Tag: Public Relations

Categories
Aesthetics Internet Culture

Day 1938 and ChatGPT 2.0 Image’s Mood Board Mania

Every time a new AI image generation model comes out, there is a wave of people creating new content riffs inspired by their friends testing out the newest capabilities.

Yesterday OpenAI released ChatGPT Images 2.0 which is tool powered by the gpt-image-2 model designed as a “visual thought partner.

It is pretty fun to play with if you have even the slightest design or visual vocabulary to work with. Or even just a couple cool selfies.

No need to focus on regulatory capture politicking, compute shortages, geopolitical drama or shipping choke points when you can create cute social media content right? Screw a grey zone informational wars (or even a hot kinetic one) girls just want to be remade as a fairy princess science or as Studio Ghibli character.

So what’s the next trend? My feed produced a wave of mood boards with color theory, swatching, fabric pins, makeup stories, hairstyles, other mood board elements that combines everything from descriptive prose to capsule wardrobes. And all this from a a couple of basic uploaded photos and some simple prompts.

I choose the below images and said “do a color analysis of the woman in this picture including best colors, makeup choices, hair choices, style options and create a mood board with outfit inspiration, prints that work, accessories and other details”

From there it spat out a long analysis which I will post below. I then asked that analysis to be mocked up in a mood board based on the look and feel of the images with the descriptions from the analysis. And I’m not going to lie it’s pretty good and clearly ChatGPT can smell the Ann Taylor on me. I mean, umm, it can tell I spent time working for some of best known American heritage retailers.

Now it gets weirder the more you try to edit it. The slow warping of my face from my own to I’m going to say Sheryl Sandberg is a little unsettling. But I do wear a lot of silks and prefer greens and browns though I am often a little black dress defaulter.

Now I just went through an enormous exercise in which I tried to find a television and camera ready foundation where other models were sure I was a soft autumn but a soft summer isn’t all that far off.

And I appreciate the buttering up OpenAI does with their quiet luxury spiel. I’m more of an Italic luxury buyer and a Quince if I’m feeling like a gamble. But somewhere back before all this inflation I for sure was the kind of girl who wore chunky antique vermeil accessories and never turned down a nice olive green.

This is a great set of photos for analysis—different lighting, styling, and contrast levels make it much easier to see your natural coloring clearly.

🎨 Overall Color Season: Soft Summer (leaning Neutral-Cool)

You sit in that refined, muted, slightly cool palette with:

  • Low-to-medium contrast (your features blend rather than sharply contrast)
  • Soft, diffused coloring (nothing overly bright or high-chroma)
  • Neutral-cool undertone (pink in the skin, but not icy)

You can borrow slightly from Soft Autumn (especially olive/green tones), but your best looks are cooler and more muted.

🌈 Best Colors for You

✅ Core Palette (your power zone)

  • Dusty rose, muted mauve
  • Soft plum, blackberry
  • Blue-gray, slate, steel blue
  • Sage, eucalyptus, muted olive
  • Taupe, mushroom, cool beige
  • Soft navy (not inky or harsh)

⚠️ Approach Carefully

  • True black (can feel a bit heavy—your blazer photo shows this slightly)
  • Bright white (too stark—soft ivory is better)
  • Bright jewel tones (too high contrast)

🚫 Avoid

  • Neon anything
  • Super warm oranges/yellows
  • High-contrast combos (black + white, etc.)

💄 Makeup Direction

You look significantly more harmonious in the softer, diffused look (photo 1 and 3 vs the sharper blazer look).

Skin

  • Light to medium coverage with a natural or satin finish
  • Avoid overly matte—your skin looks best with a bit of life

Blush

  • Rose
  • Soft berry
  • Muted pink (what you’re wearing in photo 1 = excellent)

Lips (this is your strongest feature zone)

  • Rose gloss (photo 1 = perfect)
  • Mauve nude
  • Sheer berry stains
  • Avoid: orange-red or overly brown lipsticks

Eyes

  • Taupe, mushroom, soft plum
  • Cool brown instead of warm bronze
  • Soft liner (charcoal > black)
  • Mascara: brown-black ideal

💇‍♀️ Hair Analysis

Your natural coloring works beautifully—this is key.

