Leandra Medine's Blog, page 652

The Year Without Makeup

I’m low maintenance, I always told myself. I’m a slick-of-lip-gloss and one coat of mascara kind of girl. But the first day I went to work without makeup I wore sunglasses. In the office.

To be fair, that was mostly because my bleary eye was still secreting a mysterious cloudy liquid. I was recovering from a nasty eye infection and under doctor’s orders not to put any cosmetics — not even sunscreen — near my face. I didn’t know then that I was living my first of 365 days total without makeup.

I felt naked at first. I had never worn more than mascara, blush, maybe a bit of eyeshadow for special occasions. But I didn’t realize how much those little embellishments protected me. They were my armor in a world where being female feels like a never-ending appraisal of beauty.

In the office, my bare face seemed unprofessional. The first time I went to a club, I worried they would turn me away at the door, or at least ask me to apply a layer of lipstick before joining the bronzed, contoured girls with feline eyes inside. Out on the streets, pale-faced and dry-lipped, I felt like I was fighting a battle I didn’t believe in: that by side-stepping makeup I was becoming a poster girl for a rebellion my heart wasn’t actually invested in. I was not an anti-cosmetics crusader then. But the experience has turned me into something of a convert now.

That year taught me that makeup may be a shield, but it is not a weapon. It is a transparent cloak that everyone but you can see through — all potions have limited power. You look the way you do, and you can either accept it now and get on with your life or you can continue painting your face in the vain hopes that one day Angelina Jolie will gaze back at you from the mirror. She won’t.

Wearing mascara never hid what I looked like from others. No nightclub turned me away. Men did not recoil at the sight of unpainted lashes. Women didn’t make snide remarks. People told me I looked nice just as often as they did before, if not a little bit more. After a couple of months, I gave it no more thought, instead enjoying my extra minutes of sleep in the morning and leisurely drinks before going out.

Of course, makeup can function as a confidence booster. I don’t deny its ability to hide the sins of late nights and greasy food. When faced with a special occasion — a date, or a presentation at work — a touch of color can be a bolstering shield. But sometimes it’s empowering to throw away the crutch. Try going makeup free for just one day, and I promise: precisely nothing will change if you face the world as you really are.

Image on the left shot by Ben Toms for Garage Magazine, Image on the right shot by Juergen Teller for a Céline ad campaign

Five Things to Get You Over the Hump

I don’t know about you, but my brain feels like a puddle of egg yolk and my heart hurts from being broken by Bianca Jagger’s impeccable style. Luckily, the Internet was good to us today. Let it be the toast for your fashion-month brain scramble, the Band-Aid for your heart, and the disco ball of news to get you over this Wednesday hump.

A Rihanna Documentary is Coming to a Screen Near You

Sources indicate that Lone Survivor director Peter Berg was so inspired by our Ode to Rihanna, he decided to produce a documentary about Instagram’s favorite artist. The film is said to be “much more a character study than a music film.” And although a release date has yet to be confirmed, this is still the best news eva, eva, eva, ey.

[Deadline]

Kanye West’s Awesome Song to Kim Kardashian 

Westashian pandemonium continues with the release of Kanye West’s ode to Kim Kardashian. The track was originally performed at the 2013 Met Ball, but now those of us whose invitations got lost in the mail can loop “Awesome” while lamenting on the gaping hole in our lives that is someone who autotunes their love for us. Stream it here while reading a sampling of the lyrics below:

Cause baby, you’re awesome

So awesome

You look too good to be at work

You feel too good to ever hurt

I hope you ready for tonight

I’m gon’ cook, you’ll be dessert

[Paper]

Jon Stewart Can’t Get Enough of Broad City 

We’d like to thank Jon Stewart for thanking Abbi and Ilana for bringing joy to the world. Our sentiments exactly, Jon. The Broad City creators visited The Daily Show and exuded all of the charm and hilarity we’ve come to love them for. *YES QUEEN*

[Vulture]

Your Texts Sound Better in Drake

The Drizzy app is about to make breaking up, making up, and communicating with your building super a lot more efficient. The app uses a “Drake keyboard” to translate your text messages into Drakian. Users choose from five categories of emotion: random, feels, hustle, exes, and hate, and then a suitable Drake quote pops on screen. So go ahead and finally tell your roommate:

Tables turn, bridges burn, you live and you learn

If she doesn’t get you then she never got you.

