Leandra Medine's Blog, page 40
March 4, 2020
The Outnet Sale Is Scratching My Shopping Itch in a Big Way
Like my pinky toes after a long, chilly winter, my urge to shop is just beginning to thaw. I confirmed this interest was, in fact, on the verge of a full-throttle return last weekend when I was watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on the couch with Austin and missed half the movie because I was so preoccupied with scrolling through my phone, contemplating various purchases that would complete the outfit ideas percolating in my head. Huge loss for Harry, Ron, and the gang–big win for my fantasy shopping cart.
I’ve been trying to be more mindful of my consumption, though, and to that point, the only items I’ve purchased in 2020 have been vintage. If I am going to invest in a new item, I prefer that it’s something I know will last a long time–something that is well-made and high-quality. Since quality often goes hand-in-hand with expense, sales are usually my best conduit for finding nice things at a lower price point.
The height of sale season is still yet to come (she whispered ominously), but to sate my current craving I’ve been perusing the pages of The OUTNET clearance sale that launched yesterday. In fact, I’ve spent enough time combing it over the last 24 hours to consider myself an expert on the contents that lie within, so if you happen to find yourself in a similar mood, scroll down to see a curation of the best stuff, according to yours truly.
Jackets for When You Can Finally Walk Out of Your Apartment Without a Coat
Raise one hand if buttoning up your puffer coat is starting to feel like the emotional equivalent of climbing Everest and raise two hands if you’re itching to stick them–fingers, wrists, arms, and all–inside something a little more lightweight. There are only very short slices of the year when we have the weather-induced privilege of enjoying just-a-blazer season, before it gets too brutally cold or too blisteringly hot, and I’m planning to make the most of it come April. I think scoring an 83%-off blazer from The Row would really get me in the mood, but the added bonus of dressing like an Easter egg wouldn’t hurt either. What is painful, however, is the fact that there’s only one of these 88%-off Rosie Assoulin jackets left and my ethical code is compelling me to share the link because it’s TOO GOOD NOT TO.
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Dresses to Wear While Engaging in a Serious Courtship With Vitamin D
Early spring is an extremely flirty time of year, with the oscillation of temperature creating a figurative will-they-won’t-they effect between you and your skin-baring wardrobe items. It’s also just more conducive to courtship in general, an antidote to the hibernation instincts that descend along with winter’s pervasive grayness. I can’t wait to take my spring dresses out on some long-overdue romantic getaways, and I’m tempted to add some new suitors to the pile, like this silk wrap mini that would look so good with flat strappy sandals, or this $134 poplin one that would look so good with crusty baguettes in the park.
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Tops for Going Out, or Staying In–Whatever Floats Your Boat
Speaking of ceasing hibernation, the going-out top circuit is about to rev up once again, a time of gladness and good tidings when steps are peppier and iced caffeinated beverages taste like blissful drugs. What a time to be alive!!! I love this $72 off-the-shoulder top SO MUCH and wish my size was still available (side note: is off-the-shoulder coming back because I think it is?). If I were looking to splurge, I would do so on this incredible broderie anglaise top from Chloé, but this long-sleeved blouse from Rosetta Getty is more reasonably priced and probably just as satisfying.
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Shorts Because ‘Tis Almost the Season!!!!!
If you’re sensing a theme here and the theme you’re sensing is that I need winter to be over like I need air to breathe, you’re onto something pal. Shall we talk about shorts? You might remember them as pants with post-breakup-worthy haircuts. Ringing a bell? Regardless, you’ll probably reacquaint yourself with them soon enough, starting with this delightfully long pair that would look so cool with boots and a cable-knit sweater while it’s still chilly out, followed by these with a tunic and loafers as soon as it gets even remotely warm. Just a suggestion! Feel free to tweak according to taste.
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Shoes Glorious Shoes and That’s All I Have to Say About That
You can’t have an outfit without some shoes, unless you’re inside or on a beach or living in a nudist colony–in which case I guess you don’t need an outfit at all, but let’s assume there’s a need or at the very least a desire, because otherwise these discounts are gonna go to waste. I try not to pick favorites, I really do, but these platform mules from Marni are without a doubt my most beloved sale discovery child. They’re $175, which is more than 80% off their original price, and they look comfortable enough to walk from home to work to home to work and so on and so on for the entirety of April.
Anything else you’re eyeing? Other sales you’re shopping? Do tell.
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Feature photos by Edith Young.
The post The Outnet Sale Is Scratching My Shopping Itch in a Big Way appeared first on Man Repeller.
