Presenting: the perfect striped shirt (and perfect slouchy pants).
You know, I don't actually shop at J.Crew all that often. Because the problem is that I like pretty much everything they sell, but it's sort of expensive. So it's really best if I just steer clear.
But then every once in awhile I wear one of my much-loved wardrobe basics to death, and I think, oh...what the hell.
I think you always have a special little fondness for the styles that were cool when you were in high school. My formative years, for example, were spent developing extreme (and unrequited) crushes on two boys named Borden and Jordan (yes, ha ha, I know), both of whom dressed in that half-grunge half-skater hybrid so particular to the mid-'90s, and to this day I have quite the thing for a man in a button-down flannel.
Likewise, whenever I put on something that could arguably have been worn by Winona Ryder in Reality Bites, Kendrick gets all "Oh well HELLO there." (I get it; I think our entire generation had a collective crush on Winona Ryder in pretty much every movie she did around that time.) Which is what he said when he put on this dress...which is what made me realize that it's totally '90s, hence the accessorizing with hat and round sunglasses, plus a bag and pair of boots that were actually purchased during that era (the bag from a Barney's Warehouse sale; the boots from a Salvation Army in Colorado - they've been re-soled maybe five times, have a big hole in the side made by a switchblade during my Hogs 'n' Heifers bartending days, and are still kicking).
Nothing wrong with dressing up like your partner's Teenage Dream every once in awhile...especially if it happens to coincide with your own.
I spent Saturday drinking about ten thousand gallons of ice water and re-re-re-reading Alice In Wonderland. This time, though, I'm reading the Kusama edition, which I found last summer at a bookstore in Campbell specializing in vintage, out-of-print, and unusual editions of classic children's books.
I already own a couple of copies of Alice In Wonderland, so I felt a little silly about how much I wanted this book, but every time I went into the store I picked it up and browsed through the pages, and it's just the most gorgeous thing ever. The artist, Yayoi Kusama, has a condition that causes her to see spots everywhere she looks, and her surreal vision of the world is a perfect counterpoint to Carroll's hallucinogenic storytelling. The book is created in collaboration with the Gagosian Gallery and bound in cloth, making it a crazy-good gift for a book (or art) lover.
You can pick it up here.
I remember the first time I went to the Barney's Warehouse Sale. It was back in the days when the sale was a secret whispered between friends (but not too many friends because it was so good, and over so fast, that you didn't want the word to get out too far). I found out about it because I had a friend who was a model, and only "industry" people knew about these kinds of things back in the days before social media made secrets more than a little tough to keep. She didn't even let me know about it from an email; she told me about it over an actual face-to-face lunch.
Remember finding out about things face-to-face?
Weird.
