Paris in the Heat

A trip to Paris for a conference landed me in one of the hottest summers on record. The temperature climbed to 100ºF and remained there for a week or so. I was interested in fashion strategies, or what Parisians wear when it's that bloody hot.

 Women of the young kind are in shorts, older women are in dresses, or loose fitting pants.

                                                  Then you have the ones who wear both.

I was fascinated by this woman's head gear...

A few other stand outs that I surreptitiously photographed:

Inside the Bastille Opera House

Outside the Bastille Opera House

 Inside the Pompidou Center, I was mesmerized by videos of dancers whose rhythmic movements influenced the architect, Le Corbusier. The visitor's outfits were also mesmerizing.

Difficult to see, the woman in red and white dress with striped green and white bag. I had to check my bike helmet, but that's another story. Next time I go to the museum, I'll be sure to bring a cool looking tote bag.

Early spring in southern New Hampshire

Yesterday morning I woke up feeling exhausted and drained, and the sun was shining, and the forecast promised to be amazing, sunny, warmer than it's been, so I told my good friend to take me to the beach. We headed to Rye Beach which has an amazing diversity of beach houses, really lovely smallish cottages, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

The day was actually organized around a 4 PM screening of the new documentary by Frederic Tsheng,  "Dior and I," playing in, of all places, Concord, the state's capital.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Back in Rye Beach. It is impressive that the tiny coast line of New Hampshire looks so good, so undevelopped for a coast line with beaches, and with lots of public land where one can walk for miles. The lovely little historic houses are a feast to the eye.

Next:  a stop in Portsmouth where the town was abuzz on a Saturday afternoon. We stopped in the used bookstore and cafe, Book and Bar, where I found a great selection of rock histories. Then a

quick stop at "The Second Time Around" before heading off to Concord...










...where I was introduced to an amazing cd shop called Pitchfork Records. I dropped off a bunch of old cds, and meanwhile picked up some Phish, Dave Matthews and Alyson Krauss and Robert Plant.

Time for the movie which I hope that lots of people will see simply for the exquisite beauty of the dresses and the craftsmanship that goes into them. Spend the money on a well made piece of clothing. You will wear it for a long long time. We need to anchor ourselves to things, that is the state of our modern being, so we might as well anchor ourselves in beautifully made things.

After the movie, we ate at the Food Coop right in town where the salad bar was really worth the detour, and stopped into a thrift store that was open late, where I picked up a pair of jean capris for 4 bucks.

So. A day in the life of Southern New Hampshire in early May.

Montpelier, Vermont

This past weekend I went to the Green Mountain Film Festival which shows old films, new films, documentaries and independent films from all over the world in a very casual, small town kind of way. You can get your tickets on line, because some films do sell out, and stroll around Vermont's capital in between showings, looking at old records...

in a store which also happens to double as a vintage clothing store...

or go to One More Time, an amazing consignment store, filled with leather jackets, 

shoes, dresses, skirts, and coats in a spacious location right on the main drag.

Montpelier attracts a sort of crowd that I call genuinely concerned white people. It was still cold in late March, but the locals don't mind. They put on their winter jackets, hats, scarves, gloves and Sorel boots which they don't seem to mind wearing into June if need be. They do the vintage crunchy look without the self awareness I find so wearing in a place like Williamsburg, Brooklyn where I had just been the previous weekend. In the local bookstore I stumbled upon a book that seemed to sum up the place quite well: 

                                  And these magnets await you at the checkout: 

Yay Montpelier! A state capital that fights off chain stores, known for its unique status of being the only state capital sans Macdonald's and Starbucks. We could be in 1970s America, but wearing the latest technical fleece because these people are hard core outdoorsy.

end of 2014

Here are a few photos from New York City in late December, and a black coat I acquired after "sleeping on it." I followed the woman with the shopping cart because I like women of a certain age who are not afraid to wear unusual outfits. The woman staring at the painting in the New Museum also had a lovely grey theme going. And the wooden reading tablets and benches are in the cafe at the MacNally Jackson bookstore on Prince Street. Oh, and the old sink? In a bar across the street from the Film Forum on West Houston Street.

On the movement of objects and the gift(s) from/to friends

This month I traveled to France and Belgium to see friends, relatives, buy used and new comic books…

rue du Midi, Brussels

Tintin, a lightly clad woman, and a Compostella hiker

 … and have a little vacation.

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While figuring out which coats to bring, one for the rain and one for the cold,  I encountered some old LL Bean coats that had hardly ever been worn. I threw them in the suitcase, my nice big reliable long trip hawler, with the thought of offering them to my first host, old time friend and LL Bean lover. He was so happy! Then at my friend Laure’s, she showed me a dress that had been given to her by a friend of hers. I tried it on and it was just too tight at the waist. But the following day I was seeing my friend Carla who loved it immediately. 