The Final Bows at Fashion Week Are Basically a How-To Manual for Cool Work Outfits
Forgive me for pontificating that there are two kinds of people in this world: those who want to wear a runway look and those who’d rather dress like a fashion designer. I think I’m the latter. This self-discovery reached its fever pitch over the course of fashion month, as I harped on my own question about whether fashion designers really “design for themselves,” until I realized: Eureka! Almost every fashion show reveals an answer to this question. It’s tested at the end of a presentation, when the designer comes out for a final wave or bow, dressed in something from their own closet. Following the models’ finale lap in clothes that conjure some form of a fashion fantasy, these designers appear almost as an anachronism at the end, before their spectators’ pupils adjust back to the neutral baseline of the real world.
What’s particularly noteworthy here is what the designers are dressing for: one of their biggest days of work this year, which involves herding cats, orchestrating a performance, and delivering a show that appears to go off without a hitch, while still looking good enough to be seen by an audience of peers, editors, buyers, and tastemakers at the show’s close. And so isn’t it fair to consider these outfits, worn by arbiters of style, as the ultimate recommendation for an outfit that you can wear to work that won’t inhibit your ability to professionally function? It’s something I always craved and never nailed when I was working as a photographer on a daily basis: an outfit that didn’t sacrifice presentation while still allowing for maximum mobility, and generosity when it came to a little perspiration (whether from adrenaline, panic, dread, deadlines, or acrobatics).
Acting on my hunch that these designers are the rare breed who have conquered the capsule wardrobe, I examined their final bow photos and tried to parse what they’d advise me to wear to a hectic and high-stakes day of work.
1.One long dress
The Ulla Johnson method eliminates as much decision-making as possible. This might even be a matching two-piece set but what’s the difference, really? You don’t even need to worry about weather-shamers because no one can tell whether or not you’re wearing tights. Case closed.
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2.Midtown uniform but make it fashion
I’m sure the words “midtown uniform” and “Isabel Marant” have never been said in the same sentence before, and never the twain shall meet again, but hot take: Marant follows finance’s formula. Swap the fleece vest for a tweedy, sleeveless security blanket with cavernous pockets, and the Allen Edmonds dress shoes for a pair of boots as slouchy as my posture at 3 p.m., and there you have it.
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3.The print mix
I’ll always have a soft spot for Eckhaus Latta, and I love that this photo reflects the full color spectrum of what a designer might wear for their goodbye lap. Zoe Latta wears her brand’s signature knit pants with a cacophonous button-down and shoes that look like they just walked out of an eighteenth century painting, while Mike Eckhaus is in exactly what you’d expect a fashion designer to wear if you closed your eyes and imagined it.
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4.Emotional support turtleneck
In both Lucie Meier’s and Virginie Viard’s presentation outfits, the black turtleneck is the secret ingredient. From there, they layer on the immaculate blouses, the priestly collars, and the Chanel jacket, but the black turtleneck is the machine-washable workhorse underneath it all, keeping everything together.
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5.For the first round of a job interview
If you work in an office with a more formal dress code, Victoria Beckham and Tory Burch are the references for you. I can imagine Beckham waking up that morning, looking in the mirror and thinking, “History will be kind to this outfit.” I wonder if there’s some sense in adopting that mindset at least once a week.
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6.Exactly one pop of thematic color
Lest we forgo all elements of surprise, Hermes’ Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski, Issey Miyake’s Satoshi Kondo, Shrimps’ Hannah Weiland and Victor Glemaud all wove a pop of color from their own collections into their final outfits. I’m taking cues for those days when I don’t feel like swimming in the deep end of the grayscale.
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7.The requisite head-to-toe black look
And then there are eight interpretations of the all-black ensemble, as demonstrated by Monse’s Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim, Christian Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri, MSGM’s Massimo Giorgetti, Stella McCartney, Virgil Abloh, Christopher Kane (wearing his own “More Joy” sweatshirt), Erdem’s Erdem Moralioglu, and Valentino’s Pierpaolo Piccioli. (The latter two subvert the convention by staying nimble with their Fashion Sneakers.
) Each makes the case for not resisting that tried and true pair of pants that you know work; most proselytize having one, trusty black crewneck sweater.
8 PHOTOS
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*Bows, waves, walks away.*
Photos via Vogue Runway and Getty Images.
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Open Thread: Can You Be Close Friends With Someone You’re Sexually Attracted To?
My husband, Abie, is sure that you, or at least he, can’t maintain a close friendship with a member of the opposite sex—a woman who is not me. As his argument goes: There is always tension when you’re with someone with whom you could have sex, and that tension erodes the capacity for genuine connectivity. What he means when he says connectivity, I think, is intimacy. And if I may be so bold as to put words in his mouth or ideas in his head, I wonder if, because he is so regimented—so loyal to his discipline, his personal compass of restraint—he keeps a distance.
