Leandra Medine's Blog, page 87

I Tried 7 Top-Rated Mascaras and Found the Very Best One

When I find something I like, I stick with it. At the beginning of each year of high school, for example, I would buy a new pen, and write with that pen only for the entire year. I went so far as to refuse to take notes during a science class because I’d left my beloved blue ballpoint at home. Instead, I chose (after a lengthy argument with my teacher) to copy a friend’s notes the following day. This still applies to many things in my life, including mascara, of which I’ve only routinely used three different kinds, even during my years as a beauty editor.

Through high school and university, I exclusively used Max Factor False Lash Effect. When I started working full-time, I leveled up to Benefit They’re Real. Eventually, when I left my beauty editor job, I traded it in for Maybelline Lash Sensational. I’ve happily used this Maybelline mascara for the last three-ish years, until a couple of weeks ago when I had an epiphany while applying it before work. I was burning through each tube of this mascara fast and while I loved the results, it always took about a week of use for the formula to transition from slippery to perfectly tacky. And then the moment of realization arrived: I don’t have to keep using this mascara, I can find a better one. And so, I began reading pages of reviews, until I narrowed down the recommendations of beauty writers and friends to seven mascaras that apparently all had what I was looking for.

I tested each of the seven mascaras for three very important things:

First impression: My dream mascara is thick and juicy from the very first swipe.

Length and volume: I desire both of these things in equal measure. Even if a mascara extended an entire half-inch to my lashes, if it didn’t also make them dramatically thick, it’s not for me. On the flip side, if a mascara leaves my lashes looking short and chunky, thanks to too much volume, it also gets a thumbs-down.

Staying power: Now, this is where I get fussy. My one great wish is for a mascara that doesn’t budge all day, no matter how sweaty or tired I get, but also washes off easily without excess scrubbing—these are my eyes, after all.

Are my expectations high? Of course. But that’s kind of the point of this experiment. In my lifetime I’ve tried (and written about) a lot of mascaras, so it takes something special to wow me into a new long-term makeup relationship. But—spoiler—after writing this story, I’ve handed out the final rose at my metaphorical mascara Bachelor-inspired commitment ceremony and have a new addition to my never-changing makeup bag.

Now, all of these mascaras are top performers, so I’ve ranked them in detail below in case your criteria differs slightly from mine. That said, my new No. 1 pick is at the bottom.

The One That Has a Cult Following of “No-Makeup Makeup” Lovers for a Reason

The mascara: Glossier Lash Slick

First impression: This is… not going to go far enough.

Length and volume: Both, but in an extremely chill way. Wearing this mascara is how I imagine my natural lashes might look if I didn’t wear an eye mask/sleep on my face/wear and remove layers of mascara every day.

Staying power: Washing off this mascara feels like… washing off nothing?

You should get this if: You don’t want to wear any makeup but also, you know, want to wear a little makeup.

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The One That Seriously Won’t Budge (No Matter What You Do)

The mascara: Benefit They’re Real mascara

First impression: “Huh, I’m starting to remember why I loved this mascara all those years ago.”

Length and volume: All length with a little volume.

Staying power: As anyone who’s ever used They’re Real knows, this mascara is incredibly hard to wash off.

You should get this if: You’re looking for a mascara that won’t run during a workout or torrential downpour, but isn’t a totally waterproof mascara (aka my personal idea of hell).

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The One That Makes You Look Like You Have Twice As Many Lashes

The mascara: Milk Kush Mascara

First impression: An exclaimed “Holy shit, so much mascara just came out of this tube!”

Length and volume: Being a fiber mascara, my lashes were very fluffy and feathery, rather than long and dramatic.

Staying power: Super easy to remove, but a little messier than others due to the fiber formula.

You should get this if: Fiber mascaras have made your heart sing in the past or you want a product that’s 100% vegan.

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The One for People Who Like a Whole Lot o’ Mascara

The mascara: Dior Diorshow Pump ‘n’ Volume HD mascara in Black Pump

First impression: Good from first swipe but, almost too good. I accidentally applied way too much on my first use.

Length and volume: A+ length but it was a little too chunky for me. It also really curled my lashes, which isn’t part of my personal rubric for success since I have naturally curly lashes.

Staying power: Stayed on all day and was easy to wash off.

You should get this if: You love novelty packaging, want more volume than length, and consider curls an added bonus.

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The One That Lived Up to Its Mr. Big Name

The mascara: Lancome Monsieur Big mascara in Big Is the New Black

First impression: A little scratchy to apply and not that impressive until you’re a few layers deep.

Length and volume: Once you invest the time and strokes this mascara has serious pay-off in both length and volume.

Staying power: By the late-afternoon, this mascara was a little crumbly. Granted, it was an especially balmy day, but compared to other mascaras I wore on easily sweaty days, this one didn’t stand up quite as well.

You should get this if: You’re willing to risk some under-eye flakes for the longest lashes of your life.

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The One That Was *Almost* My Favorite of the Bunch

The mascara: Urban Decay Perversion mascara

First impression: Though it took a while to build volume, this mascara went on super smoothly and really extended the length of my lashes.

Length and volume: It was definitely stronger in the length department, but it still added pretty substantial volume to my lashes. That said, once I added enough layers to get the volume I really wanted, my lashes started to stick together at the base.

Staying power: Stayed put and washed off easily without any scrubbing or tugging.

You should get this if: You actually don’t mind a few clumps or thick sticky lashes, if it’s for a worthy cause (read: long-ass lashes).

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And the One That Was Truly Just the Best

The mascara: Nars Climax mascara in Explicit Black

First impression: The blackest black and softest brush yet.

