Go Get Your Jacket

Ave Sol Invictus!

Phew.

I thought it would never come.

Of course, what's peculiar about the way we've divided up our year is that on this, the day the winter gloom, both physical and emotional, ceases its advance, we celebrate, not spring but... winter. Dude, we've seen you. Go away now. 

How much do I hate winter? Enough so that the first sight of bright spring colors at Gymboree or Baby Gap is enough to cheer me, even if all it really means is that we've spent ourselves out on fleece and hat'n'scarf sets by now and must be tempted with novelty to keep us buying. I don't care! It's green and pink and yellow, it's bright, nothing looks itchy or has intarsia snowflakes or fairisle or rows of little reindeer. 

  

  

 
 Happy solstice!
 

 
 
 
 

Awesome

Mouthman hoodies. Awesome.

 

Awesome.

 

AweSOME!

 

Surely you need to get one for your little carnivore. (I'm imagining a line of prey shirts and I guess they'd look normal and then when the child crossed his arms the springbok or whatever would go all wide-eyed with panic, but I dunno, it's just not as cool.) I want the raptor.

Stellaaaaaaaaa!

Four years ago this winter, both pregnant with our now-preschoolers, Marya and I sat at a friend's wedding admiring the bride (she was fairytale beautiful), the surroundings, the food, and a teensy exquisite Russian table-mate, all bird-bones and eyelashes, in a midnight-blue dress. We liked our neighbors fine but I couldn't wait for them to get up to dance so I could wave my arm in the air and go "Ooh, ooh, I know this one! I know this one!" about the dress. It was Stella McCartney for H&M, a fragile scrap of lapis silk with platinum ribbons, that made the wearer look like a slightly louche ballerina dining late (in Paris) with the Crown Prince. And who wouldn't want to look like that, at least once in a while?

 I wanted that dress. It had no room in it for bosoms, let alone extra people, so that was not going to happen, but I did rush down to H&M on my return hoping to see the rest of the collection, which had been entirely consumed except for a tarnished-silver chain-mail evening bag I am still kicking myself for not buying.

There's no question that Stella McCartney can make beautiful clothes, although she has outfitted too many starlets in shiny studded jumpsuits to get a 100% Andrea approval rating. It's entirely possible that she could have gotten this famous without the name, unlike, say, her mother, the world's most adequate keyboard player. None of this entirely explains, though, why she should have her name on a line of fairly drab, fairly expensive kid's clothes at The Gap. I'm trying to figure out if these will sell, and admitting that I really have no idea. Would you buy:

 

$38.00 "bloomer shorts," presumably meant to be worn over thick tights with boots or clunky mary janes, the way Chloë Sevigny or the girl who made your latte would?

(Answer: no.)

 How about this half-a-trench, half-a-pea-coat?

(Answer: If I needed it, very possibly. It's way stylish.)

This $24.00 tee-shirt?

 

(Answer, sure, off the 1/2 price rack next month.)

These jeans?

 

(Answer: Perhaps, but only for, say, a willowy and very fashion-conscious 9-year-old. They would look ridiculous on a tot. They look meant more for Stella's usual young-Hollywood or young-Hollywood-wannabe clientele, and not for anyone who will be trying to climb a jungle-gym in them.)

And finally, this, the signature piece which appears in every ad and on every splash-page but, oddly, does not seem to be availible for purchase on the Gap site:

(Answer: not on your life. It is both too on-trend (I think Padma was wearing this jacket last week on Top Chef) and too specifically Stella McCartney for Gap. I would definitely get it, though, if I wanted my kid to look half fashion victim, half organ grinder's monkey.

And if that last look is your heart's desire, you can always just get one of these from any costume shop for $14.99. And now if you see Chloë Sevigny out dressed as an organ grinder's monkey, you'll know where she got the hat. 

Too cool for art school

I've received a couple of announcements lately for Kids Ink clothes on sale and I just don't know, let's take a look.