[Cosmo]

Uniqlo and Christophe Lemaire to Collaborate

Good golly goose eggs! Former Hermès creative director Christophe Lemaire and his design partner Sarah-Linh Tran will collaborate with Uniqlo on a clothing line that’s set to arrive in stores this fall. The collection will include “creative, comfortable everyday garments.” Cashmere track suit anyone?

[Style.com]

Suits Like Jagger

Bianca Jagger is a rare bird.

In an age where trends have a faster turnover rate than an IHOP booth on a Sunday, the human rights activist’s style has endured. Speaking her name aloud conjures images of 70s disco spirit; an actual Google search yields photographic proof that she’s the Jagger with moves to watch.

It’s difficult to replicate style as effortless as hers. Bianca Jagger is a woman who moves and dresses with purpose, yet her sequined turbans and wide-lapeled suits never read as “trying too hard.” It takes true confidence to wear a plunging v-neck, and it takes courage to do so without double-sided fashion tape, but it takes real panache to not look like a fidgety willow every time a breeze provokes a nip-slip.

She, my friends, is a fashion icon.

The sad truth is that we don’t have access to Bianca’s stellar collection of white two-pieces and dramatic capes. We don’t have Studio 54, either. But we do have options. In fact, I once wore a leopard Kooples suit-sans-shirt to a birthday party in Bianca’s honor and had my nipple hanging out for two whole minutes. If at first you don’t succeed, right?

So together, let’s try, try to dress like Bianca Jagger again:

Get Suited: 

Few things say, “I came to party with my pants on!” like a well tailored suit. Go rogue and wear one like this H&M burgundy number with a bare chest. Or, opt for a blouse-y top beneath it. Either way, Bianca would be proud.

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Jump-Suit, Not Ship: 

Jumpsuits are never a bad idea, save for when you’ve had too much to drink and need to pee. Throw it back to Saturday night on a Monday. Go up, go down, turn it all around.

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Slip Into Something Comfortable 

We have many women to thank for the proliferation of the undergarment-turned-party dress, Kate Moss chief among them. A slip dress screams, “IDGAF that I have ‘itis! My undercarriage can breathe and I feel real good about that.”

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Wear a PussyBow 

Haha, she said “pussy.”

Are we over it? Good, because these neck-hugging babies will make you look .2 % more French than you normally do. The choker-cum-scarf appliqué is sophisticated without being stuffy. Tie it tight or let it hang loose at your collarbone, depending on how good the music is.

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Finally, always make an entrance.

So what if you don’t have a stallion upon which to ride? You’ve got the outfit, now. That’s what matters.

Ask a French Girl About Coffee and Brunch

We’ve asked our Parisian version of Dear Abby about first dates (“always give a second chance”) and dating apps (“they sum up our generation — alone, but so connected”). Then, as with any proper millennial conversation, the topic eventually turned to coffee and brunch.

We asked a French girl, she answered, I took her picture on my iPhone and finally, we got down to the real important event of the day: we ate.

Best place to get a coffee in NYC?

Via Quadronno (if I need it) on a Sunday. I’ll definitely need it on a Saturday. During the week, the best place to get coffee is in my house.

Best place to get a coffee in Paris?

I think my favorite spot for a coffee in Paris is at la Croix Rouge in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It’s been our family and friends’ spot forever and we know all the staff — they watched us grow up. It’s actually the first place I go to as soon as I land in Paris. I get a Perrier, a cappuccino and some fresh updates from my family.

