The Eyebrow Chronicles

I’ve been M.I.A. for a while now. My dear dad died on 27 December, and I haven’t had much heart for blogging since. But it’s coming back. Hang in there.

“Th’ whole worl’s in a terrible state o’ chassis,” says Captain Boyle in Sean O’Casey’s play “Juno and the Paycock.” But if you think that’s an excuse not to put your gladdest rags on this Christmas and/or New Year’s, you can think again. Now is the time for sequins, beads, sparkles, and baubles, for satin, velvet, and silk, for bold prints and big jewelry. Not, you will be relieved to hear, all in the same outfit.

In my opinion, there are two ways to do festive dressing, and no, head-to-toe fleece is not one of them (unless you’re a sheep). You can do all the drama with your dress and downplay everything else, or you can use accessories to liven up a simple base. If you’re going for the former, here’s some inspiration (from fantasy to reality):

Hanna silk and velvet dress by Christopher Kane

Beaded silk tunic dress by TIBI

Raindrop dress from French Connection

But if you don’t have a festive frock in your wardrobe, there’s no need to go out and buy one. You can take a simple black knit dress — one you might wear to work — and dress it up with a statement necklace, sparkly belt, or patterned tights. Start with something like this:

Sarafina knit dress by Trina Turk

And add something like this:

Sunken Treasure necklace by Subversive

Subversive has several highly covetable collections of jewelry featuring the brand’s signature tangles of chains and baubles. It’s easy to recognize and easy to rip off: J. Crew, for one, has comparable (though undeniably less fabulous) pieces for a fraction of the price.

Mint pearl mega cluster necklace by Subversive

Pearl and crystal avalanche necklace from J. Crew

With decorations like that, who needs a tree?

Etsy has some very cute offerings in the handmade hottie department.

It’s snowing in London. It’s too cold to snow in New York. It’s pretty bloody chilly in Dublin, where I’m going to be next week. At times like these, I fantasize about all things warm. Cashmere, cats, hot chocolate, saunas, thermal underwear, real fires, wool tights, big fluffy duvets … and hot water bottles. There are many new-fangled devices for warming beds, things like electric blankets and shapeless objects you put in the microwave. But I secretly wish I lived in the days when a maid would come to your room and run a copper pan full of still-glowing coals over your sheets just before you got into bed. Of course, if I lived in those days, I would more likely be the maid, who then has to climb a draughty staircase to a freezing attic where the wind howls all night long and fur-coated mice nibble frostbitten toes. But anyway. Maybe it’s because they were the stuff of my childhood, but I still have a fetish for hot water bottles. In fact, I’m quite sad that I don’t need one where I’m living now; the radiator squeals and burbles alarmingly and emits more than enough heat. But encased in a snug wool or felt cover, a hottie is the perfect bedmate: it won’t steal the covers or snore or wake you up to tell you its crazy dream about making sandwiches with Kim Jong Il. Find the one pictured here, or browse Etsy for other designs. Just make sure the top of your hottie is on tight, though, or it could wet the bed.

Lately, I’ve been seized by the idea that there’s not enough poetry on the internet. I don’t mean you can’t read poems online, I just mean that most of what’s on Facebook, Twitter, and, to a lesser extent, blogs like this one, is depressingly prosaic. This has already inspired some odd behavior on my part, including posting a tweet in Latin. I’m sure one could argue that social media sites have encouraged many kinds of creative, anti-utilitarian verbal experimentation. Rather than diving into that debate, I think I’ll just leave you with one of my favourites by the Northern Irish poet Paul Muldoon. A copy of one of his collections would be an excellent addition to any bookworm’s stocking.

Quoof

How often have I carried our family word

for the hot water bottle

to a strange bed,

as my father would juggle a red-hot half-brick

in an old sock

to his childhood settle.

I have taken it into so many lovely heads

or laid it between us like a sword.

An hotel room in New York City

with a girl who spoke hardly any English,

my hand on her breast

like the smouldering one-off spoor of the yeti

or some other shy beast

that has yet to enter the language.

Behind every great woman ...

... there's a big bear giving her a hug.

Those who know me know I love bears. Those who know and love me tell me that I will never be tenderly hugged by a bear. I maintain a surface bravado but deep down I have a niggling fear that they might be right. With this French Connection T-shirt, though, all my dreams could come true. Safely.

This ad (for the jeweler Michael C. Fina) got to me. And not in a rush-out-and-find-the-one-in-a-million-who-thinks-I’m-one-in-a-million-and-sulk-until-he-buys-me-a-big-f-off-rock kind of way.

Let us parse:

“She’s one in a million.” OK, so far so not that rage-inducing (though more on this later).

