On a tour of the Buckingham Palace State Rooms, the audio tour narrator says, “This is the theater for the pageantry of monarchy.” I didn’t know you guys were so self aware!
Archive for the ‘Fashion Blogging for Toddlers’ Category
Farce?
September 4, 2016Shoe Poms
August 24, 2016A big tragedy as of late was that these shoe pom-poms were sold out. I swear, sometimes I feel like I live in a war zone, given all I go through…
I don’t have the best kicks to go with these, though, so…
Calling All Jewish Jewelry Designers
March 9, 2016I’ve long been enamored of this story of Hasidic rabbi from Poland:
It was said of Reb Simcha Bunem that he carried two slips of paper, one in each pocket. On one he wrote: Bishvili nivra ha-olam—“for my sake the world was created.” On the other he wrote: V’anokhi afar v’efer”—“I am but dust and ashes.” He would take out each slip of paper as necessary, as a reminder to himself.
So enamored, in fact, that I’ve always hoped some spiritual jewelry designer would read my mind and make a necklace homage to this saying. Ideally, the necklace would be a simple gold, circle pendant, each side engraved with one of the sayings.
And yes, I do realize I can probably just have one made, and maybe I’ll do that, but I just thought I’d give some young upstart the chance to roll with a pretty great idea. #mitzvah!
THE FIRST STEP IS ADMITTING YOU HAVE A PROBLEM
January 13, 2016I have found Petite Meller’s publicist’s email, and am thinking of writing him to ask if he could let me know when her album comes out so I can write a profile piece on her I plan to title “Weird for the Jews.” Because apparently her real name is Sivan, and she spent much of her teen years in Tel Aviv, although she likes to play up the French aspect of her persona (in the very Greek sense of the word) and basically ignore the Jewish part. Self-hating? Another connection to Freud? WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO ME?
I would just bypass the publicist and sign up for her mailing list, but that would mean being part of her self-titled “little empire” (echoes of Lady Gaga here?) Maybe for the profile, she and I can go hat-shopping together in London and she can tell me whether her hair at the end of the video for Barbaric was supposed to resemble payot or if that was just coincidental?
Manic Monday
January 11, 2016One time, a friend of mine told me he liked my blog because it was a throwback to those days when people just “wrote about anything they felt like” on their sites. I guess now it’s all too polished (aka written for an audience of people other than said blogger’s father, husband, and lone friend who likes ad lib) and curated and sponsored. Well, no one sponsors me, so I guess I can just say what I like! Which is helpful on this particular Monday, because I haven’t been unproductive exactly, but I just can’t seem to concentrate on anything for more than twenty seconds at a time. Below are the subjects I find myself flitting between:
- I’m way late to this game, but damn, Petite Meller is one weird child-woman. It makes me uncomfortable to watch her pale ass writhing around in a pastel onesie, and yet I have had this video on in the background basically all morning. I think these Kenyan schoolgirls might be my newest fashion obsession. I’ve considered Googling “African private school straw hats” a few times in the past hour, but I’m worried Google would just shoot back, “You’re a fucking racist.” And it would be justified in doing so.
Also, when I finally get around to creating my hat label, Whimsical Haberdashery, Petite Meller will definitely model my first season. Last note on her: she’s apparently obsessed with Freud, and The Guardian just ran a long piece on the return psychoanalysis, which I recommend although I’m too lazy to link to it. Bottom line: Way to go, Freud! You may be dead but you’re still killing it! - I keep meaning to tell someone this because I think it’s hysterical, but the other night I had a dream that the only “serious” critic (whatever that means) to give my book a mediocre review and I drove on ATVs to the Grand Canyon for a little day trip. It was really fun, actually. I think we should consider doing it in real life.
- I’m pursuing a number of very different stories at the moment, and ergo am trying to find a bunch of new sources and have no idea how to go about getting them, aside from this: if you happen to have a son at the Westminster Abbey Choir School, or are a Hare Krishna convert who wears a traditional robe most of the time, or you’re currently in drug rehab and considering becoming a Christian, or maybe you wear the same thing to work every day a la Matilda Kahl, shoot me a note.
- I’m lying to you and to myself here––I haven’t been thinking about any of the above. I’ve just been looking at pictures of Petite Meller. WHY. I get the whole shtick, right now, immediately. I don’t need to hear her breathy whispers about her philosophy degree or her one-woman campaign to help us all bring our libidinal subconsciouses (subconsciousnesses?) to light––I see where this is all headed, which makes me hate it. So why am I lusting after her fake-rosacea? Lord, grant me the strength to resist her (but not yet.)
Oh and PS, she totally stole this hat idea from me. Ask my husband. He knows.
Terrible Game Tuesday
November 10, 2015Time for a new game: of these portraits of Victorian ladies, which ones were taken on psych wards and which ones are just, well, your average Victorian lady?