His language of intimacy depends a lot on touch (I know this because he literally thanks me every time I run my fingers through his hair, or rub his shoulders, or reach for his hand), and when you can experience such deep connection based simply on the act of making physical contact (whether in a platonic setting or not) with another person, and you’re hellbent on Doing What’s Right (which, bless him, he is), it builds a wall that is challenging to bring down.
I’m not sure how I feel. I have only a fistful of genuine—as in, close—friendships with heterosexual men. I know a lot of them through work. The ones I don’t work with are mostly the husbands of my female friends, and this classification of “friendship” is based purely on the fact that we have text message threads in which neither of our spouses is present.
If Abie’s language of intimacy is touch, mine is big talk—the opposite of small talk, e.g. getting to the core of intellectual angst, philosophical force, emotional intelligence. No one is more valuable than the other. But the thing about big talk that is different from physical touch is that it’s much more theoretical. With touch, you have to feel it to, you know, feel it. All it takes with big talk, though, is a deep conversation that makes you feel seen or understood and then clink, you’re connected. It can rarely be fully exercised, but still forever (“forever“) bind you to another person.
Now that I’m here though, I’m starting to think that my language of intimacy should actually predispose me to more male friendships, no? It doesn’t depend on physical attraction or romance or gender, which should make it easier for me to be friends with a man. The truth is though, among my male friendships, I maintain only two that make me feel as exposed as Abie does and for that reason, I rarely see those friends. Maybe it’s only in theory that I’m evolved enough to think members of the sex to which one is attracted could be platonically close. Or maybe the problem is that it’s been challenging to come across men who can connect in an intimate way—I mean truly dish it back—without imposing their sexual predilections on the situation. Even my own husband admittedly can’t do it. So I’m at a loss.
Partially because I came here sure that you can be friends with a member of the sex to which you’re attracted but have discovered that actually, I’m not. (Sure, that is.) But also because the question still feels incredibly isolated and especially outdated—like it’s ignoring all the ways in which the public discourse that surrounds gender has and is evolving past the prototypical standards of men as men and women as women to make room for those who identify as effectively anything else. Maybe what I really want to know is multi-fold. On the one hand: What it will take for a square to change shape? I thought I believed there should be no barrier between the friendships I maintain with effectively anyone of any gender. I thought it was true to one of my core beliefs—that we are not the sum of our exteriors, we’re a collection of experiences that paint the perspectives that attract and bind us to each other—and yet have come to realize that this belief is still just an ideal. Is that discrepancy my fault, or is it a function of the way in which sexual preferences govern our capacities to connect?
On the other, I still want to know…perhaps not whether you can be friends with someone you are attracted to, but if you can be just friends with someone with whom you’ve experienced intimate connection. When you’re in a monogamous relationship, how much is too much to expose to someone who is not your person? And what makes it feel okay to show it to some, but not others?
Graphic by Lorenza Centi.
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March 3, 2020
The Electric Relevance of Virginie Viard’s Chanel
As I observed the latest Chanel collection from the comfort of my bed this morning, I found myself marveling at the power of its relevance. Perhaps it seems ironic to ascribe the word “relevant” to a $10 billion-dollar brand that has maintained one of the most renowned fashion legacies in history, but there is a different tenor to its influence under the creative direction of Virginie Viard, who filled Karl Lagerfeld’s very large shoes when he passed away a year ago.
If Lagerfeld’s talent was building an aspirational brand universe (replete with huge collections, elaborate show sets, and a personality of his own to match), Viard’s is defining an inspirational aesthetic to fill it with. What her six collections have lacked in mock grocery stores stocked with Chanel-branded milk or feminist protests helmed by Cara Delevingne, they have made up for with innovative styling suggestions and nascent micro-trends that leave just enough room for the individual wearer’s interpretation.
The Fall/Winter 2020 collection that debuted today is an apt encapsulation of this special savvy. After clicking through it, I found myself utterly charmed by the luxury treatment of tear-away pants–a former staple of early aughts-era boy bands that, thanks to Viard, are now primed for a very different kind of comeback. Ditto for the combination of a mini skirt and mid-shin-length coat, simple in theory but compelling enough to remind me how the right proportions can electrify an entire outfit. I also spent at least 15 minutes considering where and when I could wear shorts with polka-dot tights and knee-high boots (to the office tomorrow?) or a bandeau top layered over a neck scarf (dinner on Saturday night?).