Length and volume: BOTH VERY MUCH CHECKED OFF. What I really love about this formula and wand is how well they kept my lashes separated, while still extending and thickening them to a really impressive degree.

Staying power: Like most mascaras I tested, I was also pleasantly surprised how easy this was to wash off after staying perfect all day.

You should get this if: You have the exact same mascara dreams as I do, and want all those dreams to come true. And if you want your lashes to quite literally (please see above!) double in length without any fallout or clumps.

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Do you have a mascara you’d like to squeal about? If so, I cordially invite you to join me in the comments.

Photographed  by 

The post I Tried 7 Top-Rated Mascaras and Found the Very Best One appeared first on Man Repeller.

The Thrill of Reinventing Hand-Me-Downs: Harling Ross’s Outfit Anatomy

Welcome to Outfit Anatomy, a series on Man Repeller of comprehensive style analyses that break down what we wear by answering questions like: How much did that cost? Where did you find that? Why did you buy it in the first place? Today, Harling describes the outfit she wore to work one day in August.

The top is from Isabel Marant. I bought it from The Outnet for $236.25 in May 2014, with babysitting money I earned the previous summer. I used to comb The Outnet’s “Just In” section daily, and I recall being very excited about this find. Probably because it was during the heyday of Isabel Marant’s sneaker-wedge. I remembered the top from the runway show (look #3!), and I don’t know what it retailed for full-price, but I remember feeling satisfied that I was getting it discounted. Almost like it was a mistake. I love that I still love it years later, but hate that I have to wear a strapless bra with it.

The skirt is a Chanel hand-me-down from my mom. It was in the Spring 2004 collection, and there is a matching top that goes with it. I borrowed both years ago and still have them. I don’t remember being particularly conscious of my mom’s style when I was growing up, apart from the times when she would let me borrow something from her closet. She was always keen to loan me a piece if it was obvious–to both of us–that my outfit would be drastically improved as a result (the year my feet grew one size bigger than hers was devastating). Only in hindsight am I acutely aware that her personal style influenced mine—bit by bit, over years and years, an imperceptible osmosis occurred. Not in the sense that we have the same personal style, but we both possess the same degree of curiosity. We are both interested in telling stories with what we wear.

The way I style this skirt is actually a good example of how our fashion sensibilities diverge. She would always wear it with its matching top, together with black and white stilettos, but I tend to mix it with different items to make it less formal. I’ve worn the skirt with this Isabel Marant top a bunch of times. It’s a reliable go-to outfit that exemplifies the advice I give to people who ask me how to mix patterns without looking peanuts: just pick out clothes from the same color family and go from there.

My mom and I are both interested in telling stories with what we wear.

The bag is another hand-me-down: old Bottega Veneta from my paternal grandmother who has since passed away. We had a complicated relationship when I was growing up because she could be very critical at times, frequently making remarks about my appearance—my hair, my outfits, my weight. I thought she had absolutely incredible taste, and therefore very high standards for style and beauty. I felt simultaneously in awe of this and perpetually unable to measure up. She loved wearing sequins and flowing silks, which together with her short, bright blonde hair made her seem like an old-timey movie star. I’m pretty sure my standard for true glamour is still a product of watching her get ready for a party.

Her compliments were the best compliments because she always meant them (she was very enthused the first time I got highlights), but her criticisms carried a lot of weight because of that unbridled honesty (she would frequently remark on how my sisters and I looked compared to one another—a toxic habit, to say the least). My desire to please her was also sometimes riddled with an undercurrent of rebellion, an impulse to show up to dinner in a shapeless housedress with unwashed hair. She mellowed out a lot as she entered her 90s and her mind became hazier. I actually ended up living with her for a few months after graduating from college to save money on rent when I moved back to New York. I have some sweet memories from that time, visiting her in her room and watching her favorite episode of Mad Men together over and over because she kept forgetting what happened.

I inherited the bag when she died. My mom put it aside for me when she was going through her things because she thought I would like it, and I really do. I’d forgotten how practical wristlets, a.k.a. essentially oversized wallets with a wrist-sized strap, are until I started wearing it. I love that it has a gigantic buckle, because there is something inherently tacky and therefore extremely fun about a giant buckle, right? I use it a lot, even though it’s kind of falling apart. The gold coating on the leather is peeling away, and the wrist loop has torn. The funny thing is that I don’t remember ever seeing my grandmother wear it, though it still smells faintly of the perfume she would spray on herself at the vanity near her closet. I do think about her when I wear it, though, and whether or not she would like the outfits I pair it with (either way, she would have let me know—ha).

The shoes are Tevas. I wore Tevas all summer, every summer when I was a kid and remember the ritual of going to buy a new pair every June because my feet had grown out of the previous pair. I’d obsessively mull over the pattern options and thought it was so cool that they were waterproof and I could—and was basically supposed to—splash in sprinklers and ponds and puddles. I still think it’s cool that they’re waterproof but now that’s because it’s truly tough to find shoes to wear when it’s 90 degrees and raining. The day this photo was taken was the first time I wore this pair, which is why they look so clean. They retail for $50, but I got them as a gift from the brand about a month ago—their PR reached out to me over email to ask if I wanted a pair. I always feel a little uncomfortable admitting I received something as a gift. I think because having access to free stuff can seem unfair, which makes me vulnerable to criticism. But that’s also why I see the value in trying to be transparent about it: I don’t want to paint an unrealistic portrait of why I am wearing new things on a consistent basis.

