Leandra Medine's Blog, page 671

Your At-Home Tailor: The Bobby Pin

I have yet to come upon a bobby that I don’t like.

There was first Bobby Fischer, who got me into chess, and then there was Bobby Moynihan, who got me into drunk uncles on Weekend Update. There is also Bobbi Brown, who taught me about the merits of facial brushes and there is my brother-in-law, Bobby, who is a decent human being.

Most pertinently, though, there are bobby pins, which have proven themselves an incredibly useful styling hack for the kind of woman who can’t sew, is too impatient (and hypocritically cheap) to wait on a tailor and believes enough in herself to set a change in motion — enter the below.

What you see in addition to a white poplin blouse layered over a black cotton turtleneck, paired with pants that both canonize and destroy the female fupa is an issue of length — one I wouldn’t go so far as to permanently adjust but that requires the aid of something in order to execute a crop. Enter the bobby pin. The mere placement of one on either side of the dedicated area I’d have liked to tuck into my pants but couldn’t because they were so damn tight, achieves the edit.

Amelia did this cool thing last week where she stole her male roommate’s pants (in order to maintain ownership, I suggested she tell him she got her period in them which I think worked famously but she will either confirm or disprove) and came to work looking like a shrunken car salesman who rides horses. It only got worse when she attempted to roll them up, rolled too high and therefore looked more like an outgrown car salesman who has just landed a role as an extra in Downton Abbey. Until, that is, I bobby pinned her. At this point, she looked like the satisfied Goldilocks equivalent of said car salesman.

This trick works effectively anywhere.

Say you’re layering a feather peplum under a button down a la Esther: crop the button down with bobby pins.

Sleeves too long? Flare leg too wide? Hair in your face? Bobby pin. It’s like the New York equivalent of Portlandia’s bird, only Fred Armisen has nothing at all to do with it.

The Road is Life

I wanted to drive and see, seek and find.

I wanted to be on my own, find my way, find myself.

Which, I realize now, was quite the naïve idea.

You’re eighteen and every emotion is felt tenfold,

Everything hurts that much more, joy sings that much louder.

And you forget that,

Just as easily as you can dye your hair the same shade of red as the American Flag,

You can’t just get into a car and leave.

When compromise seems better than nothing, you agree to a week with your dad.

Your romance and nostalgia for this mysterious “road” unseen, is

already shattered when he reminds you to buckle your seatbelt.

It’s not the West, it’s not your own, and it’s not a beat up car, but

it’ll do. It’ll be for your dad and you, together.

Your fingers are manicured, after all.

How gritty was it really going to be?

So, you find a sequence of:

McDonalds, and gas stations, and lonely motels,

Highways lined with the dirty dust of cinderblock,

Where you know trees used to be.

Restaurant logos lighting up each exit sign,

Beckoning you to endless displays of processed food and a false sense of fullness,

Fulfillment. Gentrification.

Nashville. You finally find a bar that lets you in,

Only to be kicked out at 10, “Too young, too young.”

You find the guitar player with the most beautiful eyes and the quickest of fingers, and the same black X’s on his hands.

You’re the only two people in the entire place, “too young, too young” to even be there,

Yet he’s attacking the stage and charming the crowd like you’ve never seen,

Committed to his passion, he’s living for the real freedom, and you—

You’re just a phony, “too young, too young,”

You’re not too young. But instead of finding yourself, all you find is the space,

The empty space between where you are, and

Where you want to be.

Johnny Cash’s dedication to his all black attire — merely a metaphor for mindfulness,

Less selfishness, more awareness.

Hours in the car with your dad.

The South is like,

The heat of fried chicken, so hot, so good, but

It burns your mouth. So does all the yearning.

Let go of the romance, let go of the need for independence,

For any overly-dramatic, preconceived notions of the road.

Accept that the song at the Grand Ole Opry,

The one that goes, “When I’m holding her, it’s like peace on earth,”

Is not about the boy who doesn’t love you back, no matter how much you wish it was.

