Leandra Medine's Blog, page 587

These Shoes are Pointless.

With the exception of dull pencils, the best things in life have absolutely no point: jokes, movies, song lyrics, memes.

Think about the last time you started laughing to yourself like a full creep while walking alone because you thought of something hilarious your best friend did. There would be no point in trying to explain it to a nearby stranger who’s concerned for your sanity and his safety; said stranger cannot understand the subtle nuance of your best friend’s accidental accent that one time she imitated Grover Cleveland. Nothing’s funny about the 22nd and 24th president of the United States other than his mustache — the story’s funny because it’s so pointless.

And what a beautiful thing that is.

Confused? Take this Vine into consideration:

Completely pointless. That’s the point.

Not getting mine? Maybe you need a sartorial visual. Ok! Think about a shoe. A pump. A pointy pump. Grab a pair that’s nearby.

Now quick, Martha, quick! Throw that shoe against the wall so that its witch toe smashes inward like a pug nose, thus eliminating the shoe’s point entirely.

(Reaction from your roommate sitting on the nearby couch: “What the hell was the point of that, you psychopath?”)

If you just ruined her shoe and feel like you need to give her a reason, borrow a move from that spectacled kid in Jerry Maguire and quote one of Lyst’s fact-y ads that you may have/not seen around town: “Did you know? Round and square-toed shoes are outselling pointed styles on Lyst by 3 to 1.”

Valentino shoes, Peter Pilotto two-piece set.

I’m going to guess that she’ll respond with something annoying about how that info is pointless because A) what is Lyst (“It’s like the Spotify of fashion,” you’ll tell her, “Except instead of songs, it’s stuff to wear, instead of albums, it’s online stores and instead of making playlists, you make a shopping cart then check out at once, jeez louise”) and B) what’s she supposed to wear to work now?

Which is exactly your point: she should wear a pair of shoes without one. Pointless shoes — though sometimes of a balletic or pilgrim ilk (that’s the point) are cool. They’re having a moment on feet.

Besides, hers were too sharp and therefore kind of dangerous. They threatened to poke holes in the beauty of futility.

You know what else don’t have points?

Appendixes.

Mole hairs.

Walking into the kitchen sometimes.

Finger puppets.

Earlobes. (Like, besides being earring-carriers, why?)

About 90% of your ex’s Snapchats.

Cupcakes made for dogs.

Hats made for frogs.

Kanye West speeches, non-alcoholic beer and pennies.

But aren’t all of those things wonderful? Do they not make the world better? Do they not all smell a little bit like the way a paperclip makes your mouth taste if you touch it to your braces?

I literally have no idea what I’m talking about anymore. Completely forgot what my point was…

Oh yea. That’s right. I didn’t have one!

In partnership with Lyst.

Photographed by Krista Anna Lewis; Creative direction by Sophia Macks of Beyond The Mag (@beyondthemag). 

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What to Wear This Week, with Stefania and Kate from Editorialist

What do you ask yourself when getting dressed in the morning? Whether or not you’re inclined to admit the impetus of why you say what you do with the clothes that you wear, they make a statement — one that is ostensibly endorsed by their wearer — for the public to consume.

You make a choice about how you will present yourself, to wear a thing that will pick up slack where words might fail you, or conversely surprise your audience in the event that your words are doing exactly what they should be doing. It’s an intellectual choice whether you want to believe that or not, and anyone with a distinct sense of style — anyone — participates in the creation of it.

In today’s edition of What to Wear This Week, Stefania Allen and Kate Davidson Hudson, co-founders of the editorial commerce platform Editorialist, break down the mechanics of what they wear and why.

What are you thinking when you get dressed in the morning?

Stefania Allen: I’m just trying to get out the door. I typically go back to my favorite core pieces for day-to-day and style them differently with layers and accessories.

Kate Davidson Hudson: How I dress on any one morning is usually predicated on what I have scheduled for the day — whether I’m on set, running around to showroom appointments, or have in-office meetings.

Do you start from the shoes and work your way up, or clothes and then down?

SA: I start with the bottom half of my body and work around that decision. Is it a skirt day? Jean? Wide leg pant? Etc? That decision sets the tone for the type of shoe and so on and so forth.

KDH: I definitely cull inspiration from accessories and keep the rest of my wardrobe minimal and tonal.

You’ve got a day of meetings and then drinks with friends — what do you wear?

