plastic paradise

2011-11-22T09:34:00.000-08:00

I know he was a dictator and did an untold number of absolutely unconscionable things, but I will miss Muammar Qaddafi's personal style. I've written about his ensembles here, and honestly, who else will yell at the U.N.? And yell for hours? I wish Qaddafi had been brought to trial. I'm a due process kind of person. I firmly believe that long, drawn-out, legal battles especially those with burdensome discovery, can seriously deflate a dictator, plus there is the added bonus of actually uncovering information about those crimes against humanity, and who was funding it. A real trial, mind you, not something manned by kangaroos.

I must admit: I often imagined the conversations that Qaddafi might have had with his stylist: make this more Bedouin, but add a couple sequins. I want the cap to look more military but retain the Bedouin feeling. I need a bigger Africa-shaped brooch, bigger, like two-thirds the size of my head. And I need a gold AK-47.

Do we now face a political landscape bereft of style? Are there no more delusional, power-hungry, seriously snappy dressers? Is there not a head of state left who understands the power of clothes? No oligarch to employ team of tailors to make some sartorial magic?

Meet Yulia Tymoshenko, former Prime Minister of Ukraine. Ms. Tymoshenko has the advantage of being a beautiful woman from the get-go, and she found a team of geniuses to create Slavic-folkloric- Star-Wars outfits for her. Oh, and there's some Evita with that Princess Leia.

Look at at these seamstress flourishes around the high necklines. (Her outfits also seem practical in a colder climate and when you spend most of your time in massive buildings with thermostats set arctically low so that men can wear wool suits.) Look at how these gorgeous brooches are deployed. Some look like badges of honor, others look like steam-punk weapons: Careful, Ambassador, my brooch is set to kill, not stun. Her dresses and coats utilize a lot of puffed sleeves and are made modern with exposed zippers. Her color pallet is also genius: she truly shines in white.

Of course there is that genius of a hairdo: that crown braid. Genius on someone's part. Absolute genius. Iconic. An instantly recognizable Ukrainian symbol and she wears it beautifully. If she has a secret on how to achieve such a bounty of hair in middle age, she could make a fortune on that alone. Apparently there is controversy about the braid as to whether or not it actually grows from her head. Ms. Tymoshenko held a press conference in which she unbraided, showing that it was all hers, or at least, all attached to her head. I really hope she has some magical powers and will share them with us mortals. (I really miss the mermaid hair I had in my youth, as Colette once said when looking at photos of her long-gone ankle-length hair: How I miss myself.) But that gorgeous braid is most likely the collusion of a genetic jackpot and a discrete miracle-worker hairdresser, both sadly out of reach for schlepper such as myself.

Just look at this coat.

And this one.

I should insert a legal disclaimer here: I do not understand the political situation in Ukraine. I made an unsuccessful attempt and am still baffled. If you have an opinion, I am happy to hear you out. What I do understand is that politics in Ukraine make mere mud-slinging look like charity work. Ms. Tymoshenko's former running mate, Viktor Yushchenko, suffered severe facial scarring when he was poisoned by the opposition. (Of course no one could prove who did it.) Ms. Tymoshenko herself is currently in jail on corruption charges. It has been argued that this is merely a tactic to keep her from ousting political opponent, Viktor Yanukovych, during election season. That may very well be. (And if one has to choose, I'd take imprisonment over poisoning any day, though neither are good for one's health.) She has been accused of brokering a deal with Russia at Ukraine's terrible expense to purchase natural gas. She might be innocent as the dawn, for all I know. And in comparison with poisoners and the like, she probably looks like a total sweetie-pie. But she didn't become one of the richest and most powerful women in the world just by being adorable. She's also a big fan of Margaret Thatcher, which means that she and I would probably get into an argument if we were seated to close too each other at a dinner party.

Then there is the giggling. Ms. Tymoshenko has a trademark giggle that she deploys during press conferences. I'm not a fan of using girlishness to manipulate events, but as I've often said, femininity is a tool used by an oppressed class to garner some benefits from the oppressing class. It's still around because it works, and every woman uses it differently (and has an opinion on what is off-label use). Is Ms. Tymoshenko a Ukrainian Sarah Palin, as I've heard her called? Hard to say, not speaking Ukrainian. But she doesn't seem as uninformed as the former Alaskan governor. It has been argued that her crown-braid and folksy-attire are an attempt to play on well, folksy-ness, as in:I'm just plain folks, folks. And an effort to play down her vast wealth. Then there are the stripper heels. Ms. Tymoshenko prefers those sky-high foot-torture sculptures that pass for women's shoes nowadays. But perhaps she wants to feel taller in a room full of men? (I'm very second wave on that issue, I mean, these boots were made for walking, why hobble yourself? Am I just a second wave scold?)

What's your take on Tymoskenko?

What would you have a a workshop of crack seamstresses create as your power wardrobe? I must admit that mine would look a lot like Ms. Tymoshenko's. But with fuller skirts, flat boots, and embroidery. And of course I'd say to my stylist: Make it more Bedouin, but add sequins.

You can follow Ms. Tymoshenko's legal battles and see hundreds more pictures of fabulous outfits on her official website.

2011-11-02T10:23:00.000-07:00

I've been obsessed with all things Masonic for a while. I had great fantasies of becoming a Freemason. I thought I'd make new friends,contribute to my community, participate in bizarre rituals involving trowels and embroidered aprons. And eventually, when I made it to the 33rd Degree, I'd participate in a ceremony of car crashes, painful dentistry, and drink Guinness on the top of the Chrysler Building as it bloomed with green and orange streamers. Oh wait, that last bit would only happen if I stumbled into the Masonic Temple of Matthew Barney. (Actually, I suspect that Cremaster 3 is an extended commercial for Guinness. All that Guinness drinking, all those Irish harps. Think about it. Okay, I criticize Le Barney because I'm jealous of his success, I loved every bit of the Cremaster Cycle. All 20 hours or so of it.)

Of course, women can't be Freemasons, so there are women's auxiliaries to join which frankly look like no fun at all. Bereft of deliberately obtuse ceremony, secret handshakes, fez hats, and conventions, women's auxiliary looks at least 80% less fun. Does anyone out there belong to Job's Daughters? Eastern Star? The Rebekas? The Lions? The Rotary Club? Do you get to wear interesting badges and do rituals? Are you having fun?

I thought to assuage this Masonic-sized hole in my heart by getting myself a Masonic tie tack, and sticking it on my winter coat. But why advertise for a club that wouldn't have me? So I thought that instead of going forward, I'll go back (my unfortunate strategy for everything) and return (the eternal return) to early childhood and the first organization I ever joined: The Brownies. I thought I'd clap a vintage Brownie pin on my lapel and leave it at that. After all, I've got a Girl Scouts handkerchief that I love.

I had high hopes when I joined the Brownies as a wee lass. I had a thrifted vintage 1950's Brownie's uniform with a brown beanie that I adored. I thought I'd make new friends and learn new skills. The meetings of our troop, however, where not as fun as I had hoped. They took place in a classroom after school, and involved mass production of macrame for hanging plants. Our den mother ran a plant store and we were essentially her sweat shop to make the macrame sold in her store. Our one nature walk was a long schlep down a major urban thoroughfare to a McDonald's. Sadly, I am not exaggerating.

Ironically, my father was a co-architect of this dysfunctional Brownie troop, as he was one of the den mothers, something he was always proud of. He felt that his role as a den mother was to add discipline. He did this by sitting in the back of the classroom and yelling at us if we got too loud. Though we were hardly doing rowdy or extreme macrame, he felt that Plant-Store Den Mother could not control us on her own. (Which is of course a rather sexist assumption. Plant-Store Den Mother could break our little spirits all on her own.) My father's other main task was to stand outside smoking Pall Malls. There was talk of a camping trip that would literally take place on the school's playground, but that was nixed for some reason. No hiking, no campfires, I don't think we even did any group singing. Just knot tying. Lots of knot tying. Just 1970s sweat shop Brownies. I don't remember how it happened, but apparently I called Plant-Store Den Mother a fascist and hung up my beanie for good. I took my father with me, so she could exploit the other Brownies on her own.

But here is a lovely tea towel showing some happy vintage Brownies apparently worshipping an owl (or maybe a mushroom). They have been taught to identify mythical creatures in the forest, such as sprites and kelpies. It is available here on ebay.

Funny, I remember that one of the macrame pieces I made was an owl. Did the Brownie sweat shop ruin me forever for group membership?

2011-08-09T09:25:00.000-07:00

Experience the Psychedelic Exuberance of Hamilton 8 of Dallas.

Here I stand, like a barker calling you into the side show tent of wonder. Hamilton 8 of Dallas is the creator of mind-bending blouses, improbable landscapes where you could lose your reason. Just take a gander at this brain-scrambling beauty.

On the front, just a couple of Victorian cyclists, placed in frames that evoke cinematic film strips. But on the back the riot of autumnal foliage threatens to overwhelm them. How I love the grey is interspersed in the orange, creating depth. And how I adore the lamp, glowing red from within and the neglected park bench. Painterly, realistic draughtsmanship combined with riotous color and surreal juxtapositions, this shirt has them all.

You can get it here if you are dreaming of October bike rides and handlebar moustaches. It is available from Plattermatter, who has a number of other interesting things, especially Hamilton 8 of Dallas blouses.

I have a Hamilton 8, a navy on white polyester shirt with light houses, seagulls and a wharf full of sailboats. Realistic and surreal at the same time. I don't even have to check the label to spot a Hamilton 8.

Here is another from Plattermatter.

This delftware lovely is available here.

Or how about the flowery musicality of this holiday print, available here from Call Me Chula.

I have not yet been able to find any information about the company. Who created these scenic blouses? Both etsy sellers featured here appear to be actually located in Texas. Perhaps the blouses originated from an actual store in Dallas? So far all my searching has turned up nothing. Do you know? Do you have one of these blouses?

2011-08-05T13:18:00.000-07:00

Wired has an interesting article about the possibly pernicious ubiquity of anonymous reviewers. Hilariously, all I could think of was to review the article, though as author Chris Collin points out, I could also like it on Facebook or tweet about it. Every one's a critic, and we are all just generating content. We can even review reviews, for crying out loud. Here I am, generating content. But what is doing to us to be in this kind of echo chamber full-time?

As Mr. Colin notes, "There’s an essential freedom in being alone with one’s thoughts, oblivious to and unpolluted by anyone else’s.", but in what he dubs the "Yelpification of the universe" that luxury is harder to find.

I must admit a guilty pleasure in reading reviews. Especially as the majority of people who review anything (be it a hairbrush, a taqueria, or a gastroenterologist) have an overwhelmingly positive or intensely negative experience. Few write paragraph after paragraph about how something was more or less okay. Only the highs and lows take the time to comment. The review world is skewed towards the extremes and I figure that reality lies somewhere between the person who deems something a salvation and another who sees it as a waste of time.

But Yelp is a subset of its own. Zagat's has the anonymity of the eerily unattributed quotation marks. (Who said it was "an affordable bistro"? Zagat isn't telling.) I began consulting Yelp back in 2007 when it was somewhat less trafficked and a bit more local. There was a some self-congratulatory rhetoric about being an insider which was tiresome, but it didn't have the unpalatable smugness of boors that permeates it now. Perhaps it's the demographics of my city that have changed and continue to change. I don't know what happened, but now whenever I scroll down for a review or two of a local eatery or podiatrist, I am absolutely floored by the entitlement espoused by young persons, some of whom by their own admission, hail from more placid regions of the nation and have only been in town a short while. I have read reviews that amount to little more than assassinations of character against poor defenseless sandwich shops because they felt their waiter was a bit distracted. People who would give their lunch a negative star rating if possible. People so appalled and dismayed by the quality of a cup of coffee that they resort to moments of ALL CAPS. These are the Yelp Princesses. Men and women with such high standards that nothing could please them. The music is too loud, too soft, not the kind they liked. The decor too trendy, not trendy enough, too brightly lit, too recently rennovated, not renovated enough. The waitstaff is too elusive, or has bad vibes. You get the idea. Nothing will suit these goldilocksing Yelp Princesses.

But my favorite complaint is that the food is just not authentic enough. Not authentic enough, cry the Yelp Princesses, who freely admit that they've never visited the culinary region in question. Perhaps they've never even met a person from the country in question, except maybe the distracted waiter. (A local Egyptian eatery was deemed inauthentic by Yelp Princesses, not to mention dirty. Akhenaten confirmed that the food was authentic, and the dirt doubly so.) Whenever I read a particularly negative review, I enjoy checking other reviews by the same person to see what else they hate. This is how I discovered that there are lots of folks out there who prefer the predictability of chain restaurants to the crap shoot of a mom- and-pop. There are Yelp Princesses out there who are terrified of every little thing. A Yelp Princess wrote in horror about people hawking cans of beer and bottled water out of garbage bags filled with ice up and down Brighton Beach. The Yelp Princess wrote disparagingly, "it was so ghetto". I just thought, great, now I don't have to bring water. Plus that is a very tough job hauling the bags around on the hot sand, and has this particular Yelp Princess ever even been near a "ghetto"? Sometimes I can be sure of liking something if the Yelp Princesses hate it.

Sometimes a customer review can do a lot of damage to a small business. A small business whose greatest crime was a waitress who forgot to bring an extra soda and the Yelp Princess had to ask twice. I've seen businesses respond and attempt to mollify customers, even when the customers have unreasonable demands. I've got news for you, Yelp Princesses, every lunch you eat will not be a culinary masterpiece. Expensive and popular eateries have off-nights. Spending 4 days at a resort in Cancun does not make you an expert in Mexican food. Life, in short, is full of little disappointments. And even if you go to the right schools and the right restaurants, you can still have a crapola of an evening. And that's all it is: an evening. Or a meal, a day at the beach. If these are the greatest injustices you suffer, Yelp Princess, you should really think about how your privilege has shielded you from the realities of life.

And I a bit harsh on recent emigres to NYC? Yes. Absolutely. No one comes here for the relaxing environment. It is a hard adjustment to make. The standard of living is lower than the rest of the country. But don't take your culture shock out on small businesses.

I know I'm an old crank having a George Carlin moment. There are many young people out there who are perfectly lovely. And there are adventurous souls who come to town to make their way in the world and I wish them luck. There are young people, and people of all ages in fact, who are committed to social justice, renewable resources. People who have devoted themselves to better and grander things than I, certainly. Perhaps, dare I admit it, complaining about Yelp Princesses smacks of Yelp Princessness itself. In a culture where every one's a critic, don't we all just sound like self-important jerks? Perhaps this constant parading of our consumer opinions is inherently vulgar. The need to comment, to have the last word, to be an insider, to determine what is authentic, is perhaps the magic land in which we all become insufferable.

2011-07-12T13:56:00.000-07:00

Persian print extravaganza. Gorgeous polyester photo print of Persian minature paintings seemlessly arranged to evoke a total landscape by Liberty House. Get it here from MomsVintage and wear it with everything. Absolutely everything. This is a medium and an absolute steal at $30.

2011-07-12T13:08:00.000-07:00

Perversely, nothing can put a dent in my desire for photo prints. This eye-popping tropical fish photo print skirt is a small and is available here from ebayer Aptwithaview AKA Vogue Runway. I'm giving out trade secrets here, as this is an ebayer who often has photo prints, and has been my source for number of spectacular examples over the years.

Just look at this beauty. It has all the earmarks of what makes photo prints so magical. A bunch of photos, including reproductions of paintings, all thematically related are grouped together in a vertiginous manner, some upside down, but all in the same color scheme. I love the mark of the scissors. You can really see how postcards and illustrations were cut-out and placed in gravity defying conjunctions. I love how the seams show between the images. I love the seagulls winging through. There is no attempt at verisimilitude, we have gone to the land of make believe. This print is virgin polyestah fabric available here from Fifisfinds and is a mere $25. All 57 x 74 inches of it, maybe you could make an evening gown out of it. Would you do that? It would be spectacular on you.

So enthrall to the photo print am I, that I want to create my own. Of course this has involved some additional schooling, something I said I would never do. But that is where my unholy lust has taken me. Surely you goslings know of Spoonflower, which will print fabric you create and upload. I know I need a three-piece suit made from this Nebula print. There are more brilliant photo prints available from the same designer, listed as Corseceng, or alternatively, Jonathan Bowen. Beautiful prints with views from the Hubble telescope, and aerial photos. I can't think of anything that could make one look more goddess-like. And if it hasn't started already, there will be a major run on photo prints in the coming seasons. It's the next logical step for printed clothing to take. And that's the progression that happened in the 70s.

Now if I could only learn to sew. Sigh.

2011-07-07T14:30:00.000-07:00

Quill pens, ink wells and over-seeing owls. Pieces of music and pipes also adorn this stunning library print with exquisite detail and bright colors. Wouldn't this make a lovely dress? You can get it here, for sale by Ownbackyard on Etsy. I also love the styling on this room and the ceramic cat is a priceless touch.

Also, a library print apron in silk with Charles Dickens' Old Curiousity Shop.

This is too pretty to wear as an apron. Treasure Island, Little Women and The Songs of Sappho are a nice touch as well. But it is Thomas Mann's Joseph in Egypt that really sends me. It is available here from Playback.

2011-07-07T08:25:00.000-07:00

Do you call it a Library Print, a Bookshelf Pattern, or the Bookworm's Delight? The lack of established labeling conventions for these prints make searching for them difficult. I'd like to agree on library print.

This greyscale library print on rayon is the loveliest I have seen in quite some time. A library print must have other elements besides book spines and here we have some very active-looking statuettes (art deco ladies in crash helmets with arms akimbo)and some vases, but the real tour de force comes from the addition of the electric fan. The vintage radio too is a great touch, though more muted, its horizontal lines mirroring the stacking of books. But the fan in all its circularity is what elevates this print to greatness.

This terrific blouse is available for sale here, from Adrian Company Vintage, who has posted these pictures on Etsy. While the print is spectacular, and it appears to be a very wearable medium, over-sized 80's blouses can be difficult to wear. I'd pair it with a rather short skirt to elongate the silhouette widened by the boxy top. I'd be tempted to keep the rest of the ensemble greyscale as well.

I have long been looking for a library print book bag. This is a print that has been made into various bags.

This one was part of last summer's collection by WoodWood in Denmark. I like the placement of the print on this bag and how the vertical books move down along the body on the strap, but that style of bag is difficult for a short woman to wear (the long strap would leave the bag itself somewhere around my knees). The same print was also available last summer in a tote bag at the Morgan Library gift shop, which I keenly regret not snapping up when I had the chance. The closest I've been able to find in this photoprint of some book spines from Thomas Jefferson's Library.

While this bag is reasonably priced and available through the History Channel, of all places,and looks bookishly practical, nonetheless I don't believe in wearing novelty prints that one cannot vouch for or discuss coherently. U.S. History routinely fails to interest me and I often horrify the young Akhenaten with the gaps in my knowledge. Akhenaten, my young Egyptian paramour, can name more U.S. Presidents (and in chronological order) than I can. In order to comply with my own rule about standing by one's novelty prints, I'd have to visit the Library of Congress (the originator of this tote) and read a book or two about Thomas Jefferson just to keep from embarassing myself. And what if I am cornered on the subway by a Constitution enthusiast? For the love of Maude, isn't all of that a heavy trip to put on a tote bag?

Then I got to thinking about U.S. Presidential Libraries. Do they all have gift shops? Do they all put out tote bags? Have I hit a vein of Library Print items? Is this the motherlode?

Sadly, no. I was really hoping for a Nixon Presidential Memorial and Library Watergate Commerative tote bag, but there is no such animal. I would have settled for a Nixon in China tote, but Tricky Dick's library is one of the few without a gift shop. Most of the Presidential libraries are administered by NARA, National Archives and Records Administration. The gift shops are fairly standardized with pens and caps with the particular president's signature or a famous quote, a section for books by and about the president, and a kids section with model Airforce1 planes and tiny t-shirts that say "Future President". Perhaps a section with costume jewelry reproductions of pieces worn by the first lady. The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library and Museum has the New Deal Store where you can pick up mugs commemorating 75 years of Social Security. There are also busts and sculptures of both FDR and Eleanor. But my favorite so far would have to be a 6 inch statue of FDR as the Sphinx. Apparently based on a caricature of FDR it must be seen to be believed.

2011-07-03T19:40:00.000-07:00

Angel, Angel, Down We Go (also released as Cult of the Damned) is a marvelously psychedelic film. It is also unabashedly campy and clearly made by people who were hoping they could get those crazy hippies into the movie theater doing some weird stuff. It comes complete with dissociative episodes expressed in painterly collages by Shirley Kaplan and flatly narrated by folk singer and songwriter Holly Near. Ms. Near plays the role of Tara Nicole Steele, an unhappy debutante (also known as "The Fat Girl") who takes up with cultish band of sky-diving rock stars. Jennifer Jones plays Tara Nicole's mother, Astrid, a status-obsessed harpy who is also constantly referred to as "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World". And Ms. Jones does look absolutely gorgeous at 50 years young wearing nothing beside a bed sheet, or evening gowns designed to look like she's wearing nothing but a bed sheet casually tied at her bosom. There are scenes of hilarious cruelty between Astrid and her billionaire Airline tycoon husband, who prefers the company of naked young men.

Oddly enough, the film pre-dates the story of the Manson Family, which broke soon after the 1969 release. Oh, and it's a musical. Jordan Christopher, who plays the cult's leader, improbably named Bogart Peter Stuyvesant, does all the singing as a Jim Morrison-type: shirtless and in leather pants. Mr. Christopher is really pulling out all the stops for this performance. Like he's not saving any energy to drive home afterwards. One of the tamer songs "The Fat Song", can be seen in high quality here. A faded version of the theatrical trailer, which really encapsulates everything you need can be seen here. But sadly for Mr. Christopher, his character is so over the top that he reminded me of Dick Shawn's turn as L.S.D. or Lorenzo St. Dubois in the 1968 film The Producers. If you haven't seen Mr. Shawn's hilarious hippie parody watch it here, and do a little compare and contrast.

Roddy McDowell has the role of a cult member that was probably a real let-down after Planet of the Apes. But he does it as if it were Lear.

The whole thing can be found under its alternate title here. Should you watch this movie? No, you should not. Well, maybe just a little. The first 15 to 20 minutes are great. The party scene in particular is gorgeous. Ms. Near's slow-motion descent down the staircase to the sitar-inflected titled song is a highlight. I'd say it's great up through "The Fat Song" and then the whole thing gets bogged down in over-blown dialogue. There is a terrible scene in the middle of the film when Bogart Peter Stuyvesant meets Tara's parents and he talks Lorenzo St. Dubois-style nonsense for what seems like five hours. It is unbearable. The dialogue feels like it was originally written for a play, where it would make sense to have lots of expository dialogue about sky-diving. You'd need to create the scene with words because you can't sky-dive in the theater. But with the extreme visuals of the film it becomes, at the very least, de trop, and at full throttle, like nails on a chalk board painful. Someone needed to cut at least 1/3 of the dialogue.

