarf tied around my neck (also inspired by my mom.) I wore them all the time in college too, often with a pinstriped blazer I got from H & M and Pepé Le Pew boots that I’ll show you guys another time. I can’t really wear these skirts anymore because they are ridiculously big on me (I must have worn them really low-waisted when I was younger,) and because they look so so so insanely 80s.
Here I’m wearing a green wool skirt my mom passed down to me in high school, around the time when I became obsessed with clothes again. (In elementary school, I used to come home and take out all of my mom’s dresses and wear them in front of her full-length mirror when she wasn’t home and then by 5:30, half an hour before she came home, I would put them all back. I never told my mom about it until one day I checked her closet and all of her dresses were gone. It turned out she had thrown her old clothes into a dumpster to make room in her closet, and only years later did I confess that I had been secretly coveting them for years! After that, I went through a phase when I dressed really badly and was bitter about everything.)
I used to wear this exact outfit (but with flat red mary janes or knock-off blue Converses with a cherry print) about once a week when I was a sophomore in college. I’m holding a copy of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying because I came up with this outfit after I had a meltdown during my Faulkner seminar. We were discussing Absalom, Absalom! a book I hated at the time (I bet I’d like it now) in a class that I loathed with all of my heart and soul, and in the middle of a laborious close-reading of a single sentence in Absalom, Absalom! I realized that I hated being an English major, and I detested the English curriculum, and I detested the methodology of English literature studies, and that taking English classes was swallowing my love for reading and writing into a black vomit hole of hatred, and I got out of my seat in the middle of my professor’s lecture, ran all the way home, searched on the internet for ‘how to tie a tie,’ and started wearing ties four days out of the week. (I also switched my major to Ethnic Studies.) My favorite outfit to wear with a tie was this one. My mom’s wool skirt with pocket flaps in the front with this thrift store skinny green tie (now riddled with moth holes,) and this plain white button-down that my friend Diana bought in China but gave to me because the shoulders didn’t fit her well. I don’t wear ties anymore, mostly because I’m sick of people, friends and complete strangers alike, coming up to me and asking, “Hey are you trying to be like Avril Lavigne?” UM, NO YOU TWIT is what I want to say but never do.
Innocently clutching Absalom, Absalom! (Actually this is As I Lay Dying, which I fucking love, but I’m pretending it’s Absalom, Absalom! for the purposes of this post.)
Dear Absalom, Abasalom! I’m only smiling because I’m going to destroy you.
Now that you’ve been destroyed, I’m going after the English canon.
So now that we’ve shared our ghosts of fashion past and incorporated them into our present, do any of you have old clothes that you can’t bear to part with for nostalgic reasons?
Love, Jenny
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
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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)
