Internet favorites for April: Barrettes

Check out these amazing surreal barrettes from Dream Collective! As a lover of jewelry but a coward when it comes to wearing necklaces, bracelets, and rings, these are just perfect. 

here are all the other internet favorites. :)

internet favorites for january: molly young's critical shopper column

This month, I wanted to highlight Molly Young's amazing column for the New York Times. She goes to a variety of stores (from upscale to goofy) and reviews the experience--the ambience, the clientele, the employees, the products. And she's hilarious and super smart and this is exactly the kind of fashion/style writing that brings meaning to my life.

 Some favorites:

1. Flying Tiger Copenhagen--the post where I first sat up and said, "Who is this genius writer?" (Here's my haul.)

"As retail experiences go, it is like walking into a junk drawer that was blown up to theme-park scale. If your reaction to that sentence is to physically swerve away from your reading device, you may cruise along to the next article. If your reaction is “Tell me more,” here we go."

2. Totokaelo--my love for this sort of thing runs deep.

"If you’re in the mood to hit the playground or just to obscure your secondary sex characteristics, any of these will do the job."

PS Another astonishingly accomplished (and gorgeous, Molly Young too, I said it) writer hero--Alice Gregory. Here's a piece of hers I never forgot, the real experience of working at Sotheby's.

PPS All of the Internet Favorites!

Internet favorites: Giant, Loose, Unaffordable

Those who know me well know about my unstoppable passion for giant, loose clothing. Basically, if it looks like you might wear it as penance, I probably like it.

For example, I just bought this "raw-edge linen sack dress" in two colors:

Internet favorites for August: Odds and Ends Wishlist

What are these little things? They are the sorts of things that prevent me from living a minimalist lifestyle. Here are the rest of the internet favorites.

1. Tell my mother I love her, from Explorer's Press

2. Eye earrings that go on either side of your ear, Bauble Bar

3. Small bronze hands from Small Bronzes on Etsy

4. Eyes by David Prossler, PAOM

5. Alexander Henry Frida's Garden fabric (for a curtain maybe??)

6. Ayame socks from Koshka

Internet favorites for July: Favorite tote bags

Here are all the other internet favorites!

I carry a tote bag every day. I have to carry around a lot of stuff for tutoring, and I usually carry a book/magazine, my calendar, my journal, a camera and film, and a draft of a story.

favorite perfume

Special report: Flying Tiger Copenhagen haul

Can you imagine a mash-up of Kikkerland, Ikea and Party City? Well, it opened in New York four days ago, and it is awesome. Flying Tiger Copenhagen is a kind of Danish dollar store. I'd never heard of it, but apparently there are 452 locations, though this is the first in the US. I went in thinking, "I'll just have a quick look," and then my eyes turned into spirals and I whipped myself into a frenzy and my "minimal living" "quality over quantity" "please don't buy anything else, Molly, you make $10 an hour"* went out the window.

favorite spring fabric trends, and some shopping in manhattan tips

anytime i have anything vaguely stressful to do in manhattan (and every possible reason i might have to go to manhattan is stressful), i wind down afterwards by going shopping. i don't always buy things (though i buy a lot more than i need), but it is very soothing to touch all the different fabrics and think about the future.

so here is your trend report (click through if you dare):

Internet Favorites for April: Print All Over Me

Some more heart's desires from your desire expert. Here are the other internet favorite posts.

Do you know the website Print All Over Me? Like Society 6 or Spoonflower or whatever, you can upload images and get them printed on all kinds of gear.

1. This scarf by jessssssseeeeeeee

2. This shirt or this shirt by Saskia Pomeroy

3. This tote bag by Sara Andreasson

4. This shift dress by Nathalie Chikhi

internet favorites for november: jewelry wishlist

Internet Favorites, a monthly series, continues its trek into the wilderness.

I can't really afford any of this but I love it all so much.

1. Bijoux Brodés
Designed by 2 friends from France.

2. Verameat
All kinds of morbid and delicate things, that universally cost too much. After we visited their Williamsburg store, I swore to Eve that I would squander the entirety of my hypothetical first book advance on their lovely adornments.