In sum, the oldest item is the Bottega Veneta wristlet, which I’ve kept for both the obvious sentimental reasons but also because I genuinely love it. The newest is the pair of Teva sandals. The total outfit cost me $236.25, a.k.a. the price of the top, which is the one thing I paid for myself since the other pieces were gifts or hand-me-downs. I recognize that being the recipient of these things is a real privilege, and one I value highly. I’m deeply appreciative of the pieces that women in my life have purchased and cared for before me, especially those owned by women who have shaped me in such powerful ways. Pieces that have withstood numerous tests of aging, purging, and moving and somehow still feel relevant. I like being able to compare how I style them to how their previous owners did or might have styled them; in a way, it’s tangible proof of their continued relevancy and the zing of rediscovery. Even though I definitely get a thrill from wearing new stuff, the satisfaction of wearing something imbued with memories holds a special kind of pleasure—the kind that lasts. As told to Leandra Medine

Feature graphic by Dasha Faires. 

The post The Thrill of Reinventing Hand-Me-Downs: Harling Ross’s Outfit Anatomy appeared first on Man Repeller.

The Viral Bra: A Theory on the Irresistibility of Katie Holmes’s Cashmere “Bradigan”

Last week, an image of Katie Holmes hailing a cab in New York City went viral. Not because of the graceful arc of her raised arm, or her very even-looking tan, though either could and probably would have been Daily Mail caption fodder had it not been for the thing that overshadowed both: an oatmeal-colored knit bra and matching sweater from Khaite, a New York-based brand getting a lot of attention lately.

The bra/sweater combo are made of baby-soft cashmere and the pieces retail for a cool $520 and $1,540, respectively. (Overcome with emotion upon processing this, I went so far as to conduct a cost-per-wear analysis on the spot—if you’re interested in a list of places you might conceivably wear a cashmere bra, I am happy to share the slightly delusional findings.)

Images of this now-iconic duo popped up in my feed all weekend long, including those of Harper’s Bazaar, The Cut, Gilt, Who What Wear, Kirna Zabête, Camille Charriere, Emily Ferber, and Marie Claire. The comments under each post were a breed of pure enthusiasm I can only compare to a room of 10,000 golden retriever puppy tails wagging:

Photo via LRNYC/MEGA.

“ICONIC”

“Must admit, I now want a fn cashmere bra”

“New life goal: become a cashmere bra peer pressurer”

“I never knew I needed a cashmere bra until now”

“I’m tryna look this good and cozy at the same time”

“This outfit gets better every time I see it”

I could have written the last comment—each time the outfit appeared underneath my scrolling thumbs (roughly a dozen times) I re-experienced the thrill I felt upon first witnessing its glory. But why? What the hell is it about this photo, and this person, and this cashmere coupling that shook the internet?

Some theories: The outfit is a rare and therefore sacred example of transitional weather dressing (what spans the late summer and early fall seasons more readily than a cashmere bra, pray tell?).

The way Holmes is posed in the photos is, to use social-media parlance, a mood. She’s hailing a cab, looking slightly bothered but mostly self-assured, and the sweater is dipping just so beneath her shoulder to reveal an even tan and the matching bra underneath. Do you think she knew she was going to break the internet that day? It’s a work of art. Really.

Adding to the already potent cocktail of fashion thirst traps is the recent news that Katie and her partner of six years, Jamie Foxx, have parted ways. As such, the outfit has been memorialized by outlets and commenters alike as the ultimate post-breakup ensemble. “Eat your heart out, Jamie Foxx!,” wrote one commenter under Khaite’s Instagram. “The Best Way to Get Over a Breakup is a $520 Cashmere Bra,” echoed The Cut.

Isn’t this what we all aspire to in the aftermath of a relationship? Looking so good, and confident, and especially iconic that we feel it, too? If I had to guess, which I don’t, but I will, therein lies the secret sauce. We all love the photo because we have, at some point, aspired to luxuriate in the exact type of moment Holmes was in when this photo was taken. It is the world’s most effortless-seeming revenge virality, point-blank.

The bra and sweater (or “bradigan,” as The Telegraph astutely dubbed the duo) are currently sold out, and either way, it would have been a massive miss to not scope out alternatives. For starters, I found this cashmere bra and cardigan from Naked Cashmere. But first—is this ensemble really something we all need? Or is it simply a rebound worthy of a slow clap? Let’s discuss.

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Feature photo via Khaite.

The post The Viral Bra: A Theory on the Irresistibility of Katie Holmes’s Cashmere “Bradigan” appeared first on Man Repeller.

Is It Just Me or Is Fashion Getting Really Streamlined?

I just opened a newsletter from Elin Kling’s brand, Totême—subject title: Shop by uniform. Inside, three templates for evening, everyday, and weekend were listed. Each featured seven looks. The only color options were actually non-colors, and therefore non-options: black, beige, white, and gray. I’d have bought it all—every last look, down to the subtlest piece.
Totême Fall/Winter 2019

Side-zipper leggings; high waist, straight leg, mid-wash jeans; a classic woven turtleneck sweater; a silk smock blouse in a color described as “nougat”—lately, this is all I want to wear and therefore what I want to buy. But I never used to shop this way. I used to listen to my gut—if it told me I had to have something, that the emotional feeling the thing elicited upon contact was worth the acquisition, I’d get it. There was no calculation beyond that—no rule. So, I’d get the thing, and not always, but often, would find that after a couple of wears, or the sum of a season, I’d never want to see it again.

