Leandra Medine's Blog, page 634

Happy National Best Friends Day! Watch This.

It’s our very own installment of It’s Kind of a Funny Story, featuring Amelia “the asshead” Diamond and Leandra “friend hat” Medine.

If you want to be twins, we encourage you to shop the below bar.




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Speaking of videos…subscribe to our brand spanking !new! YouTube page! If you want to watch one about Leandra’s legal husband, click here. A big thank you to Stone Fox Bride for letting us film in their office. Confused about how to act at a wedding? Master the speech, first and foremost. Then, take a look at Stone Fox Bride’s Molly Guy’s etiquette tips. They rule.

Sophie Auster Mixes High, Low, Vintage & The Row (Like a Pro)

Sophie Auster is a bonafide street dancer, but you can’t wear a printed suit with a vintage tee and expect not to dance when the music strikes you — an outfit like that moves you.

Granted, the music strikes singer/songwriter Auster quite often.

Her new album, Dogs and Men, comes out June 9. (Attn: New Yorkers, she’s playing at Joe’s Pub tomorrow.) As for more outfits that might inspire you to dance too, check ’em below and in the slideshow above. Keep your headphones plugged in, click through cool clothes, and consider this your Monday morning soundtrack plus a week’s worth of answers to the old question: what do I wear?

Monday

At home working on a new song with my beloved 6190 Gretsch streamliner while wearing my favorite vintage dress from 1890. I still can’t believe how perfect the condition is.

Tuesday

Waiting for my friend to go to dinner while wearing a vintage hat, vintage boots, a Maje jacket, and a Reformation dress.

Wednesday

Taking a break out back from rehearsal in Brooklyn for my June 9th album release show at Joe’s Pub. I’m wearing a Reformation blouse and overalls with a vintage leather jacket.

Thursday

On my way to a writing session with my brilliant musician friend and frequent collaborator, Barry Reynolds. I’m wearing a vintage motorcycle hat, vintage high waisted jeans, and a Reformation blouse.

Friday

Taking a coffee break between meetings for my new album, Dogs and Men, while wearing a vintage skirt, a no-name t-shirt, a Forever 21 headband and Topshop sunglasses.

Saturday

Impromptu serenade on my boyfriend’s roof in Williamsburg, wearing a blouse by The Row, pants by Reformation, hat by Rag and Bone, and vest by H&M.

Sunday

Dancing in the street because I can, wearing my all time favorite suit by Suno and a vintage Harley Davidson T-shirt that I got while running around between gigs at SXSW.

Attention New Yorkers and people nearby! Sophie is performing at Joe’s Pub on Tuesday, June 9. Buy your tickets here. Pre-order her new album, Dogs and Men, here. Follow Sophie on Instagram, Twitter, and check out her website here.

For more closets, click here. Want more fashion-meets-music features? Check out Flo Morrissey for cool ankle boots, or SZA for baggy jeans and orange hair. See also the five things every woman should own according to Leandra, or, the five wardrobe must-haves per Inès de la Fressange.

An Ode to Overalls

What do I love,

Most of all?

My denim sheath,

My overall.

But when I walk

Down the street —

Their plain surprise

When our eyes meet.

I stride right through

Their probing stares:

Fashion’s for me

And I. Do. Dare.

Words by Emily Siegel, illustration by Gabi Anderson. Follow them both at Urban Ditty, and read their poems on MR, like this one about expensive hamburgers, this one about scary bouncers, this one about that gluten-free life, and this one that will make you go, “Ew.”

 

The Best Meal I Ever Had

The best meal I ever had

wasn’t a meal

it was a Bloody Mary

every morning the summer of 2013, to be exact.

A mason jar full of vodka and heart-friendly polyphenols

with my best friend in the heart of our college town;

High July in Alabama and as at home as anyone can ever be.

I had a crush on every bartender in the restaurant.

