Christmas Time!
Is anyone else SUPER-excited about Christmas? While I do not love the cold of winter, I do love decorating my home according to a theme and creating meaningful and silly traditions. Growing up, our family’s tradition was not to have any––making way for the much lamented and decorated “Christmas Trunk” in lieu of a Christmas tree when I was twelve––so celebrating the season the way my husband and I choose means a lot.
We just ordered a very mid-century mod aluminum Christmas tree to compliment this year’s gold, silver, Tiffany blue, and red color scheme. Christmas music plays in the living room every day. I have procured my clementine oranges, Whole Food’s chocolate truffles, and tea to savor together. I’m planning presents to purchase and make. The stockings are hung on the mantle. And this is just the beginning.
What are your favorite Christmas traditions? And which ones do you want to begin?
Why Ignoring One’s Blog Is Cathartic But Ultimately Useless
That is to say, it’s useless if you ultimately want to continue writing on said blog. If you don’t care about your blog, then ignoring it is a perfectly reasonable decision. If, however, like me, you enjoy the exercise of writing and sharing your thoughts, ignoring your blog is only a temporary solution to incomplete ideas that are in their current state unpublishable. Sure, take a break. But don’t give up! Don’t be frustrated by the disheartening reality of ancient computer hardware that makes writing arduous. Continually neglecting your blog only makes you feel like a failure. But writing even silly things builds one little success on top of another. And that is something to look back on with joy and pride.
On Fashion Magazines & the Over-Mystification of Style
I like fashion. Actually I love fashion. I see it as a medium by which to express myself as an artist. But I am merely a novice, slowly learning the language of style and putting together visual sentences with care and apprehension.
In my quest to learn the language of style, I turn to what most would consider to be the dictionary, the Fashion Magazine. There I hope to learn the definitions of words, the visual signifiers that describe what clothes and accessories are and do. For instance: What is a bias cut dress, and why does it look good on some women and not others? Why does bright green look good on me and beige make me look sick? What is matte jersey, and why do I hate it? Why do most models have the bodies of 12-year-old boys? Why are tiny purses with long straps suddenly back in fashion? Who is Vivienne Westwood?
But instead of finding the answers to these questions, I encounter more words and images of which I don’t know the definitions, and other words to describe them that make no sense. My least favorite and the most overly-used word in fashion magazines: effortless. This is apparently the holy grail of what all women want in clothes. That “throw it on and leave without looking in the mirror” mystique that only Audrey Hepburn and Kate Moss seem able to achieve. Fashion virtuosos aside, I doubt even the most stylish of celebrities achieves their look without some good, hard work at some point. Discovering one’s body type, color palette, and taste takes work. I don’t care who you are.
All this to say, the very place I turn to discover what fashion means to me only serves to over-mystify the entire concept. I want to know how a one-shouldered dress is made or why a designer was inspired by Greco-Roman themes, not how Pantene Pro-V is going to help me wear a one-shouldered ensemble with confidence. That’s ridiculous. That kind of propaganda makes me think I can only be fashionable if I look like a five-foot-ten-inch model with long black or gold tresses, or if I had enough money to get liposuction, or if I had more money period. The writers of fashion magazines and the advertising that supports them want me to be in a state of constant dissatisfaction with who I am so that they can make money. And who can blame them? It’s a clever strategy. But it is dishonest and ultimately makes me mistrust everything they say.
I think fashion magazines would do better (as some have begun, but only meagerly) to teach their readers about the fashion industry and give them the tools to achieve their own personal style. Just because the archetype of the beautiful figure has changed over the past 100 years from plump and womanly to anorexic and emaciated doesn’t mean you can’t look good in what designers are putting in stores these days. It just means you need to arm yourself with the right information and devices to make them work for you–e.g. your body type, your color palette, your most flattering fabrics & fits, and your most important weapon, a tailor.