It’s about your dad. It’s about the past eighteen years. It’s about you leaving.

The road doesn’t have to be about the literary prowess of Faulkner.

It can be about returning to your hotel room, night after night,

Laughing to Seth Meyers and calling your mom,

Needing to eat Italian food in New Orleans because you’re not so sure that

Your stomach can handle one more day of Southern food,

Or Southern anything, really.

Elvis sings, “Are you lonesome tonight?”

And sometimes, I like to think I am,

But, I’m not. And I’m thankful for that.

Elvis’ mother’s tomb reads, “She was love in motion.”

That’s all I could ever really hope for — for my life to be love in motion.

I can hear them, the stories being formed already.

The stories that I wanted to be my own, aren’t anymore,

And I’m thankful for that.

Some will always stay just ours.

Hot chicken, blues, beads, Elvis, Cash, records, too much humidity.

It’s not about finding yourself, it’s about wresting your body,

Your mind, turning your experiences into a passion,

A loving and earned dedication, and making yourself.

Because instead of screaming and dancing with the American flag,

Draped longingly around your body, it’s about

Reaching up — however steadily or unsteadily,

Grasping and molding it into your own hands,

Into whoever and whatever, you, youthfully

Need it to be.

Aren’t we all just gentrified versions of ourselves?

The thing I’ve always loved about country music is the storytelling.

It’s a history of word, spoken, sung, passed down.

How can I spend a lifetime, unearthing the black holes,

Brushing dust off secrets of gold, of people past,

That’s how we cure the ignorance and the sadness of the world,

One story at a time, told, passed down,

From the original moon, to the rabbi, to the sullen boy in the prairie, to the lonely girl on 2nd Ave,

to my dad,

to the music, to the road,

to you, and to me. One.

Written and illustrated by Linne Halpern

All Hail the Technicolor Armpit

I thought that I was being risqué when I bleached the tips of my brunette hair. It was the summer of 2011 and photos of Rachel Bilson’s ombre lurked in every Internet and magazine pocket. I’d never colored my hair before, and it felt bold to pop the proverbial cherry with a trend that stipulates you shell out $200 for a look that comes free over time.

I’ve since severed my ombre for a lob and have largely refrained from hair dye. But there is one emerging trend that I’m compelled to try: colored armpit hair.

It makes bleaching your tips look as bawdy as a kitty riding the coattails of a Care Bear while listening to The Wiggles, and it’s popping — nay — sprouting, up everywhere. The trend’s origin has been traced back to Seattle-based stylist Roxie Hunt, who dyed a client’s pits blue as an experiment. She hadn’t anticipated the “viral” response the trend would amass, prompting thousands of women to grow and color their own pit-hair.

The so called #freethepit movement has also garnered its share of criticism. Although, my guess is that the naysayers have never attempted to grow their own rainbow. And while growing one’s armpit hair is hardly a novel idea, the decision to dye it colors like “purple haze” and “mellow yellow” seems to be making people quite blue. (Sorry, I had to.)

But I’m less concerned with wondering why the dye-trend proliferated as quickly as it did, and find myself more curious as to whether or not it’s actually so novel. Women have championed bodily hair growth in response to the stereotypes of patriarchy for years. And yet the #freethepit movement has seemed to inspirit the subversive trend in a way that perhaps only a social media hashtag could. Refinery 29 recently ran a story titled, “This Supermodel Is Making Armpit Hair Mainstream.” The supermodel in question is Daria Werbowy, whose unshaven pits materialized on Instagram to the “like” of 867 users, thus reaffirming the “trend’s” place in near-popular culture.

My guess is that colored pits won’t stay for long. They’re a set of bells and whistles that punctuate a time-honored movement. It’s only a matter of time before the next “subversive trend,” as The Guardian put it, eclipses it — pushing renegade armpits to the corners of Tumblr, where any evidence of the fad will collect diminutive views next to the “elevated bleached tips” of yesterday.