My clothes were flimsy, fleeting tales of the identities I once marveled in trying on for size. Quizzical, whimsical, nonsensical—I took pride in assuming these adjectives to describe how I dressed. But now I want solid stuff. The white button-down. A “good” jacket. I want my pants how I want my pants—high-waisted and long enough to cover my ankles, slightly skinny, almost straight, but not officially one or the other. I want the wardrobe for which the most unassumingly formidable Barney’s customer ascends to the 4th floor, where The Row’s collection sits. The attire you wear day in and out, season after season. So boring it’s actually fun, because, if you’re me and love guardrails, you get to have fun narrating with your shoes and your bags and your jewelry or simply how you wear your shirt. But the shirt itself? Again, I want it to be so quiet, it barely registers.

Is it just me? I don’t think so. In a post-Phoebe Philo world, as Bottega Veneta’s jeans and unvarnished bodysuits continue to sell out, as newer brands like Khaite and Gabriela Hearst and Officine Generale or old favorites like Vince rise from the ashes of our post-trend culture and the mainstay brands we know begin to re-evaluate their designs by trading in hot pink cocoon coats for subdued camel, it appears we have reached such an elevated level of peak-peacock that we are actually post-peacock.

Old guard, rejoice! There will be no gleaming sequins in your Instagram feeds from here on out.

Uuuuuuuggggggghhhhhhh

Khaite Resort 2020

It seems obvious and simple and like I should just stop talking because if I like sequins, of course I should still wear them when I want to. We are past the point of rules. There are no do’s and don’t’s—or so I would like to think. But now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t actually believe the changeover from loud! and! out! there! to (dontlookatmenothingtoseehere) is much more than just another trend cog in the wheel of consumption.

It does, however, offer something of significant value because what we inadvertently ask when we declare the color palette of the season invisible is for people to fill in the blanks. To take simple dressing cues and improvise on a micro-level with smart styling tactics. And because this request is on the micro-level, it’s also more advanced and nuanced and some could argue more important. But it seems like these days we all read from a script that paradoxically says “I’m original,” but shows a singular template of head-to-toe fashion.

So what I mean when I say that we’re post-peacock is that I am post-peacock (postcock?). And that the actual garments that fall within this classification don’t really matter.

I know I’ve said this before, I predict I’ll say it again, and I’m sorry that I always make everything so, earnest, and personal, but it has never been as clear as it is when I get dressed that something is different. I’ve grown up. I don’t look into a pantry of possibilities and think to myself: who should I be today? What I meant when I used to ask that, really, was who should I be like. The boundlessness of that possibility used to thrill me, but I’m no longer seduced. Everything that’s in there—side-zipper leggings, high waist, straight leg, mid-wash jeans, turtleneck sweaters and silk smock blouses—has been selected with purpose, the driving force of it all laddering up to an elevated, potentially unflinching understanding of Who I Am.

Officine Generale Fall/Winter 2019

And to this point, I’m really glad that a bulk of my personality development occurred during a time before the complication of social-media-generated compare and like culture could have added a thicker layer of overwhelm and self-consciousness to the process of self-realization. There’s nothing wrong with being in the in-between phase. It’s actually a crucial part of the process. Asking the question Who should I be like? is an effective version of method-acting that asks you to try stuff on—clothes, principles, aversions, whatever!—in order to decide what fits. But more often than not, and especially these days, we forget that the method-acting is a means to an end.

What’s at the end? Closer proximity to understanding yourself! Knowing who you are! It’s a moving body of work that doesn’t reach completion until you do, but there is something remarkably relieving about having a closet that proves through the vicissitudes of inevitable human wobbliness that I’m closer than ever before to “getting” myself.

When I was graduating high school and deliberating yearbook quotes, I got caught on Oscar Wilde’s classic, “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.” Ultimately, I passed on it. It was the most obvious and plain and cliché choice for a yearbook quote. But as I think about it, and where we stand at this moment culturally, I wonder if another collection of words better sum up the intended message of the collective consciousness.

Maybe what fashion is asserting through its call-to-streamlined-action with its plain shirts and predictable pants is derivative of exactly the same simplicity and clarity and power.

Photos via Vogue Runway.

The post Is It Just Me or Is Fashion Getting Really Streamlined? appeared first on Man Repeller.

A Brief List of the Life Lessons We Somehow Totally Missed

Amina, 25, can’t ride a bike; Sophie, 23, can’t cook pasta; and Quinn, 22, feels extremely uncertain vis-à-vis the basics of inflation.

Emilia can’t drive at 24. Katie’s 22 and she can’t make coffee. Melissa, 25, doesn’t know how to swim without physically plugging her nose.

Putting a cover on a duvet escapes Kiana, who is 20, and Nika, the same age, doesn’t know how to change a light bulb. “It’s been dark since November,” she says. “Good thing I’m moving.”

Aine and Abby are 23: Aine can only type with her index fingers and thumbs, Abby has no idea how to file her taxes. Maggie is 28 and says, “I cannot properly clean my bathroom without looking up a YouTube video,” which I do find perplexing, but will not judge.

Deb, 51, can’t fold a fitted sheet, but who can, really?

These are not the members of a culturally regressive cult, they are just grown adults going about their lives, unbothered by the one odd lesson they seemed to miss as they clawed their ways into adulthood. I’m fascinated by these little blips—the fundamentals that escape our grasp by simple chance. Just the other day I learned I’ve been mispronouncing wunderkind for years; I’ve been saying it as if it’s a compound word of “wonder” and “kind,” when in fact it’s far more German-sounding. Wo͝ondərˌkind. Anyway, the irony is perfect.

The other week at the Man Repeller office, the team got to confessing our respective blind spots. The spark was a Twitter thread on the topic, which I’d link to if I could find it, but it was eons ago in internet years and I’m not sure who even posted it. Either way, the conversation was lively. Crystal doesn’t know how to read a rotary clock. Amalie is still perfecting her lefts and rights. Nora and Harling only know how to tie their shoes bunny ear-style. Jasmin’s not sure how to hang stuff on walls. My brain wheezes every time I try to understand something related to the stock market.

