Tag: Fashion

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Aesthetics Culture Travel

Day 1872 and ‘bout to take my lady to Selfridges

Ahhh how I missed London. I miss it in the same way I miss Hong Kong and even Frankfurt. So many cities are no longer places for Americans. I need nowhere else to go mind you, my edge of the American empire will be flooded soon enough, it’s just that I miss being welcomed.

It’s just I’d gotten used to the freedom of our constitutional rights seemingly applying everywhere. Team America was an ok joke by true sons of the mountain west libertarian in South Park’s Matt and Trey. Now it seems like a drop out attitude of Gen X. I am still on Team America.

The end of the liberal world order, much ballyhooed by the WEF set, has me getting prepared to be seen as the enemy. It is even time to get used to being called fascists. I’m sure Nazi won’t be far off as the Germans must always take everything too far. Ironic no?

I fear if I don’t prepare to be truly sovereign, I may face a day as a refuge in the future if Americans can’t pull off its renaissance. Though I work hard toward that end.

I’ve done what I can to invest in the young entrepreneurs of the new era, and in the great state of Montana in particular, but victory is more article of faith than assured outcome.

The Munich Security Conference is, as it ever was, a flurry of events but now Marco Rubio is singing a love song to our birth continent. As if papering over the past year of slights and jabs is enough but it is the best a neoconservative in disguise can manage.

And so I had a layover in Heathrow and I saw the flavors of what is to come. And somehow that Prada song was on repeat everywhere I went.

London is still for the globalists, even if you are not a member of what William Gibson called the klept. As in kleptocracy. The Jackpot is here.

Reindustrialize they say, but look what happened to British Empire. The sun never sets? The sun barely rises on it now, and we’ve lost them to the unforeseen consequences of the generational contractual breach.

Add in the inflows of the commonwealth deciding the island will always be a destination for the 1% and London is a pricy place.

And so I think should I go to Selfridges as the song says? The Duty Free shops that makes up Heathrow hasn’t made a deal with them but I’ve got all the luxury options and high streeet choices at my disposal.

I was once deep in the world of travel retail and I bet you can guess who owns the biggest player in Heathrow. No not Arnault. It is, as you might expect, a competing regional power who certainly wishes non-doms weren’t facing wealth taxes in London. They are good to do business with incidentally.

And so I hear, over and over again, past seasons hits and remixes and think London might be the virtual world of Malthusian post Jackpot imaginings of the Cyperpunk progenitor. And we shall compete for clout and status in the same ways as always.

[Young Adz:]

Bout to take my lady Selfridges
New drip on the way, uh-huh
Rap nigga still sellin’ bricks
Half a cake on the way, uh-huh
Take a flight, she wanna take a Lyft
Phone the molly man, he’s on the way, uh-huh
I might take her The Shard, I might take her The Ritz
It don’t matter, baby, I’m straight, uh-huh

[RAYE:]
I feel like I’m in Prince’s house
Purple paint all on the walls, uh-huh
Sittin’ down on this fancy couch
And I can’t see straight, I’m a state, uh-huh
Twenty-two, I’m in Paris, baby
Got strippers tits in my face, uh-huh
Pull up in a Bentley, I want Christian, I want Fendi

I want Prada, ah-ah, ah-ah
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh-ooh
I already make that paper, I don’t need to chase no clout, wow
I don’t usually pipe up, but I don’t like how you runnin’ your mouth, wow
I already make that paper, I don’t need to chase no clout, wow

I already made that paper and I don’t need to chase no clout so now what?

I’m like George Clooney stuck in the liminal window of Heathrow for a brief moment. I am not of the country (I spent $22 to register myself with their visa mobile app as I sat in a purple corridor trying to input my biometric) so it feels all wrong.

I’m not exactly out of their control until I leave their airspace. But how much longer do any of these Anglophone countries have left?