And how do you take your coffee?

There is nothing better than an espresso. But since I moved here, I got used to the “Americano with room for soy,” or lattes in the winter.

Do Americans have any coffee rituals or coffee preparations that you find strange?

If I had to find something I thought was bizarre, it would be all of the caramel, chantilly, cinnamon, honey, whole milk, cookies and cream…

I used to find the size “venti” super bizarre, too. When I moved here, I was not able to wrap my head around XL coffee. I thought it was so “American dream.” Now I’m surprised when my espresso arrives looking like espresso in a small coffee cup. Ah…perspectives.

You just had a birthday brunch, but when you moved here, was brunch a weird concept to you? 

It feels more natural now than even two years ago. I think brunch is easier, though. It’s less strict to say brunch than breakfast or lunch; there’s less pressure and friends can come and go as they please, bring a kid, a dog, a date…

But I typically stay quite traditional when it comes to my weekend routine, which involves breakfast and lunch. I like them separate, seated at the table with an appetizer, an entree and a desert.

Do people go out to brunch in Paris? Is it as much of a “thing” there?

It has become a thing, yeah. Everything in NY travels to Paris — sometimes with a year or two delay.

Before, you would have a breakfast menu from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., and then a lunch menu from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Now it’s brunch from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., which I kind of like because Paris is super sad on Sundays. Nothing’s open like it is in NY, so brunch brings people together. It’s like having two Saturdays.

One thing about brunch in Paris, though: we don’t have the culture of the mimosa because we have wine every night. So at brunch, we are hungover. Ha!

That means I have no excuse for my weekend morning mimosas, then. Ok.  What’s the best coffee-with-friends outfit?

The best coffee-with-friends moments are the ones you don’t plan, so you’re usually in jeans and sneakers when it happens.

What breakfast do you make for yourself on the weekends? And what’s the playlist that accompanies you?

I don’t prepare a lot, but it usually includes soft boiled or sunny side up eggs with bread and butter, oranges, Nutella, apricot jam and some cheese.

And for the playlist:

Laura’s Coffee and Eggs Soundtrack by Man Repeller on Grooveshark

Now readers: what should we ask Laura next?

Laura is wearing a necklace by Parme Marin, Gag & Lou earrings, Stan Smith sneakers and her top and skirt are borrowed from a friend.

Brooke Shields’ Legs Will Be “All the Rage”

My grandmother frequently asks me about the status of fashionable skirt length. “What’s going on with hems this spring,” she wants to know. “Are they up, are they down, what’s happening?

There’s no longer a clear cut answer to this question. Whether women are wearing dresses below the knee or above the thigh has less to do with the state of the economy these days (per a 1926 theory), or what “Paris says” (her generation’s guiding hand), and more to do with a designer’s individual inspiration, genre, and most importantly: the whim of the wearer. Some girls don’t even wear skirts.

But my grandma always wants that answer; it makes her feel grounded to a world she was once strongly tethered to, something that faded away as gracefully and naturally as the pigment in her hair. And so — though they surely carry no more weight than that of a mini versus maxi, and they vary across the multitude of runways but also within the singular square footage of Soho’s Zara — I tell her about the length of pants.

In 2013 it seemed to me that ankles were having a moment. An eye-roll is warranted anytime anything has a “moment” besides the literal tick of a clock (or maybe it’s the person who uses such jargon without irony), but I felt it. Pants just didn’t look right unless they were cropped above legs’ lower bulbous knobs.

The solution was easy: snip, pin, voila.

Once amendments were made our bare bones breathed easy, and when it got cold we kept the length but added socks. Solutions! They’re there if you look for ‘em! 

But then the 90s took over and ankles were…forgotten.

Unroll. Staple-on. Shop?

“There’s a new pant length, Grandma,” I recently told her. “Think young Brooke Shields, the female cast of Friends, cowboys, Calvin Klein, and Beverly Hills 90210. It covers boots and hides the foot’s arch in heels. It’s straight — sometimes bootcut though never tapered. And it’s not exactly popular in stores yet. But I feel it coming.”