Feature image: “Frida Kahlo”, 1938, Julien Levy

MR Round Table: Can “Viral” Content Remain Authentic?

Leandra Medine: Over New Years week I noticed that the The Wall Street Journal’s Off Duty and the New York Times’ Sunday Styles were covered by tech stories. There was almost no style content in either of the sections and it got me wondering about what a style section is. Maybe I’m thinking too laterally about what it’s supposed to contain, maybe this has nothing at all to do with where content is being deposited — style, tech, business, whatever. Or, if the paradigm is actually shifting and as a result of that, begs the question of how much control the public has over what’s placed in a publication, then who controls media output?

Without sounding like a punchline for 2015, is what’s happening to the breadth of new content within different sections the actual manifestation of the democratization of content? Are journalists writing stories based on the public opinion as opposed to what they believe should be covered?

Cosmopolitan.com Editor Amy Odell: I think there’s a lot of that. If you look at what we’re doing at Cosmopolitan.com, so much of it is informed by our audience. We know a lot about our audience because we have live stats, we have daily and monthly traffic reports, Facebook likes and commenters, we have Twitter analytics, Pinterest, Vine; there is just so much data. We have so much feedback from our audience, and I think the big challenge for editors now is to distill that into media. I think that’s what has made us really successful at Cosmo.com, while holding the brand’s value really close to our hearts.

I love Cosmo. It’s an incredible brand, it’s a feminist brand, so how do you take that and how do you apply it to content that young women are interested in? That doesn’t mean that you can’t do things like politics, which we’ve done. I think you just have to be smarter, because why would you want to do a story that you feel really proud of and nobody reads?

I want to feel proud of our stories because we know that they’re great and they’re of great quality, but we also know how to get them out to people. We know how to package them. One example I like to give for content marketing is that if you were going to a table, and there were two packages in the same size box, and one was wrapped in brown paper and the other was wrapped in silver paper with a really pretty bow on it — the same thing is inside both boxes — which one are you going to choose?

LM: How do you strike that balance between producing a story that has the potential to go viral, but still abides by the principles that you’re comfortable standing behind?

AO: I feel like at Cosmo, for example, we believe that every woman has the right to a very happy, fulfilled and empowered life, and that’s going to guide a lot of our content. I also like to describe the site as, “A millennial woman’s smartest, funniest, most insightful friend.” And that’s a starting place for all of our content.

If we see that our readers are more into Miley Cyrus than Charlize Theron, we’re going to cover Miley Cyrus more than Charlize Theron. I don’t think that that’s a particularly big deal. We don’t cover things that feel “off brand” for us. There are things that you might think are a harder sell — we just spend time and we experiment and try things different ways. We’ll think about, What does our audience want on this particular topic? And then we frame stories that way. So if we’re talking about politics for instance, we’re not going to do the same story that the Times is going to do, because that’s not going to resonate with our readers.

They’re less interested in what the conversation is like on Capitol Hill about a specific bill than they are in the woman from Missouri whose life is deeply affected by that bill. They want to hear about that piece of legislation through the woman in Missouri. So we’ll interview her and tell her story.

Amelia Diamond: Different publications treat scenarios differently. A blog like Man Repeller is different from The Cut, and both are different from Cosmo.com. I think what’s interesting about a publication like the Times’ Style section is that it used to be a pretty specific, niche area inside a wider publication. People who didn’t read the Times would go to check up on the Style section. So I think there’s a sense of nostalgia maybe, where people are like, “What happened to my Times?”

LM: What’s kind of frustrating is that with certain fashion publications shifting gears with their content, we’re fed the notion that you can’t write an intellectual fashion story. T Magazine, which is ironically tethered to the Times, is one of the few publications — and Porter actually — that is producing really interesting and smart fashion content.

AO: What about the Business of Fashion?

LM: Right, but that’s the business of fashion. I read BoF for the same reason I read WWD, and not when I’m looking for a creative arc.

