ice age heat wave

change of address

2010-02-02T14:20:00.002-05:00

like,
google-read,
and add to bookmarks
the new & semi-professional
snprickett.com >>
xx

big audition.

2010-01-22T17:43:00.002-05:00

This is my new favourite thing I do at EyeWeekly.com/citystyle,
because I love official forms (especially ones circa 1998, apparently)
and handwriting and personal style questions.

But I don't love meeting new people, not as much, anymore.

So if I don't know you & I should
& you want to be in this,
email me! xo

Sarah Marantz.

Norman Wong.

Karelle Steiner.

in new york

2010-01-14T16:26:00.002-05:00

my favourite sound is the yellow horns,
bleeting, stray noises from the flock.

hands on!

2010-01-13T22:05:00.005-05:00

On Tara Day, another T. & I took this photo,
inspired by Janet Jackson + Dali.

And today, look what's on Refinery 29:
hand motifs! My favourite pair's by
Hussein Chalayan,
unsurprisingly.

the sun never sets.

2010-01-12T12:57:00.006-05:00

Veronique Branquinho, Spring 2009
(Rest in peace.)

Christopher Kane, right now!
Prints manipulated out of
bomb test photos.
Brill.

Balenciaga, Pre-Fall 2010
Ghesquiere: not the most original,
but the greatest artist.

the pusher.

2010-01-10T23:23:00.001-05:00

It was a simple thing I wanted, but I really wanted it. The poor girl. When she turned around, she looked so worried. "We're all out," she said. But seriously? I'd been craving so bad! I guess she could tell. She glanced once, twice. Ok. "Ok," she said. "Boss isn't here, so I'm going to give you this new stuff. It's not supposed to be out til Tuesday. But for you..." Her back was to me again. Hands were gloved and furtive, hasty. "It's stronger," she warned. "You can even smell the difference. Smell."

So I breathed in long. Then I sipped, and yeah, the new chai tea at Starbucks is pretty alright.

new (year's) hair

2010-01-05T23:47:00.002-05:00

I'm trotting out My Little Pony hair again, but this time it's pinker and streaked; less pretty, and I kinda love it more. Tempted to make permanent, but then, I told myself (and all you Eye Weekly readers out there?) not to, in this fads vs. trends forecast.

Oh, and I have more... Clogs? Fad. Gingham? Trend, I think, toward childish patterns and prints, employed in a kitschy, contrarily sexual way. (See also: Miu Miu.) Anything else you want to know? Ask in the comments, or email me.

fully resolved.

2010-01-01T21:55:00.000-05:00

the decade's best endings (five of them)

2009-12-31T02:42:00.002-05:00

As the decade yawned and stretched to its end, I thought about my favourite endings, in fictions and fantasies. I love nothing more than a good ending. (I didn't say a happy one.) It's the best self-deceit, the biggest ego fulfillment: the idea that we can plan our escape and leave according to how we (wish we) lived.

This list might seem random to you, but all five endings, manmade in these ten years, mean something to me.

1. "She was seventy-five and she was going to make some changes in her life." The last line of Jonathan Franzen's magnificently dysfunctional family novel, The Corrections (2001), has killed me a million times. So modest, so devastating.

2.

The final scene of The Sopranos (2007) -- the racing tension, the undeniable swell of Don't Stop Believin, and then a swift, brutal cut to black -- is my favourite in tv history, and I rarely even watched the show.

3.

image via fashionologie

Olivier Theyskens is a poet, and his last collection for Nina Ricci (Fall 2009), a swan song: melancholy, ethereal, and filled with indiscriminate beauty. The sense-defying shoes alone will haunt me till Fall 2090.

4. "A single knife wound to the chest": Elliott Smith's suicide (2003), making every other tortured-star suicide of the decade (and there were so! many!) look puny by compare. I wasn't going to include the actual, literal ending of lives in a list like this. But then, Smith's fate was so elegantly and deliberately authored that it seems to belong. I mean, he took a knife to his heart. That's performance art.

5. Bill Murray's famous last whispers to Scarlett Johanssen at the end of Lost in Translation (2004).

ten female directors of the decade that i like, or love, and one that i don't (anymore).

2009-12-30T23:25:00.003-05:00

A.O. Scott wrote of his decade in the movies in the NYT mag, a moon or two ago, and I had to read it, like, three times to be sure. No. Not a single female director. But really? I needed to make an alterlist. And then, ironically?, I needed a man's help. G & I put heads together, and off the top, came up with ten. (He even wrote a bit or two, you'll see.) Copy it by hand like it's the first grade, slip it over the counter at your local video shop, and brace yourself to fall hard.

Arnold, Andrea. Fish Tank is about a smart, yearning girl* in love with a charming man, but without the morality of An Education, and it would be unbelievable if it weren't so bloody real. Could be the best movie you won't see on a best-of list this year (it's yet to be released in North America). I saw it alone on my first tired-happy night in Paris, in an exquisitely sixties cinema, eating nougat. Maybe I couldn't help but love it? But no, for so long it stuck to me like dirt under nails.

*Arnold found this girl, Katie Jarvis, bickering on a subway platform with her boyfriend and cast her on the spot. Stuntcasting, you could say, but Arnold and Jarvis land all the jumps.

Bigelow, Katherine. She blew James Cameron, she blows shit up. Bigelow's The Hurt Locker cracks year-end lists of populist junk writers and film theorists alike, but just as importantly, G. says, "we need to mention Point Break." Done.

Coppola, Sofia. Sofia Coppola is every fucking ounce as important to girls growing up too fast, in a headlong delirium, as Wes Anderson is to boys who won't ever grow up at all. A.O.'s neglect of her is criminal. I'm still upset. P.S. Yes, we even loved Marie Antoinette, and no, not only for the s/t.

Corsini, Catherine. Her recent Partir (Leaving) has all the bourgeois romantic drama of a Nancy Meyers movie, but in French, and humourless (which, if you've tried to sit through a recent Meyers movie, you'll recognize as a compliment). Opens and shuts with a gunshot. Holds your breath all the way through. (Seen at TIFF; not sure when released?)

Harron, Mary. Sure, Harron directed I Shot Andy Warhol, and we liked it because it was about an artist (?) and the hardened lesbian who tried to wack him, but the film is actually terrifically boring, more so than the story even. So we include Harron on the merits of the wondrous American Psycho. In the same gushing cut, Harron could castrate the hyper-wealthly misogynists plaguing the 80s and slice the legs out of the argument that it was an anti-feminist movie. Plus: there'd be no Chuck Bass without Bateman.

~~Heckerling, Amy~~. Sorry, Amy. You ruled back-to-back decades: Fast Times at Ridgemont High is wickedly 80s; every female alive in the 90s can quote Clueless in her sleep. But what of this millennium? Oh look: you will be directing Vamps. Promising. Love a good vamp. But what, there are three little letters missing: i-r-e. And how apt, because nothing raises mine like vampires and the making of romantic movies about them. Go back to 1995, Amy Heckerling.

Jenkins, Tamara. I've only seen one Jenkins movie, The Savages, which meditates on death without sermonizing (rare), makes Hoffman's hangdog act look like a new trick, and wreaks pathos unexpectedly. Her previous film, The Slums of Beverley Hills, is alleged to be awesome.

Peirce, Kimberley. Right, so Boys Don't Cry was actually made in '99, but its influence on the decade is significant and precious. I can't think of a film that did more to dislodge "the heroine" from her pedestal. (Like, can't we all just be heroes?) And Stop-Loss (2008) is... well, I'd have to be taken hostage to watch an Iraq war movie, but G. proclaims it alright.

Ramsay, Lynne. I'd never even heard of Morvern Callar til it was on Bravo, one night in the rain, and I only watched it because of Samantha Morton. That's still a good reason. But also, Ramsay's sometimes-realist, sometimes-fantastical bildungsroman is a trip, while most directors would have been content with a journey.

Reichardt, Kelly. Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy follows her earlier Old Joy in its revitalization of the classic American road movie. While Sean Penn's Into the Wild chronicles a fools journey to a solitary death, Wendy and Lucy trails Michelle Williams' on her drive north from Portland to Alaska. Subtle, yet astute, in its response to the economic recession, the film's success resides in its unspoken comment that a story lived through -- not thought on -- is the first rule of the road movie. (Ed: But come on, she couldn't shoplift a change of clothes? SNP.)

Varda, Agnes. Out of time and thoughts, and besides, like you don't know why to love Agnes Varda. Read this!

25 most played songs

2009-12-28T12:44:00.005-05:00

...of all my time. Because I grew up in a nuclear shelter of a family, hyper-Christian and conservative in a way that makes Pleasantville look like Sin City, I only really started listening to music in high school, and then really seriously listened in university. So, my all time = your last ten years.

And I was going to do my own best-of-the-decade list, but who cares? And what do I know from best? The songs that matter are the ones we play on repeat... As for the ten-year thing, if I included only songs made between 2000 and now, it wouldn't be true at all.

Here, in the order I thought of them in, the twenty-five.

1. 1979
I only knew that this song was one I should love, that it was deja entendu, and that it had been playing in my head since I was in pigtails, even though that's not possible. I didn't know the name. Then my ex-boyfriend forced me to watch Clerks 2, and there, deep in maybe the shittiest movie ever, was that magic noise. It's "1979," he told me. Like how did I not know that? Well, I don't know. If you didn't grow up with Nirvana, you wouldn't know the Smashing Pumpkins either. I embraced this song instantly, completely, and without context. And after he told me what it was, I made him play it for me all the time, and I downloaded it and put it on night after night and woke up when it was finishing the 96th spin.

2. Float On
Would I have kept living without "Float On"? Not a rhetorical question.

3. Wonderwall
This was the first song that my first boyfriend put on the first mix cd anyone ever made for me. I listened to it on my bus home from my first day of class in first year university, and I was smiling, the only one on the bus smiling, and super-aware of it.

4. Maps
Stunning, transcendent, all heartstrungout, perfect in its aching restraint, "Maps" is a lump in your throat, and when you pull it out, it's a diamond.

5. Ceremony
First time I heard this song, I was wearing 100% Gap: tank tops in two (!!) shades of turquoise, and a khaki skirt. I admit this so you understand that I am a different person now, and yet, I still feel "Ceremony" in my bones.

6. Ex-Factor
Lauryn Hill's Miseducation was the first cd I ever bought, and I'm really proud of that. When she sang "Ex-Factor" under the covers after curfew, I felt like yes, this is what my love is gonna be like.

7. Unbreak My Heart
What happened to Toni Braxton?! This woman's the hottest unrequited lover in song. Plus, the way she rolls her r's makes Rihanna sound like Taylor Swift.

8. Such Great Heights
Another mix disc classic, and the best thing Ben Gibbard will ever do. Like the "everything" he sings of, it sounds perfect (even more so) from far away, from years now, and from decades too, I bet.