I’m weirdly delighted by these little side-steps, which I don’t consider embarrassing evidence that we’re incompetent, but rather proof that among the millions of lessons we metabolize as we age, we’re bound to miss a few. They defy the expectation that there exists among us a shared essential knowledge, and free us up to admit we still don’t know how to floss (Katherine, 31) or do a cartwheel (Jess, 23), and are doing just fine anyway.

When I asked my Instagram followers to share their blind spots, some of which populate the beginning of this story, there were a surprising number of redundancies: Trust me when I say a lot of people don’t understand taxes, health insurance, or long division. And you need not be ashamed if you’re one of them (I blame our horrific education systems, although I recommend figuring out the first two to some degree, if only for your own financial and physical wellbeing. But who am I to judge? I’m no wonder-kind).

Which “essential” boats did you manage to miss?

Feature graphic by Dasha Faires.

The post A Brief List of the Life Lessons We Somehow Totally Missed appeared first on Man Repeller.

What Happens When I’m No Longer “Impressive for My Age”?

My birthday falls at the end of the calendar year. By the mandate of the New York City public school system, this put me perennially behind my peers. I was last to graduate into the upper age brackets in sports leagues, to advance into subsequent bunk ranks at sleepaway camp, to earn the liberty to purchase scratch cards I never wanted in the first place.

In college, I marauded from bar to bar in Saratoga Springs, sliding my flimsy form of false identification toward bartenders and bouncers until well into my senior year—the point at which most of my friends had already grown numb to the glimmer surrounding their 21st year of life. I was familiar, in the guttural sense, with the experience of catching up.

Until suddenly, I wasn’t. After I traded my clapboard college home for an apartment in Brooklyn and willfully greeted The Real World, my tempo sped up. I wrote frantically, read Franzen, subscribed to the Times in print, configured myself into the writerly shape I had been so determined to take as a student. The whole dynamic seemingly turned on its head: I was no longer last, I was first. I was writing! Publishing! Parading around in block heels and oversized Oxford shirts, marveling at the wonder that is an email signature. I was a thing to be commended—“wise beyond my years.” The favored term amongst my superiors was uniform: I was impressive for my age.

Is there an age—a predetermined threshold—at which we outgrow the whole charade that is age-contingent success?

 

For all the reasons age appears a bizarre qualifier here—akin to tacking “for a girl” onto a compliment about athleticism—it never felt that way to me. It flattered me, but beyond that, it became a matter of identity politics. As I saw it, age and success melded into misshapen, conjoined concepts, each one thoroughly dependent on the other. To be worthy of praise, I had to surpass my peers, and in order to surpass anyone, I had to be praiseworthy.

Now, at 24, I am still doing the things I was doing at 21—writing, collecting newspapers, publishing stories on The Internet (though, admittedly, reading less Franzen). And I continue to not-so-quietly delight in the pleasure that comes with revealing my age to colleagues: What a thing, they squawk. You’re so young!

But here is a dark if obvious thought: I won’t always be, and what then? Come December, I will turn 25, and then 26, and eventually 30, and is anyone impressive for their age at 30 unless they’ve found their name on a Forbes list? (I only mean to be as dramatic as my own interior monologue.) The utterly inconvenient, onward march of time seems to beg the looming question: Is there an age—a predetermined threshold—at which we outgrow the whole charade that is age-contingent success? And if so, what if the successes themselves are lacking without age as a qualifier?

“I’ve been ahead for so long,” my friend Emma told me recently from her couch in Bed Stuy, having determined that she was ready to leave the job she’d held for the past four years—one she’d left college early to begin. “I’ve been labeled ‘remarkable’ by bosses and mentors, almost always with the disclaimer: ‘And look at how young she is!’ But now I’m realizing, that’s not really the whole thing—it’s not the only professional identity I want.”

It’s difficult to express the largeness of this particular thing for this particular friend, but it undermined something we’d rallied for in more than a decade of friendship: This perpetual grasping at the next thing. We’d sprinted, headfirst, into an iteration of adulthood that we found more commercially admirable than the ruddy terrain of our girlhood. But now that we were here, our ambitions had nowhere else to move. However long Emma might have been able to maintain the whole wunderkind shtick, as a metric of success, outrunning her peers felt transient. It felt cosmetic. If not forging ahead, she needed a different vessel for her ambition.

“You know, people your age tend to forget they can move sideways,” a friend’s father, notorious for his sage, if granular, wisdom, once told me over shabbat dinner. “Sometimes moving sideways will make you happier than moving forward.”

But it seems that, even for those of us who aren’t frantically hurtling towards some great, amorphous thing, the notion that we’re eternally behind schedule if not ahead runs rampant.

 

Naturally, there’s a case to be made that age has never been a relevant barometer for where, exactly, we ought to be in our personal and professional trajectories. That moving diagonally and sideways and probably even backwards each have their own merits, while age-specific qualifiers only apply to a very particular form of progress: forward motion.

“I remember reading the Forbes 30 Under 30 list after I had just turned 32,” says a former editor of mine, Alex, when I ask him about his feelings on his age. “They owned companies! They were worth millions when I was only worth thousands!” Hearing this surprised me. As I saw it, Alex had always been content to meander forward, delighting in all the particulars of his job as it was, wading coolly through his 30s. But it seems that, even for those of us who aren’t frantically hurtling towards some great, amorphous thing, the notion that we’re eternally behind schedule if not ahead runs rampant.

