GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES

Happy Halloween!

This could be an easy way to try the bleached-blonde thing without the follicle damage, no? (You’d be shocked by the number of people who thought this was my real hair. [Three.])

MY FAVORITE PART OF HALLOWEEN...

…was finally putting this dish from Anthropologie to good use! (I lost my “gay card” over the weekend when I failed to recognize a friend was dressed up as Lady Gaga, so I had to do this post about decorative ceramics to get it back...)

Sorry there hasn’t been so much love for interiors on le blog lately - I feel like nothing particularly interesting is going on with my apartment. Plus, all of the corners that get enough light to be photographed well have been photographed! I’ll try to be more cognizant of the little things that might be interesting and worth sharing...

HALLOWEENSPIRATION

Halloween is not my holiday, regardless of what you may have learned about the gays and Halloween from various TV shows ("It's like gay Christmas!" >_< Parks & Recreation). Picking out a costume is way too trying on my patience, period. All I know for sure right now is that a blonde wig is in my possession and I am not going as Marilyn Monroe. Enter some inspiration-board-age - I'm thinking either Kurt Cobain if Kurt Cobain had been the type to date Winona Ryder in 1990 or Aughties Ashley Olsen. Grungy, punky, a little bit confused. It'll be all right.

THE ARTIST'S STUDIO

A few months ago I shot my friend Beate's home just for fun. I had a new photography project in mind, but as it turns out, balancing a 9-5 and too much ambition = overload. These photos of her studio have been languishing on my laptop since then, waiting for their moment in the sun. Wonderful, no? If I could change anything about living in a studio, I would add on another studio where I could create. What a dream!

Artist's studios are particularly compelling spaces because of the contrast they present to the average viewer, since most of us work in offices. It's like, "Why do I sit in a cubicle? Why don't I use my hands? Why can't my space look like this?" I immediately think of Google's offices, because their employees must spend umpteen hours a day staring at a screen, yet they've tapped into a creative energy that keeps the work from stagnating. Don't you think any office could do well to foster that kind of creative freedom? I love finding the ones that do since they're usually putting out the most interesting products.

Speaking of artist's studios, I stumbled across designer Lotta Jansdotter's new book the other week and was thrilled to see something comparable to my beloved Editions de Paris. Published earlier this year, Open Studios with Lotta Jansdotter profiles different artist's spaces in an unassuming manner that makes you feel like finding the creative meaning behind your own jumbled living space. Fore more photos you can visit Anne Sage's post about the book here, and Lotta Jansdotter's professional website here. If your interest is piqued, be sure to pick up your copy locally at O'Suzannah!

YOU CAN FIND ME OUT THERE

My friend Chelsea is a poet, apparently as much behind the camera as when she's holding a pen. By day a projectionist at Vinegar Hill, Chelsea shot most/all of these with a disposable camera, but sometimes uses a Holga. Many thanks to her for letting me pull these from her Facebook albums!

all photos C.C. Harlan (Oo, new nom de plume, Chels?)

FANTASTIC SEÑOR FOX

Suit - A.P.C.

Shirt - Banana Republic via Ike's

Shoes - Lotusse

Belt - Vintage Vixen

Ring - Ten Thousand Villages

And here it is, the last in my "brown & black" series (of sorts). I've had this A.P.C. corduroy suit for about three years, but what you are witnessing with these pictures is my first time wearing it as a whole! I mean, brown corduroy suit? The first thing that comes to mind is that episode of SATC where Miranda finds a brown corduroy suit in Steve's closet and barfs and then her heads starts spinning and then the priest...oh, wait. So maybe that's The Exorcist-ish. Either way, the brown cord suit was a no go in my book until I saw Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson's stop-motion feature starring woodland creatures with a better sense of style than moi. But if you click through the link you'll see that Mr. Fox's suit is double breasted - so fancy! I had to put my boho (read: lazy) spin on it. Enter my oversized Banana Republic black linen shirt, thrifted from Ike's Underground. I feel like a high school art teacher when wearing it - in a good way! The accessories enliven the mix and the overall effect, I hope, isn't, "Oh God, this guy owns a brown corduroy suit?"


photos by the fantastic Fareine Benz (available for weddings, bat mitzvahs and everything in between!)