SA: For fall, it’s an oversized button down, cropped jacket, wide-leg pant, Giambatista Valli lace-up bootie, Chloé Faye bag, Anita Ko earcuff and a Paige Novick ear cuff.

KDH: My go-to-uniform is a pair of wide-leg Céline pants, a Miu Miu tee and a Balenciaga leather jacket.

Do you find that people take you less seriously when you’re dressed “fashiony”?

KDH: No less seriously than when they see I’m blonde.

You’ve both been pregnant! What did that do to your style?

SA: I found pregnancy to be a pretty surreal experience. Your body starts to change in ways you thought it never could. I am pretty petite so I found anything too baggy made me look a lot bigger and frumpy. I chose body-con silhouettes and lots of over the shoulder blazers to hide a few things ….

KDH: It forced me to rethink proportional dressing, so I pretty much dressed around the bump, meaning things cut above it or below it. And, I found that good body-con underpinnings were key to anchoring everything. Then you can artfully layer to change up your look from day-to-day with scarves, blazers and swapping-out accessories.

Foolproof styling trick?

SA: Things really do just look better with a heel.

KDH: A belt can be one of the best styling tricks in your toolbox. Use it to give boxy cuts a shape or to keep layered pieces in place and defined.

The one garment that never lets you down?

SA: A Céline leather jacket.

KDH: A Céline trench.

The one that always lets you down?

SA: Anything overly fussy.

KDH: My skinny jean.

Share your best shopping tip, pls!

SA: Editorialist.com, duh.

KDH: Keep your clothes, update your accessories.

Check out the Editorialist’s newly launched Holiday 2015 Gift Guide and follow them on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Photographed by Krista Anna Lewis

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Home Alone: The Most Stylish Holiday Movie of Them All

In honor of the Home Alone 25th Anniversary.  (Yes, it was released in 1990.)

Kevin MacCallister was a sartorial prodigy. He had a knack for knitwear and a penchant for flannels. He wore khakis and corduroys with great aplomb. He didn’t let trends interfere with his natural intuition: he found his uniform at an early age, refined it quickly, then stuck with it.

Some critics of Kevin’s style (likely those jealous grinches who have a hard time believing in the magic of fashion) will argue that he was dressed by his mother. After all, wasn’t she the one who bought his clothes? Sure. But the young man was old enough to dress himself!

Consider movie number one, the first time he’s home alone. He chose a sweater reminiscent of an early Proenza Schouler knit, added a bit orange for interest, then balanced with a slouchy cargo.

Now ask yourself — and answer honestly, ” When I am home alone…what do I wear?”

Raise your hand if you just admitted to sweatpants, a weird tee-shirt, or nothing.

The kid just had that natural style.

Here he is in Home Alone 2 looking like a photographer who works at Opening Ceremony on the weekends (for the discount more than the paycheck).

I take it back: the kid doesn’t just “have style.” He exercises it.

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Still, we cannot discount his mother. After all, if we’re talking nature versus nurture — and we’ve already agreed he’s naturally nailed the art of dressing awesome, we shouldn’t forget that nurture likely enhanced his inherent gift.

I mean look. At. His. Mom’s. Coat!

You cannot tell me that this very scene didn’t inspire Adele’s “Hello.”

(Let us not forget the mom’s neck scarf or the earrings, either.)

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Yes. Kevin MacAllister’s family may have been a tad bit…(according to parenting magazines and various child protective service veterans)…awful. But they showed their love in other ways. All families are weird. This one in particular shared their love via clothes.

Do we not sort of do the same?

And if the family photo above does not convince you that A) robes are the new blazers and B) glasses can add dimension to any outfit, then I don’t even know what fashion week is for anymore.

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The thing about Home Alone (I’ll speak to the first two movies here; I’m less nostalgic about the rest) is that all the players have a bit of panache. Avert your eyes from Kevin here and kindly focus on the tall burglar, far right.

He is wearing a cardigan as a waist coat. That, my friends, is refined.

Now zoom in on the short one. Here, I zoomed in for you:

That sweater-as-a-scarf! That coat! That hat.

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Of course, one must always attribute at least a bit of style to surroundings. Where we grow up directly affects our aesthetic. Where we spend time influences our minds.

Which is why the real style hero of the Home Alone franchise isn’t really Kevin MacAllister, after all.

It’s his lived in, loved on, floral furnished and grandmother-wallpapered house.

Home for the holidays, indeed.

