Swatch Book, 1.19.18
Some writing about clothes I liked this week.
Only Mei Guo Ren - Wendy Xu
Here's a short story about a Mormon visitation (the titular mei guo ren, or "white American people"):
She gave the missionaries some house slippers to wear, both pairs embroidered with delicate orange chrysanthemums, ending their initial indecision about shoes. We all gathered in the living room. My father was pouring tea, making an elaborate production of serving it to the visitors, and this gave me the impression, yet again, that there was something important about the missionaries I didn’t understand. My father was not in the habit of trying to impress anyone unless they were a white supervisor at work or a family friend whose kid had already been accepted to law or medical school. With white supervisors, he explained that it was just a necessity: “Do whatever they say in the office, but they can’t stop you from making fun of them when you get home!” With family friends, there was always the understanding that I would eventually attend the most prestigious of institutions in the most prestigious of fields. My father knew it was only a matter of time until he was the one with much to brag about.
The story is largely about the narrator's Chinese family and its struggles to fit into its suburban environs—the word "once" in "Once, in the Asian Flavors aisle of Wegmans, my mother saw a Chinese woman with her teenage son picking out bok choy" is doing a lot of work—but the LDS visitors and their discomfort with their footwear situation offer a nice reflection of that anxiety. "The two young men stood in the doorway for a long time and could not decide if they should take off their shoes," Xu writes. But likewise for the narrator's mother, "occasional sightings of Chinese people, without opportunity to attempt an introduction, had begun to taunt her."
Cartier Kings - Zach Goldbaum
*Big Sean voice*:
There’s no sign that Cartier has any interest in associating with Detroit. This is in part a business decision. Two short-lived Cartier boutiques came and went in the region — one in the Renaissance Center and another in Somerset.
Unlike Paris and New York, Detroit doesn’t see the volume of wealthy clientele necessary to maintain an official Cartier store. Residents may line up for entry-level luxury items like sunglasses, but stop short of purchasing $120,000 watches and 5-carat diamond rings.
The only hint of recognition from the brand came with the release of a special-edition pair of Woods with blue and orange stems, the exact same colors as the Detroit Tigers uniform. It could have been a coincidence, but it’s also possible Cartier is happy to quietly profit from its sizable Detroit customer base without ever forging a real relationship with those patrons. (Cartier did not respond to repeated requests for interviews.)
At the bottom of this story is the note "A version of this story was previously published on GQ's website." One wonders why it's at Racked now. If ("if") there was advertiser pushback, it's hard to understand why the association is so scary for a brand. Gucci is out here putting graffiti artists on staff and partnering with a bootlegger who stashed gun pockets into his coats, and it's on top of the world! It would seem that, now more than ever, the incentive for flexing criminal connections outweighs whatever penalty there is.
Dress-Coding - Arabelle Sicardi
Here's a meditation on two things that are way more alike than they're given credit for:
So much about programming seems to be about “safety” and control rather than connection now. And one of the failings of code is that too easily you can escape into the belief that you're in control if you know the language of the system. You can delude yourself into thinking you can run ahead of it. But people continuously build systems without realizing all the ethical implications of what can be done with them—they get away from you. In fashion, your body can’t be discounted. You cannot escape the realities of your body, the limitations, the shape of it, the risks it takes and how it reacts to the clothes you put on. Code has no body, can be used by anyone with language of it, but fashion cannot. It will rip, or sag, and you will see the harm even if it is repaired carefully. Clothing is a narrator with limited resilience. In fashion your failings are physical, something I find oddly comforting.
There are companies out there pretending that the technology in a full body scan is enough to get you a near-bespoke suit, but that's ridiculous. The thing that makes bespoke suits so good (and so expensive) is that they're incredibly labor-intensive. The tailor rushes head-first into the body, the "limitations, the shape of it." It's not just the way the body is shaped, but how it bends (or doesn't), how it moves (or doesn't), "how a sleeve entered the jacket’s shoulder and this made the customer look longer-armed and more elegant."
‘These are our true friends’: Trump fans flock to a Mar-a-Lago celebration - David A. Fahrenthold
Trumpito threw a party:
It started with cocktails and appetizers around the pool, while a band dressed in American-flag outfits played and servers passed grilled-cheese bites. Then the crowd moved into the club’s two big ballrooms — one to see it live, another to watch the events on a video feed.
On the way, they passed multiple life-size cutouts of Trump himself, placed to accommodate the demand for selfies. But the night was windy and unkind to the Trumps: They kept blowing over. “Man down!” one guest shouted when a cardboard president fell over. A passer-by took the cutout’s baseball hat. Another guest propped him up again, and two posing women pretended to grope the president.
There isn't an adjective venomous enough to convey how mind-numbingly degrading Donald Trump's presidency has been, not to mention the collective moral abdication all the people who, like the evening's band, wrapped themselves and their craven priorities in the flag in order to justify a payday, no matter its toll. Thinking on the attending "Palm Beach women in furs" on a Florida night where the temperature didn't fall far below 50 °F, only one comes to my weary mind: unnecessary.
Clearly 'The Wopsters' Needs To Be A Saturday Morning Cartoon So Cut The Check Nickelodeon of the Week (via @BasedJane)