Ms. Near does a terrific job. I loved the scene when she was trapped upside down on the ceiling while everyone else was sitting down below (mostly because I feel that way a lot). Ms. Near gives such a good-natured performance, game for anything and with laughter in her eyes. And she looks beautiful, the brocade robes and towering wigs really suit her. The film posits her as "The Fat Girl" but she isn't particularly big. If she does have any extra on her, it looks great. In fact, the other women just look weirdly emaciated around her.

Ms. Jones has some marvelously catty lines and plenty of meaty situations to explore. Many have bemoaned the appearance of a gen-u-ine Hollywood star in this sort of rubbish. But perhaps Ms. Jones merely knew the Bette Davis truth of the matter: that plum roles for women over 40 are best found in B movies.

But don't watch the whole thing. Really, you'll just be hurting yourself. Instead, check out Les Blank's terrific God Respects Us When We Work, But Loves Us When We Dance, an un-narrated documentary of the 1967 Love-In in Los Angeles on Easter Sunday. A beautiful day in the park with a lot of sweet souls doing their own thing. Each mediating, playing music, dancing, or even totally tripping out. There is lots of style inspiration here and the gentle editing almost makes you feel like you are there. A wonderful hypnotic quality permeates this film, along with a kindness, both to the participants and to you as you watch.

2011-06-22T13:43:00.000-07:00

My goodness, it has been a long time since I have posted anything. I'd like to say that I was busy doing something terribly worthwhile, like restoring medieval tapestries as part of an exhibition of women's textile art or bringing clean drinking water to remote villages. But alas, no. I was frittering away my time as usual:strumming a ukulele and watching old movies. I stayed away from the siren lure of the novelty print. Mostly, anyway. And yes, of course the young Akhenaten and I have been anxiously following the revolutions that blossomed (and continue) across the Middle East. But as so many have said so much about it, some better informed and some even more ill-informed than myself,I decided (quite reasonably) that journalists and people who are actually there are best equipped to analyze and describe what is going on.

I have been urged (by Ms. Kitty Penknife, among others) to blog about my plans for a Psychedelic Summer, as well as my adventures in seasonal themes so I thought I'd check in on my old blog. I was shocked (shocked!) to find that it has actually gotten some traffic, despite my long sabbatical. It can't all be from spambots, right? So, hi there. How are you? Thanks so much for stopping by. How have you been? What are you obsessed with these days? Do tell.

In the interest of curbing my continued novelty print addiction, I thought I'd focus more on good old-fashioned fun. What is fun, after all? I recently read Frances Burney's Evelina, a charming epistolary novel that I strongly endorse, whose modern editor noted that the word fun was, at that time (1778-ish), slang. Fun originally meant ridicule, as in to make fun of someone (which is a favorite pastime of some the novel's characters). But fun was just beginning to be used (and conceived of) in the current sense. The title character spends two seasons, one with her upper-crust relations, and one with her tacky downwardly-mobile relatives. But both sets are keen to find some fun and the reader is taken on a tour of late 18th Century London amusements, from the opera to displays of mechanized birds to public dances. Fun was a new idea, as were the libraries and public gardens and free displays of fireworks, all of which serve as backdrops for the novel's actions. Wearing a kicky new frock, seeing and being seen, then critiquing the event and its attendees seems to comprise fun for both sets of relatives, high and low. Not so different from writing Yelp reviews and posting photos of your delicious entree on Facebook, now is it? But I thought, fun has to have more to it than that? Perhaps? Is it possible to write about fun and even exhort others to have some fun without falling into the obvious traps? Probably not.

During the winter of 2011, I was devoted to all things Russian. A Russian Winter, complete with multiple snow days. Among other things I saw Battleship Potempkin on the big screen and got a lovely hand-painted woolen Russian folk shawl. I listened to a lot of Tchaikovsky and watched Ken Russell's wonderful film version of the composer's life The Music Lovers, which I recommend highly, though he does take liberties (but what wonderful liberties they are, do enjoy the 1812 Overture scene, watch it here right now, you owe it to yourself. Go on, I'll wait). I also saw Boris Godonov at the Met, which was marvelously full of deep Russian bass voices and the timbre of bells. And if you can watch the silent Russian film, Chess Fever, which is actually streaming on netflix, you are in for a real treat. If you need a good cry, watch The Thief.

I spent a lot of time at the Nicholas Roerich Museum, one of these little jewel box museums devoted to the work of a single artist. Mr. Roerich did the set design for Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, among other things. As a painter and a spiritualist, Mr. Roerich was obsessed with Mount Everest and other great heights, creating scads of paintings of mountain scenes. While I'm a valley girl myself (literally), one can really get a lofty feeling looking at such tremendous vistas.

I cooked up pot after pot of borscht. And I finally read Natasha's Dance, by Orlando Figes, which is a wonderful cultural history of Russia absolutely bubbling over with anecdotes. I learned a couple of Russian folk songs on the uke. I also ended up appearing in a short program for Russian television (which is a long story). Now that I've listed everything it doesn't quite seem Russian enough, does it? Ah well, I think I shall have another Russian-themed winter next year in which I hope to work in some ice-skating and chess lessons.

Summer 2011 is the Psychedelic Summer and it has just begun. I'm focusing on the late 60s, the moment where LSD met harpsichords and mimes in popular culture, but I'm open to some trippy mid-70s as well. I decided to start with Yoko Ono on the solstice at dawn.

Make Music New York set up Central Park for all comers to re-enact Yoko Ono's Secret Piece, originally created in Summer 1953, which proscribes being in the woods from 5am to 8am playing one note to the accompaniment of birds. Oddly enough, no one else wanted to get up before dawn to do this with me, so off I went in the dark. Though I did bring my least expensive camera (which I now regret, when will I ever see the park again in that morning light) and Akhenaten fretted a bit (though not enough to come with me). About 50 people turned up for the adventure. Most of them young people, and some visitors to NYC who planned to take in all the free music Make Music New York had scheduled for the day.

Arranging for people to get to the wooded areas of the park at dawn and providing all with green tea at the end sounded like a logistical nightmare, but it was expertly handled by one terrific young intern named Camden. Ms. Ono had given permission for her piece to be performed (though her people said she might show up, she did not) and the parks commission had issued a permit for us to be in the park at 5am, when it is technically closed. Make Music New York printed out maps of the park and we were free to position ourselves wherever we liked. It did feel creepy being in the park at that hour but we were not the only ones there. A man with an enormous beard was sloshing around in the Bethesda Fountain collecting the coins at the bottom. There were a few other career campers such as this gentleman milling about, all of whom seemed to be busy with their morning toilette. I soon lost sight of the other participants in the piece and felt rather reckless.

I didn't make it up to the North Woods, the densest and wildest part of the park, but instead parked myself under the Alice in Wonderland sculpture and played an A on my ukulele, occasionally alternating with an A on the recorder. (Why an A? Well, according to a very scholarly source (an episode of Seinfeld) composer Robert Schumann was afflicted with tinnitus and hearing an A note over and over in his head drove him mad.) But the best part of this project was actually listening to the birds. I never realized how complex and beautiful bird song really is. And how much they like to sing in the very early morning. I let them take the lead and just played a little back-up. And, while I am hesitant to anthropomorphize the birds who were just doing their thing, it seemed like they were improvising with me. A number of sparrows and starlings came right up to me and chirped for a while and we looked each other in the beady eyes.

As the sky began to lighten and the city woke up around the park, dog walkers and early morning exercisers began to make an appearance. The sound of the recorder made dogs want to climb into my lap with glee--not in terror as one would expect. And as even the patient Akhenaten had banned all recorder playing in his presence, it was great to get some positive feedback. After the peace and quiet of dawn, it started to seem a bit crowded. The minimalism of the one-note private concert was refreshing, as was the feeling of having the park mostly to myself.

I met some lovely people sipping green tea afterwards. A sweet and energetic woman had come in from Philly with her teen-age daughter and a Tibetan singing bowl tuned to A#. A young bartender, who said she headed over after work, and spent most of her time just listening to the birds. Everyone I spoke with had an uplifting experience.

A greater perusal of Yoko Ono's Grapefruit was in order. I've always been a big fan of Ms. Ono, and the idea of having a dance festival in your head.

Hope you are out there having fun, gosling.

2010-11-17T12:38:00.000-08:00

What to wear to the Corduroy Appreciation Club's next bash? Yes, one might contemplate more weighty contemporary issues, but I prefer problems that I can actually solve. Either of these vests would be just the thing. The first is small and boasts an adorable bird. It is available on etsy from Wearewere, who has other delightful things as well. The second one, insulated and with the charming applique of the skier, (oh how I love winter novelty) can be found here on ebay. But kiddos you need two or more items of Corduroy to hang out with the appreciators.

The Club itself sells artesanal corduroy ties. Membership brings you mysterious buttons showing a whale, whale being a homonym for wale which denotes the raised part of the corduroy fabric. Founder Miles Rohan modeled the club after the Elks and Shriners. Since none of the old males-only secret societies will have me, perhaps the Corduroy Appreciation Club will be more welcoming. Though it must be said that corduory is definitely something I would have much more of if I were male. It is a hearty fabric more often used in men's clothing. And it does seem to convey woodsy and enduring qualities. I hope to score a corduroy bow tie, and a 70s pinafore in corduroy.

The New Yorker wrote about the club back in 2005. Mr. Rohan went about ronin-style, chasing down dapper corduroy wearers to give them his card. By his own admission, the first ventures were failures. It wasn't until his girlfriend and now wife Jordana Furcht, a graphic designer, created snappier-looking cards and the whale logo, that the club took off. Ms. Furcht's designs are compelling. I can see how they made all the difference.

The Corduroy Appreciation Club hosts photogenic events (where it appears to be raining men) on days that are numerologically linked to warp and weft of corduroy's pattern. The last one was on 11/11/10. Of course the motherlode of corduroy dates looms about a year away on 11/11/11. So you've even got time to start a chapter in your home town, should it be sadly lacking in corduroy festivities.

I own only one corduroy item: A short taupe-colored jacket with a notched collar. It was just something my sister Kismet had lying around one cold afternoon when I was under-dressed. Never did I imagine that it would become a high rotation item and remain so for about 5 years. Yes, my wardrobe is so profoundly lacking in basics that the introduction of any practical item comes like a revelation.

The Corduroy Appreciation Club, however, has a profound distaste for velvet, which seems rather macho to me; men's clothing being as lacking in velvet as women's clothing is in corduroy. Though perhaps it is just the technique of creating cohesion with a common enemy. In what was probably a staged stunt at the last meeting, a velvet-clad interloper was ejected. The recent Corduroy Appreciation Club had sponsorship from Cotton, a hefty player if ever there was. There is a small chance that what looks like a secret society could become an extended cotton commercial, like those with Zooey Deschanel who is entirely too adorable for my taste (yes, I know I'm just jealous). See the corporate logo here.

Do I think the corduroy appeciatators are mere corporate shills. Not really. We are all corporate shills; some of us just don't realize it. There is no exit from consumer society. Create your own subculture all you like. If it attracts enough attention its trappings will soon be mass produced and, entirely divorced from context, sold in national chain stores. If you don't believe me, check out The Rebel Sell by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter.

Of course the fabric closest to my heart at all times is polyester, but I don't think I could start a semi-secret society based on the enjoyment of it. Not even with the help of a crack graphic designer. Sad but true. Even people who wear polyester gear have a profound distaste for it. But if I could round up other polyester enthusiasts, I'd get Du Pont Chemical as my evil sponsor for sure. And I'd made Zooey Deschanelesque commercials where I'd cavort about wearing the miracle of science.

2010-11-15T09:40:00.000-08:00

Forsooth, a delectable Elizabethan tapestry dress, available from Meat Market Vintage Clothing on ebay.

I have never seen a print like this before. Never in all my days. The colors all muted, pensive, as if in a minor key. Olive abstract leaves form a background with touches of fawn and here and there a coral flower. I love the heavily-lidded eyes of the bearded courtiers, their ruffs and expressive hands. I also love the profile of our one-eyed redheaded lady and her haughty high forehead. But there are other parts of this repeat print that I wish had been focal points for the photos: the lovely lady with the lute (seen in the side view), the melancholy brunette with the gold ruff,the gentleman with the brown velvet sleeves. And how I love the empty black chairs, seemingly of wrought iron, left unoccupied in the garden. The details on the clothing of each of the figures is stunning, precise and yet full of expressionistic brushwork.

Sadly this one is not my size, or I'd snap it up and wear it to baroque recorder concerts. For winter I'd probably want to wear a chocolate-brown velvet shirt with long puffy sleeves underneath (to mirror those on one of the figures). This sheath would also look lovely with tights and over-the-knee boots. I don't think I'd be able to resist wrangling my hair into a snood either. Please get this dress. It would look darling on you, and you would show restraint. Over-the-knee boots or a snood, but not both, right? I always succumb to the cornucopia of details.

I had hoped to amass an absolute horde of novelty prints with lutes on them, or other quaint musical instruments, but the progress has been painfully slow.

2010-09-16T13:58:00.000-07:00

Lynn Yaeger, chez elle, delighting in her eBay finds.

The glorious Ms. Yaeger will be interviewing collectors of obscure antiquarian stuffs in the weeks to come. But this article shows her own growing collection of becassine dolls, reindeer sweaters, and Victorian baby pins. More photos can be found here, in what is apparently an on-line magazine for ebay.

More Lynn Yaeger goodness can be found here, in an article by Meredith Barnett.

I love the reindeer sweaters. Doll-like and practical at the same time. And she makes that mink work too. I love how elements from different eras and sources are all pulled into her orbit and rendered unmistakably 20s, cartoonish and childlike. It's as if that's just the way gravity works on her planet.

The Inside Source evidently has the eBay finds and obsessions of famous people as well. Padma Lakshmi, for one. And just when I finally kicked my eBay addiction. Of course during that time I was searching everyday for vintage novelty print dresses (particularly those with vegetables or nautical motifs on them), eye-scalding Hawaiian print dresses, children's handkerchiefs and Victorian mourning jewelry. I still regularly search for Vested Gentress, Waltah Clarke, Vera or Shaheen frocks just to prove I can walk away anytime I like. I do need a top hat, preferably Edwardian and silk. Now that Ms. Lakshmi has already bought herself one I won't have to worry about being outbid by her deep pockets. I could also always use another Shriner's fez.

What are you searching for?

2010-09-15T09:23:00.000-07:00

Take me to your leader, Anne Carlisle in Liquid Sky

To sound the depth of 80s inspiration, I recommend Liquid Sky. Though to be perfectly frank, the plot and the acting of this 1982 movie make watching it rough going at times. It's the sort of underground cult film that interested me more as a young'un, when my life maintained a veneer of bourgeois respectability. Now that life is quite seedy enough, I prefer to go to the opera. But despite these caveats, Liquid Sky has a beauty of its own that you must not miss.

Many images from Liquid Sky are permanently burned into my brain. The most famous one, of course, is the androgynous Anne Carlisle, who co-wrote the screenplay (or possibly wrote it entirely), in Bowie-esque face paint dancing with a preying mantis on her arm. Unfortunately this scene from the film is not available on youtube.

Set primarily in the perpetual twilight of Manhattan's nightclub Danceteria, Liquid Sky is populated with such thoroughly unpleasant people that no one really cares when their friends are vaporized by aliens right in front of them. The dialogue, such as it is, is delivered in affectless, dead-pan junkie-speak. But what Liquid Sky has going for it is low-budget spectacle. It is also a time capsule of early 80s counter-culture before New Wave was cleaned up and commercialized. Plus there is some nice use of heat aura photography and stop motion animation.

And the costumes, oh, the delight of the costumes. Puff skirts, portrait collars, pink and blue streaks in platinum hair, androgyny, over-sized mens wear, all paired with face paint that is equal parts Kabuki and clown. The film captures the playfulness and the aggression of it, where glam rock and punk commingled. There is also an unintentionally funny song, Me and My Rhythm Box, performed by Paula E. Sheppard.

The plot can be dismissed as risible, yet it has undercurrents of real William S. Burroughs-type Science Fiction as drugs, aliens, and violence are intertwined. Underground fashion model Margaret and her heroin dealer girlfriend Adrienne live in a neon-lit hovel filled with avant garde costumery. The smack is hidden behind something that looks like a blank template for a Japanese Noh mask. Aliens arrive in a tiny space craft and perch on the roof. The aliens are also after the heroin addicts as they thrive on the chemicals released by humans on the nod, until they figure out that vaporizing humans having orgasms is a better high. A whole series of terrible things happen to Margaret, who is used and exploited by everyone. But since she is unable to have an orgasm (sort of like the virginal final girl in horror movies), she finds that she can get the aliens to vaporize all those who have wronged her. And that's the short version without any spoilers, honestly.

Ms. Carlisle, who plays two characters (Margaret and in drag as Jimmy), carries this film on her back. Her performance is what makes the film watchable. Margaret is believably vulnerable (despite being about 2 feet taller than everyone else in the film) and Jimmy is petulantly slimy and churlishly real.

The soundtrack is pure early 80s electronica. Repetitive, mechanical and naive, it sounds like what a smacked out Phillip Glass might have composed for an orchestra of merry-go-rounds. More about the soundtrack here. It can really worm its way into your brain. (Full disclosure: I have this soundtrack on cassette tape somewhere. I used to think it was the perfect music for driving L.A. freeways.)

Enjoy the fashion show, goslings.

2010-09-13T09:57:00.000-07:00

Photo by Monasuevintage

This exquisite silk dress by Scaasi, boasts a three-tired ruffled peplum, shoulder pads and all-round 80's goodness. I love the irregularity of the polka dots, their organic shape and three dimensional illusion. These dots have a trompe l'oeil effect of depth and shine. And I adore the abundance of flounces. Polka dots always resist propriety with their abundance.

This dress is quite spendy, alas, though it would probably fit me. But perhaps you are feeling flush. And perhaps you are going to Seville and intend to wear it with matching polka-dotted heels and white flowers in your hair, so trot on over to Mona Sue Vintage. ¡Olé!

Dots were never my thing, I always opted for stripes. A whiff of the prison colony about a stripe, no doubt about it. Whereas the polka dot was reserved for the court jester. Or so I thought. But over the past year, polka-dots have won me over. Flamenco is definitely to blame. My style is usually influenced by whatever dance form I'm compulsively chasing. (When I was doing Bharata Natyam and Odissi, I seemed to find many occasions to wear salwar kameez or saris and accumulated some very beautiful shawls and bangles. The sarongs and Hawaiian prints come from the Hula and Tahitian dance obsessions, etc. ) Now I'm all about the flower in the hair, the full skirt, and polka dots (lunares). One of my current style icons is the great Lola Flores.

Here is an impressionist offering by Joaquin Sorolla, a detail from the painting El Baile (1914-15). This image was found at Mi Espacio Flamenco which has lots of beautiful paintings of flamencos, gitanos, dance and vistas of Spain. The site has audio as well,and I hope to spend more time there soon.

I couldn't resist this one either, also from Mi Espacio Flamenco:

This painting, Pastora Imperio (1922) is by Julio Romero de Torres. Here polka dots meet a patterned shawl. I love her severe glance and the arm band. If I could substitute a ukulele for that guitar, I could do this one.

For more flamenco inspiration, you can see some great images from old vinyl flamenco records sleeves here at Flamenco y Copla en Discos de Vinilo.

Some other lovely vintage flamenco images can be seen here at Dos Lunares, which promotes Roma and flamenco music and cultural events in Los Angeles.

Lunares literally means little moons, and the same word is used for beauty mark. Apparently, gypsies are known as the people of the moon, though how polka-dots became associated with dancing, especially Sevillanas, I don't know. Perhaps you do? Clearly there is some mysticism involved.

And finally, for your polka-dotting joy, here is a slide show on the history of polka dot fabric from a Northern-European and US perspective. In Medieval Europe, evidently, spots were originally associated with disease, and outcasts of all sorts. And this slide show notes that it was impossible to make fabric with a consistently spotted pattern until machine printing. Thankfully it concludes with the polka dot's greatest proponent, artist Yayoi Kusama.

Ms. Kusama, for whom the polka dot is a graphic representation of the vastness of the cosmos and the disintegration the artist feels (among other things) is truly the High Priestess of the Polka Dot. She's been covering every known surface with them since the mid-60s.

I became a big fan of Ms. Kusama a few years ago. Her total commitment to the dot as a portal of mystical or perhaps schizophrenic experiences. Ms. Kusama, who has had experiences of going into trances from an early age, currently lives in a mental hospital in Tokyo, but is still able to create her amazing works of art. I would also like to check out her novels.

2010-09-10T14:43:00.000-07:00

Photo from Hillbillyfilly

A lovely and unique Egyptian print skirt. Hieroglyphics and Egyptians, venerating and offering stylized gifts to what looks like Hathor holding someone's hand. The hieroglyphs themselves appear to be upside-down, but that is a minor quibble. I love the sketchy feeling of the drawings, that loose mid-century style illustration.

This would look adorable on you. It's got a 28 inch waist, and a 28 inch length, so it's too long for me. But perhaps you are taller, nu?

Happy New Year and l'shana tova. I hope 5771 is a good year.

2010-09-10T12:57:00.000-07:00

Are you in need of some fun? Some diversion? Gothamist has this slide show of candid looks from the streets of NYC in the summer of 1969. And those skirts are just as short as those worn today.

I recently started a project to read late 1960s self-help books, but only original editions salvaged from rubbish heaps. The ones whose pages are turning paper-bag brown and disintegrating. But this young lady is way ahead of me.

I don't know what kind music Yacht may be. Perhaps you know. The young Ms. Claire Evans, however, has a blog about old school science fiction paper backs, lovingly photographed and thoughtfully reviewed, that I have been enjoying. Ms. Evans possesses literary insight that goes beyond genre fiction, and is an unabashed feminist to boot.

She also pointed me to a blog of a Portland-based vintage shop that is truly psychedelic. Light on text and chock-a-block with images and film clips, Rad Summer is a movable feast of a lookbook. Plus it looks like they have some fun parties.

I must say that Portland, Oregon is shown in a very favorable light. But I am starting to cast about for a new city. New York has been over for quite some time, but as I do with all my relationships, I am prolonging this one to the bitter end. But I have put down roots here. Roots that are tangled up rusting pipes, sewers, friends and foes, rat traps. These are roots deeper than I am tall. Reading Vanishing New York daily reminds me of all that I loved and lost here. And nostaglia is a politically tainted place to sit, to say the least. But then again the fantasy of self re-invention and greener pastures is equally suspect.

2010-08-30T09:28:00.000-07:00

In a gloomy mood of late, I had been ruminating on life's many disappointments. But after checking out photographer Steven Hirsch's Courthouse Confessions, I remember that my problems are banal and rather vanilla in this rough-and-tumble town. Thankfully, nothing currently requires my appearance in court (pfui! pfui!). I'll take my bourgeois frustration with dead-end jobs and under-achievement over being locked up in the Tombs fighting for my shoes any day (pfui! pfui! pfui! kaynehora!).

