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?

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.

A backgammon blouse, for old time's sake. I can't tell who is winning in this game, perhaps you can.

This is merely a pretex for a long rant.

The Argonauts on their quest for the Golden Fleece, so legend tells us, were constantly repairing the Argo. After 7 years of repair, the ship had been entirely rebuilt. Piece by piece everything had been replaced. Is it still the Argo?

This is entirely rhetorical, perhaps.

The human body, I once read, is up to something similar. At the cellular level, we are all constantly repairing ourselves. After 7 years, all of the cells in my body have been replaced with new ones. Am I still Samsara? As all of my annoying (one could even say crippling) foibles are still intact, I am forced to admit it’s still me. Without quite the same spring in my step, but here I am.

Of course my city had been gentrifying for decades, that’s not news. Back in late ‘80s, I was among the horrified onlookers as Gaps and Barnes and Nobles sprouted up in Astor Place. I was out of town for a few years in the early ‘90s (one could call it graduate school, but I prefer to say I was just out of town) and upon my return I could no longer afford to live in downtown’s tenements. I didn’t like moving uptown but enough of the things I loved remained. I could still shop at Fifi Le Frock, the Fleamarket on 26th Street, or if I had enough paprika in me, head out to Domsey’s to dig through the dollar-per-pound bins. I could still chow down on dim sum at the Hop Woon Sing Tea House for $1.50 per plate, pop into Cafe Degli Artisti for cannoli, catch a Kung Fu movie at the theater that is now a Buddhist temple, or hear live jazz at Augie’s. I could rehearse a show at Harlequin Studios, or Fazil's, or Charas el bohio. I could see thrilling experimental theater by expensively trained actors for a mere $12. If I had had the dough, I could have learned to ride English saddle at the Claremont Riding Academy and gone galloping through Central Park. These are all the ghosts of Christmas Past, goslings, all gone. And gone too those days of loft parties that were actually fun and when I seemed to be constantly running into Bjőrk pushing Matthew Barney’s lovechild in a stroller.

I know, I know. I am beginning to sound like those old anarchists who are forever going on and on about the Thompkins Square Park Police riots. And what grand times those were. We had unity then, they insist, we all came together against the cops. But in the end, the tent city of homeless people was driven from the park, and the surrounding area is now inhabited by investment bankers. I personally know an i-bank millionaire who lives in of these now fancy schmancy buildings and bemoans the gentrification of the neighborhood. Yes, just like that. Without any acknowledgement of his role in this dynamic. Nostalgia, I tell you, is corrosive.

Lynne Yaeger’s column this week follows some new store openings and the continued gentrification of our town. I apologize for the New York centrism of this post, but perhaps the same thing is happening in your home town?

Ms. Yaeger explores the fate of the old CBGB’s, now the serious upscale retail space of a John Varvatos store. Varvatos has evidently preserved some of the famous filth and graffiti of the old club, as a historical monument, for folks to view while shopping, I guess. I went to the club a few times in the 80s, but I was never a big fan of CBGB’s, except in Nan Goldin photographs. I never got into that rock n’ roll the kids listen to. But it’s hilarious that rich people will look at the remains of it now safely behind glass. But it’s not just that theaters and art and music venues are being replaced by retail space. That’s bad enough. But does it have to be such overwhelmingly expensive retail? She writes: “A few cute little stores on Bleecker? No prob. But Bruno Cucinelli? If you want a $1,200 cashmere cardigan, can't you just go to Saks?”

But what cuts me to the quick, is that Florent, an old meat-packing district 24 hour French dinner, is closing tomorrow. She writes: "So traumatic is the passing of Florent, so symbolic, so fraught with pain, so rage-inducing, that the restaurant has launched a series of upcoming performance pieces under the rubric 'the five stages of loss.'"

Now whenever I visit the Strand, St. Mark’s books, The Village Chess Shop, Film Forum, Anthology Film Archives, Tea and Sympathy and Caffe Reggio it’s like a dowager visiting her charities. As if they are orphanages in need of my philanthropy, but of course, I also the orphan. Please stay open, please. Raise your prices, fine, and I’ll surrender my seat to a tourist in 10 minutes, I promise, just please stay open. Otherwise I'll have nowhere to go.