9. Love Will Tear Us Apart
You've figured out by now that I'm an emo, right?

10. Torn
...And so's Natalie Imbruglia. I remember my mom (sincerely, fearfully) thought this was a song about rape, because why else would a woman be lying naked on the floor, feeling a little torn? Mom. Ew.

11. Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl
With due apologies to Stevie Nicks, no song ever made me feel more nostalgic for that wasted age.

12. Hallelujah (Jeff Buckley version)
So much more beautiful than the original, it's blasphemous. And yet, undeniable.

13. A Scale, a Mirror, and Those Indifferent Clocks
A minor bit in the Conor Oberst canon (aside: did you know my "true blue" tattoo is the Bright Eyes song, not the Madonna one? Uh-huh) but for me, a moment. God and I were coming apart, not slowly, and this, I guess, was our breakup song. (If these lyrics aren't an atheist manifesto, don't tell me. I'll shatter.)

14. Last Nite
Just fucking epic.

15. Toxic
The great Britney song, and how I learned to shimmy.

16. Don't Speak
That I've never sung this at a karaoke birthday is shameful.

17. Time to Pretend
It was a coin-toss between this and "Kids," but when "Kids" won, I tossed again. Nothing sums up the diefast ennui of my generation, and our problems of leisure, better than this.

18. Lucky
This would be my favourite Radiohead song: it goes "kill me Sar-ahhh, kill me agaaaiiiin... with love." It is a bad idea to play this full-volume when you're driving on the highway or trying a new drug or having unprotected sex because it makes you feel supernatural, omnipotent. (Oh, don't worry, I don't actually do that. I don't even know how to drive!)

19. Bleeding Love
To paraphrase: I don't care what you say, I'm in love with r&b ballads by improbably scorned women!

20. Fake Empire
I couldn't choose a song from The National's Boxer; it's one of very few records I've listened to faithfully in its entirety, time after time. So I went with the opener. Before the man was mine, I knew he would love this album. (Any more triumphant feeling than knowing when someone you love will love something? No, I don't think so.) I was right, and now it's ours.

21. Lovefool
Romeo + Juliet = best movie, and movie soundtrack, of high school. And this, the best song.

22. The Scientist
Yes, I loved Coldplay, and yes, of course, I learned to play this song on the piano. Backwards.

23. Running Up That Hill (Chromatics version)
When I blogged my adoration for the Chromatics, a best friend's ex-bf said, well, of course. It's, like, emo-electro. I thought that was soo perfect. (Later, I'd discover that this genre had already been wrought and, practically, perfected by Erasure, in the year I was born.) Anyway, this spacey, glistening cover sounds more like being chauffered up that hill in a hovercar, but I love it.

24. Empire State of Mind
Actually, I have listened to the NY, NY anthem enough times in the last six months to earn it a spot on this list. Thanks. I think it's the "Don't Stop Believin" of our time, and you can feel about that how you will.

25. All My Friends
Thanks to its lead role in the trailer for Greenberg, which my own G. will not stop fucking playing, James Murphy's silver-tongued and shiveringly true lament gets my last spot. If you want to know, it beat out both the Pixies' "Where is My Mind?" and the Alanis manslayer, "You Oughta Know."

beginning to look a lot like

2009-12-24T09:26:00.004-05:00

2009-12-23T02:13:00.002-05:00

Me by Blue Logan
& click to read Blue Logan by me.

2009-12-17T15:02:00.007-05:00

I'd never had a favourite photographer before, except one or two I knew for real. If you had asked me, I would have been all, like, "Juergen Teller?" And you would have known I was just saying that to say it.

Early this year I found her, first on some wild internet tangent, and then in Another mag. She is Lina Scheynius, she's Swedish, and she's never shot digital. Her work is all warm and fuzzy, and never forced, and so yearningly, gutsily romantic it makes me want to scream. When she exhibits new work in London this coming March, I need to be there. Somehow.

Yesterday and today, Lina uploaded these super-nature photos to her stream of consciousness (by which I mean, Flickr). Don't you want to curl up and die in them?

Emeric's Bed, 2008.

raising the bar.

2009-12-15T09:03:00.000-05:00

I originally wrote this piece for the Weekend Post (NP), but in a week straight out of hell, it got burned. Apologies to my very good editor, and to the interviewees whose time I took to do this story.

I’m running it here as submitted, resisting urge to re-edit in a bloggier voice, or one more like mine… So, start reading, and pretend your fingers are getting inky.

Ahem.

...

If, during the Art Basel Miami that was, you went only once to Le Baron—the rose red-lit grotto of a pop-up club at the Delano Hotel—it would be little more than the least tacky dance floor in South Beach. But if you ended five consecutive nights there—not that any self-respecting, hard-working journalist would do this—you’d begin to understand. Every night, the party was held in the name of a different magazine: Purple one night, Jalouse the next. Everything else was the same. The same songs played (Jacques Chabrol, Jay-Z). The same doorman said the same thing to you (“oh hi,” and then, “is it goodnight now?”). The same characters (an American girl with a Louise Brooks haircut, the Swedish designer J. Lindenberg peering through lenses thick as the smoke) lurked or swayed in the same spots. You began to feel like a simulation, like you were being played for a project: nightlife imitating art.

“It’s half club, half installation,” said Andre, no last name needed, on the second night. Co-owner of the real Le Baron (and Le Montana) in Paris, and founder of the Standard chain of hotels, he’s gone from street artist to party don without losing an ounce of smarts.

And where is the art?

“The people!” he said, without so much as a glance around, and slid into a trio of familiar-seeming, model-looking girls.

If that was little Paris, the Max Fish pop-up bar—on the other side of the bridge, in a lowdown hood—was little New York. Made to replicate the famous Lower East Side dive (and celebrate its 20th anniversary), the pot-smoky interior (of a former, actual bar) was hung with art and crammed “core elements” of the original.

“I feel like I just clicked my heels and came home!” said one pale, wistful NY native. And truly, Dorothy, we weren’t in South Beach anymore. The place felt grimy, consciously urban, authentic-with-air-quotes. The installation was done by Miami’s O.H.W.O.W. Gallery (a hypercool and youth-cultish incubator that happens to be co-owned by ex-impresarios Al Moran and Aaron “A-Ron” Bondaroff). And the performance art? Leave that to the self-replicating attendees.

Canadian-born, London-living artist Dean Baldwin has both worked as a bartender—at the Drake Hotel in Toronto—and performed as one, which must confuse the regulars.

“My performances usually centre around a constructed environment: an active installation, usually in the form of an actual bar,” says Baldwin. “I have toyed around with the term ‘barchitecture.’ It’s basically a kind of relational aesthetics but I like the term social sculpture.”

Baldwin’s Minibar was first performed at Toronto’s Mercer Union before popping up at the Powerball, travelling to the Volta Fair at Art Basel Switzerland; just now, he’s finished a three-month art-tending stint at London’s Space Studios. In a statement to accompany Minibar, gallerist and writer Paul Pieroni wrote that it “was designed for participants to enter and have a good long drink and ultimately get drunk... Drunkenness can cultivate huge love, togetherness and jouissance between its fellows.”

Obviously, right? But then: “It’s no good just allowing people to participate; they have to be participating in something with an innate complexity and quality of its own.”

The watering hole as participatory art scene was pioneered by American artist Tom Marioni all the way back in the 70s; back then, such work made party out of art. Now, in an art world subsumed by the scene, a bar pop-up's role is to bring work—maybe even meaning—back to the party.

In Sydney, the Seven Metre Bar is a fully-licensed shambles so filled with washed-up junk that it looks more like a mad scientist’s garage sale than a bar. The artist involved, Richard Goodwin, called it a statement on global warming—“the bar at the end of the world,” so stop and have a think. It remains installed until January’s end.

Or there’s the notorious Tacheles of Berlin. Born in the heady, post-Wall nineties, Tacheles was probably meant to be an artist’s co-op by day and club by night; yet somehow it’s both at once, all the time. In an art world subsumed by self-celebration, it makes a crazy kind of sense. The inspiration, the resulting work, and the showing thereof were once disparate points on the wheel; now they spin together in a boundary-less blur. (And if it doesn't make sense, it will when you're drunk.)

Of course, it’s a German word that neatly encapsulates these opposite, yet full-circle purposes of the bar as art happening: stammtisch. “It means common table,” says artist Paul Butler, who is participating in Theo Simms’ The Candahar—a fervently faithful recreation of an Irish pub, with bartenders serving as “unscripted performers,” during the Winter Games. “I think artists need to engage with non-artists, so a bar installation becomes an extension of the studio. Alcohol is an essential component—it builds trust, breaks down hierarchies.”

“But stammtisch also translated as a table where ideas come about,” Butler adds. “Really, a bar is just a regular place for people to escape. But for artists—I think they need to engage with non-artists, and I think of the bar as installation is not so much an escape, but an extension of the studio.”

the advent can eat itself.

2009-12-15T08:23:00.000-05:00

xo AV & SN

why she smokes.

2009-12-14T10:45:00.005-05:00

I never know how a cigarette is going to make me feel: dizzy or very still, lightheaded or sober and hard again, on the edge or over it.

Two weeks ago I was alone in the apartment, unable to work, unable to not work. That's always my problem. Finally I took a five-minute break from failing and lit a Belmont that I think my brother left behind. Sat on the radiator, puffed out the living room window. (I'm sorry; I know I promised not to.) For three of those minutes, I thought I saw a little bird watching me, alight on the fire escape of the halfway house next door. Then it was just a shadow; it was dark early, and lamplight is tricky. And then it was a bird again. I swear I saw him nod.

I'm seeing things more all the time now.

Around eleven last night I crushed out a ciggy halfway through, because he (the man, not the bird) was coming and he hates the smell. It went out very slowly. Smoke licked up my fingers. It wasn't over, but I was done.

bird's-eyelet view

2009-12-10T13:01:00.004-05:00

photo: biz <3

I should stop writing stories on my Blackberry, right? Never mind the typos, here's the ballingest store in South Beach -- The Webster! -- and bit of an interview I did there with cocktail guest-of-honour Joseph Altuzarra. I asked about his romanticism, his favourite artists, and does he honestly like Miami style?

http://dazeddigital.com/Fashion/article/6087/1/Altuzarra_at_the_Webster_Miami

text "art"

2009-12-09T12:12:00.004-05:00

As a writer, I'm obligated to think that text art is 95% retarded.
(The notable five per cent: Jenny Holzer, Kelly Mark, who else?)
It's just, like, things you and your two friends think are super-
pithy and hilarious and profound, which is great, until you
write them in ALL CAPS and demand thousands of dollars.
I mean, really, this stuff is to art what Twitter is to thought.
The art world's big inside joke, no? Whatever, here are ours.

& more white.

2009-12-08T18:40:00.003-05:00

Studding reaches a new low, here, on Ellen Jong's porcupine-spiked toilet seat. It looks sharp as hell, like a quick-and-dirty sendup of that old Hindu yogi thing. But then, if you touch it with your hand, it's artifically soft. I like that conflict: hard look, soft feeling. Like the Gareth Pugh SS10 collection, which is hardcore wrought from ribbons and greys, or a shyly feminine girl with a dykey haircut.

