Every year, I often have grand sewing plans to coincide with various holidays. Always starting with good intentions, I keep a notebook to record my idea of the perfect skirt for Easter, to launch into Spring, or to commemorate Halloween. But, because of the craziness of life, it rarely ever happens that way. True to form, my annual Christmas skirt is about a month behind schedule. Well, you know what they say about making plans…
Some days (or years, really) can feel a bit like a house of cards. You know what I mean – where you are managing to keep everything together, stacking each day precariously on top of the next. But you know that one wrong move – one exhale in the wrong direction – and it will bring everything a tumbling down.
The start of a new year is normally accompanied by a feeling of crisp anticipation. It always reminded me of the sense that I’ve come away from the ATM, where the machine has just spit out newly minted bills. And you get to believe for a minute like anything is possible, if you just spend those dollars on the right thing. This year is a bit different than most – in that I’m really struggling to find that feeling.
As we’re ticking down the minutes to the end of the year, I always start to feel a lot of pressure to think big thoughts. To close the year on something profound and find some meaning in the chaos. But here’s all I’ve got people: 2021, I am DONE with you.
I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of seeing a piece that is just so perfect in its simplicity. One that stands tall and proud without all of the bells and whistles of print and sparkle. Now, as someone who is all about the extra, it takes a garment that is truly exquisite for all that it’s not to catch my eye. But such was the case when I spotted the most spectacular vintage Lanvin skirt….
I’ve always had a thing for clothing that finds its way to nature. Floral border prints, necklaces of leaves snaking around my neck, and you are all by now pretty aware of my fruit-themed sartorial obsession. I wonder if it’s a way to help me feel more grounded. Where, despite the pavement I click my heels down or the car I zip to the lab in, I am always a little bit connected to nature.
When I was a kid, we had this massive purple lilac bush in the backyard. I can vaguely remember stepping off the back porch in late Spring and being hit with that immediate, sweet scent, a wall of purple calling me forward. There are a lot of memories of my childhood that linger. But few are as powerful as olfactory memories – one whiff of lilac and I can literally feel the start of summer.
I will very likely be dating myself here, but something I have always been grateful for is being one of the last generations to grow up analog. Truly, the internet wasn’t really a thing in my teen years. Home computers had only just started to become normal, cordless phones were the newfangled modern technology (call waiting? What?!!), and to get the movie times you had to dial a number and drum your fingers on the countertop while a recorded voice droned on through your options.
I know we all have those photos saved to our Pinterest boards – the elusive collector’s items, the seemingly unattainable vintage. More often than not, I’ll have a photo saved of a vintage piece, and then will inevitably see it appear a few weeks later on some of my fellow vintage huntresses. And all I can do is hope that one day it will be released back into the wild…
I feel like it was only about two days ago I was bemoaning the start of the new semester. Like most of my colleagues (and profs in solidarity worldwide), I felt burnt out before it even began. And suddenly I blinked and found myself on the threshold to October. I guess if there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that time chuggs steadily and relentlessly forward to the next station, whether we like it or not.