Wanna See My Clips?
A few things I've written elsewhere, now here, for your hiring consideration.
Hi hi! Today’s post is a bit different than the others (sung to the tune of Ma Nishtana)—it’s a clip compilation of all my epic rail slides and ollies. Just kidding, I wish, but my ankles are more suited to being a writer, so below are various excerpts from publications like
, where I’m the News Editor, , from my time there as Managing editor, and more, from product packaging copy to musings on non-binary fashion. All sources are linked in the blurb titles.I’m sharing this because some of you have expressed interest in seeing what my writing looks like when I’m actually being paid to do it (and have excellent editors), but also because I’m moving back to the US (CA, to be specific) in a few months and I desperately need a/many gig/s. I’m happy to work remotely starting immediately, full-time, part-time, or freelance, and have experience in everything from brand development for fintech startups (yeesh) to academic articles (one forthcoming in the Long Now). Feel free to share this post (or this one, on IG, or my portfolio) far and wide, and reply to this email with any leads you may have—If you help me find work, I’ll give you free HR for life.
Thanks, team! I hope you like this assortment of goodies:
No delicate “rosette” could weather the Bimba Y Lola x Palomo Spain collaboration—they’re giving us meaty, strong-minded ROSES, blossoms beefing up the boat neckline of a mesh-knit jumper, buds acting as the aggressors on what are essentially sculptural brass knuckles, and foaming up to the chin like a primo bubble bath on halter-neck mini dresses—the few non-rose-centric items are just as muscular, with ab-like pockets on XXL leather tote bags.
Beyond the expected iterations on its trademark Links Tote (including a compelling version in crimson and oxblood) SC103’s FW23 collection has a near-pious tenor, with a monkish herringbone jacket that gleefully profanes its solemn brown with bright red thread around its buttonholes and a sternum-baring, flare-sleeve paneled blouse that looks like the uniform of a dilettante oracle.
The standout moments of the Shushu/Tong FW23 collection come when the brand eschews its usual babygirlification in favor of cartoonish severity—less Matilda, more sexy Miss Trunchbull (free Halloween costume idea, by the way). This switch-up comes through clearest in its coats, one black with sleeves flared *just so,* a pilgrim’s lapel, and buttons as big as a mouse’s dinner plate, one nubby brown tweed with arms sculpted like parentheses around the torso.
Maison Margiela’s new Sandstorm collection, unselfconsciously genderless, is one that gets better the longer you stare at it—the central conceit, definitely a gimmick but also a genuinely thrilling aesthetic bid, is that the garments are flocked with tan rayon to look caked in windblown sand. Something about the zip-up cardigan and denim shorts especially feels ineffably emotional, like Harry Dean Stanton in the beginning of Paris, Texas was compressed into an outfit.
Peter Do’s new capsule for Banana Republic brings the aspirational architecture of the former to the steadfast sensibilities of the latter in the aesthetic equivalent of an Oceans-esque crime ring: there’s the secretly sexy workhorse, a backless utility jacket with detachable sleeves; the honeypot with an understated intelligence, a button-down tank top; the traditionalist with “unconventional methods,” a crisply pleated trench skirt; and the jack-of-all-trades that holds the group together, a double-belted waist bag in subdued black leather.
Zoe Gustavia Ana Whalen’s SS24 collection is available for preorders now, assuring us that the cyclical nature of the fashion calendar doesn’t have to be gear-grindingly mechanical. Whalen reworks old Levi’s into voluminous, laced-up “jeans” (an understatement), and deadstock silk taffeta into a horned corset dress that circles the bare stomach, a reminder of the body’s collaboration with each garment. ZGAW’s cycle feels like falling, again and again, a little more in love with a longtime partner.
