Leandra Medine's Blog, page 745

Finding Your Lady on a Nail Bed

Have I spent ample time thinking about the day that I would finally want to look more feminine? Sure. Did I believe that day would come this quickly and furthermore ignite my wanting to wear nail polish again? Absolutely not.

Here’s what happened yesterday: Amelia has been hell bent on producing a story about printed socks. This might come in the wake of the recent though perhaps unsurprising revelation that men do menswear better than women do.

We’ve chalked it up to a number of variables that cannot be eradicated. For one thing, our hips don’t lie whereas mens’ do (because they’re slim regardless of waist size). For another, men are unimpressed by appearing over-styled. They also don’t brand-applaud or shame one another, and all those elements allow for the fundamental tools of good style to penetrate the surface layer that is the human body and shine, baby. Shine.

But where socks are concerned, it’s a moot point: when you think well-dressed women, you rarely consider the socks. We planned to make the case for them today using photos of me outfitted like me, which is to say like a man who looks like a cross between my dad and Michael Jackson. When we scrapped the story, I was left in a flannel shirt from Uniqlo plus high waist raw denim jeans, a double breasted blazer, wedge loafers and, of course, the socks.

Due to the nature of my short hair coupled with my ascot I felt more masculine than usual. And frankly, being confused for a boy is thrilling at first, but by the time you grow ready to assume your own gender it gets a little tired. I yearned for an unwitting sense of femininity and without the relief of red lipstick (point of contention, don’t want to talk about it), I had to get creative.

This is where the nail polish comes in.

I’ve recently taken an interest in a relatively new polish brand called Treat. This is partially because their clear polish is first-rate and they offer a generously wide range of nude colors for ladies like me, who don’t often festoon their nail beds in color, but also because it’s toxin free which is completely in line with my new, anti-Cancer, pro-running lifestyle.

Now, you may not know this about me but I have not worn nail polish in years. This is chiefly because I wear so many rings, and that combined with auspicious nail color seems too much like the accessory equivalent of Charlotte York. It is also incredibly UN-FRENCH TO WEAR NAIL POLISH and really now, why would I put the final nail in my own coffin of continental discovery?

But last summer, Daria Werbowy’s Fall/Winter Céline ads replete with red long nails perplexed me in the same way that Birkenstocks do. My stance said no but my heart said yes which is probably why yesterday, in my own puny effort to look more like a girl (earth to Leandra! Try a dress), I painted my nails red using Treat’s Summer Time. (I am projecting).

Now, when I look down at my keyboard and watch my fingers press keys, I feel like Janice of Friends fame and I’m okay with that. Maybe ultimately this is not about becoming more feminine but rather recognizing that I will never be French — and that that’s okay. Or, you know, maybe I just like red nail polish again. Whatever.

Part 1 of 1 in collaboration with Treat Collection.

Wearing a Studio Nicholson blazer, Uniqlo flannel shirt, Topshop muscle tee, Patrik Ervell jeans, J. Crew socks, Celine loafers and a Bochic ring.

Let’s Get Waisted

I had just turned 20 when the first Sex and the City movie came out. I forgot my driver’s license on the day I went to see it, and the ONE theater in the history of ever decided to card me due to an R-rating and my under-18 appearance.

Obviously I did what any self-respecting freshly-minted twenty-year-old would do and used my fake ID. Then, I vowed to absorb absolutely every fashion cue from Carrie Bradshaw & Co. in order to never again be mistaken for 17. My ultimate take away — other than that one should always wear a long strand of pearls to bed despite the very clear danger this presents — was that waist belts were to be worn with everything.

I belted my outfits all summer. Which is disgusting, considering the ring of sweat it inevitably left around the belly of all my tops and dresses. But I was dedicated. Sweaty, 20, and dedicated.

Then, much like I ruin every song I love or food I crave by repeating or eating it until I’m ready to barf on both accounts, I’d made myself sick of the dumb belts-or-else trend. Of the six or so I’d bought for my short-lived summer romance, none made it past age 21, and after that the concept of belting anything save for a pair of size-too-big shorts was gone from my realm of consciousness.

It wasn’t until last year that I started thinking about the constricting accessory again. I was browsing a sale at Phillip Lim when I came across a really beautiful belt, composed of two different colored straps of leather linked by a simple piece of hardware. One half was black, the other was chocolate brown, and it held me so captivated that I bit the financial bullet and bought it. Naturally, the belt sat untouched in my closet for the better half of 2013.

