Charleston Street Style

Here's a taste of the style on the streets in my vacation destination, Charleston, SC:

Relaxed, geeky chic, minimal monochrome. Lookin' good, Charleston; lookin' good.

Photos from CharlestonMag.com.

Dance Dance.

I'm bound for a family trip to Charleston, South Carolina tonight. Among other things, I'm definitely planning on dancing the Charleston while I'm there. The Charleston actually originated in Charleston (imagine that!) and became popular nation wide in the 1920s Flapper craze. Watch the experts get it done to a Daft Punk Soundtrack:



My posting may be as jumpy as the dancers above for the next week or so, but I'll be back and better than ever soon enough.

Visual Candy: Millie Motts

Collectors, hoarders, and bloggers are all kindred spirits. I've stumbled upon the site of Millie Motts, a self-described "collector of 1940-60s just-about-anything." Her blog is full of fashion mag scans, vintage ads, and illustrations from days gone by. It's a feast for a fashion lover's eyes like mine. Her site feels like home.

Wham, bam, thank you, glam ma'am!

Clubland.

Seeing this clip of all the 90s era club kids crowding the couch on the old Joan Rivers Show is like having a strange E flashback.

First of all, I don't remember the club kids being so scary with all those things on their faces. Second, how ironic that she says "all you wanna do is have a good time in life and not hurt anybody" to future Angel slayer Michael Alig. All the insanity aside, club kids made the 90s go 'round. I kind of miss their costume craziness. Do we have a current equivalent? Methinks not.

Supermodels On Board.

I've never successfully stepped either on or off a skateboard in my whole life, but I did used to dress like a "skater" in middle school because I crushed on every in-need-of-a-shower boy who rolled by my Manic Panic red headed, converse wearing self as soon as my hormones hit. What can I say? I had a thing for boys who could grind some rails, get some air, and land some ollies. And after watching this footage of Mr. Chris Halsam doing his thing, I think I still do.



I totally dig the roller Jesus look. It makes me want to pray.

Anyways, turns out Halsam--and any other boarder who cares to--can start rolling around on some hot models as soon as they like. Erin Wasson has become the latest babe in a bevy of babes to be featured in nothing but boots and boobs on the boards of Swiss skate supply company Doodah.

Wasson's board body (r) and her backyard ramp (l) as featured in Interview Magazine.

Turns out Erin is more than just pretty board decor, she's a grinder herself. That's a photo (above right) of her LA backyard complete with a skate ramp installed by the local ska8er bois (Whaddup, Avril?!). I can't find any YouTube proof of her heels on wheels, but that doesn't mean it's not out there. I'm going to keep searching and you just watch that video of Chris Halsam again. He's magic. Hot magic.

He's Got Legs.

From The New York Times accompanying a story about the closure of a giant flea market turned import/export enterprise in Russia.

Please Avoid The Too Powdered Look.

How does one wear makeup in 1940? Well, like this of course:

I love the word rouge.

It's My Vice.

WARNING: F-bombs are dropping in this post.

I'm about to let you in on one of my guiltiest of guilty pleasures. It's like this: There are at war within me two equal and opposite forces. One is a sophisticated, design-minded fanatic of fashion with what I can mildly assert to be discernible taste based on a passionate and educated sartorial awareness. The other? Well, it's a 15-year old boy who just shot soda out of his nose while laughing at his best friend who epically failed to reenact that scene from Jackass where they roll billiard balls at similarly shaped sensitive anatomical parts. For the latter force, I blame my father. He thought that because his kids were in the backseat they couldn't hear The Howard Stern Show blaring out of the speakers of our Mazda four-door. I've spent years trying not to laugh at the baser things that predictably tickle my funny bone, thinking I should be above the oh-so-politically incorrect wickedness of the lowbrow. But, ya know what? Screw political correctness! Humor done well is a talent, a golden-bowed gift! I think I still have discernible taste, even when it comes to bathroom jokes. I can sniff out the sub-par and I am not above saluting the truly comical, no matter what the subject matter. Why am I telling you all of this? Well, because the fashionista and the fifteen-year-old in me have a secret bonding ritual that I think you should know about. It is awfully, awfully, wrongly good. What is it? Well, it's the (all of the sudden I'm afraid you'll judge me...yeesh) Dos and Don'ts from--no, not the back pages of Glamour (also brilliant!)--VICE Magazine.

I know, I know they often go against any shred of decency that you would hope still exists in the world. They curse, they are filled with lewd, crude, rude, raunchy, sexually explicit gag-inducing visuals and captions. They are culturally insensitive, often sexist, and unabashedly arrogant. But, they are also...funny. Yep, I said it: I think they are funny. Well, not all of them; if they offend me I click the "next" button just a little quicker and move on. But, man when they get it right, they get it so right.

This appraisal of platform flip-flop wearers could not be more accurate; they are a quite predictable sign of greater problems.

You see styley fashion street sites all over, but I love witnessing what the gen pop is really wearing. The Dos and Don'ts what the folks on the street really try and get away with. The thing I like most is that when someone nails the style, they get the props. When they fail? They get torn something new.