AO: Could it be that the fashion industry isn’t as interesting as what’s happening in the technology industry right now?

LM: Well, possibly, but I have a hard time believing that. Fashion will always be interesting, but it depends on who’s delivering the story. We always say that Man Repeller is supposed to feel like a phone call that occurs five times a day where you pick up the phone, call your best friend, have no idea what she’s going to tell you but you know that whatever it is, it’s going to be interesting because you’re hearing it from your buddy who tells the craziest stories. Even if they are about health care reform.

But I don’t even think that this is about style, tech, or fashion so much as it is about this looming sense of content fatigue, right? So tech stories are doing really well; and stories about apps and dating and Tinder and Instagram…they’re commanding such a wide audience, but they’re also getting kind of exhausting because there’s so many of them.

AO: I think that content fatigue is more of an editor’s problem than a consumer’s problem. I always try and remind my team that the way we consume content is completely different from the way most of our readers consume content. You’re probably on Twitter all the time. You’ve probably seen one story five places today and in three places yesterday. But they haven’t.

LM: Do you think virality counts if you’re not running a campaign?

AO: Well of course. You always want to be growing. We don’t just look at the number of people on our site, we look at the amount of time they spend on our site. We look at how many of them are coming back, and we’ve had very good rates not only in terms of monthly uniques, but in people coming back. Troy Young, who runs digital for Hearst and who’s my boss, when I first starting talking to him about this, he wanted to turn Cosmopolitan.com into an “addictive site.” That was one of the first things he asked me about, and that’s a word that I think about all the time. 

LM: That seems so simple, and you can say to anyone, “Oh yeah, addiction! That’s all it takes.” But then to actually produce content, to create that drug is very difficult.

AD: So maybe for the Times, that digital content is what’s addictive for their readers right now.

AO: I read the Times every day. I read it on my phone and that’s where I go to get my overview of the day. So you could say that I’m addicted to the Times since I have to look at it everyday.

AD: But you know what’s so stupid? The Internet will probably never be able to get enough of puppies doing cute things. That type of thing is both addictive and totally overdone. People follow cats everything, and Daily Puppy on Instagram.

AO: Well if it makes you feel any better, our audience is not super into animals.

AD: Really? Your traffic doesn’t spike if you throw a cat in?

AO: Well, we’re all millennial women and I think, are you going to click on that?

AD: I’m the wrong person to ask.

LM: She’s really the wrong person to ask. When she misses a deadline it’s always because she is looking at animals online.

AD: Yesterday there was a crazy hippo that was so scared of all of these birds on it.

AO: Well I’ll be honest with you: I like that stuff too. But what is Cosmo known for? It’s known for its coverage of relationships and sex and beauty, and those stories always perform better. I’m trying to remember a viral animal story that we’ve had but I can’t even think of one.

LM: How do your more tech-heavy digital dating stories do? How much of your content looks like that?

AO: I don’t feel like our most trafficked stories are necessarily about online dating or Tinder, to be honest with you. I feel like the stories that do the best are just sort of commentary on 20-something life. Whether it be about partying or dating or kissing, or just relationships generally. Those stories do super well. I don’t think our readers are necessarily obsessed with the ecosystem on OK Cupid.

LM: I can’t wrap my head around that because it’s become so difficult for me to think about dating without immediately thinking Tinder or Hinge, or a like-minded app.

AO: Right. I mean it’s important for our audience for sure. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet with a lot of our readers, and a lot of them just want to know basic things, like how to meet guys. A lot of them want to meet guys in person, they don’t necessarily want to scroll through Tinder.

AD: I’m curious about when and if it’s going to go away. I mean again, it goes back to editor versus consumer fatigue, but I’m like, what could you possibly still be discovering on there? Nobody needs to write about the parody that Tinder is anymore. Everybody is fucking with everybody else on Tinder now. The next big story is going to be, “I tried this crazy new dating app where I went to a bar and met someone!” 