Then one day, perhaps out of wardrobe fatigue or a subconscious yearning to look slightly more feminine, I dug the thing out and belted my coat. Worlds really shattered right then, because belting your coat is R E V O L U T I O N A R Y. (I don’t know how I think of these things either, you guys. I just get a feeling and I go with it.)

But truthfully, the second I did it I couldn’t believe I hadn’t sooner. The belt made new shapes on everything I own. With a generous tug and a practiced knot, my blazers and jackets became something more. It was as if I’d just gone shopping: my wardrobe felt new again, I was excited to get dressed, and despite a winter of hoarding pie in my cheeks like a hampster, this whole belting thing managed to bring back my waist.

If you, like me, are wondering A) how I’ve managed to blather on this long about BELTS without smashing my own knee into concrete on purpose and B) exactly how many times I’ve just written the word “belt” (12 if you count its plural version and cousin Verb) then great, we’re on the same page.

But it seems that I’m also on the same page as some other women who were photographed on the street during men’s fashion week and spring couture, which could totally mean nothing at all…

Or, it is quite possible — and really, it’s just more fun to think this way — that maybe I am on to something.

On Leandra: Max Mara coat, Acne denim jacket (I do also like this Topshop one, though), Paige Denim jeans, Armani sunglasses (these ones from Asos are pretty close), Christian Louboutin boots

On Amelia: Ralph Lauren blazer, J. Crew seamed motorcycle pants, 3.1 Phillip Lim belt, black sweater.

Celebrities, They Grow Up So Fast

Last Fashion Week I found myself at the same party as Justin Bieber. A flock of photographers hovered around him, their flashing lights offering an opportune getaway for models trying to sneak by. Leandra and I stood on heeled tippy-toes to get a better look at him. But where her remark at the small gentleman covered in leather was a nonplussed “Huh,” mine was, “He’s gotten so big!” as if I were his aunt or something.

In the same way that I take on certain celebrities as my imaginary best friends (et hem, Mindy Kaling and I shopping for a Christmas tree together), it’s difficult for me to view grown up child stars without a sense of very personal nostalgia.

Do you remember The Sandlot? It’s probably one of the greatest movies of our time, replete with a cast of boys who I always assumed would grow up to become the men their characters played. They had to — these were scrappy kids who learned seminal lessons through life’s greatest metaphor: baseball. Just recently, though, Yeah Yeah was caught on film acting like a jackass, and friggen’ SMALLS was arrested for head butting a cop.

Though I’m aware that I have grown up since the movie first debuted, it didn’t occur to me until TMZ told me that they could evolve past the Sandlot vacuum. Watching their demise was like watching my children act like idiots, and I felt like I’d failed as a mother.

Which is crazy.

Then I heard about Justin Bieber and his arrest. It seems like people had been predicting this moment since he outgrew his floppy hair and “Baby” fat, foreshadowed by a series of odious events that included peeing into a mop bucket, allegedly drinking sizzurp, and egging a house. The cops didn’t find evidence to back said egging, and sure, if it were true, egging — and peeing in a bucket — are more accurate indications of idiocy than they are a much larger problem but it made me ask the parental question, “Justin. Who are these people you’re hanging out with?”

When people began posting his mug shot from the DUI arrest last week and its accompanying memes — even the one of his head on a jail house orange Prada shift — my immediate instinct was to tell Justin that even though he’d messed up, he was still my little angel. He was grounded for at least a year, but still, angel. 

Then last Sunday, there was Gaby Hoffmann’s emotional breakdown on Girls.

I essentially grew up with Gaby — I watched Now and Then almost every day from the year it came out until my VHS irreparably broke. When I saw her on Girls, it was like I’d reconnected with an old friend on Facebook. “We grew up together!,” I wanted to brag.

Then she broke a glass with her bare, bloody hand while standing half naked in front of HBO’s viewership. Only it wasn’t Gaby, or her Girl’s character Caroline — it was Samantha. My childhood friend. With her vagina out. On HBO.

But I was shocked, I realized, not because the scene reminded me that robust pubic hair is rare on cable television but because it meant she’d grown up. And that meant that I didn’t actually know her at all.

Maybe you’re thinking, “Duh,” but I still can’t seem to pinpoint exactly why I feel so connected to these people. We don’t watch celebrities grow up any more closely than our parents’ coworkers who remember us when we were this big do. So why is it that we’re always shocked when they get a little bit taller?

I’m still rooting for Lindsay.