I’m a dark Swede of dubious stock and many generations of me and mine adjusted to the Weberian Protestant work ethic. I don’t want Prada but I did enjoy working for them as a client.

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Aesthetics Startups

Day 1866 and Never Escaping Veblen Goods

I love a good signaling and status competition. There are so many ways to to signal that at the far reaches of taste you will never fear to tread. Just don’t worry about how other people live.

I’ve worked in luxury fashion and venture capital and they run on the same rules. And it’s all snobbery up and down and it is a mixed bag when it comes to what works in reality.

I’ve known sneakerheads who seamlessly transitioned to private equity because they know in some fundamental way that rising price increases demand in strange markets. But the little signals can give away your whole game and you can’t always assume you are speaking their language.

Many an investor and fashionista has made good use of this basic understanding of a Veblen good. The more expensive it gets, the more it stokes demand. Everyone thinks they can become Hermes or Facebook but if you could well you would have.

This can fuck with actual performance as the thing being performed isn’t necessarily the thing that is getting done in reality. You can show your own displeasure with the pricing scheme by not participating. You can short a thing with a little creative and signaling of your own.

Many decided will continue to play along despite not needing to participate in status games. Outsourcing taste is actually something you can pay for and sometimes you should just get a realistic budget.

Often you really can’t afford to play the game and it’s better to cultivate your own taste and satisfactions in life so you are comfortable taking on the risk load of stepping out of unnecessary competition. You play your own game and win on your own terms.

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Aesthetics Travel

Day 1864 and Retail Therapy in Fashion Exile Land

Maybe it’s because it’s been such a wild week in the financial markets, but I’ve been thinking back to one of my moves to San Francisco just before the Great Recession. It’s a story about buying clothing but I’ll get to that.

I had just come off the high of being the first publisher to break (by live streaming and photography) a new fashion designer who would become one of the biggest names of his generation.

The low hit me as I realized I was unable to afford any of the pieces in his collection. And nor was I able to buy them anyway as the whole collection sold out instantly in New York City. I look back on being backstage at his first (and subsequent) shows with much fondness. Once he threw a full on carnival in a parking lot! Imagine models tossing their size 9.5 Manolo’s on concrete to hop into a bouncy castle.

Those models were his muses and he was known for an off-duty model look. I am about a foot too short, 20-30lbs too fat, and three cup sizes too large to be mistaken for a model so not an ideal customer.

Normally one could politely ask for samples or gifting if one helped break a collection, but this was not a sample collection that would have fit me. I’m a size 7 shoe and those boobs do me no favors for hanger sizes.

Still I wanted one item badly. Even if I couldn’t afford it and I couldn’t find it in stores, I kept an eye out everywhere for it.

The coveted item was a pair of high waisted pleated black wool trousers (lined with an ample cuff) that was the wearable merchandising anchor to a collection that was otherwise a bit tricky for mere mortals to wear.

For the men (and some women) who haven’t given thought to runway models, the metrics are specific. You need to be over 5’ 10”, never over 115lbs and have an A cup to fit a designer runway model call sheet.

These aren’t aesthetic preferences, just that models are a glorified hanger and not a person for purposes of ease of fitting. Yes it’s a bit degrading.

And so I resigned myself to never getting those pants and having only the glory of discovery and first to market coverage. Though the proof on that may be debated.

But then a small miracle happened. As I was relocating to San Francisco (by the buyer of my first startup) I began to get invited to events and parties.

A brand new Barney’s opened up off Union Square in San Francisco. An old girlfriend who had just married and moved to San Francisco told me “you will love the shopping out here as the good stuff never sells out!”

Mind you the collection had sold out in other fashion capitals. I had called around. I asked all the major stockists. It just wasn’t to be had anywhere.

But the new Barney’s was very late in opening and had stock from the previous season saved. I missed the opening party but thought maybe I’ll see something from the newer collection and I’ll splurge.