PATTERN + COLOR + TEXTURE

I am flipping my scheiße for the styling here, not to mention color, color, color! Apparently Vogue is doing online-only editorials now? And I love the idea - this is a promising beginning. If you know of any menswear edits styled this with this much wham and whimsy, please link to them in the comments. I'd looove to see them...


photos by Justin Hollar via Vogue.com

DEAR INTERNET No. 9

Finds from around the interweb...

1) A wonderful fall wardrobe concoction from Landon Ford of Paper Magazine. C'est parfait, no? The proportions are just SO RIGHT. And those shoes! And those bracelets! Oh and yeah, that deep-scooping teesh. He doesn't have my chest beard to really make it pop, but he's keeping the dream alive. Kudos to you, good sir.

2) Topshop Unique nails as seen on 5 inch and up. Dalmation print? Stop it. Dying.

3) Piombo scarves from Barneys. The whole line is pretty fantastic, and I also fell hard for some of their belts, but these beauties are number one in my book. Some details about the line can be found at downeast and out.

4) I've been worrying, as we head into winter, what could add pizzazz to my flowerless coffee table. The solution? Gorgeous hurricane glass and a giant candle; an inspiring tableau via And George.
5) St. Vincent is playing in Charlottesville next weekend! I honestly don't think I like the album enough to see her in concert (I know I'm so unhip), but this song and Cruel have been stuck in my head all week.

STYLE SNAPSHOTS

from left to right, top to bottom…

1) I finally succumbed to the temptation of the “arm party.” I rooted through my jewelry box and found an assortment of bracelets that I think work well together, including my jangly pirate coin bracelet of which a friend once said, “that’ll be nice for your girlfriend.”

2) I went to Richmond for the first time this past weekend – apparently it’s more than just where the big mall is! We went out for brunch on Sunday morning to Kuba Kuba where I enjoyed café con leche and eggs and toast and avocado. C’est bon.

3) This…is a flower. Maybe there being only one is a metaphor for winter coming on? Or...pretty!

4) A most wonderful bike in a most wonderful color.

5) Busted out my Hermès pocket square the other day…but then it turned out to be too hot for a jacket. What is this weather, October?

6) My new ring! Malababa from Need Supply Co. I am completely obsessed with it and was getting a bit out of control on their jewelry display. I might have been straddling it at one point, but it’s ok! Because this baby has reignited my passion for jewelry, which had been lying dormant seeing as piling it on isn’t practical for work. Well, slap my ass and shower me with diamonds, because I fU*KiNg LoVe JeWelRY – practicality be damned!

NIKES X DENIM

Mi amigo Coogan started his own denim line, Handsome Man Jeans, and I've been shooting them for his Official Brand promotion(z). He makes every pair by hand from locally-sourced selvage denim and can even customize the back-pocket designs for ya. (Maybe I can finally get a pair of pants that has "Ass Butt" scrawled across the back!)

The model this time around was customer Sebastian, whose Nikes I quite liked and so I took half the pictures of them. They just looked so awesome with the jeans! I'm still kind of in awe that Coogan actually handmade these suckers - this pair may look a little weird in the pics because the denim is inside out, whoa. For more information, check out the link to his blog above, or email him at coogan[dot]brennan[at]gmail[dot]com!

BROWN, BLACK & BLUE

Sweater - Ralph Lauren

Shirt - Muji

Scarf - Zara

Pants - Opening Ceremony

Shoes - faux Tod's

Bag - Banana Republic

Hat - Low Vintage

Sunday was preposterously gorgeous, the kind of fall day that makes you feel guilty for not having planned a hike, two picnics and an outdoor dinner party for ten. Instead of all that I took a long walk with a friend around some local neighborhoods. This outfit, now that I think about it, is actually second in a series-of-sorts about wearing brown and black together, because apparently I can't get enough of those two neutrals. Final installment coming soon! Also, I love this hat.

MEN WITHOUT PANTS

photos, from left to right: Stylites, The Sartorialist, Pop Bop & Snap (x2), Brandon Acton-Bond, Joey Ma from Individuality.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about men without pants – but there’s a twist! They’re wearing skirts. And I’m not just talking about that recurring dream where I show up to the first day of high school wearing a pleated mini and everyone starts laughing and I look down and am like, “How did Cher Horowitz’s bottom half get on me?! Oh, but I love my shoes right now.” Nor is it some hypothetical alterna-reality where everyone wears a cross-cultural kimono-wrap-dress hybrid uniform, because I know that’s where your mind went next. My interest in the skirt was piqued a few seasons ago when Marc Jacobs closed a few shows in a kilt, but I wrote that off as something that worked because he’s Marc Jacobs. But as the pics above evidence, men are wearing skirts outside the exploratory realm of the high fashion runway and on personal and street style blogs alike. Is this the final frontier in breaking down gender boundaries?