In an impressively short period of time, Viard’s reign at Chanel has lent the brand a renewed sense of urgency–sparking the desire to do more than just admire, but also to take tangible action: to participate, to recreate. The effect is a democratizing one because to participate in Viard’s Chanel isn’t necessarily to buy into it. Even her couture collections (in theory a hallmark of astronomical expense and technical mastery) have managed to shed light on the possibilities contained in an everyday wardrobe.
To this point, there is something enigmatic about the way she designs: in conversation with the zeitgeist and yet never dictated by it. In homage to beauty and yet not at the expense of a clear commercial strategy. In continuity with Lagerfeld’s legacy and yet distinguished by something else entirely--a real feminine energy that injects practicality into the brand’s well-established elegance, bringing it back to reality while still letting it hover slightly above the ground.
15 PHOTOS
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Photos via Vogue Runway and Getty Images.
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The Surprising Appeal of a “Get What You Get” Tattoo (and Why I Got Mine)
On a recent Tuesday, I walked into Electric Anvil Tattoo in Brooklyn and turned the dial of an old-school gumball machine. A ball popped out. Inside was a folded piece of paper with a small illustration on it. A few minutes later, I got it tattooed on the inside of my right forearm.
What an adrenaline junkie! you might be thinking. I bet in her spare time she enjoys downhill mountain biking and snake charming. Or maybe you assume I’m a cautionary tale, an example of what can happen when you get too drunk or high or lose a bet.
But you would be wrong. I am a wimp (I’ve never ice-skated because I fear if I fall the blade of someone’s skate will slice off my fingers) and I was stone-cold sober when I let fate decide my tattoo, also known as a “Get What You Get.”
The Birth of the “Get What You Get” Tattoo
“There is something magical about letting fate choose your course and just riding that wave,” Holly Ellis, owner and tattooist at Idle Hand Tattoo in San Francisco tells me. Although the Get What You Get (GWYG) method was created by Justin Shaw at Faith Tattoo in Santa Rosa, California around 2004, Ellis believes Idle Hand was the first place to use a gumball machine when they started offering the service in 2009. It’s since become a feature at many tattoo shops in the US and overseas.
Ellis says that, at its core, GWYG is a rejection of the popular notion that a design must have sentimental significance in order to justify having it inked on your skin. “There was a period of time when people felt pressure to get a tattoo that has sooooo much meaning,” she tells me. “It was like, no one could get a tattoo just ‘cause they thought it looked cool. Now there’s a new generation of people getting tattooed purely because it’s aesthetically pleasing to them—for whom it’s not so serious.”
In her experience, there are a few common reasons people seek out GWYG tattoos specifically. “It can serve a therapeutic purpose, doing something that feels kind of wild, and doing it with other people—it can be a real emotional high,” she says. “GWYG can be a thrill, as well as a way into [tattoos] for people who don’t have a meaningful design in mind, but have that innate urge to decorate their body.”
The Pleasure of Not Choosing
Despite being around for over 15 years, the popularity of Get What You Get has spiked in the last year. This is in part due to social media—the #getwhatyouget hashtag on Instagram has thousands of photos and videos of people reacting as they unfold the paper to discover their tattoo. But when I spoke to some women who recently got one, I found the compulsion goes deeper than an internet stunt.
Bailey, an art student from Fresno, California, got her first GWYG in November—an old-fashioned torch (like the one the Statue of Liberty is holding) on her thigh. “I wanted a tattoo but I didn’t want to have to decide [what to get],” she tells me. “I found it thrilling to be able to do it without the pressure of choosing.”
In the information age, when many of us wouldn’t buy a shoe rack without reading 50 novella-length reviews, the pressure to make the right decision can be uniquely daunting. It’s no wonder some might find it liberating—rebellious, even—to not overthink something for a change. In their own way, GWYGs are a rejection of the abundance of choice. A way to take the power back.
“When I look at my GWYG tattoos they remind me that unexpected things in life can turn out to be beautiful,” says Kayla, who has two GWYGs: a girl on the inside of her left ankle and a rose on the outside of her left thigh. “They remind me there are things in life I can’t control, and that’s okay.”
For me, the appeal of GWYG was also the surrender implicit in the act. A year before I walked into Electric Anvil, life brought me to my knees. My mom died suddenly, and three months later, my husband was hit by a car, lucky to escape with his life and a few broken bones. For months I railed against my lack of control over these events, going over and over in my mind how I could have prevented them. I swayed between feeling crushed by the chaos of life and believing it was all part of a larger plan. One day, in a very Eat Pray Love crying-on-the-bathroom-floor moment, I put my hands up and said through tears, “Okay! You win!” To whom I was talking, I’m still not sure.
