233. No year in review, no 2009 lists, just some snazzy photos of Meggy in all her pulchritude!
December 31st, 2009 § 13 Comments
Oh, You Pretty Things!
This is a tiny bit sneaky since I didn’t seek Meggy’s permission to do this, but I wanted to post a roundup of some of my favorite outfits of Meggy’s from our blog this year. (I’m also paranoid that I’m missing an ‘of’ in the subject of this post, can someone with upstanding grammar tell me what’s what?) It’s been a lot of fun to read all of the ‘top ten outfits of 2009′ posts that are popping up everywhere, and since I only started blogging here a few months ago and also have no inclination to do a roundup of my own outfits, I wanted to show you a few of Meggy’s that I love dearly. Here they are, in no particular order, with captions from David Bowie songs because it’s lovely to end the year with Bowie.
Lady Grinning Soul
Sound and Vision
Eight Line Poem
I had to slip in this photo of Chris. (Photo by Arrowood Photography.) Will you just look at that jacket lining? And that tie? And the pants with the matching blue!! But I’m pretty sure Meggy styled the whole thing, yes? Oh right, and Chris’ Bowie caption: Be My Wife
A New Career in a New Town
Suffragette City
Golden Years
Thank you to all of our readers and everyone who comments and makes us feel giddy and silly with gratitude. Happy New Year everyone!
love, Jenny
232. Cripes, three posts in a row on the blue swiss dot Rodarte for Target dress
December 29th, 2009 § 23 Comments
Topshop coat & Rodarte dress
Meggy looks like a beautiful sprite (with a refined hat to top it off!) in her Rodarte for Target dress, and I’m afraid I look like a upside down martini glass with a choad-like stem in mine, if that makes sense, so here it is covered up by my sailor coat that I think I have no business wearing. My cousin left this morning to go south and Michael will be here in a few days. A sad thing and a happy thing. Last night, my cousin and I made fresh pico de gallo and Spanish rice and tacos for my parents and my brother, and on Sunday, we went to the beach to find rocks and chase seagulls.
We sashayed down the boardwalk and an elderly lady praised our tights and fortitude.
We found rocks that sell for 50 RMB in little specialty shops in Shanghai (according to my cousin.) I took many opportunities to show off my new favorite nail polish. (Thank you Sarah!!)
These inelegant pictures of me throwing rocks are still the most elegant of the bunch. My cousin giggled at how many photos she took of my ‘indecency.’ There goes my chance to be a quaintrelle (thank you B. Vikki Vintage for introducing me to the term!)
We left the beach to go down a small, wooded road, and found this weeping willow. Our grandmother used to talk to trees and she believed most trees had lovers (some were Only the Lonelies), and when one lover died, the other would try to take her own life by standing in the path of lightening or growing unruly and ugly to entice humans to cut her down. My grandmother also believed she could fling a burglar from one end of the room to another with the point of her index finger.
I miss my cousin. Here’s her kitten self about to devour cupcakes: (I hope she doesn’t mind I put her picture up here!)
Here we are at the W. Hotel in Chicago where everyone else was a guy with big meaty arms or a girl in a bandage dress and crazy layers of makeup:
My cousin: H&M lace dress; me: 1960′s lace dress. (Photo taken by these folks.)
Today, I had Shanghai steamed crab soup dumplings with my oldest friend, Diana, read Buckminster Fuller’s And It Came to Pass–Not to Stay,
listened to Sir Richard Bishop and drank a gingerbread latte and an almond milk bubble tea, and then my mom picked me up and took me to get a steaming basin bowl of pho at Pho Bang (bizarre bit of trivia: it used to be John McCain’s favorite Vietnamese restaurant in Phoenix before they moved to New York??) I’m a little tuckered out from consuming all day long, but I’m also a little seduced by Buckminster Fuller’s ‘ventilated prose,’ and I think I’ll finish his book, and then watch Bonnie and Clyde if I don’t fall asleep first or get sidetracked watching Wu-Tang Clan music videos online.
I have another Rodarte for Target dress to show you, but FFW can’t very well have FOUR posts in a row on the Rodarte for Target collection lest we end up sounding like sycophants–or what if we already are?