The best meal I ever had

was spaghetti

sprinkled with inexplicable bits of bone

under a metal awning on a hillside in Greece.

(It was the best meal ever

because my grandfather,

with crinkly, mischievous eyes,

told my brother he ordered him beef

and later revealed it to be lamb genitalia.)

The best meal I ever had

was a bowl of ramen in Paris

with a new friend, in a city I had run to

to soothe the wound of being a post-grad.

The broth was mainly butter, bad for your heart but good for your soul.

We both woke at 4 a.m. with a stranded-in-the-desert thirst,

and yet, every Sunday, a text: “Ramen?”

The best meal I ever had

was the morning after New Year’s Eve

back in our hometown during our first year of college

at our favorite high school restaurant.

We began 2011 in giddy, morning-drunk laughter

because under my bootcut gray sweatpants I was wearing the only shoes I had:

glittering, black, pointy-toed stilettos.

The best meal I ever had

has happened many times.

It happens whenever my dad lowers his crab cages

into the murky Severn river

and we drink cheap beer and get Old Bay in our eyes

and I marvel at his picking skills, and feel grateful that he taught me.

You see, I could rhapsodize for days

about burrata, mille-feuille and tender medallions of ostrich,

crunchy golden beets, smoked bacon with caramelized bourbon sauce

and really anything in the sandwich family.

But ambience is nothing without conversation

and appetizers fall flat without affection

and after 23 years of loving food,

there’s one thing I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt:

It ain’t what you’re eating,

it’s who you’re eating it with.

Images via Harpers Bazaar. For past writer’s club prompts and submissions, click here. For a recap of this whole week on MR in one fell swoop, read Esther’s little ditty. And if you haven’t seen Gucci’s Resort 16 show yet, you definitely should.

ICYMI: Give Your Future a Helping Hand

Like the first day of summer camp, this week started off with such promise. The sun was out, umbrellas were not, and Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover was unveiled. With June 1 came the CFDAs, a major triumph for contemporary evening wear wizard Rosie Assoulin, and the herald of summer love via Susan Miller.

Jean Stories’ Jane Bishop taught us how to wear denim five ways, Gabrielle Pedriani assured us that there is nothing wrong with being basic, and Mickey Drexler imparted his wisdom on budding business owners. We thought to ourselves, Self, we’re going to be just fine. We may even hit the gym.

Who cares that my Apple Watch berates me at every turn? That my fridge will never look as good as Sami Miro’s? Or that half my face was cropped out of every photo my friends and I took over Memorial Weekend? Not I. Do you know why? Because there is an Instagram dedicated to hot guys reading on subways, and Kim & Kanye are having another baby.

I have five items in my shopping cart, and I am alive. I’m going to dance in the streets with nothing on my body but strategically placed flash tatz while listening to Flo Morrissey. I will Dubsmash the shit out of The Lion King and I will pre-order Gucci’s entire Resort collection.

JK. But I’ll keep fakin’ it till I make it.

To Hell With Minimalism!

Although there are lone wolfs (or is it heavy hitters?) that preview their Resort collections months early, the thick of the season has been set in motion this week and will continue through the greater half of next.

Some of the topical conversations that have erupted in the past couple of seasons include how “Resort is becoming the third fashion week,” whether it is appropriate that more designers are favoring shows (located in faraway destinations, no less) in place of presentations and frankly, how un-Resort Resort has become.

But yesterday in Chelsea, across 22nd street by the highway, Gucci added a new point to the roster of talking ticks with its decidedly maximalist approach to a collection that has no place priming on a beach.

New creative director Alessandro Michele, in fact, seems to be turning on its head the relatively recent adoration fashion has shown for both minimalism and irony, pointing his nose up at clean lines for the sake of fur trim! And metallic brocade! Moving parts like a pair of glasses, floral wreaths and hair pins or a beret, shiny footwear and lurex socks — prints! Loud colors! Lace up shoes and fur pom poms.