Well I got even luckier than I imagined. The pants were not only at the new Barney’s but on the sale rack. No one in the market had even liked them.

The salesgirl said weren’t moving as they were too formal and too trend forward for the town. They were having trouble moving most of the pieces from the designer in fact.

There were multiple pairs of the pants in size 38. That is a size 6 in American sizing which is almost always the first to sell out. I purchased it without even thinking. They were 40% off.

I still wear them to this day. And anytime I visit a bigger city or capital with a retailer of high end fashion, or designer goods, I’ll go looking. Sometimes in the strangest places you will find the exact item you wanted marked off in the middle of February.

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Aesthetics Culture

Day 1854 and Will The Real Fake Fendi Please Stand Up?

I don’t know if I should be flattered or irritated but I learned funniest thing this week. Netflix “stole” my Real Fake Fendi story for their hit show Emily in Paris. Let me explain.

Emily in Paris wrote a plot-line into the current 5th season which appears to be riffing on one of my old blogposts “The Real Fake Fendi.” It is a true story & anyone who has known me awhile has heard me tell it.

I wrote about it in ‘21 on this blog five years long before this season premiered. I am on day 1853 day of writing a daily blog and published the story on Day 89 of my writing experiment though the actual experience took place sometime in the late aughts or early teens where I believe I first wrote about it on an old blog I took down.

Emily pitches a campaign to Fendi for a “real fake Fendi” on Emily in Paris

I suspect I would find earlier variants of this tale from my very first (somewhat popular) fashion blog as well. I suppose where fashion is headed is always where fashion has been. Or as they say on the show “it’s super meta and self referential”

The story goes like this. I was once was asked by a tourist for directions to find “a real fake Fendi” when I lived in Manhattan’s Chinatown.

I was honestly stumped by this inquiry. I didn’t answer immediately as my mind raced through the implications of their request. Imagine my mind retrieving.

Was there a fake that had inherent realness that other knockoffs did not possess? Was there a vendor who sold the most authentic mimicry of Fendi which the tourist wished to find? I had no clue how to answer.

Did they mean the realness one sees on the catwalks overseen by RuPaul? But which kind of realness? The creation that evokes the spirit of its inspiration? A realness so over the top and yet absolutely true to its essence?

Or perhaps the blunt direct feedback from being “read” by a drag artist that no construct, no matter how convincing, is the original artifact. Is is serving realness? I honestly didn’t know. I had Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction swirling in my head and still has no answer.

Apparently tourists looking for Canal Street want to buy the most authentic real fake Fendi

I just told the tourist that Canal was one block north and walked away. I don’t know if they ever found what they were looking for and I may have even given them the wrong directions I was so flummoxed.

Now can I really complain about someone taking one of my coinages and injecting it into a Darren Starr show about spunky brunette girl from heartland American who becomes a luxury fashion marketer by being good at social media. You see where I am going with this. That girl is me.

Perhaps my friend and fashion scholar Susan Scafidi of Fordham Law School’s Fashion Law Institute & author of “Who Owns Culture” would know who owns this cultural artifact. I bet I’ve told her this story too.

This life story archetype has been aspirational long before me. Murphy Brown anyone? It has been done in many different formats including Darren Starr’s best known work Sex and The City.

But it is my story too. So is Emily in Paris the real story of Julie in Manhattan? Is Julie in Manhattan the real Emily in Paris? Am I a retro causal multiverse prequel version of Emily?

Who is the real Emily? Am I the real Emily? Who buys a fake version of the real thing? Either way, I think Netflix owes me at a walk on spot. It would be very self referential. Or me-referential

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Travel

Day 1847 and Cardio versus Packing versus Ski Bunnies

I’ll be on the road for a portion of tomorrow. Other members of my traveling party have already pulled ahead to parts unknown, as shifting obligations and vehicle needs turned schedules this way and that. Nomads as we adapt to a new world.

