Leandra Medine's Blog, page 656

Dear Future Self

Dear Charlotte,

I’m writing this to you from year 23 and a half. You still live with your parents. Your mom does your washing and your dad makes you sandwiches to take to work every day. You take it all for granted.

You wish you didn’t.

You eat what you want but don’t gain weight. You assume your metabolism will remain on your side for life. Is it still faithful to you? You don’t like avocados and you leave the whites of your eggs. You paint your nails every Sunday. You wish your skin was clearer.

Shaving your legs in the winter is a rarity and your boyfriend doesn’t mind. The dull, grainy, whitewashed days of winter give you headaches. Today is one of those days. Don’t forget that a cup of strong tea will always make you feel better. Weak tea, weak mind.

You’ve started only buying shoes and bags cut from leather. Your taste in fashion is becoming sensible and grown-up. You’ve learned the power of investment and enjoy the sensation that comes from buying a Tom Ford lipstick or a pair of pure cashmere socks. You listen to The Smiths on long journeys — a die-hard habit that began on weekends visiting home from university. Listen to “What Difference Does It Make.” Does it make you feel nostalgic?

Do you still cry at movies — all of them? Do you still remember how to do a 12-beat riff tap step? The thought of having children scares you. You worry you’ll never want them. You realize you’re a little selfish. But you also realize that you’re susceptible to change. Nothing stays the same. Friends have come and gone; some were cigarette breaks, some were forest fires.

You’re good at remembering people’s birthdays and you’re getting better at solving cryptic crosswords.

You believe that a sin that humbles you is better than a good deed that makes you arrogant. You hope this mentality is one you still occupy, future self. On the sea shore is where you find solace. You collect sea-glass in an old coffee jar.

When was the last time you visited Salcombe?

Remember that summer you learned to water ski?

You can’t make up your mind about whether you’re happy with a calm life or if you crave more adventure. There are parts of the world that you’d love to see and parts you have loved seeing. You’re lucky to have had those opportunities. Never forget how lucky you were. Are. Remember that life was short, but now it’s even shorter. Make sure you have the haircut you want and a job that doesn’t feel like work.

Look after yourself, it pays off. I look forward to meeting you.

Literally forever yours,

Charlotte

Image via Wallpaper Magazine January 2013

Weather Got You Down?

It is possible that as you read this post’s headline you thought to yourself, “Seriously? Those turtlenecked doorknobs at Man Repeller are talking about the weather again?” To which we would reply, “Uh, yeah, Barbara. We are. You know why? Because the weather is being fucking weather again.”

If you’re in New York City right now and not in a bad mood then you’re probably looking out your window at the sunshine while thinking, This isn’t so bad. You can handle the blinding cold so long as the sky isn’t grey.

I mean gray.

Or, you’ve resolved yourself to a life of polar bear soup like, Whatever. Bring it. I’ve lost all hope. 

If you’re somewhere warm (Look at me, I’m so tan. My bra is made out of coconuts and my biggest complaint is getting sunscreen in my ear) then I hope you brought gum to share with the rest of the class.

But regardless of your locale or the color you stand behind when it comes to body-con dresses, I do believe we can agree upon one thing: That by February 27th, all of December’s romance is gone, January’s hopeful promise of a new start has vanished, and what we’re left with is March — a month that does nothing more than confirm my theory that spring doesn’t actually exist.

Spring is a Hallmark-fabricated “season”; it’s propaganda created for card-makers to buy time until mid-July, because everyone knows that the only people with worse writer’s block than this writer are those who create copy for summer greetings. Especially after Snapchat co-opted “wish you were here.”

Which means that you need something to make yourself feel better. And we have ten ideas.

1. Learn to contour.

…And I suppose you want us to show you? Have you met us? Leandra doesn’t wear makeup and I do mine in like, 3 seconds without a mirror and no one can tell the difference anyway. We are learning though.

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2. Get a manicure and a pedicure. Pro-tip from she who chips all her tips: call ahead to see if your place sells Vinylux. If they don’t, buy your own. This shit lasts longer than any polish I’ve ever tried but it doesn’t ruin your nails like gel.

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2a. Get a backrub.

3. Get a blow out not job. (And if Lady Mary has taught me anything, it’s that the best blowouts come to you.)

4. Buy gold boots. Old Sugartooth Leandra over here says she is “proof of concept and trust me, this works.” But would you trust a bear who hadn’t eaten breakfast yet? IDK. You tell me.