But Alex offers a humbling thought: “Mozart wrote his first symphony at 8. John Glenn flew into space at 77. I was raised by a single mother who waited tables to help send me to college only to end up getting her masters degree in her 40s. Guess which I find most impressive?”

Here is the age-accomplishment problem: When we stop evaluating personal successes in their own rite, and instead the age at which they were achieved, fulfillment becomes a measure of speed rather than depth. It becomes comparative rather than personal. We all wanted to be prodigious. But success and prodigy are not like terms, and we do ourselves a disservice in using them interchangeably. As we age, the whole territory of success will shapeshift—and that’s the metric that does matter, qualifiers aside. Right?

My father, a therapist, now in his late 50s, told me recently that he believed his age was no longer relevant. “All of ‘middle-age’ is murky territory,” he said. “It’s funny that, for you, being in your early 20s is central to your sense of self. For me, age is just sort of outside of my own field of vision.” In his early 20s, he worked as a wardrobe supervisor on television sets. The career he’s held in social work for most of my life came as more of a second act. “If I’d thought the way you do about all this, I never would’ve started over,” he tells me. “I wouldn’t have wanted to go back to square one as I entered my 30s.”

He says he thinks in prose—words like father, author, speaker—in place of numbers. He says I should do the same. And to some degree, this feels obvious. If I were not compulsive in my desire to outrun myself on the battleground that is New York media, perhaps I’d be writing more, unafraid of distilling my ambition into lateral motion—writing sans deadlines and digital bylines. Writing with no obvious endgame. As of right now, this is still foreign territory for me.

The age-success ratio weds us to trajectories, in place of our more profound predilections—most of which are free-floating and all but disconnected from corporate ladders. It renders us allergic to the very idea of lateral motion. But what if we were interested in a different sort of geometry? What would we be then?

Feature illustration by Molley May.

The post What Happens When I’m No Longer “Impressive for My Age”? appeared first on Man Repeller.

Oh Boy, COS Is So Good Right Now

I always forget how good COS is. This is not an insult to the brand, nor to my memory for that matter–it’s actually part of the reason why COS is so good in the first place. Not only are the clothes well-made in good materials and at a great price point, they are also the kind of clothes that don’t scream out a particular label. Much like pieces from The Row, and Brunello Cucinelli, and sometimes Old Céline, they have a quiet kind of staying power. It’s not hard to imagine keeping them in rotation for years to come.

I was recently reminded of COS’s goodness when I received a press email advertising their new fall campaign imagery, which prompted me to take a spin around the brand’s website. There, I was confronted with the fruits of that aforementioned quiet power: slightly oversized navy cardigans, black cotton wrap dresses, felt skirts, sleekly dark denim–but I’m getting ahead of myself. Scroll down for a breakdown of why COS is an important stop on my fall outfit road-mapping adventures.

The sweaters are the definition of “grown-up”…

Do you know what I mean? They just look like something the chicest 40-something woman would have duplicates of in her lavender sachet-scented closet. The color options are punchy without being tiresome–deep turquoise, oatmeal, plum, olive. The fits are roomy without being sloppy. And the details are subtle without being boring, like the slight funnel neck on this pullover.

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The outerwear is a capsule wardrobe waiting to happen…

In my fantasies vis-à-vis being a capsule wardrobe person, I own six pieces of outerwear. It just so happens that COS offers up the ideal versions of these six pieces I’m imagining: a raincoat that goes with everything, a puffer that is actually chic in addition to being warm (surprisingly elusive), a dark denim jacket, a trench with a Peter Pan collar, a simple black blazer, and a camel-colored coat. Coincidence? I think not.

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These legging-style trousers are the perfect legging-style trousers…

In other words, they look enough like trousers that you could conceivably wear them to work, or to dinner with your future in-laws, but they have enough elastane to feel comfortable enough to fall asleep at your desk, or finish the second half of your seat mate’s soufflé in addition to your own. They’re also not too long and not too short, which is great news for your shoes and bad news for all your other pants.

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The cotton shirts are guaranteed to make you look like a French woman sitting at an outdoor cafe…

Okay, not guaranteed, but even a practiced skeptic would have to admit that this shirt carries the air of one that has basked in Paris sunshine whilst the person wearing it applies red lipstick with a devil-may-care attitude, oui? Ditto for this one and this one, both of which would look great with the aforementioned perfect legging-style trousers.

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The accessories fly way under-the-radar but might actually be the best thing…

Look at this wide-brim nylon hat! And this sheer dickie! And this cool folded hair clip! I bet you never thought the items your wardrobe might be missing are a wide-brim nylon hat, a sheer dickie, and a folded hair clip, but such is the hypnotic captivation of truly distinctive outfit decor.

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Like I said, COS is so good right now.

Feature photo via COS.

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All I Wanted Was to Grow Up: A Poem

Below, the winner of last month’s Writers Club prompt: Does growing up have to hurt?

All I wanted was to grow up.

I wanted large womanly hands, long legs,

A low voice, a laugh buoyant and sparkling.

To be a woman who had things people needed:

a bandaid, a sweater,

a story, love,

that was what I wanted.

No, I never had growing pains.

Me and my body

couldn’t grow fast enough;

My knees became my mother’s,

my feet became her mother’s,

my nose became a stranger’s.

“Wise before your years,” people said,

and I believed them,

hastening towards maturity,

wisdom, fertility, ripeness.

No, I never had growing pains.

The pain came later,

when expectations soured,

dreams gone stale crumbled.

Still so much a child. Eyes closed, I can see her still,

my invention—the woman with everything.

Her capable hands

tend to things, grow things, they hold things,

things people need.