I Can’t Say It, So My Shirt Will

I knew I was subsisting in the right cosmos the minute that “copy paste” became a metaphor for fornication (Metaphornication?).

Fran Lebowitz famously said, “If people don’t want to hear from you, what makes you think they want to hear from your sweater?”and I have cited it at least five times on Man Repeller. This is arguably because the prolific writer’s inflections are so astute, once, twice, three times repeated just isn’t enough. It is also, however, highly possible that every story I have written that has warranted the use of that quote until this point has been warm up for the Olympic equivalent of my reflecting on sweaters that say stuff and t-shirts that show stuff.

Back on the chicken-or-egg bandwagon, the automobile is stocked with just one question: which came first? Art is imitating life — or is it vice versa? — with a recent collaboration between UK-based apparel brand Être Cecile (you remember that nod to Woody Allen in the form of a black cotton box strapped across my chest that read: Written and Directed by Woody Allen — don’t you?) and meme-base artist Richie Culver. The anterior is responsible for the thick black block letter maxims that appear on the t-shirts and muscle tanks which, in his own words, feature “technology that is crude and urban; the sentiment behind it…ancient and pan-cultural.”

The t-shirts support a digitally apt nod to the world we occupy, borrowing its lingo to make a larger, independent comment on our respective states of existence. With “My mistake was staying logged on,” we can universally attest to having erroneously stayed on but when we did, we called it lingering. With “You make my hard drive full,” you’re not experiencing an issue that RAM can assuage so much as you are addressing an emotional condition that can be deemed triumphant.

They will obviously mean different things for their wearers, though. Where “online I just feel stronger,” is concerned, the blouse is like a personal affirmation of my dual existence. The one that is independent of being online and the one I have cultivated to shoulder the former, but that effectively cannot exist without Wifi. For another wearer, that strength could be measured in how far one anon can push another.

The more time I spend on these t-shirts, the further it occurs to me that contrary to Lebowitz’s initial point of view, it doesn’t matter if no one wants to hear from you or me because there is something to be said and sometimes just saying it doesn’t work. Where the intention might get lost is simply in recognizing that independent of the shirt’s articulated biases, they are so good, you’ll probably want one even if you’ve never deigned to delete.

Proof of concept? A pants-less me.

A Feast for the Eyes

A constellation of glittering light sat below bottom lashes at Chanel, textured like tiny nonpareils, so delicate that the word angelic was called to mind — impressive considering such detailing sat under a halo of spiked hair that was decidedly more punk than heavenly. But where heavenly was concerned, look no further than Valentino where the opening number lifted forward like fog, or upward like a cloud, painted in nothing more than the notes of a song. Heaven was also apparent at Giamba–

JK guys. LOL.

We could wax poetic on couture for the next forty five hours of your life. We could go full Shakespeare-HAM all up in this bitch until your eyes bleed and your brain hurts and you’re writhing around on the floor yelling “PLEASE MAKE IT STOP! NO MORE SIMILES OR METAPHORS, NO MORE PICTURE-PAINTING VIA WORDS.”

But we won’t do that to you. We like you guys, we like hanging out with you, and we really wouldn’t want to end our friendship all because Leandra and I couldn’t shut up about chiffon.

Besides, you’re observant. You can see for yourself that Valentino has the hand-sewn capability to break your heart five ways to Dallas, and that Maison Martin Margiela was just like, Fuck sleeves, man, EYEBALLS are the new sleeves.

I don’t have the proper words to describe the ethereality at Vionnet (other than “ethereality”) and the only way to explain how the floral appliquéd vines reaching up from green silk at Giambattista Valli made me feel is: qwerhgfaQW3E17SCAV@Q35#z!!!!!!!!!

Ya know?

Sometimes the best thing you can do is to look, so let’s just absorb the spectacularity of these collections with every open pore we can rally. And let’s do it with music, so that our ears are part of the experience as well. Fingers, you’ll do the clicking, and taste, since you also need in on the visceral game, let’s find you a Bloody Mary. Because it is Saturday after all.

And for heaven’s sake, this is Couture.

Images via Vogue, The Cut & Style.com

In Defense of The Runners

We were standing at Le Pain Quotidien in 2010, rolling our eyes at the moron asking for almond milk in his tea. “Tea drinkers are worse than cat lovers,” I whispered to Amelia and she snarled in acquiescence.