Love, Jenny
231. ok, i couldn’t help it (rodarte 4 target)
December 28th, 2009 § 12 Comments
So because Jenny and I are the same person, we both got the blue Rodarte for Target dress. I tried to be all la di da jaded about this particular Go collection, but some of the stuff was so sickly sweet on the computer monitor that I wanted to go check it out. Today Chris and I braved the crowds at Target at Clearview Mall and I put on four different Rodarte for Target things, including a dress that Chris swore up and down was a nightgown but just turned out to be an unflattering dress (it was silky and I don’t think I’ve seen any pictures of it anywhere)… and I wound up buying this simple blue number, which I’m going to wear to Cochon tonight. And eat some pig ears. (I’ll try to bring my camera.)
I received all kinds of jangly lariat jewelry for Christmas this year, including this beautiful vintage pearl necklace from the 70s from Dominique. (The fact that my hands look so wrinkly in this picture probably does not bode well for when I become an old person, and have ultra-wrinkly, delicate hands.)
Remember how I said that Joe, the owner of Retro Active, is retiring soon? Well, he’s going to be making hats during his retirement — this is one of the hats that Dominique wore when she modeled for his hat show, and my in-laws picked it up for me as a present. It’s yellow and made of a 20′s ball gown, including lovely beading in the front and a giant bow on the side.
My Christmas was lovely lovely lovely, and I ingested tons of Southern home-cooked food over the holidays, including the best string bean casserole I’ve ever had (thanks to Velveeta). Mmm, Velveeta. Then we’re flying back to California in a couple of days and I’m going to eat my weight in Shanghai dumplings and hot pot.
xo, mw
230. I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things, I just want everything or more than everything for my family
December 28th, 2009 § 13 Comments
My birthday falls on Christmas and when I was younger, my parents would host epic birthday parties for me and all of my family friends, who were all Chinese and didn’t celebrate Christmas either, and everyone would give me extra gifts because everyone thought that someone was bound to gyp me and only give me one gift for Christmas and my birthday, but everyone was nice, and I always ended up with extra gifts. My upstairs neighbor gave me four gifts one year. I still remember what they were: a pair of gloves, a doll, a walkman (that I broke 4 hours later) with a Debbie Gibson tape, and a Nintendo Gameboy that I played to death on all of our long family road trips. One year, I posed with all of my presents and they cocooned me like I was an ant in an anthill, and another year I had six laundry baskets full of gifts. I was pretty greedy for a while. The best part of my birthday was the food. My dad made two gallons of hot and sour soup the year I turned seven, and I ended up drinking 10 bowls of it over the course of the night.
My friends and I always hid in various closets in my house while the adults drank and told raunchy jokes. We were terrified that our parents would suddenly remember our existence and coerce us into performing for them (we all knew how to play at least one instrument and nothing pleased our mothers more than when we played scratchy violin and off-key piano in front of everyone.)
The year I turned nine, my brother was born. So we share the same Christmas birthday, and it turns out we’re pretty similar too. I’m real smiling at his fake-smiling in this photo.
My brother & I. He’s in an 826NYC t-shirt I gave him & I’m wearing this Stella McCartney for H&M bathrobe, I mean dress.
(Christmas Eve hotpot (pot not pictured))
We don’t have big parties anymore (neither my brother nor I want them) but we still feast pretty hard. On Christmas Eve, we had hot pot with a gazillion things including watercress, beef tripe, special fish balls, enoki mushrooms, Chinese cabbage, broccoli, and um, everything you see in the photo! Our dipping sauce consisted of:raw egg, satay sauce, shrimp sauce, sesame oil, chili sauce, hot sauce, preserved beancurd, and soy sauce. We all exploded afterward and re-pieced each other together bit by bit in the days that followed. Should I mention that the day before, my family went to my mom’s Christmas Party at this place, Harvest Buffet, and let’s just say I had eight full plates of food, not including bowls of soup, ice cream and dessert. Also, I should mention that I wore a bib for just about every meal?
My dad’s pretty amazing. He works ten to twelve hours a day plus a four hour commute, and he takes care of my mom and my brother and me, and he takes care of our beautiful house and he still has time to make dinners that include at least four of the following:stir-fried lobster in scallion and ginger, steamed whole fish, bone and radish soup, black bean Cantonese dim sum style mini pork chops, four different kinds of Chinese sprouts, Chinese eggplant with pork and garlic, cold seasoned wood ear mushrooms, and on and on.