Surprisingly, people are very chatty on their way to their court dates. Mr. Hirsch must be a sympathetic fellow, as people willingly open up about what they are going through. He transcribes what they said apparently without comment or editorial, as it says on the masthead, in their own words.

Most of the stories here are profoundly sad. Others have plenty of bravado and levity. Stories of being chased by over-weight, out-of-breath New York City cops, the rush of tagging the city for graffiti and street artists. Other stories are so confusing I wasn't sure who had done what to whom.

But many of the stories here show people who have a lot of problems and the court date is perhaps the least of them. Some glumly admit they made a bad decision. Most seem glad to have someone to listen to their side of the story; it is indeed a gift just to have someone to listen sometimes. Tragically, there are stories that demonstrate how the mental health system fails the people who need it most, like the gentle soul in the Superman costume who just wanted to save the sparrows. There is a lot of police harassment of street vendors, and use of excessive force. Many of these stories are great evidence for the utter uselessness of the war on drugs, and the prejudices of the whole system. Sadly, there are also random and horrible acts of violence. And after reading about how many people are carrying great big knives I will think twice about yelling at people on the subway for blocking the doors.

I have written a lot about what to wear in court. And while your lawyer might want you to show up in a suit, clearly it is sometimes better to come as you are.

Mr. Hirsch has another blog devoted to comings and goings at 100 Centre Street, the main court building, which handles high profile cases. Celebrity stalkers, scammers, mobsters and murderers who get their names in the paper. Looking at the photos there I wonder if weapons charges aren't used as publicity for Rap artists (is that what the kids call them today?). Mr. Hirsch also has some beautiful, yet unflattering photos at Street Creatures, and a blog devoted to street kids in Tompkins Square Park called Crustypunks.

2010-08-30T06:18:00.000-07:00

And so, as an experiment, here is an outfit post.

I could not resist this jungle print, complete with leopards, monkeys and giraffes. There are some bold birds flitting through here as well. The flowers are puffy like clouds and threaten to overwhelm even the carnivores who lurk in them. The puff sleeves and the neon orange peter pan collar with matching orange buttons were selling points as well. Plus it is impossible to lose me in a crowd with colors this bright.

2010-08-24T09:23:00.000-07:00

According to the New York Times, young women are unconsciously referencing a 1990's sitcom with the current trend for floral prints. Seinfeld character, Elaine Benes ,has been declared a style icon. I've always been a fan of the ankle socks and spectators look. It sure is practical for hoofing it around town. This photo is owned by NBC and shows Julia Louis-Dreyfus at the apex of the sitcom's popularity. Note the hair poof; these are making a comeback. But then again, once the New York Times notes a trend, that means it is already over.

And I certainly am not seeing any long skirts around town.

The article goes on to implicate Chloe Sevigny, whose recent resort collection for Opening Ceremony is said to reference these floral prints and tough shoes favored in the 90's sitcom. However she maintains that she is entirely innocent of the television show, and that she does not own a TV. That's plausible, I suppose.

I actually saw her once at the Guggenheim at the big, mind-blowing Louise Bourgeois retrospective a couple of years ago. There was a massive line, so I spent about 45 minutes trying not to stare at her. She is even prettier in person and very petite. She was wearing a lovely dress that I was staring at before I quite realized who she was. She in turn was staring at my lemon fruit print dress and we traded a little smile. And then I realized, hey, how fun is that? My lemon dress just got a nod from a famous trend-setter. Yay, lemon dress. (But perhaps it is sad that I still remember that?)

Ms. Sevigny appeared to be a very attentive and compassionate listener to the friend she was with. But perhaps being a big ol' star means listening to your friends and not complaining about your own personal life in public where some muckraking journalist (or nobody with a blog) can hear it and write about it. I shudder to think how my public behavior would stand up to that sort of scrutiny. Rarely do I see famous people, though this town is lousy with them. But when I do, I try to leave them alone, attempt to give them some privacy. (Did I violate her privacy by sharing this anecdote?)

photo by Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

Another one of these envy-inducing NYT articles with photo of someone's spacious sun-drenched apartment featured performance artist LuLu LoLo and her husband. They've even got a backyard with a miniature chapel. Ms. LoLo does an excellent job of wearing great things on her head. And I am very interested in seeing her performance work.

2010-08-23T09:07:00.000-07:00

Lynn Yeager (in the center), one of my style icons, gathered some of my other style icons, Suzanne Golden, Patricia Fox, Iris Apfel and Tziporah Salamon, for tea at the Carlyle and a discussion of evolution of their fashion sense. You can read her article here. Alas there are no more photos, as each of these ladies is a marvel of inspiration. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall. Sadly, this article is simply not long enough for me. I wanted more, more!

I want to know where these ladies find the best treasures. Who does alterations for them? What were their greatest fashion failures and how did they turn them into successes? And so much more.

Ms. Yeager has some interesting questions. She asks the group if there is a time when style failed them. She writes: "I confess that there have been rare occasions — a business meeting, say, or a funeral — when I’ve looked at my wardrobe and thought, Why, this is a clown’s closet! Did the others ever face a similar dilemma?"

Ah, indeed I have, Ms. Yeager, though I did not realize it. I have donned what I considered to be perfectly appropriate attire, only to be hounded by school children hoping to follow me to the circus. I have arrived at business meetings only to realize that metallic green harem pants were undermining my credibility. And in these cases I have watched people's faces pucker in disdain. Oh yes, I have. What to do if this should happen? Well, goslings, there is a tunnel out of this mess: dazzle them with what you are saying. Trot out the upper echelons of your vocabulary, make eye-contact, and pretend that you feel confident. Of course this only works if you really know what you are talking about (I also have to resist the urge to over-enunciate like Julie Andrews when my back is to the wall). But a few times I've been able to pull it out of the fire this way. And it can be exciting to watch someone change their opinion of you as you speak.

A workplace can deform one's sense of style to be sure. An oncologist can't really wear a sun dress, and you should never see your lawyer's feet.

Ms. Yeager has great advice on this issue. With her extreme, Weimar Republic broken-porcelain-doll looks, Ms. Yeager says that in order to look sane when she's gotta go somewhere and be a journalist, she always carries a very expensive designer bag. Bags aren't really my thing, so to keep from looking insane, I wear pearls. After all, a woman in pearls is at least trying to be respectable. She may fail, but at least she is trying.

As I was not invited to tea with these ladies (an oversight, surely) so I ask you:

1. Who are your style icons?
2. What would you ask them?

I'd love to hear your responses.

2010-08-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

No doubt you've seen it, goslings. New Dress A Day is the blog of Marisa Lynch, an amiable and energetic young woman who lives in Los Angeles and who has vowed to make something wearable from the sad-looking muu-muus and polyester secretary dresses that can be had for $1. And she plans to do this every day for a year. She has gotten some very far reaching press coverage today. While I am not thrilled that my favorite $1 Jet Rag parking lot sale was named-checked in the article (as I fear it being over-run), nonetheless Ms. Lynch is a hardworking and imaginative person whose efforts definitely warrant a look-see.

Ms. Lynch has impressive sewing skills , and her step-by-step photos of her sewing projects are very generous and informative. One can learn a lot here, and find inspiration. Ms. Lynch is tireless in her excavation of flawed frocks. She dyes dresses with bad stains, salvages trim, and turns sleeves into belts. At times she will edit a dress down to a blouse to wear with jeans, which is not really my style, but it is done and worn with aplomb.

Ms. Lynch is young, slim and photogenic with a soft, almost Pre-Raphaelite look to her. She can kinda wear anything and still look good. She smiles with genuine glee and makes no effort to look like a model, which makes her even more charming. I like that most of the completed outfit photos show her doing something worthwhile, like drinking lemonade or going to a concert at the Hollywood Bowl.

As a person who has salvaged many a cheap and damaged dress, I must say I've never gone as far as Ms. Lynch. I cannot make clothing, but I can perform surgery on an existing garment (though sadly the patient doesn't always survive). But I've rarely done much besides alterations, taking in a waist or shortening a hem. I have a much less invasive stance on what can happen to a dress. I might remove sleeves or add a collar, but a 70's dress clearly remains a 70's dress. Ms. Lynch tends to update a dress, bringing it into line with current fashion, which I feel somewhat conflicted about. But it must be pointed out that Ms. Lynch is working with Capitalism's detritus, the recently outmoded (that is not outmoded enough to be back in fashion),the big-shouldered 80's monstrosities and massive muu-muus. It's not like she is taking the shears to a rayon 40's evening gowns (Maude forbid!). Nonetheless, I tend to respect the integrity of the garment. But perhaps I should ask myself: does a polyester dress really have integrity? Is there a reason it needs to be preserved as it is? Isn't wearable the goal, and shouldn't form follow function? I am definitely inspired to go home and make some old dresses fit better.

What do you think? What would you do or not do to a dress? Which of Ms. Lynch's projects could inspire you?

While Ms. Lynch's enthusiasm is infectious, and her tutorials valuable, nonetheless I must point out that I am fatigued by people doing something everyday for a year. It sounds like a plea for a book deal to me. I will not lump Ms. Lynch in this pile (But No Impact Man, I'm looking at you). It is an interesting point that endurance performance art, like the work of Tehching Hseih and Linda Montano, has crept into popular culture this way. Why do something everyday? Why only do it for one year? Why not do it forever? Or at least as long as you feel like it. And on the days you don't feel like it, why not play a banjolele or just simply sleep in? But perhaps Ms. Lynch could use a book deal? Why not?

2010-08-18T09:33:00.000-07:00

Another lovely Flair of Miami Persian Print cotton dress. Available from Oldage on Etsy. I was sorely and painfully tempted to get this one myself. A truly spectacular print with a harpist, readers and blue tiles.

Go get it. It would look adorable on you.

2010-08-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

When I was young and naive, I had a French lover. I also had a very beautiful wasp-waisted full-skirted winter coat that really suited me. Both the man and the coat were very attractive, and we all looked great walking along those cobblestoned streets together. I spent a lovely December in Paris, going to museums, eating delicious pastries and catching pneumonia. When it was clear to me that I needed to see a doctor, I asked my Frenchman to come with me, especially as I was not sure of the proper idiomatic French expression for "collapsed lung". To this my handsome Frenchman said: "Non, non, tu vas toute seule comme une grande." Which means: "No, no, you're going all by yourself like a grown-up." And with that he strode off, leaving me in the middle of the Place Vendome.

Since then the men in my life have been much more helpful than this retrograde Frenchman (who was promptly and deservedly abandoned). But nonetheless, I've found that wherever life takes me, (be it to the police station to identify my mugger in a line-up, my father's funeral, small claims court or oral surgery)I'm going there alone. And after you've done all that stuff by yourself (the French Health Care system is terrific, by the way, and totally free)it's really not a big deal to take yourself on vacation.

I am consistently shocked when I meet adult persons who would not even consider going to a movie alone. Are they really afraid they will be drugged and kidnapped while watching the film (and found 6 days later in the Wicklow Mountains, up a sycamore tree)? Or are their lives filled with so much togetherness that they never have the opportunity to go anywhere on their own? Such persons are completely mysterious to me.

I do miss that coat. I think of it wistfully sometimes.

2010-07-20T08:07:00.000-07:00

Someone went to Wonderland and never came back. Just look at these frolicking playing cards on this gorgeous 1950s handkerchief, designed by Pat Prichard and available from Etsy seller Undoneecletic .

Gossiping, gesturing suit cards. Jousting playing cards astride wide-eyed chess horses. I love how the checkered board is suggested in the base of the chess horse on the left. And the expressions on the cards' faces as the 3 of Spades prepares to unseat the grimacing 3 of Hearts. An Alice in Wonderland scene is enacted by the cards that are painting the roses. And I just love the lute-playing heart suit card (4 of hearts?)with an outstretched pink leg. Everywhere is the feeling of movement, the angles of the limbs, the undulations of the little flags, the castle in the distance. The grey trees, the barest of outlines, create a landscape evoking Japanese brush painting. The use of pink as an accent really thrills. I love how this print takes the ideas of Lewis Carroll's creation and runs with them.

As much as I love this print, I can't have it. It's much too lovely to use. And handkerchiefs tend to get used if they are near me. Especially as the thermometer climbs. The heat turns me into character actor Jon Polito, who has appeared in so many films (notably 5 of the Coen Brothers' films)as a portly, pencil-moustached con man or private eye, mopping his sweaty brow with a handkerchief.

2010-07-09T15:07:00.000-07:00

I would love to waste time in this surfer dress. It's even got ukuleles on it, and a freewheeling character who plays uke and surfs. This frock even has pockets. It is adorable, but it is super small and rather spendy. But it is a very nice example of the style. I have not before seen a late 60s print with a Hawaiian patois theme.

It's got what I like to call a Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In kind of print, something that my wardrobe does not currently have. Laugh-In was a vaudeville style variety show on television, that box without a keyboard that people used to stare at, that ran from the late 60s to the early 70s. The show launched the careers of comediennes Goldie Hawn, Lily Tomlin, and Jo Anne Worley. Not to mention unleashing novelty act Tiny Tim. Any late 60s print with non-sequitor text makes me think of Goldie Hawn in a biniki, dancing between skits on Laugh-In, with counter-culture text and psychedelic flowers painted on her.

Goldie is looking marvelously svelte and fit,no? She and the other female cast members did not relish the bathing-suited go-go dancing aspects of their jobs, and who could blame them? The show's stars abandoned it as soon as they could and left the go-go dancing to newer cast members after the first season, and then farmed out the task to uncredited dancers for subsequent seasons.

I would prefer to dance in this marvelous dress, or perhaps an a-line paper dress, printed with "Fight the Power".

2010-07-09T14:51:00.000-07:00

Men's silk ties with library prints are easily enough found. Over-sized 80s shirts like these, and, at times, vests too can turn up. The first blouse, an Ellen Tracey with a beige background, and the second blouse, is a Pendleton. Unfortunately I am unable to read the spines of the books on either. I really want to know what kind of false library I am wearing. And I definitely want a copy of Don Quixote in there.

In the movie version of my life, I have a library print mini-dress that enables me to blend into an bibliophile environment. I am also an archeologist and a spy, because the film is a 60s spy musical. (Yes, that is an actual film genre, though there is only one film in it: Modesty Blaise starring Monica Vitti, which I recommend heartily. See it right away, the clothes and art direction are thrilling.)

So in the movie version of my life I have a friend who's a lobster. Her name is Dolores and she helps out with the spying. You know, she'll climb up on cafe tables with a microphone and play dead in a bed of lettuce to record a top secret discussion. She also invents new spy technology with her little lobster claws. I recently attempted to explain the movie version of my life to someone at work who looked at me with utter horror. When I said this was only one of my fantasy lives even more horror ensued.

What's so odd about a lobster friend? Poet and essayist Gerard de Nerval supposedly had one as a pet. He is quoted as having said at some point: "Why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog? ...or a cat, or a gazelle, or a lion, or any other animal that one chooses to take for a walk? I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures. They know the secrets of the sea, they don't bark, and they don't gnaw upon one's monadic privacy like dogs do. And Goethe had an aversion to dogs, and he wasn't mad."

Perhaps you can do something with these library print shirts, make them into sleeveless dresses or tunics perhaps. The Pendleton is an extra large and perhaps you could use the fabric from the sleeves to add some extra length, or for a matching scarf. You probably have sewing skills. Wear them in whatever fantasy world you wish.

2010-07-08T14:58:00.000-07:00

A bookish library print scarf in a gray color way features Don Quixote in Italian. What serendipity. Other books included are Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and Emile Zola's Nana , and a few cobwebs besides. It is available from SmartyPantalons.

While it's too warm to wear this now (NYC broke 100 degrees the other day--I'm still melted), library prints are exceedingly rare so I recommend snapping this one up. It is not cheap, but again, I almost never see library prints, and I am constantly on the look out for them. Constantly.

And in my exhaustive searches I found this other charming bookworm, who, just by reading will be transformed. This mug is available from Booloobird on etsy. I love the caterpillar's freckles and bent antennae.

Does anyone else remember this ad campaign to get kids reading? It's been many years since I've seen this poster. I saw it first in the lovely Macondo bookstore on 14th Street, which is sadly now long gone (and yes, Macondo is the name of the fictional village in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude). Si no leo me aburro is one of my mottoes. I would like to embroider it on everything. Tea towels, bedding. It says: If I don't read, I get bored.(aburro - burro, isn't that cute?)

2010-07-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

Ahoi, Sea Witch. She is a worthy vessel, clearly, with a curly-headed crew. I love the light blue sail that disrupts the red, navy and white paradigm. I love the little red flag that waves faintly from the back of the ship, and how the striped sail fills with the wind. I love how the top mast extends almost to the waist. But above all, the name of this boat is the Sea Witch. It just doesn't get better than that.

At first blush I thought this was an Alfred Shaheen print. He has a number of red white and blue nautical dresses and skirts, such as this one pictured below, available from Etsy seller Tractordog.

And another Shaheen print, this time a skirt. I saved the photo, but I don't think I have posted it previously. Unfortunately, I no longer have the name of the seller, as I always give people credit for their marvelous finds and photography, but these photos are from ages ago. So, I am breaking my own rules here and digging these out of my file for greater Shaheen appreciation.

I have a weakness for all things nautical. Last summer was officially my nautical summer. It involved boater hats, several actual boat rides and finally finishing Moby Dick, which turned out to be a rollicking read.

This summer it is all about Spain. Flamenco dancing, tapas and Don Quixote. Yes, Don Quixote. Again. I attempted it first back in 2008, and I didn't get very far, I made the mistake of getting bogged down in too much commentary. And sadly, my Spanish is not what it once was so I am reading slowly. I plan to dine at the El Quijote Restaurant to celebrate when I am done. The El Quijote on 23rd Street, festooned with images of the book's hero, is one of these New York time machines. Go through its doors and you emerge in the mid-1960s. Many of these untouched and unrenovated New York institutions are closing, so I worry that if I linger too long over my reading, El Quijote will no longer be around to see me prevail and serve me a lobster.

I've seen a number of windmill prints, usually of the Dutch variety, and I have a crypto Don Quixote print: red and white with smeary windmills, churches and a figure on horseback. I call it my Don Quixote dress, but I am taking liberties with the title.

Here is a real Don Quixote dress, and what looks like a Spanish souvenir print. I thought I had posted this one long ago, searching through my archives I couldn't find it. Again, I no longer have the name of the seller, as this was in my file from years ago. I do sometimes save pictures of dresses I like but couldn't buy (either they were too small, or I was outbid). It is a bad habit, perhaps, but I get a bang out of just looking at them. I thought I had written about the Don Quixote Dress before at great length, but alas, no. I wish I could link to its seller, as it is a delight. Never before and never again have I seen a Don Quixote print like this. Please enjoy.

2010-07-06T09:52:00.000-07:00

This stunning Persian print on cotton is available here. Bidding ends in 5 days, and it is a size medium. This ebay find was inspired by the many beautiful Persian-art influenced prints that Ms. Vintage Voyager has on her blog. And she has done the research to determine where the textile designers found their inspiration, which utterly delights me.

One of the many things to love about this print are the expressions on the faces. The courtiers who whisper behind the seated nobleman, the oud-player's bearded serenade. I love the upright pears that one of the women carries on a tray. I love that the blue sky with soaring birds is perfectly placed at the neckline. I am very curious as to what is on the back of this dress. The pattern moves into what appears to be a print of stylized trees on a goldenrod background along the sides, which help accentuate the waist, something a sack dress can always use.

I have only seen Persian minature inspired prints on cotton twice before. Once on ebay and once at the Fairfax flea market in Los Angeles, so I believe this is a rare one. But perhaps someone else has seen this before? I have a lot of Asian art on Polyester, as I am a sucker for photo prints and have started my very own Polyester Museum of Art. I've got a lovely Persian minature print tunic in an orange color way on Polyester, but it lacks the fine details that you see here. I have a Waltah Clarke Persian print on rayon though and that one is a show stopper. I love when Hawaiian dresses meet Middle Eastern and East Asian art, especially with the work of "Master Printer" Alfred Shaheen (though sadly his frocks are often cut too narrow in the hips for me). I've long threatened to photograph my own collection and post them here, and now that I've got a tripod and some lovely summer light, I better get to it.

2010-07-02T13:39:00.001-07:00

Be an explorer in your very own Captain Cook trousers. Oh, the places you'll go in these wide-leg, high-waisted, pants (about a smallish-medium) that include photo print images of Captain Cook's portrait, ships, sepia-toned hand-written documents (including lists of stuff like hard tack), and possibly an etching of the Captain meeting his demise in Hawai'i. This print does not hold back. There are large close-ups of compasses and sextants, breadfruit, hand-drawn maps, and paintings of supposed Pacific Islander revels. Bidding ends in mere hours so hop to it.

These pants would be fun to wear if you feel like you don't get out enough, or you want to start a Mutiny on the Bounty, or when you dream of the open seas. These pants might even be enough ocean for you. Enough to keep you from wandering the streets barely able to restrain yourself from knocking people's hats off like Ishmael at the beginning of Moby Dick. And this light polyester is versatile. You could wear these pants to work with a blue and white striped shirt t-shirt, for nautical overload. Or you would work the Polynesian feeling and pair them with a coconut shell bra, or a tapa cloth halter top for a night at your favorite Tiki bar. You could muster up an 18th century vibe by pairing them with a puffy, ruffled, white shirt, or perhaps a pale corset and powered wig. One of those trendy admiral style jackets with lots of buttons could keep it looking very British navy, and very uniform official for work. A pair of espidrilles, a bikini top and a bandana on your head would turn heads at the boat basin. Truly, these pants could be the backbone of a summer wardrobe. Why not yours?

Would'nt it be great if there was a functional compass on these pants somewhere. Maybe you could wear a compass as a necklace.

I would play ukulele on the docks in these. I'd wear them with a powdered wig to Return of Rococo party. I'd wear them to a sailing lesson on the Hudson River. Though honestly, I don't know what kind of response I'd get if I wore these to a Hawaiian national sovereignty meeting.

Goslings, just when I think I've seen it all, especially when it comes to photo prints on polyester, some beauty comes along and shakes up my world. This is the first time I've seen a photo print on polyester devoted to a single historical person.

I hope you are out there doing summery things this summer.

2010-07-01T18:48:00.000-07:00

It's back. Serendipitously enough, often when I find a novelty print I haven't seen before, another version of it pops up like an echo. Well, here is our ballet print on a polyester t-shirt open for bidding on ebay. As a shirt it lacks the drama of the dress, and feels muted somehow, less sky, less water. A dream only half recalled.

2010-07-01T18:44:00.000-07:00

Today is the great Ms. Karen Black's birthday.

I hope you enjoy this tribute. Many of my favorite Karen Black moments are here.
Airport 1975 was my first exposure to Ms. Black's oeuvre. When she says: "There's no one left to fly the plane", I remember thinking, that's the story of my life. And I love how the characters she has played, no matter how tough they are, are often in way over their heads. Ah, but perhaps I'm just projecting here.

Ms. Black is currently in a Henry Jaglom play that is running at the Edgemar in Santa Monica. If you are in Los Angeles--go see it. It's called "45 Minutes from Broadway" and deals with a Yiddish theater family now in living in the 'burbs and struggling to find acting work. Yiddish and Karen Black? Mr. Jaglom is clearly courting me as an audience member.