Best Hair Direction

  • Neutral to cool brown
  • Slight ash or soft cocoa tones
  • Subtle dimension (very blended, not high contrast)

Avoid

  • Golden highlights (too warm)
  • Very dark/black dye (overpowers you)
  • High-contrast balayage

Styling Note

You shine with:

  • Soft movement
  • Natural texture
  • Slightly undone polish

👓 Glasses (important win here)

The black frames:

  • Add structure (good)
  • But slightly overpower your softness

Try:

  • Soft charcoal
  • Translucent gray
  • Muted tortoiseshell (cool-toned)

👗 Style Essence + Mood

You read as:

Soft Minimalist + Intellectual Romantic

(very understated, very intentional, very modern)

Think:

  • Quiet luxury
  • Slightly academic
  • Soft structure, not rigid tailoring

🧥 Outfit Direction

Silhouettes

  • Fluid tailoring
  • Draped fabrics
  • Soft blazers (less sharp shoulders)
  • Relaxed but intentional lines

Fabrics

  • Silk
  • Fine knits
  • Matte satin
  • Soft wool
  • Avoid stiff, shiny synthetics

🧵 Best Neutrals (your wardrobe backbone)

  • Mushroom
  • Cool taupe
  • Soft navy
  • Dusty olive
  • Muted charcoal (instead of black)

🌿 Prints That Work

Because your coloring is soft, your prints should be too:

✅ Ideal

  • Blurred florals
  • Watercolor patterns
  • тонal (low contrast) stripes
  • Soft geometrics

🚫 Avoid

  • High-contrast graphic prints
  • Sharp black/white patterns
  • Loud, busy designs

📌 What Your Photos Show (Specific Feedback)

Photo 1 (window light, glasses)

Best overall look

  • Soft pink lip = perfect
  • Brown shirt = harmonious
  • Natural light = confirms your muted palette

Photo 2 (black blazer)

  • Black is wearing you slightly
  • More contrast than your features naturally support
  • Makeup slightly sharper → less aligned with your softness

Photo 3 (relaxed, green tone)

  • Muted green = excellent
  • Skin looks balanced and even
  • This palette direction is very “you”

🧭 Style Keywords (use these when shopping)

  • Muted
  • Soft
  • Washed
  • Dusty
  • Neutral-cool
  • Blended
  • Understated
Categories
Community Culture Politics

Day 1926 and Who Gets To Be Albanian?

One of the more frustrating debates in current American life is who gets to be an American? This did not used to be such a hot topic. I grew up in America in which if you swore to uphold the Constitution figures, no less than Ronald Reagan welcomed you to our shining city on a hill.

Now your best chance of becoming an American is apparently crossing the border and waiting multiple years in legal purgatory. America is a country of ideals not blood right? Well, other countries are also having the debate in reverse. See today’s amusing story about Eric Adams

New York City’s former mayor Eric Adam’s became an Albanian citizen and it is exploding into a debate as to who gets to be an Albanian. He seems to like the place so why not. This is a fun sideshow.

But is he Shqiptar? Definitely not Arbëreshë right? Wikipedia is now in a fierce debate as to whether he should be considered an Albanian American. He holds citizenship but he’s not an ethnic Albanian. But he holds an Albanian passport? Much to debate.

Ethnic Albanians being massacred is whole tragedy that believe it or not America once went to war over. No I’m not kidding read your nineties history.

So when Eric Adams says stuff like “New York City is after all the Tirana of America” it’s a diaspora issue. Lots of Albanians left in that era and came to New York.

When Adams goes to Tirana it’s just confusing. But that is a thing he would say about any place he’d visit and vice versus. It’s a bit Adams does.

You might not know it but I’m a fan of Albania. My husband and I vacationed there last summer and I go regularly to the Balkans to visit with family. They are not blood family but besa. It’s a whole thing. I’m not Shqiptar. And I have no Illyrian blood. But I wouldn’t mind being an Albanian American for a publicity stunt.