Europe is in a tense state and the weather hasn’t helped much. As I’m writing, Davos is awaiting Trump speech in the Swiss mountain town.

I finished a workout in the hotel gym but my room wasn’t quite ready for me, so I went down to the lounge to take in the BBC having had my fill of Bloomberg commentary while in the gym.

Management must keep up with their bosses

You can probably spot the hotel brand and imagine easily my experience intaking the World Economic Forum by proxy as I attempt to manage my life and health in the unspooling of the order of things.

I packed up a slightly unusual range of things for my transit tomorrow, as I had been going by car but will hop a low cost carrier to recenter. Somehow this has my large luggage separated from me. I’m carrying a very fine leather duffle I recently acquired as a gift for my husband.

Will this work for my carry on and personal item?

I have gone from doing a bit of cardio bunny as I work to improve my V02 max to a pack rabbit, as I moved around this and that to be sure my cascade of items and medications were within reach and packed appropriately. And would make weight but I’ll get to it.

I’ll not end my travels as a snow bunny in Davos though I have seen rather a lot of snow in Southern Europe as far south as Greece.

Why are bunnies on my mind? Well I have to keep in mind some odd weights for the low cost carrier I’ll be using for a short hop. Just look at this guide to baggage.

3kg is a silly amount of weight for a bag. That’s the weight of a house pet like a bunmy

3kg (3 kilograms) is equivalent to approximately 6.6 pounds. While this weight is roughly the size of a medium-to-large house rabbit rather than a “small” one, it is a common weight for many everyday household items like a large bag of flour or three liters of milk. Via Perplexity and Weight of Stuff

For whatever odd reason, the carrier listed your personal item or under seat bag as needing to weigh 3kg. This is about the weight of a house rabbit.

Which is honestly not a lot. I doubt any purse I’ve ever carried is under 3kg when you account for laptop, shoes, cosmetics, wallet and other sundries. But we shall see if my backpack can do it. Nothing but pajamas and medications ought to keep it light.

Categories
Culture Travel

Day 1835 and Sweater Shaving As My Travel Yak Shaving

If you are an engineer you may have heard someone irritated with a project that has drifted out of scope because unforeseen new problems are blocking completion as “yak shaving”

In software and engineering, people use “yak shaving” to describe being forced into a long dependency chain: updating a tool, which requires upgrading a library, which requires fixing build scripts, before touching the actual feature or bug. Perplexity Synopsis via TechTarget

If you find yourself obsessing over small problems that are absolutely “core dependencies” and getting lost in all the problems that must be done before you can do the actual thing you might be Yak Shaving.

Somehow this is related to a Yen and Stimpy episode about a fake holiday. Coined by what I assume is a Gen X coder (who else watches MYV cartoons) named Carlin Vieri in the 1990s at the MIT AI Lab.

Sometimes a seemingly useless task (reading a manual or fixing a subroutine) does actually do need doing in order to progress on the wider task. But you have to be wary that you aren’t simply procrastinating on supposedly crucial preparations for the actual task.

Well I am packing myself up for week long trip, and while I know basically what needs to be packed and how I’d like it organized, I have not put anything in my bags yet. Want to guess why?

A piling cashmere turtleneck with a cheap sweater shaver filled with fuzzy bits of wool

I am yak shaving by shaving my wool sweaters. It’s now midwinter and my favorite pieces have little bits of pilling in areas that rub or have had more friction. Longer fibers pill less but all wool fibers including cashmere eventually pill a little bit.

We are in an age of down market cashmere thanks to the proliferation of the contemporary price point (lets say under $150) cashmere sweater thanks to the success of Uniqlo, Nadaam, Quincy and Italic.

My older sweaters from past well managed contemporary brands like Ann Taylor are in excellent shape as are my higher end pieces from APC and it’s ilk.

But more disposable 3-4 year basics I wear down? Well sweater care is a constant issue, especially the texture of a pilling fuzzy sweater bothers you. And it somewhat bothers me.