I did my usual visits to consignments shops and vintage stores, every European city has them at every street corner it seems -- making it difficult to resist the temptation of going in. A few new places I discovered were the flea market in Ghent where the set of six colorful chairs were for sale for 400 euros,

and yet another consignment shop on rue de Turennes in Paris, right next door to a one day "vide armoire," access to which required waiting on a line for which I had no patience.  

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All this stuff. And it's Christmas season, so there's even more stuff than usual to tempt the eye. What presents to buy and for whom. What to bring back. All these things everywhere. So many wonderful and beautiful things. But the book Stitched Up was on my mind. I encountered a long line of shoppers waiting to get into the newly opened Primarc on the rue Neuve in Brussels and thought, "arghhh." How can one fight back the awful labor practices of the fashion industry? 

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In Lyon, I bought a scarf from somebody sitting at a sewing machine in a little shop that purports to sell only locally made scarves. Lyon is known for its silk industry, and continues to produce, in small amounts, fabric for the upscale market. 

Buying hand made things from a reliable source might alleviate the guilt but won't solve the overall problem. 

I've been collecting wine corks and bottle caps for years, and this morning, I finally thought of something to do with them. Christmas ornaments! I had read an article in the New Yorker about a severely handicapped person who was wrapping objects with thread. And I had been struck in Brussels by a window decoration that had balls of thread hanging from a wooden treelike shape. 

I am obsessing with all the "stuff" I've been accumulating with the idea that someday I would transform it into some kind of artistic object, making a grand statement about consumption, luxury, high vs lowbrow. The process of wrapping yarn and ribbon around a core of useless hard shapes that had served their purpose was extremely therapeutic. 

There is no problem with loving objects. While hosting me for tea, my Parisian friend Mathilde laid out her new/old tea service that she had recently purchased in the Loire Valley.

We live in a material world. The trouble is that the material from which we are living has become cheap and disposable. 

Restaurant in Ghent with a wall made entirely of old doors

I'm glad that some (old) objects have found new owners. Like this sheepskin coat, which belonged to my friend Laure's Corsican grandfather and has found a new happy owner. 

Merry Christmas everyone!

late fall musing

Clara with old records,  and bags to drop off at the consignment shop. The bucket might symbolize my need to clean out my entire house...

It's Thanksgiving Eve and I am taking a vow of non consumption. It's about time! Last night, with daughter Clara visiting from NYC, I pulled out clothes I didn't want anymore - because I just didn't wear them, had no reason to wear them, and I could see her looking much better in them than I do.  In a frenzy of sorting through my closets, I was forced to face the reality of excess clothing. Too many of us  suffer from the uncontrollable urge to purchase, and we can't seem to put a stop to it. Retail therapy helps in the short term, but in the long term, whatever it is that is causing the uncontrollable desire to acquire has yet to be addressed.

Maybe the book I'm reading, which I picked up at a feminist book store on the Lower East Side, can help with this addiction. It's called Stitched Up and it's all about our love/hate relationship with the garment industry which has awful labor practices. Cheap labor is abundant all over the world, the garment industry will never run out. The more I read, the more disgusted I become with the rapaciousness of an industry that could pay its workers higher wages but won't because it might give one retailer or manufacturer a slightly -- ever so slightly -- less competitive edge against its competitors.

The book also points out the absence of minorities in fashion ads.   

I noticed right away, while perusing one of these street fashion web sites, that indeed ethnicity is almost completely absent. Plenty of gender bending, but not much ethnic diversity, in the people nor in the clothes. 

Meanwhile, my friend Laure who awaits me in Paris, is sending me announcements of "vide dressing" in December. We are going to be each other's partner in abstinence. 

Unless of course there is that perfect thing that goes with that other thing that I don't wear because it's too odd or I don't know what to wear it with. 

excerpt from "conversation" on FB, for the French speakers:

• Annabelle Cone ok: problème. Je viens de "vider" mes armoires en espérant que ma chère Clara se servirait (ce qu'elle a fait) et je me suis rendu compte que j'avais TROP DE VETEMENTS! Donc je prends aussi un engagement de non consommation de vêtements. On peut acheter des cadeaux par contre...

  29 mins · Like · 1
• 

  Laure Marcellesi On dira qu'on est des reporters pour Fringarde, on ne prendra que des photos. ou des cadeaux. (ou cette jupe vraiment trop parfaite, qui ira tellement bien avec ton pull gris...)

  11 mins · Unlike · 1
• 

  Laure Marcellesi Et si on craque, eh ben, on apportera tout ça à la prochaine saison à Révolution ou chez l'alligator rose. Faut bien faire marcher l'économie, non?