Ms. Black is kind enough to be my friend on Facebook. How fun is that?

The on-going Karen Black Film Festival is now showing: Firecracker. I haven't seen any of these more current films but am excited to see that Ms. Black has taken the Bette Davis path of finding the juiciest roles as villainesses in off-kilter films.

2010-06-13T08:23:00.000-07:00

The Karen Black Film Festival: Five Easy Pieces.

What seems like an outsider movie, is really about insiders. Co-written with it's star Jack Nickolson, the 1970 film marks the second collaboration between Nickolson and Rafelson. Their first was the Monkees movie Head, in which they did their best to destroy the Monkees wholesome image. Five Easy Pieces is a film immersed in pointless cruelty. Bobby Dupea, played by Nickolson, is a classical pianist on the run from his social class. He is slumming it, taking jobs on oil rigs, and hanging out with the locals who he reviles. He has particular contempt for his girlfriend, Rayette, played by Karen Black, misty-eyed (and possibly pregnant) in false eyelashes, willing to supply all the love in the relationship.

There are only two types of music in Five Easy Pieces, country and classical. The world too is divided into thems that got class and thems that ain't. Tammy Wynette plays in the home Bobby shares with Rayette, and Ms. Black sings a number of country songs a capella, showing a lovely voice that is later used to such effect in the film Nashville. Bobby can barely contain his hatred for her, and when he's not busy cheating on her (with Sally Struthers, for one, and she has a great monologue about the dimple in her chin), he spends his time insulting her or literally shoving her away. When compelled to visit his family, we discover that Bobby hates them too, but he's just a little more sophisticated about how he shows it.

Ooh, what an angry young man, this Bobby. He's so alienated (or something) always rebelling against something or other (society? practicing piano?) by being really mean to women. In a famous scene he even yells at a waitress and smashes some cups over the absurdity of ordering a chicken salad sandwich. How is some privileged white dude terrorizing the help supposed to be transgressive? Isn't that just what privileged white dudes do? Take out their aggression on the nearest person who can't (or won't) strike back? Now while a closer reading of this scene could posit the waitress character as an allegory of arbitrary rules, she's also a middle aged lady trying to do her job. (Not to mention that poor Rayette is a waitress as well, and it doesn't look like she has a lot of other career prospects.) Yet this scene is beloved, and there is much dudely identification with his anger. Perhaps it is the rage of the privileged over losing privilege?

Nickolson, to his credit, does manage to infuse this wholly repugnant character with some traces of slimy charisma. He is acting his foot off here. There is a bit of breathing room when the film becomes a road movie and picks up two soft butch hitch-hikers, played by Toni Basil (Hey, Mickey!)and Helena Kallianiotes. Ms. Kallianiotes has a hilarious monologue about garbage and the supposed cleanliness of Alaska. Karen Black is believably besotted, though her real triumph here is the scene where she visits his family. Her decent dress, stilted manners and attempts to restrain her accent show just how much this girl wants to make a good impression.

Sadly, as I often find with late 60's counter culture, the dudes get to have all the fun. Like Jack Kerouac, they can thumb a ride away from the mediocrity and total bummer of responsibility. They may be alienated, they may be critical of consumer society. They may be conscientious objectors to the rotten American dream, but women are left like Rayette at the end, with all the consequences.

2010-05-24T09:41:00.000-07:00

This dress is giving me Stendhal Syndrome. Ballerinas tie their toe shoes, or cavort through the clouds beneath the enormous orange roses. Swans linger on railroad tracks watched by huge women sheltered by archways. Daisies adorn the heads of heavily made up women and cities and moons cannot stop their dance. I'm sweating and I might lose consciousness in the presence of all this beauty.

What is so marvelous about this dress, and what makes it so unusual, is the use of collage within collage. Normally a photo print dress on polyester contains images stuck in their rectangles, placed together without much thought (sometimes even upside down). But here we have are beautiful collages in their own right, mixed with other unaltered photos. The fusion of swans, ballerinas, pensive ladies, and moons over a rocky yet modern city is absolutely doing me in.

I would want to waltz to the Blue Danube in this dress, but alas, it is too small. And as it is printed on acetate (rather than my good friend polyester) there is mostly likely no give. Can you wear a 25" waist? Go get it. Wear this dress to walk on clouds. To dream the impossible dream. I think I'll faint now.

2010-04-08T09:46:00.001-07:00

The Karen Black Film Festival, now playing: Day of the Locust and The Great Gatsby. Two films showing the 20's and 30's as they seemed in the 70's.

Day of the Locust , released in 1976, is a deeply disturbing film that feels about 20 minutes too long. But the film does an impressive job of evoking 1930's Hollywood, the cruelty of the film industry, and has some truly masterful performances by Karen Black, Burgess Meredith and Donald Southerland.

The story, relentlessly faithful to Nathaniel West's apocalyptic, misogynist 1939 novella, charts the disillusionment of college-educated East Coast transplant Todd Hackett (William Atherton) as he works as set designer on B movies during the depression. Beginning at a scruffy apartment complex, grandly named The San Bernadino Arms, Hackett rents the "Earthquake Suite" complete with a deep fissure in the wall. From this bungalow on the brink of Armageddon, Hackett works on a vast painting of Los Angeles being destroyed by fire, and meets other show biz hangers-on such as Abe Kusich (played by Billy Barty with foul-mouthed bravado), peroxide blonde film extra, Faye Greener (Karen Black) and her vaudevillian father Harry (portrayed with all the shabby grace of a true vaudevillian by Burgess Meredith).

Both Ms. Black and Mr. Meredith received academy Award nominations, and both of them bring real pain to the grotesque and stylized father-daughter dynamic. A scene in which Faye belts out "Jeepers Creepers" to torment her father, in particular, is marvelously executed. Both Faye and Harry are first and foremost performers who will take an audience wherever they can get one. Selling snake oil door to door, Harry does his entire vaudeville routine for any chump unlucky enough open their door. To the point where the snake oil is merely a pretext. When Faye turns in the doorway with the light behind her and says to Todd: "I could only ever let a rich man love me," you know that Faye has said this many times before, and probably practiced it in her bedroom, staring into her mirror surrounded with movie star photos clipped from newspapers. Both Ms. Black and Mr. Meredith do an excellent job of of presenting us with people for whom artificiality is the only genuine they've got.

Ms. Black disappears into the role Faye. And here we get into a mis-en-abyme, because Faye is also playing the role of Faye. I love the scene at the movies, with Faye watching herself on screen as an extra in an Arabian Nights type of picture. She mirrors herself, admires herself,critiques herself, presents what was edited out, and opens a window into into Faye's performative life. As with the opening sequence of the film which shows Faye as an extra in a 19th Century costume chewing gum. We watch her transform at the very last moment into a duchess when the camera focuses on her.

One of the many things I enjoy about Karen Black's oeuvre is that she never really plays an ingenue. Her characters are always weighted down with too many problems, and cast into a world far too cut-throat, to follow an ingenue's trajectory. Yet, they still contain within them an ingenue's soft-focus feelings which have no place in this world and can only seep out at the margins. To say that Faye is just a cold-hearted chiseler who uses the severely damaged Homer Simpson as her butter and egg man is true. But her only other option, presented quite matter-of factly, is prostitution. When Faye humiliates Homer in the night club scene, we see her treating him as she has always been treated. In fact, he's the only person, oddly enough, who doesn't exploit her. And when she explains this to Todd, Ms. Black shows us the softest part of the very tough Faye. Todd's violent rage against Faye is not because she's amoral (which she is), and not because he actually cares about her (because he doesn't). He's angry that she has deprived him of the pleasure of exploiting her himself. It is the rage of the privileged. He's just slumming in Hollywood, but this is the poisoned soil that everyone else is rooted in. I think Mr. Atherton does a good job, but his character was so repulsive I found it hard to watch.

Day of the Locust depicts a grotesque and violent world that I didn't particularly enjoy spending time in. We end with massive riots in Los Angeles, all sorts of casual violence and sadism in the streets. The only possible ending for a world this bleak. The performances are great and Ann Roth won a BAFTA for Best Costume and she richly deserves it. Donald Sutherland is amazing as Homer Simpson, and like Ms. Black he totally disappears into the role. Geraldine Page does a star turn as a preacher in a marvelous scene that is also not to be missed. But overall the movie was too dark and cynical even for me,and I like Fassbinder. (Though in all frankness, I couldn't make it all the way through Berlin Alexanderplatz, so maybe I'm just lily-livered.) I thought They Shoot Horses Don't They? (another 70's take on the 30's) was more uplifting.

Whatever you do, do not watch The Great Gatsby. There are some terrific costumes, and Theoni V. Aldredge deserved that Oscar for Best Costume Design, but the only really good thing in this movie is Karen Black, as Myrtle. She's just not in it enough for you to slog all the way through it. It runs at a bloated 2 and a half hours long, it just feels like 12 hours. Save some time and watch her clips on youtube. Ms. Black has a terrific monologue where she describes falling for this lout of a rich guy. The camera pulls in for a claustrophobic close-up of her sweaty face and she delivers Masterpiece Theater. All of her longings and a lifetime of mistreatment are compressed into the way she says "patent-leather shoes." (You can watch it here, as part of a medley of scenes from great Karen Black films.) Ms. Black won a Golden Globe for her performance and this film is only watchable when she is in it.

I've seen mannequins in department store windows with more personality than was shown by Robert Redford in this movie. In contrast, Mia Farrow does a great job as Daisy. That is to say that she plays the unbearable Daisy just as she is written: vain, shallow, narcissistic, entitled. The kind of person who sucks all the air out of a room. And there is a stupid scene where Gatsby throws all of his Easter Egg-colored shirts into the air. There is a horrible narrator-as-neighbor contrivance, there are soft focus flash backs, badly edited party sequences: all terrible.

The fault lies with the source material. The Great Gatsby is one lousy book. I don't know why it remains on reading lists for U.S. high school students. The book has that same stilted neighbor-as-narrator device. It has the insufferable egotist Daisy who we are supposed to find charming. Gatsby is a cardboard cut-out, a haircut masquerading as a person. It romanticizes status, conspicuous consumption, big ostentatious houses. Not to mention a hot summer where a rich ditz commits vehicular manslaughter, and her racist husband manipulates a gas station attendant into committing murder. The social commentary consists of pointing out that rich people can be mean, and even kill you if they feel like it (well, duh), but it kinda loves them for it.

And after two people are dead, all the neighbor-narrator can say is that Daisy and Tom are "careless." Or more specifically, since it is also said in the film: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness..."

Careless means you neglected to RSVP. Careless means losing your gloves on the bus, whereas vehicular homicide, in many states last I checked, is a felony.

There has been considerable recent scholarship claiming that Zelda Fitzgerald authored much of F. Scott's output. Or, at the very least, that he plagiarized her diaries to get the meat of his text. Does that exonerate him or damn her?

2010-04-07T19:58:00.000-07:00

The Karen Black Film Festival continues. At last. It was on hiatus for some time, but since it is taking place in my apartment, it was re-scheduled for my convenience.

I just watched Family Plot, Alfred Hitchcock's last movie, made in 1976, when he was 76. It has a risible, inconsistent plot that veers from thriller to slapstick, sometimes within the same scene. Two sets of grifters intersect in landscape that is not quite Los Angeles and but not really San Francisco either. In fact, locations from both cities were used to create a dreamy placelessness. The film is beautifully shot, adding to the oneiric quality. John Williams' score leans heavily on the harpsichord, giving it a touch of whimsy and mid-70s cache. As you well know, I am a total sucker for a harpsichord. (Some of these tracks have been released on CD.)

We begin at a seance, in which a wealthy older woman is being blatantly manipulated by a psychic named Blanche, played by Barbara Harris. Blanche has been promised $10,000 if she can find the long lost nephew who is to inherit the old dame's millions. Thankfully Blanche has a cab-driving, out-of work actor boyfriend George (Bruce Dern) to do the leg work that her smokey-voiced spirit guide Henry (voiced by Blanche herself) cannot provide.

The two cross paths with Fran (Karen Black) and Arthur Adamson (William Devane) a kidnapper/jewel thief duo, who really don't seem to need the millions they are raking in in ransoms. Instead of fencing the jewels, they hang them from the chandelier in their entranceway, kept in plain view like The Purloined Letter. Devane has an uncanny resemblance to Jack Nicholson, at least in this film. He even has his sneering cadence of speech.

Ms. Black is especially gorgeous in this film. She is well served by the slick costumes designed by Edith Head. In the film's opening, she struts into a police station, toting a gun and wearing a blonde pageboy wig and sunglasses at night. Of course she's wearing a trench coat though it isn't raining as well. Without a word, she boards a helicopter to lead them to the kidnapped tycoon. After collecting an enormous diamond. It's such an exciting image that is has been repeated elsewhere, consciously or not. (I could swear that this opening scene was used as the entire premise for Brian DePalma's unwatchable 1980 Michael Caine vehicle Dressed to Kill.) Ms. Black's character is slowly shown to be the only one with a conscience. Though she doesn't have much to work with, she gives Fran warmth.

There are a couple of wonderful moments that are worth seeing, besides reveling in Ms. Black's charisma. There is a scene from the point of view of the windshield of a car with no brakes that has a nightmare's vividness and artificiality. And there is a kidnapping in a Cathedral that shares that same immediacy of a dream. Both seem bluntly Freudian. I think it's Hitchcock's ability to focus on the details: Fran's feet as she stands up in the Cathedral, the letter on blue paper, that give the film its intensity. Vertigo, this movie ain't. But in brief flashes, some of that feeling is there.

One of the oddest things is the casual vulgarity that pervades. (Kind of like Katherine Hepburn's last film where she curses.) Blanche and George have some ribald banter: what was hinted at in double entendre in previous Hitchcock films is said quite plainly. It seems to make the characters less neurotic, but not anymore well-adjusted. It felt tacked on, like trying to be 70's groovy, as did the slapstick scenes that were not at all funny.

There is a cameo for one of my favorite actresses, Katherine Helmond. I just adore her and have done a film festival for her in the past. I know that Soap is her magnum opus, but I love her in Brazil (Terry Gilliam seems to adore her as well). She appears here in a small role as the mechanic's wife, and brings all sorts of doomed gravitas in a simple look.

I thought I had written reviews of the two other films in the festival so far: Day of the Locust, and The Great Gatsby, but I now see that I have been remiss.

2010-02-10T14:32:00.000-08:00

Gotta love a snow day. Everyone runs home and the city is quiet.

I stumbled across this marvelous video of Peggy Moffitt in action, wearing Rudi Gernreich's amazing creations. Now I desperately want a helmet of dark hair to crown with a hood of peacock feathers. I want to dance like a giraffe in a giraffe print coat too!

For more inspired fashion choices, a friend of mine and her cohorts, were recently profiled in Time Out NY as Disco Shamans. There are some excellent ideas for 99 cent store style, and the awesome Sarah Van Buren makes an appearance as Gernreich-eque sad clown! And on roller skates, no less. Kudos to Sarah!

2010-02-03T08:25:00.000-08:00

Penguins eating ice cream. No really, penguins eating ice cream. You will not find this print again anywhere else. Ever. Could there be a more perfect winter novelty print?

Look at their happy little faces as they keep cool in a black and white cityscape here and there relieved by sepia tones, Neo-Classical buildings and faceless pedestrians. They appear to be standing on a subway grate to me (which would probably hurt their little webbed feet) but with my provincial eyes everything looks like New York. Perhaps you see something different? To me they appear to be wandering around the Wall Street area, with the colonnades of the Stock Exchange intruding, and the narrow cobblestone streets closed to automobiles. Only their feet, beaks and ice cream provide the technicolor highlights.

This amazing print is available on sale for a mere $10 from Shotgunvintage, where you can find a number of other fetching things.

Far out, indeed. Prints like these were conjured up by the casual psychedelia of a time when counter culture was transitioning into consumer lifestyle. But I wouldn't say that the designer needed to open the doors of perception to create this print. There is plenty of late 60s to early 70s stuff that mimes or references tripping, but much of it is just that, a reference. I always felt that way about that Monkees' movie, "Head". Jack Nicholson, one of the only credited writers may have been high, but one gets the sense that Bob Rafelson, the director, was not. He was just thinking: what would someone on acid do? But without the bother of the trip. After all, one has production deadlines and someone had to edit the film, and get these ice cream eating penguins printed on polyester.

Though I must say it's been a long time since I've seen "Head". Perhaps a winter psychedelic film festival is in order. Though I cannot interupt the juggernaut that is the Karen Black film festival, currently screening most nights in my apartment. I'm now reading Marianne Faithfull's autobiography and she has a keen eye for the places where counter culture and capitalism cozy up. Her reinvention as the grand dame of rock alone shows her savvy. (I really want to know how one becomes a grand dame of anything. I promise a full report if Ms. Faithfull delivers any trade secrets.)

So, it's your call. What do you think? Penguins on peyote? Or: a bunch of suits sitting around a board room saying: will this rock those hippies?

2010-01-20T13:40:00.000-08:00

This wavy ocean dress has already been snapped up by some lucky person. But it haunts me, so I had to keep a photo, and post and write a bit about it. The seller is Advintageous on etsy, and there are many other lovely things to see at the shop. Like this delicious powder blue turn table.

There are so many things to love about this dress. First is the very nice reworking of Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa, denuded of its tiny boats, reduced to its stronger lines and turned into a repeat print. Next, the use of color is truly fetching. Referencing the use of indigo dye in Japanese noren (fabric room dividers, often used in shop doorways), the royal blue and white really pop. Then there are the slits in the 3/4 sleeves and the long A-line skirt. Not to mention that I have an obsession with Hokusai in general, and this woodblock color print in particular. I can't think of what could have possibly kept me from buying this one, except perhaps the fact that I cannot fit another thing in my closet. (And that's after I removed about 2 huge trash bags worth of evening wear that must be sold.) Then there was the fact that it was a rather long dress in terms of inches of fabric, better to be enjoyed by a tall woman than cut down for my Liliputian height.

2009-12-23T10:02:00.000-08:00

Ah, goslings, again I've gotten behind on everything: periodicals, scandals, health care reform, correspondence of all kinds. I haven't even been shopping with my usual elan. Akhenaten, my young Egyptian lover, fears for my health, considering this current lassitude. If I had my druthers I'd curl up in a silken cocoon that was edible (tasting like rose-infused Turkish Delight, or mashed potatoes, depending on my mood) and there I'd snooze like a pupa, occasionally awakening to nibble, until spring. Or at this until that holiday is over. The one that starts with an X. I can never remember what it's called. I can summon sufficient enthusiasm only to practice the banjolele and watch silent Greta Garbo flicks. And of course my favorite winter sport which is drinking hot cocoa. Maude help me, I've already got the winter blahs already.

And my over stuffed closet has been put on a starvation diet, so I haven't been eyeing the racks much. I'm keeping myself off ebay, and staying away from my usual haunts. But as I am always on the lookout for Egyptian kitsch, and couldn't resist this Cleopatra Play Suit. It's an original uncut sack dress on sale by Etsy seller Stellaranae. And it is a rare one indeed. I positively salivated when I saw it. The text alone is priceless, and the muted colors create an ancient Egyptian tableaux. The truncated limerick absolutely slays me. I want it engraved in gold on my closet doors. Too often I face my enormous wardrobe and see nothing to wear and would like a queenly response such as this. One could say the text goes too far, that there is no need to proclaim that this is a Cleopatra PlaySuit, but it is precisely that self-reflexivity that makes it so charming. Now the mask and asps are genius. I imagine coming up with some way to turn the asps into a hand bag and the mask into sunglasses (magically, of course). I love that it is printed with a trompe l'oeil faïence collar, and that the pyramids appear to be sporting TV antennae. Come in closer to see that the sphinx on the bottom is having her coiffure tended to with an enormous can of hairspray. And just when I think I couldn't love it any more, it declares itself a play suit. Putty, I tell you, I am putty in the hands of this sack dress.

I would be sorely tempted to wear this. Not just on those "Nothing To Wear"/Comb Down My Hair days, but everyday and all the time. I'd like an army of these dresses, some lined so they could be worn with tights and a turtleneck underneath for winter. An extra few for pajamas, even. But in this case, truly, I think the best use of this uncut sack dress is to be framed. To be contemplated upon getting dressed every morning.

But wait, there's more: Stellaranae has another, just as charming.

I'd be an old bag in a sack in this one for sure. Go check this one out. More unabashedly Pop Art, I love the proscription: Trim with Ermine for Formal Wear. I would love to have a sack that could be dressed up for evening and down for day and even has instructions for doing so. I like how the text here is repetitive and slightly off, as if poorly translated. I like the broadsheet style, evocative of the printing of advertisements in the early 1900s. And I do think there are days when I should be wearing a frock that says: Handle With Care.

Again, I'd be tempted to cut and wear this one, but agree that it would be best preserved uncut and unworn.

I feel like there must have been others in a series. Cotton sack dresses for all moods and means. What could they have been? Other historical figures (Catherine de Medici? Boadicea? Lady Godiva? Judith beheading Holofernes? Are those too obvious? What would a Joan of Arc Play Suit look like? Would Catherine de Medici come with poison?) What other feelings could be channeled? Was there a Fight the Power dress?

I love the idea of a personal uniform. As with the work of artist Andrea Zittel. But I don't have one myself and often have to re-invent the wheel each morning. With the cold snap I've taken to wearing Whiplash Sweaters, you know, the sort of light colored turtle necks that look like neck braces, with loud shirts and boots.

What are you wearing these days? Is it your ideal uniform? What would your equivalent of the Cleopatra Play Suit be?

2009-11-16T15:12:00.000-08:00

You'll look positively virginal in this regal unicorn tapestry photo print maxi dress. Go get it here. It's a medium, though long enough for a tall lady. It looks to be in excellent condition, with a large collar and set in belt.

Wear it to the Cloisters to view unicorn tapestries, or sing madrigals. Wear it to strum a lute, embroidery endlessly, or make eyes at countertenors.

But wait. Hold your horses. This dress got more amazing the more I looked at it. This is a repeat print of The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries that are on display at the Musee de Cluny in Paris. You can see all of them here. I'd imagine all 6 of them are here, though I only see 4 of them clearly. These tapestries, so I just learned, are related to the senses. There's one entitled La Vue (Sight), shown here with the lady holding the mirror for the unicorn. There's one called L'OuÏe (Hearing), shown here with the Lady singing while another lady plays the organ. Le Gout (Taste) which I also see here, though not as clearly. And the final one, A mon seul desir (My Only Desire) which shows the lady divesting herself of her finery and become a nun. You can see the blue tent that is behind her in this tapestry clearly in the repeat print, since it is markedly different from the others in the series. I include it for you here so you can spot it in the print.

Having all 4 of these present, I can't imagine why the printmaker would bother to leave out L'Odorat (Smell), and my personal favorite, Le Toucher (Touch).