All I know is for the first time in my life, I understood what it really meant to surrender. Only then did I begin to heal, to fix myself. I got into therapy to deal with my shit, started to take care of myself properly and, you know, do the work. I grew stronger, wiser, and felt more empowered than I ever had before. So on the one-year anniversary of my mom’s death, I decided to walk into Electric Anvil and accept whatever came out of the gumball machine. It would be a marker, a reminder, of my transformation, of how radical acceptance had led to my metamorphosis. So what did I get? A butterfly.
Finding Meaning in the Meaningless
Even though GWYG is, as Ellis points out, the antithesis of insisting tattoos must have a deeper meaning, I’ve noticed a tendency among those with a GWYG to search for wisdom in what the machine hands out anyway, like reading tea leaves.
“When I got a torch, at first I was a little bummed out,” Bailey explains. “But I had been through a lot of heartbreak, followed by realization and clarity, so then it hit me: the torch symbolized a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Ellis says that kind of thing happens all the time. “I have always felt confident that people would get the tattoo they were meant to,” she says.
When I sent a photo of my butterfly to friends, some saw it as a spooky coincidence and sent me links to information about butterfly symbolism in various cultures, from Native American mythology to Buddhism: the soul set free after death, profound change, spiritual transformation. It was an oddly perfect motif for someone who is still healing from loss, but hopeful. At times I have wanted to believe the butterfly is a secret message from a higher power, intended just for me. It’s also just a butterfly.
A lot of people ask me what I’d have done if I hated what the gumball machine dispensed. And I’m serious when I say that if I got a can of Spam, I don’t think I’d have regretted it. Because the design was never the point. If you feel compelled to flip the bird in the face of convention, to express a feeling of a loss of agency, to defy your inner control freak, then no matter what your GWYG tattoo is, it will always remind you of the time you were seeking, alive to possibility; open like a flower in bloom.
Graphic by Lorenza Centi.
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MR Writers Club Prompt: What’s Your Most Chaotic Life Advice?
The first stretch of time I ever spent in New York was a five-week work trip in the hot summer of 2013. I was staying in a cold, industrial loft in Williamsburg and I remember that time most as one of visceral extremes. I was exactly where I wanted to be, and yet up to my neck in anxiety for the first time in my life: a tightness in my chest, a shortness of breath, a tidal wave of emotions that made me dream of escape. I now know I was coming to terms with the fact that I’d been lying to myself back in San Francisco, and that my spiral was manifest fear of that fact that I’d have to go back. But at the time it just felt confusing, and so my friend Karolyn and I came up with a mantra:
“Don’t think about it,” I’d say, to her and to myself.
“You’ll figure it out later,” she’d reply.
We repeated this call-and-response all summer. Over text on the way to work, laying in Central Park on a Sunday, sitting by the Soho House roof pool she snuck me into. Don’t think about it. You’ll figure it out later. Again again again. It went counter to everything I’d learned up to that point–that my feelings were worth unpacking and responding to in responsible, methodical ways. It was a verbal hand wave, a refusal to engage with an emotion I simply wasn’t in the mood to feel. And it was, above all, chaotic.
Eventually I’d have to contend with the dark thoughts that bubbled up that summer (and I would, a few years later when I left my life behind). But that August, the month of my 24th birthday, I just shoved it all to the back of my mental closet, and it kind of worked. There wasn’t anything I could do about my life in San Francisco from my summer rental on Graham Street. And so I embraced the messiness instead of trying to solve it.
For this month’s writers club, we want to hear about your most chaotic life advice. We’ve all seen the scripted axioms making infinite rounds on Pinterest—this time we want something a little less tidy. The advice you might get from your eccentric aunt who never followed the rules, or from your best friend when you’re both feeling a little reckless. Write it up and send it to us in 500 words or less on or by Friday, March 20th. We promise to heed it carelessly.
Graphic by Lorenza Centi.
The post MR Writers Club Prompt: What’s Your Most Chaotic Life Advice? appeared first on Man Repeller.
March 2, 2020
Ant Farms, Lasagna, and PCP: New Yorkers Share Their Most Chaotic Roommate Stories
Cohabitation is a strange dance, much like marriage or the HoeDown Throwdown. It conjoins entirely disparate lives in sticky, intimate ways, and re-codes the very shape of well worn relationships. It demands small talk of the small talk-opposed, and instills a yearning for alone time in even the most social beings. All cases call for a certain etiquette—a trade of goods and services, toilet paper for clean dishes, the exchange of fridge real estate, the list goes on. Don’t forget to rinse your recyclables.