Remember: there’s no point in me explaining that this look can and will co-exist among cropped trousers and hacked jeans. She wants a fad.

“But I thought the 70s were back,” she countered. “Doesn’t that mean flares are what’s next?”

“Grandma,” I diverted, “shall we talk about my love life instead?”

At Valentino: The Seriously Good, The Acutely Funny

I remember having a conversation with Business of Fashion’s Imran Ahmed several seasons ago outside the Hotel Meurice on Rue de Rivoli. He’d said that “Paris is the unmissable,” referring to the bi-annual week of collections that set in motion the wheels of the following season’s creativity. I agreed with him but didn’t know exactly why until I was seated at a show in New York last month and realized I was watching regurgitations from the previous season in Paris.

This happens every six months: you get through New York, you go to London, you’re almost dead in Milan and then Paris comes in (hopefully) like a lion and storms out like an even stronger one, sharing new ideas and concepts and textures, setting the stage for what will be a literal manifestation of the next six months of your life. And then the six months are up but you’re forced to endure another week-long recap only now it’s called New York Fashion Week.

The cycle repeats itself.

 

At the tail end of a particularly special round in Paris, the most salient trend to walk off the runways appears to be a sense of humor. At Valentino, it was subversive in its delivery: when show opened at the Tuilerie Gardens, the mood was austerity. The all-black set was ominous — ready to present gravitas.

The opening series of stripes and black and white geometric figures, set on what have become full-skirted mainstays of the brand while in the hugely protected and intelligent hands of Pierpalo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri suggested that we were very well about to listen to the story of the “Jailhouse Rock” that could have been. The music was sobering, the models severe and the clothes — the clothes were remarkable.

There were something for everyone: she who slouches towards rock and roll (with two tulle mini dresses featuring cascading sleeves but straight, shapeless shoulders); she who marvels in the cues of hyper-literal sex appeal (one black embroidered and sheer mid-length dress, straight and shown with just black underwear and a bra); she who dresses up for the theater of her life (where else, after all, is one expected to traipse with the swagger of Mrs. Jagger in a red, v-neck gown that leaves as little to the imagination as white pasties might); she who favors comfort (there were knits!) and, of course, she who wants to everyone to know, when she walks into a room, that she is wearing that Valentino dress.

It was beautiful, really, the whole damn thing.  It didn’t live in the same vacuum of continuation of previous collections, which have earned Valentino the kind of sincerely Italian reputation that Dolce & Gabbana has built, but following Chanel’s cafe installation and the veil of fatigue that looked like it was almost literally lifted from the thousands of faces in that gargantuan room, Valentino was also just a show. And not a particularly funny one.

Until it wasn’t.

When the final model, in her elaborately embroidered dress disappeared off the runway, the music went dim, then bounced back with Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller. The two walked the runway on opposite ends toward the photo pit. Zoolander turned left, Hansel dropped his mic a.k.a Valentino coat and just like that, fashion was fun again.

The two actors were announcing a second Zoolander movie, which will premiere next February. It was an important step on the quest to achieve funny-in-fashion. Here is Valentino, a show that has consistently functioned as one of the heaviest weight lifting champions of fashion month. And where we thought Tuesday morning’s brasserie could not be beat, in just a matter of hours, a new stroke of life, devoid of bells and whistles, was collectively inhaled by the lungs of fashion as if saying with a kind of indelible confidence that you can be good, you can achieve respect but you must — you must — be funny. It’s trending.

For more fashion month coverage, click here.

Images via Style.com

Human Disco Balls in Paris

If there’s one thing I ask myself every single day without fail, it’s how to be a better human disco ball.