Then there we were again last week on a Tuesday morning. I was waiting for the gentleman behind the counter to ring up my order and while I watched him swipe my credit card, Amelia looked at me and ruefully exclaimed, “I don’t even know you anymore.” I’d ordered a large cup of hot water replete with lemon and I imagine she waited until the twenty-third hour to share her two cents because she thought I was performing a terrible joke.

I laughed her comment off  – why she said what she did is because until two weeks ago my blood type was Coffee Positive. I have been told on a number of occasions that watching my transformation from un-caffeinated to caffeinated is like watching the sun rise. Initially, it’s dark, you’re scared because you’re not sure what to expect and you’re right in feeling that way because if you act too courageously you might get hurt but then ba da bing, ba da boom: the sun comes up (I drink my coffee), the world begins to shine, birds are chirping and humanity’s natural order is restored.

See but I started running — walking, actually — in June after I’d read in one of the plethora of Anti-Cancer books I have assumed as bibles that walking four miles a day can minimize the chance of your cells erratically dividing into the pen that scribes your death sentence.

It began innocently. Early on Friday mornings, I would drive to Southampton to meet my parents at their home. We would put on sneakers and begin a four mile walk that would last approximately one hour which we would repeat on Saturdays and Sundays. Then, while my father went for a health-eradicating pain au chocolat post-walk, I would go to Juice Press to pick up a cold brew that came with a notice which read, ”Coffee should never be confused with a healthy drink. It contains theobromine which is essentially a poison the body must filter.” Frankly, it barely even phased me. I was now a champion walker, creating an internal environment that would allow little room to err, theobromine or not.

But when the summer ended, it occurred to me that in order to maintain my life’s only resolution, to not contract cancer, I would have to go to extreme measures. Like a treadmill.

So, one day in September just after New York Fashion Week, I went to the gym. I anticipated walking but the walk got boring so I started running which I soon learned was probably the ingredient that Elizabeth Wurtzel omitted when she wrote about her tribulations in Prozac Nation, and before I could become one of the lamentable Facebook status chanters — Nike shop tab open on browser, Dri-Fit t-shirts in cart — that Amelia staunchly stood against just two weeks ago, I was running four miles a day.

Recently, however, I started to experience palpitations that made my heart feel like it was an aberrant drummer. I was actually pretty sure that I was dying until two weeks ago when my body essentially crawled out of its skin to tell me that I am terrible at decoding its messages. Earth to Leandra! It said. We don’t need the third party — artificial energy — anymore. 

Which is why in spite of Amelia’s protest against the, yes, insufferable 5k runners of Facebook, I want to vet in favor of your running. Not so that you can become a chronic status updater or even really because I think your calves would look better if they were 20% more toned. I am just so thrilled that I have become a human coffee bean, which as far as I’m concerned, is really the only superpower worth achieving. Now, please excuse me while I sip on my lukewarm water plus lemon.

Image via Vogue, 2008

Two’s a Trend: Couture Sneakers

I don’t know why when I think about couture season in Paris I expect to be shocked. Couture is never really about the excessive grandiosity (though the price-upon-request tags should suggest otherwise) that I have naively tethered to it so much as it is about the art of the craft — a celebration of the specialists who, with their repertoire of unique skill sets, allow for such a season to subsist.

I do, however, know that one of two things is happening relative to couture. Either ready-to-wear collections, like those of both Vika Gazinskaya and Rosie Assoulin, are becoming more elaborate — highlighting the techniques of the anterior specialists who use not machines but their hands in a capacity that current consumer-driven clothing has not, or the bi-annual season that takes place in Paris is stripping away the layers (pun intended) to be considered in line with their more marketable, four-per-year-collection counterparts.

This isn’t to say that the garments are getting any cheaper but where wearability is concerned (and it always is), the current season appears to function as a sequel to the one that came last July, which purportedly came as a result of Raf Simons’ success at Dior the season before. Make sense?

A brief interlude for context: when Raf Simons took command at the House of Dior in 2012, he focused not on what would elicit the most exagerrated gasp but on what would please both the eye and pocket for his first couture collection. As a result, the house saw a 24% spike in made-to-order goods.

Last season, I conjectured that his success may have propelled change for his contemporaries thus resulting in a more functional season (jeans at Margiela, lace slips at Valentino, blazers at Armani) of couture clothing. But in a particularly curious change on the trajectory of gourmet fashion, both Christian Dior and Chanel showed sneakers with their collections this week.

Where Simons for Dior only implemented his comfortable footwear on three models, Karl Lagerfeld deigned not to subject his women to the wrath of heels at all. Interestingly, that decision did not deflect the allure of the clothes which were still dramatically in line with the Chanel ethos — perhaps in fact projecting only the future version of this woman. But why did the designers couple their looks with athletic footwear to begin with?