In any case, be it a matter of sink-vomit, communist propaganda, burnt lasagne, or the occasional ant farm, in the great tradition of New York living, the “roommate narrative” remains a rite of passage. So, in honor of that very tradition, I’ve pulled together some of my absolute favorites. Below, by way of friends, friends of friends, friends’ parents, colleagues, friends of colleagues, the occasional stranger, and a number of Instagram DMs, I’ve cataloged a roster of poignant, decidedly New York tales re: adventures in the art of communal living.
“In my first apartment in Bushwick, I had four roommates. I’m pretty sure one was a PCP dealer. I’m actually positive. She was pretty cool, though.”
-Ilan G.
“Both of my first roommates on the Lower East Side were actors, so they were always doing scenes together. I would come home to them engaged in a dramatic fight about a lesbian affair or whatever. One of them would be crying, the other would be standing on the counter, and they wouldn’t break character when I came in to get water, or make food or anything. It was impressive.”
-Kai I.
For months, copies of the 100-page manifesto would just appear in places around the apartment in piles.
“When I graduated from college and moved back to Brooklyn, I half moved in with my boyfriend in Greenpoint. Technically, my belongings lived at my parents’ in South Brooklyn, but it was rare that I went ‘home.’ At the time, he shared the apartment with his best friend, whose dad owned the building, only accepted rent in cash, and lived downstairs. He had been something of a film protegee in various Soho communities in the ’80s, but it was entirely unclear what he was actually doing at the time–in fact, I knew very little about him…other than that he’d spent the past year writing his own communist manifesto. He’d had it printed en masse, with thread bindings and everything! For months, copies of the 100-page manifesto would just appear in places around the apartment in piles. No matter how many times we moved them or put them elsewhere, they just continued to reappear. Now, in my own apartment, I still find them sometimes, tucked at the bottom of old bags, or wedged behind stacks of books.”
-Eliza D. (It is I)
“My second New York apartment was above a family-owned Chinese food restaurant in Chinatown in the ’80s. I was a student at the time and had minimal budget to spare. So, in exchange for free dinner, I would go downstairs most evenings and help the kids whose family owned the restaurant with their homework, which was in English. It was a very solid arrangement.”
-David D.
“My roommate is a dungeon master. I didn’t REALLY know what that entailed until we’d ACTUALLY moved in together. Once a week, or every other week, I’d come home to a whole group of dudes (maybe 7-10) gathered around the kitchen table engaged in these giant games of Dungeons & Dragons. They all had characters, so you’d hear them walk through their stories. My roommate would facilitate or set the scene (‘You stumble into a hidden alcove in the ice forest, and you hear a noise coming from a box in the corner. Do you open it?’) to which the respondents would say things like, ‘I drink my last remaining health potion for extra strength and approach the box.’ Sometimes there were whole dioramas involved. Sometimes people who couldn’t be there in real life would make video chat appearances. It was such a spectacle to come home to. But eventually, after watching or listening enough times, I decided I HAD to participate, just to try it. And honestly…I’ve LOVED it ever since.”
-Jake D.
“I had a roommate who blacked out and threw up in our kitchen sink but refused to clean it up because she ‘didn’t think it was her’ and didn’t believe she’d done it. It was on a Tuesday night and I was like, ‘Well….one of us was blackout [drunk] and one of us was me so….’ In the end, I cleaned it up.”
-Izzie I.
“I’ve heard a lot of people’s horror stories about their roommates leaving pasta water boiling and passing out, but one time, my roommate fell asleep while baking a whole lasagna. Our apartment smelled like sour tomato sauce for like three months.”
-Isaiah S.
“Years ago, I lived with a guy who was really really serious about this ant farm he had. He was a freelancer and he mostly worked from home, so he would just sit at his desk and look at it. I started having nightmares about ants crawling all over me.”
-Erik G.
“Once I had a roommate tell me I had to give her a heads up if I was bringing meat into the apartment (an odd request to honor). We arrived at that rule because, one time, I’d been cooking fresh scallops in the kitchen, and she’d run out of her room screaming bloody murder, then literally did not come back into the apartment for two whole days. She also told me I wasn’t allowed to keep my lobster claw crackers (like those little metal things you use) in the apartment because she had no use for them and they made her sad…. Oh, and on top of that, she kept my blender in her room—which was very weird—and then lied about having it when I was trying to move out.”
-Hallie F.
We’ve been living together about six months now and I seriously don’t know her name.
“Well…this is more sad than funny or strange, but my boyfriend and I moved in together in an apartment in the East Village that was like, the smallest apartment you’ve ever seen. We could barely fit inside of it. Then, we broke up. But we were both new to the city, so we waited a whole month for our lease to end, living in the same apartment, literally not saying one word to each other. I hope that will be my worst roommate experience ever.”