The perks of being a human disco ball include, but are not limited to:

– Light infraction, aka science

– Excellent distraction techniques

– Unicorn baiting capabilities

– The power to cause momentary blindness in the same way that someone who is wearing a watch while hand-writing an essay ferociously by a sunny window can, times a billion

– On-the-Go Saturday Night Fever

If that’s not enough to sell you on a matter that should, ultimately, be priceless, then may I remind you that Raf Simons believed his Dior woman to be no one if she wasn’t glittering up a dang storm in Pre-Fall 2015. (I know it seems like he showed these mere weeks ago, but when you’re considering fashion, weeks can feel like years apart.)

This past week in Paris, amid the Fall ’15 brouhaha and what-I-wore-grams, a few brave women took on Raf’s sequins challenge and reminded the world that glitter is not just a shimmering condiment to ship to your enemies. Why, in the form of neck gear, it’s practically couture.

But in Dior’s iteration, it’s both expensive and impossible to find. So, you have a few options, sparkle beard. One includes smashing a disco ball, covering yourself in glue, and then carefully rolling around in the shards. You’ll note that this is a less convenient glue activity than Leandra and Charlotte’s boa buffet.

Or two, you can satiate your inner magpie by embracing the Next Best Things.

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And if someone tells you that all of this sequined crap was supposed to be left behind in your Vegas hotel room after New Year’s Eve?

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Allow #FuneralCore Lorde to set the record straight.

Or, get like Kanye and embrace your inner 14-year-old-who-only-agreed-to-go-to-the-mall-to-check-out-Hot-Topic and join me in a large, collective, no-one-understands-me, “UGH.”

Now shine on, you crazy diamonds.

A Day in the Life During Paris Fashion Week

It is 9:02 a.m. on Tuesday, March 10th and I have been up for exactly three hours and twelve minutes. Keeping my eyes open isn’t difficult so much as it is frustrating, which is a wonder given the breakfast room in which I currently sit. There are five packed tables to both my left and right full of men and women dressed entirely in Chanel, presumably to wear their team colors to the imminent show, which is set to begin at 10:30 a.m.

Last night, I had smoked salmon rolled into bilinis which is essentially a fancy way to say pancakes for dinner, followed by a full bread basket at Hôtel Costes for dessert. My partner-in-procreation left at 2 p.m. which was upsetting given how enlightening his perspective on fashion week has been (for example: “Leandra, I stood outside the Dior show after I dropped you off yesterday — are all the shows like that? There were hundreds of photographers taking pictures of all these people and I saw Chiara Ferragamo! She really works it!”) but it is hard to contest the spectacular weather we’ve seen in this damn city all week, so I’m feeling great about still being here.

The Saint Laurent show was last night in Le Marais. There was a stage that elevated itself and put seated show attendants at head-level with the runway. That was cool. Before that, I hung out with Rosie who is holding appointments at a hotel not far from mine, and I bought a navy blue patent leather A-line mini skirt from Courrèges which is really, really due for a comeback. The morning included Stella McCartney, who always shows at the Opera house and for the occasion, displayed knit turtleneck one piece scarf things. (I don’t know why that would be “for the occasion” but the sentence works.) I sat behind Paul McCartney, who was next to Kanye West, who was next to Cara Delevingne, and wondered what that meant for the YouTube of the future.

The clothes were good, too. Sacai showed some pretty bomb-ass jackets that almost make the notion that another winter will occur in like, six months, palatable. I guess that’s what was missing in New York, right? Excitement for coats. Or maybe not. Anyway, I also stopped by Alessandra Rich’s showroom, who will blow the fuck out of your mind for Fall, which I will tell you all about in an upcoming review that will sandwich Rich between disgustingly cool designers like Natasha Zinko and Vika Gazinskaya. I don’t know if you’re wondering about what’s happening internally, but I haven’t gone to the bathroom since I left New York, which you can do with what you want.