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5. Get a piercing!

6. Wear your jeans as a scarf. Or wear your jeans as jeans you downtown queens.

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7. Send yourself flowers, or BE your own flower.

8. DO NOT cut your own bangs.

8b. Unless you have a good blow dryer.

9. Turn your phone off, queue up House of Cards (or play Ackee & Saltfish on loop), and forget about the fact that Victory Gardens charges $12 a pint for their goat milk ice cream and buy three! Their flavors are so neat. (Note: Leandra wrote this one, so keep in mind that regular cow ice cream works too.)

10. Come up with secret handshakes between either you and your best friends or you and Bed Bath & Beyond employees. Same thing.

Now turn off your computer, slam your laptop shut, take your pants off, run them through the office shredder and then throw them in the air like the confetti they were meant to be. It’s the end of Friday, baby, and whether or not the weather sucks — we’ve made it!

Frozen Photographer Club

I’m going to call it before the official AccuWeather results are in: this was the coldest fashion week on record. My unsuspecting brain told my body not to worry, that running around outside would mean I’d end up sweating instead of shaking. So off I went, day after day, with my double layer of fingerless gloves and a Carhartt beanie as my only extra protection against frostbite.

Oh how wrong I was. Stalking the fashion cognoscenti is not the same sort of exercise as skiing. I can’t even remember how many times I lost feeling and movement in my fingers, each time worse than the last. I still don’t know if I have, in fact, gained full motion back.

Did you know wind can be blinding? Even the kind without any snow in it? The west side of Manhattan in particular is known for its especially brutal gusts, forcing the photographers to huddle in a cloud of cigarette smoke behind buildings. Then someone (me! since I don’t know any of the other photogs!) would stick her head around the corner to check for the end of the show, only to be pushed back into hiding by the wind before catching any sort of helpful glimpse. At least I never fell into a snowbank or onto my camera like a few unfortunate souls.

Adrenaline kicks in the moment you see cool clothes or a beautiful detail, which cancels out the pain of freezing limbs until the show starts. But then the show starts. And you’re standing outside, left wondering where the antelope have gone.

Considering this is only my second season photographing street style, in the wild, on assignment, I take each moment as a learning opportunity. It felt like a bonding experience with humanity: once you see people slipping or waddling on ice, you’re reminded of their mortality — in a good way. My biggest takeaway from my still recovering phalanges, however? Invest in mittens.

Oh, and Charlotte was wrong. Bill Cunningham may indeed be Superman, but he definitely wears gloves.

Warm your own fingers by clicking through Krista’s favorite shots from her NYFW excursion above, and to keep the fire burning check out all of our fashion week content here. 

Your New Show to Watch: Ackee & Saltfish

When the New York Times titles your interview, “Cecile Emeke Isn’t Afraid of Hollywood,” you know you’ve made it to the brink of influence.

You know that your novelty, creativity and candor have awarded you the attention of both your peers and the critics. It also means you’ve remained undeterred by the ruthless machine that can be Hollywood.

It’s a unique position for anyone to be in. But especially for a woman — and a Jamaican-British one, no less, whose work is being described as “Robert Altman-esque” crossed with “a sort of British Broad City.” At that point within the position, you drop your bagel and give the man next to you a high five.

The writer and director’s short film, Ackee & Saltfish, has inspired a web series of the same name. The first episode, “The Lauryn Hill Tickets,” premiered last Sunday and follows friends Olivia and Rachel as they, well, don’t really do much. The concept — an exploration of female friendship shot in a single-cam aesthetic with talk-y scenes where the dialogue is to take you beyond the surrounding four walls — is not exactly new. And yet Emeke’s witticisms feel so fresh in their own right that to shadow the series with comparisons would be a slight.

The difference between the repartee-filled moments of Ackee & Saltfish and Broad City is a matter of conversation. On her website, Emeke writes that the original film was inspired by, “the everyday experiences and conversations had during a time when the whole of London was quickly being gentrified.” The preeminent crisis of the film? Olivia and Rachel can’t find good Caribbean takeout.

Emeke’s dialogue gives life to quotidian activity much the same way that your funniest friend makes a long wait line at the DMV seem like a flight of entertainment. In the first episode, a trip to find ackee and saltfish inspires an ode to Solange, a sold out Lauryn Hill concert triggers an existential crisis —

And a group of American girls, seated in an office building across the pond turn to one another and with knowing smiles exclaim, “That is so US.”