Reminiscence is probably the last affordable vintage place left standing in Manhattan. (Yes, there is Brooklyn where vintage is still to be found, but sometimes I'm too tired to spend 1 hour each way to get there. But that's another post entirely.) They still do a lot of vintage reproductions which I never cared for, but it’s probably what kept them afloat. It was the sort of place I used to look down on, back in the day when there were piles of 40s rayon dresses to be had for $5 a piece at Dalia’s on 7th Street. Just piles of them. Sigh. Ah, well. Reminiscence has been good to me over the past decade. I can usually find interesting evening wear for under $20 there, including some real workhorse evening gowns that are still in high rotation. I was in there last week when I overheard a very adult-looking young woman telling her friend: “My mom used to shop here when she was young.”

And then (I know this sounds horribly contrived but so help me it’s true) when I got home I found a letter addressed to me personally from a funeral home. It begged me to take the pressure off my loved ones by buying a grave stone and plot now. I’m only 38, for crying out loud. And how did they get my name and address? (A friend of mine was recently outraged when she received a letter from a fertility clinic advising her to freeze her eggs before it was too late. She only felt better when I told her that I got that letter too, almost 8 years ago.)

Last summer I saw a documentary film, Manufactured Landscapes, which chronicles the work of Canadian photographer, Edward Burtynsky. Mr. Burtynsky’s photographs show the massive impact of industry from the denuded hillsides of iron ore extraction to the displacement of people during China’s 3 Gorges Dam project. The film also shows Mr. Burtynsky at work photographing shipbreaking in Bangladesh and the remaking of Shanghai from a city of two story houses and communal outdoor kitchens into a terrain of high rises. In one scene, filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal interviews a Shanghai real estate developer, a starkly beautiful young woman, skinny as a runway model. The developer sits in her obnoxiously modern penthouse looking down on the city. I believe that even the windows are remote-controlled. She speaks of her current troubles. In knocking down all the old 2 story apartment houses on a particular street, everyone had accepted buyouts (or perhaps succumbed to threats) except for one old woman. She just won’t leave. Skyscrapers were going up around her, blocking the sunlight to her garden and still she won’t leave. The developer simply can’t understand it, and she’s pissed off. This old lady is just gumming up the works, and what value could she possibly have? The developer says unabashedly that Shanghai is for the young, without acknowledging the impermanence of her own youth. Of course, you’d get a more sympathetic interview on the plight of minnows from a shark. And I thought, I have a lot in common with this old lady who’s staying put. I'd love a chat with her.

How much needs to vanish before I cry uncle? Before I say that the New York I loved no longer exists? The festival I dance in every summer has been cancelled. It’s kind of a relief since I can no longer afford rehearsal space. Even my more successful friends have nowhere to perform. All of this is to be sung to the tune of “Have I Stayed Too Long at the Fair?”.

Many of my friends have left this town, and gone on to mortgages and children. All of them call me to express how bone-chillingly miserable they are. Between working and marriage counseling and potty training, they say that the thing that grinds them down the most is the utter lack of impending fabulousness. Gone is the feeling that maybe you’d get booked into a better venue, or meet a gallery curator who is putting together a show of pinhole photography and wants your work in it. That maybe you’d become a glove model, a dj, a UN interpreter, or Ru Paul’s ghost writer. Or perhaps you’d be lewdly propositioned by Salman Rushdie, or run into Laurie Anderson in the elevator. The feeling that something note-worthy is about to happen, and that all of your hard work could pay off.

I tell them: this place existed only in our imaginations. The sense of impending fabulousness was just a feeling. And even worse, that feeling was just a by-product of youth. And I repeat: nostalgia is corrosive. This is especially funny if I am on my analog 70s phone, wearing a 40s vintage suit and sitting in the yellow velvet chair I rescued from the garbage. Ah, it's amazing just how hard it is to see your own blindspot. Corrosive indeed.

And then I find Akhenaten staring in horror at my cassette tapes saying: “Habibi, Egypt is a third world country and even there we don’t listen to tapes anymore.” And I am at a loss, perhaps all five stages of loss, on how to move forward. Oh, I suppose I could buy an ipod, cut my hair, whistle a Sondheim tune, look at where I'm going not at where I've been. And then what? Then my 78- year-old father calls and asks me how to attach a document to an email (though he says "mail it through the internet") and I find myself filled with more compassion and patience than I thought possible.

"How do you really preserve a part of history, but keep something moving?" Mr. Varvatos asks Ms. Yaeger, "almost," she writes, "pleading for understanding."

Royal flush, goslings. Today is an absolute novelty bonanza. I've never seen ebay this novel. Go get this playing card shirt dress. It's a very wearable medium, the print is detailed, and current bids are low.

I have 2 more to post!

Let the games begin. Curtain panels, two of them, each 31"x 34" with a current bid of $18.50. This print would make a splendid shift dress. Does anyone know enough about chess to tell who's winning?

Wear it to take on Deep Blue.