Kenzo showed moving pillars on Sunday and Céline was like, “I am going to kill white sneakers by keeping them very much alive on this runway.” It was so subversive. Oh! And on this note, apparently the French as a collective are really gung ho on the “white sneaker trend” dying. One of the buyers at L’Eclaireur confirmed that with an eye-roll when I suggested a pair of pants in the store would look great with some.

Never mind!

I met and saw a new designer called Vyshyvanka by Vita Kin, who makes these incredible, traditional Ukrainian dresses which I plan to never not wear again. Paris is providing all that exciting butterflies in stomach flutter shit about fashion that the other cities haven’t been able to.

After a Moroccan lunch at a market in Le Marais, which sells the best Medjool dates north of Galilee, I hightailed it to Chloé at the Grand Palais but not before first getting myself embroiled in the weirdest traffic jam. This big @$$ truck tried to hook a U-y on a one-way street that looked just about wide enough to support a single bike and then sandwiched itself between two large buildings. There was no way this truck was getting out of there without like, a crane or something, but the most unusual part of the whole fiasco is that no one honked or cursed or attempted to assault the driver who got himself caught in a concrete pickle. I got out of the cab and onto the subway just in time to be wooed by a light blue corduroy suit.

Then, I came back to my hotel, mandated a shower, did not take one, instead sprayed perfume and dry shampoo, then changed into a denim mini dress and went to see the Yazbukey presentation, which was basically a cabaret performance in Saint-Germain-des-Pres. That was followed by dinner #1 at a nearby restaurant called Boissonnerie which everyone reading this is obliged to try the next time they are here, and then dinner #2 at La Belle Epoque, which on Sunday was the unofficial post-show hangout of Fashion Week.

Abie and I went back to the hotel immediately afterward and said, “Okay! Tonight is the night! We are going places! But first, let me change into something that covers my legs!” Because his legs were already covered, that last note was for me only so he stayed downstairs and ordered a hot (lukewarm, actually) water with lemon in the lobby while I went upstairs and slipped into jeans and a white shirt. By the time I came down, ready to party (or possibly eat more salmon) he was asleep at his table. It was the shortest-lived outfit change I had ever endured. We went upstairs, I brushed my teeth (maybe) and got into bed with my computer.

By 8 a.m. the following morning, I was right back here at this exact table, eating slices of grapefruit and oranges and drinking a cappuccino, which I am only calling a cappucimonkey henceforth. Team colors weren’t out yet but you could tell they were coming. Currently, we’re at seven full breakfast tables of head-to-toe Chanel. Let’s see what happens.

Update: a cafe, the best cafe, is what happened.

Breakfast at Chanel

I’ve been to the Grand Palais six times this week for different shows. It has consistently reflected the disparate aesthetics of the designers using the venue, but it has never looked like such the authentic, hyper-literal cafe, aptly named “Brasserie Gabrielle” that it became this morning when Karl Lagerfeld showed his Fall 2015 collection for Chanel. The purpose of the show, I’d guess, was to prove a point about the irrelevancy of where you’re going. Dress for the theater that is your life! Even if your life is just a series of deliberately casual cafe visits.

Ah, if only.

The enormous room was broken up by a huge, round bar stationed in the middle of the Palais. On its counter top were various pastries and freshly squeezed orange juice, grapefruit juice, small ceramic coffee mugs and eggs. Eggs! A staff of six men dressed in livery stood behind the bar, helping show goers to coffee and champagne. Beyond that majestic scene were four groups of rows (the front row was actually a series of tables with little chairs, which made for cheeky fashion Instagram comments like “The Vogue Cafe” where the U.S. team was positioned and so forth) positioned in the direction of the bar. Behind those seats were four more groups of eight rows, looking down at a series of vacant dining tables that would, no doubt, begin to fill up the moment Karl’s women emerged. And when they emerged, they emerged.