2009-11-16T15:05:00.000-08:00

It's back. This is a sweater version of a polyester print I saw last year. Yep, I've got a degree in Marxism so I'm always on the lookout for a print like this. This one is embroidered, and with more details in the rendering than I've seen before. Spectacular, though not economical. It's available here.
Best worn with Animal Crackers and Duck Soup for a Night at the Opera.

2009-10-29T14:27:00.000-07:00

Be still my heart, a chess dress, or more realistically, a tunic that could use some leggings. Mod, rainbowy, and geometric. Figurative and yet with moments of abstraction. This was so lovely I just had to post it. The construction is nice as well, with the mock turtle neck, but it doesn't detract from the print which is the real star here.

I've found a number of chess prints over the years, and I had to look very hard for them. Chess prints are rare indeed. One can go months, even years without seeing one.

2009-10-29T08:25:00.000-07:00

Fantasmagoric rainbow zebra frock. I was transported to a land of vintage Juicy Fruit gum commercials, which, if I remember correctly, had singing rainbow-striped zebras. I'll look for a link to the commercial to post, so that you can decide for yourself. Perhaps I am having some kind of Singing Detective-style meltdowm. (But happily, without the psoriatic arthritis, or dreadful misogyny of the BBC series.)

This frock is silk, small, and, with a buy it now price of $130, not cheap. But then I am most accustomed to shopping at the Salvation Army on half-price day, so I've got no realistic sense of what things go for anymore. I've seen poorly made dreck priced at 80 clams or so at H&M, so perhaps this is a steal. The ebayer is throwing in free shipping, which is magnanimous.

What I love about this dress is movement. Those colorful zebras are really booking. And the vertical strips of motion invariably evoke Eadweard Muybridge. Do you see it too? But in dazzling pop art technicolor.

Each zebra seems to be captured at the magical moment where all feet are off the ground. Wear this dress to the races, the circus, auditions, or as a contestant on a game show. Where it anywhere you need to talk a mile a minute. Perhaps the zebras would really look as if they were moving if you wore this dress under a strobe light. Perhaps this dress is really a zoetrope? Or it could be that all it needs is you to become a zoetrope.

2009-10-09T13:45:00.000-07:00

Mine. All mine. I know I shouldn't have. Not with my overstuffed closet. But I cannot resist photo prints on Polyester. And this one really delivers. You have to look really close to see that this is a repeat print, its logic is that organic, that fluid. I mean, in this blouse I could lay in the grass and disappear. This is a print for the movie version of my life, where I am a novelty print ninja.

It was on sale at Luncheonette Vintage, the source of this lovely photo and many delectable items.

2009-10-01T14:53:00.001-07:00

I had planned to post a cadre of style inspiration photos for Muammar Qaddafi’s first visit to the U.N., but Vanity Fair scooped me. You can see their slide show here.

The Colonel is, hands down, the most stylish head of state there is. He manages to combine Bedouin fantasy with St. Pepper. He manages to look luxurious yet rough and tumble. And he mixes it up. He wears novelty prints that he believes in. Just look at that jaunty Africa print and the silhouette of Africa won like a badge of honor. I like the little caps, the tousled curly hair. He has done what I have always wanted to do. He has created a uniform that is both folkloric and modern, regal yet snappy. Does he have a stylist?, I wonder, or just a tailor who really understands him? And then there’s his equipage. He’s got the air conditioned tent, that you’ve heard of no doubt. But what about the squadron of female bodyguards with AK-47s? I mean, that is how to make an entrance.

There is a documentary about Qaddafi's female body guards, made by Rania Ajami in 2004, when Ms. Ajami was 25. Ms. Ajami interviewed the bodyguards, placing them in the larger context of feminism in Libya, has sparked some interesting discussion.

Here the Colonel looks like a rock star and the other guys look like his legal team.

So what can you incorporate from his look? What is your badge of honor? What novelty prints do you believe in? What happens when military and folkloric looks combine?

And no, in case this is not clear, I'm not interested in living under a dictatorship, though there are some stylish dictators out there. I think the cult of personality does a lot to encourage one's sartorial development. And if you are aligned with national sovereignty, then you've definitely gotta include some local indigenous clothing and make it work with camouflage.

As for Qaddafi's speech, it actually seemed pretty reasonable to me, thought I must admit I didn’t listen to the whole thing. I don’t think anyone did, except his translator. Wait, no, I heard some rumor that the translator suffered from nervous exhaustion and someone had to fill in for him there at the end. (However U.N. translating is uber stressful. A friend of mine was a translator there, and says this is not so unusual.) The 5 main points of Qaddafi’s speech have been summarized here.

So what did he say? Here’s what I got out of it. It seems like common knowledge that the U.N. is ineffectual and corrupt, no? That’s hardly controversial. He said that the big 5 (U.S., Russia, China, UK and France) dominate the U.N. and smaller member states don’t get much of a say. Accurate, right? He also said that the U.N. has been inept at preventing war: especially large rich countries bombing the hell out of small poor countries. Well, yeah. So his renaming the Security Council the Terror Counsel is not such a stretch. Next the Libyan President pointed out that the U.N. was formed before many small countries gained their independence, so the charter did not consider their needs. Just the facts there, Ma’am. The Iraqi War did not have U.N. backing so his calling for an investigation seems reasonable. He also called for Israel and Palestine to remain one country. I was kind of a two-state-solution person, but I’ve heard this one-state-idea floated about. Again, not controversial.

What else? He would like the U.N. moved to Libya. I say, why not? Tripoli could probably use the tourism, and it could help with development and job creation there. It’s more centrally located for diplomats coming from Asia. The meeting of the General Assembly would no longer cause a traffic snarl in midtown Manhattan. Tripoli looks beautiful. Smack dab on the Mediterranean, everyone could go for a swim in the afternoons. (As for the old U.N., some intrepid New York developers could turn that Mid Century Modernist U.N. complex into some gorgeous condos. Maybe the General Assembly room could be a concert hall. I’ll bet the acoustics are good. Or roller rink? That would be fun. Oh, the possibilities.) And in conclusion, Qaddafi likes Obama. Well, I think that’s nice, though his encomium is hardly going to do Barrack any good at this point.

If the Colonel had kept within his 15 allotted minutes, it might have gone over better. But on the other hand, talking for over an hour and tearing up the U.N. charter has garnered high altitude publicity. The kind you couldn’t get if you tried to buy it. But unfortunately wackiness undermines credibility. Trust me, I know from experience.

Extra credit question: what pin would Madeline wear to meet with Muammar? And what novelty print would he wear?

2009-10-01T07:49:00.000-07:00

This lovely bee broach is from Madeline Albright's collection. The former Secretary of State has a passion for broaches, mostly costume jewelry, with an occassional piece with diamonds or semi precious stones, and has written a book about her strategic use of them as a diplomatic tool called Read My Pins, which she is currently promoting. You can read the New Yorker review, or get more info. Evidently Ms. Albright is funny. Like Carrie Fisher funny. So I imagine going to one of her readings would be kind of a hoot.

I hesitated to include the publicity photo of her wearing a matching set of dove earrings and a broach, as Ms. Albright always struck me as very Kissingery. Both former Secretaries of State have that zaftig Yiddishe Eastern-Europe mojo going on. But Ms. Albright with a dove symbol is like Henry Kissinger winning the Nobel Peace Prize. (Oh wait, that totally happened. Fun Fact: Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 to be shared with Vietnamese Diplomat Le Duc Tho, who had the decency to turn it down especially since the Vietnam war did not end until 1975). And Mr. Kissinger has been quoted by the Grey Lady herself, saying: "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." While Ms. Albright made that horrifying comment about the deaths of about half a million Iraqi children due to sanctions. Realpolitik, folks. The Secretary of State is not running for Ms. Congeniality. "Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks."

What I like about the idea of this book, leaving all that blood on the hands stuff aside, is a powerful woman discussing something frivolous and framing it with anecdotes and quips about her extremely high profile work. This bee broach, for example, was worn by Ms. Albright to meet with Yasser Arafat. And Mr. Arrafat apparently sent her a butterfly broach after their meeting. Quite charming, no? And then there is the snake pin. Saddam Hussein had a court poet who wrote a humorous verse about Ms. Albright's snakelike qualities. (Akhenaton says that political poetry, invariably in praise of the leader, is a tradition in Arabic poetry and easy to write. Perhaps like Limericks?) Ms. Albright chose a pin showing a snake coiled around a branch and holding a diamond in its teeth to wear to all future Iraqi negotiations.

The other thing I like is the idea of a woman who is known not known for her beauty, who is of a certain age, and whose work came first, writing about her love of these trinkets and how she used them both to signal her feelings and boost her mood. (Isn't it sad that I love that? Isn't it sad that a woman has to be young and beautiful to worthy of an audience in our society? When will the youth obsession die?) At any rate, Ms. Albright has some good tips. Commenting on her ample physique she says that she wore her pins higher and higher on her shoulder to draw the eye up and away from her matronly bossom. Useful info indeed. I just might read this book.

2009-09-30T08:49:00.000-07:00

Freezing? Looking ahead as cold winds blow over a frosty future? Hoping to get a little fall foliage viewing in before the icy age? Well today I combed Etsy for all things autumnal.

This adorable two liter thermos, available from Be My Elf (which has to be my favorite Etsy name, and makes me want to sing All by My Elf) is very reasonably priced at $9.50 and is certain to keep you warm, and even cheer you up. And these acorn earrings are pretty jaunty too.

And how about a new Interest? Interests are what make life worth living. Now I prefer useless Interests, like learning Esperanto, or playing the banjolele. While Butoh dance and flamenco cante also keep me out of trouble, they involve a lot of practicing by myself. I desperately want to take up the musical saw, though it seems unfair to the ears of Akhenaton, my young Egyptian lover with whom I live, since it takes quite some time to play it without sounding like a cat in heat. Every now and again I think it would be grand to have an Interest that yielded more tangible results. Something riveting yet practical that could be done indoors. Why not take up bread sculpture? This book, available from Big Dream Supply (also on Etsy) grabbed me by the lapels. Why not make art that you can eat?

This is one of those priceless 70s books. It's hand written, and assumes that the reader is intelligent enough to figure out the basics. And contains personal anecdotes and short stories. This book also has projects to use stale bread, which is utterly charming. I have the feeling this book is a great treasure and should be reprinted. It's here all by its lonesome waiting to lead you to great loafs.

And finally, a snuggle.

Available here this 70s afghan. Why they are called afghans, I don't know. Though I wish I had spent the 70s on the India to Afghanistan hippie buses. My sister made me one of these in blue in 1979. And I gotta tell you, there is nothing warmer than acrylic.

2009-09-25T14:51:00.000-07:00

Cheery polyester version of Renoir's 1880-1881 painting Luncheon of the Boating Party. This blouse is for sale from Cloud Nine Vintage. You can buy it here. It looks like it will fit a medium or a small.

This is one for the Polyester Museum of Fine Arts, to be sure. If I didn't already have a polyester evening gown with a Renoir photo print, I'd snap this one up. I love how this brightly colored rendering of Renoir's painting is centered on the shirt giving way to brushstrokes before fading cinematically into black. But I really love how the print is used on the sleeves. The print rolls across the sleeves, stretching the image and creating the illusion of cinemascope. The pieces of the painting that resurface on the cuffs and collar are jaunty as well.

My favorite character in the Renoir painting is the woman in the middle with the drinking glass almost obscuring her face. I suspect that is because this painting is reproduced over and over again by a kooky neighbor in the 2001 film Amelie. The woman with the glass is the favorite of the neighbor, played by Serge Merlin. Sometimes my memory is so good it scares me. And reminds me of how derivative I can be.

At any rate, goslings, Happy New Year. I think 5770 should be a good year. (And here I am still writing 5769 on all my checks.)

2009-08-31T09:12:00.000-07:00

Paganne, goslings. I wonder when I became such a toady for labels? This whimsical frock is available from Love Me Two Times Vintage. It's a medium, full length gown with a long slit up the left side going straight to mid-thigh. The print is on the front and the back. Pagannes don't come cheap. But you are worth it, so go get it. Or at least look at all the lovely photos.

I'd be tempted to wear this with a hat made out of broken violins. You can pick them up cheap by the armload at Goodwill. It would be even better if the pattern on the dress was actually an electronic keyboard. How fun would it be to play your own evening gown at a gig? Though the keyboards are not optimally placed for doing so. But just imagine, watching drummers struggle with their kits and saying:load-in's a cinch with my new piano frock. In the movie version of my life, the working keyboard would be on an apron that I tied onto my gown, that way I could adjust it in my lap. And I'd play all Blossom Dearie tunes. Perhaps I'd have a small grand piano nestled in my chignon. It would have a working keyboard as well, but--get this--it's a toy piano, all plunky, decayed sound.

And rings on every finger--rings shaped like grand pianos that are in fact--music boxes. Did I mention that I love Liberace?

Now I'm getting greedy. I'd sit next to a full size grand piano, playing it using extended techniques, play the electronic piano on my apron and occassionally reach up to the toy piano in my hair. Winding the music boxes on my fingers.

Quick, someone call Margaret Leng Tan and Phyllis Chen. I have had the pleasure of seeing both of them perform live. Margaret Leng Tan was performing with Eiko and Komo at the Japan Society. And Phyllis Chen playing an assortment of toy pianos, music boxes, a grand piano, and even played a composition than involved frying an egg, at Symphony Space. Both were awe-inspiring.

New to my blogroll is Couture Allure's blog, featuring designer vintage togs, along with vintage advertising and tips. Tips not only on vintage make-up stylings, but the proper way to carry your gloves. Like a lady. [That last line must be read with an Eliza Dolittle cockney.] But I prefer to smack people in the face with my gloves, and challenge them to duels.

2009-08-27T13:36:00.000-07:00

Oh, goslings, this is the dress that brought me out of retirement. It's just too succulent to keep to myself. And besides, it doesn't fit me, it's too small. Perhaps you can wear something with a 34 inch hip? Go on, you know you want it.

Isn't it just dripping with summer goodness? Don't you just want to nibble on it?

I am very devoted to Vera prints. I have a few that I love, but nothing this spectacular. Though her work has always had a following, the faux-retro, overpriced Anthropologie has recently latched on to her. I was shocked to discover that someone has unearthed a corporate video of her from the 70s,(complete with long shots of the lighted buttons of analog computers that controlled the color for fabric printing) and had it playing on very low volume on a monitor in the Anthropologie store. There was also a display of some of her scarves. Sadly, whoever installed the set-up nailed them to each other and to the wall. Now, I'm not precious about things, but, ouch! And some were silk too. Oh, the humanity.

So, what the hell happened to me? Well, it's been an eventful year, both good and bad. A lot to process. I'm a regular factory now, processing things, not ready to issue official statements. I attempted to post a couple of times, but couldn't for some reason. I'll be dusting off some elderly posts over the next week or so, and putting things into perspective. Just for the record.

Please go get this watermelon dress. It would look so adorable on you. Wear it to picnics and boardwalks. Summer's not over yet.

2008-12-04T10:18:00.000-08:00

The comeback is a time machine. An alchemical instrument that, when used as directed, enables you to return to a halcyon moment of possibility with clear eyes and an unlined forehead. And there, refashioned to surmount all past failings, triumph. And not only triumph but shimmy in a glimmering Haltson mini-dress (that is now back in style), and stick it to all the naysayers by being in fine voice and showing some thigh in a two hour cabaret act with a 12 piece orchestra, and 5 costume changes.

Liza Minnelli has this magic device. And she's at the Palace this month. The sacred bloody Palace Theater, shrine of guilded Vaudeville with boards trod by Sophie Tucker and Fanny Brice, and the scene of many of her mother's comebacks. At the beginning of 2008, I said that I wanted to see Liza Minnelli live and now I've seen her twice and for free.

I love Liza irrationally. I love her vulnerability, her ebulliance. She could fill an oil tanker with her energy. I even love her even when she can't do it all.

When I saw her last summer at Coney Island last summer, with Spartacus and Spartacus' boyfriend, Ms. Minnelli, alas, was not at her best. Okay, that's putting it mildly. Frankly, she was drunk. We were white-knuckling it through her signature numbers where she paused to cough dramatically before attempting the higher notes. But we loved her nonetheless, all 3,000 or so of us. Every now and then someone in the crowd would shout: We love you, Liza! "And I love you too," she replied sinisterly, "more than you know."

But here she is now, a mere 6 months later, cream of the crop at the top of the heap. Though her voice has changed over the years, becoming deeper and more textured, she's still got the power and the phrasing. True, the band came in loud to help her over some hurdles, we cannot deny that. But Ms. Minnelli was on her feet dancing almost the whole time. It was a love fest with a standing ovation for almost every song. What I love most about Liza is that she inhabits each song and finds a character to portray. With a few simple gestures, she transformed herself into a drag queen for a rendition of Charles Aznavour's "What Makes a Man a Man?". The second set was devoted to her godmother, Kay Thompson, and her snappy cabaret act from the 50s. Some genius had the idea to give Liza two handsome guys who sing back-up and dance with her. Not only were her boys able to do the more energetic dancing, they could also prop her up when she faltered. Liza is still kicking for sure, just not so high. But then, my high kicks are pretty low to the ground these days.

I wasn't there for opening night. What I saw was actually her dress rehearsal. The audience was packed to the rafters, and full of celebrities, most of whom I didn't recognize. I really needed Spartacus there, he's the one who notices when Anna Wintour is standing next to us at MOMA (she is so skinny), or when Ethan Hawke is schlepping along 7th Avenue with his kids. But there was only one golden ticket at the last minute from someone who knows someone. I got one of those phone calls that starts with: How quickly can you get to Times Square?

On my way home, I was accosted by a frozen comedian. "Hey, Gilda Radner!" she shouted. I think she was trying to insult me, but we ended up having a lovely exchange about the original SNL star. (In my town comedians are camped out on corners everywhere cajoling people into nearby comedy clubs. Shivering in the winter and shvitzing in the summer. Just to prove that comedians are even more exploited than dancers, they don't get stage time unless they bring in a quota of paying customers, hence the anger and desperation.) Do you know what this means, goslings? My Jewfro is returning! Markedly diminished from its former Radneresque glory, yes, but returning slowly. I have little tufts along my hairline. And when the wind blows, the tufts dance.

The date here is deceptive. I am actually posting this on August 27, 2009. Where the hell have I been? Well, that's a good question...

2008-11-11T14:12:00.000-08:00

The generous and kind-hearted Ms. Pratistha Durga sent this to me. Thanks so much, Ms. Prati!

I am verklempt. I’m getting mascara all over a novelty print handkerchief. It's a Nobel Prize commemorative handkerchief from 1978 showing Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin sharing the award in a burning, bull-dozed olive grove haunted by hungry doves. Just kidding. There are no Nobel Prize handkerchiefs that I know of. But wouldn't it be great if there were? I'm actually dabbing my eyes with a circus-themed children's handkerchief depicting little bears eating popcorn.

It really made my month.

Well, first there was Obama's victory, and that definitely got the month off to a fantastic start. Now I won't have to pretend I'm Canadian when traveling abroad. Really. I'm taking all those unconvincing maple leaf patches off my luggage.
What with no longer shamming Canadianness, and shacking up with my young Egyptian paramour (yes, reckless, reckless), well, I was away from my blog longer than anticipated. And when I returned to find Ms. Prati's nomination, I was floored to the point of inactivity. And then a whole lot happened to keep me away from blogging for almost a year.

What exactly is the Brillante Weblog Premio? Does it have anything to do with The Dark Crystal? The fact is, no one seems to know the origins of this award. But it certainly has proliferated. Now the Museum of Hoaxes has some unkind words to say about it, like "viral nuisance". But wherever it began, and for whatever purpose, it has become a very nice way for collegial bloggers to honor each other.

And so, for the dear Ms. Prati, I have just created a special award, a Liberace.

Not only is her blog a delight, but she is excellent at fostering community. What are the rules of the Liberace Award? To indulge your most glorious excesses.

In accordance with the rules of the Brillante Weblog Premio, one is to nominate 7 other blogs. I am so tardy that I cannot in good faith send them the 2008 thingy, now can I? I know, I broke the chain. Thankfully I am not superstitious (pfui! pfui! pfui! kaynehora! keep the evil eye away), but still I must come up with something nice to forward on.

At any rate, here are 7 blogs I truly enjoy:

1. The Ullage Group
2. Cat's Litter Box
3. Advanced Style
4. It's (k)not Wood
5. The Vintage Traveler
6. Couture Allure
7. An Apple a Day

Yes, this post has been dramatically and disastrously delayed. It really did begin on whatever date it says here. Then I went back for a final clean up on 1/21/09. At that point, I was derailed. I am actually posting this on 10/10/09.

2008-10-27T12:50:00.000-07:00

Trompe l'oeil skirt. Unsold, but not on ebay at the moment. This one was both too small and too rich for me. But this print is truly swoon-worthy. The faux bois background is very convincing, almost as if the skirt were cobbled together out of cupboard doors. The gold locks and keys are sumptuous and mirrored in the brass of the trumpet horn (or is that a coronet? I never know), the sheet music and the bright grain of the violin. The bow appears suspended. The cracked book spines are also expertly rendered.

Sadly, I do not own a trompe l'oeil anything. Not so much as a novelty rain poncho with realistic drops on it.

If you could have any trompe l'oeil item imaginable, what would it be?

I tracked down the original painting that inspired this print. It was easy in this case, only about 5 minutes of searching pulled up this painting called "Old Models" by 19th Century, Irish-American painter William Michael Harnett:

The green chipped wood really gives a sharper line to all the objects shown here, while on the skirt there is the danger of everything sinking into the woody pulp. Mr. Harnett was among a passel of American artists working the trompe l'oeil circut. Their work was more likely to hang in an industrialist's billard room than a museum. Mr. Harnett's work was the more abstract of his set, prefiguring the assemblages of Robert Rauschenberg. One piece, "The Golden Horsehoe" showed only the horseshoe of the title nailed to a wall. Trompe l'oeil painters often included greenbacks in their tableaux, which brought Uncle Sam and the Treasury Department to their studios. The Treasury Department doesn't like it when you make a copy of paper money, not even in a painting. Trompe l' oeil artist John Haberle's visit from Secret Service about a hundred years before money artist JSG Boggs was charged with counterfeiting.

Although I usually spurn the novelty t-shirt (since they are usually smeared with vulgarity and to paraphrase Blanche Dubois: I cannot bear a naked light bulb or a vulgar novelty print), I couldn't resist showing this Paul Frank trompe l'oeil shirt here. You can't help but smile at this men's novelty t-shirt. And at the wearer's impish grin.

I saw this over a year ago, but I remembered this t shirt with an African-American baby. I could have sworn that on the Paul Frank site there were babies of every ethnicity to choose from. But afer exhaustive searches (truly, I found the source painting for the shirt much more easily), I couldn't find the other babies anywhere. I fear it might have just been wishful thinking on my part.