AO: You’ll never believe how they met! They were set up!

LM: But do you agree that the trajectory of historically “style”-focused sections and maybe otherwise dedicated and targeted sections are changing as a result of the broader conversation? And is that good? Or bad?

AO: I mean, of course the Internet has changed everything. Publications have to embrace that. They might see in their metrics that people are more interested in reading about dating than they are fashion. So many things go into a story and with fashion it can be difficult to cover because the industry is so small, it’s so New York, and if you look at Jenny in Ohio who’s going to grad school at night, does she care about the new designer at such and such Italian label in Milan that you and I might be interested in after having worked in the industry? I’m going to guess not, which is not to say anything bad, I just think that high fashion is a very small community.

Charlotte Fassler: But I do think there’s something to be said for a paper’s style section that acts as this portal for people who may not necessarily be exposed to such a niche world. I feel like they used to do human interest stories, or talk about a really specific designer that maybe someone like my mom had never heard of and she’d send me the article and say, “Wow, this is blowing me away. This is someone I’ve never heard of before and is so interesting to me.” Whereas I feel like now, that is lost.

AO: Jenny in Ohio is looking at Pinterest and seeing street style images and getting inspiration from there. And that’s what she wants from high fashion. She wants to look good in her everyday life, but I think she’s less interested in where it’s coming from. And why is that? Is it because the fashion industry is historically difficult to access? That’s a harder question to answer.

LM: Do you feel like fashion can still be a dominant language through which we connect with women? Because I feel like we use fashion to do exactly that: connect with other women.

AO: I wouldn’t say it’s the dominant way to connect to women, I think women are interested in just about everything. But I think that because you have your foot so firmly planted in fashion, that makes sense for you. And I think that Cosmo has always had its feet in a lot of different things, so we wanted to reach our audience through a lot of different subjects.

AD: It’s interesting, because when people ask me what I do, I used to say “I work in fashion.” Now I say I work for a website or that I’m a writer, but still, when people ask what Man Repeller is I say, “A fashion website.” But it’s become so much more than that.

LM: You should start telling people it’s a nudist colony.

AD: My grandma just assumes we’re a bunch of lesbians.

CF: I always throw the word “humor” in there too, because I feel like that’s the way we connect with our readers.

AO: Humor is incredibly powerful. I think when you write about fashion you can only take it so seriously, and people love to laugh. When I started at Cosmo.com, I knew that I needed to get the funniest writers I could find. And not just “haha” funny, they actually make you laugh and you’re going to want to read them when you’re having a bad day.

I just finished writing my book, Tales from the Back Row, which is going to come out in August or September, and it’s just humorous essays about what it’s like to work in the fashion industry, kind of as a fish out of water. But the concept wouldn’t have worked if it was serious. I think humor is really important. In the book there are stories about relationships and careers and fashion is a really good way to look at broader themes about not fitting in and standing out in order to fit in.

LM: Well, the major hypocrisy about the fashion industry is that once you’ve been initiated, it’s like you’re being initiated into this world of outsiders. We’re outsiders, right? Art school graduates who for the first time are maybe not subject to be made fun of because you’re now “in” — but then you realize that you have to pay dues — that you’re back on the outside. You get to Paris and nobody wants to have dinner with you.

AO: It’s weird, there are so many layers. It’s like, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop? That’s how it is in the fashion industry. It’s kind of like celebrities too; how many people do you have to go through before you get your interview with this person.

AD: It’s funny because considering what you just said, all these all-star tech people, they were the nerds! They were the people who were made fun of in high school and college, and then they graduated and now they’re like, Haha, sucka! Have fun using your iPad without me. 

LM: It’s like waking up one morning post-puberty and realizing your voice has changed.

It’s a boy that has become a man. We should drop the ball there. [To Amy who hasn’t heard Leandra repeat this joke 100 times] We drop the ball on New Year’s Eve because we’re a city of boys becoming men.