Cara Delevingne, who has been largely absent from this fashion month, opened the show in a black and white tweed suit. Every model who followed wore the same pair of camel colored slingback mid-heels with black cap toes. They were the perfect backdrop for a characteristically huge collection that seemed to pull reference from the entire archive of Chanel. There were brown tweed suits and this peculiar fabric that almost looked like large squares of black bubble wrap. Many jackets, cinched at their waists, featured colored embellishment which foretold of the closing looks — these were defined by the bright and pastel stones sewn into pencil skirts and blouses.

The hemlines remained modest. The models wore a discernible cat eye on their lids and headbands around their bunned hair. But if you didn’t notice this — if you didn’t notice any of this — I wouldn’t blame you. When you’re at such a show, such a spectacle, such a deliberate and literal and extravagant event, it’s difficult to remember to consider what goes on beyond the grandiloquent room. But you should know that the clothes were good — they were really, really good.

Models walked up and down the divided runway in a million different directions, giving the photographers in the pit minor heart attacks every fifth step. The kind of stimulation overload that emerged as a result of the tweed, then chiffon, then crystal, then metal, then back to tweed, then bow ties! felt like fun with a capital F. It was exactly what fashion week has been missing — performance coupled with clothes compelling enough to tell a story, to preach a point, to actually make you want to go home and change into your least practical, most indulgent Sunday finest on a Tuesday just to walk back out and go for a stroll or, who knows, maybe happen into La Brasserie Gabrielle.

For more fashion month coverage, click here.

Generation Portmanteau

I recently found myself wedged between half of NYC’s tourist population while waiting in line for a Cronut.

At 8 a.m. on a Friday, the line was as dense as a Jaden Smith tweet and its standers equally as distressed: What if they’re sold out? I hear the Cronut is overrated. My friend says you haven’t lived until you’ve tried one. 

Surely I was of the last few mortals who hadn’t yet sunk her teeth into the flakey Dominique Ansel confection. I’d avoided it forever out of defiance, refusing to wait for the glorified version of a timeless dessert. As far as I’m concerned, the Cronut became a phenomenon due to hype and exclusivity over a pastry that — if you compartmentalize the cro(issant) and the (dough)nut — already exists. Twice.

I feel similarly about brunch, or the concept of brunch as an experience: the kind enjoyed by urban millennials, specifically on the weekends, usually in the presence of diluted cocktails, avocado toast, and, yes, Cronuts. But to me, brunch is simply a combination of the words “breakfast” and “lunch.” It’s a portmanteau: the software update-equivalent for vocabulary, the easiest way to make your average noun more cool.

On the roster of that which we’ve fixed despite their original parts not being broken: eggocados (egg baked inside an avocado), doughkas (a doughnut/babka hybrid) and duffins (doughnut + muffins). But it’s not just food that’s being merged.

My inbox is flooded with Groupon e-mails extolling the virtues of Piloxing (Pilates + boxing) or Jazzercize (jazz + exercise). And God forbid I walk a mile without seeing some sort of advertisement for literotica (literature + erotica) sensation 50 Shades of Grey. 

Recently, Rob Fishman wrote a compelling ode to men’s jeggings (jean + leggings) and if the success of Modern Family has taught us anything, it’s the comedic appeal of mockumentary-style (mock + documentary) filming.

Back in January, Amelia kissed the year 2014 goodbye while declaring it the year of the meddle; “Original states were no longer good enough. Everything was remixed.” We are, after all, a generation that craves the mashup music of Girl Talk and revels in the nostalgia of CatDog. We witnessed the death of Bennifer, the birth of Kimye, the commercialization of Chrismukkah, and we welcomed Frappuccinos with hungry, eager hearts.

But is it a lack of innovation that prompts these marriages? Or are they the supply-driven manifestations of our abridged attention spans? Do portmanteau fads have the same staying power that their original ideas had? (Woe is the day we see croissants go totally extinct!) Or perhaps it’s simply a matter of exhausting their two-as-one novelty. Maybe Cronuts are inevitably destined for the same fate as Go-Gurt — the all but forgotten snack that, apparently, launched a thousand ships.