This was on the 19th floor of the Viceroy, by the way; we were going up to a party, and got waylaid by art, which is how (too) much of the week felt. On the bathroom counter there was a sign that said, "Toilet not for use." Remove the "toilet" part, and what remains is the best artist's statement ever.

white & white

2009-12-01T23:12:00.005-05:00

Favourite thing in Miami so far:

the Moore Building,

and Limited Ed. Experiences therein.

(Click to read my DazedDigital article.)

As I, um, twittered...

The Moore Building - established 1928,

installed in 2005 with Zaha Hadid's "Elastica" sculpture -

makes me want to marry in Miami.

Can't you imagine doves fluttering among

these curvilinear nouveau-rafters?

Creepy kid robot @ Neon Monster.

Gibson guitars by Fendi.

Maison Martin Matryoshka.

(These dolls, made for Russian Vogue's 10th anniversary,

sell for $170. Drake General has - or had - super-similar

ones in blank wood for $20. FYI.)

Put your records on?

hi from magic city.

2009-12-01T18:05:00.002-05:00

Welcome to Miami. Not the beach (yet). Here since Sunday, I'm still on "business," a word never uttered without air quotes in this town.

Weather is 80 degrees American and perfect, with a chance of irony: I'm always freezing. The air, anywhere indoors, is over-conditioned. Sunlight looks photoshopped: too shiny, too rose-gold. There are two women in white pantsuits and metallic sandals, who seem unaware that they match. Their faces have an old, moneyed patina.

On an industrial stretch waits a nu-Grecian warehouse, stucco'd in the exact fade of pink you get by washing one red sweatshirt in a load of whites. The sign says, "Christmas Place." Nobody else laughs!

sweet dreams.

2009-11-27T17:27:00.001-05:00

Dylan's Candy Bar, said Jeffrey Steingarten in October Vogue, "is the most perfect American candy store in existence, all three airy floors designed and decorated in the happiest possible manner, each clever colorful detail conveying the deepest candy love imaginable."

I believed Jeffrey Steingarten, for a few reasons: I have a jealous love and trust of most food writers, but especially the really good ones, like Steingarten; I don't know what kind of person would lie about candy; if you are a really good writer, and if you use enough superlatives, I will usually choose to believe you rather than stop believing in superlatives.

But then I went to Dylan's, and I thought, horrors: Steingarten was wrong. And in the same thought, I finally forgave my parents for never taking me to Disneyland. (See? Forgiveness! I am kind of Christian after all, parents!) There's no such thing as perfect, but somehow, there is such a thing as too perfect, and that is Dylan's. The Disneyland of candy. Happy, dazzling, saccharine, overwhelmingly lit. Not a shadow or a flaw in the place.

I hardly sampled anything (compared with my desires!) but still, I left aching from sweet. I'll go back again but only to make sure it's real. I swear. Nothing to do with all that too much, too perfect licorice.

famous tea parties in history (real or fictive).

2009-11-20T12:58:00.003-05:00

Mad tea party.

Witches tea party.

Boston tea party.

Vaneska tea party.

Actually, she looks more like Vanessa here.

So deservingly adored.

I would think my teapot's prettiest.

You know it's a rager when the TUMS come out,

yes Carolyn?

It's soo... Gossip Girl! we said,

with the slightest embarrassment.

well, she's all geared up / walkin' down the street

2009-11-18T12:43:00.005-05:00

Lately broken news: Danier's not for leather mommies anymore. When did this happen? How? Lucky lucky, I will tell you:

1. Around the time of TIFF, I acquired a pair of reverse mullet leggings: party in the front (i.e. slick, soft leather), business in the back (easy stretch knit). I've worn them once a week since. So have too many other people. Seriously, these freaking leggings are the local fashion mafia's worst-kept secret.

2. Also -- and this is big, since I'm not a bag lady in the least; my last two were bought on U.O. clearance racks -- I found a bag I like. Everyone else likes it too. Even after I'm all, "Whythefuck would I lie about this? It's Danier!"

The other night Paigey texted me and said she saw the bag on a chair at Spoke Club and hoped it meant I was there. Not unfortunately, I wasn't. I'm faintly annoyed that a Spoke Club member has the same widely available black leather handbag as I do, but I'm going to be the bigger girl and get over it.

3. Before fall, I bought a stunning Dynasty-era dress from the Public Butter: black suede, backless, dotted in rhinestones, bold-shouldered and long-sleeved. I shortened it, of course, and wore it once or twice before looking at the label. Then blinking, looking again. DANIER. You can't see this bombshell dress right now -- it's lost to the insatiable gape of my lampless, hellish closet -- so just... believe it.

4. And now, better late than never, Danier's joined the fashion film festival (http://danier.com to watch the winter campaign vid). I won't lie and say I like it -- looks too like an adventure travel commercial for my taste -- but I love how they made Sports Illustrated models (Melissa Baker, Julie Henderson) wear the most possible clothes.

5. Finally! Vote for Eric Tong in the Danier Design Challenge. He is an adorable boy, and his jacket has a buttercream feel & Rick Owens-y appeal.

Alright. Patriotism over. Now I can return to being an unCanadian fashion whore or whatever the local internet is thinking this week.

can i get an age advance?

2009-11-10T08:12:00.005-05:00

http://theplaygroundmagazine.com/index.html

The other day, I met a girl who works at a hotel cafe, lived in Arizona, has a huge rip in her wool tights, cuts her own bangs, looks like about five ethnicities, can smile while talking, and in her spare time, paints age-progession portraits of children lost to cancer or other unknowns.

I would think I'd scripted her, but then, I'm not Scott Neustadter.

The girl is real. I want to see her paintings. I asked her if she looks at people and watches their faces morph decades ahead, in moments. She said yes, actually! She sees everyone at age 65. I was scared to ask the next question, but of course I did. She said I would be fine; I don't have a lot of body fat, so not much will sag. But I should exercise, probably, and not smoke. Well. Yeah.

Then I remembered that in Paris, I bought the first issue of Playground Magazine, only because it came out on the day I arrived--or something equally meaningless. And in it, there are two brilliant black-and-whites of this withered, sun-beaten woman. Long long hair, shades, a cigarette. A shrivelling cackle.

Swear to god I looked at these photos and thought, oh my god! Lindsay Lohan? Why didn't they airbrush you?

reality star.

2009-11-09T12:49:00.000-05:00

After the fact, what should have been a preface to the Strombo story I did for Weekend Post: I went to j-school with many a girl who had every line of Almost Famous memorized, the complete works of Chuck Klosterman on her bedside table, and a massive, drooling crush on George Stroumboulopoulos.

I wasn't one of them.

Still, I spent almost two hours becoming fascinated, so I'll tell you why.

The alarm on Strombo's cell went off, like I said in the beginning of my little story, and then it went off again, and again. So my voice lowers. I ask fewer questions. I look around more slowly. The producers have markered SLEEP! on his whiteboard. He says it's a joke. But he's seriously fucking tired. He says "people exist in two states: tired and exhausted."

I can only ask, "people?" And he says, "well, professionals." I think, strivers. There are strivers who want to move to New York, and strivers who want to move to LA. Strombo's the latter. He already has an apartment there. Fucking loves it: "All these people on a quest. That's beautiful." I wonder if ambition isn't a bit ugly, though. But he shakes his head. He isn't talking about ambition. Knows nothing of it. Well, of course not.

Because here's a guy, almost 40, always working, never sleeping--and yet I'm not sure he has a job. I mean, yes, he's hosting and playing music and interviewing. (People, even people who don't like him, few as they are, say he's a good interviewer. I'm not sure. He's a good talker -- a really good talker, as those almost two hours would indicate -- and he's a good listener, and it's rare and difficult to be both.)

So Strombo's job is all of those things, but it's none of them, because really it's only this: being himself. Relentlessly, restlessly himself. On air. On the street. On my tape recorder. Dear god. Can you imagine anything harder? A hundred times harder than acting. The person, the personality: one, the same. Strombo is always Strombo. That's what his friends call him, and it's what his fans call him, and strangers, and it's what I'm calling him, and I don't even know why.

I wonder if, when he was drawing pentagrams on his bedroom wall, he imagined this cult of person/ality. I don't wonder it out loud. I know he'd say no, never.

And I know this isn't what George meant me to think, but it's what I left with: this guy never gets tired of himself! How?

what you need, you think will last.

2009-11-08T21:55:00.005-05:00

First, I don't remember (or I only think I ever knew) that it's Van Morrison covering Bob Dylan. But then I'm forgiven. He says, "None of the bitches would dance with me when this song came on at high school dances." I say well, one of them will, now. He's always warm. I don't cry. I swear. I don't.

they made me do it.

2009-11-03T08:20:00.003-05:00

Don't you ever just get tired of yourself? I forget who asked me this question, which is probably why the answer is: every day. It's fucking exhausting: the making of conversations, of contacts, of (something like) a career? Remembering everyone and everything? Making face, when my inclination's to make faces? Making nice? I can't do it! I snapped and ranted this one time, so now you know. I hardly care who knows it. (Only afraid they'll know I don't care.)

And all the outlets my energy ebbs from. All the feeds I can't properly digest. I don't know if I have taste anymore! I know so much I can't think.

So I needed to make a new face, act a fool, stay up, not think, not have to care. There's no pretension when everyone's in on it. There's no society. I mean: you dress up, and suddenly, strangers recognize you. How amazing is that? How much realer than real? Halloween! I've always loved it, ever since it was withheld from me: my parents thought it pagan, or Satanic, whichever's worse. We went to church instead.

(Carli Mia and me, uh, on the biz)

We descended first into this smokepit of a party. In an old theatre, no one watched the movies. We danced to good rock, bad rock. Same kids, old kids now. After one or two a.m., we had to climb stairs to somewhere lower. It gives you an out-of-body feeling.

"You're not yourself tonight," said more than one. Thank hell. I don't know if I said anything. But no one was pretending to care if I said anything. An easy crowd to feel strange in. And strangely comforted.

Four or something a.m. and I was home alone, scrubbing off my makeup to the bone.

the look for now.

2009-10-30T12:28:00.007-04:00

The Felipe-Oliveira Baptista S/S10 lookbook arrived in my inbox today, but it's really only runway images, so I could've blogged this earlier. Ah well. I really like Mr. Baptista's militant sex (better than Balmain) and his loose way with a blazer. Here, it's exaggerated into a long black gown. With heavy ankle boots. A better look for now, I can't imagine.

And the Tippi Hedren headpieces! I want to see them editorialized, shot in a sweeping desert, in bone-rattling wind, the feathered wraith-like models feeding on dead beautiful boy bodies.

Fashion makes one sick. It's true.

phoebe philo pastry.

