Get Graphic.

National Geographic was my spongy, dorky mind's playground when I was a youngin'. Other than Liz Tilberis's Harpers Bazaar relaunch (What? It's all about fashion between these two ears), it was my favorite magazine to read cover-to-cover. Where else could one learn about the dolphins of the Yangtze River, poverty in Virgina, and Viennese cobblers all in one afternoon perusal? Nowhere, that's where. These days you can take a virtual tour thorugh villages, cities, cow country, and church with National Geographic as your guide. Click through the photo index on their site and stumble on great photos of the world's population, including great shots of just how they dress themselves.

Make Noise.

The Native American culture is a wealth of gorgeous clothing, costumes, and traditions. I aspire to know more and more about it and pass whatever I find on to you, dear readers. Your first taste is an introduction to the Jingle Dress.

Traditional Jingle Dresses were made of solid fabrics in "healthy colors" like red, green, yellow, black, and blue, and were adorned with jingles--metal cones fabricated of the tops of tin containers. According to legend the dresses were dreamed up by a medicine man who's granddaughter was ill. After a recurring dream in which he envisioned four women dancing in a snake like pattern in dresses that made noise, he instructed his wife to make four dresses and teach three other women to do the dance he had seen while asleep. Upon witnessing the jingle performance, the man's daughter regained her strength and soon began to dance as well. Thus the dresses are worn in dances of healing. The musicality of the dresses, and the stomping rhythms of the dances are soothing, energizing, and hypnotic.

Here, watch this and be healed:



The audio of the jingles is a bit better in this clip:


I don't know about you, but I feel better already.

Calm Down.

I had a slightly nerve jangling morning. No, the details are not juicy or particularly interesting, but it left me craving something serene. Perhaps, something saffron and simple? Like a monk wrapping his robes. Yep, that'll do it...



Mmmm. That was like hitting my reset button. There is something so soothing about witnessing the act of traditional dress. Monks, who symbolically don their robes in allegiance to the Buddha's dictation that they must only dress in cast off rags, have the most comforting three piece suits I've ever seen. The upper robe wraps the torso, the inner robe wraps the lower body, and the outer robe is worn as a shawl or overgarment, depending on the weather needs of the monks. So simple; so form and function related.

Serenity, now!