In one of those “Who cuts the barber’s hair?” riddles, but for who makes clothing Miuccia Prada would wear, the answer might be Lucas Ossendrijver’s FWfall 2023 collection for Theory Project, replete with steadfast classics that betray off-kilter details—a gray, v-neck sweater, of course, but with a silky georgette dipping below its hemline; a twill skirt with sunburst pleats and unexpectedly shirred waistline (someone hide the scissors); a reversible bomber in dynamic, yet muted, colorways…
Someone at Alaïa, as evidenced by its new collection at Bergdorf Goodman, has been drinking the Rei Kawa-kool aid. Lumps and bumps abound, bulging seemingly at random out of turtleneck arms and cut-out overcoats, but the collection’s successes are when it drops the Comme act and gives us some good, old-fashioned Alaïa mesh in the form of skater dresses or slingbacks.
If you ignore the existential aberration that was Riverdale and go back to the source text, Archie Comics of the ‘50s and ‘60s, you’ll understand that 2023 Betty and Veronica would both be Tory Burch girls, especially in the wake of its fall arrivals. They’d appreciate, from different socioeconomic angles, its sly gestures toward a certain legacy brand that’s currently appropriating a Brooklyn diner—Tory’s new pieces might nod at the silhouettes of Chanel, as in this cardigan that cribs the shape of its signature cropped jacket, but the younger brand makes clothes that belong in a real diner, making the townies swoon with a caramel-colored poplin wrap dress, narrowly missing a maraschino cherry-colored top handle purse with a wayward drip of milkshake, or click-clacking across the linoleum flooring in cap-toe pumps that are sure to pique the interest of the next wave of Tinder shoe thieves.
Puppets and Puppets’ FW23 collection could just as easily be the costume closet for a nascent David Lynch project—the dark romance of red and black makes sophisticated a faux snakeskin jacket and matching, hip-baring trousers that Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage would’ve had custody battles over in Wild at Heart. Corsets and panniers are earnestly deployed in blazers and gowns, and the nearly obsolete home phone is given new life as the handle of a purse.
A new contender is throwing its hat in the boxer ring: Tekla pairs its crisp, stripey poplin shorts in shades of blue and white with washed-out sleep tees that have the exact energy of the shirt a romcom heroine would nab from her one-night stand. Stüssy also pokes its proverbial head into the Tekla matrix once again with bathrobes that make a renewed case for bathrobes—remember when SSENSE told us to wear them to the club?
Moda Operandi’s summer-ending sale is in the wild west of sale-on-sale territory, with an extra 25% shaved off your total using LABORDAY25. We warned you that blazers were coming out of style hibernation, and this wrappy, puffed-sleeve situation from By Malene Birger is 60% off and an unhinged (in a good way) method of plunging into that deep end. Other notable dispatches from the frontier are on a pink silk slip-ish Rodarte gown (why does it feel like a lifetime since we last saw the name “Rodarte” in a sale section? Jpeg of rat smoking a cigarette) and a spiky little black Bevza dress that’s too sculpturally fascinating for the offhanded moniker “LBD,” 60 and 70% off respectively.
All 11 pages of the La Garconne Long Weekend sale—take an extra 20% off with GLABOR2023—are excellent. It’s almost impossible to find a multi-brand sale with no skips, but this one is so well-curated, it’s the sartorial equivalent to Björk’s Homogenic. The operatic, swooning “Jóga” would be a plant-dyed lace top in waves of indigo by Blue Blue Japan, tha abrasive wails of “Pluto” trace along the jagged hem of a CDG Homme Plus vest, the pleated satin of a teal Noir by Kei Ninomiya skirt ripples like the synth-y pulses of “Hunter,” and a crinkly, strapless Ter Et Bantine dress in a color-redefining shade of purple challenges, with its ballooning shape and technical fabric, what the “shape of a girl” Björk sings about in “Bachelorette” can look like.
i-D: Is it possible to 'dress non-binary'?
