#34. WHERE'S THE LINE?
or "Hey Guys! I Think It's Over Here"
Cream and Sugar!~* Who needs it!?
Yes, my springy buds, from late nights to early mornings, all season long we will be deferring to the breakfast basics that keep us well-fed because this is the kind of news-cycling consistency we call for.
Neither a doctor nor a nutritionist so I can’t save you if you’re bleeding out, nor can I ~pouf you into some health nut, but here, let me put on this apron allow me to serve you up some *healing thoughts.*
At that time, the telephone still hung– an outcast settled carelessly between the dirty-linen hamper and the gasometer– in a corner of the back hallway, where its ringing served to multiply the terrors of the Berlin household. When, having mastered my senses with great effort, I arrived to quell the uproar after prolonged fumbling through the gloomy corridor, I tore off the two receivers, which were heavy as dumbbells, thrust my head between them, and was inexorably delivered over to the voice that now sounded. There was nothing to allay the violence with which it pierced me. Powerless, I suffered, seeing that it obliterated my consciousness of time, my firm resolve, my sense of duty. And just as the medium obeys the voice that takes possession of him from beyond the grave, I submitted to the first proposal that came my way through the telephone.
– Walter Benjamin, Berlin Childhood around 1900 (2006) p. 49f
Like peppermint and pipe tobacco, what the . . . POUF~*
You’re Welcome!
~the envelope.
Straight from the phone to our diner booth (shut the door), today we are all about cosy*ing up with our classics à la mode and pressing our syrup*y fingers against some corners of ~simplicity.
According to Roland Barthes, the sense of touch ‘is the most demystifying of all senses, unlike sight, which is the most magical.’ The truly beautiful cannot be touched. It demands distance. Faced with the sublime, we stand back in awe. When praying, we fold our hands. The sense of touch destroys distance. It knows no astonishment. It demystifies, de-auratizes and renders profane what is touched.
– Byung-Chul Han, Non-Things (2022)
What the print!? So this is what it means to get our hands on things?! That there really is no going back?!
The FUTURE, oh la la~*
Like my favorite old Céline dress WITH POCKETS inset in the seams, how do we hold on more to the haute of simplicity, other than with some adherence to our favorite elegance? Like watching where you put those sticky fingers.
Lately I get asked all manner of absurd questions.
The people who ask these questions are all the same. They don’t even know each other, but for years they’ve been planning how they’re going to get me to say that fashion is dead. They’re all lying in wait for it. It’s like a trap. It’s around every corner.
“Oh Mrs. Vreeland,” they always begin, “you’ve always had such wonderful taste. You’ve always understood everything about elegance and . . .”
And et cetera. I can feel the storm gathering for miles and miles. They think they’ve really got me by the tail. They think they’re really going to get me to talk. “What do you think . . . of blue jeans,” they say.
Of course, they expect me to release myself and say, “Oh, they’re terrible! They’ve killed fashion!” Whereas, actually, blue jeans are the only things that have kept fashion alive because they’re made of a marvelous fabric and they have fit and dash and line . . . the only important ingredients of fashion.
So I always say the same thing. I say, “They’re the most beautiful things since the gondola,” and leave it at that.
–Diana Vreeland, Allure (1980) pg. 202
What more do you need?! How often we find ourselves pulled by the desire to get all romantic and do it up, little dashes of excess and spice. Le fuss! All these little luxuries . . .
Like evolving into feathers on a whim, has it ever been so easy to ~pouf to the top only to then get carried away by what’s beyond the steps?
Honey, I’m home!
~the envelope.
A million and one excuses dress up the fact that what is it in the end but some whimsical tradition we mostly can’t understand or explain why we tend to follow and fall in line, only that some don’t and do and it’s [ quelle poison ] to choose.
But just the other day, someone really threw me for a loop. “What was the relationship between Picasso and Chanel?” she wanted to know.
This is apropos of my Diaghilev show at the Museum, do you understand? This girl was going to get everything into her interview.
So I thought a minute and then I said, “They were both Big Timers and big money-makers who started nowhere, ended everywhere, and influenced the entire twentieth century– what more do you expect of two people?”
She’d expected at least a half hour of intellectuality, naturellement. Not from me.
But I thought a bit more about Chanel and then I said, “Most people are totally . . . looking into themselves. Chanel wasn’t. She was the only real visionary that fashion has ever had. She was the most interesting person I’ve ever known.”
That was the end of that question.
– Diana Vreeland, Allure (1980) pg. 202-203
In fact, when we five why’s down to it, come to find out it is le creative process that matters and finding more interesting ways to self-actualize is what it’s all about! How to sustain ourselves with something that, in turn, sustains others. Voila!
Like writing away from the curtain, and considering more ~nurturing forms to write on, like, ‘How can we support the true ambition of the silk worm?’
As rewarding as it can be to sink our teeth into the layers of an elite croissant, not everything must exist so shrouded in mystery.
What Wind?!
~the envelope.
Like a pack of good old fashioned Cream Savers, our mode à la mode is all about cutting through this chicken wire to– you guessed it– GET MORE OUTSIDE! All in the interest of getting more into what’s beyond ourselves . . .
Like we’re going to get hung up by our plucked honey strings on some white wall of artwork. Our goal is to remain anchored in our own elegance in pursuit of ~bridging to a more elevated style, like a busy*ness that comes from feeding the birds.
In Boston a few weeks ago, I had another question thrown at me. “You see, in Boston, the girl began, “anyone who’s well-dressed is considered in bad taste...”
I didn’t even let her finish the question. I was running late and I was simply fit to be tied. “You can’t– in 1979– say that!” I said. “You cannot!”
She was lost the whole time, the poor thing. A nice girl– but lost. She hadn’t bargained for this. She’d expected lots of copy.
“But why do you worry about good taste?” I said. “That’s part of the problem– the worry, the eternal worry. Lots of people have terrible taste, you know, and make a damn good living off of it.”
So then we got into elegance. She wanted to know the difference between elegance and fashion. That one I was prepared for– a week doesn’t go by when someone doesn’t ask it.
“You can’t ask a question like that casually,” I said. “Fashion is a passing thing– a thing of fancy, fantasy, and feeling. Elegance is innate. It has nothing to do with being well-dressed. It’s a quality possessed by certain thoughts and certain animals. Gazelles, I suppose, have elegance with their tiny heads and their satiny coats and their little winning ways . . .”
Once, years ago in Sidi Bou Said, a little gazelle jumped in my lap, terrified. His greatest terror, of course, was being in my lap, but I felt these tiny hoofs and this miniature face looked in my eyes as only a woodland creature can . . . I’ve never forgotten it.
So I said, “Gazelles have elegance. And Audrey Hepburn– magnificently.”
Then I said something I’ve always known. I don’t know who it’s a quote from. I didn’t get it from you, shall we say, and I didn’t make it up, but I’ve known it all my life.
“Elegance,” I said, “is refusal.”
– Diana Vreeland, Allure (1980) pg. 203
Something like getting back to ground level.
~the envelope.
In the spirit of getting more across by refusing more to be [ like ] and instead being more like yourself . . . This season of seasons calls for paring it DOWN! Throw it OUT! Do it UP with the thought. Inhabit the spaces in-between for those looking to tighten up and land more.
Deep in the folds of that big little brain, find what’s authentic to Y-O-U and your 1-800-agency, and then get out there on your own type of runway and STRUT IT!
Never a better day to make what you’ve got more interesting,
LA