Follow Cosmo on Instagram and Twitter, and follow Amy Odell on Twitter here. See more Round Tables here. 

Original image shot by Roxanne Lowit.

MR Writer’s Club: What’s In a Name?

Aren’t humans funny? We spend the earlier part of our life cursing the names our parents bestowed upon us. We shudder when someone brings up the rhyme (Bedelia) or the meme (“And I was like, ‘Emelioooooooo.'”); we resent having a name so common that it requires the addition of our last name’s first initial; we anticipate mispronunciations, marvel at a fifth-grade boy’s ability to find the gross or sexual innuendo in any monikered introduction, and waste a lot of time wishing we were called something else. I used to want to be a Kelly or a Shannon — those sounded like popular girl names to me.

Then something happens. We enter a state of emotional unrest, where mini existential crises become so common among our peers that the question “Who am I?” is met with sympathy and camaraderie, not concern. Our names suddenly become something we cling to. They’re the most tangible form our immediate identities. After all, “Who am I?” can be simply answered with your own name.

This is why we’re determined to protect these legacies-in-the-making. Our names are a badge of honor that, whether they rhyme with unfortunate body parts or not, we fight to defend. Why else would we care whether or not knew ?

Perhaps most interesting, though, is whether or not we agree that we “fit” our names. Ultimately they’re like a horoscope in that you’re stuck with what the stars put out for you. Are you indeed, “such a Samantha”? Or the “Carol” of your friends? Are people always saying you “don’t look like a Jackie”? Do you ever “not really feel like a Dan”?

In ~500 words, this week’s Man Repeller Writer’s Club Prompt wants to know what your name means to you. All stories should be submitted to write@manrepeller.com by Thursday, January 22 at 12 pm. Slim Shady need not apply.

Original Image shot by Paul Schmidt for Marie Claire Italia

When’s the Last Time You Surprised Yourself?

I was walking down Prince Street in Nolita last month when I came across a group of foreign teenagers ambling in the opposite direction. As I moved closer to my destination and they closer to me, one looked at me in passing and asked if I spoke French. Before I could answer (I’d have said bien sur, obviously) he said, “Suck my penis,” and continued walking, now laughing maniacally with the blessing of an echoed cackle from the herd that followed him. Frankly, I didn’t care that much — I’ve lived in New York my entire life and have, likely as a result, been the butt of a terrible joke or comment at least as many times as I have missed the subway.

Yet on this day, I turned around, grabbed his arm and very forcibly asked: “Do you have a sister? Do you like your mother? How would you feel if a piece of shit kid walked up to either of them and asked to have them suck his penis? Watch your mouth.”

Then I turned around and continued walking, never once looking back to appease his retortive shouts. I maintain that the actual incident hasn’t had much of an impact on me so much as my response to it does: was this my female instinct kicking in? Why now and not ever before? Does it mean I maintain more respect for myself now? Or was this simply just the first time I’d actually been placed in such a position? The ordeal felt foreign — it was, I believe, the first time I’ve ever actually surprised myself. A feat that seems relatively difficult considering how well I know both myself and in most cases, what I’m about to do.

Does that make sense? When’s the last time you surprised yourself?

Image shot by Theo Wenner for Rolling Stone

Change We Can Believe In?

Our old cereal bowls were blue and white and had occupied precious cabinet space in our tiny kitchen for more than a decade before my parents decided they had to go. They were chipped and battered and dingy, kind of. One boasted a long, fine crack right down the middle. Another had lost a great chunk to some dishwashing fiasco that we no longer discuss. Eyeing them over breakfast one early morning, my mother insisted they were past their prime. The most important meal of our days deserved worthier receptacles. I shrugged my shoulders and said a swift mental goodbye to the blue bowls, but my brother intervened.

“I don’t want new bowls,” he declared over and over again. As uniform ceramics never mattered very much to her, my mother relented. She disposed of the most damaged goods, saved two for his exclusive use, and bought a pretty set of floral china. My brother is now almost 27. He has lived in California for three years. But those two bowls are still in our cupboard, waiting to be recognized for their seniority. Each time he comes home to visit, he does just that. For as long as I’ve known him, Josh has maintained that “the original is always better.”