Again, these Dos and Don'ts are not for the faint of heart or the humanely sensitive--there are both body parts and bodily fluids on regular display-- but if your inner man child and your innate fashionista need to spend some QT together, sit them down in front of VICE and let 'em at it. They'll play nice as long and your conscience doesn't come home and spoil the party.

Um...do you still love me?

Twice As Nice.

I'm on a running mission to congratulate The Face Hunter every time he scores a double: A pretty face wearing a pretty face. This time I think I shall award some extra credit for the presence of boobs.



I want a tee with teets on it. Good things come in pairs! On a more sophisticated note, it's kind of amazing how the washy colors of the shirtdress match the sunset (or sunrise? Most hunters find their prey in the wee hours...) in the sky. Nice work, Hunter!

Universes Collide! Mind=Blown!

Yowza! I just love it when two of my favorite things come together and unexpectedly brighten up my Monday morning. Mr. Robert Longo, who's series of drawings entitled Men In The Cities, is some of my favorite art ever (The dancing/dying drama! The black and white, life or death action! The drawings that look like photos! The movement! The clothes! Ok...I'll stop now...) is featured on The Selby! Yes sir, The Selby, that site that gives proper props to the insides of cool peoples' cool living and working environments. Longo + The Selby= yay. Here's some shots of Mr. Longo's studio.

Oh, how I love The Selby. Sometimes I have to be really careful to check my jealousy (what? I'm not perfect!) at the splash page of the website and just enjoy the sumptuous visuals. When I can do that, I admire Todd Selby's photographic cataloging like no other's. It's so clean and detailed, so lovingly presented, so well arranged. So many superlatives. Lots of love for him and his biznas.

Ok, Call Me Obsessed.

I'm a blogger, if I wasn't obsessive, I wouldn't be any good at what I do! I found yet another tutorial on the "perfect red lip" and I have to share it with you. I really would never do all of this shading and powdering and lining, I'm just not that HM, but any makeup video set to the lovely, dulcet tones of Brass Monkey by the Beastie Boys (Get Well Soon, Adam!) deserves a re-post! Also, you have gotta love Jonny Cosmetic's big "la la la" finish.



Ha.

Boys Who Love Girls Who Love Boys' Shoes

I've always been a fan of not so femme footwear. I've coveted men's shoes for a long time, way before they became the latest trend. There's something so reassuring and sexy about solid, brown, leather, low wooden heeled, brogues on a man. As a woman I like to borrow some of that manly sexiness sometimes. It's brute and brusk and boys surprisingly dig it. I've been keeping my eyes peeled for a perfect pair of boy shoes and although my heart's true desire would be a pair of hand tooled, timeless George Esquivels, which I drool over on his website often (that opening slide show is like shoe porn to the max for me...here, sneak a peak at some styles)...

...my budget is a little less generous than Mr. Esquivel would allow. My alternative tactic for scoring a quality pair of boy booties has been to keep my eyes peeled like bananas at any thrift store I enter. And yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, it paid off! Meet my new baby boys!

They are Cole Haan Resort and I scored them at Housing Works Thrift Shop for $30. I love the knotted leather and the twine detail. I also love that they are broken in and that my thrifty purchase doesn't simply stimulate--or perhaps lightly poke?--the economy, it helps AIDS patients get the support and services they need (go Housing Works!). My strategy is to wear these shoes with girlie things like dresses and skirts, and of course my new red lips! I'm loving this style/aesthetic I'm cultivating. I call it TomGlam (meaing tomboy glamorous, not to be confused with TomKat) and it feels like home to me. My favorite part of these shoes? You can see my bright red pedi through the strips of leather. I like it!

Common Goods: Dutch Beach

I wax ecstatic about The Commons to you all the time, but really, there are few things I find as wonderful about our techy time as the ability to flip through the collective pictorial history of the world on Flickr. It still makes my inner geek go gaga. There's so much to explore. Take for instance the results of a random search of the words "Dutch" and "beach" (the rain was inducing a feeling of nostalgia for sunshine, and anything Dutch is cool):

These photos are from the Spaarnestad and Nationaal Archeif photostream. They are institutions that work together to preserve, catalog, and make public a vast archive of mostly Dutch documentary photos. The shots above are all various beach scenes from their collection. It is amazing to see the variation of dress that people wore to visit the sea over time. Something as simple as dipping the body in ocean water, an activity that has been done since the beginning of time, takes on so many different codes of dress. From the older "bathing costumes" that seem so impractical and so burdensome, to the man's high-waisted swim trunks, and even the nun's religious garb, dressing for the beach has a more complex history than one would think. But, the activity has always been the same. Sometimes I like to imagine the things that would feel absolutely the same even if I were to time travel, and the beach is one of them. There would still be sand between your toes, water lapping at your ankles, and sun shining down on you, whether you were dressed in a full cover bathing outfit in another century, or a tiny bikini. Some things never change, others always do.

Click here to see the rest of the Spaarnestad/ Nationaal Archief photo stream.