Yes, this photo is from The Sartorialist. Mr. Sartorialist seems like a super sweet guy, and though I think his men's wear ideas and photos are perfect, fun and even ground-breaking, I don't like his women's wear choices, pas de tout. The ladies, though undeniably beautiful and beautifully photographed, are mostly model types, making safe clothing choices and wearing very ouchy-looking high heels. I mean, a girl's gotta walk in this town. Now and again he posts a photo of a gorgeous older woman, and those I relish.

2008-10-24T07:55:00.000-07:00

With apologies to the lovely Ms. Pratishtha Durga, who's weathering temperatures in the mid-90s in Mumbai and would like a crisp autumn day; it is freezing here in New York. Unseasonably so. I'm shivering, drinking hot cocoa and thinking seriously about cold weather novelty.

Now I appreciate a light, glittery snow on Chanukah, and while it's fun to layer up, and even dig out the furs and pretend I'm an extra in Doctor Zhivago for a month or two, come January I am majorly sick of winter. And filled with dread about soldiering on through 3 more months. In mid-winter the subways are plastered with ads for getaways to Tahiti. Huge photos of white sand beaches and relentlessly sunny skies loom over the commuter landscape of florescent lights and wet wool. And I think: why must Tahiti mock me like this? I need winter novelty just to cheer me up. And I start with a scarf.

Sinuous ink and plump fountain pen nibs. Just click on the photo to see it larger. Aqua and purple are absolutely one of my favorite color combinations, and adding the black and white illustration, it's very evocative of the mid to late '70s. Charming black and white fountain pens and quills, some dripping purple ink, arranged unsheathed and ready like swords. A genie bottle of ink spills, missing the ink well entirely and leaving the ends of the scarf awash in purple. Not silk (silky acetate), but I'd be willing to forgo good fabric for this print. Not inexpensive, but worth it. It's for sale here. The pattern repeats at both ends of this enormous scarf (13" by 56"! My evening gowns are only 51" long from shoulder to floor, this scarf is practically as long as I am tall.) so no matter how you tie it, everyone can still see the print.

That's the real issue with scarves. Now I love scarves. I am devoted to them. I am usually wearing at least one. Sometimes a scarf and a shawl (even though that might sound like wearing a belt and suspenders, I can assure you it's not). But they can end up being for private viewing in the confines of my closet. I have so many thrilling scarves, but once they are tied around my neck you really can't see the print. You can't see the bluebirds in autumnal trees. Nor the Victorian men in top hats in row boats. Nor the entire Egyptian Book of the Dead. Nor that there's the galleon on fire surrounded by buoys, compasses, fishnets filled with starfish, telescopes, lobsters, sextants, the pole star, and symbols for the entire zodiac. (Yes, those are actual scarves I have. Although I did exaggerate a bit with the Book of the Dead, it's really an excerpt, but wouldn't the whole thing be amazing? A scarf with the entire text would need to be about the size of a sarong though. Then, I'd want another scarf with the entire Tibetan Book of the Dead for good measure, and maybe another printed with the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, and one with the entire text of the Geneva Convention, just in case I end up a prisoner of war. Then maybe a survival scarf: one printed with instructions on how to build a fire and send smoke signals, just in case I survive a plane crash on an ice covered mountain top. An ounce of prevention, as they say.)

I know the print is there, tied around my neck, peeking out of the folds of fabric. I suppose I could feel smug about it, but instead I'm constantly untying the whole shebang to show people whose eyes glaze over with disinterest. I guess I'm the only one who wants to see it.

Now and again I see Vera's scarf tying book on eBay, perhaps I should invest (and I am devoted to Vera scarves and prints). I seem to remember the title as something like: 52 ways to tie a scarf. (But perhaps I am thinking of Wallace Steven's 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird? Or perhaps one of Sondheim's list songs. I generally have a mixture of Wallace Stevens and Stephen Sondheim on the brain.) Though I know quite a few knots (did spend some time in France, after all), I found this website truly helpful. Yes, it's Brooks Brothers' website. Shocking, I know. But check out the lovely nautical, equestrian, and fishy novelty print scarves our preppy model is tying about her throat. (The prep aesthetic can yield some great novelty prints, the secret is to pair them with psychedelic prints in similar color ways, then they really pop.)

Here is another beauty available from the same seller. This one in silk.

I have been longing for a book print forever and this one would fulfill a lot of my needs. Any mix of red, powder blue, mint and goldenrod is bound to pop my rockets. I love that the placement of the books is not uniformly vertical. I also love the objects that are displayed on the shelves: the small clocks, sturdy jugs (or are those trophies?) and delftware. I'd wear this one with tweed and wellingtons.

If I could make all my dreams come true, I'd have several library dresses, and the books' spines would be legible. I'd have one dress with books in Latin, Greek and Arabic. I'd wear that one with this book scarf as a cravat, a tweed blazer and a pocket square with a photo print of the Rosetta Stone. I'd have another library dress with favorite feminist authors. You'd see bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Judith Butler on those spines. And I'd have a magazine clutch purse. But instead of some faux fashion magazine, it would be a vintage cover of Ms. Magazine, or Mother Jones or ... some other magazine created entirely from my imagination(hey, maybe I could arts and crafts one of those with a little paste and patience).

Then Marxist-Leninist library dress, in Russian, would be hilariously retro, paired with a Soviet chess master tournament lapel pin. Then a Magical Realism dress: a 70's style polyster shirt dress with a photo print of bookshelves with Gabriel Garcia Marques, Alejo Carpentier, and Mario Vargas Llosa's novels collaged with huge brilliantly colored butterflies. A Proust dress: photo print of a few pages Proust's orginal handwritten manuscript, also on a polyster shirt dress and a cravatte printed with Madeleines.

Whoah. I just went to some magical place there.

Much more economical, though equally gleeful, is this Leslie Faye scarf. Leslie Faye has some terrific 70s prints. I have a couple of Leslie Faye dresses that I adore. It is truly an under-appreciated label.

And here are a few museum scarf goodies. I am a sucker for a museum scarf. Go here to see a beautiful Chinese opera scarf from the Museum of Shanghai. All silk, and a mere $12.99. The images are copyrighted or I would show them to you, of course.

This Christo scarf, showing Christo and Jean-Claude's designs for The Gates in 2005 has sold, alas. But the designs and the traffic-cone orange curtains caught in the breeze would make such a great winter scarf. Christo and Jean-Claude know just how dreary New York is in February and The Gates sure cheered me up that winter.

This Egyptian scarf has sold as well. And it was also made by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Lovely, yes, but I often wish that whoever decides which museum pieces would look good on scarves didn't always make such safe choices. Why not a scarf of Picasso's "Guernica"? Any of Anna Mendieta's works? Banksky? True, the folks with the wampum to shell out for silk scarves usually aren't fans of Ms. Mendieta nor the elusive stencil artist. But with a scarf tied around your neck and the pattern mostly-obscured, wouldn't some rich folks relish the subversion of it all? After all, Spartacus and I were at a MOMA benefit where M.I.A. performed "Paper Planes" and I have an indelible image of white dudes in tuxedos singing along.

2008-10-16T19:45:00.000-07:00

I'm special. So special. This acrylic novelty embroidered sweater didn't immediately make me think of Chrissie Hynde, I had to let it percolate for a while.

Just look at these cheerful little sheep. Can't get enough of their splayed back legs and the purple bows around their necks. The two sheep separated from the flock on the back of the sweater are a nice touch. I posted a black sheep skirt about 6 months ago, well this sweater is its cousin. The text on the arm featuring a cameo of the black sheep is just gravy as far as I'm concerned. Hilarious. Though I would expect a sarcastic remark or two when wearing it.

I'd wear this sweater to curl up with a cup of hot cocoa and read Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase. (Or anything by Murakami for that matter, that man has sheep on the brain.)

I'm always on the hunt for good winter novelty. The novelty print does seem to belong to spring and summer, all parasols and picnics, parceling out only a few orange leaf prints for fall and the dreaded reindeer sweaters for winter. Perhaps most novelty looks like too much forced gaiety when faced with February sleet, while in the summer it looks downright jaunty.

This one cracks me up. Or rather, first I laughed, then I was in awe. Notice the pocket where a marsupial would have a pouch. Just big enough for lipstick and keys, how precious is that? I love the 80's illustration style on this oversized wool sweater, along with a block of red on the shoulder. I'd forgotten that peach, white, brown and red was an 80's color combo. The kangaroo's little crooked paws and big feet are terrific details. I also like how she's looking over her shoulder at another kangaroo off in the distance. It gives the whole thing depth.

Doesn't this one look like a Tsumori Chisato design? But it's bona fide vintage, goslings. Only you beneath the moon and under the sun. And who can resist a Cole Porter themed novelty sweater. I love the combination of brown and white, the drowsy moon and contented owl and sun. I like the way this sweater is divided up and the smaller stars creating a sense of space. It's still open for bidding.

Again the details on the back push this into ferocious cuteness. The two clouds adrift there during the day and a smattering of stars at night. But again the text is what really makes this one pop.

I'd be tempted to express myself solely with Cole Porter lyrics while wearing this one. In the roaring traffic's boom, in the silence of my lonely room.

What's your favorite Cole Porter tune? How would it work as a sweater? Could a Kiss Me, Kate sweater be possible, with "Always True to You in my Fashion" on the sleeve? Or perhaps something more obscure. I love the more saucy and risqué Cole Porter tunes immortalized by Bobby Short at the Carlyle Cafe.

And last, an Escada offering in cashmere, high end novelty long ago sold, alas. Penguins are perhaps the ultimate winter novelty since they evoke cold weather but avoid referencing winter holidays.

2008-10-06T10:52:00.001-07:00

Glorious anthropomorphic chess print blouse. Sized large. Brilliant late 50s (possibly early 60s) chess themed novelty. I just love how the checkerboard is there grounding the pieces and optically rendered in space, transforming the board into harlequin moments. I love the king's waxed mustache and the queen's primly pursed lips. The smug bishop, and Gaudi inspired rooks capped with tents flying flags and the knight's gritty horses seemingly missing a layer of skin: all are irresistible. The use of color is truly expert. Though the whole rainbow is marshaled here, colors that aggravate each other are kept far enough apart.

I want this bad. I want this with a greedy and irrational desire. But the truth of the matter is that I have about 4 times more clothing than I need and I've already got a chess piece blouse. Not quite as trippy as this one, perhaps, but close enough, certainly. And here's the proof.

The tendrils and the leaves are truly distracting from the chess pieces on my blouse. This is true and I must face it. Until you see the horse-faced knight and the flag flying on the rook, it's not entirely clear this is a chess print. The blue and lavender used throughout also turns the volume way down (while the multi-colored chess print above definitely turns the volume way up). No one seems to notice the chess pieces except me. And alas, this blouse doesn't really fit me well, and it is made of some tough unbreathable rayon so it is in low rotation. And I paid far too much for it. But from the instant I saw it on a mannequin in the window of a somewhat spendy vintage shop, well, it was love.

I love the pouting bishop who can't look anyone in the eyes. I love the feminine and almost indistinguishable King and Queen. The slightly open-mouthed knight and the rotund rook. I love the cross hatching and scribbling on the leaves.

I hope these photos are viewable. I must apologize. Photographing fabric in a cluttered apartment that gets zero natural light is a challenge. But I am hoping to take some decent photos of my entire Polyester Museum of Art collection and post them here little by little. I'd like to document some of the more interesting prints that I have, and cut down on this depraved concupiscence of mine for more (and more!) novelty prints. Sometimes looking at gorgeous, unusual prints is just too tempting.

2008-09-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

Happy New Year, goslings, and L'shana tova. Tonight I'm gonna party like it's 5769. I know that a pig dress is entirely inappropriate to present while wishing all of you a happy Rosh Hashanah. But then, that's my style, isn't it?

To be perfectly frank, I've never seen a print anything like this before. A 70's looking couple with a mustached man and woman in a prairie dress holding an umbrella ride an enormous pig in an angry landscape of animalistic plants and polka dot trees. Whoa. This one could cause an acid flashback for sure. I love how the belt on the woman's dress catches the wind. The pig does not look particularly friendly. These pigs are just doing their jobs, as if polka dot pigs had been drafted to serve as shuttle busses. The tulips in the landscape are a nice touch, as are the white outlines of the orange clouds. Or are those marmalade skies?

Its current bid is almost nothing. Maybe your life isn't trippy enough?

I tend to snap up prints I've never seen before. I can't help it. Looking seriously at prints these past few years, I've seen a lot of repeats. Last week for example, I was in line for tickets at the Clown Festival, wearing a jaunty polyester photo print dress with Chinese tapestries and Fu Lions on it, when a woman came up to me and asked to examine my dress. I always oblige in such situations. After all, I have deliberately chosen prints so eye-scaldingly ornate that it takes a good 5 minutes or so just to take it all in. The woman got very excited when she found the Fu Lions. "I just bought my husband a vintage shirt with this same print," she told me. The husband soon arrived to corroborate and we all discussed our love for photo prints, Asian-themed Hawaiiana and the like. And it was a lovely example of loud prints bringing people together.

In the end, even a hand-made vintage dress (this one was laboriously and crookedly handmade) is not entirely the unique snowflake that one imagines. In the past, I have not acted quickly enough on unusual prints only to have them resurface 6 months or a year later. Someone made bolts and bolts of this photo print polyester at one point. It's all out there somewhere.

But I have never seen passenger pigs before. Have you? I feel like this one shall not appear again in my lifetime. Like a century plant in bloom.

I don't know if it is beautiful or not. But if I wore it to a party, I probably wouldn't be able to circulate. I'd sit too long at the hookah table and get lost in the psychedelic goodness of my own skirt.

2008-09-22T14:10:00.000-07:00

A degree in Marxism. I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception. Risible and irresistible 70s tunic, medium-sized, and it's still available. I love the off-center placement of Groucho's iconic face, and the red stripes that invade the black and white landscape. The black collar keeps it crisp, mirroring the black border around the neck and sleeves.

Don't I sound like a docent of novelty prints? This is one for the Polyester Museum of Fine Arts.

This past summer I vowed that I would make all my dreams come true. Fortunately, I like to dream small. With only some minor exertion, look at me now:I'm a patroness of the arts. I'm a card-carrying member of MOMA. I can loll about the sculpture garden, hang out with some of my favorite paintings, and eavesdrop on European tourists enjoying the devalued dollar.

MOMA's recent exhibition of Salvador Dalí's film collaborations and set designs seemed to be in dialogue with my post on the Dalí scarf of a month ago. Truly. Just as if I called up and ordered it like a sandwich. Obviously someone else was thinking of this 4 years ago, or whatever the lead time is to put an exhibition like this together. (I used to be 2 years ahead of the curve. That is: my aesthetic wants and needs blossomed years before ready fulfillment hit store shelves, museum catalogs, movie theater screens and the like. This gap has been narrowing over the years until now, when I'm actually behind. Either I'm losing my touch, or my tinfoil hat stopped working.)

The exhibit had lots to enjoy and many surprises, especially a 49 minute 1975 film called "Impressions of Upper Mongolia", a deliriously self-indulgent microscopic view of a patina developed on the metal band of a ballpoint pen that Dalí cultivated with his own urine. The film is oddly beautiful and inspired me to make movies again. Salvador was way ahead of Warhol, Ofili, and Andres Serrano. His politics gross me out, but Dali was performance art before there was performance art.

I didn't know that Dalí had planned to make a film with the Marx Brothers. A rough draft and some sketches and paintings were on display. That's all that exists of "The Surrealist Woman", Dalí's film that was to star Harpo Marx. Dali struck up a lively friendship with Harpo by sending him a harp strung with barbed wire. Harpo responded by sending a photo of his hands wrapped in bandages.

2008-09-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

Thrilling Egyptian photo print shirt, ripe for the plucking. This one is live goslings, and cheap and bidding will close in about 45 minutes.

Go get it.

Am I not salivating? Yes, I am. But I've got an Egyptian photo print maxi dress that I haven't even worn yet. Although the print on this one is much more cleverly done than what I've got, I'm gonna sit this one out.

2008-09-10T12:31:00.000-07:00

I know all there is to know about the crying game. How could anyone resist this hand-painted pessimistic crying hankie?

The photos are small here, but this hankie shows an intrepid brunette faced with bad weather, taxes, working late, and no one helping. Put your tears here, this handkercheif exhorts. In a lovely cursive hand are such truisms as: No one gives a darn. And: I never have enough money.

You can see it better here, though it has sold already.

Wouldn't it be great to have one custom-made? With all the travails and woes depicted? Mine would have to include: paying late fees, the drastically fluctuating temperatures of my shower scalding me, goddamn mice in the apartment. The list goes on. But I wouldn't be able to cry into it. Seeing my troubles animated would probably make me laugh. If I'd had this handkercheif last week I would have gotten over myself a lot quicker.

Though to be on the safe side, perhaps I would need to commission an optimist hankie to go with it. One covered in good penmanship with Stuart Smalley type affirmations. (I am nostalgic for the 90's taxi cab announcement with Stuart Smalley saying:You're pretty enough, you're smart enough, and gosh darn it, you're in New York.) And drawings of aspirational moments, like receiving the Nobel Prize, or having work exhibited in the Venice Biennale. But maybe that's too grandiose. Maybe that's even more depressing. Perhaps a handkerchief that simply says: You're gonna be okay.

I love novelty print handkerchiefs and have a few adorable children's hankies that veer into extreme cuteness. Though I wish I had gotten a Stalin-themed handkerchief I'd seen years ago. A red scare anti-communist piece of hilarity, it encouraged one to "give a blow to Uncle Joe".

2008-09-05T09:37:00.000-07:00

Somehow, I got obsessed with sailor dresses. Again. In the early 90s, I did this whole Edwardian doll look with sailor dresses and lace-up boots. I can't believe I'm recycling myself. And it's not the first time. About 5 years ago I was chatting with Esmeralda saying I was suddenly keen for anything Spanish (flamenco skirts, polka dots, combs and mantillas) and she simply said: Again? Anyhoo, I was all over ebay looking for sailor dresses. I kept finding what I thought was the perfect one, size 6, but it always turned out to be for a person 6 months old, or 6 years old. And I thought: do I dress like a child? I'm almost 40, for crying out loud. Maybe it's time to get some appropriate clothing. But what is appropriate clothing anyway? I looked into the future and saw nothing but yawning void with the winds of change setting my coiff into total disarray. And I thought: I cannot go gently into that good night.

So I put on a tree trunk novelty print maxi dress and played croquet with my friends at the foot of the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park. Then I was right as rain again.

But in my state of bummedoutittude, I even forgot my bloggerversary. Plastic Paradise has been 2 years old since September 1st. Who knew there were so many jaw-dropping novelty prints in the world? And who knew I'd still be at it 2 years later?

And who knew I'd have 5 lovely readers? A big thank you to all of you who have keen kind enough to read and comment and share the love of the novelty print. Ms. Fuzzy Lizzy, Ms. Tea, Ms. Kitty and Ms. Prati, you are so (so very very!) awesome. And a big thank you to the amazing Spartacus, for all his encouragement. Spartacus was my only reader for the longest time, and a one-man cheerleading squad complete with backflips and pyramids.

And so: a cheery post,yes?

If I had been quicker on the draw (and had deeper pockets) I would have picked up that golden egg of a chicken in every pot dress above and paired it with this Warholesque tote.

This bag would push the outfit into pop art delirium, no? The soup bag was fairly large too, like big enough for a beach towel, just to give you a sense of scale. And I think the oversized can keeps the outfit pop, as opposed to surrealist. But alas, both have sold. And at prices a little too rich for my blood.

There was some truly thrilling flea marketing in Los Angeles. I tell you, I have not had such a good flea market day since the last century. I got a vintage Jansen bathing suit, a batik sailor dress, a nautical-themed polyester shirt (lighthouse, compass,sailboats and seagulls), and the coup de grace: A high-necked polyester dress with beautifully rendered 70s art nouveau influenced grapes. Esmeralda and I made a great mother-daughter haggling team. Esmeralda effectively cut the price of the grape dress in half by loudly lamenting: Oh, that stain will never come out! She was very convincing too. Esmeralda is a natural actress. My sister, Kismet, has often threatened to get her an agent. I think Esmeralda could be a star, or at least get a national television commercial.

I also got a couple of Reggie's old shirts. Reggie is a pinky ring, monograms and French cuff kinda guy, so I just invested in a pair of chess-themed cuff links. The most hilarious thing about Reggie's early 80s custom made shirts is that they fit me perfectly. I'm thinking I should find out if he still has any of his 70s tuxedos.

2008-08-29T10:17:00.000-07:00

Every so often, about every 6 months or so, I look at my life, blink back the tears with my false eyelashes and say, "Brad, we can't go on like this."

Who wants to put up with indignity of it all? After all, I've got a gas stove, why not get on the Syliva Plath Express outta here? But luckily for me, I've been conditioned by a life of relentless disappointment and can eat this stuff for breakfast.

Today is my first 39th Birthday.

Now I rail against Ageism. I make no effort to hide my age, nay, I even flaunt it. I've got an untouched gray streak. I reference the Carter administration. I routinely say things like: I haven't ridden a bike in 25 years. Or: I've got shoes older than you. Still, even I am feeling a bit bummed out about the slippery slope to 40.

Of course, in the scheme of things, 39 is still young. Just ask my mother, Esmeralda, who's 78 and she'll tell you: 39, feh, just a baby. But by my age she had already had 2 children, 3 husbands, and a wild time in Cuba (details still remain undisclosed, but I hope they make it into her unexpurgated memoirs).

I was too busy producing and performing in off-off-off broadway flops to get an actual career. Is a smidgeon of success too much to ask for? I'd settle for a few drops of grease from the pan where success was cooked. Okay, just a sniff. No? Well, alrighty then. I am a fatalist. I mean, you can't drown if you are meant to hang. It is what it is, as the kids say. And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut would say.

After all, things aren't so bad (pfui! pfui! pfui!). I've got a handsome, sweet Akhenaten. I've got wonderful friends like Spartacus, Modesty Blaise, Rita Hayworth and Mrs. Diamond. My apartment no longer has a carbon monoxide leak. Things are looking up (pfui! kaynahora, keep the evil eye away).

I just need about 4 more years before I could say I was 40 without being embarassed. True, I have made great strides over the past couple of years. I learned to play the ukulele, bought a couch (my first piece of furniture not found in the garbage) and finally found a foundation that matches my skin tone. These are not accomplishments to be sneezed at.

In 4 years I think I could: 1) clean my apartment 2) get an actual job 3)pay off some debt 4)write a novel 5)visit Indonesia 6)waltz through a winter season in Vienna. I've got a list of things longer than my arm.

Can I have 3 more 39th birthdays, please? That's what I'd like as a birthday present. I've often said that I should be allowed to deduct the 4 years I spent in graduate school from my age (since those years were like being in a coma). I know this undermines my assault on Ageism, but am I not allowed to be a little contradictory?

2008-08-14T05:54:00.000-07:00

Well goslings, I'm off the the left coast for a week to see my parents, Esmeralda and Reginald.

I hope to be able to blog from there, and post photos of flea markets, ukulele duets, horse races and fish tacos but we'll just have to see how that goes. Esmeralda and Reggie are Luddites so their ancient computer might not be up to the task.