-Hannah S.
“I actually don’t know my roommate’s name. I’ve lived in this apartment for almost a decade, and I used to live with my best friend. He moved out because he was getting married, so someone else came to sublet. I work pretty crazy hours and we almost never cross paths. We’ve been living together about six months now and I seriously don’t know her name.”
-Pete D.
“I subletted from a guy who was learning to play the violin via YouTube tutorials. It might have been the most painful sound I’ve ever heard. Ever.”
-Kiara N.
Feature Photos via Comedy Central.
The post Ant Farms, Lasagna, and PCP: New Yorkers Share Their Most Chaotic Roommate Stories appeared first on Man Repeller.
A Hack for Having Really Fun Plans Whenever You Want Them
In San Francisco there are more readings, plays, drag shows, movies, concerts, and art exhibitions than I can possibly attend or consume. If I add friend’s parties and work happy hours to the mix—I now have a social calendar that would require 30-hour days and five-day weekends to achieve.
This is true in many cities and, as winter turns to spring, the number of things to do will only increase. Unfortunately for me, the more things there are to do, the more likely I am to hit the “nuclear option”: book nothing, eat popcorn in bed, and play the Sims. Nights in are necessary too, but I might not always live in such a vibrant place, so I tend toward pushing myself to get out and about.
But for a long time, short of piling a million things onto my personal calendar, I wasn’t sure how to remember all the things I was curious—but not yet committed—to attend. How could I keep track of events that I didn’t seem to hear about until they were over? Or the tricky repeating monthly ones? Knowing a nearby comedy night only takes place “every third Thursday” wasn’t a detail likely to stick in my brain.
Enter: My “Culture Calendar”
Once I started adding things to a separate “Culture Calendar,” I was overwhelmed by options (in a good way). The bar that has jazz every second Tuesday? Trivia every Monday? The house party that I don’t know if I want to go to yet? The life drawing class in the park every first Saturday? The exact happy hour hours of my favorite bar? An interesting movie or play or art exhibition that’s been running so long I’ll never prioritize it? Everything I’m the vaguest bit interested in goes on my Culture Calendar.
Now, when I have a date with a friend or lover and we don’t know what to do—I click it and am reminded that a café I like has live music on Thursdays, or that it’s the last night to see an exhibit at the SFMoMA. On weekends, it’s nice to wake up and see that there’s a hip-hop dance class and an indie foreign film at the same time and get to check my vibe at that moment. And when I don’t want to look at what the whole city is up to—I just click it off.
Our collective leisure time may be dwindling (a problem for another time), but now I can fill mine with activities that surprise and interest me instead of always defaulting to what I know (unless I want to). My culture calendar has enabled me to spend less of my brain space remembering happenings—or regretting that I never do—and more time appreciating the liveliness that drew me to this city in the first place. A blessing.
You can add your own extra calendar through gCal, name it whatever you want, and start tracking. It takes some time and effort to get it started, but after a while it will become second nature. You can also share a calendar among a group of like-minded friends and all contribute to it to make a robust social directory.
Have you ever done anything like this? Or have another trick for making the most of your free time? I’ll be waiting in the comments.
A note from the Man Repeller team: We’ve created a NY-based Culture Calendar for the month of March—if you’d like to add it to your Gcal, click here!
Graphic by Lorenza Centi.
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Things Are Getting Chaotic on Man Repeller This Month
Every once in a while, a word or phrase comes along that is embraced so thoroughly that it feels, if only for a moment, like all of humanity is singing the same tune. There’s a honeymoon period with these terms, before they lose their potency and retire to Florida where they live out the rest of their lives as cliches. As a lifelong nerd, I’ve always found it satisfying to track the life cycle—and the honeymoon period is probably my favorite part. That’s when we become drunk on collective recognition, inventing and reinventing ways of using language to deliver our ideas and observations about the world to each other more efficiently, and hopefully, entertainingly.
Right now, the word “chaos” and its adjective form “chaotic” seem to have reached their feverish peak. I’ve found it interesting that they’re used interchangeably as positive and negative descriptors, with widely varying stakes: An episode of Vanderpump Rules can be chaotic; your unhinged-but-harmless roommate can be chaotic; the very fabric of our society—from climate change to the democratic primaries—can be chaotic. (In fact, Mayor Pete Buttigieg used “chaos” four times in a single response during the Democratic debate last week.) Sometimes, we use the word to express our utmost amusement and other times to express our deepest anxieties through gritted teeth.