Categories
Aesthetics Politics Startups Travel

Day 1909 and All The Twinks Standing In The Line For The Bathroom

I am not an early riser, especially not when I’m out late for happy hours and dinners and the like. So I wasn’t planning on being at the 8am opening for the conference I’m attending in D.C amongst all the side programming.

I had a ten thirty talk I was particular excited to listen to as it was most salient to my work in artificial intelligence policy. Well, that was a dumb decision on my part. Not to arrive earlier.

I’ll take full responsibility for being a moron on that front, but I stood amongst a gaggle of gorgeous well dressed, well groomed and bright eyed young men hungry to build the world of the future. What a crowd of young people.

Being a chatty Cathy I asked about vintage Barbour jackets, bulldog ties, pocket squares, the merits of gel versus more advanced soft hold hair products, the declining quality of Moscot eyewear and other important topics to ambitious young men who are looksmaxxing to win the great game.

I didn’t have much else to do as the line was not moving. No one was getting in. Until people left no one was getting off the line. And that included others who had already been in and had their passes. The hottest ticket in town was perhaps a bit over capacity.

Someone rolled out a portable Starlink and we all piled in to tweet, chat, roll calls and (in my case) send tweets, Signal messages, and Slack channel responses. I got told my tweet about the two hour wait wasn’t ideal so I deleted it as I appreciate any attention to me running my mouth as I assume no one ever listens to me. I barely do.

But maybe I’m wrong? Last night checking into Butterworth’s, the woman manning check-in in lit up when I gave my name “I love your Twitter!” So maybe people do notice what I say. I still find that an a funny notion.

That said, it did take the full two hours to get into the giant event hall which made all the rush and planning a laugh. More people left the line and went back to work than stayed at 10am but everyone determined to participate seemed to make the best of it.

I asked if this was normal for a DC event and no one seemed to be from DC. So I didn’t get any good answers. This was an unexpected wrinkle that the venue was full was full up as an enormous crowd circled the block twice.

Since we remainders had decided to make the best of it we got to know each rather. Every man was quite a gentleman as we chatted oblivious to status till we were let in and others let us all know the pecking order. One of the young men I spent my wait, who is I learned later was literally the heir to one of the most important fortunes on the planet. Another was launching containerized autonomous weapons.

But that time of work and waiting was rather like being on an elevator stuck together, we might as well get to know each other. We are all equal before a tough door.

Thankfully we did get into the room before Jamie Dimon spoke. And he was the big boss of the handsome executive crowd.

I titled this “all the twinks standing in line for the bathroom” as yes a lot of handsome queer men were in attendance. But twink is an all purpose gender fluid aesthetic and not reflective of anyone’s sexual preferences.

And the line for the men’s y was a lot longer than the women’s. Ten to one ratios make me think this would be quite the dating scene for the ambitious woman.

But yes there are a lot of very well groomed young men in Washington D.C and everyone wants to build solutions for America. And being beautiful doesn’t hurt. To my single lady have you consider meeting a man in DC? Good odds and I doubt even a fraction of the twinks are gay.

Categories
Aesthetics Startups Travel

Day 1905 and Run of Show

I have very particular traveling habits. I like things to be packed in cubes, labeled with contents and in a cascade of backpack, carry on and checked bags should something go awry.

As I’m heading to our nation’s capital soon I am taking extra care with my “run of show“ as I’ll have more varieties of events to account for over my stay. I expect humidity and rain so that should be fun for hair and makeup. All men need to worry about is sunscreen and maybe a bit of hair gel.

Now my travel wardrobe must account for visits to historical sites, nice dinners, late night parties, internet friend meetups (see you at the Polymarket’s Monitoring the Situation bar?) and a conference that is somewhere between startup event and defense contractor conference.

If you are a woman, you are probably nodding your head and thinking well that’s at least 4 different pairs of shoes and two purses. Then there is evening wear, day blazers and skirt suits, sweaters and other mix and match separates, and heaven forbid I find time to exercise so sweats and all the undergarments.

All that packing must work with the additional run rate risks of TSA slow downs (can Congress pass a budget) while presumably needing additional care and attention to security. Given we are embroiled in a war with Israel in Iran it’s hard to count on smooth sailing. So I pack as if I will encounter unexpected difficulties. Hopefully none more irksome than long lines.