It turns out he isn’t the only one. The virtual universe erupted in protest earlier this week to resist the latest gross international indignity: Mondelez International revealed on Monday that it had changed the recipe and shrunk the portion sizes of Cadbury Creme Eggs in Britain. Fans of the beloved treat registered their objections all across the World Wide Web. They launched impassioned online petitions. They inaugurated support groups. The Guardian cried “Shellshock!” and journalist Ben Collins beseeched readers of the Daily Beast: “How Much More Indignity Can the Cadbury Creme Egg Take?”

I know we all count down to Apple announcements like Christmas and would exchange at least a portion of our dignity for Google Glass. I know fifteen minutes of fame sounds like an eternity in an age that has made 140 characters into cultural currency. But at least my own experience has demonstrated that many of us are in fact as terrified of change as some idiot brother of mine was of new cereal bowls. We are as nostalgic as our ancestors ever were for routine and consistency and familiarity. Even as we accept that change has wrought groundbreaking social movements and every constitutional amendment and at least a dozen new Cronut flavors, we refuse to overcome our inertia.

We want our Cadbury Creme Eggs to taste and look as they always have. And despite our revolutionary roots, the United States at least seems to appreciate as much. Hershey’s, which manufactures the confection stateside, announced that the “product sold in the U.S., that American consumers know and love, remains unchanged.” I am happy for us, guys. I really am.

But I wonder whether we have attached ourselves to more than supermarket chocolate. So, how do we feel about change? Do we embrace it better than our grandparents did? Do we pretend to? Should we all move back to the old country? What’s it like to be Amish, anyway? My father likes to say nothing is “what it used to be.” The produce at Fairway, the New York Times, Billy Crystal—they’ve all gone down hill. But is he right? Or is it as my grandmother, a mistress of reinvention, used to say: “Change is good”? In this relentless modern era, what is beyond improvement? And what are you ready to change?

Galliano Takes a Stab at Margiela, Only One Face Goes Masked

On Monday of this week, among the deluge of Fall menswear collections that are currently on preview at the bi-annual Pitti Uomo, John Galliano discreetly slipped into the arena with his Spring 2015 couture collection for Maison Martin Margiela. The response to it has been underwhelming if not eerily quiet. It is fascinating that such eminent news within fashion — a designer who has been celebrated as a genius and then deserted as a racist taking over another Parisian house — could slip under the radar. It should ostensibly cause the same kind of brouhaha that Raf Simons at Dior or Ghesquière at Louis Vuitton, or Marc Jacobs at…Marc Jacobs did.

And so far, with a first attempt at the label’s Artisanal adjunct, it hasn’t.

So here’s the question: is this stillness deliberate — an acknowledgement of unrelenting change, the dedication to honoring the privacy of the house of Margiela — or is the collection, with its denim cut offs and leopard print underlays, red splattered arteries (a nod to a new chapter for Galliano of utter transparency?) and one feathered head piece just simply unremarkable?

The clothes no doubt appear to embody some of the escapist decadence with which Galliano has historically designed. Possible, however, is a sloppy tack-on of the incognito attitude of the Margiela of yore. I’m thinking specifically in regard to the facial jewels, the nasal jewelry and one closing mask that depicts the face of, presumably, a dead king who was once a fan of the-also-late Biggie.

There are moments where Margiela’s deflection of a conformed gaze is represented: a red triad of three floor length sack dresses, or one of black suits (one boasting effusive arm hair), and an embellished arm cast from look 13 which actually successfully strikes the hypocrisy of the anterior with its precise cocktail of quotidian impracticality. But like a jolted non sequitur, the extravagant moments of Galliano leave one wondering if the large hats and a tiger print, gold hair and what appear to be fragments of torn tulle are just manifestations of what the designer is fighting to sew into the DNA of a brand he’s only just met.