My dad’s cookin. (First two photos taken by my cousin. Bad photo taken by me.)
Also, I should mention that I love my family, and here we are, dorky and smiley and eager to finish taking photos so we can eat.
Mom: 80′s leather heart belt & Burberry wool skirt; me: Rodarte for Target, gulp! (Photo by my cousin!)
I was wearing a heart belt too, but took it off in anticipation of gorge-fest. I’d be happy to know if your hearts are also swelling with love?
Love, Jenny
229. Deformity be reformed! (FFW Loves: Helen Robotham)
December 26th, 2009 § 2 Comments
From Vice magazine
The buy buy buy buy frenzy of the holiday season seems completely antithetical to love and happiness and life and well-being and the pursuit of meaning–is it even possible to begin to consider equating multinational corporations with any of those terms? I know that probably seems antithetical to this blog (what is a fashion blog if not the ultimate in displaying consumption and materialism?) but what’s particularly egregious is the masquerading of a ‘Buy stuff from us!’ campaign by corporate retailers as a ‘Be warm and giving this Christmas season!’ message. I’ll be sweet to my family and loved ones without your gross and completely transparent exhortations to buy from you, you corporate ninnies! It’s always been more exciting (& touching) for me to give and get gifts on non holiday occasions.
Thank my dripping wet sky for Helen Robotham, a recent winner of the Fashion Fringe prize in accessories for her balloons handbag. I first heard of her from Vice, & below is a very brief interview they conducted with her:
Vice: Hi. Why does your bag look like that?
Helen: It’s from my “They Are What They Aren’t” MA collection and represents the grotesque shape of consumerism in the 21st century. I always try and create new shapes and forms for my bags and I’m obsessed with spheres, which is, I suppose, the ultimate timeless shape.
The bag & other bags in hanging form from Sonnyphotos.typepad.com
That said, I’m off to enjoy my grotesque, spiritually deformed gifts with the greatest of love and pleasure. Just kidding, sort of.
Love, Jenny
228. All I ask is to feel my brain ((kidding, I feel everything) & I like it)
December 24th, 2009 § 6 Comments
(1960′s lace dress with velvet bow & heart tights & my cousin’s kitchen implements. Photo taken by my talented cousin.)
I’m happy and it has nothing to do with Christmas in two days, nothing to do with the holiday spirit, or New Years, or buying gifts for other people as insanely encouraged by all of the retailers who stand to profit from this holiday and every holiday, and it has nothing to do with “the intimate shrinkage of my being and the insane castration of my life,” even though I love using the word insane as an synonym for ‘devotion’ and so does Michael and by the way, I miss Michael very much and when I miss him very much I try to look at the art that he liked/likes/is liking/has liked/was liking/had been liking/has been licking/will be eating like Paul Delvaux and here’s one of the few Paul Delvaux paintings where the woman isn’t naked with a big, round, moon butt:
Paul Delvaux’s La robe de mariée, 1976.
I hope you’re all happy, whether it’s because of the holidays or in spite of the holidays or having nothing to do with the holidays, and doesn’t it feel lucky to be happy completely unrelated to Christmas cards, and holiday songs, and top ten countdowns, and wish lists, and New Year’s resolutions, and wrapping presents, and all of that? I’m not completely unmoved though–a few years ago, I met a young man named Sam on the Caltrain and he helped me carry my bike on the train and told me his favorite thing was riding public transportation, and in fact, his screenname and email was ‘Samtran,’ which is a transit company in the Bay Area, and he would ride the train to Sacramento on the weekends for fun, and when I met him he was wearing a fannypack and carrying a set of pictures of himself on trains and buses, and we exchanged addresses so we could send each other Christmas cards, and I thought he was kind of a nut and didn’t send him a thing, but he sent me a really sweet holiday card with lots of glitter, and his return street address was “Teddy Lane,” and I showed it to my friend Max and told him the story and we both thought it was too perfect, just like how these days are too perfect, and because of that, I’m scared of what’s coming for me, if anything, but I’m also trying my hardest not to give a rip or rat or fuck.
Love, Jenny