The faux Chanel is kind of witty, if terrifyingly WASPy:

But most of it looks like this, with a (sixty dollar) high/low East Village graffiti/tattoo art thing sort of vibe:

Or this: or this: 

All of which I'm filing under "good design/trying too hard." How many toddlers of your aquaintance are big Basquiat fans, or really miss The Sex Pistols? These go way beyond putting your kid in a CBGB onesie so people know you know what CBGB was. These are downright pretentious. And why stop at Warhol? Wouldn't Jeff Koons make a good t-shirt? Why not Damien Hirst? Kids love sharks.

I do love this one:

 

but I just don't think I can send these guys my money. My kids are still too young to make me feel uncool by comparison. I'd like to keep it that way until they're at least, I dunno. four?

Baa baa black sheep

I've had the somewhat revolting term "mutton dressed as lamb" stuck in my head for days like a bad but catchy melody. "Afternoon Delight," say, or "Tie A Yellow Ribbon." Those earworms are often idiopathic, though, while I know exactly why I've been thinking ovine thoughts: I got bored with the edge--free, not to say matronly style I'd defaulted to after too many bodily changes, and started looking longingly at engineer boots and big black buckle-y coats and other items I wore regularly in my, if not entirely wayward, certainly way waywarder than I am now youth. As I've started to add back in the occasional "Hey I was too a punk rocker" item, I've wondered if you're allowed to wear them over forty (hell yes) and whether people might judge me for it (also hell yes) and also whether anyone might ever look at me in my combat boots and think "mutton dressed as lamb."  One does hope not. And screw them, obviously. And yet at the same time one still hopes not. 

Look, here's one now, Style Spy proclaiming Doc Martens (how much do I want a pair of the cherry patent ones?) off-limits to anyone over-- get this-- 20.

I've managed a useful trick of mine-- fretting without actually caring-- about the whole issue until this last week, when I indulged a lifelong taste for funky legwear by buying a pair of loverly over-the-knee sockings, or stocks, Comme ça. They stretch way up, past the knees, and well into the zones not usually discussed here unless we are talking about diapering products. And they stay there, until they don't. I remembered some gartery clip-type things from the old days, and dug them out, and indeed they do work but they are old. Almost to the point of giving up old. And so I searched. 

Sock Dreams, the vaguely fetishy and altogether delightful sock fanciers shop I'd ordered from carries them but they are out of all colors except baby bllue, which, no. Men's shirt garters are hilarious (they attach your shirt to your socks) and available from haberdashers, but I don't need my shirt attached to my socks. I need my socks attached to my underwears. And so (and now you know why this post is here and not on socklover.com) I ordered mitten clips.  Little kids' mitten clips, for ataching their darling mittens to their snowsuits. The cutest, most innocent thing in the world, to hold up my sexxxxy soxxxx. I feel dirty. No, I really do. This is mutton dressed as lamb fetus. It's unseemly. And I dearly hope it will work. 

Outsmarted by Zappos

I knew she was fated to outstrip me, and soon, as a style-hound and shopper, the day I told her I'd ordered the wrong leggings and should really have bought the green ones, see, here in this picture, honey, the ones that go with your new dress? Out shot her arm, elbow bent, first two fingers incurled in that imperious Carmela Soprano "come hither" command. "Let me see the catalogue, mom." She was two. 

Of course we don't really shop that much. We get a ton of stuff as hand-me-downs and there's a ton of stuff nobody really needs, and at least another ton of stuff I hate, so that makes three tons of stuff we don't shop for. And most of the things I do buy them I get on sale or via late-night semi-insomniac eBay binges. I've been  particularly unwilling to buy good kids' shoes at full price (Target sneakers and the execrable but beloved Crocs don't count) because of the obvious instant-obsolescence issue.. The cutest kid shoes go for  close to what I'll spend for my own, and need I mention  my feet don't grow? Even carrying twins, they didn't grow. 