Armed with these tools, I know that bias cut dresses don’t usually look good on me because my Latina pear-shaped-ness makes the fabric fall weird; matte jersey seems like it’s always cut on the bias, and I don’t like its gritty feel; my winter complexion means I look best in jewel tones; tiny purses are back because the powers-that-be said they were; Vivienne Westwood made punk a style; and I look awesome in high-waisted, tailored jeans.
Who Does She Think She Is?
It’s a film about women struggling to live as wives/mothers AND artists. It is exactly what I am trying to figure out, and I don’t even have kids yet.
The Impact of Movie Lines on Feelings About the Approaching Season
“Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.”
So goes one of my favorite lines from the 1998 Tom Hanks / Meg Ryan classic, You’ve Got Mail. Today feels like the perfect day to buy school supplies. It’s overcast and drizzly, summer is almost gone, and I just got back from a big vacation abroad. How very Bonnie Wheeler of me. (Bonnie was my medieval studies professor at university who always spent her summers in France at a monastery with her likewise professorial husband.)
There is something magical about this time of year. The urge to be intellectually and creatively productive is immense.
I also just bought a new blazer that will be perfect for fall and a puffy coat that would have been perfect for life in Boston. So the desire for autumnal weather is strong.
Go buy yourself some new pencils. It will feel good.
All Vacations Must End
Singing whilst whistling summoned brightest thoughts from the lady on her last day of summer vacation. She would remember the day as it was, as it should be, rather than whine that it must end. Undo appropriation of gloomy thoughts would ruin the day, be it rainy or not, she thought wisely. We shan’t do that. No no. We shan’t do that.
French Day at Chateau Shuker
The Blankenships are in Luton, England outside London visiting our good friends the Shukers. We planned to go to Paris one day, but missed the cheap train. In lieu of oui Paris, we celebrated French Day at Chateau Shuker.
Viva la créativité!
Mandy + Grad School = ???
So I’m considering graduate school for fashion design. Having given up the dream of being a university English professor (because I finally realized I hate literary criticism), I returned to the childhood dream of being an artist.
And now, being a “self-employed” artist person, dabbling in mixed-media paper goods and fashion, with the occasional return to photography–a return that will soon, God-willing, be permanent because of a friend’s generous darkroom donation and the purchase of a new computer (one that won’t bark like a rabies-infested dog whenever I attempt to use the internet and iTunes at the same time)–I have the epiphany that FASHION is where I’d like to focus a lot of my attention. But I feel I have reached the ceiling of what I can teach myself.
I want an actual CURRICULUM to study, with a teacher to whom I can ask questions–not the “go-and-find-a-pattern-and-I’ll-help-you-read-it” method of the community college / fabric store here in town. But of course, to be accepted to a graduate program for fashion design, I have to build a portfolio OF my own fashion designs. This is a Catch-22, is it not?
The Atlanta campus of the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD, in whose graduate program I am interested) has some community education classes I plan to take this fall to build my portfolio. And thank God, Amtrak has a train to Atlanta from a nearby station (because I HATE the drive to Atlanta).
So, dear friends, I’m asking for your advice, insight, and general opinions. What would you do in my situation? And, perhaps more importantly, how would you PAY for it?
How To Get Kids To Help You Do Chores
While friend Meg Wilson swears her son Gardner LIKES to help with the chores, playing pretend never hurts in the cause for a cleaner house. I remember imagining myself as the cloistered Cinderella while dusting or vacuuming per Mom’s directive. My hardship became justified yet romantic.
Dr. Mercola on the Rise of Gluten-Intolerance
If you’ve noticed more people complaining of food allergies in recent years, it’s not just because of mass hypochondriasis. Naturopathic guru Dr. Mercola blames the Standard American Diet. As a person with a significant gluten-intolerance, I can definitely attest to the woes of thoughtlessly eating grain rich foods. It doesn’t just cause digestive trouble, it DESTROYS my immune system.
