Chaotic Neutral, Why That Margiela Show Made Me Weepy, Rick Owens: Local Boy Makes Good
Let Me Dream!, That Schiaparelli Baby & More on Quantum Physics Later
So many thoughts swirling around in this little head lately but haven’t had more than 30 seconds at a time to process let alone crystallize them into a newsletter. I’ve been terrible at following my number one IN for 2024 - making myself unavailable. I finally stole a few hours away from helping others to get some thoughts down in words and curate some links to shop. And by curate, I mean I pulled some new arrivals, mostly from SSENSE, because that seems to be one of the few online retailers stocking adventurous and risky offerings these days. And I’m in the mood to dream again.
Although I’m currently on a tropical island chilling in ribbed tanks and cargo pants day after day, the force field blocking my imagination, my sense of whimsy, and the appreciation I once had for fashion has been penetrated and blasted open by a couple of recent couture shows. I am once again letting my imagination run wild and daydream about wearing some things that are not only delulu, but deliberately silly or a little absurd or unnecessarily extravagant or stupidly expensive or downright ugly or just plain cray cray again. Good pieces for an outfit formula I call “One Weird Thing” which is easy enough to pull off without being a total slouch. You can just wear all good basics and one weird thing - like a catchy hook in a smooth tune. I suppose these can still identify as “understated” since they’re in the neutrals fam. (This one is also an ode to the character type I always get in those alignment chart quizzes - Chaotic Neutral.) I have no intention of buying any of these things. I’d love to see you wearing them though. I’m happy to simply indulge in a little fantasy. Fantasy is free.
Speaking of fantasy - the Maison Margiela Artisanal Couture Collection - it made me weep! I don’t usually follow couture or the big designer labels - it’s usually just irks me as empty spectacle and gives me ‘eat the rich’ ideations. How I could find this particular show - so over the top and poetic down to every detail - to be the most relatable and potently human runway presentation I’ve ever seen surprised me. But it makes sense. What occupies much of my thoughts these days is less fashion and more AI, algorithmic tyranny, the fate of humanity, a little bit of quantum physics, and wondering about how internal me will adapt this aging vessel I am housed in. Living in the era of breakthroughs in biohacking, the discovery of an immortality gene, sin-absolving deal with the devil pharmaceuticals like Ozempic, and talk of uploading consciousness to a digital world has me wondering what choices I will make when the rubber meets the road. What anti-againg, life extending advancements will I resist?
Seeing those broken dolls hobble down the runway like futuristic, immortal, cyborg, trans humans as if their sleepless half robot instincts keep on trucking while the organic bodies are slowly breaking down but can’t die, yet are still compelled to look beautiful, young, fabulous, and feel desirable and sexual. The matted hair, the masochistic corsets, the layers and layers of dilapidated nylon veils, stockings and gloves hiding imperfect flesh, the shiny silicone mask-like faces in porcelain doll make up mimicking digital filters to look forever young in real life, to me read like a half living Hell of inescapable torture, monstrous urges, a trap of decay. Is this what we are? What we’ve become? Will become? What will be left that is still human? Although the models shiver in the wind and look so pained and pull at my heartstrings, at the same they time come across as NPCs. Will we experience real suffering and joy or be programmed with synthetic emotions? What is to be believed in a posthuman, post truth world? These probably aren’t even my own thoughts … just my own mind programmed by too many podcasts, books and think pieces on the subject.
The fact that at some point in watching the runway show on Youtube (the magnificence doesn’t fully come across in photos) I started to think it was so masterful that I wondered if it was designed by AI and had to catch myself. Can I no longer believe that humans can conceive of something so incredible? Have I forgotten that humans are capable of beauty and greatness?
Silly me could make a meme of a look saying, “Me, a super-centenarian immortal transhuman cyborg on my way to a kink scene at Dom Daddy’s house sometime in the 22nd century,” but behind the humor is absolute terror at what will become of my last sunbeams of physical beauty, my sexual desires and need for kink as my own body changes with age? How ungraceful can it get?
If you want to use a scare tactic to make me not do something, don’t tell me it will kill me. Tell me it will make me immortal. I recently listened to a podcast from a few years ago called Dying for Sex, partly narrated by a woman who went whole hog into a ho phase after being diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. I was there for the funny and salacious stories but after a few episodes would end up bawling in the fetal position on the bathroom floor while listening. Not only because she (spoiler alert) dies but because the way she views her own dying is the deepest and most expansive outlook on life and death I have ever heard. And it made me not dread death. It made me think dying is the last truly human thing we can possibly do. I don’t want to be uploaded to metaverse heaven no matter hot and fuckable my avatar looks.
Whew, I guess I had a lot of extra time to let my thoughts wander lately, especially on my drive to and from my hometown of Porterville to see my mom. That same weekend in Paris, Rick Owens, who is also from Porterville, showed his couture collection, which he called Porterville. I kind of hoped he was just keeping it real, being humble, as if he wanted to, you know, “throw up where he’s from / let ‘em know he’s still hood”. But he described it (in the way I have described it since coming of age and the reason I left and never went back) as a place of intolerance. The world created by high end fashion houses in Paris isn’t any less intolerant. But I will say this was the first time I visited and saw it through more mature and loving eyes. I could appreciate the location cradled in the valley below the Sequoias and the Sierra Nevada mountains, which were blanketed in snow, golden hours and sunsets to rival Southern California, the purity that comes with being sheltered and ‘unsophisticated’, and how the depressed economic situation has stifled new development, preserving much of the charming old homes, storefronts and has allowed a surprising amount of mom & pop businesses to thrive. Sure a lot of people dress like they’re about to storm the capital but I didn’t actually talk to anyone to confirm and consciously made an effort to not fall into the city slicker trap of looking down my nose at people different from me or making assumptions about them. That would be an intolerant, judgmental bitch ass move. I was delighted to see a thriving LGBTQ+ scene at a bar I visited where butch lesbians and cowboys shared the dance floor and sometimes a two-step, the jukebox played Garth brooks and Sexyy Red, and drinks were served by a young John Waters lookalike. A lot has changed in that regard. But the fact I intuitively don’t want to go around naming which bar it was, tells me this place is sadly, as Rick and I know, still a place of intolerance.
Lastly, I can’t stop thinking about that Schiaparelli baby. It isn’t enough for it to be the wallpaper on my iPhone. I need one on a keychain.
You know what would mean the world to me? If you became a paid subscriber. Even if half of you paid $1 a month for my musings I would feel very encouraged and a lot less delulu.