We were talking to Dear Friend last week about how impossible it is to find the perfect boots. Not too high, not too snug in the calf, not too Western/Moto/pointy. Basically, the kind of boots that people either completely ignore or have people stop and ask you where you got them.
We both had fallen in love with a pair at Madewell, a store we generally love. However, we can’t handle $300 price tags on boots made by companies we’re not tried/tested/true with. We loved the tallness, the short/flat heel, and the complete lack of details that make us say ew. But we couldn’t hang with the price tag.
We may have found a solid substitute. The Rachel II boots from Corso Como are everything we want; discreet, caramel, comfortable (padded insoles! really!), roomy in the calf – these are boots that we are stopped about every day. In a good way. Best part? They’re relatively reasonably priced at just under $200. We will note, we bypassed them when browsing online and in the store; they fade into the sea of shoes. But once on, we were completely all about them.
Rachel II Corso Como boots, $198
Short hair, while easy theoretically, can be a massive pain. Sure, we’re never bothered about long drying times, how to wear it for an event, and we have a great stage for strong eyes and/our lips – but it’s also the only hairstyle we’ve had where you may need to wash it at any given time. We were once told by our mom’s hairdresser that we could never have short hair – our hair is too thick, too curly. Well, 14 years later – 10 of those with pixie-length hair – we’re still proving him wrong (though we can’t hate him; he called 911 when our dad passed out during a haircut and called the next day to check on him). Continue reading →
Our love for Sephora is well documented. We love everything about them; the selection, the generally pushy sales people, the ability to stumble in looking frightful and emerge cleaner and well put together. We’ve raved about their return policy (anything! ever!) – the only bad thing we’ve ever said is with regard to a makeover that we’ll never mention ever again.
Sephora, delightful as they are, rarely have sales (perhaps our only other complaint?). When we got wind of the friends and family sale, we knew we were going to dip into our savings account to pick up some new things. Of course, we need makeup like we need another hole in our head, but we’ve found that makeup is a fun, goofy pick me up that we rarely regret buying. Plus, we realized the eyeshadow we’ve been wearing is quite literally 6 years old. Out/old, in/new.
We write this post from India—like literally, and bizarrely, we can see the Taj Mahal from where we write this, or we could, if we weren’t so freaking lazy and satisfied to sit on the chair against the wall—and we have found India to be quite easily the most bananas place we have ever been. We have found that one of the ways this bananas quality asserts itself is by keeping us disconnected from everything in our lives except the location of our passport, our contact lens solution, and the nearest Diet Coke, if we are very, very lucky.
In particular, we recognize that it kept us ignorant, until now, about a million years too late, about the death of Irving Penn a couple weeks ago. He shot this cover for this Deborah Garrison book, which we had wished so much we had written when it first came out.
We have never forgotten this line, and we think of it often:
I haven’t had dinner
I’m not half of what I thought I’d be.
That slippage, you know, between the small disaster and the big one. Anyway, we thought it was worth sharing this (though we certainly do not advocate the smoking) and one of our other favorite photos of his.
What Sephora says it does: “Creamy liner brushes on deep, smoky, eye-defining colour. Long-wearing, waterproof. Ophthalmologist tested.”
What we think: We read up on reviews before we bought this, but we figured we’d give it a shot. There may/may not have been a gift with purchase involved in our decision making process. We love eyeliner, but we hate pencils that make us feel like we’re stabbing our eyes out. We don’t love liquid because it spills and runs. We figured cream was the safe bet – non-stabby, non-drippy. We did not realize this is like graduate level eye makeup.
We’ve tried it once so far – unfortunately for us, it was minutes before we had to leave for a very important event where we needed to look our best. We globbed on WAY too much of the, er, liner on the teeny-tiny brush (out of all the reviews we read, the brush was the biggest negative). We then tried to brush it on and we ended up with waterproof eyeliner on our cheeks. Both cheeks. While trying to line one eye. We made a second and third attempt, and we then scrubbed as much off as we could. We have to say, we were left with a rather nice lash line after all the scrubbing.
Stars(!): * *1/2. For people who are skilled at this sort of thing, it’s probably a good product. We are unskilled and clumsy, and while it didn’t fail us, we’re not so sure we’ll be keeping it. As a waterproof eyeliner, it’s great; as a product we can use on a regular basis, well. Not so much.
We generally try not to talk about things that you can’t buy – we do not fancy ourselves to be experts on much, or think that people take us too seriously. We, we would like to think, understand our role. However, over the course of this week, we’ve heard an enormous amount of chatter about models and their sizes. It’s Fashion Week in Europe, and we’ve been doing what we can to keep up with the happenings. What’s stuck with us the most is not the new spring collections, or who showed up to whose show – but the chatter about skinny models.
We listened to a 15 minute segment on NPR about how German fashion magazine Brigitte will no longer use super thin models – from here on out, only ‘normal women’. We’re assuming ‘normal’ means thin without bony, ‘beautiful’ means pretty without freakish. We do not think we’ll see the actual normal woman on these pages, but rather a more attainable ideal of what the ‘normal woman’ is supposed to look like. Some say this is in the interest of cutting costs (in which case, we semi-applaud them). Some say it’s a strike against the super skinny fashion world, and the ideal that it conveys to women of all ages everywhere.
Seriously? We’re having a hard time with this. First, we do not – nor have we ever – measured ourselves, literally or figuratively, against models. We have never looked at our hereditary belly and thought, damn, we will never grace the pages of Vogue. We’ve been reading fashion magazines since age 10, and we do not have feelings of negative self worth, self image, or self esteem. We’re quite comfortable with how we look, generally speaking. None of the women we know – of all sizes and ages – feels inferior because they do not look like a model.