“Now let the whole world know.” Sir? Sir? I have questions.

1. Why? Seriously, why not keep it to yourself? Does the world care? Did you think about this, Michael C. Fina: maybe the world ALREADY knows. Maybe the world already has a population of roughly 6,692,030,277 and therefore couldn’t give a rat’s arse about one in a piddling million.

2. Why with a diamond and not with a song, poem, painting, tattoo, teacup pig, Krav Maga training she’s always wanted, or by volunteering to do laundry for a year?

Oh, because the world might not get it. The world is a little slow. The world doesn’t speak in laundry, teacup pigs, or Krav Maga. The world speaks in diamonds aka small, portable symbols for lots of cash.

I’ve got nothing against diamonds (aside from the dead miners, the civil wars, and the indentured child slaves). I’m sure a lot of people buy and wear them just because they look nice and not because they want to let the world know anything. And a hand-woven caftan can be as much about making a statement as a five carat solitaire.  Oh, bugger. I’m actually starting to respect the simple honesty of this ad. Some people will buy diamonds to “let the whole world know” that their net worth girlfriend is superior to that of everyone else. Those people are probably the ones most likely to be swayed by an ad in a Sunday newspaper.

One thing still gets me, though. I’m one in WAY more than a million. What kind of stone do I get for that?

I could buy tops till the cows come home. If I were buying things, that is. Actually, last night I dreamed about a cow coming home. In said dream, I went to pick up my pet cow from the vet. She was as wide and well-stuffed as a sofa. I wondered if I should ride her home but decided against it on the grounds that I didn’t know how she would behave in traffic.

Anyway.

Bottoms are a different story, especially trousers. So hard to get the right fit! And when oh when will harem pants go away? Not for some time, I fear: Topshop and Marks and Sparks just showed next year’s collections to the press, and M&S is banking on “the new pyjama pant” being the next big thing. How does it differ from the plain old pyjama pant? Well, I bet it will cost a lot more. The best solution might be just to stop getting dressed. Or, better yet, stop getting out of bed.

harem scare 'em

J. Crew recently told me that if I thought I couldn’t “do skinny,” I might be mistaken. So I went into the Time Warner Center store to test this hypothesis. I tried on a pair of ankle stretch toothpicks, which sounds like a form of torture for mice but translates as short, stretchy, and tight.

mouse torture instruments

Surprise: there is some truth in advertising. I thought I couldn’t do skinny, and there I was, doing skinny! Bigger surprise: they only looked good from the calf up. I guess I can do skinny but I can’t do short. They would probably look SUPER HOT with preposterous heels. And a white ribbed tank top, dark roots, crumbling trailer in the b.g., loser boyfriend named Darryl Wayne a blur on the horizon as he makes off with my welfare check in his beat-up Mustang.

Dang, I shoulda bought them jeans!

Know how I always say the greenest thing you can do is not buy anything? Well, I do. And when I’m feeling really grouchy, I’ll say things like “buying green sh*t doesn’t make you green.” Even though I know replacing the “i” in shit with an asterisk doesn’t make it pol*te.

Anyway, it turns out I may have been slightly less than a hundred percent correct.

How many pairs of underwear do you have? I don’t mean that in a creepy way. I only ask because one of the easier ways you can be greener with your wardrobe is to wash your clothes less often. But to do that, you’re going to need enough smalls to go the distance between laundry bouts.

The biggest environmental impact from your clothes comes from washing and drying, not manufacture or transportation. Do you know how much energy that washing machine uses? About 0.256 kWh per load, plus about 40 gallons of water. Most of the energy goes towards heating the water. So if you love those hot washes, think about going warm or cold a bit more often. The good news is that hot water shrinks and fades fabric, so your clothes will last longer if you lower the temp. The bad news is that hot water also gets things clean. To get around that, you can soak your dirtiest things in warm water before washing. Also, treat stains as soon as they happen. You might not even need to put the item in the washer at all.

Thought your washer was bad for your carbon footprint? It’s positively smug, sitting as it does next to one of the biggest energy hogs around, the dryer. One dryer cycle uses more than 10 times the energy of a wash, and it destroys your clothes so you’ll end up buying new ones sooner. Got a yard? Stick up a clothes line. No outside space? Get a clothes horse, leap on its back and ride it all the way to green heaven. Or just hang the stuff on your shower curtain rail. Yes, it’s unsightly, but so are dead polar bears.

Need I mention environmentally-friendly detergent? Some are better than others; nothing works quite like chlorine. Just console yourself with a well-earned feeling of smugness if the grey-ish tinge on your running socks gets you down. And keep pre-treating those stains!