(I could have kept going for ages, for the record.)
Email Siobhan for the answers!
This Was the Aesthetic!
October 21, 2015Guys, remember when I had my psychic dream? THIS is what we were wearing.
Groovy.
Meringue Hat
October 19, 2015I really should have a category called Whimsical Haberdashery, but I think I might be done adding categories. I mean, at a certain point, expansion becomes procrastination, no? Speaking of procrastination, I wanted to work today, but I went to a family wedding last night so I was tired and lazy and ended up watching a lot of (really good) movies and eating an entire medium pizza by myself. A day that sounds funny in the context of a Girls episode––millennials, they’re so stupid and yet witty!––but is actually just kind of sad in real life. But you know what isn’t sad? This drawing of a meringue hat, which I told my husband I wanted the other day. It was done by Will Cotton, my new art crush. Will, can you make me one of these IRL? Great, thankssomuch.
Branding
September 21, 2015I don’t know that this stuff all falls under this topic heading, exactly, but I’m going with it.
1. When I was walking through the streets of New York before we moved, I noticed ads for Club Monaco’s new line (or maybe it wasn’t Club Monaco, but some similarly business casual outlet that would advertise on the sides of bus terminals) that featured something they were calling REPORTER PANTS. And I thought, “Gee, I should just stop working and get those pants, and maybe things will be about the same!” I couldn’t find them––so probably they were called “journalist pants,” and made by Gap, or something like that––but here are a pair of “reporter pants,” from ModCloth, which, as we all know, is the best (said in Jessica Simpson slur) at product labeling (there’s a marketing term for that, no?)
Yes, these do look like they have great sources.
2. A few years ago, I read an article in Departures about this place in London called The School of Life. Founded by Alain de Botton and other sweet pop-philosophers, it offered classes in things like, “How to Get Things Done.” I thought it sounded amazing; now that I’m older and (in some ways) more cynical, I wonder if perhaps the teachers of a class like “How to Get Things Done” ought to tell his/her students to take that hour to do said things instead of listen to a self-professed expert blather on. Lest you think I’m being too harsh on the School of Life, I present for you: the Philosopher’s Jumper, A TWO HUNDRED DOLLAR BLACK SWEATER guaranteed to make you as influential a thinker as Heidegger.
BITCH. PLEASE.
And to put the cherry on this pretentious sundae, check out the insufferable copy:
“It has taken pride of place in the wardrobes of philosophical figures as diverse as Herbert Marcuse, Iris Murdoch, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. The Philosopher’s Jumper, designed in collaboration with Bella Freud, invites us to share in the philosophical life: one of soul-searching, interesting relationships, impassioned argument and bold speculation.”
I have… no words.
3. Speaking of London, a truck from a company called Future Comforts has been parked across the street from my house for the past two weeks. Here’s their logo:
I think it’s the word “comfort” that’s throwing me.
Yep, that’s a geisha. Is this offensive? I’m going to vote yes, and I almost never vote yes.
4. Is it just me, or is the Times Magazine basically all celebrity profiles these days? It’s like a more long-winded version of People.
LONDON
August 23, 2015So now I live in London, which is “quite” weird. (I’ve learned to say “quite” a lot, because that’s how you fit in here.) And I’ve been busy… well, learning how to fit in, which means I haven’t blogged in thirteen days! A travesty. I was thinking to myself just before that there were things I had planned to write about but I had forgotten what they were, and then, lying in our lumpy bed in a corporate apartment, I remembered one: Westminster Choir School!
Husband’s birthday was on Thursday, so we went to Westminster Abbey, because he’s a bit of a history nerd. I surprised myself by being actually as interested as I usually have to pretend to be at historical sites, mostly because there were a number of elaborate tombs for people, and I adore elaborate tombs. Perhaps the funniest of the bunch were the tombs of Mary I and her sister, Elizabeth I, because Mary was an ardent Roman Catholic who succeeded in reviving interest in Catholicism during her reign, but then Elizabeth brought back Protestantism, and as everyone knows Brits hate Catholics, they opted to bury Mary underneath her sister. No doubt as to who won that battle, eh?
Anyway, here’s what I actually wanted to write about: during the audio tour, a butter-tongued Jeremy Irons tells us that young choirboys at Westminster not only sing there, but attend school there as well. After the tour, husband and I took a brief little walk around “Dean’s Yard,” as they call it, and I immediately hit upon a genius idea: a YA series that takes place at Westminster Choir School. Part Hogwarts, part Fame, throw in a little Mary Renault and a dash of Spring Awakening, if we want things to get real spicy, and I believe we have a few hits on our hands. Then again, with that admixture, what kind of audience would it attract?
You wish these had been your uniforms.
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