The kind of clothes that make you wonder how so many different points can possibly be conveyed and furthermore successfully (aspirationally) executed on just the single canvas of one human body. The show was thrilling. It was a roller coaster of stimulation oscillating between a jovial take on menswear dressing married to hyper-literalized scenarios that took clichés, crystallized them and made living up to their corny ambitions feel, in a word, satisfying.

If you’re confused about what I mean, consider the girl in the beret.

She closed the show in her pleated lamé maxi skirt and pink cross mules. She was wearing little earrings and a pair of thick-rimmed eyeglasses that made her look, at first glance, like a librarian with an interest in fashion, or at least eclecticism. But she also conveyed an unvarnished and charmingly stereotypical take on the French intellectual who spends most of her day sitting beside a notebook at an outdoor cafe in Paris. Mais oui! And why not? There is no doubt that an element of thrill and escapism — a motif we started to see being sprinkled back into high fashion in Paris last February — is inferred here. More and more, I’m believing that we need it. I think it took getting caught in the yawns of normcore to realize it. Because here we spend the whole of our realities firmly planted in, you know, reality, so why can’t — why shouldn’t — our clothes foretell our dreams?

All in favor of decadent and fancy, urgent and necessary futility, say, “Pearl buttons sewn into suede bows that lace up my calves!”

More fashion content, right this way.

Images via Style.com. Did you know that Glamcore is the new Normcore? At least Normcore had a nice eulogy. Speaking of books (see above) and also, death, do you think the e-book is over?

To Hell with Minimalism!

Although there are lone wolfs (or is it heavy hitters?) that preview their resort collections months early, the thick of the season has been set in motion this week and will continue through the greater half of next.

Some of the topical conversations that have erupted in the past couple of seasons include how “resort is becoming the third fashion week,” whether it is appropriate that more designers are favoring shows (located in faraway destinations, no less) in place of presentations and frankly, how un-resort resort has become.

But yesterday in Chelsea, across 22nd street by the highway, Gucci added a new point to the roster of talking ticks with its decidedly maximalist approach to a collection that has no place priming on a beach.

New creative director Alessandro Michele in fact seems to be turning on its head the relatively recent adoration fashion has shown for both minimalism and irony, pointing his nose up at clean lines for the sake of fur trim! And metallic brocade! Moving parts like a pair of glasses, floral wreaths and hair pins or a beret, shiny shoes and lurex socks — prints! Loud colors! Lace up shoes and fur pom poms.

The kind of clothes that make you wonder how so many different points can possibly be conveyed and furthermore successfully (aspirationally) executed on just the single canvas of one human body. The show was thrilling. It was a roller coaster of stimulation oscillating between a jovial take on menswear dressing married to hyper-literalized scenarios that took clichés, crystallized them and seemingly made living up to their corny ambitions feel, in a word, satisfying.

If you’re confused about what I mean, consider the girl in the beret.

She closed the show in her pleated lamé maxi skirt and pink x-mules. She was wearing little earrings and a pair of thick-rimmed eyeglasses that made her look, ay first glance, like a librarian with an interest in fashion or at least eclecticism. But she also conveyed an unvarnished and charmingly stereotypical take on the French intellectual who spends most of her day sitting beside a notebook at an outdoor cafe in Paris. Mais oui! And why not? There is no doubt that an element of thrill and escapism — a motif we started to see being sprinkled back into high fashion in Paris last February — is inferred here. More and more, I’m believing that we need it. I think it took getting caught in the yawns of normcore to realize it. Because here we spend the whole of our realities firmly planted in, you know, reality, so why can’t — why shouldn’t — our clothes foretell our dreams?

All in favor of decadent and fancy, urgent and necessary futility, say pearl buttons sewn into suede bows that lace up my calves!

More fashion content, right this way.