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Indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for All

It doesn’t feel right resuming regular programming this morning without first re-addressing the grisly attacks on humanity, of which too many Parisians, and before that Lebanese, and before that Iraqis, have been victims. Because as powerful as the solidarity espoused by social media users has been over the past 72 hours, I wonder if it’s enough — if it will be enough. The dust is going to settle and the wheels will continue to rotate and then what?

It is a wonderful gift that in 2015, it’s an impossibility to not know what’s going in the world by mere virtue of scrolling through a photo-sharing app. Times like these define the cultural shifts of our generation — social media is no longer just social. It’s mainstream, a lifeline, a voice you rely on. And in that way it’s a fortress. But that we might delude ourselves into thinking that hash-tagging “JeSuisParis” will provoke actionable change is where I take issue, partially because I wonder whether such social-fueled worldwide attention continues to feed the beast. By giving these attacks a dedicated hashtag, does it give fame to the enemy?

So I keep coming back to this question: what do we do?

How do we funnel the new medium through which we rally and protest to not just show our allegiance but to produce real change? To contribute to making this world one we’re proud to be part of and to show to our offspring, the future generations of humanity?

On Friday night, I felt an overwhelming sense of inertia. How many “likes” is it going to take, how many more generations of teaching kindness, of training ourselves to believe in the happy ending — that humanity trumps vulgarity and love cures hate — will it take for all of that to finally come true? Because even if it is true, the reality remains that “all it takes” is a single night and half a dozen gunmen to turn our world upside down. I hate myself for asking this, and even more for starting to believe it, but could it be that our faith in humanity is our weakness?

Yet we need it to survive, so we remain strong in our weakness. We prove that we won’t be afraid to go on living the lives we’ve architected. We will laugh and we will love and we will not just marvel in the distinct air of freedom that permeates our world, but help those caught in the darkness uncover the light.

They say that living well is the best revenge so that’s what we’ll do. We’ll open our hearts and our doors, we won’t forget, we might forgive and above all else we’ll be vigilant in our celebration of liberté, égalité et fraternité.

*

Artwork by Yael Bartana

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Let’s Wait Until They Cut the Cake

Let me set the scene. You’re at a birthday party.

(It could be any type of party, but in this instance, it’s a birthday party.)

It’s taking place in a fancy hotel function room. The host isn’t in your immediate circle of friends, but you gratefully accepted an invite anyway. There’s music, liquor, merriment…and a huge iced cake sitting on the side. You’re looking forward to having a slice of that. You really are.

You’re enjoying a few alcoholic beverages and maybe having a dance with some of the more familiar faces that have also turned up. You’re smiling and laughing and looking as though you’re having the time of your life (mainly for the host’s sake), but your mind is otherwise engaged. When are they going to cut that cake? We’ve been here for 3 hours now, it’s 11 pm. Surely it’s time?

In hushed tones you say to your boyfriend, “The cake looks good, doesn’t it?” This is the first time you’ve spoken about the cake out loud. He glances at it and replies, “Uh, yeah? Do you want another drink?” You nod, but you’re not sure another gin and tonic is going to scratch your itch. I bet it’s a jam and cream sponge. Although it could be a chocolate cake. I really hope it’s not fruitcake…that will be SO disappointing for everyone.

The host mingles with your group, so you politely kiss her on the cheek then thank her for inviting you and tell her you’re having a wonderful time. Do I say something?

“Your cake looks incredible! Who made it?” you ask, hoping to get the cake ball rolling, so to speak. The host gives you an answer, but you couldn’t give a single damn where it came from, or who beat the eggs or sifted the flour, you just want to know when you can have a frickin’ slice. As the host leaves to mingle with another posse, a sense of unease rises through you.

Midnight strikes and a few revelers begin to leave the party, cake-less. Your heart rate quickens. Were they offered any cake before they left? What kind of host doesn’t offer their guests cake? Especially after it’s been sitting there all night! This is beyond a joke.

“Do you want to leave soon?” asks your boyfriend. “Sure,” you reply. You realize that you’re staring at the cake as if it were a stray puppy you can’t bear to leave behind. “But do you think they’re going to cut the cake soon?”

“I don’t know, does it matter?” your boyfriend chortles. He thinks I’m being childish, I bet. “There’s some cake at home if you’re that desperate!” NOT THE POINT, IDIOT. Still, you say your goodbyes and depart the party, leaving the untouched, virgin cake behind.

There is no pet peeve worse than not being able to have your cake, or eat it either.

Photographed by Will Cotton for New York Magazine.