2009-10-28T16:42:00.007-04:00

Her sweet everythings: flesh, feathers, constant smoking, horse rides, khaki and denim, classic leisure, boudoirs. And more. Some personal inspirations, some archival stuff. Mostly from the 70s. All bound together in the best picture book I've ever seen, the one with a wood-grain cover, left on every coveted seat at Celine S/S10 in Paris. Oh Phoebe. You deserved all the lust in that room.

Meant to scan and share a few of the pages as soon as I got back—I have no better souvenirs!—but I've been scattered, I'm sorry.

Please enjoy.

this is where i've been shacked up

2009-10-23T15:45:00.001-04:00

http://www.eyeweekly.com/lgfashionweek
come say hi?
xo.

this is where i've been shacked up

2009-10-23T15:45:00.000-04:00

http://www.eyeweekly.com/lgfashionweek
come say hi?
xo.

fyi sunday.

2009-10-18T13:54:00.004-04:00

It's apple-crisp and shiny out. Bit cold. But good weather for window seats, and for window shopping. Take a warm muffin and a walk. Toronto's Fashion Week starts tomorrow, and do you care at all? You can sit with Eye Weekly on a park bench and read my little spread on Brooklyn Brownstone, plus other daughters of fashion. Or, if you're in the right shop, get a copy of ION mag (also free) because Kavin's beautiful, quiet photos of Tara deserve to be seen in real. She's wearing bits of my friend Matthieu's paper world, with one of those shredded tees by Thomas; I styled and wrote.

autumn/winter is

2009-10-16T17:30:00.003-04:00

hot meals, dying flowers, a black bundle of pretty (in reverse photo order).

PRS SS 10: three left feet.

2009-10-15T23:24:00.007-04:00

In Paris (is this getting tired yet?) I tripped over odd and wondrous shoes everywhere. Here, a few pairs to remember.

Two fillies stood at the Rick Owens show,
just raring to be asked: "Um, those shoes? Where??"
(They made them. Email marel-amber[at]gmail[dot]com
if you want to know how, or how to buy.)

2.

A seamed, riveted, and pieced-together circle of leather
folds up to make this flat, angular boot.
Yuima Nakazato's the name.

(Found this fashematician by happy accident,
lost en route to Acne showroom.)

Alain Quilici: clean, sexy, mixed-media shoes. Top shelf.
He's the new [whoever your favourite cobbler was yesterday].

PRS SS 10: prints charming.

2009-10-12T15:42:00.003-04:00

This season, I found the larger mood hard to pin down. It was simple when it was about shape: the sharp, cold shoulder; the padded hip. You could see the changes coming from a hundred yards down the runway. But now it's about feelings, not the big ideas. So you have to look closely... though no further than Gareth Pugh, for the best example. He kept his hautecore shapes but did them in softer leathers, feathers, ribbons. I thrilled instantly to that juxtaposition. There were brilliant textural statements at Giambattista Valli, which I thought was the second-most beautiful show (first, Lanvin), and loud, luxe ones by MJ for LV.

But texture is heavy. I'm still too lagged to suss it all out. Let's look at the lighthearted motifs that dominated a few of my favourite shows. There's so much talk of print in fashion now. These are just prints. Easy, amusing, innocent. Or not so?

Swallows and swimmers at Miu Miu.

Strawberries at YSL.

Itsy-bitsy spiders at Giles.

from a plain notebook, from the plane home.

2009-10-11T21:25:00.003-04:00

We walked to Chez Moune past stained glass and strip parlours. Meg fell from her dino heels and lay like a broken doll -- Tyra would have said yes! -- on the sidewalk. I resisted snapping a photo. We all helped her up and then down the stairs in to the lesbian cabaret (allegedly). I really love any staircase that spirals, but especially one that plunges down like a corkscrew into some dark giddy potent place.

Diane Pernet's DJ set was good for half a song and then she vanished. Well, that's how you get places in fashion, by always seeming to have somewhere better to be.

We stayed. It was good dancing. Then Meg and I got tired and sank into banquettes, watching the other girls bust it. I think I like underground Paris and not just because it's a thing to like. We saw the most gorgeous couple. Not good-looking, understand. But she was all in black with perfect French bangs and he was a bit chubby, in blue plaid, and together they were just all oved up, they were crazy. They were such bad dancers. They were the best. I could have cheered silently for those kids for a long time, but Claire came to talk to me. I didn't know she was Claire. I knew she was a fashion school lesbian, though.

Claire asked me if I'd seen the films. Oh, right. Diane Pernet did this short fashion film fest and the awards were earlier. I hadn't reserved energy to go. And I supposed to meet Matthieu. What happened to Matthieu? Weird.

So I said, "No, I was eating Chinese food."

She thought this was the funniest thing ever... We talked. She lives in -- a wild guess -- Berlin. I should watch her film. It won an award, she told me right away. They had bottle service: vodka, jus d'orange. I could have a drink? But we had to go.

I much prefer being hit on by lesbians than by straight old wankers. (There must be a great French term for wanker. Look it up.) I don't feel anything really except flattered and... interesting. (Yes, interesting is what I mean; not interested.) And they understand the impossibility of "later tonight" when you explain. The men don't. One asked me boldfaced, in French, if I would go home with him. Not even a bonsoir.

Outside it was almost cold. My last night, I said, so let's go to le Montana. We got in a cab. Down to Rivoli. The driver careened into the Louvre, totally without caution, and we squealed. We were hurtling over the cobblestones, and the glasss pyramid was lit up, dazzling, and the old Louvre was the colour of a thousand karats, and air rushed in...to the cab? ...to our heads? and it was so amazing! So amazing! That was Paris!

you little tart.

2009-10-07T18:36:00.004-04:00

Honestly. All I do in Paris is walk and eat. I get up, do a little work, take too long to get dressed, realize I've no time for the hotel buffet. Say to myself: the last thing you need is a buffet, you newly insatiable glutton. So I walk up to the metro, and on the way, buy a jambon-and-gruyere sandwich. And some kind of viennoserie, which I can only eat half of, or macarons, which I can eat infinity of. Then, a bunch of oversized grapes from a street vendor. And sure, some Haribo candies. After a show and a showroom visit, time for cafe creme and a sweet something: today it was a raspberry tart at Angelina's. (That's what I call it, a "raspberry tart," but in Parisian, "raspberry tart" is twelve words in frilly, raised-ink script.)

After Angelina's, Miss Bubble and I stopped by Calla's showroom again, just to make sure her clothes are really that beautiful (they are). And right next door: Tartes Kluger! Understand, these are the best tarts around. So good that the mere smell immediately eradicates all memory of the tart you (er, I) just consumed, half an hour earlier, at Angelina's. I bought something containing the words passionfruit, meringue, and noisettes.

Tartes Kluger is so fancy, it has its own magazine: Le Tartezine! Only the new Fantastic Man (with its fairer, sexy companion, The Gentlewoman) is more appealing.

This is all that remained by the time I remembered to snap a shot.

PRS SS 10: strawberry fields forever.

2009-10-06T14:34:00.005-04:00

I think every girl had that thing she wore and wore and wore, out of love and stubbornness, until it was accidentally mixed up with the dish rags or consigned to charity. Mine was a white cotton skirt with a luscious fraise print. My momma sewed it for me. Eventually, I imagine she pried it out of my hands while I slept. If only she had known...

YSL SS 10. Really, Mr. Pilati, what gives?

seven things that would make anyone smile, or feel lucky.

2009-10-03T19:41:00.008-04:00

Girls who paint their nails together on the metro.

And reading Menkes every day in the IHT.

Longtime owner of tiny vintage shop in Marais,

cheap and chock full of stripes.

Slap-on tattoo from a bubblegum wrapper.

Girl with lunch on steps, avant Marant.

Boys being boys:
Tommy drew this in the Tuileries dust on Sart shoes.

The courtyard of a small church, museum, or someplace.

Helmet check at a party in the 10th.

PRS SS 10: this will not be my last lanvin show, i promised myself today.

2009-10-02T14:51:00.007-04:00

Stop motion, stop my heart. Lanvin makes me believe: season after season, Mr. Elbaz delivers true beauty, whole beauty, nothing but beauty. No irony or apology. And each collection, rather than making the previous seem passe or outmode, proves it to be more right. Improves on perfection, dare I say. Impossible? That's nothing when it comes to love like this.

yo mama's so cool she doesn't need air conditioning.

2009-09-30T08:23:00.009-04:00

If that joke's no good, it's because there's nothing funny about how much I love my hotel. The capitale, too, but first the hotel.

Mama Shelter does have air conditioning, actually, and also: big downy beds, Starck raving mad cool design, excellent concierges, free-wifi, disposables for sale, a book-filled hotel bar, heavy shower pressure, newspapers from everywhere, magazines too, a Batman mask for a bedside light, city cycles to rent, and a rate of (really only!) 79 euros a night.

I'll even forgive Mama for not waking me up this morning. I couldn't sleep til four a.m. I think it was more the air change than the time change. The Paris air! It hums infinitely, even when all seems quiet. It sweats parfum.

In an alleyway near the hotel, alone, I ate my first French meal: coffee to start, and then some delicious fish, quinoa risotto, bread, everything touched with butter. For a parting kiss, homemade marshmallows. A moped, zooming past, nearly knocked a water glass from my hand.

This is a city for those more easily enchanted than scared.

Apres-dins, I saw a film by myself in a little cinema. It appeared undecorated since the 60s, ergo: perfect. Fish Tank was the film (of course I would see the only English option!) and it was really brilliant. I ate handfuls of pastel candies from the bonbon bar.

Anyway, this morning, and then this afternoon, I slept and slept and slept... I slept until all the croissants in the city had been devoured, and the Anne Valerie Hash show had begun (oops! sorry, Anne Valerie Hash!), and room service had come knocking three times. Only my body's scream for caffeine woke me, finally.

Now my hometime alarm goes off. You still asleep? I miss you, and at the same time, am completely happy. I think this is a city that will let me feel myself. I sang on the street last night. The first time in years. Not even, like, Phoenix or Air or anything. "Colorblind." Why? Maybe Cafe Noir made me think of it: coffee black and egg white...

Right, caffeine. I'm going to get an espresso and a baguette and some fruit, wander off, smoke Gauloises on the famous graves, visit the Tuileries... Everything typique! Is that how you say it?

in rainbows.

2009-09-28T10:58:00.005-04:00

Though my favourite shades are grey, today's weather called for rainbows.

Here's the tie-dye cake I made for big T on her birthday.

In memory of her poor dead blog, allow me to say

this woman is Good Old(er) Neon.

Arc-en-ciel nails a la Sophy Robson, via paiiige

Fantasia Lights! Cigs like candy, or pencilcrayons,
as seen in The Dreamers (crimson, of course)
and Mr. Ford's A Single Man (pink).

edge of seventeen.

2009-09-27T23:39:00.000-04:00

My sister's less little today. I love the girl. Want her to know how pretty she is already, so she can try for something else.

