Top: People don’t often recommend things to me. Actually, that’s not true. People recommend things to me all the time. 85% percent of the time it has to do with mindfulness and how I need more of it. Another 10% is either about recipes, dietery supplements, or alternative medical treatments. 4% is people recommending eyebrow pencils. 1% is my mother who can’t figure out why I haven’t watched or read Lessons in Chemistry yet (I’ll read it, Mom; it seems like something I’ll enjoy at the beach).
Or to put another way, people don’t often recommend to me the kind of things I recommend to other people. You know, like music and books and stuff. I get it. I mean, that was kind of my job for a while and I still kind of feel like it’s my job now, even though the algorithms get all the work these days. They don’t always do a terrible job (although Spotify’s Discover Weekly has absolutely zero idea what to do with me), but they lack the fun psychology of a personal recommendation, which in its purest form is never just what I think you would like or what I like, but some fusion/Venn Diagram/ riff on the two. Because there are layers depending on who you are and what you are to me and how I want you to see me and whether I think you’re willing you are to try something new and if so, how weird would you like to go.
I used to love the whole mixtape process because it was such a character study. And I realize that I’m going to sound annoyingly “High Fidelity” here, but you can tell a lot about a person by what they think you’ll like (or whether it seems like they’ve thought about you liking it at all). Most of my favorite art makes me feel a little uncomfortable, at least at first blush. I like records I have to think about for a minute or two before I can tell you that I loved them. I like books that, by style or sensibility or subject matter, fuck me up a little bit . I don’t mind feeling a little out of my depth and exposed or even a little complicit. I don’t know if that makes me harder or easier to recommend things to, but I will tell you I’m the kind of person who will tell a hairstylist, “I don’t know. Whatever you think. Let’s shake things up,” and mean it. I like a surprise and I’m not risk-averse.
Which is very long-winded way of saying I thought it would be fun to have someone else style me. Like I always enjoy it when my friends pull something off a rack or send a photo on the internet and tell me it reminds them of me. Because they’re often right and usually it’s not something I’d notice. My mother is also pretty good at this, but we also own at least a dozen articles of clothing in common. Like, we actually discuss who is wearing what dress if we’re in the same town at the same time. Oscar Wilde possibly would have found this circumstance humorously tragic, but I doubt even Lady Wilde had my mother’s incomparable panache.
So back before the pandemic I assembled some pinterest boards, took some quizzes and signed for some subscription/style services to see if they might surprise me into a risk. I tried to game the system. I went well past the “I want something wild and impractical surprise me!” into “I’m going to Berlin with attend street style fashion shows with club kids in formerly industrial conceptual art spaces” or “I am attending the non-traditional wedding of an avant garde fashion designer and their aristocrat-turned-heavy-metal-drumming fiancée.”
You know where this is going don’t you? You know that most people, when they say they want something wild, they mean leopard flats or maybe some tastefully distressed denim. You’ve seen at least one make-over show and never is the result some wildly offbeat look. You know that editorial fashion, or even knock-off editorial fashion, never comes over a size 10. You know so-called “stylists” at the subscription box company are almost certainly algorithms signed by Heather in Shipping. And you probably know what I got. Pastel floral pussy bow blouses. Tunic sweaters in neutral shades. Beige suede ballet flats. Stretchy gray work pants. Tidy black blazers. Cozy blanket scarves. I got a green, paisley dress I described thusly in a review I returned (with the dress) to the site:
“I get how you might think I could pull this off. In my youth, I once owned about thirty pairs of platform shoes, some glittered, all dirt-cheap, and probably the reason why my right knee has bouts of performance anxiety. I had highly flammable polyester dresses in every color of the Cannot-Exist-In-Nature spectrum, and acres of neon bangle bracelets. To date, I have a jewelry box the size of a chest of drawers, filled to capacity mostly with all the neon bangle bracelets and the kind of earrings Good Taste takes one look at and is like, Not today, Satan. So look I get it. But even with the plastic signifiers and glittered Jesus earrings, this dress is kind of a travesty. You can’t wear it “straight” without looking like a sad woman who has lost all dreams, all hope, all sense of herself, left to languish with a plate of lukewarm potato salad at unshaded, yellowjacket-bedeviled office picnic while her terrible pleated Khakis husband refers to her as mother and ogles the boss’s teenage daughter. Just thinking about it makes me want to shake that woman and say, How did you let this happen to yourself? There is a whole wide world out there. Why have you settled for this life, this unbroken misery of days, in this dismal paisley shroud of self-negation? It was literally either send this dress back or start taking Wellbutrin again. I mean, the humanity.”
I guess I was surprised. I suppose one might also argue that I was pushed out of my comfort zone and into . . . I dunno, Ann Taylor (to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with Ann Taylor–my first pants suit came from there and if you were femme-identifiying around 2000, yours maybe did too—but it was not exactly the result I was hoping for). I did keep a few things. If the spirit of the exercise was ending up with a few wild pieces that I might adapt into my wardrobe, I ended up with the same in almost reverse. This top, a printed-chiffon shell with a smocked yoke and ruffled not-quite sleeves is, perhaps, the most worn of the subscription box purchases now over the course of numerous work trips and almost six years. That’s got to count for something.
Sweater: In 2015, my mother finally made it Beverly Hills after driving down the Pacific Coast Highway in a convertible with my stepfather. Whilst on Rodeo Drive, she bought herself a fancy designer cardigan with a floppy bow on it. Said sweater somehow ended up getting passed down to my little sister, who, while moving into her house in 2022 passed it on to me. So far none of my younger siblings (or cousins who feel like siblings) have daughters, but rest assured that I plan on one day passing on this obvious family heirloom to one of them.
Shoes: I have only owned two pairs of loafers in my life. These and a pair of platform-soled, fringed behemoths purchased at a Journey’s in the “Flagpole Sitta”-era of the 1990s (possibly to “Flagpole Sitta” playing over the store PA) that I wore all over Austin, Texas on my second visit to Austin, Texas until an unseen girl throwing up in the stall beside me in a bar on 6th Street literally stopped mid-barf to tell me they were the ugliest shoes she’d ever seen. I don’t remember exactly what kind of shoes she was wearing, but I do remember looking at my feet and thinking, she is not wrong.
These shoes are not interesting enough to inspire any real thoughts, but they are conference shoes. As in, “I’m going to a work conference and must appear presentable on my feet for two days. These are comfortable.”
Outfit: I still have a cold. And I think it’s going in reverse. Like from the chest to the head. Is that possible? Doesn’t that defy gravity?
I took a couple of meetings by phone and Zoom and then I made an “Easy Chicken and Bean Soup” recipe that ended up taking almost seven hours because I made the stock and cooked the Rancho Gordos. It was absolutely divine but never let me tell you that I don’t complicate things for myself.
PS: Please feel free to recommend things. I would love that. Any things. Books. Records. Filmed media. Dresses. Musical instruments that might entertain/annoy the cats. Anything, really, except meditation. I’ve tried that. It doesn’t take. Also, if you have access to a theremin and would be interested in letting me play it for the cats, you can help me scratch a critical line off my bucket list.
PPS: Speaking of mixtapes, today’s post shares a title with my all-time favorite Helium song, which you probably already know if you ever received a mixtape from me.
Blouse: City Chic, 2018
Cardigan: Carolina Herrera, 2015
Jeans: Kut by Kloth, 2022
Loafers: Franco Sarto, 2023
Earrings: Peel Gallery, Carrboro, 2021
Tiny Commotions 