The best part is that you get to do all of it less often, and you can use the time you would have spent on laundry for other, low-impact pursuits.

(Stinky guy who was sitting near me on the subway yesterday: none of this applies to you. Wash, wash, wash the stench away, using all the industrial chemicals in China if necessary.)

Remember that (by now WAY overcooked) metaphor about self-basting turkeys? I promised I’d offer up some shining examples of style writers who eschew the roasting pan and flap their highly fashionable feathers freely. Turns out, it’s slim pickins out there.

Thank the gods of style (sartorial and syntactical) for Cintra Wilson, who regularly writes as the Critical Shopper in the New York Times. The Critical Shopper feature in general is a welcome relief from the “oops, I just vomited up this press release and called it a story” approach that prevails elsewhere. Not so much in the hallowed style pages of the NYT, you understand — most of that’s either dull or of the “Five Favorite Belts Under Five Hundred Dollars” variety. I believe the word for the latter crime is “aspirational.” Aspire to this, NYT style scribes: offering more sensible suggestions about things a rational human of moderate means trying to survive the worst recession of her lifetime so far might realistically consider buying/wearing.

So when the Critical Shopper appears, I lap it up like it’s the last French 75 in the desert. Each piece is a review of a store, and not those tiny, hidden away, one-of-a-kind boutiques that you’re never going to get to unless you live in New York. In fact, the one that got me all excited recently was Wilson’s take on Ann Taylor, somewhere I’ve always sneered at. OK, I admit I’m not sure I’ve ever set foot in one, but even the window displays have tended to make me yawn. You can read CW’s hilarious take on it for yourself here. Cintra Wilson, I think I love your writing. Anyone who can make an article about Ann Taylor both funny and interesting is a heroine in my book on my blog.

I was also intrigued by Mike Albo’s review of the yoga wear chain Lululemon. Yes, apparently men shop! Not as much as women, but they do. And not just for beer and flat screen TVs; for things like “yoga pants that don’t gape or ride up.” But that’s not the interesting part. Just hang in there till you get to Landmark Forum.

Which is most definitely NOT my advice for life in general.

My friend David Page recently posted an article on The Traveler’s Notebook entitled “Do Freebies Undermine Honesty in Travel Writing?” It’s a thought-provoking and beautifully-written piece which sparked a lively online discussion. Apparently, freelancers for the NYT’s Travel section have to agree never to accept freebies, even when writing for another outlet. The idea is to breed a morally incorruptible, fiercely independent journalistic stable. The reality, given that most freelancers also have to write for publications that can’t or won’t cover their expenses, is that this policy makes it very hard for those without independent means to make travel writing a career.

I can’t help drawing a comparison to fashion writing, where the proliferation of freebies may be one of the main attractions for many hopeful young Wintour-Wannabes. Obviously, the average style story isn’t likely to come with the same kind of tab as a travel piece about trekking in Nepal. But I think that the questions about who should pay for what and the ramifications of that raised by David’s piece resonate far beyond the travel pages. With old and new media mud wrestling in a shallower revenue stream, do you have to be a mad man (or woman) to go into journalism?

I have never heard of a style journalist turning down a freebie. But it’s just clothes and cosmetics, right? It’s all frivolous, empty, and totally subjective anyway! Who cares if glossy mags are basically catalogs that readers/consumers have to pay for, while most fashion and beauty blog posts are press releases that publicists don’t (except with the odd free purse or powder compact)? I do care, actually; as David suggests, it’s hard to write well and sell a product at the same time. That’s why advertising is so lucrative. If I really wanted to do that, I should probably be begging to be hired at BBDO, not browsing “job” listings where established cosmetics companies offer to pay bloggers $15 per 300-word post. I kid you not. But hey, you probably get free face cream!

There’s already more than enough writing out there online and on newsstands that’s been sucked dry of all liveliness by the need to sell ads. While I’m not getting freebies, beholden to commercial interests, or on the payroll of an organization that is, I may as well say exactly what I want. Better that than acting as if I were subject to the same restraints as someone writing for a major commercial media outlet just in case I might be in that position again sooner or later. For some reason this makes me think of self-basting turkeys, which I always imagine climbing obediently into a roasting pan and offering helpful advice on the oven temperature. If the regurgitated press release is the norm in style blogging, we are all in danger of forgetting that there are other ways to write.

Vive la independence! Uggs are vile. Marc Jacobs’ clothes are unflattering to women. Sleep, sunscreen, and water will do a hundred times more for your skin than Crème de la Mer.

I might or might not sell my soul (send offers here), but I certainly won’t give it away.

Next: the freebie-eschewing frontline of fashion writing freedom fighters.