Is Fashion Necessary?

In a recent article for the New York Times from the field at London Fashion Week, Vanessa Friedman wrote that fashion is, “by definition unnecessary.”

It was written to substantiate a point of victory regarding the ebullient energy that emerged from London, especially when held up against the dull restraint — the paring down, scaling back and growing up — that was largely on display in New York. And she was right, frankly. But I took issue with this notion that fashion could be unnecessary, especially on the heels of a memorable Oscars ceremony, where I was reminded, through third-party participation in an event that galvanizes the act of getting dressed up to sit in a large auditorium and re-watch scenes from movies you’ve already seen, that entertainment is the crutch of our survival. Because when we’re confronted with the realities of existence, the ones we invariably fight — and fail — to defy, it is only really the notion of escape — an ambitious synonym for hobby — that keeps us moving forward.

Of course, what defines escape will vary by person: one man’s art collection might be another woman’s new handbag, or prematurely released soundtrack, or new set of fishing supplies, but it is this sense of suspension from our own lives — the ability to step into shoes that don’t belong to us, to assume foreign identities and ultimately neglect the minutiae of our circumstances — that we find solace. Life. There is an axiom that is universally acknowledged as true, which says that “stuff” can’t buy happiness. I have argued that it can, however, rent it but I’m coming to realize that it’s not about the rental — it’s about the suspension.

And fashion, no doubt, is the currency with which I trade. Diana Vreeland was right: “fashion must be an intoxicating release from the banality of the world.” And it is. Because without it, that banality reminds us of what the prolific comedian Louis C.K. touches upon frequently in his routines — that we’re all alone and we’re all going to die. The “banality” that Vreeland addresses doesn’t allow for us to divert our attention from the underbelly of our collective unconscious, where there remains in perpetuity a looming fear of the unknown.

But now I’m digressing. What’s more important than arguing that fashion can’t be unnecessary is considering whether that is even possible.

Because when it is 17 degrees below zero, clothes are all we have. Literally. Maybe the bells and whistles that are sewn into the fashion as opposed to the de facto garments are disregarded or looked down upon but when they’re not, the champions of those bells and whistles feel imprisoned by the lack of choice inferred by an imminent snow storm or dangerous windchill. Getting dressed is, after all, our great escape and when that is compromised, we are left inert. Lifeless. Stuck.

If fashion might actually convince you that there is no end point, there is no darkness and that life runs in an ongoing loop littered by rose-colored fancies, it cannot be deemed unnecessary. Quite the contrary; it is decisively necessary. For survival. For endurance. For the gumption with which you persevere.

And on Louis C.K.’s theory, I offer this: we can’t fight the facts of existence and it’s true that we’re going to die — but worth canvassing is whether she who dies with the best shoes really dies alone.

Image via Giambattista Valli Couture Fall 2014 

MR Writers Prompt: Your App in 500 Words

If I had not launched Man Repeller five years ago, there is a 49% chance I would be fact-checking at a daily newspaper on the brink of becoming a bi-weekly, a 21% chance I would be sitting behind a table dressed up in a cardboard sign that read “Free Advice! app.

Considering how low that last likelihood is and the mere fact that I did launch Man Repeller (and therefore spend 85% of my time picking at my eyebrows and thinking of shit to think about and then write), it is something extraordinary that I spend the other 15% of my time thinking about what that app would do.

Which, mind you, I have narrowed down to three services.

1. Chalk-to-Gold: this app would turn the chalk you have left from your blackboard days into bars of gold. Geared toward retired teachers frustrated with their 401ks, the app would require a substantial sign up fee but would also pay itself back in dividends (depending on how much chalk you’ve hoarded). If you didn’t have chalk, or care much for gold, you might be interested in Chalk-to-Gold’s phase two, which would include the medically remarkable ability to turn said retired teacher into a modern day Cumberbatch!

2. Brusher: Similar to Uber, this second app would be a kind of luxury service that championed entrepreneurship by virtue of its modus operandi. But instead of pledging drivers to clients, we would pledge people — hair stylists and moms alike — equipped with hair brushes, who would show up at your door step with a set of three, ask you to choose one (thick, medium, comb) and for the subsequent hour, brush your hair. You could share whatever lament you wished with your brusher, but he or she would not be required to participate unless you’d signed up for the therapy add-on. If it felt a bit like being wrongfully charged something obscene for adding avocado to your salad, that’s because it’s similar.