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Our Thoughts Are With the World

It’s weird that it was sunny in New York this morning. The attacks last night in Paris stained the world with so much darkness that one began to wonder if the lights in the sky still worked, that maybe the moon is artificial after all.

Illuminated instead was the presence of evil. Real evil. A word or concept that feels constructed for the sake of comic book villains but applies every time unthinkable acts of violence strike, and what’s overwhelming is that acts of violence strike, and they strike, and they strike.

The bombings in Beirut. The Russian plane crash in Egypt. The bombings at a funeral in Baghdad. The massacre at Garissa University College in Kenya. The train station bombings in Ankara. These are just a few.

They make us feel helpless. They make us feel small. They are stone hands on our bird bone shoulders that push us into the ground, paralyzing our beings. Can’t think or breathe or move. In tiny voices we barely whisper, “What do we do?”

I called my dad last night to ask him as much. I needed to know if it was okay to watch something other than the news. Was it okay to not break plans when the world was breaking? What if something was funny? Could I laugh — was I allowed to? How do we at Man Repeller open our site Monday morning with a post about clothes and shoes?

He told me that the difference between all of us and terrorists is that terrorists destroy. They tear things down. They do not build.

We build. Humanity creates. Music, literature, art, film, architecture, laughter, food, family, love; we make these things. It’s why in spite of destruction and horror, we will prevail. We’ll rebuild.

Did you ever read A Wrinkle in Time? The main characters are three kids who travel across time and space to fight The Darkness. Evil. At one point, they observe the thick mass through a medium’s crystal ball. They see it clouding our planet and it terrifies them.

One of the main characters asks their guide, Mrs Which, to tell them what’s going to happen to the world.

She tells them, “We will continue to fight.”

She also tells them that we’re not alone. “All through the universe it’s being fought, all through the cosmos, and my, but it’s a grand and exciting battle.”

The children are not so convinced.

They continue to watch The Darkness through the crystal ball, and then:

“Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared…and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure…No shadows. No fear. Only the stars and the clear darkness of space, quite different from the fearful darkness of the Thing.

‘You see!’ the Medium cried, smiling happily. ‘It can be overcome! It is being overcome all the time!'”

Those exclamation points, her exuberance, such assured positivity — it all feels a little too bright right now. Sort of like the sun this morning. But the sun was just doing its job, signaling us to wake up, strap our heavy hearts to our chest, fight the darkness, and live this life.

Our thoughts and prayers are with Paris. Our thoughts and prayers are with the world.

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Welcome to Monocycle, Our Newest Podcast!

My guess is that when Charles Dickens wrote a “Tale of Two Cities,” it was not a Friday afternoon. If it had been, that opening lyric would have read, “it was the best of times, it was the best of times.” Because, you know, Friday afternoons are great. They signal the end of the week, the beginning of the weekend, they maintain the word “fri” in them and everyone knows you can’t spell French without Fri(es). Now, with the launch of our second podcast, I am humbly hoping, they will get even better. That is either a profoundly narcissistic thing to say given the nature of the show (it’s a ten minute monologue delivered by me, which I hope makes you feel like we’re talking on the phone and you actually care about what I have to say) or precisely on point (because of its narcissism!) because I only talk about me to get to you and I swear that’s true.

Monocycle will cover a range of topics that include feelings, feelings, what it’s like to feel feelings and why I feel like without your providing insight, this thing will never be what it could be. So do me a solid, take a listen, make me feel like you truly are the best friend I have made you out to be, and tell me what you want to hear. I sort of feel like we’re just about to round third base.

Homerun incoming,

Leandra

Intro song: “The Show Must Be Go” by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0 License;  Logo illustration by Kelly Shami.

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“TGIF” Kind of Sucks

TGIF started out innocently enough.

It was a nice little morale booster inside offices and school halls, something to say in awkward elevator rides or when a colleague accidentally went in for a high five.

Thank god it’s Friday! Amen to the end of your clocked-in nine-to-five (plus six, seven, eight, nine). Hallelujah to two days of no deadlines, no class. To freedom!

Then “TGIF” turned into a conspiratorial lie.*

*Not for everyone. That’s the disclaimer that needs to be understand before moving forward. There remains a large population of those who, regardless of sleep stats, will catch a 5 PM Friday second wind; those who live for the post-6 PM rage fest, who either drop their crap off at their apartment then turn it right back around, or who don’t bother checking into the homestead at all; they book it straight to the bar.

Question: “But Carole, what do you do with your crap?”

