002. LIFE, BLOODY LIFE.
Welcome to ISSUE 002: LIFE, BLOODY LIFE 🪳
This month’s offerings feature stories about mustering the gumption required for the indignities of everyday life, from the “little brown marmorated stink bug toppled over on its back” in Abby Lacelle’s Sanctity, to Barnaby the gnome furiously pedaling away to supply human electricity in Ben Wignall’s Employee of the Month. Then there’s Mrs Singh and Mrs Singh living amongst the dead in Vasundhara Singh’s short fiction, or Mel in Kyra MacFarlane’s Maybe, hanging on to life. We have poetry from Nicole Mae and Ben Nardolilli, cream soda-flavored and dissociative. On the culture side, Briana Soler and Cait Barlowe report on recent TikTok trends, from Tube Girls to the Roman Empire to Laika the Space Dog. And finally, Kiran Gill shares an in-depth look at Fashion Week and trends you can expect to see in 2024.
Thank you to everyone who submitted work this month, and for your interest in paloma magazine. We’re having a blast so far and can’t wait to see where we go from here. So here’s to life, bloody life, and everything else it has in store.
| co-editor
Sanctity by Abby Lacelle [Creative Non-Fiction]
The Tube Girl Moment by Briana Soler [Non-Fiction; Culture]
Employee of the Month by Ben Wignall [Fiction]
Mrs Singh & Mrs Singh by Vasundhara Singh [Fiction]
Cream Soda Dissociation and Autumn, 2011 by Nicole Mae [Poetry]
Feathers, Fringe and Diaphanous Dresses: All of the Highlights from Spring Summer 2024 by Kiran Gill [Non-Fiction; Culture]
Preselling Out and Line Go Down by Ben Nardolilli [Poetry]
My Personal Roman Empire by Cait Barlowe [Non-Fiction; Culture]
Maybe by Kyra MacFarlane [Fiction]
Sanctity by Abby Lacelle |
“The sanctity of life,” she screamed, as we tried to brush past a crowded intersection to the subway beyond. “Life starts at inception. From that point on, the baby is entitled to human rights!”
There is nothing. There is something. And that almost indescribable something is due just as much as or more than everyone else.
As she grew irate and her voice rose, and as her body camera flickered its light, she clutched her bloodied placard for dear Iife; life, life, that funny thing we stand on street corners debating. That thing we all want a little more of. As she huffed and fumed, I spotted a little brown marmorated stink bug toppled over on its back, writhing to be back on its legs. Was it there before, or did it appear just as sudden as that? It kicked and fought its little limbs all about until it rolled over to its stomach and crawled on over to the boot of the red-faced, red-haired, red-blooded, red-plackarded woman’s boot. There, it moved up the soul and trim, and relentlessly climbed up the cuff of her jeans and up her pant leg. This little critter. Pest, parasite. So unwanted here, yet fighting for a little more life.
“What are you looking at?”
I point.
“Is there something on me?”
“A bug.”
She uses the pamphlet with dead babies to violently jettison the alien from her pantleg.
She flicks it off, where it lands on its back and gets to thrashing all over again.
Same as me, she feels this new tension. We watch the bug struggle. We look at one another. When we look back to the insect, it’s no longer there.
“It must’ve righted itself.”
The Tube Girl Moment by Briana Soler |
How an innocent viral video has made all the girls rise in confidence
If you are on TikTok you have probably seen the “Tube Girl” trend. It started with the TikTok creator, Sabrina Bahsoon, a 22-year-old Malaysian-born Londoner with a law degree from Durham University. The viral video is only a few seconds long, demonstrating impressive camera work with the 0.5 back lens as she films herself singing and dancing casually on the tube full of strangers. She wears AirPods and uses the tube’s fans to create a wind in the hair moment. The first time I saw the video I didn’t think that much about it, I think I probably liked the camera work because it’s engaging for the eye and then I probably physically “liked” the video on TikTok and moved on. The comments were filled with praise, and admiration, echoes of people saying they could never have that confidence, and questions like, “But is it awkward after you are done recording?”
In her short BBC interview, Sabrina alludes to being unhappy as an academic and in the industry she is in. She said she always wanted to do something creative and TikTok seems to be her way of expressing that. In another interview, she explains the inception of her first viral Tube Girl video was something she asked her friend to film for her but her friend refused, and rather than give up on the dream she decided to do it herself. And it paid off because now her videos have 1.4 million views, she has walked for MAC Cosmetics during London Fashion Week and is now doing commercials for companies like BOSS.