The key may lie in the fact that garments are gendered largely because of the trajectories of their histories as utilitarian objects. The high heels mentioned above were first adapted for the same reason that, centuries later, cowboys favored their iconic boots — the heels hooked on to a saddle’s stirrups, allowing for more maneuverability and stability while fighting on horseback. As women gained more political visibility in the 18th century, they started to adopt high heels as a way to masculinise their looks, though still not allowed to fight on horseback, which led them into a social trap. “The high heel, once separated from its original function of horseback riding, becomes a primary example of impractical dress,” Elizabeth Semmelhack of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto told the BBC. Because women adopted a visual signifier of masculinity without being empowered to enact its utilitarian justification — as anyone who’s stumbled over subway grates in even the most forgiving pair of heels can attest to, they’re not the most functional footwear off-horse — the heel’s pragmatism was absorbed by its new function as a purely aesthetic symbol of aspiration, and became synonymous with the idea of femininity as superficial and performative.
Some of the most intriguing entrants into fashion’s new guard, a host of designers and brands that incorporate an inclusive, creative approach to dressing across and outside of a gender binary, are attempting to engage with these questions: What if, instead of trying to reconfigure clothes gendered by centuries-old conceptions of utility into “gender neutral” looks, we started back at square one? What if we developed a sartorial lexicon based on a new utilitarianism as expansive as our contemporary understandings of gender? What are the needs that a garment can fulfill, now that most of us aren’t fighting on horseback or spending all of our days perched upon tuffets, waiting for our soldier to return home?
passerby Magazine: youtube rabbit holes to tumble down together
If you or your video-watching copilot have never seen Francis Bacon’s paintings, imagine a human body turned inside out, the spine of a cow dripping with its rent flesh, images that not even Cronenberg could conjure up, all hewn in oil and canvas with gorgeously fantastical stylism. This video takes a tour through his canon alongside the artist himself, sharing his thoughts: “What horror could I make to compete with what goes on in the world every single day?” Bacon insists his paintings aren’t creations of nightmares but rather affirmations of the inescapably disturbing facets of our society, physicalizing and objectifying the sensation of violence in order to reckon with its intrinsic presence in life.
If this line of artistic thinking piques your interest, travel further down the catacombs with this short video on Paul Thek, a tragically under-appreciated artist eulogized by the likes of Susan Sontag after his death from AIDS, whose most compelling works were waxen sculptures of humanlike cuts of mystery meat. Thek’s relationship to bloody, visceral imagery was not intended to shock, but to detach and re-contextualize: “It delighted me that bodies could be used to decorate a room, like flowers” was Thek’s reaction when he visited the Capuchin catacombs, which are decorated with decaying corpses. He picked up what he’d thought was a piece of paper — it was a human thigh. Thek said “We accept our thing-ness intellectually, but the emotional acceptance of it can be a joy.” If the rabbit hole you want to go down is existential in character, these artists’ works and thoughts can truly be catalysts of joyful acceptance.
Mildew Magazine: The Overcoat [print]
One form of material fetishization is quantitative, and largely dictates the clothing market of today: watching a TikToker or influencer pull a never-ending strand of cheaply-made clothing out of a shopping bag like a clown pulling scarf upon scarf out of their sleeve offers the same satisfaction as the image of a gold-filled cave in the Disney adaptation of Aladdin—sheer bounty is naturally alluring. In Jewish tradition, long before the Jewish American Princess archetype and million-dollar B’nei Mitzvahs created an advertiser’s fever dream demographic amongst the Chosen People, an obsession with preservation, quality, and sacredness acquired through age and use was the main mode of material fixation in our culture.
gush Underwear: Creative copy [used on site and packaging]
gush is a revelation and its ripple effect, starting with the perfect thong and cascading into your life in whatever shapes it takes on next. For people who feel their hearts in their whole bodies, perennially unbuttoned, this underwear is an ode to the limb-melting indulgence of making (an outfit you) love. gush thongs are flattering, not flattening, like liquid thoughts we share in the dark. Crafted in sustainable techno-fabric in New York City, each pair is obsessed with your body, the sweetest transgression in honor of something sacred. They sit high on the hips without pinching, and are never afraid to be seen.
Your skin decided
To show itself
The moon cracked
The sky glass
As everything fell
To its knees
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