Regardless of what tone the word takes, there’s an underlying acknowledgment that chaos is ephemeral. It’s simply not built to last. Unsustainable in all forms. It’s a transitional phase, and transitions are always exciting in some way. When we acknowledge something as chaotic we are acknowledging the fact that we don’t have control over everything and commit ourselves to watching things run their course, not trying so hard to tame the energy, but to experience it instead.
So, yes, March is “chaos” month on Man Repeller. Here’s what you can expect (although, I would encourage you to surrender to the unexpected, naturally).
Extremely ”unconventional” roommate stories (later today!)
An ode to the “get what you get” tattoo
Really fun “getting ready” videos featuring Leandra on IGTV (kicking off today and updating all week)
A check-in with the writer of one of our most out-of-control money diaries
A detailed accounting of rush hour in one of New York’s busiest cafes
One editor suggested that we turn the MR office into an escape room for the month, but I drew the line there….
And now I’d love to know what you want to read about this month. What’s causing chaos in your life right now, good and bad? Which kinds of chaotic things do you still desperately want to tame and which ones do you embrace wholeheartedly?
Photos by Alistair Matthews. Prop Styling by Max Rappaport.
The post Things Are Getting Chaotic on Man Repeller This Month appeared first on Man Repeller.
February 29, 2020
From Paris Fashion Week: The Primal Pursuit to Create (and Flee)
Yesterday I was on Ave Suffren in the 7th Arrondissement of Paris, watching a show by Jonathan Anderson for Loewe that retained a quality I still so badly desire from fashion—curiosity.
Curiosity enables innovation and enforces a refusal to rest on the laurels of what the past has proven performs. And even though Anderson’s clothes are dependable in that they’re of a singular vision, they also seem to constantly change. With every new collection, a garment, an attitude, an energy makes you see something differently. It feels a little like what happens in the succession of conversations you have with your most trusted allies.
After the Loewe show, I spent four hours at the LVMH Prize showroom on Avenue Montaigne with 20 semi-finalists who would be whittled down to eight, all on a quest to earn simultaneous mentorship from the leaders of LVMH and a financial grant of $300,000 to invest in their businesses. Among the 20 designers, I recognized at least a handful (Area, Chopova Lowena, Helmstedt), was delighted to discover another handful (Commission, Casablanca, Vaqar), and noticed this quality of relentless passion in every last one of them. It really stuck with me; this prize seems to display, more than talent, a high concentration of the purest and most primal pursuit to create. It’s nice to be around.
This pursuit dims over time for a lot of us. The pressure to Become an Adult knocks it into an elevator that never actually closes but often remains stationed on a floor we infrequently visit. And even when it prevails, like in the case of Loewe, or Paco Rabanne the day before, who showed a stunning tableau of women in their armor—literally with full ensembles of mixed metal mesh, figuratively with delicate white fabrics and broderie anglaise set on full skirts and blouses, and somewhere in-between with feminine swing silhouettes on military coats and floral embroidery on a thick grey jacket—I wonder why it becomes so serious. Why the stakes of creation begin to seem so high.
At Hedi Slimane’s Celine last night, I got a text message that the French government would call an emergency meeting the following morning and that I should consider going home as soon as possible. I could barely see the clothes through the fog of hysteria that swept over me. I saw enough to determine that the collection was the next chapter in an ongoing novel, dictated by a repetitive plot line (the French bourgeois, but this season influenced by British rock culture) narrated by a very strong voice.
I care about this voice a lot. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s my own stubbornness because I’ve already committed to going back on my initial word about Slimane’s first palate cleanser collection, or because I trust that his vision is several steps ahead of mine. Maybe he sees something I don’t yet get.
But nothing is clicking. I’ll think about matching the length of my jacket to a mini skirt. I’ll take the dusty pair of navy wool Bermuda shorts hanging in my closet (fortuitously purchased just a few streets away from the show venue, several years ago) and pair them with black tights and platforms. I’ll relocate my velvet kick-flare pants, match them to something metallic and as I’m writing all of this out—having thought nothing clicked, realizing something clicked—I start to think that maybe it’s the tension between being slight and powerful that makes his voice appealing. To me at least.
And if that is true—that in relying only on the storage of my memory to resee the collection (I’m on airplane headed home, I’ll have you know, I gave into the panic) and finding that even though the clothes seemed slight enough to miss at first glance, they were also powerful enough to make me feel like I was having a unique idea of how to fashion the same me into new ways—he’s not so different (speaking strictly philosophically) from his Céline predecessor. Are we wearing curling collars because of him? Is he why knee-length boots have returned? Some of the most highly concentrated pursuits of creation whisper as if pretending to say nothing at all. It’s only after the fact that we realize we’ve been indoctrinated. Just landed.
Photos via Getty Images and Vogue Runway.
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