3. Old Gold Boutique. Alas the web store seems to have gone out of business. But, like Verameat, they used to carry things that looked like they belonged in a cabinet of curiosities.

internet favorites for august: my favorite two apartments on the selby

i recently moved apartments, so i've been buying furniture for the very first time. eve and i have had so much fun picking out muji sheets, home depot crates, my little pine nightstand from ikea, and other things that fit in the simple/cheap/natural triad.

i love reading home decor blogs, but i rarely find anything i find actually inspiring--something that makes me want to get up and do it myself. well here are my two favorite-ever apartments photographed by todd selby that are really special and make me very excited to make new things.

katsuya kamo-- a hairdresser from tokyo who has created or amassed a huge collection of shadowboxes. i'm obsessed. i love the one that's all white-paper geometric solids, or the one that seems to show an arrangement of twigs in front of an image of tall mountains.

cheri messerli and david rager--these photos, from 2008, show their loft in brooklyn. (they've since moved to paris, how beautiful!) i love how theatrical their space is. dark jewel tones and paper-white sheets and lamps. it reminds me of shakespeare and company.

all photographs from the selby.

Desperate purchases

I took the train back to Milan yesterday so I have better Internet again. I took my first real shower in a month (at Podere Campriano all the water is heated by the wood-burning caldaia, so you really can't linger). Then I set out into Milan and bought the following:

1. 500 grams of Sterzing-Vipiteno coffee yogurt. I considered whether it would be better to buy three different flavors of the 150-gram cups. But I'm sick of things that finish just when they start! Anyways, I ate all 500 grams with great speed in the little sunny piazza by Porta Ticinese, so dazed that the yogurt was all gone in an instant.

2. An extra-large wool-blend nubby gray sweater at Muji. I've never bought anything extra-large in my life. My very large clothes are either one-size-fits-all, or from the men's section. I didn't need the sweater, but I had to have it, especially because I'm planning on washing all my winter clothes tomorrow. Clothes that fit properly often make me feel swollen and bursting-at-the-seams.

3. A ring with wings on it at H&M. I'm still not sure why I bought it. It was euros 4.95. I suspect it contains heavy metals. I took it off before my hosts in Milan could see it.

4. A tiny pink bottle of "Gardenia" perfume at H&M. It cost even less than the ring. I imagine it's made out of petroleum and windex, or some other such thing. I sprayed it all over my scarf, trying to figure out if the smell was nauseating. (Jury's still out. I can't even tell if the smell is clean or not.) The pink glaze on the bottle cracked like plastic and came off onto my hands, especially around the bottle's neck, which was covered with some oily non-perfume liquid that I could not rub away.

This summer I bought a similarly non-elite perfume at a Cogne pharmacy. The perfume (actually it was just called "body spray" or something) was meant for men and smelled like vetiver. A bit like for Proust in that high-ceilinged bedroom, vetiver fills me with a vague dreading unease. The H&M perfume also gives me a nervous, upset feeling. (I tend to get that feeling from every perfume, though.) But when I'm on a farm where money is so carefully distributed that clothes are washed with baking soda, there's nothing I want more than some sweet spray to douse my hay-prickling clothing.

Big coat for Paris

I got this coat from the American Apparel LA factory warehouse on a huge discount. It's unisex one size fits all, which means it's very big for me, which makes it the perfect coat for traveling alone. Oversized clothing is good for solo travelers. Plus, the pockets are enormous.

Style Blog

In Berlin, my friend Sara told me that Stephen Prina, her teacher, always buys a pair of socks in every place he travels.

"But I'd be worried that I'd get all those socks mixed up and forget where I'd bought them," I said. I thought you'd have to buy fancy socks.

"No, he just buys regular socks," she said.

Imagine: A suitcase full of regular white socks bought in every place you've been. (Now that is style.)

Free advertising for H&M

I'm sorry I keep writing about clothes.

Anyways I somehow missed that Maison Martin Margiela was doing a collaboration with H&M. ("What's that jacket, Margiela?" --Kanye West.)

I can't afford any of these things, and also there's no H&M nearby, but the collection appeals to me in every way.

Things it has:

1. A coat made out of a duvet, and you can actually take off the duvet cover and wear that as a different kind of jacket, and plus the sleeves are removable:

2. A clutch purse made out of metallic faux leather that looks like a giant candy wrapper (and, on the guys' side, a fanny pack as big as a backpack):

3. A purse that you wear upside down (it actually has a zipper on the "bottom"):

4. A dress made out of two different dresses (below). H&M describes this as "half lined," which is the first time I've ever seen that in a clothing description. Also, there is a dress made entirely out of dress lining, and many other pieces made out of incorrectly used materials/materials masquerading as other things--a men's jacket made out of belts, a belt made out of a watch band, jeans sewn inside out, tops made out of scarves, a dress made out of car-seat leather, and skin-colored leggings with a fishnet print on top.