Images via Style.com

The Do’s and Don’ts of Gold Temporary Tats

You like music, we like music. You like gold shiny pretty things, we like gold shiny pretty things. After all, we’re only human.

However, no one gets to live in a festival dream land forever. We live in the real world (zzz), which isn’t always the most practical place for an armload of temporary armor.

Or is it?

Here’s how to wear those strangely addictive gold temporary tattoos that — yes, my friends — are likely to be around for one more summer. Why?

Because you like gold shiny pretty things, we like gold shiny pretty things. This isn’t brain surgery. But it is strategic accessorizing:

Do: Consider your outfit

Nothing says, “I am still mentally sleeping in a tent and dropping the proverbial bass,” quite like cut-off jorts, a crop top and temporary tattoos. (So there’s your first don’t.)

Instead, wear something that will completely throw your audience off. Layer a bit. Get funky with volume. Then climb back into that mental tent and count your lucky stars.

Do: Apply in moderation

I think this is the one time on this site that we’ll advocate such restraint.

Don’t go overboard with the ice even though we know it’s tempting. You don’t want to be “gold girl” at your summer internship. Making a face like you mean it helps.

Do: Get creative and cut them up

Just because you buy a set of intricately woven chains doesn’t mean you have to go full Midas. Snip them down to your liking. Don’t be afraid of the scissors.

 

Do: Place in discreet locations

Can you spot the flash tat?

Or, don’t be discreet at all.

Not sure why we’re being so bossy today. Just put ’em right on your face.

Maybe people will think it’s a cool mole!

Do: bring enough to share. 

These babies catch on faster than a bag of cough drops in a classroom. Now get yourself a pack and upload your photos below so we can see your golden do’s and don’ts.

 

Yup. We were into gold temporary tats last summer, too. Buy them here, here, here or here. Would you get (/do you have) a real tattoo? Weigh in.

MR Writers Club Prompt: Gather ‘Round the Camp Fire

Click here for past Writers Club prompts and entries.

I have only one clear memory of camp:

I hug my dad goodbye and climb aboard the yellow school bus routed to take me away from home and into the woods. This is day camp — a test to see if I can handle the sleep-away variety — and I am buddied up with my next door neighbor Elizabeth. She’s older than me by about 3 or 4 years, and is as thrilled with me being her newest appendage as I am at the prospect of doing anything besides playing Nintendo.

Hint: she hates me.

A round of ice-breakers begins once the final kids are picked up and saddled into their seats. The game of choice is a new one for me: Who Stole The Cookies From the Cookie Jar?

The idea is simple. Everyone repeats, “Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar,” in unison.

Then someone goes, “Johnny [or whoever] stole the cookies from the cookie jar!”

There’s some interlude-banter that’s irrelevant, and then it’s up to Johnny to place the blame. Johnny scans the name tags taped onto our T-shirts, chooses the next defendant and goes, “Elizabeth stole the cookies from the cookie jar!”

Oh no.

Elizabeth looks at me.

“Amelia stole the cookies from the cookie jar!”

Here’s a fun fact about me: I can’t read yet.

And I only know Elizabeth’s name.

“Elizabeth stole the cookies from the cookie jar!”

Boom — she sends it back. Firmer this time, because now we’re in the US Open. I can read all these name tags, her squinted eyes tell me, but I am only coming for you, little thief. 

“Amelia stole the cookies from the cookie jar.”

Back and forth, back and forth. The crowd’s eyes follow our verbal volley: “Elizabeth!” “Amelia!” “Elizabeth!” “Amelia!” “Elizabeth!” My lip starts to wibble. My chin crunches.

“AMELIA.”

I break, and proceed to sob. “I didn’t steal! I didn’t steal! I didn’t steal the cookies!”

Perhaps the lady doth protest too much. One hour later and I’m back at home on my couch, controller between my hands with a sleeve of Oreos on my lap.