We’re calling shenanigans for a second reason, too. Maybe we’re oversimplifying, but what appears to be more attainable? The ‘normal, beautiful woman’? Let’s say for argument’s sake, she’s about 5’7″ and a size 6 (which is by no means average in the US, but we know that we’re seriously different from Europe). Or, the supermodel aesthetic – generally very close to 6′ and a waist smaller than most wrists? Which do we think will leave women feeling like they can’t measure up? The woman who looks like their prettier friend? Or the woman who, essentially, looks a bit freakish? We know we’ll never look like Karen Elson; but the girl next door, well. We would think that being THISCLOSE might seem more attainable, and thereby more discouraging when it doesn’t happen.
We’ve heard chatter about other designers and photoshop mishaps, other countries contemplating banning skinny models. How will the designers react? How will the public react? As far as we can tell, there will be no shift. Until the fashion empires that be make a proclamation, and designers everywhere look at models as people, and not clothes hangers, our world isn’t going to change. Rather than lash out at fashion magazines and designers, we’d like to see women take a more positive stance, and hey – who knows. Work with young girls in a volunteer setting. Lead a scouting troop. Speak at a middle school.
Most of all, though, don’t take it too seriously.
We’d love to hear thoughts on this – leave us comments! We love them, we do. And we know this is a bit of a hot topic.
This is just to say that if you have not yet picked up a copy of Scott Schuman’s The Sartorialist, you just simply must, and as soon as possible.
We know—we’re late on this, but bear with us. (Many books are even better long past their debut date! Especially when they have covers hand-silkscreened by the author!) We once worked at an honest-to-goodness fashion magazine, the kind with Ukrainian models and English photographers and weird, mime-style poses in unwearable clothing selected for the stylists by the advertisers. We love magazines, just love them, but we’ve found that there are lots we just can’t read anymore—a few mainstream fashion magazines in particular. We just cannot believe in any of it anymore: the underfed models, the insider-only columns, and the inevitable profiles of utterly undeserving and uninteresting socialites and heiresses. We’re not making any news here, but if they are what “fashion” is, we truly and absolutely want no part of it.
There are other examples of a counter-argument but our current favorite is The Sartorialist book. (Just like the second edition of the Nylon street-style book, hurrah, which we’re working on!) We like the website just fine, but it’s better to be able to rip out the photos and put them on your wall—as a reminder that it’s not just models and socialites who are eligible players in the art of looking stylish. (Or, for that matter, the white and the under-25, which is an equally reprehensible limitation.) It’s not the world we live in. It’s not a world we’d ever want to visit. The one we’d prefer is the one we see in Schuman’s book: multi-cultural not for the outmoded purposes of political correctness but just because it is true—because this is the world we inhabit. Multi-generational because people should not be forced into obsolescence after whatever age the obsolescence-cut-off seems to be— 25, 35, 50. We don’t even like to use the “multi-” words—the words of an unpleasant past being used to describe a document that exists, and is documenting, a newer and better world.
That’s part of what we love about this book: It’s democratic. Certainly, it’s democratic within a certain milieu—many of those pictured will know how to properly pronounce “Hussein Chalayan,” and Schuman himself has said he had trouble convincing certain, often underrepresented women to let him photograph them: “When I am shooting on the street older women and larger size women often say “no” to my request to shoot them. Actually, much more than any other category of people I shoot.” (That’s, obviously, not Schuman’s fault, but a natural—and pathetic, and regrettable—result of the condition described at top.) There are few pictures here from outside the world’s fashion capitals, none from Africa—which we have been covering more than any other place in the world lately, because we love it, or at least the parts of it we have been to. It’d be great to see this world through Schuman’s literal lens. Until he works on that project, though, we are well satisfied with this book. It gives us hope: that what makes us (read, in this case: “women”) interesting, even and especially in this style/fashion context, is not limited to our genetics and our age—that it is about our eye, our creativity, our time, our talent, our hard work. (This reminds us of that Ugly Betty scene where Betty’s is laboring over putting a look together for her prototype magazine, and Marc just swans in and does it for his own in a flash. Schuman, we’re sure, would be open to both approaches.) It’s not (necessarily) about class or clout. It’s the American dream, goddamn it, or one of the best examples the fashion world has had the good fortune to muster, and we, from the bottom of our hearts, salute it.
We’re pretty sure we’re in this relationship where Gossip Girl where we’re just waiting for GG to break up with us before we break up with them: We’re there, but are we present? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it was Tyra. Did you love Tyra? We thought she grated. Like a giant cheese grater. We do hope she wins an Oscar one day, though.
We have always loved J. Crew. We remember going to the outlets when we were very small; we remember very long trips to big cities to visit the nearest retail store. A barn jacket was THE thing to have when we were in middle school. Even when we dabbled in a slightly more extreme look, we always came back to J. Crew for basics. They’re like the Gap, only without the reallllly questionable collections every other season.
We posted a sweater we were super into a couple of weeks ago – it’s lovely in person. It feels way better than we would’ve thought, but we were a bit bummed that the buttons weren’t wood. Or something other than, like, plastic. We think it’s still a bit pricey at $138, so we’re holding out until Christmas/until it goes on sale. While we were looking for other stuff, though, we came across a jacket we just fell in love with. We loved the cut, the color, the material. It was like a Barbour coat, but cuter. We had all but talked ourselves into it before we looked at the price tag – and we were almost fearful checking. We’d rationalized what we would return, not eat, cook, and sell to buy it. Lo and behold, it was a bit more affordable than we thought at $148. It’s not cheap, for sure – but we have faith in J. Crew coats (they’re all we’ve worn for about half our life). Continue reading →
