start seeing art

Isn't she beautiful?  This is Jane from (!) DesMoines, IA in NYC doing an internship/slaveship of some kind.  I've been at the Institute of Art looking at the Hiroshige prints, so like when some impressionable people hear their neighbor's dog telling them to steal a car and drive to Clear Lake, I am influenced to see patterns in fashion. Yes, that's the way it is without Prozac, my friends.

Mmmm, that's diff'rent

 

And in my book, diff'rent is effin' good. I was actually conducting business in another distant part of Coffman Hall at the U when I saw these yak-inspired shoes go by. Well.  When you combine my mad tracking skillz with a lifelong obsession with thatched animals -- yaks, Highland cows, donkeys, Westies, sheepdogs, my soon-to-be husband in the 70s -- you get exactly the sort of incident her parents warned her about when she packed her bags for the US of A.  Mom, dad, it's true, people are sick here but in a mostly harmless way. Nothing a little sake mace can't cure. 

First of all, you won't find any of her wardrobe wonders at the MOA -- all bought in Japan. So until some wiz kid comes up with a way to permanently adhere a yak toupee to some swell suede wedges with hand-stitched soles, there's going to be a trade imbalance. That's yak-ro economics -- super esoteric. Don't even try. Higher up the wardrobe chain of love, please note the PhD-level briefcase holding a thesis on why smaller is better. Prerequisite? Go to Japan and bring your American Express. Vest upon vest, you can't have two many.  Molecular models of awesome hang from her earlobes.

back to the future

Have you ever seen so many picturesque uses for animal hide, up to and including leather leggings? I captured the anti-vegan on the Upper West Side in an ensemble I like to call The Winter of Love. See, this is a double entendre, one entendre referencing the winter of 1967-68 that followed the Summer of Love and included all of the drugs but little of the nudity and thus is very poorly remembered if at all, and the second entendre is that it was winter and I do love this I Got You Babe look. Hooookay.

Moving on. 

I did not goof up. I intended to chop off her head. It's called creative license, sheesh.

this time, it's clinical

Apologies to my two Common Good Books friends above and to your trashed retinas. As usual, I've got a lot of explaining to do. 

Stopped by Garrison Keillor's hobby hut on Snelling Ave. on the stealth opening day, not because I read (so many of the books did not have pictures), but on the chance of finding the proprietor in the house.  Instead I found two blazin' style-ists and, at the same time, helped the staff identify an overlooked security issue (mullet-wearers stumbling in and getting up in patrons' business in a way that's not even fit to spread around the interwebs).

Unfortunately, what I thought was a one-time Kitty hissy fit (see below) was in fact user error artistic differences. This occasioned a talk between the Kitty and I in which I pressed every button many many times, tossed salt over my shoulder and called in a young priest and an old priest. Kitty turned her lens 360 degrees and asked to be called Regan, but I think the problem is exorcised.

Course, there are no do-overs in the book store style biz, so I might have to fill in the details verbally. Which is very satisfying indeed. In the uppermost blur, it's pretty easy to see her eyeliner but something you may have missed is the atomic boots she scored for approx. $3 at Goodwill!

The impression above these words but below little red riding boots is one of Amelia Earhart and Scout who went to Memphis and all they got was this delectable scarf. Oh dang, there I go with the highbrow art references again -- below is a room done in the subtle Memphis style. Something's wrong here, it's all clear and visible...

 Back to Amelia/Scout, she rocked this vintage Gibson girl 'do with the granny-gifted Memphis-inspired scarf and an aviator-ish leather jacket and tomboy southern half and mega-janitor carabiner... boy, you shoulda seen it. If you really want to hurl, scroll quickly between my blurry shots and this mad sharp one of the room, blurry, clear, blurry, clear, bluuuu. Fun huh?

Hello Kitty messes with us

I could cry*. I get a shot of half a man, an artist who dyes his pants himself with fabric dye from Wet Paint, including these wide wale Levis in a delightful chartreuse, and the Hello Kitty auto focus camera is out of focus! This is one of those old school cameras that is not a cell phone -- it does not have to tell me where the nearest Starbucks is, or play video games or make calls or record video. No. All in the world Hello Kitty has to do is take a picture of what's in front of it. I suspect someone with really terrible vision can take off their glasses and enjoy these pants, and the accompanying wingtip shoes, like no one else. But psyche, Kitty, we can still dig the chartreuse color!

We had a great conversation, this guy who is doing his part to make the world more colorful and I (who am doing my part to make the world less productive), about the creative catch-22: artists rarely have the ability or desire to promote and manage their art as a business, so they make no money. If they are that rare person who can manage themselves as a brand, they have no time to make art. Bottom line -- being creative is a bitch. That is clear. The photo is not. But I'm posting it anyway. in honor of guys who dye their own pants (he has cerise, purple, lime green among others at home).
*Alternately, I could stop talking and/or get glasses.

co-operative

You know how I'm everlasting whining about shallow bloggers focusing their lenses solely on young, beautiful women wearing six kinds of fun tiered maximum dresses, possibly from Paris, and white leather jackets, possibly from LA, that do not look like Guido's girlfriend's and caps with feathers in em? And the haircut I was hoping to achieve but missed by a mullet? Yeah, me neither. I nearly dropped my vegan cheese-like product in my haste to take this snap.

peplumed!

We're back to our roots -- sidewalks! With gum! Street style sounds a bit... commercial, n'est ce pas?  To help capture the mood here, I still had the smell of airplane deodorant on my person and a pair of pulverized complimentary Delta cookies in my backpack, along with all my worldly belongings which I had been carrying since dark-thirty. I'd been boggled and buffeted and imposed myself on like a million a people, and I could not believe how much sense, how very practical and wise, a shopping cart was sounding. As a personal acquisition. As urban transportation. I had quit Lincoln Center and headed north, perhaps muttering, which is to say, I fit in perfectly on the upper west side. I went past this woman, seven trudges, ten, until her peplumed jacket, like a modern day coat dress, her well played jeggings, her dudely stocking cap and fab spectator boots mixing leather and canvas sent the shopping cart juddering from my narrow mental window, and I went back. She was indeed in conversation with someone but I did not let that stop me from communicating my perverse needs. Via miming! Here's how I mimed I am a street style blogger from Minnesota and I'd like to take your picture and disseminate it to an eager public over the WorldWide Web, OK?: I moved my lips and pointed to my camera (this very clearly said Minnesota), then fossicked in the backpack, retrieving errant smalls instead of the business card I was looking for. She stopped talking, stunned, maybe horrified. I mouthed the words, Act natural, clicked the button, pressed a card in her other hand and gave a thumbs up, as if to say, Thanks for that cover shot for Italian Vogue. Call me.

a Marilyn moment

 

The source of this updraft was one of those carpet dryers instead of a subway grate, but I'm not a stickler for historical accuracy. She busted out this Modcloth 50s-esque sundress to celebrate radiation piercing the ozone that we enjoyed in early March. The age of dinosaur-like weather here, and the fact that she was working at a theatre (which shall remain unnamed because I forgot), account for this Marilyn moment taking place at the U rather than Daytona Beach. I like when people play along with their clothes.