As a woman who mostly spends her time in Montana or otherwise in the middle of nowhere, you can imagine that my makeup these days has a bit more in common with tinted sunscreen than it does with a smoky eye with a cut crease let alone a full powdered contoured beat fit for television. However I’ve heard polished full makeup is the preferred look on the hill including eye makeup basics.

I’m hoping I’ll be able to rely on my skills without additional practice, but I won’t lie I did a couple dry runs on new palettes I’d picked up and a few new colors. Very little new made the cut. When traveling, rely on what is reliable.

Categories
Culture Internet Culture

Day 1902 and Cynical Victories for Hollow Lies

I know it’s sweet bordering on stupid to engage in good faith when it comes to politics, but maybe I’ve grown soft in my old age. I really do believe that Americans are capable of building wide coalitions in a pluralistic society.

Call me naive but most Americans, even most humans, have more to bind us together than to break as apart. We are social animals even the most introverted of us.

So I hate seeing groups who share common values fall apart over schismatic propaganda pieced together explicitly to worsen your weaknesses and widen your vulnerabilities till you are both tied to horrors you’d never have condoned.

The trouble with Utilitarians is they say up front that the ends justify the means. Thats your starting baseline. Which is at least clean. Then the Machiavellian’s say it’s alright to obfuscate. The noble lie and all. And then suddenly the enemy is inside your gates and you are being gutted.

This is roughly what is occurring between Bannon-world who hates technology so much they have accidentally teamed up with a gaggle of one world government rationalists to…use zoning rules to save the world from…industrial parks with rack servers?

I know it doesn’t sound very sinister but everyone involved is sure the anti-Christ is going to be involved. Peter Thiel is in Rome giving lectures so the buggy man has involved.

Folks must enjoy being useful idiots as it’s strange to me to think you might align with people you loathe just to fuck up the other team. The goal is flourishing for all no? You came at me and my boys for whom all I wish is flourishing.

Which is funny as I was always under the impression that end times eschatology required the Antichrist to be quite well liked. Everyone involved in this is universally despised.

I guess if you are certain that you are in danger of being stomped out by an evil, and believe any of your actions are justified by this premise, you may as well embrace all kinds of evil.

But you do have the options of not using millenarian tactics to scare the shire. Hobbits are brave or so said the neomonarchist who can’t tweet. But I won’t forget people who threw me over for propaganda they were too dim to understand or cynical enough to believe no one else would.

Categories
Chronic Disease Culture Politics Preparedness

Day 1901 and Burying Ehrlich

For as much time as I spend kvetching about my own petty problems (and I know that it is a not insubstantial amount of time), I am what my husband calls a macro optimist.

This is somewhat in contrast to him, who is on a day-to-day basis, a micro optimist but doesn’t quite see the long-term horizon as positively as I do.

Different temperaments are a good thing when it comes to balancing outlooks and outcomes. This is arguably why we are a good team and have managed to stay married for a decade.

I look out for the macro level future and optimize for it being successful and he optimizes the day-to-day, making sure that the micro level is successful.

I titled this post “Burying Ehrlich” because Paul Ehrlich passed away at the age of 93 last Friday. You might know him as the co-author of the 1968 best seller Population Bomb.

An entomologist by training, his book jumped to much bigger claims saying Earth faced imminent mass starvation urging governments to reduce population. That has not so far proven to be true. Even now the New York Times obituary said his claims were premature. We just love an impending disaster.

It’s a cruel historical irony that a man who wrote his thesis on butterflies would end up having such an enormous butterfly effect on the number of human beings being born. His neo-Malthusian insights were a huge hit.

And unfortunately we will experience the consequences of his public intellectual adventurism. We will have fewer humans and the famine he predicted never materialized. And now if we have more troubles facing us, we have far fewer humans able to take up the task of finding the solutions we will need.

Maybe if he had been a little bit more of a macro-level optimist, he would have been able to see what I see everyday. Despite daily travails due to my chronic disease, I see the micro-optimism of humans like my husband every single day. While I can’t always be positive every day, I remain positive that together we can find a way to improve on yesterday.

