Beginning of an End

Ah, first day of the last two months of undergrad. Highlight: squeezing cardio and lifting into the two hours before class. Not cool: going in for a haircut that I didn't even really need, and leaving with basically the Mao Zedong Mushroom minus the male-pattern baldness. -_-bb

But, I did find time to pick up my Gilt.com purchases--namely, a Hyden Yoo sweater and a pair of A. Testoni loafers that, while being too good a deal to pass up, are far, far too nice for my age and surroundings. I'll be worthy in 3-5 years, maybe. In the meantime...maybe the market value will appreciate.

Here's the outfit posting of the day, as inspired by the catch-up Gossip Girl I watched last night & its sheer abundance of shawl-collar cashmere sweaters.


"Welcome to the Next 30 Years" - by jmniu on Polyvore.com

Polyvore Experiment

As the days of cleaning out sophomore-year homework and pondering over my fledgling portfolio comes to an end, I've finally gotten around to fiddling with the nifty collaging tool millions in the blogosphere are already taking advantage of to add more visual punch to their posts. I'm not terribly impressed with it so far--it often fails to import photos I want for no apparent reason, even when it's static and not one of the numerous Java-enabled product photos that zoom in and out you see on so many shopping sites nowadays.

For that matter, the outfit I chose to do isn't anything revolutionary--I've done better at the summer-prep thing before. Still, it's a simple start, and the red works well for both attending a Chinese function and for pairing with Jack Purcells & skinny denim for a look that's all Rob Lowe circa 1985.

Incidentally, I found out that the JP's I got at Jeremy's on sale--as a spare pair of white sneakers--are actually current-season. What what?


American Minimal - by jmniu on Polyvore.com

Ralph Lauren F09

Just as prime-time TV's poster boy of prep has steadily shed his earlier propensity for loud, punchy uses of color, the bastion of prep design seems to continue its back-to-basics approach to reconciling inherently colorful prep design with the somber tone of our times.

As a matter of fact, the collection as a whole was a trifle *too* monochromatic for the tastes of yours truly--an abundance of earth tones and black/dark navy, with nary a gray-and-pastel combo in sight. Guess I'll have to check elsewhere for matching suggestions for my forthcoming new gray cardigan.

In any case, here are a couple of the very few items that carried on the proud prep tradition of always wearing exactly one item that says, "go to hell." I have yet to figure out a way to pull off the cardigan-as-blazer trick without it looking gimmicky--the main thing is finding a sweater that will still be functional enough to work in ensembles where it is not the main component.

Reading: A. Cicolini - The New English Dandy

Inspiration: it always strikes when one least expects it, and when one is least predisposed to exploit it. So I discovered, to my pleasant surprise, this 2005 gem of a coffee-table book right here at the university Main Stacks library over the weekend whilst searching for something else to do a history of business paper on besides 19th-century industrialists compared with Russia's oil/mining oligarchs.

It's got a lot of interesting things to say, as far as drawing a more accurate picture of dandyism in the modern age than what most could presuppose on their own. It articulates something I've been meaning to express: in an age where casual streetwear has become the de rigeur uniform of the young, it is those who are looking to classic staples of tailored jackets, shirts, and the like, who are interpreting them anew through unique combinations of colors and patterns, that are infusing creativity into daily aesthetics and rescuing us from monotony.

Here in California, where the cultural emphasis is on a careless, relaxed attitude, the propensity for hoodie-and-jeans banality is even more clearly visible. What most accept as "dressing up" here at university is usually a joyless effort, entailing a boxy, bland three-button jacket cut too high, paired with an unremarkable printed tie, thick-soled square shoes, with no more texture than a sheet of copy paper. Add a backpack, and you begin to get an idea of the campus' approach to suit-wearing.

[This is where I might articulate a grandiose bit of self-justification for "rebelling" through blackwatch plaid jackets and bow ties, but putting such sentiments into words, locking them in, would ruin the purpose of outfitting in the first place.]

I think I'd rather leave the capricious critiquing of "bad style" to the GQ and Details editors; as much as I love their work, their constant jonesing for a new phenomenon to define, elevate, and subsequently critique in three months' time does wear on my patience. There's nothing wrong about trying things you identify with or aspire to, so long as you know to move on when it begins to bore you or clash with how you see and feel about yourself.

LA Express

Sugarcult - "Los Angeles"

Been listening on this one for a while...haven't been to LA in some time, but this song, to me, captures the mystique of it all, the vague patheticness of standing in lines and waiting rooms to pitch headshots to crap-shoot gigs, the heat, the knowing, doomed, world-weariness that completes so many people's sense of what it's all about.

Resonance

"In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse either in fantasies of the future or in modified visions of a half-imagined past."