Karl Lagerfeld’s Spring 2014 show for Chanel and the selection of white dresses embellished by graphically inserted palettes of varying colors of paint made one blaring comment on the relationship between life and art — that the former imitates the latter. In the case of this week and couture, his collection reversed the point, using the fundamentals of couture season — the artistry of fashion — to suggest with just the right dose of irony that art imitates life.

When scrutinizing a selection of clothing that has been rightfully typecast for its spectacular but predictable use of hand-stitched beadwork, embroidery and embellishment (this conversation may hearken back to the one we had last week on whether gowns are “fashion”), maybe the deliberate choice for sneakers offer that inexplicably expected sense of shock value I look for in couture. Or, you know, maybe the models just demanded a respite from the bodices and pounds of paillettes.

Like You Mean It

I have a very distinct memory of the first time I told my brother I was sorry and meant it.

I was five. We had been fighting over whose turn it was to take command of the television when the conflict escalated. He called me names. I kicked him. He retaliated. On the brink of World War III, I pulled back as if to admit defeat. He stood victorious, but only until I marched over to a shelf that held our favorite movies, plucked his most beloved, special edition Power Rangers VHS from its depths, and gruesomely tore out the film.

Even in familial fighting, there are rules to warfare and I knew I’d broken a cardinal one.

I suppose the crime seems small now. And yet I can still summon that first guilty,       sink-y sense that I needed to apologize. Some people, I think, find it easy to say they’re sorry, but I was not — fine, am not — one of them. Maybe that weakness explains why I so admire people who manage it gracefully. It might also rationalize why I sometimes sympathize with those whose mistakes and misjudgments play out on a public stage. Apologizing privately is hard enough.

Publicized scandal is hardly unique to this age, but it does feel especially prevalent these days. Earlier this month, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie complicated his presidential aspirations after a series of damning emails exchanged between members of his staff leaked and evolved into the scandal since dubbed “Bridgegate.” On Friday, Madonna paired a photo posted to her Instagram account with a caption that included the N-word. On Monday, style icon Miroslava Duma found herself in hot water after her website published a photograph of Russian socialite Dasha Zhukova perched atop a chair in the likeness of a black woman, created by the Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard.

In keeping with the grand tradition of those publicly condemned, Christie, Madonna, and Duma have each responded to the uproars.

Christie fired the aides involved and told constituents that he was “heartbroken” at their disloyalty.

Duma apologized on behalf of the Buro 24/7 team publicly on Instagram, and also issued a statement, via a spokesperson:

The chair pictured in the Buro 24/7 website interview is an artwork created by Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard, one of a series that reinterprets art historical works from artist Allen Jones as a commentary on gender and racial politics. Its use in this photo shoot is regrettable as it took the artwork totally out of its intended context, particularly given that Buro 24/7′s release of the article coincided with the important celebration of the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr…

Meanwhile, Madonna replaced the offending caption with one that now reads: “#get off my d—k haters!”

So, should we? Celebrities are not politicians. Should they be expected to apologize for personal indiscretions? What kinds of moral lapses require public apologies? Can PR-mediated statements ever come across as genuine? If so, which have? And does issuing one via social media make it feel more genuine or less so?

It took several attempts to properly phrase my long-ago apology to my brother. (“I’m sorry that you started it,” apparently doesn’t qualify as an expression of remorse.) Eventually, I looked him square in the face and just said, “I’m really sorry.” But would a celebrity who framed her apology so simply be as readily forgiven?

Ali MacGraw once said, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Unfortunately for the rich and famous, I think fame means you do. The question is…do you?

Let’s talk about it.

Junk Food Hair

Not to sound like your freak of a younger brother who eats sticks of butter wrapped in waffles without gaining so much as an eyelash, but my hair can basically eat whatever the fuck it wants and still have abs.

My hair.

It has abs.

In the proverbial sense, though. If one can even proverbially have abs.

Before I continue and you start throwing text books at me, let me pad my rather unusual bragging by underscoring the fact that my skin still breaks out at age 25, my nails are like little baby bird bones, I have the eyesight of a blacked-out mole and my body issues run the same gamut as everyone else’s. (I, for one, do not have abs.) When I Snapchat photos of myself to friends with the caption, “I woke up like this,” it’s not to gloat about my morning appearance courtesy of a Beyoncé lyric but rather, a plea for help on behalf of just how fucking scary I look.