In her card, my brother copied out Rimbaud: "No one's serious at seventeen." I quoted Stevie Nicks, because I wish I'd known about Stevie, when I had more sleep for dreams.

james murphy's law.

2009-09-26T21:38:00.008-04:00

Few nights ago, Vanessa and I went down to the ElMo to catch Wavves. First, though, we went to make face with Vanity Fair portraits at the ROM. Between two of us, we knew too many people. I felt unsocial, underdressed in a plain t-shirt and fast-fashion skirt and knockoff Marni shoes. Still, we had to linger for civilities, and sure, for bites of lobster. Thought we were going to be late. Wavves was an early show, right? But we skittered, tired on those heels, into a pretty empty place.

"We're not late, then?"

Kids at the merch table gave us skeptical twice-overs. Or maybe just me, overdressed in a clean t-shirt and Topshop skirt and knockoff Marni shoes. Clicking on my Blackberry. I thought of saying, you know, my other phone is a vintage Razr.

Later I realized why one kid was such a dick, rolling his eyes all over the place. He was in the first of two opening bands, the one that wasn't Ganglians (they were awesome). We had no idea. Well, sorry. With that haircut, I thought you were Pixie Geldof in British Vogue.

His band sucked. We stood at the back, out of it. I watched all the smaller girls in liquid leggings, plaid, 50/50 tees, chain purses, sneakers. I remembered the girls just like them, before them. They used to frighten me. I smiled but I bet it came out like a smirk. They made faces at my feet: too high these heels, too shiny.

I felt new in town again. Wondered if I'd spun full circle: out of it, with it, out of it. Maybe I belonged out of it.

Two days later, I woke up not feeling any older after all. I played that Modest Mouse song I named this blog after, three ages ago. Then I played it again. My brother (he's been sleeping on the couch) rolled his eyes, kind of. I said, "I'm allowed! It's my birthday." And I knew what I wanted.

everything's coming up violets.

2009-09-25T11:53:00.008-04:00

On the first day of my 25th year, I came to light with a champagne hangover, a naked man nearly on top of me, and a hurricane of amethyst hair. Yes. I mean purple. It took me ten minutes to remember why I'd done it. Let me tell you, backwards and dizzy.

This is me at the salon, yesterday, because you don't want to see my face right now. Apparently, purple hair comes with matching under-eye bags. Also I am suddenly sure that crow's feet have landed. And that my writer's wrinkle is deeper than you'd guess my thoughts could make it.

Hair looks even purpler, gemmier, and more crazy-old-ladylike today.

This is one of Proenza Schouler's spring visions: a surf-rock babe caught in a violet wave.

This is Kinga, pretty in POP. Can't stop loving it.

This is, sigh, Lady Gaga.

This is My Little Pony.

LDN SS 10: the digital age.

2009-09-23T19:40:00.005-04:00

Yesterday I started reading Nick Cave's new novel, Bunny Munro, and this arrested me:

"Bunny zones on the afterpart of her lilac gingham uniform, and a glitch in the pixels of the crosshatched pattern causes time to deregulate. He begins to see, in a concussed way, that this moment is a defining one for this particular young lady and a choice is presenting itself to her."

Well, it's also a defining moment for the digital print, an innovation that truly belongs to my Nintendo generation, and is being rapidly perfected thereby.

Basso & Brooke, the originators of the anti-analog revolution
& still going strong.

Mary Katrantzou, the new favourite.
(Anna Della Russo wears it best.)

Josh Goot, the Aussie whiz kid I met in Barcelona.
Soon to be sold at (no way!) The Bay.

gone fishin'

2009-09-22T19:57:00.001-04:00

Oh, the things I get to call work.

LOVE Magazine, p. 164

2009-09-22T09:44:00.003-04:00

"Now more than ever, the Great British Public want 'real' celebrities. Since the official demise-of-everything-we-thought-we-knew (aka the Global Economic Whatever) we have become embroiled in a hysterical hunt for ordinary people that somehow bring us hope. You only have to look at the parading of Susan Boyle as some kind of modern-day Sea Biscuit to see that the nation wants its celebrities to be everyday to the point of mediocrity, so long as they make us believe that if we dream hard enough it will all be OK."

Oh shit, amazing. Such a relief to read anything in a fashion magazine that hasn't been sanded and sanded and sanded to gleaming pointlessness. I should know. So Karley Sciortino, I don't care if you're unsecretly mean, or slutty in that dated third-wave way, or even if you wear purple Doc Martens. We could be friends.

closing thought.

2009-09-21T16:54:00.006-04:00

Doing TIFF's social circuit fried my brain. Still, I learned one V.I.T., which is that I like going places far more than I like being there.

Also, because I'm into alternative endings, here's the realization I originally wrote for this sooociety dinner party: "When the main course arrived at last—on each gleaming platter, a grandiose hunk of sirloin or sea bass—we gasped. This extraordinary problem before us: how ever could we consume it all?"

LDN SS 10: live fast.

2009-09-20T22:02:00.007-04:00

I fell Fast last season in London, and my long-distance love only grows as Mark spins ever further-out yarns. For Spring: lash-fine knits, of course, in a palette of powders and kohl, with a couple of feather-brushed skirts. Love beads get all caught up in his spider-fingers; spills of lapping ruffles, upside-down and triangular, break the webs. But not the spell.

Photos from LFW.

P.S> OK, this can't be ignored: apparently, a few plus-size models were too big a stretch for showrunners. A Fast staffer quit, and the stylist was fired. Really? Yes, on Fashionista.

Thing is, I too think all those gossamer knits look slinkier and more delicate (what I am scared to say is: better) on waifish frames. But my perceptions, perhaps, need to adjust for reality. And it's so nice to see a designer actually putting his models where his mouth is. Kudos!

NYC SS 10: the lineup.

2009-09-19T15:20:00.008-04:00

This New York season, it feels like TV on the Runway.

Army Wives
L: Alexander Wang, R: Rag & Bone

Witches of Eastwick
Rodarte

White Collar
L: Phi, R: Calvin Klein

Glee
Chris Benz

Cougar Town
L: Jenni Kayne, R: Proenza Schouler

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
3.1 Phillip Lim

Dollhouse
L: United Bamboo, R: Marc Jacobs*

*who always manages to get the last word.

these muffins are strawberry-b-a-n-a-n-a-s.

2009-09-18T10:14:00.004-04:00

Earlier today...

I really was going to go for a free BK breakfast sammie,
but then I decided to blog and bake at the same time.

Favourite muffins I've ever made*:
3 cups Quaker bran muffin mix
1/2 pint chopped, past-season strawberries
1 ripe banana, mashed
1 cup water
1/3 cup plain yogourt
Honey and cinnamon, as you like

Mix everything up with a fork. Pour into mini-muffin tins.
Bake at 400F for 22 minutes.
Eat in handfuls.
With jam.

(Still life taken on my ever-more-beloved
Olympus Pen.)

what weight restriction?

2009-09-15T16:09:00.007-04:00

My haul from Manhattan's bad-necessities shops. I drool at all this artificial sweetness, so delicious and toxic, and think the candy looks okay too.

how to lose a mind in 10 days.

2009-09-12T18:43:00.002-04:00

Sorry, I'm on this working vacation from reality.

acquired reading.

2009-09-08T23:37:00.002-04:00

On first days of school, not that long ago, I thrilled to book lists. I never tired of new texts; it was the glossing of and over them I couldn't stand. I wanted to keep feelings whole. Not dissect. Anyway, now that writing is my job, reading is love again. Here's what I have for my homeschooling, this semester.

The one at the bottom: ok, it's kind of an obvious fashion book, but it was $20 at the eleventh hour of the Pages [RIP] closing selloff. And I like Vogue's big old ALT-bro.

All the rest was random, but now that I look at it, not. Many splendours and sorrows.

Wish I had time to read Bonfire of the Vanities before, ahem, TIFF.

playpen.

2009-09-04T12:03:00.009-04:00

(Products not intentionally placed in foreground,
believe it or not.)

If anything could make me toss my disposable habit, it's this new plaything: the Olympus Pen. A 60s revival to rival Biba, this reimagination of a classic synthesizes analog and digital and turns the half-frame camera into something wholly desirable. Even for those who don't know what a half-frame is. Anyone?

for lovers.

2009-09-03T12:39:00.004-04:00

When I'm lying around reading old novels and listening to Coltrane live—an unimpeachable pleasure, by the way; think before you roll your eyes—I start wondering, why isn't there some Portland rock-school-dropout band doing for cool jazz what Hercules & Love Affair did for disco? Then I become sure there is such a band and I'm just waiting for the right person to tell me.

the simple bear necessities.

2009-08-31T18:37:00.008-04:00

Because I've been tired, in the way that means... sad, one of my best friends said I should get a teddy bear. I already have a bear, have had him for ever. He stays in the corner. I don't subscribe to substitutions, Splenda excepted, and teddy bears are fake warmth personified.

I listened to her anyway, if not in the way she meant, and started hunting for comfort creatures. In fashion, of course. Designers have a weird kink for stuffed things. I suppose something so innocent is begging to be perverted, or that anything a child uses to sleep is better used to dream. (And fashion is what else but dream?)

Jean-Paul Gaultier once admitted to fashioning his first bustier on his poor bear. Sonia Rykiel and Betsey Johnson use them sometimes as motifs. Jean-Charles de Castelbajac loves them, loves them, loves them, and Jeremy Scott--sorry, JEREMY SCOTT--twitters them obsessively of late. Even Prada made teddy bags. There is a surprisingly extensive history of bears in mode! And the more I write this, the less I can imagine why you care, but. Whatever. Indulge me in a brief overview.

J-C de Castelbajac, he who frogged Lady Gaga,
has long been living the plush life.

Here's the infamous teddy bear coat
he made for the First Lady,
Madonna, 20 yrs ago:

(Well, so says Google image,
but I thought hers was black?)

Similarly, here's the faintly horrifying showstopper
at Disaya's CSM graduate collection, 2005:

Four years later, she can't let go...

Above and atop this year's Xmas wish list are
Disaya's bedazzled ceramic teddies. I almost begged
the boutiquier who showed me them
to order right that second.

Sketch of last year's Lagerfeld teddy for Colette.

Who doesn't want Karl Lagerfeld whispering
thinspirations to you in the night?
So beary scary.

This fetus is from
Teddy Bear Natural History
by artist Stephanie Metz, 2008.

If this repulses you, don't go examine teddy skulls.
I said don't.

pulp truth.

2009-08-28T11:33:00.002-04:00

"That's to make it look more badass," explains the bro, with a straight face I've missed. "Because it's really just a book of poetry inside."

little princesses.

2009-08-26T12:59:00.001-04:00

Don't you think she's a little bit young? »

A good writer friend of mine (well, better writer than friend) sent me this link last week. Watch. A narrated slideshow: photos of child brides (unbelievably young, some of them) in their last days of innocence. Can’t stop playing it in my head. And keep thinking, hell, these mothers must believe they want the best for their children.