Images via Style.com

Beautiful Misuse: Tom Ford Cream Color for Eyes, Great on Cheekbones

Remember when we launched Beauty for Dummies in the summer of 2013? The series would follow me on a journey as I experimented with products, using them against their intended purposes and passively assuming the misuse on you. I used an eyeliner as a brow pencil (and still do), a red lipstick as blush (I broke out), baby powder as dry shampoo (I think I lost hair) and in one instance, I pulled a Nicole Kidman and eschewed concealer for white eyeshadow.

In a beauty PSA that was supposed to go live right now, I anticipated waxing poetic on the most wonderful, thick, liquid shimmer I have been using on my cheeks since last month. I planned to list its benefits: the natural-looking glint that hits me exactly where it’s supposed to — between my eyes and my cheeks when I move my face, the fact that the product makes me look vaguely suntanned and the absolutely applicable though not entirely un-hypocritical no-makeup makeup approach it champions.

But then, as I set out to research the product and found that no Google search word cocktail would come up with a viable result, I consulted the powers that be at TomFord.com and lo and behold: I am truly, truly a dummy. To think, all this time I’ve been faux-contouring my face with a cream color for EYES that has no place populating my cheeks.

Of course, though, that’s never stopped me before so here I am, here we are, specifying the multifarious uses for Tom Ford eyeshadow. I’d show you a picture but I’m too ashamed.

LinkedIn is for Lovers

An high school dalliance who lived in a different state recently texted me a letter that I wrote to him in a variety of colored pens. At the time, he had been in the process of phasing me out, and I was in denial/not having any part of it. In the middle of my on-paper live-blogging (“My mom just came in the room and asked what I wanted for dinner. My phone just rang but it was a prank call so I hung up”), I casually threw in the following line:

“I don’t know why we’re really not talking as often as we used to but when I come back to visit everything will go back to normal…or else I’ll kill you :)”

And then I signed off the letter as though I’d not just written a death threat with a smiley face. (I also drew a few horses in the margins and included a tan photo of me from a family cruise.) Signed, sealed, delivered, boom.

Letters were the “Remember me?” of a simpler time.

Then came the Facebook Poke, where the use of a digital index finger signified Remember Me? flirting — RMF, recently that subtle hinting has blown up again thanks to, of course, Instagram. (Tinder and all those apps don’t typically count. RMF hinges on the notion, “We used to have or be something.” To further reduce headaches, let’s leave in-person flirting and holiday texting out of this entirely.)

Recently it seems, ex-romantic partners are winking via double-taps on Instagram less. Instead, they’re taking their “Remember Me?” pokes to the social utility that, until now, remained unscathed by the plague of twenty-something complications: LinkedIn.

Hey baby, your resumé has never looked so good. 

According to an unofficial sampling of people — my friends, strangers at bars, dinner party seat mates and the conversations I eavesdropped on — the website is now being used for meaningful reunions with the intent of dating as opposed to work relations. Getting a request on LinkedIn from a guy or girl you used to more-than-just-know is the grown up, white collar Facebook poke.

It’s also about more than just sex. Everyone I spoke to, who claimed to have been the recipient or sender of these loaded “adds,” said that LinkedIn was an adult way to act on nostalgia and reconnect. A few people also noted that it’s a very “immediate” way to impress the person of your affection: Here’s what I’ve been up to. Here’s my intended career trajectory. Here is also what I look like in a tie.  

However, all interviewed parties cautioned that no one should read into a LinkedIn request until there’s follow-up that proves your requester is flirting — remember that all too often, LinkedIn requests are sent in bundles. Let us not forget that some (most?) people on LinkedIn really do just want to expand their professional networks.

But it seems unusual that one should try to turn a site for professional connecting into one for “love.” Isn’t the main rule of corporate life to not shit where you spreadsheet?

Incidentally, all is becoming fair in love, war and social media.