Response: “If someone wants my briefcase, they can have it.”

However. We’re not here to discuss those weekend warriors. Those whose eyes are focused on the happy hour prize. No, no. We’re here to form an alliance against the night that — somewhere in our late twenties — went from relaxing safe-haven to stressful hell.

The work week, as you know, is go, go, go. There’s also a high likelihood that your day doesn’t end when you close your laptop: you’re at work dinners, client drinks, networking events, fundraisers. That means at least four full days spent nursing mild school night hangovers.

And believe me, I know. Re: that headache? You “just” had a glass of wine. My former youth betrayed me, too.

Come Friday, you’re barely hanging in there. You’re pushing toward the end like a weed-whacker stuck in molasses, watching your inbox grow as your outbox refuses to shrink, all while the text messages on your phone start popping up.

“What’s the plan?”

“Where’s the party?”

“What time are we starting”

But you’re exhausted. The thought of going home after work to change, to then leave your apartment again (again!) sounds like cruel and unusual masochism of the first degree. All you want to do is sit on your couch. Catch up on TV. Catch up on Instagram. Take a shower. Take a nap. Review the blank spot on your wall. Go to bed at 10 so that you can wake up and have a proper, productive, worth-it weekend.

“You can sleep when your dead,” your more fun friends goad you.

“But I’ll die if I go out,” you reason. “Let me sleep now.”

Besides, you’ll party Saturday! You’ll show up for the brunch. And you’ll day-drink Sunday. All hope is not lost.

So who’s with me? Comment your petition below to end the Friday Night Madness. I’ll be in bed with a book and my Friday night-light.

Feature image by Krista Anna Lewis

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Intolerance of Opinions, and What That’s Doing to Us

Before Halloween, the administration at Yale University sent out a campus-wide email recommending that students think before they costume as a protective measure against cultural appropriation and ultimately, offense. In response, one teacher from the university invited a conversation among her students about whether the course taken was corrective or detrimental, ultimately resulting in a mass protest against her employment at the school. Earlier this week, The Atlantic published a story on the situation called “The New Intolerance of Student Activism.” It hearkened back to another article published in the September 2015 issue of the same magazine called “The Coddling of the American Mind.” Both argue a sentiment brought forward by the latter story, which is that “Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense.”

Here, Mattie and Leandra discuss the recent phenomena in a text message conversation.*

* In the time since this conversation took place, new pieces of context have been added to the narrative thus alluding to the much larger and frankly unacceptable issue of structural racism. But how do we invite debate and talk about these problems in a way that is productive and thoughtful? Can we?

Collage by Krista Anna Lewis

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The Thigh High Boot Challenge

Leandra

Thigh high boots are like a cashew in that they trick their consumers into thinking they’re one thing (a nut when they’re really a fruit, a practical shoe decision when they’re anything but), then following use they pose the philosophical question of: Huh? 

As in, did I really just eat 51 cashews a.k.a. 51 individual fruits, or am I emulating Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman during the former half of that movie, and is that an acceptable role to play through the motions of my psychic architecture, respectively?

I know, I know, I should just drop the mic now but of course, I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m going to go on and on and on (and on) — and then let Amelia do the same — about a challenge that was self-imposed and consequently accepted this week. Following actionable curiosity about thigh high boots (call it fascination of the abomination: you hate them, you hate them, you can’t look away, you want them, you need them, you get them, you’re confused — now how to wear them), we set out to figure out just that: how to wear them. Follow the slideshow + comments above to read some equal parts reductive and emotional sentences about how the boots makes us feel — plus some verdicts.

Oh, and happy Friday!

Amelia

Cashews are low on my nut list so allow me to throw out another metaphor, this one situational: remember in middle school when you had a suspicion that something was cool, but because you were at an “impressionable young age” and needed the confirmation of others, you kept quiet and didn’t tell anyone? That’s how I felt about thigh highs. They seemed sexy and trendy (see: shoepants) and hard to pull off — but were they cool? Fashionable as opposed to hot.

You’d think that if I’ve learned anything by now, it’s that “cool” is a state of mind. But it’s also a state of styling. If you harbor hope for a sartorial something then rarely is it a lost cause. You know the cliché: if there’s a Will, there’s a Grace.

There’s also a way. If you’re trying something scary, build the rest of your outfit in the same way you would regularly and your risk won’t feel so strange.

See what I/we/us/yee(zy) mean(s) in the slideshow above.

Then party.

Photographed by Krista Anna Lewis

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