And you know what else it makes me think? There’s that TLC show, “Toddlers and Tiaras,” and it’s not metaphorically named. It unwinds behind the scenes of beauty pageants: all those tiny, unknowing whores, as real as they are porcelain, and the mothers who love them. These mothers, too, believe they want the best.

So tell me how, in the relative moral framework, two disparate wrongs are not exactly the same.

new montreal.

2009-08-22T09:54:00.009-04:00

I wanted to go to Montreal, and then very quickly I needed to. Said I was escaping my home city's swelter and skelter, but I only found more and more in la belle capitale. Ah yeah. C'est vrai, what they say: change of scene is as good as a rest.

On the train home--oh, four words I love so much!--the internet connection is like a bad-news boyfriend. Off and on. Off, on. It lets me upload a few of my favourite moments. Here:

Andrew Ly, friend of a best friend,
and the new fashion kid in Montreal's school of no schooling.
(Why bother, when you can learn from the rest?)

Here he wears the triumph of a packed-house debut show
and a very awesome, golden
Powerhouse necklace.

Kudos!

When I sent this snap to Badalie, she said, "Where are you???
Aldo? Or heaven??"

Your guess is as good as hers.

Leisure, class.

Once when I was small, I cried for two hours
because Mama wouldn't buy me a zillionth-rate
painting of a white unicorn and a sunset.

It's all made up for now: how daydreamy is
Boutique Unicorn?

I bought this really good necklace, all black leather braided,
for seriously only $24. It's by Lifetime,
a Van brand I hadn't known.

The brunches at Le Cartet are oh god, so good.

And this is Andrew again, wearing the shoulderpiece
of a super-cool sidebag (only at Reborn, sigh)
as a nervy kinda gas mask.

With Adrian. Duh.

happy hour, or the eleventh.

2009-08-18T06:49:00.004-04:00

Night swimmers, tonight. The happiest I have felt in so long. He says, how much will you give me if I take off my trunks? I say I'll pay him $20. Later I'll go naked, free. Under water with no temperature he's slippery and hard as ever to hold. I watch with tenderness the flash of ass, the lazy, thrashing way he swims. I know this is love. The barest flicker of wind. Rippling water's surface turns white lamplight into the loose ends of birthday streamers.

i'm making fun of myself too, don't worry.

2009-08-17T18:08:00.006-04:00

Luckily for me, my sternly German mother (and agreeable father) ensured I was fluent in the most unromantic of unromance languages at a very tender age. Before I could speak English, even.

Luckily for you, this means that although I've let the Mama-tongue slip, I can still roughly translate the uncountable blogs of the Berlin uber-cool.

Original, click to enlarge:

Translation:

OH MY GOD CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT AFTER PURPLE FASHION MAGAZINE #11 THERE IS COMING OUT A PURPLE FASHION MAGAZINE #12. IT WILL MAKE MY SEPTEMBER ONE MORE MONTH THAT I DO NOT KILL MYSELF WITH A ROPE IN THE MANNER OF THE GUY IN THE MOVIE "CONTROL." THERE IS SO MUCH FANTASTISCHNESS IN THIS ONE, LIKE THERE IS A PHOTO SHOOT WITH BAPTISTE GIABICONI, WHICH MEANS NOTHING TO ME EITHER, EXCEPT HIS NAME IS THERE WITH KARL LAGERFELD'S. AND TERRY RICHARDSON, OH MY GOD, I HOPE THE SHOOT IS ON RARE FILM CAMERAS THAT HE FOUND ON EBAY AND FEATURES AN OVERGROWN PRIVATE PART OR THREE. I HOPE ALSO THAT THERE IS A MEGA-COLLAGE MEMORIAL ON DASH SNOW, MY FAVOURITE ARTIST NOW THAT HE IS DEAD LIKE BASQUIAT, BECAUSE I REALLY WONDER WHAT HE LOOKS LIKE IN A POLAROID.

paper hearts.

2009-08-11T09:16:00.004-04:00

weekend work: creating a little piece of a paper world,
and then doing it again,
differently...

figure a.

lovely Tara, looking (almost by accident) rather Laroux,
a wicked Shark, and white sheets.

figure b.

model like a Nordic Ann-Margret, in Heidi Ackerman,
not eating Vesta breakfast,
with Istoica.

...can't wait to see these both unfold.

i don't like being this mad on a sunday.

2009-08-09T16:59:00.004-04:00

If the recession's end means an immediate return to soulless gold-digging among the wannabe jet set, well, hold on a second. Give me that recession back. From today's Styles:

The invitation to the latest Fashion Meets Finance party — an affair that shamelessly includes only women who work in fashion and men from Wall Street — declared that the dark days are over — not just for the economy, but in the dating market. “We are here to announce the balance is restoring itself to the ecosystem of the New York dating community,” the party organizers said on their cheeky Web site.
The site allowed people to post R.S.V.P.’s, including job titles and salaries, and while many entries were clearly fictitious (“David” who works in “cougar trading”), there was nothing imaginary about the hundreds of well-dressed, well-groomed people who snaked down East 50th Street waiting to get into Nikki Beach in Midtown Manhattan on Thursday night.

Clap hands, please, for the writer's verb choice: could anything sum up the necessary contempt better than "snake"? God. I could see that slimy, reptilian queue so clearly, if it weren't for my blinding wrath. And it's not directed to snakes of the trouser variety, either. I mean, sure. You're all unevolved pricks. At least you can say it's required on the job, the one you'll keep after marriage, along with your name and worth.

But you women? You "attractive types who work in fashion [and therefore] just want to find wealthy men who work in finance" because, what, they can afford your dignity? They can keep you in appearances? You, Beth Newill, former "merchandiser for Ann Taylor"—what does that mean, you got paid minimum wage to wrap faux-crocodile belts around the wasp-waists of window mannequins in Soho? Wow, you're really working it, Beth—you'd give up fifty years of a good fight for a man who makes you feel "stable" in six-inch Loubs?

You know, some of us actually do work in fashion, or around it. We do so in no small part because, at its best, fashion allows us to create and uphold a vision of the female that has nothing, nothing at all to do with what men find attractive. (No, you don't think so? Show the boyfriend your latest favourite editorial, and then argue with me.) This is our special place. Your special place? Is in Hell's Kitchen, I hope.

all kinds of wonderful.

2009-08-07T12:14:00.005-04:00

For the utility jumpsuit, you have to visit my favourite Kensington spot. Like most secrets worth keeping, I'm not sure it has a name, but I think it's one up from Harry David's on Augusta Ave (the place with all the construction vests outside; I'm sure they have coveralls, too, but more authentic and/or expensive). The other day I stopped in and bought a leather vestlet, with clasps and Madonna-ish curvature, and it was $7.99, and aren't you jealous?

For the hair, so recently re-trendy, call your mother and ask her if she still has a bowl sized just right. After it's cut, a caveat: avoid hats.

For the gloves, cop a Koi Suwannagate hand-beaded look. Fingerless frippery isn't worth paying real money for, I don't think, but it's a very pretty thing to imagine you will someday have time to DIY.

For the leather jacket, any old l'imparfait will do.

For the kiss, just cherry chapstick, please.

For Mr. Hughes, nothing but love.

happy for never.

2009-08-05T15:00:00.005-04:00

[image: lelove]

First of all, Ariel Levy is probably my favourite writer of profiles. Not for a second, then, does it surprise me that I can't get her New Yorker snapshots of Nora Ephron out of my head. I wasn't interested in Nora Ephron or her movies, not particularly, although my first boyfriend and I used to think we were Harry and Sally. You know, without the "adulthood." Lame. I want to see Julie and Julia, but let's be real. I'm still emo. I prefer eye-watering to mouth-watering.

In the Levy story, Ephron has these wry quotes—which you'll have to find yourself; I'm busy—about how her neat breakups (so neat you nearly imagine her slicing the couple in two with an old-fashioned razor) are just wishful thinking on her twice-divorced part. Real love, we all know, bleeds like hell when it dies.

And I've been watching movies about love this summer. I've decided. For the post-modern romantic, a truly happy ending is—yes, an ending, not an ever after. We all feel it's really "until life do us part." The fantasy isn't to stay together. It's to split up and stay okay. To escape, intact. I think about my friends who say "breaking up was the hardest thing I've" and it's not that they didn't want to break up—oh, they so desperately wanted to break up—but that they didn't want it to be hard.

Even I, the most-in-love girlfriend you ever rolled your eyes at, sometimes wish that I could just be happy. And alone. Then I remember.

bikini kill.

2009-08-03T10:29:00.004-04:00

What are you waiting for? It's summer out there.
You could be the belle of the beach.
Your tan lines would be art.

rainglasses.

2009-07-29T09:31:00.005-04:00

First, I wanted a perfect circle pair of shades for this hippie-chick thing in Eye Weekly. Then I wanted my bro to get some. He emailed me for shades advice. I said, go like a record: round. He said yeah, but they don't suit, and stuck to cool Cats instead.

But guess who's back, smiling shiny, in the ideal pair of Lennon-lovely, Willy-Wonky black frames, with lenses the exact green of ale bottles?

This girl. Home sweet homegirl. So much and too long I've missed her.

The perfect glasses, oh, you know, they just belonged to her counter-cultural artist father, back in the swing of 196?. And no, I'm not allowed to borrow.

everything's gone green...

2009-07-27T12:50:00.006-04:00

...and "everything" is what I mean.

my "green as the grass grows" salad:
1/2 honeydew melon, cubed
1 non-english cucumber, cubed
however many green grapes, halved

dressing:
1/2 pkg mint leaves, fresh
1/2 cup rice vinegar
2-3 tbsp honey or sugar
half a lime, squeezed
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ginger

(pulse in blender,
pour over salad,
let it chill out)

sticky, not sweet rice and green curry tuna
(I cheated a little; the green curry sauce was from a tin,
with a few vaguely eastern spices added,
and then green peppers, onions)

wasabi sweet pea soup (served very cool).

and finally, to begin with, edamame
steamed then pan-roasted in rice vinegar, oil, seasonings
that I don't remember, and toasted sesame seeds.

yes, this dinner has been served to you backwards
because I'm too lazy to reverse photo order.

also backwards: after imbibing all this greenery
I remembered half-consciously its inspiration,
from a book G. has of Sophie Calle's
absurd, romantic art projects.

the only thing that would have made it greener?
trying this nailpolish on a few days earlier.
o.p.i. calls it "gargantuan green grape"
but i'd say "pistachio pudding."

xo, love, kermit the girl.

on the street, part two (overheard).

2009-07-23T17:02:00.004-04:00

"What's the party for? Someone famous?"

So-called insiders are now outside and smoking, maybe feigning boredom, maybe not. You can't look too candid on camera. That's all. These are style people, and some of them are E.B. White style people, too, and they know the subject should be "who." Around here, it's always "who." Ask someone "what" they're wearing, and they'll wonder, under clean smiles, are you trying to insult?