3. Rabbit, Rabbit: This one would simply deliver a live bunny to your doorstep on the first of every new month as an old-fashioned reminder of the 12 new chances we get each year. You would not be required to return the bunny, which, according to how long you are signed up for the app, could prove itself a really interesting case study in cohabitation.

So, what would yours look like? Paint a picture in 500 words and submit that shit to write@manrepeller.com before next Thursday (March 5th) at 12 p.m. EST. Comb through past entries here.

MR Writer’s Prompt: Your App in 500 Words

If I had not launched Man Repeller five years ago, there is a 49% chance I would be fact-checking at a daily newspaper on the brink of becoming a bi-weekly, a 21% chance I would be sitting behind a table dressed up in a cardboard sign that read “Free Advice! app.

Considering how low that last likelihood is and the mere fact that I did launch Man Repeller (and therefore spend 85% of my time picking at my eyebrows and thinking of shit to think about and then write), it is something extraordinary that I spend the other 15% of my time thinking about what that app would do.

Which, mind you, I have narrowed down to three services.

1. Chalk-to-Gold: this app would turn the chalk you have left from your blackboard days into bars of gold. Geared toward retired teachers frustrated with their 401ks, the app would require a substantial sign up fee but would also pay itself back in dividends (depending on how much chalk you’ve hoarded). If you didn’t have chalk, or care much for gold, you might be interested in Chalk-to-Gold’s phase two, which would include the medically remarkable ability to turn said retired teacher into a modern day Cumberbatch!

2. Brusher: Similar to Uber, this second app would be a kind of luxury service that championed entrepreneurship by virtue of its modus operandi. But instead of pledging drivers to clients, we would pledge people — hair stylists and moms alike — equipped with hair brushes, who would show up at your door step with a set of three, ask you to choose one (thick, medium, comb) and for the subsequent hour, brush your hair. You could share whatever lament you wished with your brusher, but he or she would not be required to participate unless you’d signed up for the therapy add-on. If it felt a bit like being wrongfully charged something obscene for adding avocado to your salad, that’s because it’s similar.

3. Rabbit, Rabbit: This one would simply deliver a live bunny to your doorstep on the first of every new month as an old-fashioned reminder of the 12 new chances we get each year. You would not be required to return the bunny, which, according to how long you are signed up for the app, could prove itself a really interesting case study in cohabitation.

So, what would yours look like? Paint a picture in 500 words and submit that shit to write@manrepeller.com before next Thursday (March 5th) at 12 p.m. EST. Comb through past entries here.

What is Shipping?

According to the irrefutable Urban Dictionary, the term “shipping” is used to describe:

Fan fictions that take previously created characters and put them as a pair. It usually refers to romantic relationships, but it can refer platonic ones as well. (Just think of “shipping” as short for “relationSHIP.”)

Further research led me to shipping’s Wikipedia page, which promptly pointed out that the phenomenon has been proliferating since the 1960s. Before Twilight fan circles were photoshopping Jake and Bella, they were (friend)shipping Star Trek’s Kirk and Spock. Times were just simpler back then, weren’t they?

Call me late to the gravy train but shipping seemed like an excellent way to waste time and exercise-feigned-control over situations entirely out of your reach. It’s also a reason to put amateur Photoshopping skills to the test.

The Internet, however, which never fails me when it comes to providing weird and unnecessary things to buy, turned out to be a disappointing stockpile of ships. I had imagined a world in which couples like Larry David and Downton Abbey’s Ms. Hughes existed. This led me to begin shipping on my own.

I firmly believe that Broad City’s Ilana Glazer and old Rust Cohle of True Detective need each other. Cohle could use a little free spirit and Ilana proved in last week’s episode that she has excellent hound skills. Heck, let’s turn this dynamic duo into a threesome and throw in Superbad’s McLovin because wouldn’t that be the car ride from heaven?

Daria and Southpark‘s Cartman could hate on the whole of society while making sweet, sweet television together. And Taylor Swift and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver! I mean, why hasn’t this happened yet? Where is that man hiding? A secluded cabin in Wisconsin or something?

When life gives you lemons, you make relationships. Now give Charlotte something to do this weekend and tell us, who do you want to see shipped? 

Let’s Talk About What We Want to Talk About

According to my mother, there are two foolproof ways to have a boring conversation. One: begin a chat by asking a friend whether he or she would like to hear about the dream you had last night. Two: recap an episode of television.