Cashmere are isn’t too hard. You can brush them gently and hand comb the pilling out. You hand wash, lay flat and fold your sweaters. You can use a sweater stone to gently brush them out. And that’s worth it for something that lasts. But the Italic sweater above gets a shave.

You can see from the picture I’ve got a lot of fuzzy bits inside the cheap shaver I bought off an Amazon seller years ago. It has lasted longer than some of my sweaters.Alas if I don’t want to look sloppy then shave I must.

If you want elegant functional code even in your basic systems well sometimes you must yak shave. If you want an elegant functional wardrobe sometimes you must sweater shave.

Categories
Aesthetics Media

Day 1801 and Parked in Front of The iPad

My immune system must be reacting to something, be it travel and environmental factors or perhaps a bug I caught, so I’m in bed and trying to keep my body happy. That means catching up on a few Love is Blind seasons.

As the American seasons get worse and worse, the international editions offer up clues as to the politics and tensions that producers feel the need to offer up to international Netflix audiences.

I am an unabashed fan of the franchise and what it offers up as a cultural mirror especially as different countries try to show the ways their status, class, colonial and power structures impact marriage.

The United Kingdom had a Manchester season that was more commentary on the failures of the working class and the country’s immigration systems than it did romance. It almost hurt to watch.

France’s most recent cast was more pan-Asian colonial tensions at the forefront (with an Algerian or two) than featuring any continental or regional ties. The Italian season reflects a more United Colors of Benetton than Georgia Meloni’s. European franchise spin offs feature more immigration more than America.

While everyone is talking about Netflix acquiring Warner Brothers today, I wonder if Hollywood will drive new cultural directions or if the data driven Netflix will produce endless remixes of subgroups and niches so no matter your identity you too will have an avatar on a spinoff of a reality show. Love may be blind but the watching data sure isn’t.

Lest you think it is all fan service and showcasing different immigrant groups being absorbed into the wider national identities of their former colonial governments, you do see the occasional fusion of sanded off styles meant to appeal across strange niches.

I love watching the style of the country doing offs as it is both globo-homo any and everywhere while still targeting very identity driven and place specific people.

Some make no sense. Who doesn’t love seeing a bizarre fashion choice like a Prada bolo ties at a French wedding? Unless you are an Italian getting married to a Texan girl at Marfa, it’s odd to pick 2020’s most viral celebrity accessory to get married in France on a 2025 reality show.

Sure still see some aesthetic choices you expect for both local and global reasons. Like the Italian party planner with the Gucci bee broach. That seems culturally appropriate with a cast that was variably actually Italian despite their their aesthetics

Long burgundy blazers and Gothic Bulgarian girls could work in any country this year. That’s simply globally appealing in the now in any country. Warner Brothers should be taking note.

Categories
Aesthetics Internet Culture

Day 1797 and Last Minute Cyber Week Shopping

Shopping in a highly bifurcated consumer market is an unpleasant experience. No more so than over the great shopping holiday that has become Cyber Season.

Regular consumers feel gaslight enough as it is by smart pricing strategies and persistent inflation. Their trust that they can make a better purchase is at a low. Their Black Friday looks very different than it did during the ZIRP years.

But many brands are battling it out for the ten percent of consumers that do 48% of the spending. And that is a brutal business. I can’t spend time on image or video social networks for fear of triggering some kind of shopping allergy. Being in that group of consumers makes you a target.

And very few of them are battling on the merits of their products. I went brand by brand through my usual suspects of Black Friday brands and found better deals and less to like.

I bought cashmere and skincare and I still don’t know if I got scammed on the cashmere. Ironic as I’m buying seconds of items I already own hoping the sourcing didn’t change in the intervening seasons.

I genuinely miss the Ann Taylor of 2010 when I worked there. You wouldn’t think it would be a glory year for the brand but there was hope. It was still publicly traded American brand. And it had a real estate portfolio of stores to envy from Madison Avenue to the Magnificent Mile.