There's a reason for this Barbra Steisand photo. Here's an inspirational video from Color Me Barbra that I've been seriously enjoying. It's got a travel theme, and Babs wears a brilliant patchwork rainbow maxi dress as she performs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Don't miss the cocktail rings and glittery make-up. I wish that stylist could come over to my place right now to fix my hair and help me pack. When flying, I believe one should look as mod as possible. I always wear something Pucci-esque that makes flight attendants want to chat. It recalls the glamorous age of air travel, and who doesn't want to remember that?

There are many reasons to love Barbra. She's got some glorious pipes on her, that's for sure.

2008-08-12T19:50:00.000-07:00

Stick a fork in me because I'm done. I need an ebaycation. I need to get a hold of myself. I need to stop feeding my id lest it outgrow this tank. Limit my indiscretions to the flea market. That only happens on weekends. During daylight. I mean, how wrong can you really go during daylight? Or at least until 10 or so when the stores close. The bars are open until 4, but at least I can't shop there.

Yes, I was outbid by a mere 50 cents on this nature skirt. Sour grapes, I tell you, sour grapes.

And I love--really love--the bunnies, raccoons and frogs. Such cute 70s illustration style. Very Hedgehog in the Fog. I had already planned our life together, this skirt and I. Picked out the sweater I was gonna wear with this skirt. And the boots. And oh the adventures we could have had. But now...

But of course the irony is that I wasn't home to outbid the outbidder because I was shopping for other things. Oh yes I was. I got myself a thrillingly constructed late 60s dress that looks like wood grain, and a 70s polyester dress printed with broken chains. Both will be on high rotation as fall transitions into winter. And the two of them together cost me a mere 6 bucks. Of course I traded in choice items like 50s silk dresses to get them, but there you have it. I was at Beacon's Closet, where I had a voucher. And I'm always afraid to die with a Beacon's Closet voucher in my purse, I mean, what a waste that would be.

My month-long ebay binge has made me $89 lighter. I got three dresses, one skirt and four necklaces out of it, which isn't so bad. And in all honesty, one of those dresses, a glorious Vested Gentress number was, a whopping $37. And Akhenaten bought that one for me. He saw the terrible tragedy of one of my beloved vegetable print dresses being destroyed in the wash and stepped in with some humanitarian aid.

But now I'm done. I'm not bidding or watching anything.

I began this blog almost two years ago to curb my compulsive shopping problem. And I have fallen down a couple of times before, though never like this. You and I both know I've got plenty of things to wear. So what's going on? What gives?

Well, what I don't have, at the moment, is hair.

I had an acute telogen effluvium about 4 months ago. That means my hair fell out in handfuls for about 2 months. A rain of hair. It would get all over my desk at work. Piles of it. Very distracting, to say the least. I lost between 30 and 40% of my hair. My general practitioner sent me to a dermatologist who did expensive, painful lab work and concluded that my hair was falling out (no kidding), but that she didn't know why (gee, thanks). She told me to take Biotin and use Rogaine. I'd like to say I kept a stiff upper lip, but instead I wept bitter tears from my heart.

Rogaine is a hypertension medication whose side effect is hair growth. In creme form, new hair will grow wherever it touches, pretty much. Brittle hairs about 2 inches long, but no usually more than that. If I am supposed to put it on before I go to bed, won't it get on my pillow case? Won't it get on my face? I mean, the instructions are adamant about washing your hands afterward. And even Big Pharma itself says that Rogaine is a life style choice. That means you gotta use it continuously for it to work. And it ain't cheap. I decided against this route. Supposedly a telogen effluvium is a temporary situation. Some even say that the old hair that is resting is being pushed out by new growth.

Hair is divided into 3 parts: growing, resting and falling out. Hair also grows in 3 month cycles. If something happens to interrupt the cycle (a high fever, extreme stress, starvation, postpartum, and new medication all can be culprits) the hair that is resting will begin to fall out, along with the hair that is already falling out. And then you have a major bummer.

The part in my hair began to look like the Grand Canyon. I wore scarves on my head (what Akhenaten and I jokingly called "Hair Loss Hijab") for about 2 months. I don't mind rocking the Little Edie look, but summer set in and it began to get too warm.

So Biotin. I've been taking it from the get-go, and my part finally seems to be filling in with wiry short hairs. Most of them gray. But nonetheless, the Grand Canyon seems less wide. Of course that didn't help what's hanging down my back. And so I began to cut. First 2 inches. Then 4 inches. Then 6. My waist length hair is now somewhere around my shoulders and still looking paltry. Head scarves are still in high rotation. I think I'm still about a year away from having hair that I can stand. Maybe a year and a half. And possibly it won't quite recover to it's pre-shedding fullness. And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut used to say. But I did not go bald, though the rain of hair was alarming, it slowed to a drizzle and stopped.

I did not use Shen Min, a Chinese herb reputed to keep hair from falling out and return grays to their original color. It hasn't been shown to work consistently.

I tell you all of this, goslings, because heaven forfend (pfui! pfui! pfui! kaynehora keep the evil eye away) it should happen to you or someone you know. But at least with this information you could be more reassuring to someone experiencing hair loss than the expensive dermatologist I saw.

So the question is: should I just cut it off and start all over again?

2008-08-11T14:02:00.000-07:00

"God will get you for that, Walter," Maude said often. There's a reason for this terrific Bea Arthur photo. Really. You'll see. They just don't make tv shows like this one any more.

There's an alarming story about 3 vintage clothes wearing gals attempting to live vintage lives. It's published in some kinda tabloidy Brit paper, so one can certainly question it's accuracy. (The few dealings I've had with the press I was misquoted and/or my name was mis-spelled, so I generally presume that the news has been tampered with.) But I must say I'm worried about these women. At any rate, you can read it hereand some commentary here. It references a tv show about them that is currently airing in the UK. You can find clips here. (In all honesty, the article makes the women sound crazy, but the clips seem a little more balanced.)

There's a dame devoted to each of these 3 decades: 50s, 40s, and 30s. Although our 50s gal seems a bit kitschy to me (I love not only the flowers in the hair, but also the strangely asymetrical placement of said flowers, very Dorothy Lamour), our 40s and 30s gals look a little more down to earth (though the 40s gal is more New Look than wartime rations). These ladies are serious. They live in homes from their eras, surround themselves with decade appropriate knick-knackery and use only the technology that was available during their time: cars, cake mixers and whatnot. This ironically means they spend a lot of time on the internet to find their historically accurate stuff, but nonetheless, they have created time capsules that they inhabit.

So why am I concerned about these ladies? After all, don't I lounge on an orange velvet couch and talk on a 1970s analog French Princess phone while wearing polyester palazzo jumpsuits? When I'm not busy seeing my analyst or eating fondue with my consciousness raising group, of course. Well, not quite. Just missing the fondue pot and the consciousness raising group (gotta work on that). And while I'd love to coat everything in faux fur and become a primal scream therapist, my style isn't strictly 1965-1972 though that's what I like the most these days. I think that vintage clothing should not be worn to create period authenticity. I caution all vintage neophytes to avoid this trap. Just wear what you like mixed with what you like. The more diverse the time periods the better. I ascribe to the Iris Barel Apfel school of surrealism: combine things that are thematically similar, but come from different places and times. Otherwise you can end up looking like an extra in a period movie.

So who am I to care what decade pops someone's rockets? After all, just like me, these ladies have cherry-picked the things they like most about their decades. Ms. 30s doesn't stand in bread lines, even if she could find one, and I'm not lamenting inflation, high gas prices and protesting an illegal foreign war. Oh wait, shoot, I am doing just that. The more things change, the more they stay the same, I tell ya.

What worries me about these ladies is that they have retreated to the past to avoid the messiness of today. All of them state that specifically. All avoid the newpapers and current affairs, while fetishing traditional gender roles. Not only that only that: all three claim to get the biggest bang out of doing housework and cooking for their husbands (though one couple is just shacked up). Gadzooks! Do I hear Stockholm Syndrome? Get them all copies of The Feminine Mystique. Didn't we already determine that being subsumed into the family unit and losing you own identity is bad for women's mental and physical health?

The other problem with settling all your happiness on another person is not just that they could up and leave you (though there is that), but also that they could (through no fault of their own) get sick (or run down by a trolley car) and die (pfui! kaynehora, keep the evil eye away). And then where's your raison d'etre? And, in these cases, where's your meal ticket? Ever tried re-entering the job market with gaps in your resume? How about a total lack of marketable skills? Plus what about pensions? They might get some kinky thrill out of being housewives now, but what about retirement? Women tend to have greater longevity after all. What will they do at 75? Can't draw a pension if you don't pay into it yourself.

Other people also have the uncanny ability to change at the precise moment when you need them not to. Like you find yourself going through major health problems (pfui! pfui! pfui!) or some other catastrophe (pfui! pfui! pfui!) and your lover man decides he needs to climb Mount Everest, go back to Law School, have an affair, or become a Scientologist. If I could reduce this to a slogan it would be this: "Other People: not always there for you".

Oh, dear, if only I did really have a consciousness raising group and could invite these ladies. However, it seems to me that all these women are really engaged in long-term performance art-installations. Though there is a creepy doll house quality to Ms. 50s set up, mixed with fetishism. Again with the Stockholm Syndrome. Do these men really want home-made jam? Or are these gals just obsessed with making time-consuming edibles, like as artists? There's so much false consciousness here, I need some smelling salts.

Plenty of people sure are compulsive about their environments. Watching Ms. 50s scrub her floor in the clip, I was reminded of the overwhelmingly clean-freak, detail-oriented, house-proud folks at apartmenttherapy.com. I think that dusting the baseboards every night before going to bed is a textbook case of OCD, and there's medication for it. But on Apartment Therapy you'll find people who do just that. And think everyone else should too. I think it would be much worse to live with a minimalist than a 50s fetishist. After all, the 50s fetishist is happy when you bring home more 50s tchotches, but the minimalist comes unglued every time you buy a pair of earrings or fail to wipe down the shower curtain after bathing. (Trust me, I speak from experience: never live with a minimalist, it's just a more socially acceptable form of control-freak crazy.)

Finally, something that no one seems to mention is that historical re-enactment folks are always white. This is so obvious. Does anyone else really miss the good old days of segregation, violence and discrimination? Really now, how can one say that those were kinder, gentler times? Just because they didn't have reality tv? And, I might add, the 40s were not a particularly fun time to be a Jew.

An angry commenter on one of these sites that linked to the article (one of these dudes without the ability to understand statistics who feels discriminated against because shelters exist for battered women but not for men)unintentionally inspired me. He wrote something like: What about a 70s wife? One who won't cook, clean, or dress to please you but will complain about oppression. He wrote that like it was a bad thing. And I thought, where can I meet her? She's my new best friend. Or how about the 20s girl? She's got bootleg gin in a hip flask and she just loves to dance the charleston and vote. Hey, I just might have the makings of a consciousness raising group there.

Yes, full disclosure, I am nostalgic for the 70s. Ironically feminism was less derided in the 70s than it is now. People thought that peace and government spending on social programs were good ideas. And you had shows like Maude. Bea Arthur was a limosine liberal, it's true, but she wrestled with her issues, and held her salt-and pepper gray-streaked head high. We don't eve have gray-haired women in the mainstream media any more. Let alone a gray-haired woman who runs for public office. Not only was she outspoken, but Maude had an abortion (on demand and without apology) on prime time tv. Now we have movies with PG-13 ratings that can't even say the word abortion. What happened? There's only so much backlash a free-wheeling woman can stand.

2008-08-11T08:55:00.000-07:00

In all my fervor, I can't believe I let this one slip away.

Vintage Salvador Dalí scarf. Lurid colors. Armored Roman torsos on an endless vista. I just love the fissures drawn in, making the silk resemble crumbling stone.

As a kid I was a huge Dalí fan. I mean, what kid doesn't like melting clocks? And he was so prolific (that is, he would do anything for a buck) that there were plenty examples of his work to see and in different mediums. Cartoons, sculptures, even perfume and clothing. I loved the dream sequence he did in Hitchcock's Spellbound, which led me to explore more of his work. This was the image that stuck with me the most:

The moustache, the aphorisms, the giraffes on fire, all left an indeliable mark on my aesthetic. I saw photos of his house once and vowed to myself that I too would one day sleep in an enormous seashell. (This dream remains unrealized, though I do sleep in a loft bed, surrounded with Japanese carp windsocks and plastic bubbles and seahorses.) The Mae West Room, and the lobsterphone are also interior design aspirations for me. As a teenager I spent hours staring at reproductions of his paintings and tripping out on them. At that time he was still alive. And still churning it out.

Later, I began to view his work as a collection of rather obvious tricks and effects, mercilessly flogged by a PR machine. King of Kitsch, and never one to miss a merchandizing opportunity, Dalí's academic photo-realistic painting style easily appeals to a mass market. And he supported Franco, which seems crass, at best. However, reviewing Surreal Lives, by Ruth Brandon, which describes the arc of the movement and some breathless gossip, Lawrence Osbourne wrote:

"In a sense, communism was the grave that surrealism buried
itself in -- not only because it imposed a philistine realist
aesthetic at odds with surrealism's deepest instincts, but because
it also destroyed the primacy of the erotic interplays that made
surrealism's booming, narcissistic individuals tick. When Dalí
unveiled an armchair studded with glass vials containing milk,
[Luis] Aragon dourly declared that there were too many children
in the world who needed milk and that the armchair was politically
unacceptable."

I guess in the context of continual Marxists bummers like that, maybe one would want to go against the grain. But Franco? No, that's too much. I'll still maintain that it's possible to make socially responsible art that isn't self-righteous or banal. Easy? No, but possible. Alas, even asserting socially responsible art sounds hopeless prim in our current cultural climate, doesn't it? But then Dalí's brand of surrealism is the one that prevailed in popular imagery and Marxism collapsed under the weight of it's own ugly concrete housing blocks. Sigh. Like the mother at the end of the film Goodbye, Lenin!, I awake from a coma to find a Coca Cola ad outside my window and statues of Lenin being taken away by helicopter. And I think: What was so wrong with thinking communally? Was there no other possibility besides the over-commercialization of every aspect of our lives? (But that's a whole 'nother post.)

Seeing the massive Dalí exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art a few years ago made me a fan again. I even enjoyed the optical illusion paintings that obsessed him in later life.

Of course there would be no Dalí without his wife Gala. Born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova, Gala managed and harnessed Dalí's crazy gift. And apparently she was real good at negotiating contracts. Critics have speculated that she wrote the books published in his name. She certainly tidied up his bizarre French. He claimed that without her he would have faced only madness and an early death. He even signed many of his paintings with both their names. The story goes that Dalí met Gala while filming Le Chien Andalou. He was wearing girl's underwear over his clothes and liberally daubed with his own execrement. I wish I could remember where I read this because I'd love to credit the author. She wrote something like: It took real vision on Gala's part take this man by the hand, call him darling and make him an art star.

2008-08-08T08:25:00.000-07:00

I am hyperventilating over this one. Peter Max design on a mod raincoat (Raincheetahs, get it?) barren trees, lush psychedelic flowers and it's double breasted. Just look at that pert little stand up collar, those sturdy buttons. So amazing I almost want to bite it.

But it has soared out of my price range already. A helium balloon just beyond my grasp. But I'm reaching. Still reaching.

2008-08-07T09:18:00.000-07:00

Today marks the 34th anniversary of Philippe Petit’s art caper. At 7:15 am on August 7, 1974, the French funambulist, juggler and street performer, only 24 years old at the time, did a 45 minute tight rope walk on a cable strung between the very tops of the two World Trade Center towers. Over 100 stories above the ground. Without a net. Without a harness. And, as one snarky commenter wrote: and in bell bottoms, for crying out loud.

Indeed, Mr. Petit was rocking a David Bowie as the Thin White Duke kind of look.

Rita Hayworth and I went to see Man On Wire the other night, an interesting documentary, by James Marsh about Mr. Petit’s legendary skywalk.

The footage of the walk itself, although as one of the policemen who arrested him said: “it was more like a dance”, is white-knuckling. Even if you don’t have vertigo. There is something elated and beautiful and terrible about the whole thing. My heart was in my throat watching it. Mr. Petit is obviously in ecstasy, or some heightened state of being. You can’t miss the joy that shines out of him.

The towers were still under construction at the time and Mr. Petit and his crew disguised themselves as construction workers and business men, complete with fake ids to infiltrate the building with over 500 lbs of gear to make it all happen. Mr. Marsh’s documentary focuses on the how rather than the why to show the 6 years of planning that made this stunt happen. Mr. Marsh frames the coup as a heist, which adds to the excitement.

Many of those involved in the initial planning backed out of working the event itself. As one puts it: I didn’t want to be responsible for something that could cause a friend’s death.

Possibly Mr. Petit was conscious of having a legacy to protect even then. (Or perhaps he was just lucky enough to have a devoted friend with a camera.) Man on Wire has a lot of footage from the planning stages of what Mr. Petit called “the coup”, as well as footage of his early street performances. There are a few black and white reconstructions with actors. I found these distracting, but mercifully they were few. Mr. Petit had done similar high wire walks before. One in Paris, between the towers of Notre Dame, and one in Australia, over a massive tension bridge. But nothing equivalent in height and difficulty as the Twin Towers.

Mr. Petit himself, who currently lives in upstate New York and is an artist in residence at Saint John the Divine, is a very lively interview subject. For the events that were not filmed or photographed, he acts them out. His energy is very intense. Like stand back or you’ll crack the lens on the camera intense. One of his collaborators says that when he first met Mr. Petit, he thought he was crazy, or a con man. And certainly, that’s how he comes off. But when you see him walking the wire, he is another person. Transformed by concentration, you see the artist in him. Clearly, he was born to do this. But there will be some fall out around him because of it.

Sneaking into the Twin Towers, shooting an arrow between the two to link them with a wire, and orchestrating this whole stunt was illegal. Not mean, or bad, Mr. Petit points out, but illegal. But because of massive public outcry, the charges against him were reduced to trespassing and disorderly conduct. He was sentenced to perform a free show for children in Central Park, which became a major media event. Obviously a stunt like that would land him in Guantanamo today.

His friends were not so lucky. Some were fined. One was immediately and permanently deported from the U.S. He appears to have abandoned all of them. I’ve never had any experience of fame, nor have I been around anyone who blew up, but I think this is fairly standard.

His girlfriend at the time, Annie Allix, is the most philosophical about it. She says something like: Our relationship ended at that moment, and that’s how it should be. It’s beautiful that way. Ms. Allix was Mr. Petit’s constant support during the venture. She says that it was exhausting (I can only imagine). Her description of their relationship was telling. She said he was riveted by him. That he was so thrilling and courted her so sweetly, but that she became completely subsumed into his life to the point that he never even considered that she might have something of her own to do. I mean, there’s only so much of that a girl can take. Yeah, after getting him up there and down safely, and after 6 years of planning and sacrifices, I’d sure feel like that project was done too.

What Man on a Wire fails to mention is funding. Several transatlantic crossings for several people, a cable that cost $10,000 in 1974 (adjust that for inflation and that’s a whole lot of mango). Hard to finance all that as a street performer.

Rita Hayworth and I were discussing this after the film when a lovely French woman in fabulous glasses (and don’t French women always have the most amazing glasses?) interjected: these were children of privilege, you could tell by where they lived in Paris. But Rita Hayworth had an excellent point: what parents would give a kid thousands of clams to do some crazy thing that would probably get him killed? He must have had other income streams. Or other supporters. Perhaps since the whole thing was illegal, certain aspects remain secret to protect these supporters.

Thankfully, Mr. Marsh never mentions the destruction of the Twin Towers. I mean, you'd have to have been in a coma for the past 7 years not to know about that. In that sense the film could be seen as a tribute to the Towers but without any of jingoistic shlock that now surrounds almost any mention of these structures. The film importantly points out that the World Trade Center was not popular in the 70's. It was merely seen as a big behemoth in an already cash-strapped city. Mr. Petit's performance helped to raise public support for the buidlings.

I first heard of Mr. Petit in 1990. A distant cousin was visiting me from abroad. She was studying architecture and wanted to see the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. Naturally we waited until the very last day of her visit, when she had to catch a plane that afternoon. It was also the morning after a particularly raucous party (though some of the guests were still in my apartment). Both of us were wearing beaded 1920s party frocks and admittedly still drunk when we took the hour long subway ride uptown. To see the cathedral at dawn was worth it.

But our appearance (and alcohol induced high spirits) attracted the attention of a pair of stonecutters who were working on the cathedral’s façade early to beat the summer heat. They insisted on giving us the grand tour of the place which was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. No, that’s not a double entendre; the building is that amazing. It’s the largest Neo Gothic structure in the world and to this day it’s still unfinished. They led us through secret passageways, we met the peacocks in the garden, and finally we climbed pigeon-shit encrusted ladders (in high heels) to be on top of the dome. That was terrifying, and ecstatic. Heights, I tell you, they are something.

To get there, we went through Mr. Petit’s office, a little nook nestled right beneath the cathedral’s roof. They told us that he was a professional wire-walker and an artist in residence at Saint John the Divine. And I thought: nice work if you can get it. But it was hard to conceptualize what that would look like.

Indeed, I don’t think that the spectators on the ground could really see all that much on this morning 34 years ago. He was a very distant figure 100 stories up. The magic of the high wire then exists not so much in the seeing of it, but the feeling it produces in the spectator.

2008-08-06T13:15:00.000-07:00

It's International Clown Week. Who knew? Above are a few old clown prints from my One That Got Away file. All over the world, folks are donning red noses. According to clownlink, Richard Nixon was the person who signed the bill into effect, creating National Clown Week in 1971 and then the thing just took off from there. Again: who knew? (For some reason, just the name Richard Nixon always gets a laugh out of me. Maybe a conspiracy theorist could take this and run with it.)

I love the circus. Give me the sawdust, the big top, the sequins and the death-defying feats anytime. The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, Circus Amok, Circus Contraption, the Happy Hour Clowns. Oh, yes. I'm an enthusiastic Clown Festival theater-goer. I love French clowns, Russian clowns, and American buffoons. I'm even a fan of Canadian clowns.

No, I don't like circuses with animals. No Big Apple or Ringling Brothers for me. I think those belong to another era and are no longer appropriate. (Full disclosure: I come from a vaudeville family; a great uncle was a trick rider and snake charmer.) In general, animals don't like to perform*. And worse, no one knows how to direct them. I hate seeing animals overact, as they usually do in movies, but it is always the fault of the director who's coaching them to be cutesy. Animals are method actors, they want to live it.

I even love Marcel Marceau. That's right. I even go for mimes. I mean, has anything been more discredited? Is there anything more embarassing to admit? I don't care. I love mimes. I watched Mel Brooks' Silent Movie, just for Marcel Marceau's cameo. (He is the only person to speak in the film--hilarious!) And I love that mime bit at the end of Antonioni's 1966 film, Blow Up. You know, where there are a bunch mimes in full makeup playing mime tennis. And at the end the camera lingers on the invisible ball invisibly rolling through the grass. I mean, he's saying there's no there there. And yet it's still there, got it?