It’s not that my mother doesn’t appreciate a good story. She loves them — novels, New Yorker articles, Joni Mitchell songs. But the standard television episode is a lazy medium. It’s formulaic. And while it works on screen, even I — an indefatigable conversationalist — have to admit that the best of great television can get lost in translation. I shed real tears when Seth Cohen introduced Ryan Atwood to the Bennifer of holidays on an early episode of the O.C. And yet, “The Best Chrismukkah Ever” would never be so spiritually uplifting in subsequent analysis with my best friend as it was when I watched it at 8 p.m. on a Thursday night.

For all the viral chatter that television generates on Twitter and in elaborate “think pieces” and on this website, where Leandra and I read so much into each episode of Girls that I have started to parse hairstyles for indications of character development, it turns out that my mother is not alone in her assertion that even the most beloved TV series make for lukewarm banter.

Over at New York Magazine’s Vulture, Daniel Engber contested that “Your TV Small-Talk Is Ruining Dinner Parties.” Recounting a particularly banal instance of the social crime, Engber surmises: “this conversation isn’t good at all. It’s weird and sad and dull.”

While Engber concedes that television itself is as “amazing!” and “SO GOOD” as we celebrate it to be, our discussions about it are more repetitive than Room Raiders. “We don’t need this in our lives,” Engber concludes. “If our TV talk were on the DVR, we’d delete it.”

I understand what he means. And yet I’m not so sure I buy it. For me and for my friends, conversations are genuine and unique social experiences. They are not pale imitations of some “real thing.” It sounds dramatic, but I mean it: Our group exultations in The Mindy Project and Orange is the New Black are how my friends and I stay in touch and connected. We tune in, and we talk about it, and, for a few minutes, our lives seem close together. Isn’t that what great conversation is? A tool of communication that lets us make some sense of each other? Would it be better for us to gossip about our roommates? Is it delusional to gossip about Olivia Pope? Real talk: Can she be my friend?

What counts as good conversation in the era of sound bites and animal GIFs and @kingbentleythebulldog? Should we talk more about books? Or boys? Or beauty treatments? Should we expound on politics or super foods or the weather? Should we just pour ourselves another drink and exchange synopses of our favorite episodes of Sex and the City? No? Okay! Anyway! Tell me: What do we even want to talk about anymore? And what kind of conversation holds your interest at mealtime?

To Be Cool in Contemporary

Fashion Week in New York really prevails where none other can because it is the only major city that provides a playing field that allows for different weight classes to bat at the same cage. I think I just used two sports metaphors to make one point but here’s the thing: New York shines a flashlight on contemporary wear where other cities are more prone to hit the same genre of collection over the head with that flashlight, treating it as though it were an incidental little sister instead of, frankly, the precise ammo that keeps the wheels of shopping — and therefore fashion — in motion.

But the best part, really, of contemporary fashion is that you’re given the opportunity to be so many different girls in an era when style really should be non-committal. That’s a point that is reflected in the recent work of Tory Burch, at least, who seemingly has no problem co-opting the cues of a sort of 1960’s university student, like she did for last fall, and then with the same ardor, traveling across time and space to a Moroccan tea lounge with prints that also call to mind the kind of Turkish rugs you can find at a bazaar in Istanbul to hang out with a group of women who are neither “leaning” nor standing vertically, but just existing in their own baths of power.

Worth mentioning is what the buffer between the two aforementioned collections looked like, which was a case study in marrying a kind of tribal flare to the sort of girl who might summer in Nantucket on weekends (and use summer as a veritable verb) but spend her weeks in a one bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side.

And why shouldn’t she? Isn’t that exactly what being a “modern” woman means today? Isn’t that what the spirit of a contemporary collection should evince? We are, after all, the “back-slash” generation and to assume that we can be placed in neat boxes where we are expected to flourish (or languish) is about as futile a want as a talking plant that can only say “Sack.”

If that’s not enough, I offer this: in a ribbed polo and fringe-trim skirt — two garments I plan to further explore as temperatures become more amenable — plus a color-blocked bucket bag, what experience is more rewarding than being typecast and subsequently presented with the opportunity to prove the stereotype wrong? Because, let’s be real here, people. I’m not nearly as cool as the clothes suggest I am.

In partnership with Tory Burch. Bucket bag pictured will be available later this spring.

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