Humans are incredible at finding a way around life’s intractable problems. We produce little innovations, little inventions, little tweaks and little solutions. And they add up.

We are social animals whose evolutionary pressures seem to have yielded a culture of engineering. These little fixes we constantly produce when added up together have made for major improvements.

We even occasionally see extraordinary catalysts that allow us to go much faster with our improvements. We’ve had a number of revolutions, industrial and otherwise. Indeed the last 50 years or so have shown the Malthusian fears of food production to be histrionic in comparison to the progress we’ve made.

We have fed the planet but we will never get back the babies who were not born either because of China’s one-child policy or simple cultural attitude acceptance that one or two children should be enough. In my generation it may end up being more common to not have children at all.

Now it may seem rich that someone who goes in for quite a bit of preparedness should speak against a man who saw the value of taking action in the face of what he saw as long odds.

But next time someone tells you that the end is near and all is lost, remember that Paul didn’t end up being correct in any of his assumptions.

Not because at the time it was so crazy to think we weren’t producing enough food, but because he couldn’t conceive of a world in which we were able to solve our problem.

So I pray as his family buries him that we as a species can remember to bury some of our own alarmism. Our job is to keep on going in the face of long odds, just as every one of our ancestors has done before us.

Categories
Politics Preparedness Startups

Day 1887 and Trust Me Bro

I don’t feel terrific so I’ll keep this as a ramble but with some links. I fear some sort of Rubicon has was crossed, which we will only recognize in hindsight, in the fight for property rights in America versus the tyranny of failing state capacity.

I am referring to the contract dispute between foundation model developer Anthropic and American Secretary of War Hegseth that boiled over on Friday night as some sort of Murderbot surveillance subplot parsed only by lawyers, policy wonks and anyone who remembers the patriotism of Chelsea Manning.

Right before America and Israel went all Epic Fury on Iran over the weekend, somehow it was felt a messy public fight between defense contractor and the civilian oversight of our military was ok? Good thing everyone is too distracted to care.

Funny how one can go from cheering on our military’s capacity for innovation one week and the next to be waving one’s arms screaming “no oh no no no” but that’s just politics as run by the instincts of reality television I suppose.

The best writing on this so far has been Dean Ball (who worked in this Trump administration on its AI position statement not so long ago) who feels that Hegseth took an approach on renegotiating a contract with a frontier AI model developer that has consequences.

Loosely and I am missing much Anthropic had its previous contract to parse classified documents in the Department of Defense (now the Department of War) negotiated by the prior administration. Some aspects of this contract wasn’t going to work for the Trump administration. Anthropic didn’t want to change it and Hegseth threatened to call Anthropic a supply chain risk unless it complied. They didn’t and Sam Altman signed a deal.

Wrapped up in this is that of course we all eventually comply with Leviathan who has the monopoly on violence. I don’t claim any expertise here but lots of people understand defense contractor law.

On its face Anthropic looks like the moral high ground and the position all capitalists and private property respected would prefer. However, it’s in Dean’s words, a bit weird for a company to tell the state that a private corporation has a say in policy as opposed to our democratic institutions.

Anthropic is essentially using the contractual vehicle to impose what feel less like technical constraints and more like policy constraints on the military

This is all complicated by the model developer having wishes for frontier AI development to be nationalized and for their work in particular to be safeguarded by a different political administration. It has become a right versus left thing as it was bound to do.

Now Anthropic gets to enjoy the full throated defense of its industry peers and even conservative policy makers like Dean, because our current state capacity is not what I’d call excellent when it comes to our civilian government capacity. Honestly our military still seems to be crushing it.

Secretary Hegseth looked a bit like he was over reaching in his command that he get his demands met. Americans are very touchy about surveillance of if’s citizens and much less touchy about autonomous weapons so it’s natural to be a bit suspicious if you are a millennial who remembers the Global War on Terror. If you are Zoomer who doesn’t know who Chelsea Manning is please go ask Claude.

However it’s not at all clear that Hegseth’s original negotiations were out of hand as of course it’s the state who decides legal use not the private company and we are meant to have laws, judicial process and all the rest. It’s just that we don’t. So what on earth do we do about it? Trust me bro is not a policy.