Now that you’ve read my camp story, it’s time to tell us yours. In around 400 words (yes, we’re cutting it down) regale us with your tales of saluted shorts, bunk bed makeout sessions, color wars and canoeing catastrophes. More of a science camp kid? Great. We love beakers.

Send it all to write@manrepeller.com by Thursday, June 11 at 12 noon EST.

Click here for past Writers Club prompts and entries. You caught last week’s short beach read, right? And if you’re still bored, show us your Dubsmash. Or shop. Either works.

Musician Flo Morrissey’s Got Serious Style

In an industry saturated with uniform pop ballads, UK-born Flo Morrissey’s voice is both refreshing and familiar.

Inspired by the music of Devendra Banhart, Neil Young and the style of the late 60s and 70s, Flo’s music captures the ethos of a glorified time in music while expressing the perpetual longing and desire that plague modern life. Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful demonstrates Flo’s unique ability to hold up a mirror to the world around her.

Flo was kind enough to talk style (she’s inspired by Françoise Hardy and Jane Birkin), writing tricks and music, even after I threatened to steal her trunk full of vintage wonders.

Since you’ve been on tour, have any cities inspired your style?

San Francisco and Portland have been quite cool to see. I think New York is actually very chic and more my kind of style than L.A., though that city has elements of what I like, too. I used to prefer dressing more “hippie,” but I’m trying to find that balance while being graceful too.

I feel like the bohemian/hippie stage is kind of like a rite of passage, style-wise.

Right, exactly. I’m into not buying mass-produced things. I appreciate sustainable, long lasting pieces that mean something, rather than buying 20 versions of the same T-shirt. It’s more eco-friendly, and friendlier to your purse, too.

You come from a big family — nine siblings, right? — do guys all share clothing?

I take all of my dad’s jackets! And my mom’s clothes. And somehow, I always seem to find something in the wardrobes of my younger brothers and sisters as well. I don’t see it as hand-me-downs, but more so using the things that are around me, seeing the beauty in my little brother’s top, because even if it’s too small, it brings something with it. I’m lucky that they dress well!

You left school to pursue music, can you talk about what that experience has been like for you?

I always knew I didn’t want to go to university. It made more sense for me to actually play music in the real world rather than study it, and I’m lucky that my parents were so supportive of that. They trusted that I wouldn’t sit around all day on the Internet.

I started putting music up online from a young age on MySpace. That lead me to a manager. It was risk, but sometimes you just gotta go for it.

To an older generation though — like for example, my grandparents — it’s a bit risky that I didn’t go to university. But I think, hey, we’ve got to stand up for ourselves. It’s good.

Do you have any weird tricks for jogging your creative muscle? What inspires you to write a song? 

I’ve had to work more at writing and to find inspiration in mundane things as I’ve gotten older. That’s kind of what the message of my album Tomorrow will be Beautiful is — finding that you can make something ordinary really beautiful.

I’ve gotten into meditation and yoga to help me get into the zone. Routine is also really important to me. I’ll tell myself, “Okay, at 10 a.m. every day I’m going to sit down and write. No matter what.” That’s been really important.

Keeping busy is the main thing. You can sit around all day and tell yourself, “I’m researching stuff on the internet.” We like to pretend that we’re being productive.

The key, I’m realizing, is being open. You never know when an interaction with somebody will suddenly spark a line in a song.

It’s time for our rapid fire round!  DIY or buy?

DIY!

If you could sing a duet with anybody who would it be?

Billie Holiday.

Exercise or meditation?

Meditation.

Favorite musician who doesn’t inspire your sound?

James Blake.

Is there anything that people don’t know about you that you would like them to know?

I’m not related to Morrissey, the singer — he’s not my dad. And I was born on Christmas day.

Follow Flo on Instagram, Twitter and on Soundcloud here. 

We like music, yes we do. For more “get to knows” click here. Meet a musician who might also be an alien here, and ruffle through the closet of Dallas crooner, Leon Bridges, here.