That hair, though.

It’s always been good to me, always been there for me. It’s predictable, dependable, with rarely an errant cowlick or rogue crease. And I’m not exactly sure why since I don’t really take care of it.

At least not in the way I’m “supposed to.” For starters, I wash my hair every single day. Any woman equipped with the Internet, a fashion magazine and an aggressive colorist knows that washing your hair daily strips your strands of necessary oils and turns everything in its wake to straw. Remember the no-poo trend? It was terrible. People didn’t shower for weeks on end in order to restore their mane to its originally intended oil-coated state that would — supposedly – eliminate the need for conventional sudsing. Well I don’t like necessary oils and neither does my hair. We are pro-poo, my hair and I.

I also use really basic shampoo and conditioner. Head & Shoulders is my jam. Herbal Essences, so are you. If I’m being fancy, I splurge on Dove, and if I just spent a lot of money on clothes than I’m probably more likely to use whatever strange Axe products are in the bathroom courtesy of my male roommate.

I’ve tried the salon recommended products — organic, color-friendly, the cream rinse, the gloss. My colorist counters that if I’m willing to splurge on lotions (yes), candles (always), clothes (hi) and shoes, then I should at the very least put some basic consideration into that which is comprised of chemicals and goes on my head.

And in the past I have. I’ve bought forty dollar bottles of goopy “miracles,” only to find that my hair reacted with an unreasonable level of horror, clinging to my scalp like a cat facing his imminent bath, or sticking up wildly as if I offered to set it on fire.

“You would think,” a friend offered, “that for someone who works in a city so consumed by labels and green juice, you’d care what you used and put in your hair. This is junk food,” she said holding up a bottle of conditioner that I’d gotten on sale. It smelled like coconut so I was sold. “Think of the damage it’s doing. Think of your hair in 20 years!”

But there’s no use in arguing with a teenage boy, is there? Not one who has developed abs simply by playing Mario Kart while eating an endless supply of Gushers and Doritos.

The metabolism will eventually kick in. The pizza bagel phase will fade — I’m already partially gray. But for now, in the words of Kanye, “That that don’t kill me, can only make me stronger.” So please, for the love of good hair and a slow motion breeze, someone hand me my brush!

Actually, I don’t have one of those either. Finger combing it is.

Winter, We Are Through

Drop the jar. Flag up. We surrender. I said “uncle” and the towel has been thrown. It is so cold that in spite of my most profound effort to put forward lesson in layerings that could assuage the pungency of, ugh, snow boots, we have no choice but to dress weather appropriately.

Of course, if you’re Charlotte, that still means looking cute-as-shit in a way that doesn’t actually call to mind fecal matter but if you’re Amelia, you’re essentially forfeiting your LTB (license to bone) in the name of looking like an L.L. Bean catalogue male model — but not just male, a little boy with long hair. She is basically torn between two worlds that tug her in the directions of Maine and South London.

I, on the other hand, look like I am a lost child waiting for my parents at the grocery store of life. My point of victory is simply in that if I look hard enough and squint my eyes and tilt my head and fake an accent, I also kind of feel like a personal style blogger based out of the U.K. — leather pants, Nike running sneakers, navy blue turtleneck sweater et al.

Every season I try to get by without purchasing a pair of snow boots and every season the climate punishes me for my Type-B antics. I won’t give up though. In fact, fuck this. All of this. As members of the Internet and further, the society it has cultivated (the greatest thing about this club is that all you need is computer access and operating Internet connection to join!), one of our most impressive coups is that we live in a world devoid of impediments like weather and so forth. So why not seize the fantasy and officially dub this afternoon Wet Hot American Summer?

Also, please tell me you’ve seen that movie. By the power vested in me and Bill Gates (if he’ll sign on, that is) I hereby declare day two of the Polar Vortex’s revival just another summer day. Forget your earmuffs and scarf and those ugly ass boots with traction. Sink into your chair, shelve your chin on your desk and marvel in the near-tangible thought of sunglasses and bathing suits and sweat that runs down your arms and inner thighs (what?) for the duration of this cold front.

Frankly, I might buy a bikini to remind summer that I haven’t given up on it. Maybe newfound proprietorship will catalyze the climate changing process or maybe it won’t. Whatever. Just fuck it. That’s all. Strip down, play music, think about bright colors and pineapple scarves and Edie Parker clutches and cocktail umbrellas and just fuck it.

Now, all in favor of staying in until May, say I.