A strange coincidence: this afternoon I was looking at a major Yves Saint Laurent exhibit, and around the same time the man himself died in Paris. It was already fabulous, but now there’s even more reason to go (ends 9/28).
(Image from the MMFA)
On the plane from Chicago I read the following in an interview with Simon Doonan, author of Eccentric Glamour –
Eccentric glamoristas love fashion but are not dictated to by trends. They treat clothing as a form of personal expression and are less about layering designer labels than the creative manner of mix-and-matching to achieve a look. [Our customers have] a high tolerance for eccentricity. She is looking for quirk. She does not dress head-to-toe in one designer.
Which sums up my general approach to clothes, though my practical application has varied.
But “lately/there’s been a lot going on.”
Psychologically, after years of androgyny I’ve become more comfortable with traditional expressions of “masculinity,” as my friends and private-blog readers already know. And this has thrown my whole aesthetic into confusion. There’s a tension — not a contradiction, but I think a tension — between “eccentric glamor” and the implicit conformity of mainstream masculine self-presentation.
While we’re on the subject, I do feel some qualms about spending tons of time and/or money on clothes. I’m far from my days of Quaker plain dress, but I still hanker sometimes for a simple wardrobe, made of a small number of fantastic things.
But can a wardrobe be small, durable and fantastic at the same time?
I got myself into a funny situation this year with my medical flex spending account. Basically, those are accounts you set up through your employer, funded through payroll deductions, that you can use to pay for medical expenses. The benefit is that you don’t pay taxes on that money, but the downside is that you lose any money you don’t use by the end of the year. So it requires accurately estimating the amount of money you’ll need.
I utterly failed to do this. (continue reading…)
It snowed today, and my lips are getting chapped — time to get a scarf!
Any money I have for clothes is going towards a coat first, so I’ll probably just find something at my mother’s house over Thanksgiving. But allow me to share my two winter neckwear aspirations. (continue reading…)