5. Beyond the candy wrapper, a ton of giant things, including this necklace that looks like a huge key chain. There's also a women's peacoat big enough for Mamadou Ndiaye, and a massive turtleneck with "extremely long sleeves," which is the thing I'd most buy for myself.

But the single awesomest thing, that made me write this post and that reminded me of Proust, is this linen tablecloth set, that is printed with a photorealistic image of a tablecloth after a party.

Here is a close up of the napkins:

It is so beautifully executed too--I mean what kind of party was this? It looks like a party with ribbons and confetti that were then covered with a thick layer of ash. No one had time (or everyone was too careful) to spill their wine or drop bits of food.

It's great how a lot of the clothes put on a good show of being multifunctional (that split dress, for example, or the sweater you'll never outgrow), but are actually deeply impractical. I think I particularly like this collection not only for its jokiness or narrative or fairy-tale proportions, but also because it doesn't seem to give a shit about being "body-conscious." Most everything, except for the shirts and leggings that are supposed to resemble skin, would not flatter anyone's figure. I never like those designers who, in Vogue or wherever, talk about their careful study of the feminine form, their strategic darting and pleating to bring out the body, and especially how such garments give women self-confidence. I don't think self-confidence goes that way. How about clothing designed to make invisible and conceal the body--or something that tries to make you lose confidence in yourself and the world around you? (The skirt that looks like you didn't realize it got hitched up in your underwear when you went to the bathroom--the fake-sequin dress that shows that you are clearly a fraud--the tiptoeing person who actually has plexiglass heels?) So you can expose yourself in a different way. But what I like even more is the option to sequester yourself away in these clothes, those huge coats in particular, and hide.

My life is bro

I have spent a lot of time today looking at totalfratmove.com and mylifeisbro.com. I don't have anything profound to say about this.

They like to call girls "slams" and "slampieces." Here is the kind of thing on mylifeisbro.com:

And this is from Total Frat Move:

 Above: The rice makes it too balanced, I think.

It is surprising to me that part of being an online bro is pissing people off. I thought of bro culture as mainly white college guys drinking beer and trying to get laid, but it has a significant trollish aspect as well. It's rambunctious, humorous, half-ironic, misogynistic, patriotic and self-congratulatory and it's not as uniquely American as it seems (cf Australia).

For the slightly more couth/scrubbed/consumery side of things, there's Chubbies shorts. They're short-shorts in pastel colors that come in blue cardboard boxes that have "Boomshakalaka!" printed on the inside of the lid. The customers are young men who are "freeing their thighs from the tyranny of pants." They are called Chubbies because they have an elastic waist. There's a lot of rhetoric about liberation, complete with a photo of the founders with protest posters that say things like "I hate pants." Meanwhile the products are innocuous, vintage-inspired cotton short-shorts in colors like lavender and hot pink. (Bro hats also makes use of a brightly-colored vintage-inspired aesthetic. Those trucker hats seem so hipsterish, but unlike hipsters, bros seem to embrace their bro identity, and I think they're more into trucker hats because they're outrageous and tacky than because you can find them in thrift shops and revel in your own random weirdness/vague cultural criticism, or whatever. An orange hat that says "Rage" switches irony-type entirely when worn on a Bro's head or a hipster's head.)

These shorts have had a lot of commercial success (especially at my old high school), which is surprising given that their advertising copy is trying so hard that it seems like their target would catch the whiff of pandering that is the death of cool:

Key tenets of the new legislation under the Chubmander-in-Chief:
*Everyone must be awesome. At all times. No exceptions.
*Anyone caught discussing their "career" is sentenced to three shotguns. A day. For the rest of their lives.
*Barbecue grants to all citizens.
*Extensive investment in cutting edge research on the use of pants as a new form of fossil fuel - maybe they do have a use in this world.
*Any disagreements must be resolved via a karate wood-breaking competition. Using only one's thigh.
*We've decided against the season of Winter. Yup, simple as that. In fact, we'll just go with Summer all the time. Done.

But I know nothing. I hope that Emily and Charlotte will write their long-awaited book, "Towards a Bro Aesthetic," so I can learn.