At night she sleeps. I lay awake,

thinking of her.

No, I never had growing pains.

Now, though, I’ll admit,

I do.

Feature graphic by Dasha Faires; Photographed by  

The post All I Wanted Was to Grow Up: A Poem appeared first on Man Repeller.

The Unique Anxiety of Outgrowing the Life I Built for Myself

Growing up doesn’t always signify the accumulation of new knowledge and wisdom. Sometimes it can mean letting go of the routines and beliefs that have come to bind us, forcing us to tread water long enough to realize we’re not moving. In honor of Growing Up Month, we’re republishing this story of Harling’s from September 2018 to serve as a reminder that opportunities for growth present in mysterious ways.

I’ve always done the sensible thing, made the safe choice, kept quiet until I was sure of what I had to say. I did well in school. I graduated on time. I moved back to the city where I was born. I live with my best friend, a person who watched me grow up. I’m in a relationship with someone I met when we were children, 11 years old in a swimming pool. I prefer to write things down, in my head or on paper, before I speak them out loud.

As the unwitting architect of my life, I built it like a swaddle — a blanket wound firmly around the decisions I’ve made, a perfect mold for the person I thought I would always be. I built it to hold me still, to keep my feet planted exactly where I am. I built it to weather change, to withstand all the external uncertainties that might seep through and drown my sense of stability.

That’s why I never expected a leak to come from the inside. It caught me by surprise: Suddenly, I found myself underwater. Now everything looks blurry, like I’m missing something even though I haven’t lost anything, like I need something even though I have everything I used to need, like no one “gets” me even though I’m surrounded by people who know me, like everything changed even though nothing has.

I can’t articulate who I am anymore, but I know for certain it’s something I’ve never been.

Well, not nothing. I’m different. That piece of the puzzle has just started to crystallize. After months of indulging in the misplaced frustration that nobody was seeing me the way I wanted to be seen, or asking me the questions I wanted to be asked, it occurred to me that I was the one who had fanned out the clues to a new self, only to hold them against my chest like a cryptic deck of cards.

I can’t articulate who I am anymore, but I know for certain it’s something I’ve never been. An urgency to put words to it is stuck like a lozenge in my throat, a case of writer’s block so debilitating it keeps me up at night. Fragments of sentences swirl their way around my head as I’m trying to fall asleep. Waiting to know how to fit them together feels both impossible and necessary, because what is a piece of writing without a pitch, an angle, a clear beginning and end? Nothing more than a journal entry, or worse, mere gibberish jotted down in a Notes app.

Countless times, I’ve reached over to my nightstand and opened up my phone to try to scribble something down before it slips away like a marble I can’t help but chase: I’ve started to wonder if, up until now, I conflated doing the same thing and making the same choices over and over again with having figured myself out.

We repeat stories about ourselves to make sense of our worlds. The stories I’ve always told about who I am — that I don’t take risks, that I’m the good daughter, that I’m the uncomplicated girlfriend, that I have to look a certain way to be happy, that the shape of my future is not only obvious but inevitable — sound strangely discordant now, as if out of tune with my current self. But even though I’m starting to discern what I’m not, I still can’t pinpoint what I am. That’s what makes me think I never knew in the first place.

I want to feel understood, but first I have to understand myself. I know I don’t feel out of place because my life has changed, because I built it to hold me still.

My mind clamors to dismiss the suspicion. It says it’s nothing more than a passing whiff of the classic late-twenty-something identity crisis trope. It goads me to duck my head and cover my ears and wait for it to blow over so I can wrap myself back inside the life that used to fit me so comfortably. That would certainly be easier, but my body knows the truth, pricking tears into the corners of my eyes whenever I brush closer to it, spiking hot with adrenaline every time I probe a little further, vibrating with a near-unbearable hunger to have someone hold my deck of cards in their hands and nod, gently, in recognition.

I want to feel understood, but first I have to understand myself. I know I don’t feel out of place because my life has changed, because I built it to hold me still. I built it to keep my feet planted exactly where I am, so when I took a step forward, when the person I thought I would always be suddenly wasn’t, when I cracked the mold and asked what other stories I might tell about myself, the life I made so carefully looked strangely small.

And yet, as confusing as it all seems, as disorienting as it feels, a curious thrill pulses in my chest. With a thud, it tells me I can’t unknow what I know now, but I can give myself permission to chase growth over stability, to hold lightly to the things I thought I wanted, to unwind the swaddle and lay myself bare. With another thud, it places words on my tongue, a kind of surrender, like a lozenge dissolving: I am the architect of my life, and I am no longer unwitting.

Gif by Louisiana Mei Gelpi.

The post The Unique Anxiety of Outgrowing the Life I Built for Myself appeared first on Man Repeller.

Growing Up at The Cheesecake Factory, Where Everything Stays the Same

I’ve discovered the perfect party trick and it involves cheesecake. Like cilantro, the restaurant’s signature garnish, bringing up The Cheesecake Factory in conversation inspires just the right kind of exchange—it’s a topic that’s polarizing enough to cause impassioned debate but is still suitably low-stakes enough to discuss amongst acquaintances. Nothing about this temple to the “palate of the common man” is subtle; hence its ability to evoke such strong points of view.

That said, nothing about it is unexpected either—to look around the restaurant and say, “This is a nice one,” as Drake does in his 2016 music video for “Child’s Play,” is part of the joke. The place is uncannily consistent. And as the legend goes, once an item is added to the menu, it never comes off.