Imagine an American brand like that now. It had strong supply chains, good relationships with vendors and it had just hired a hot new young executive with a hot new designer.

This was when you could imagine an MBA reinventing a brand’s look for a new generation of working women. Millennial feminism was on its way up, a blonde Gen X feminist beauty from Harvard led the charge and everyone believed. Heck maybe we’d even see a female president who wore our pants suits.

And we know how that broader cultural story turned out. We made pant suits cool for a brief moment in time and private equity ate the brand and now it’s shit. But I know we did good work and I’m glad our MBA leader landed on her feet at Amazon.

I just look at where I shop now and I look at Ann Taylor and the prices are roughly the same but it’s not the same cashmere sweater for that $200 absolutely anywhere. And if you want that sweater be prepared to spend over a grand.

So while I did a little shopping I think maybe I’ll get lucky. Maybe I’ll get a good batch. But it’s not always a sure thing. I got my replacement retinols. And I finally found my old Mansur Gavriel tote (going on year 12 or so) for roughly the same price as I bought it.

I’ll use my beat up on still but I thought hey maybe they still make good bags. But I don’t know if their private equity guys are any good. Fingers crossed as it’s a great tote.

Categories
Aesthetics Internet Culture

Day 1795 and Luxury BNPL So Techno-Capital

Like anyone who has worked corporate retail, I keep a close eye on Black Friday narratives. I named a few sales I thought were particularly unusual in my beauty blog based on how I shop for myself on Black Friday. I am a very value driven customer even though I will spend a lot with a brand who earns my trust.

I’ve found there to be less and less worth shopping across fashion, beauty and other consumer goods. Still I do use the holiday to strike a better bargain with a brand I might consider becoming a regular with.

It is a delicate dance between better customers and quality providing the original layer of trust that makes loyalty. This dynamic plays out every Black Friday with a few purchases. Are these your best customers? Maybe if you don’t disappoint them.

Now you have to wonder about higher end customers who use Buy Now Pay Later options like Klarna. Is this just an extension of the freedom we afford luxury consumers in their lives if bizarre credit choices. Why not spend a little more to not require additional liquidity. Maybe that is a more efficient way of social signaling on Instagram for some. I think I’d be worried about that consumer. Their defaults are on another planet.

As for myself I like buying an extra retinol serum and some fancy shampoo. I am not buying $400 moisturizers being resold by Quince. Thats just a little too odd for me. But maybe I will get those weird recovery boots. I wonder what luxury purchases that don’t use extending credit say about my financial niche.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 1793 and Shopping Around

Black Friday is somewhere between a global celebration of shopping and an affirmation of consumerism as a shared cultural value.

It’s easier and much cooler to denounce consumerism. There is more cultural criticism material of shopping in the genre of commodity aesthetics than there are laudatory treatises on say the bourgeois virtues of shopping well.

Most religions, and many flavors of political governance, focus on dangers of consumer markets and the dangers of overweighting and overvaluation of material things.

It’s just that if we look at the subject from a different direction, it’s quite clear that humans love to make things. Sure we focus first on shelter, food and water but we quickly use our excess capacity to produce. Climbing up Maslow’s hierarchy we look for ways to make things for ourselves and others. If we make surely we must use?

So much of our lives are dedicated to the making of things. We have children. We make tools that make the making of our needs easier and faster. We make art and music. We adorn ourselves with decorative objects.

So why is it that the consumption of the things we make as humans have such a bad reputation? If we didn’t consume adequate food we wouldn’t be able to reproduce. If we didn’t make and use shelter those offspring wouldn’t live to adulthood.

It seems to me that as in all things we make we do so as part of our commitment to being in a community with each other. A Buy Nothing Day may seem necessary when the balance tilts too far from making to consuming but each and every one of us is enabled to make wonderful things for each other. So go shopping if you like.