A Latte Chai (Celebrating the Japanese Quartet's Style)

Sometimes a beautiful image and the promise of a pun is enough. Images are by Shina Peng for the NYT from Jeremy Gordon's article about the Japanese quartet Chai.  

When punning, please pronounce "latte" as "latta" (Dickinson slant rhyme?).

Reprise: My Story on Stella McCartney’s Olympic Designs

 I can’t believe it’s been eleven years since I wrote this story for what remains my favorite textile/style and magazine, Selvedge.

Emma Corrin's "Quirky Blue Jumper": A Bloomsbury Mystery No More (Designed by Feben)

I just love clothing that evokes Charleston, the country--handpainted and embellished--home of Bloomsbury notable Vanessa Bell (and Duncan Grant). 

Sometimes the clothing makes a deliberate reference, which I find to be less compelling than those serendipitous connections. 

I like my clothing to be as an Emily Dickinson poem: "Tell all the truth but tell it slant––." And adding a bit of mystery only steepens the slant.

To wit: I have been captivated by this trompe l'oeil sweater that Emma Corrin wore to the premiere of their play Anna X. The same details (indeed, the same story) have been run in multiple sources, describing it only as a "quirky blue jumper." 

If anyone knows the designer, I'd welcome that information. (I was thinking maybe Miu Miu since Corrin is their new "face" but haven't found confirmation.)

*Update: Thanks to Sue, who let me know that Feben is the designer! Here is the image from her Instagram:

And here is a link to an interview.

Ocean View: Clothes by Sea

I grew up on the beaches of PEI, as gentle readers may know, and the sand/surf combination is what I consider home, wherever it may be. 

This summer I'm finding it via Sea, a new-to-me label that evokes coral reefs, 

the inky beauty of an octopus, 

and the cheerful stripes of a beach blanket or beach hut. 

Waulk this Way: The Pungent Charm of Harris Tweeds

I grew up with a grandfather who wore Harris Tweed jackets every day. He had deep Scottish roots: his family moved from the Highlands to Cardigan, PEI, where they settled.

Harris Tweeds were a part of our home; I didn't think they were anything remarkable until I stepped out as a twentysomething and learned that they were made by hand, in the Outer Hebrides. 

And as recently as last month I learned that Harris Tweeds undergo a process called "waulking" or "fulling." The setup reminds me of a quilting bee: a group of women sit around a table (or a quilting frame), working together on the same textile. But instead of adding quilting stitches to layers, "waulkers" rhythmically beat the tweed cloth against the table to cleanse it and, I've read, to slightly felt/strengthen it. 

And part of the process is to soak the tweed in urine, which would help set the dye of the yarn (and soften it). A video is here:

The blog Glamourdaze.com (from which this video comes) is one useful source; "waulking" has also been included in the show Highlander, a video of which is here:

My grandfather used to take daily walks in his Harris Tweed jackets. I wonder whether he knew that the fabric had been on a "waulk" of its own.

Wally Funk and the Flying Bunch

 

Actually just Wally Funk. 

This 82-year-old astronaut, should she wish to wear it, would look smashing in Vivienne Westwood's green Harris Tweed suit from her Time Machine collection.

The suit can be seen at the National Museum of Scotland, from where these images are found. 

Of Mare and Mères: Notes on Mothers in Mare of Easttown

SPOILERS THROUGHOUT For a lover of puns, Mare of Easttown provides: say the title out loud and the title character becomes the "mayor"—which is a stretch, but if we consider the French pronunciation (mère = mother), it all makes sense: Mare is Easttown's unofficial mother: she grudgingly but dutifully goes to their homes in response to issues minor and major (remember in Episode One she tells a community member that she's a detective and shouldn't call her for such small things); she is a maternal figure to her grandson; however, she cannot mother her own children due to feelings of guilt: her son committed suicide and her daughter found his body in response to Mare asking her to check up on him. 

Indeed, we could add an "s" to the title (Mares [Mères] of Easttown), for this is a story of mothers and both the potential and limits of their love for their children. Erin carefully squirrels away money—even considering selling her body—to afford ear tubes for her son; Carrie, whose story is bookended by leaving and reentering treatment, wants the legal right to parent her son; Dawn considers stealing from her employer to pay ransom for her kidnapped daughter (but she won't break her best friend's heart by identifying her brother as the hoax-kidnapper); Helen, a crusty soul who fought her way through her marriage, banters and battles with Mare; Lor agrees to mother the child her husband fathered during an affair, and Lor and Mare come to the worst types of knowledge for a mother: that one's son has killed; that the other's son has killed himself.

I used to watch shows like Law and Order in graduate school, but once I had children, I stopped: as a mother I couldn't bear seeing children suffer as "entertainment." I feel the same way about using kidnapped or killed women as plot devices; even though I smirked along with SNL's "murdur durdur" skit, I remembered that a (fictional) young woman had been killed for this spoof to exist. Still, the show drew me into theorizing: Mare's daughter? Guy Pearce (who does not seem to have a character name, according to Twitter)?  Mare herself in a blackout night-mare-ish turn of events? 

        Maybe this is a humblebrag, but I did identify Ryan as the killer (didn't see Mr. Carroll's gun coming at all; thought it was Mare's father's), and while that ID was OK theoretically, seeing Ryan run home and tell his mother that Mare knew was one of the most terrible moments I've even seen on screen because it was so real, so not played for drama. And Mare's face when she realizes that Ryan killed Erin, when the knowledge comes into her ken, to borrow from Henry James, is another terrible moment because she knows that she has not solved a crime; she has broken a mother, her best friend Lor.

The penultimate scene, with Mare holding Lor in a twisted pietà tableau—Mare is no Virgin Mary; Lor is no Christ figure, though she did accuse Mare (a Judas figure?) of betraying her—shows motherhood at its perhaps most complex: Mare cannot release herself from guilt over her son's suicide; she can comfort Lor, whose son she has had arrested for killing the mother of the baby Lor has agreed to mother. That scene, even more than the final one, sticks with me.