Anyway, the askees ignore the asker's syntax, try replies: "Not famous, exactly. Well, internet famous. Or industry famous. Or..."

And finally, hesitantly: "He's a blogger."

Beat.

"Is it Perez Hilton?"

"No," and laughter.

Well, then, the woman doesn't care. Why should she? She and her friend, they move on. Maybe they go to get their nails did.

on the street.

2009-07-23T12:44:00.004-04:00

last night, he said...

here's a biznesswoman on the scene,
and other haphazard snaps...

...and this happened just now
[guess who?]

loose morales.

2009-07-20T15:07:00.008-04:00

Renata Morales will show you her A/W 09/10 collection when she bloody well pleases, and besides, she's forward; she can afford to be late. Worth the wait? Overwhelmingly. Immerse yourself in twisted visions of hypertextility, riffed off Rodarte, sure, yet (if you've got the money) no worse for the wear. With no press release, I can only take a squinting guess at her mood board: subversive beauty and terror, from The Birds to Japanese slasher films I'm not schooled enough to know.

of the day

2009-07-17T14:54:00.002-04:00

I like the way our belongings stack up. He says, "A photo for what? I'm trying to clean our disgusting apartment, and you're trying to be Diane Arbus."

where you drink champagne and it tastes just like cherry cola.

2009-07-16T15:37:00.004-04:00

It's mostly true that I can be bought off with pretty things I wouldn't buy if I had the money. When I skipped back in from my picnic lunch hour (or two) today, no small delight awaited. Aloha, a Lola! The new Marc Jacobs fragrance, a little Schiap-shaped and lovably, evocatively monikered; I think of The Kinks, or "the tip of the tongue," hinting, as Lola does, at Lolita. Would this Dali-gänger of a rose by any other name smell as sweet?

While I have you in my part-time workspace, let's play Selby. Care to ogle and judge the things I adore at this very moment? Here's one cubicle wall...

...and the other.

How many items can you name?

a long work day is when...

2009-07-15T10:55:00.003-04:00

at the end of it, you're on a Starbucks patio, too quickly depleting your Benson & Hedges fund, and when a homeless woman -- or, at least, a shoeless woman -- bums a cigarette and a lighter, you absentmindedly try to take back the cigarette instead of the lighter, and she looks at you and says, so disgusted, "Are you on drugs?" and swishes away in her blanket-cardigan and bare feet.

Yeah. That's it.

out, out damned spot!

2009-07-13T12:01:00.005-04:00

(Givenchy Couture Fall 2009)

(via Jak and Jil)

Lady Macbeth was never so right. I wasn't into the ombre trend, but now: look at these dresses, stained or dipped in a crimson tide, and tell me they're not bloody heaven.

pop goes the dropout

2009-07-08T18:11:00.005-04:00

A garbage strike is good for treasure-hunters. Today, dear Dani arrived at lunch with an armload of magazines from Conde Nast's more glorious days. I tore into a Vanity Fair with Miss Clueless on the cover, and inside, this:

(click click)

metalomaniac

2009-07-05T19:37:00.006-04:00

Favourite outtakes from this Weekend Post piece I did on Bruce LaBruce as fashion pornographer, for which I spent a few fascinated hours smoking in the basement of an art gallery here in Toronto and feeling like a fly on the wall, wide-eyed (a rarity anymore) and engorged with nicotine and soda:

1. “One of my friends bought a black/white jersey [of Gareth Pugh’s] at Carte Blanche. Kept it clean all night at the bar. Super careful about anyone getting near him with a drink or anything. Got home. Nosebleed all down the front.”

2. “I look out the window and it’s just a sea of Celine Dion posters,” says Fran, whose assistant should be immediately relieved of hotel-reserving duties. “It's like great, this is my first and only impression of Canada.”

Walk up Yonge Street, I advise. There are all these stripper stores with lucite heels and PVC. Nikki mentions a neon bodysuit that sounds like the one from Borat.

“Sounds great,” Fran says sincerely.

3. And Fran again: “It’s what time in London now? Three a.m.? That’s fine. When it gets to be five a.m. London time, and I’m not drunk, then it’s like, what the fuck.”

Finally, here's the schlock & key to Bruce's fashion-shooting inspiration: The Eyes of Laura Mars, a 1978 fashion thriller starring Faye Dunaway, excerpted on YouTube below.

a clever way to stop your girlfriend stealing your ray-bans

2009-07-04T21:55:00.001-04:00

is to put prescription lenses in them.

Jerk.

i die!

2009-07-03T14:45:00.002-04:00

I left Torontoist and someone cared? Oh, Russ(less). You kill me, you eulogize me. Didn't our j-school instructor tell us never to do the latter? But we were too busy writing OCAD jokes to each other to listen.

Anyway, if you were a hater, you can fuck off and die laughing at me here. It's amazing.

My Friday is made.

happy home day

2009-07-01T21:10:00.003-04:00

Inevitably, the girl—woman, sorry—I’m interviewing will have to be described as “folk-pop artist” or “indie chanteuse.” She sounds wary of this. Like most of the people it’s my sometimes-job to pop-quiz, she’s got soundbites under her tongue.

“I was just listening to the sound of the road. The sound of movement.”

“The album was born out of long nights in vans, on tour.”

“I was trying to find what the word ‘home’ means.”

So did you?

I’m not sure why she’s surprised I ask, but I can hear her breath pull back.

“Yeah,” she says, not so quickly now. “I figured out that home was a person, so that felt pretty good.”

Uh-huh. I’ll take your pretty good, I’ll raise it a miracle. One year, when I was going to university in my hometown, I only read one book I really loved. One book in one lost hell of a year and in it, one line that ran through me and could have ripped my heart out, swear to god.

“In the mind of a woman for whom no place is home, the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable.”

I was not a woman but I knew that when I was, I would be that woman. I’d also never been on the beginning of a flight, let alone the end of one, to be punny about it. But now… you know, I feel allowed to say this. I’ve gone places this year. I’ve come back, knowing what I’ve got because I didn’t til I’d gone. And now we’ve gone places. We’ve come back. We know.

this modern glove

2009-06-30T10:23:00.006-04:00

The man wanted to scout out teenage boy memories, and I am always happy when I can take black & whites of colourful places, and that's why we were in Seattle Centre the day after Michael Jackson died.

Have you ever walked through a cemetery in daylight? And stumbled upon gravediggers working? And stood watching while they pretended you weren't?

Then you know a little of how I felt when I walked into the Experience Music Project to find my boyfriend, and this.

What should—and will forever—be enshrined in bulletproof glass was protected for a few priceless hours by rubber gloves, a few rock nerds in khakis, and one (count him, one) security dude. There were a few cameras and some other, also accidental witnesses. I don't think any of us believed it: that single glove, glittering and wing-white, held aloft for all my lifetime and all our collective imaginations, was right there. Alive as the hand ever was, it seemed.

I didn't think a death like this would touch me—well, we have our own Elvis now, I'll admit to thinking first—but then I never thought I'd stand so close to a memorial, in such random circumstances, and in such a hush.

As it happens: the book I want to read now is Robert Wright's Evolution of God. You have to think about the deaths and reiterations of small-g deities, too; our construction of a pop star says just as much about us as our heaven. When an icon dies, so does an idea of ourselves. The same lightning never strikes and electrifies and illuminates our desires twice. We'll never reach for a star like that again. When another is born, well, we'll all be different then too.

welcome to vancouver

2009-06-24T11:19:00.004-04:00

where a man, having just been arrested, is allowed to stand over the hood of the cop car, eating his Viet-Thai takeout from a container that looks styrofoam, but is probably a new variety of hemp-soy blend.

don't, don't let it go to your head.

2009-06-23T10:33:00.000-04:00

To quote from a time in my life when I dressed for Battles of the Bands in red backless sneakers, frayed denim minis and maybe a hoodie, borrowed from the week's big crush:

She said
"don't, don't let it go to your head
Boys like you are a dime a dozen,
Boys like you are a dime a dozen"
- Taking Back Sunday, "You're So Last Summer"

And yet, with so many of my favourite creatures in the style kingdom crafting ever more daring crowns, how can I resist the big head trend? Recent favourites include that gorgeous bird sighting at the Power Ball, and the lovely Lara Vincent playing paper-mache princess, below. Isn't it so Basquiat?

To top it all, Amazing Baby's LP, Rewild, is out today (if you haven't heard, I'm sure you can walk into any Urban Outfitters and find some Olsen-a-like humming along) and the first single is titled, guess what? "Headdress." You have to watch the video. It's hilariously, hyper-consciously styled. Just soars way over the top. Even I can't string together enough hyphens to describe it.

the stars of rack and heel

2009-06-18T08:44:00.006-04:00

Big kisses for anyone who gets the title reference.

The Star's idea of Toronto's best dressed (for now)
is out today, and guess what?

There's only room for one "best" in this photo, and that's Fiona Green, assistant fashion editor at Flare. Don't hate her because she's wearing Balenciaga; hate her because she found it on Ebay. (I kid. She's so lovely.)

As for me, head-to-toe credits are in order:

BLONDE: the master himself at Greg May Hair Architects

JACKET: vintage DKNY a la Carli, the undisputed boss of blazers

WATCHES: bought at Value Village with Natalie

BRACELET: found at antique shop, given to me for luck from (again) Carli

CHEMISE: formerly a prairie slipdress, so Chloe in Big Love, found at 69 Buy-the-Pound

SHORTS: originally 501s, faded, torn, and cut off to perfection, then stolen from boyfriend, further slutted up, worn too much.

SHOES SHOES SHOES: Tashkent by Cheyenne, only at my favourite new shoe store, Chasse Gardee (psst: on sale! and also available in a perfect shade of putty)

Good looks from the shoot include a slick shine on Tania Martins, the multi-talented minx behind Carte Blanche, Bruno! oh no, wait, not that Bruno (in 100% Syd's), and superbabe LBC making Complex Geometries look easy.

dress your family in denim and denim

2009-06-17T11:50:00.002-04:00

When it comes to our combined blue-jean collection, this is really just the tip of the ice cream cone. The less generous would call it a tipping point. So what? Finally-summer nights make me so happy that "feeling the blues" is just delicious irony.

the omelette of the masses

2009-06-15T18:15:00.001-04:00

For those of us who've misplaced our religion, brunch is the only Sunday institution. The only any day institution, really: this ritual celebration of our independent days, our earned weekends, and with less and less distance, less irony, our belonging to gentrification. It's mass, or atonement, perhaps, for the nights before. We sacrifice skinny paychecks to offer our drained bodies various bloody drinks. We observe devoutly.

Such a shock to the belief system, then, to read in the weekend papers that brunch is neither the rite nor right we've claimed; that to the Sunday service industry, brunch is hell. Consider the whole hilarious, vitriolic piece or just my favourite quote:

“They'll order a coffee, O.J., water, a Caesar, ‘Oh no, could you make that a mimosa?' [And] some obnoxious hipster who is all, like, ‘Hey, look how many drinks I need, yo'” wrote Ms. Shortall* in an e-mail. “Check out the weekend warrior. Whatever.”