It’s precisely The Cheesecake Factory’s consistency that has given me such an emotional tie to this casual dining chain. Even as I’ve grown up and changed, The Cheesecake Factory has always stayed the same. Much like the restaurant’s design, an exercise in layering motifs from different cultures and time periods, the place is, to use my favorite ten dollar word, a palimpsest for my own experience. Each time I enter into its orange glow and settle into one of its big booths, I dine with each of my earlier selves.

When The Cheesecake Factory opened at the fancy mall in my Boston suburb in 1996, I was ten years old. At that time, make your own taco nights, kid-friendly joints, and the occasional Lean Cuisine were the extent of my culinary adventures. But on my inaugural visit to the Cheesecake Factory with my family, I entered into a new landscape, one filled with Egyptian columns with lotus tops and trompe-l’oeil fractures, six-foot-tall palm trees. The buzzer we received upon check-in seemed a harbinger of our tech-driven future. While we waited for our table, my older sister and I ogled the main event—the cheesecake display, with its enormous hunks of dessert in neat array, nineties-style chocolate swirls, topped with letter-perfect whipped cream pipettes, up-lit and down-lit as though on exhibition in a museum.

In those same big booths, I experienced all the fizzy excitement and despair of adolescence.

Once at our table, my sister and I balanced spoons on our noses and took pictures giving one another bunny ears. Full glasses of Diet Coke were delivered to our table before our current glasses were even half-empty. This, in particular, struck me as the height of decadence. I had entered the world of real adult dining—an eternal spring of soda refills, Chicken Teriyaki, Roadside sliders, and, yes, definitely, Snickers Bar Chunks Cheesecake—and it seemed like, for once, the adults really understood how kids wanted to party.

In those same big booths, I experienced all the fizzy excitement and despair of adolescence. In middle school, this meant test-driving the mode of independence that comes with delivering one’s salad order amongst friends while being set loose at the mall. A 21-page menu, two hundred and fifty items, and each girl landed on a singular identity: “Chinese chicken salad no cilantro no wontons dressing on the side extra brown bread.”

In high school, the most heavily programmed time of my life, The Cheesecake Factory provided some semblance of family routine.

So many after-school lunches we’d sit together, celebrating real birthdays… and fake ones. A slice of fluffy cheesecake, fudgy insides fully exposed, would sail alight towards the table. As went the custom, one friend would smudge out the birthday girl’s name, rendered in chocolate icing across the plate, then swipe the icing across the girl of the hour’s nose. There would be an echo of laughter, which if you listened carefully, sounded slightly caustic.

In high school, the most heavily programmed time of my life, The Cheesecake Factory provided some semblance of family routine. The complicated schedules of my sister and my extracurriculars alongside my parents’ full work week encroached on our ability to gather and eat together around the table for a home-made meal. This same period marked a specific type of cultural reverence for doing just that. News reports suggested that families who ate dinner together could ensure a certain type of social harmony that starts at home. A failure to sit down together represented an existential threat.

Eventually, I left for college and began the accumulation of firsts: first flight of wine at a tapas restaurant; first time someone gently corrected my pronunciation of “prix fixe.” The same institution that so figured into my coming-of-age suddenly struck me as outwardly ridiculous (I was fancy! I had seen things!).

When Drake name-dropped the restaurant chain in 2016 (“Why you gotta fight with me at Cheesecake? You know I love to go there”) the internet immediately responded, and the cultural ricochet made clear that the The Cheesecake Factory had been a consistent background for more lives than my own. This fixture of American casual dining became a centerpiece of gonzo Vice reporting and Eater oral histories, of NBA player sightings, of ironic cool-girl Instagram stories. Millennials began to reference it with a semi-ironic tone that seemed to fit to the latter part of any trend life cycle. First something was edgy, then cool, then ridiculous. Finally, years later, a tongue and cheek revival was in order.

What makes it mockable is what makes it marketable, and The Cheesecake Factory is in on the joke.

For all my earnest talk about my love of this place and its role in my childhood, was that all a cover-up for what I am really saying: That I have outgrown the place, and like other millennial, now have an arsenal of ironic language to say so?

In a sense, The Cheesecake Factory has always been easy to mock. The depth and breadth of its menu, its biblical portions, its “fully-immersive postmodern design hellscape.” And yet, the chain has now effortlessly capitalized on this parody in a way that no other casual dining chains seem to have quite captured. What makes it mockable is what makes it marketable, and The Cheesecake Factory is in on the joke. When Drake, “the first rap megastar fully of the Internet era” enacted his own music video break-up there of all places, he knew exactly what he was doing, too.

Particularly as we grow up, what we appreciate most, I think, is authenticity, things that are true to themselves. Even if The Cheesecake Factory isn’t “authentic” in the broader context, it’s authentic to itself. That it’s a little weird and nonsensical is also the point. Because, so are we. And perhaps, when it comes down to it, we always find a way to seek out what we know to be delicious.

On a recent night, in the spirit of research, I decided to pay The Cheesecake Factory another visit with my husband Ben. It was not the location I grew up with, but the restaurant at the Glendale Americana, a large-scale outdoor shopping center in Southern California (which incidentally has its own fan-generated ). Once seated, we revelled in the possibilities as though it were the first time, before finally landing on Miso Salmon and Thai Lettuce Wraps. Going splitskies at the Cheesecake Factory is a love language, too.

Perhaps it was the focus afforded by our bi-annual Diet Coke binge or perhaps it was the security of our booth, the table bolted satisfyingly to the ground. Whatever it was, after dinner, we paid our check, and sat there talking in the soothing glow of the orange light, for what seemed like hours. Eventually, by way of a cheerful, semi-scripted check-in, our waiter stopped by to ask: “Are you two still happy over here?” We nodded gratefully.

Feature graphic by Dasha Faires.                                                

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