Swatch Book, 12.29.17
Twenty seventeen sucked. A lot of good things happened for a lot of people, myself included, but I don't know many folks who are leaving this year better — spiritually, mentally, whatever — than they entered it. I (and many others, I'm sure) spent a lot of the last twelve months getting intimate with the arcane systems of norms that govern our lives, figuring out how they worked while simultaneously watching them get subverted and degraded, and it left me feeling very burnt out and depleted. (It's been a bad year for naivety.) If good things happened for you, congratulations. If they didn't, or not enough of them did, then I hope you spend this weekend recharging and steeling yourself to struggle for better in the new year.
Some writing about clothes I did this year.
James Forman's Overalls - No Man Walks Alone
The uniform was also a deliberate de-centering of the white gaze. As Robert Parris Moses, one of Forman’s colleagues in the organization, once explained: “This movement is pointed in a different direction—not toward the downtown white but toward the rural negro, not toward acceptance by the white community but toward the organization of political and other kinds of expression in the Negro community.” Whereas more mainstream civil rights groups wore suits and skirts in part to make the rest of America feel bad watching them get arrested and abused on television, the overalls were field clothes for field work, with SNCC activists doing much of their outreach in actual fields. (Plus, as Tanisha Ford lays out in her examination of the female SNCC aesthetic, they were gender neutral, enabling women to get their hands dirty with as much convenience as men.)
White Tee - If You Pleats
About a year ago, Jeronimo Yanez pulled Castile over one last time. Castile, dressed in a white tee, cautioned Yanez that he had a gun as he reached for his license, and seconds later he was full of bullets. His girlfriend and passenger, Diamond Reynolds, counted four of them as she streamed the encounter, but Yanez’s dash camera would later say seven.
Sometimes, folks wear tall white tees when they get baptized. Always, baptism washes away sin like the blood of Jesus, allows the baptized to look at themselves as clean and free. Often, America washes away its sin in black blood. In her video, Reynolds narrates Castile’s death: “He’s covered,” she says. He bleeds out and we, too, are covered.
Supreme Copies - The New Yorker
Supreme Copies once riffed on a Supreme tee that appeared to reference the Crown Fried Chicken logo, writing that the tees were “paying homage to New York, by parodying the logo for what I can only assume is good chicken.” It’s the educated guesses that most rile up Procell. He brought up another meat-based post, this one concerning a tee featuring the Boar’s Head logo and the words “Only the strong.” Supreme Copies wrote it up thus: “From fried chicken to baked goods, it’s clear Supreme enjoys the occasional food reference. As to why they select the brands they do—and whether or not they are based on vintage tees of the brands—is beyond me.”
But, for Procell, that’s not enough. He helped design the shirt and said that the words were a callback to “Lord of the Flies.” The head was a nod to the pig’s head that the book’s newly feral boys mount on a stick, and the text ties that moment to the idea that Supreme’s core demographic—well-dressed New York skate rats—had to grow up fast in order to play in city streets. “It’s Ph.D.-level shit,” Procell said. “It’s beyond the bar.”
Gucci Down - If You Pleats
On his first date with Keyshia Ka'oir: "Keyshia and I went to dinner at the InterContinental Hotel in Buckhead. We were still wearing our all-white matching outfits from the '911 Emergency' shoot. We ordered the same thing, salmon with mashed potatoes. I took her hand as we left the restaurant. The whole situation was out of character for me. I knew she was special."
Fun Shirt - Wyvern Lit
They disgusted Fun Shirt, happy with lesser lives. He knew they were worse off, just knew, even when he saw them in the street or at the Alumni Club, that everyone who knew better knew they were cut from different cloths, knew that his was superior and theirs a mere temporary, token mistake. But his supposed lessers could see it didn’t matter because they could see so from afar and when they were close they could see even more clearly and when they got close he could see that they could see and, even if it weren’t true, he lied to himself over and over and over until it became his quiet truth.
Restorative Instagram Meditation of the Year (via @guyfromcentralpark)
Ben Levy from The Armoury has this thing he does every Friday where he posts a selfie accompanied by a few encouraging words. He used to do it with a cigarette, but I think he quit smoking, so now he does it with a smile. These posts were really helpful to me.