And then the in/famous Zappos business model, the one that appears so revolutionary and brilliant even though all they really did was decide to be nice to their customers,did me in. There was a good price and, of course, free shipping on these Umis, a brand I normally sigh over a bit and then move on to the less glamorous, less exorbitant domestic brands. So what if they didn't have them a sensible half-size up? Free shipping! Free returns! Why not order her current  size and see if they work, what the heck, free shipping/free returns.

Then I thought better of committing to boots, no matter how attractively Italian, which might so soon abandon my daughter in favor of a younger child with smaller feet, the cads. I ordered another style, a little larger  (what the heck, free shipping/free returns) and figured I'd send the smaller ones back if it seemed like they'd be too soon outgrown. But who was I kidding? (Not Zappos.) The new boots are sitting here. all suavely suede and patent, assuring me in a velvety voice (they sound like Fabio from Top Chef), that they will fit in a mere six months so why not let them stay? 

Zappos and Lilah are in cahoots/ making me buy her Italian boots. 

The Wrong Trousers

This is a pair of "Boyfriend" jeans from The Gap. They're cute, and the slouchy shape would certainly be more flattering than the page-adjacent "skinny" jeans (featuring gratuitous crotch-whiskering), especially on someone with a bit of a belly. Like, say, a two-year-old. These are toddler pants.

I'm wondering if the Gapfolk really thought this one through. As I understand it, the "boyfriend" garment is supposed to evoke a specific sort of scenario. The waif-like ingenue sleeps over at the boyfriend's bachelor pad, all very spontaneously, and in the morning she shrugs into his pants/blazer/sweater/over-sized white shirt with tails that flap charmingly about her slender thighs. They go to brunch. She looks all insouciant and gamine and all that French stuff. Adorable! But surely the "sleeping over" part is key? Why does a two-year-old need boyfriend pants? Does this not seemat least  borderline icky?

Next up: the "Walk of Shame" holiday line at Gymboree: sparkly, but wrinkled. The "last night's party dress" look, come to think of it, pairs perfectly with a boyfriend jacket. It's a classic. 

Ooh-la-la! Oh well!

It's Baby Gap's new "Deauville" (honh honh honh)  collection:

Would I wear it? I surely would. I more or less already do, although I don't have that heavy cotton knit biker jacket and I need it  delivered to my door before the next chilly day, which could be tomorrow. Note that this is Baby Gap, though, the toddler section, specifically. Would your toddler wear it?

Toddler girl, I mean. The one in the princess dress over pink-and-lilac striped leggings, with the mismatched socks and the tiara.

I didn't think so. 

I suck, you suck

Oh, Nina and Tom, as the Fug Girls would say, I just don't know.

Is this an attempt to reclaim suckiness, on the model of "queer," "cripple," and "fat?" Because I just don't think that's going to work. Suckiness is not a civil rights issue.

 Some people really just do suck beyond redemption, and the class of suckers has not suffered discrimination except, I suppose, that which they have brought upon themselves because they suck. There will be no sucky people rights movement, no International I Suck Day, no Gay, Lesbian. Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, and People Who Suck Parade. 

If, on the other hand, you just forgot what the phrase "I suck" means to most people, well, you... I mean, I can't help you. 

Yes capes!

Now ,imagine you're me. Or not. You have the skills, the experience, most of the tools, some of the materials, and, if you don't let yourself get too distracted by passing shiny things, the time to make something like this. But will you? Will I? If not, "Oh, I could make those myself!" isn't really as sensible a protest as it initially sounds, is it?  I mean, it doesn't actually result in anyone getting a cape. 

I could make these. I might. So might you. Since we probably won't, though, we could do worse than to support a small,adorable, local (to me) business. They are from Baby Leo Designs, who also make almost ridiculously exquisite baby blankets, and are really beautifully made. They are, at fifty bucks,  neither cheap nor really prohibititive, provided you're solvent and your kid really wants a cape.

And provided that you yourself do not object to capes, of course. 

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