Categories
Emotional Work Media

Day 1859 and Crime Without Punishment

People tell stories of where they were or what they were doing when major world events happened. Most of them are silly and personal but necessary to ground the horrors of being connected at scale while still being such small bit players in the scale of things.

On 9/12 I had just left New York City to return home to Colorado to finish out the high school I’d dropped out of the year prior. My grandmother called me at dawn before I’d left for the annual start of school camping trip, distraught that we couldn’t reach cousins and other family who were first responders or worked downtown. Then we couldn’t get through for hours.

When Lady Diana was killed I was up early for a sports competition preparing my gear when the news broke. My mother and I watched in shock at 4 in the morning as we packed bags.

When Michael Jackson died I was in Miami on my first solo vacation between jobs having sublet a condo for two weeks while I sublet my New York apartment. The grocery clerk at Publix ringing me up asked if I had heard. I attempted to explain that I’d seen it on something called Twitter.

When Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself I was in the hospital. I had been entirely off social media but still listened to the five minute radio news update. I don’t know why but I told my doctor that he was dead and her immediate response was to swear. I recall us both being upset as she shook her head saying “now he will never face justice.”

The entire weekend was a deluge of people processing, concocting, and turning over the “flood the zone with shit” dump of files on Epstein. As if the Friday night “take out the trash” media playbook somehow still held sway over a population of networked humans.

Now we are a species who remember every Harry and tragedy both personally in the context of our own small lives and at large as it emerges into a wider understanding shaped by the contours of those who seek to distract or draw attention.

It’s no wonder we spellbound by conspiracies. I lived across from ground zero for years. Tourists grieved and paid homage next to soap box schizophrenia weaving tales. I grew up on forums dissecting every aspect of death and tragedy from princesses to the King of Pop. Why should the coverage of depraved sins be any different?

So I ask myself why should I believe any of it. Who should I give information dumps and theory threads and newspaper headlines any attention at all? I’ll never know if crimes were punished. Justice works slowly and sometimes not at all.

Categories
Media Reading

Day 1855 and Reading The Certain Uncertainty

My daily routine starts perceptually early when I am in Europe and perceptually late when I am in Montana. The world is currently rotating on the narratives of American Eastern Standard Time and that means I try to rotate with it too.

Alas part of me has always oriented my circadian rhythm around the full noon day sun as I’m I am not an early bird nor a night owl. So European hours work better for me than Mountain West Hours for some types of work.

Most notably the watching of flows of information, particularly from legacy media and its keepers in Washington DC and New York City.

I don’t know where I got the habit, probably from my mother or father, but I always start my day scanning the major newspapers.

There is functionally no local paper to read any longer in most markets but I will take Bloomberg, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, along with NPR before I do anything else. If I’m feeling spicy I might even look through the New York Post.

It’s a habit I was encouraged into as my family was a household that always had a newspaper delivered. Whoever began their day together would share or sections, like a Norman Rockwell painting. I generally remember it being my mother but my father was a great reader as well.

What began with a local Colorado paper turned into many subscriptions. We subscribed to all sorts of magazines and periodicals when times were good and what we could not justify in the household budget, I was encouraged to pick up at the library after school.

Maybe this is why I am such an avid writer, as I am an avid reader. Although I don’t know if either of those habits will have much utility in the future as we transit into visual and oral communication methods. I am still reticent to scroll video platforms.

Now I begin the day not just with a newspaper scan but with every sources of information I can scan from commodity indexes to podcasts and social media.

I like to know where the discourse is being guided as early as I can. Obviously in my professional capacity sometimes I’m months ahead or even years, but I like to be ahead, at least, of the day’s news as well.

Increasingly it is hard to be sure that you are able to paint yourself a picture of what may really be happening as opposed to a picture of what somebody else would like you to think is happening. This was always true but now we are in the fog of war.

Hence my interest in being on European time zones. I can usually get a good grip on what may percolate up being ahead of the London broadsheets. Being just ahead enough of the largest media market (American media is mostly based in Manhattan) can give you a real sense of freedom in these very certain, uncertain times.

Categories
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