Okay, I know you'd probably rather eat your eyes than be subjected to mimes, goslings, and it's very true that there is so much bad miming these days, painfully bad, but still there's good stuff out there. I promise. Dark mime. Butohesque mime. Really.

But even I, shameless clown(and mime!)lover though I am, would find it a challenge to wear the more lurid clown prints pictured here. I mean, I'm already something of a flippertygibbet, why connect the dots for people? And the middle print in particular was a very creepy little blouse. Something macabre about that one. But perhaps it is for me to be bold and wear these anyway. What do you think? Would you wear a clown print?

Now young Akhenaten plays the accordion, which is one of my (many) fetishes, but if someone came along juggling flaming batons, riding a unicycle and wearing a red nose...well, I'd probably run off with a clown. Akhenaten knows this. He understands.

______
* Except otters, they love it. But they never know when to quit. Otter acts always go on way too long.

2008-07-30T14:03:00.000-07:00

Sorry, you didn't win: these two dresses. Nor the Picasso top either. No indeed. Sniped at the last second. I was naive and didn't know that sniping existed. Yes, an old broad like me can still be naive about things. Kind of charming, no?

Of course I don't need any more clothing, but I've been giving into my worst impulses over the past month. A combination of stress and despair that left me in desperate need of a new frock or three. But my schedule made it impossible to hit the stores.

I just did a week-long run of a show, most likely my swan song, and finished editing a movie. I think I logged in about 900 hours of editing. But I found plenty of time to bid on fripperies while waiting for video to import at 3AM. I also found it convenient to guzzle hootch and make poor nutritional choices while doing so. Why rotate your addictions when you can combine them?

But these three above I lost. Oh, sour grapes! And how I am jonesing for vegetable prints, Picasso reproductions and giraffes. Sighs.

These two I snagged:

Now the vegetable print skirt was obviously a necessity. Clearly. Just look at those juicy eggplants and sturdy carrots. And it fits perfectly, much to my surpise. It is my first ebay purchase. Really. But now the seal is broken and I am out there bidding. Look out.

The dress has not arrived yet. I own at least two dozen Hawaiian frocks so this was not necessary, pas de tout, but I could not resist the combination of blue gold and white. Plus it was the middle of the night, the show was mired in tech problems and I just had to have something.

Now that I am retired from the stage I really don't know what to do with myself. I found a yoga studio that shares space with an OTB. I'm not kidding. Exacta and downward dog, now that's what I call a Saturday. I figure I could place my bets, then take a yoga class and then see if I won or not. (Though most of the fun comes from watching one's horse lose.) Then hit the flea market and top it off with a soak and a shvitz at the Russian baths. Now that I'm a private citizen, I might as well indulge myself, no? Live it up a bit. Focus on improving the quality of my life.

I've discovered that I am extremely lackadaisical about lunch. I work in Midtown Manhattan where lunch is generally both banal and expensive. I take the path of least resistance most days by going to a national chain (let's just call it Overpriced Sandwich) that is in the lobby of the high rise building where I work, simply to avoid traipsing around in the heat (or the cold)and getting really angry at the very slow-moving tourists who are clogging up the sidewalks. Horrors. And here I am, a snob who orders all her books from a local bookshop to avoid big box stores, who won't even try on a dress with a Gap label, who avoids TV like it's radioactive (etc., etc. ad nauseum) and I don't bother to apply this philopshy to what I eat. For shame. It's all or nothing, right? Or can I just be a sloppy hypocrite with a blindspot the size of an oncoming freight train? Can I just say that I've been busy, and I can't do everything and leave it at that?

Diana Vreeland ate the same lunch everyday she worked at Vogue: an apple and a shot of scotch. Now that sounds ideal to me (provided I had eaten an enormous breakfast, with eggs and toast and blueberry pancakes--I mean, I get hungry) but unfortunately drinking at one's desk is very much frowned upon these days. I don't know why, but that's how it is. I could pack a lunch, but the few times I have done so I gobbled it up by 11am and was hungry for more come 1:30.

Into this void steps Midtown Lunch, a blog devoted to finding better lunch options. But alas, most of them too meat-centric for me. Though I do enjoy eating things off catering trucks and roadside carts with dubious sanitary conditions, I find the food so heavy that all I want to do after lunch is nap.

What do you eat for lunch? How do you like it?

2008-07-30T09:17:00.000-07:00

Now let us praise Nana Mouskouri. The polyglot Cretan-born songstress with only one vocal chord is currently on a farewell tour. Though Cher has had more than one farewell tour, so perhaps I can still hope to see Ms. Mouskouri live.

I became enchanted with Ms. Mouskouri when I was 16. In a local Salvation Army, I found an LP with a cover photo of a beautiful woman wearing an evening gown and black thick-framed glasses. And I remember thinking: any woman who proudly wears her glasses (and with an evening gown no less) is totally awesome, I must have this record. I bought it despite the outrageously expensive price of two dollars. (This was 1985, goslings, and I was accustomed to buying 70's photo print shirts and gold lamé suits for 25 cents.) The record was called something like International Songs, and it is long gone now alas. But I remember that there were beautiful, lushly orchestrated songs in French, German, and Greek, and it was in high rotation during my last two years of high school. I could still hum the opening song for you, a traditional Greek melody.

Her music always makes me feel like I'm living in Europe (with free health care and the entire month of August off) and I'm having a dinner party at my summer home (with a mod pop art decor) serving delicious things including vegetables from my own garden for witty, multi-lingual friends and no one is in a hurry to get home.

Ms. Mouskouri beautifully demonstrates Andy Warhol's dictate to find a style of your own and stick with it. The last photo shows her concert at the Acropolis on July 24, 2008, still lovely and proud at 73 years old. That's what attracts me to her style the most. It's marvelously dignified. I'd keep her around as a style icon even if she didn't sing.

Of course the early 70s are her strongest influence. Just look at her in the Yves Saint Laurent Mondrian dress. But I still think she makes it her own.

2008-07-10T08:16:00.000-07:00

Jumping Jehosaphat. Not just frogs, but frogs in hats. Vaguely Argentinian hats worn at a jaunty angle. Leaping frogs, toes spread, making ripples on the pond, reeds and cattails astir. Thrillingly unexpected black, white and red colorway. I love how the print lurches around the dress. The red panels and border, and the grain of the linen. I am clutching my heart and sighing. Go and see more for yourself. It's not in pristine condition, but how could you hold that against these frogs?

This is 40's whimsical novelty at its psychedelic, Doctor-Seussical best.

Frogs are one of my mom's obsessions. Come on, mama, let's hear your thoughts on this beauty.

I'd wear this with a very thick red belt and my new white Worishofers. Yep, German nurses' sandals. They've been on my wish list for a coupla years, but I decided, what the hell, why not make all of my dreams come true? My dreams, as it turns out, are fairly modest. The ones that don't involve films crews or jet fuel anyway. Just some comfortable shoes, a day at the beach, some Georgian cheese bread, and tap dancing lessons. Not too much to ask, really.

Now of course I have fantasies, and they run the gamut. For example, I've always wanted to sing Cole Porter songs backed by a full orchestra in a swank supper club like El Morocco. Naturally to do this I'd need a Schiaparelli gown festooned with lobsters and red opera length gloves. That one is gonna take some more work.

The Worishofers are both orthopedic and 40's looking. They go with all my full skirted dresses in particular. They definitely add charm to my 40's inspired late 70's summer dresses. They are super light and quite comfortable and supportive. However, I won't lie to you. There has been a learning curve that involved some blisters and bandaids. But as my friend Rita Z says, the moment when stiff shoes start to yield is one of life's most exquisite pleasures.

2008-06-25T12:49:00.001-07:00

Photo print with erupting volcanos. Explosive halter dress (I couldn't resist) with tropical scenes. Flowers, lava, sailboats on lightweight polyester with a deep plunge in the back. I love the panel in the front of the bodice. Perfect for a summer afternoon into the evening.

Bidding ends in mere hours. If I could, I'd get this one and wear it with a white shawl, and lots of white plastic jewelry. If I had 30s bakelite bracelets in blue, I'd do that too. I'd wear this dress to sip white wine with friends at one of those free NY Philharmonic performances in Central Park. It could even go to the Opera or the Ballet with different accessories.

Maybe if I wore this dress I'd find a friend with a boat. Not one of those dinky things where you fear for your life the whole time, no. A boat with a crew of its own so you can just sit there and stare off into the sunset with out hoisting sails and fumbling with things you know nothing about. See what I mean, there's just something preppy about this Hawaiian dress. It would look good with navy topsiders, or espadrilles. You could even tie a sweater around your shoulders cause it gets chilly on a boat.

I really love photo prints. Here are a few from The One That Got Away file:

Jaunty, nice and fun, right? I love the ladies on the hoodie and the castles on the poncho.

But here is the real show stopper. This could have been one for the Polyester Museum of Fine Art. Most photo prints just slap images together without any thought. But now and again, someone gives the photo print it's due, choosing and assembling images with care and insight. Finding images that vibrate against each other, yet are still complementary. Here the roses are collaged into a garden, their colors matching and almost camouflaging the artwork. This one makes me kvell.

2008-06-23T15:53:00.001-07:00

I've been tagged by the charming Ms. Pratishtha Durga over at Shot Couture Street Fashion. I've never been tagged before and I like it.

Here's the tag:
"List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now, shaping your summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they're listening to."

Here goes:

1. "Besame Mucho" as interpreted by Professor Alvarado.
2. "Light My Fire" as interpreted by Dame Shirley Bassey.
3. "Haram te'habek" by Warda.
4. "In a Bar on the Piccola Marina" by Noel Coward.
5. "The Triplets of Belleville" title song from the soundtrack.
6. "I Love to Whistle" as interpreted by Deanna Durbin.
7. "Tout va tres bien, Madame La Marquise". one version by Ray Ventura et ses Collégiens, and yet another (even better one) in Russian.

Section 3, in which I explain myself unnecessarily and at great length.

1. "Besame Mucho" As interpreted by Professor Alvarado.

You can see the Professor in action here. 77 years young, this dashing Ecuadorian-born musician plays a Yamaha keyboard in the subway stations, often accompanied by a cavalcade of battery-operated dolls. (Yes, the photo is nabbed from the Village Voice article.) And whenever I see him, he's always playing my favorite song: Girl From Ipanema. He's got oodles of stage presence. He grins and waves when you look his way. And his eyes are filled with delight. If I see him on my way to work, I know it's gonna be a good day.

I bought his cd as part of a project I'm doing called Busker's Ball. If I like a street musician, I buy his or her cd. The intention was to review them here, as a regular thing. But for one reason or another I never got around to it. A big thank you to Ms. Pratishtha for being the catlyst here.

Professor Alvarado's cd, ambitiously entitled "International Music: Volume One", includes many of my favorite standard songs from around the world such as "Muñequita Linda", "Óchi chórnyje", and "Brazil". And, I ask you, what International cd would be complete without a Jewish song? "Hava Negila" is there with plenty of bounce just waiting for a wedding party to dance the hora. The Professor's keyboard technique includes lovely enbellishments. His keyboard is now a trumpet, now a glockenspiel. He makes choices, and they are bountiful, loungy, loopy, 60s movie soundtrack choices. Yes, the pre-fab beats on the Yamaha are shmaltzy, but that's the way I like it. I can't help but sway and sing along.

The liner notes of the cd state that the professor teaches piano, voice and accordion, along with his contact info. I can't resist. I may have found my guru.

2. "Light My Fire" as interpreted by Dame Shirley Bassey

Yes, it's a Jim Morrison song with lots of caterwalling, but Dame Shirley Bassey (of "Goldfinger" fame) takes it downtempo and throaty. Purring more than demanding. I love the dame's ennunciation and phrasing.

I was dismayed to hear that Ms. Bassey had to cancel a recent appearance at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday concert due to health reasons. I hope she gets well real soon.

Full disclosure: I met her once. She was super sweet and fun. I totally heart her.

Did you notice that she's wearing the Welsh Flag in this photo?

3. "Haram te'habek" by Warda

Just drink in this lovely vintage photo of Warda al-Jazairia.

Brocade dress, bright eyes, half smile, coral-orange lips. Yes and yes.

Long ago in my early late 20s, I did a bit of belly dancing. I wasn't terrible, but my life took a different path. At any rate, CDs from that lost era persist. Akhenaten, my young paramour, dug them out and put them in high rotation again. This song is particularly fun. I know I've bungled the transliteration, but it means: it was immoral to have loved you.

4. "In a Bar on the Piccola Marina" written and interpreted by Noel Coward.

I just got Noel Coward at Las Vegas from the library, and it is all I hoped. Recorded live in 1955 to an appreciative crowd, this song is hilarious. His lyrics are like short stories. He even does a jaunty cover of Cole Porter's "Let's Do It".

5. "The Triplets of Belleville".

Soundtrack from the 2003 animated film. (I am a sucker for movies virtually without dialogue.)The title track sung by Mathieu Chedid.

But the whole thing is great. Django Reinhardt and 60s spy movie music references. I mean, there's even a song created with a newspaper, a vacuum cleaner and a refrigerator, who could resist? This is always on high rotation for me.

6. "I Love to Whistle" as interpreted by Deanna Durbin.

Yep, recently referenced in my Deanna Durbin worship. This song, from Mad About Music, is stuck in my head like you wouldn't believe. I even found the sheet music, scored for a ukulele no less. I almost plotzed. I hope to be strumming my uke and singing this one at an open mic soon.

7. "Tout va bien, Madame La Marquise"

A real novelty tune, and sadly, the story of my life. Lyrics, here and here.

The Marquise calls her country estate after an absence of two weeks to see how things are going. Her loyal retainers, one after another, tell her that all is well except for one tiny, little problem. First one of her horses died, then the stables burned down, then chateau was engulfed in flames, etc., escalating into total ruination. I love how in Ray Ventura's version, the part of the Marquise is sung by a man in falsetto.

But the Russian version, oh the Russian version. The subtitles include such lines as "We roasted potatoes in the flames" and my favorite, "May all your creditors be tall and handsome." This is it!

If I could watch this twice a day, I wouldn't need therapy. Watch the guy in the back who doesn't sing.

Is this song from the 1966 musical "Kavkaskaya Plenniza"? The video looks more 70s to me. Have I been led astray by the interweb?

Hey there, I'm tagging you...

1) Ms. Tea Time
2) Ms. FuzzyLizzie
3) Ms. Gastrogradstudent
4) Spartacus
5) EV Big
6) Ms. SequinExpat
7) Ms. Rita Z

And all others who might read this. What are you listening to?

2008-06-23T12:47:00.000-07:00

Renaissance or Roman? The ebayer lists this dress as a Roman frock, and the colonades are certainly Romanesque, but the caps on the figures, along with the hunting dog, scream Renaissance to me.

What do you think?

I'd wear it to watch I, Claudius, anyway. I am now 6 episodes in, and I adore Sian Phillips as the poisonous Livia. Ms. Phillips has this gaunt, stark, wilted beauty that always looks queenly. I hope to see all of Ms. Phillip's oeuvre. Under Milk Wood, anyone? Though alas a quick search shows that her scene from Dune ended up on the cutting room floor. I would have loved to have seen that.

This dress is a gem, nonetheless. Go on, go get it.

2008-06-20T13:25:00.000-07:00

Tilting at windmills?

Inspired by the divine Diana Vreeland, I often spend slow afternoons trying to think up new "Why don't you...?" ideas. It's not as easy as it looks.

I just found out recently that Ms. Vreeland's Whydon'tyous have been collected in a lovely book, but alas I've never gotten my sweaty hands on it.

Why don't you...become obsessed with Don Quixote?

I mean look at all this stuff. Picasso and Dali, of course, but the mod woodcut and painting are my favorites. Of course you could branch out into sculptures. Then there are movies, a ballet and even an opera. Lectures at your local Cervantes Institute. It would actually be funnier if you somehow never got around to reading the book. That's the true philistine spirit. And friends and family would know what to shop for when birthdays roll around. Cervantes isn't my favorite, but there just weren't as many merchandizing opportunities with Proust.

Some whydon'tyous are just for laughs, but I tend to act on them too. With mixed results. I have not yet achieved a "Russian Winter!" of borscht, vodka, ice skating, babushkas, Tolstoy, furs and lessons with a chess master. (I guess there's always next year.) But I've showed some real stick-to-it-ness with the ukulele (and accepted that the musical saw and the theramin are beyond my meager skill set). Sadly, I only took 2 fencing lessons (and it's a crime too, since there is a world class fencing club right around the corner from my house, and everyone there was so nice), really got to work on that. Freemasonry was a bust, as you know. (Mom sent me this article on young freemasons in Los Angeles, but as with many things, it's the dudes who are having all the fun.)

But some worked out. I developed an alter-ego (she's an 83 year old lounge singer named Ruby Khan). I also became an opera snob, turned my living room into a faux forest, and devoted myself, body and soul, to the wearing of the most eye-scalding vintage novelty patterns.

Do these sound too much like run of the mill New Year's Resolutions? I told you it was not easy.

Why don't you...change your name to something even more difficult to spell and pronounce?

Why don't you...study Basque, Kurdish, Yiddish or some other minority language?

Why don't you...decide that all your shoes must be green lizard skin? Or wear spats? Or Japanese tabi socks with all your flip flops?

I love the idea of a signature item. It could be something as non-controversial as a color pallet. I have a friend who travels for business alot and only wears shades of red. I have another friend who only wears black, white, beige and brown.

The thing with consistency is that anything outré will become normal through repetition. Really. You just have to wear it everyday. The first time you wear a flower behind your ear (or a bustle, or a bathrobe as a coat) to work, you'll get a stare or two. After a few months, they are shocked if you aren't wearing it. This has been road tested by me. (Caveat: I had a job with a dress code once. The manual said: business wear or evening attire. I didn't have a suit, so I wore these 80's prom dresses I got for a buck a piece at a swap meet. Fluffy, pink, fuschia, tulle, big shoulders, fabric roses. And this was back in the 90s when everyone wore all black. I thought it was hilarious. I'm still cracking up now. But they so totally fired me.)

Why don't you...volunteer at a charity you believe in (but don't tell anyone that you are doing so)?

Why don't you...save your pennies to buy a big ticket item from a local artist you admire?

Why don't you...cover the walls of your hallway with thrift shop paintings of eyes?

Why don't you...?

Come on, I know you've got better ones.

2008-06-20T10:52:00.000-07:00

Comrades, what could be more fun than to check your false eyelashes (and false consciousness) in the mirror of your communist compact? To stare into your own eyes and ask what you've done for the revolution today?

I've long had a yen for a novelty compact. A real show stopper. I've been collecting these images for a while, so forgive me if most have sold already. The bejeweled seahorse fetched a pretty penny, but the leather guitar sold for a whopping $270, and with a broken mirror no less. The 8 ball is an unusal piece, but sold for a comparatively reasonable price. While the hand was more economical. The cookie is doubtless the most whimsical, and the one I probably would have chosen, had it been all I hoped. But alas it is not a proper compact with a mirror, but rather merely a container for lip gloss. The rotary dial phone compact is a spendy one (and long gone).

I've got a beautiful, though rather plain, 50s compact which I don't carry for the simple reason that it is too heavy. If I were to tumble into the East River with it in my pocket, I'd drown for sure. Though should my life turn into an Agatha Christie novel, I could use it to brain someone. ("The countess tried to bludgeon me to death with her gold cigarette case, Monsieur Poirot, I was forced to fend her off with my powder box.")

This blog began as an attempt to curb my compulsive shopping. Full Disclosure: I own about 90 vintage dresses. (This includes the Polyester Museum of Fine Art, my collection of polyester dresses with photo-prints of Japanese screens, Indian miniatures, 19th century etchings and old masters. It does not include evening wear. Or costumes. Or separates: like novelty circle skirts or garishly bejeweled sweaters. Then there are the 200 or so scarves. I could go on.) Admittedly, many of these frocks cost as little as two dollars, so my vice has not bankrupted me. But I am not unaware that this is entirely too much. And I have run out of space in my tiny apartment. I can't fit another freaking thing in there.

I know it sounds counter-intuitive to regularly comb ebay for novelty delights and collect pictures of them, kind of like a recovered alcoholic hanging out in bars, but stay with me. Posting photos and writing about them can often satiate my somewhat outsized need. And it is almost as exciting. When I find a really thrilling print, my heart leaps. It's like falling in love. When I found a 1960's blouse printed with enormous anthropomorhized blue chess pieces, my heart rate went up, my hands shook and I broke out in a sweat. I blushed, I stammered. I negotiated the sale through the crack of the door since the shop was closing. Okay, maybe that sounds more like heroin addiction than love to you, but it works for me. I get almost as much of a bang out of knowing these things exist and looking at pictures of them. Truly. I'm not just shining it on for you. And it's certainly better to share them with others than to hoard them.

Though one could argue with hundreds of novelty print items at my disposal daily, I could get high on my own supply for a year or two. I've tried.

Why am I like this?

I could take the socio-economic tack and write about the overwhelming commercialization of modern life, but you already know about all that.

I could take the Freudian route and tell you that my father is a compulsive gambler and my mother is a compulsive thrift shopper. Not many 8 year olds could read the racing form or explain to you that her vintage 1950's brownie's uniform was only a buck at the local charity shop, but there I was.

The thrill of your horse coming out from behind and taking the lead, or of finding the only cashmere sweater at a Goodwill (and it fits perfectly), these, I learned, were life's greatest delights. Since I tend to lose big time at the track, I focused on the latter.

2008-06-13T14:54:00.000-07:00

I am a sucker for anything aquatic. And this dress does it all. Shells and seaweed (or is that coral?), and aqua background, and a draped front split at the feet to trail behind you like tendrils. A hostess with the mostest dress for sure.

Too long on me, alas. The ebayer says the lot of dresses she has available are all from the same owner. She was a party girl because there's a whole stable of hostess dresses available with Hawaiian motifs, eye-scalding patterns, and beautiful faux Grecian drapery. Whoever the previous owner was, I'm sure she was lots of fun. Probably smoked cigarettes with a holder and called everyone darling, mostly because she was better at faces than names. I imagine her hobbies like scuba-diving, esperanto and blackjack. Maybe she liked to get her hands dirty at a pottery wheel, or play the harpsicord, something to surprize the neighbors. She had an analyst, of course, along with an astrologer and a psychic to help her make the really difficult decisions like whether or not to do over her boudoir in red silk. But she'd quote Schopenhauer or Mao in casual conversations so you knew she wasn't all icing and no cake. She was quick with a joke or a valium when you were feeling down. You could always stop by the back door of her avocado-colored kitchen and coffee klastch for hours. And she threw theme parties with cheese fondue and flambéed hors d'oeuvres. I imaigne she probably had a philandering husband but didn't care since she was too busy with love affairs of her own, darling.

And everyone was always talking about her. That Mrs. So-and-So, they'd say, you just never know what she will do. Maybe all my ideas about her were just the rumors they created. Maybe she was shy and pliant, uncompromising only in her love for eye-catching evening wear. But somehow I think she had to be as fun as her clothes.