What I most appreciate about the effect, especially as seen in its incarnations here, is its sincerity. There really isn’t anything in a man’s wardrobe a woman couldn't pick out for herself, right? She’d be a tomboy or just edgy and there’d be nothing sensational about it. To think of a man walking into a woman’s closet and pulling out his “fave piece” to co-opt seems a bit preposterous. Part of this is the dynamic and complicated nature of the female wardrobe; part of it is obviously social stigma. He’d be a cross-dresser – not a label you’ll see playfully splashed across the pages of a GQ market section the way you might find “Tomboy Style” sitting proudly atop a selection of "ways to get the look" inside Elle. The reasons behind all this are handily explained in song form, thanks to Madonna.

Long story short, these guys are wearing skirts and it isn’t drag, nor do they look like cross-dressers. They’re post-modern men to whom wearing a skirt isn’t emasculating because maybe looking “like a woman”, like looking “like a man”, isn’t something to be ashamed of – nor is it something defined by an article of clothing. Will I be wearing a skirt anytime soon? I’m not a post-modern man yet, although I do think the look has potential. I just figure Katherine Hepburn wanted to wear pants for a reason. But hey, if Lady Gaga hasn’t technically started a revolution she’s at least indicated a movement of sorts in the fashion universe – pants are kind of optional, really. It’s 2011 - power to the pantsless!

A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN

{photo courtesy of Nick Strocchia}

I was lucky enough to be featured this month in Abode, the local shelter magazine. Thanks is due entirely to the wonderful Cate West Zahl of The Charlotte – she’d seen some snaps of my little corner of the world online and wanted to do an apartment feature as her first piece for the mag. You know an interview is either going to go really well or really poorly when the reporter brings you wine and flowers – luckily for me, it went really well! Cate and I had a wonderful chat about style and design and then she picked my brain about the inspiration behind my space (you can find the article online).

To supplement the feature and give credit where credit is due, here’s a rundown of local goods as seen in the shoot. The black screen dividing the “living room” from the “bedroom” is actually two pairs of antique shutters hinged together – not by me, of course. That’s like, hard. I found it last spring at the Girlfriends of Greenwood sale, but didn’t bite until over the summer after reorganizing a bit. Antiques dealer Caroline East (Willow Creek Antiques, 434- 244-5860) was nice enough to pull it out of storage for me and deliver it – gotta love that Southern hospitality! The art on display is courtesy of James Anthony, a formerly local screenprinting artist whose business was recently relocated to Atlanta, thanks to Anthony’s undying passion for the Braves. (Joke!) The piece pops thanks to a brilliantly minimal frame by artist Beate Casati, whose shop, La Linea Bella, also took care of the framing for Sometimes I See the Sky. (That particular frame might look familiar to And George shoppers - the antiques boutique uses it for all of their art.) Also featured is an antique Moroccan hand-hammered tin plate from The Curious Orange cradling a pair of antlers from The Greenwood Country Store. All of this is on top of a 19^th century Persian rug from Low Vintage.

The green bench, which was featured on Design*Sponge, was actually gifted to me. It was originally…well, just click through the link above if you want the before and after nitty gritty! The “entrance table” is another gift and DIY success story – I pulled out some superfluous lattice-work detailing from the sides, painted it white and replaced the handle with an adorable knob (also from The Greenwood Country Store) (Dayum, they’ve been good to me!) My last pseudo-DIY project was the bag display, inspired by this shot from a home featured on Design*Sponge. To get my own display I hung up hooks from Anthropologie and artfully arranged some shopping bags on them. That’s sort of DIY, right? Except I had a friend screw in the hooks for me…ok, so maybe not. Some detail shots below...

Reaction to the piece has been good so far – two nice ladies have voiced their support for my “form before function” philosophy and one drunken older gentleman declared me a, “cute boy.” All I’ve ever wanted! Special thanks to photographer Nick Strocchia for lending me this shot to blog and also for making me look pretty.