*This Ms. Shortall, having worked at Poor John's - an adored cafe so near my place - has probably greased my eggs with her spittle, and can I blame her? I'm the girl who requests butterless toast and non-potato options and for my Americano, soy milk, even though I'm not a vegan.

But if brunch is hell, hell is beautiful. Just witness the work of my instant-favourite painter, Elizabeth Neel, who's recently begun painting her Canadian bacon and eggs as oily, sculptural abstraction.

"Oh yeah. I wanted to paint brunch. Dad was sending me all of these photos he took. If he were younger he could have been Roe Ethridge or Wolfgang Tillmans, you know. He takes these laissez-faire still lifes, and he has a good sense of humor and composition. I didn’t have any ideas at the moment, so I thought it would be interesting to paint a proper still life, since I don’t usually paint something so stagnant. But, of course, with Cézanne, things aren’t really sitting still either. For this painting, I wanted it to be like you were looking down on a plate. When I eat, I always pick out the best parts in the middle and leave everything else on the side. It becomes a big sculptural mess, but there are nice compositional elements about how it all sits on the table. It seemed like a challenge to paint that. It’s only halfway through. I’m still trying to figure out how to make it work. I like parts of it formally already. There are parts that remind me of Canadian bacon.

"Even though I don’t have any larger spiritual or ideological system, there is some logic in concert with a huge number of beautiful, disconcerting, screwed-up variables that results in a certain visual pleasure in violent things. Like a broken egg yolk can be the most violent thing I’ve seen all day, if I’m in the right mood."
- from Interview with Elizabeth Neel by Michel Auder.

My own bacon, which I call not Canadian but peameal, is fried with onions, butter (okay, light margarine) and a little syrup (trust me) and shares a plate with mozzarella scrambled eggs.

Finally, here's the most recent repast, shared with (on the left) Paige, pro-brunch, and (on the right) Carli, anti-brunch. Don't worry. It was heated more by the overdue sun than by debate. And it was pretty satisfying. And I'm not telling you where it is because I'm too selfish to share the miracle that is a no-wait patio placement on a sun day.

she's such a tie-hard.

2009-06-12T15:06:00.006-04:00

Having failed to work at home -- finishing nothing but someone else's work, oh, and half a box of Oatmeal Crisp -- the only thing to do was don a maxi dress and saunter into the great outdoors I've been hearing so much about on my status updates page. But I failed at the long-dressing part, too. I love a minimalist maxi in the manner of 90s Calvin Klein, or 2009 Calvin Klein on Ashley Olsen maybe. But I love my legs more.

1. Ok, I think. Maybe it's not too long, but too large, this nautical knit thing I believed I could yacht-rock so hard.

2. Luckily, a slit makes two pieces out of one hell of a lot of material, and two pieces make for easy knotting.

3. I also have to tie my shoes.

black and white (and read all over)

2009-06-10T11:34:00.010-04:00

Best news in fashion this week? Pick one or the other:

BLACK is the Rei Kawakubo guerrilla brand, in celebration of Comme des Garcons' big 40th. (Guess she's not so over the dark side after all; I was worried, when I heard she gave her Paris shop a bloodbath of scarlet paint.)

The CDG concept shops will pop up and shut down, one after another, like dominoes around the world. First stop? Tokyo, in January 2009, followed by a handful of other Asian openings. It's quieter on the Western front (our hegemony, after all, is crumbling) but Colette, Dover Street Market, and Barney's will all welcome BLACK holes at some point. (Toronto, dream on.)

WHITE is the white tee project in which tee stands for T-shirts and Tommy Ton. The genius Jak&Jil photographer has collaborated with Montreal's excellent Complex Geometries, and the sum is stunning.

you've got nails

2009-06-04T11:36:00.001-04:00

[this post is dedicated

to my nailpolish guru and great friend Paige,

and Paige's new blog]

In a recession I guess it's a good idea not to spend more

dollars on your digits than you

can count on them.

Who says redheads can't wear pink?

This is the colour they inject into Florida orange skins.

Classic scarlet on a wild-style child.

Indoor pool blue.

Guess whose?

She's bossy and glossy in slick pylon orange.

The shade of blue, just ask this lovely and all her friends.

i recently dyed my hair to match my ambition

2009-06-02T23:05:00.002-04:00

DKNY power-bitch blazer credit:
Carli Mia-mi Vice

the simple life

2009-06-02T15:30:00.004-04:00

My maiden aunt, dressed in plaid flannel shirts that would later, and without her permission, become cool, gave years teaching ESL to young adults in Japan. Her letters came with stamps that I collected (yes, I did) and on stationery with Engrish aphorisms: "The greeny sun makes happy as the morning is slow." Things like that.

The language of TASCHEN and Phillipp Keel's new—and anti-new—Simple Diary (as in, simply the best thing to land on my work desk so far this week) is sometimes familiar in that unfamiliar way. It trips you up lightly. It asks you if your day was a snack, a trophy, or off track? A roommate, made in Taiwan, or homemade? A sip, wasabi, or a slip? But don't think about it. The point is not to think about it.

I wrote on the intro slip, wasabi, or sip of paper already, in red ink. It's been a long time since I was lonely, and contented at that, enough to keep a diary private. Maybe this will be a new way to let just enough blood onto the page each day.

Click to read pictures.

Cover letter.

Inside.

poached!

2009-06-01T16:52:00.006-04:00

I'm pretty sure last week I participated in art happening, wrote lots about style, and went to some parties, some of which might even have been invite-only. WHO CARES. My only real accomplishment was that I poached an egg, by myself, and got it right on the first try. And I'll let you on my little secret: it's actually as easy as guess-how-many-fingers-I-am-holding-up?

HOW:

1. Take a piece of plastic wrap. This is probably the hardest part. Press it into a cup or a mug (not a tall glass, ok? Use your head) and leave a couple of inches over the top.
2. Crack the egg and drop it into the plastic, then wrap up, so you're holding this little makeshift bag of raw egg. (Ick.)
3. Drop it into a pot of boiling water. Oh, right: maybe "boil water" should have been Step # 1. Watch the egg poach itself.

No, really. Easy. When it's done (I don't know, eight minutes?) it slides right out of the plastic wrap onto your plate. Like so:

I served it to myself on a hotbed of ramp leaves and spinach, all wilted together with garlic and old cheddar.

Pictured are ramps: from the first Farmer's Market in the Park, weeks ago, before I read the Globe article that stung my faint eco conscience and made me regret my whole fling with spring's it-ingredient.

Nailpolish: Chanel, Orange Fizz

Glass: Dollarama

Coke: Zero

head and feathers above the rest

2009-05-29T17:12:00.003-04:00

Of all the Power Ballers living high off the hog last night (no really, Castor brought a pig roast to the art party), by far the best dressed was this broad. She's the Darling in Salvador Darling, you know, that surreally amazing Parkdale cocktail bar. This headpiece de resistance makes a raven beauty of an already hot blonde; it also has a cool Cleopatra thing going on. She found it "on Queen, somewhere east of Parliament" on one of her one-of-a-kind furniture hunts. Something to crow about, indeed. I'm obsessed! And this looks like a Juergen Teller ad for a costume shop, don't you think?

disposable outcomes

2009-05-27T20:20:00.011-04:00

After, let's say, the seventh grade, my next one-time-use was when my digital camera up and stopped charging and then my birthday came and why even have a birthday without photos of it? No, seriously. I'm asking.

So I bought disposables on sale at Shoppers (incidentally, might be my favourite chain store in the world). I'd already decided that Kodak Fun Saver moments, like a dollar each if you do the division, are the new Polaroids. Just trust and see. The old Polaroids are nearing extinction (save for a few rogue efforts) while their era gives way to ever-more-instant nostalgia. We're heralding all other things nineties—like, you should see the collection of faded denim and stretch cycle shorts I've stockpiled for summer—so why not the snapshots of our youth?

Friends questioned my vanity: the pictures could be bad, and they couldn't be mulligan'd. There's no in-camera editing of the self with film, no vetoing bad angles or remaking magic. You click blindly (in a single-use camera, the shitty plastic viewfinder has even fewer uses; don't even try) and cross your fingers. That's what I love: the picture is luck, it's a singular thought, it is what it is. (The existentialist in me craves more such dilemma-free processes.)

And from that night, what they were: they were great. Even the accidents were keepers, and I, a convert. Below are a few of my recent developments.

Margiela attack! Recognizing a certain inner-tube-as-outerwear look,
I singled this Belgian boy out from the line of PPQ after-partiers,
took the picture, and called it a night.

That was in London, and this too. I guess it could be anywhere.
"Tea or champagne?" at 10 a.m.
(Maybe not anywhere.)

G-man about to pop his cork (ew! sorry)
at the Gladstone.

Sugar and chambray.

Pretend you work at Purple. You're spending a lot of time in Photoshop
trying to make your photos look this brilliantly shitty.

The rain in Spain!
Maybe favourite ever.

Pink bike, red bikes.

Estrella, Coke Light, Lucky Strikes, etcetera.
And a credit card belonging to someone who's lucky
I don't shoot in hi-res, no?

The Majestic view of BCN.

...and many more to come. And yet, irony of ironies, I write this while staring down the Black Steel gaze of an Olympus E-620 Digital SLR. The special loan was delivered to my desk a few days ago. I still can't focus. I'm overthinking, I know. Anyone want to take me out for shooting practice? Sign up in the comments, pretty and please.

afternoon nap

2009-05-25T14:17:00.004-04:00

Dear Toronto,

If you're spinning past Palmerston on the sunny side of noon today, stop. Get a scoop and scope out Kavin's CONTACT jam. He (illegally, ssshhh) postered photos of people pretending to sleep. They are shadowy and sweet.

xoxSNP.

me and the man at dufferin variety

2009-05-20T13:15:00.003-04:00

me: "Can I have... oh, I don't know. I don't even smoke. Really. Benson & Hedges 100s?"

the man at dufferin variety: "You want the Deluxe?"

me: "Actually, I should get the extra-lights."

the man at dufferin variety: "These are the extra-lights."

me: "Right. OK."

the man at dufferin variety: "Are you over 19?"

me: "Are you kidding? I am so over 19."

the man at dufferin variety, just checking to make sure: "You look very different with long hair!"

me: "Uh-huh, and also, I was seventeen."

the man at dufferin variety: "The lottery's up to 49 million. Have you bought a ticket?"

me: "No, I've never bought one. I don't believe in it. Or I just don't want to tax my luck."

the man at dufferin variety: "But all that money, it could change your life."

me: Standing at the variety store counter, buying cigarettes, 1:40 a.m. and not dressed like I came from the bar. Because I didn't. I think I'm wearing a hoodie and sneakers and I think my eyes must show ruin. And it's like, excuse me, mister. What makes you think my life needs any changing?