Grace on TikTok claims the trend is voyeuristic, and says “I feel sad that young girls feel this pressure or this manufactured desire to capture their nonchalant hotness in every single situation because otherwise, it doesn't exist.” The comments in Grace’s video were a mix of people defending Tube Girl, saying she helps build confidence and people saying they are tired of having to perform for social media. So which is it? Is the Tube Girl trend just about a girl having fun, and getting to express herself creatively in an otherwise uncreative field? Or is Tube Girl more political than that? Is it part of the women’s movement? Can it help or hurt a girl’s confidence? Can it be all of the above? I am reminded of an interview with Grace Paley where she recalls “People will sometimes say, ‘Why don’t you write more politics?’ And I have to explain to them that writing the lives of women is politics.” Anything a woman does will be political, both in a good way and in a bad way. I can see the love and appeal for Tube Girl, she seems to be singing an anthem for all the social anxiety girls who are tired of being afraid of people potentially judging them. Tube Girl says to dance anyway, have fun anyway, she embodies the idea that confidence shouldn’t be limited to socially acceptable ways anymore.
It seems like everyone has been trying to argue every reason as to why Tube Girl is problematic, one being that she lacked public etiquette. But what is public etiquette anymore? Doesn’t it change with the times? Perhaps the bigger question we are all trying to answer is what is the new normal? The problem is that generally speaking, we as a society cannot see the nuances in our likes and dislikes. Even after 40 years of the internet, there still seems to be a pushback, a resistance to change. We are all holding onto both the nostalgia of the past: landlines, phonebooks, renting DVDs at Blockbuster, emailing each other as a means of communicating and printing out GPS directions, and a time when social media wasn’t as prevalent. Simultaneously, we are also reaching for the temptation of virality, of hitting it big online so we can quit our jobs and travel and live off of promotional work, a way to pursue our creative passions without having to work 3 jobs. We are living in a time now where babies grow up knowing how to use a tablet, and adolescents are getting anxious earlier on due to earlier exposure to “success” and feeling inferior. We probably spend more time online than anywhere else anymore. We create these online versions of ourselves, as a means of what?
Erving Goffman, a philosopher, said in 1959, “We are all just actors trying to control and manage our public image, we act based on how others might see us.” Later, Goffman went on to say, “We have then, a basic social coin. With awe on one side, and shame on the other. The audience senses secret mysteries and powers behind the performance and the performer senses that his chief secrets are petty ones. As countless folktales and initiation rites show, often the real secret behind the mystery is that there really is no mystery. The real problem is to prevent the audience from learning this too.”
In all of these viral videos, the comments I often see are groups of awe or shame and while we may try to control the way people perceive us, Tube Girl releases us from that paradigm. She knows you cannot control how others view you, so you might as well do what you want. Conversely, some might say she made the video to control how those online see her but either way you swing it, it comes down to Sabrina making a choice to express herself that day, to fight back against feeling stuck in life, or to dream a different future for herself. I cannot in good faith get behind the notion that Tube Girl is contributing to the problem of young girls wanting to be “hot” any chance they get. Truthfully, I don’t think that’s a new phenomenon. What is the solution? Are no hot girls allowed on the internet? Is the solution to not indulge in the self sometimes? Are we supposed to stay quiet and stare into our phones silently while we all ride the train? What are the rules? I come back to a quote by Virginia Woolf that reads, “Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics.”
But like everyone else, I am also torn. I start to notice more and more people take out their phones to record themselves in public settings, stream the restaurant they are eating in, or go up to random people at the park to interrogate them, and I wonder if this is the new normal. I admit I am also sometimes annoyed at being in someone’s video without fair warning. Somehow it feels like living in a fish bowl, and we are all just extras in some show we didn’t sign up for. I wonder about all the people who have had really bad days at work, or life in general, and the last thing they want to see is a camera in their face or someone almost running into them for no regard but themselves and the video they are making. I am left with the question: Which is reality, online or in person? The constant wave of screens I see daily makes me feel like the world is mostly online; maybe physically we are all here sharing a train together, but our heads are tapped into some other sphere. And then some days, I don’t mind seeing people make their videos for TikTok or social media, sometimes I smile at them in support and am happy they dared to do something for themselves, to express themselves in this way.
The constant wave of screens I see daily makes me feel like the world is mostly online; maybe physically we are all here sharing a train together, but our heads are tapped into some other sphere.
And maybe because we are all more online, we are all more aware of the awkwardness of living. All of our faults and downfalls as humans are documented online; people are quick to make memes and jokes about others, and maybe that has played a role in the social anxiety a lot of us feel when doing something in public for fear of being judged. The anthem Tube Girl represents, whether she intended to or not, is freedom—that to go after something you want you have to ignore the stares. In a Daily Mail UK article, Bahsoon says “If you’re giving weight to other people’s opinions like you’re not living your true self and you’re not doing what you want to make yourself happy.”
I am sitting outside at a coffee shop in Houston writing this, and I have my film camera with me. I love this coffee shop and the way it hasn’t changed since the 50s, and I want to take a photo of myself sitting here, but I am too afraid to ask someone to do it and I don’t dare try to prop my film camera up somewhere to get a shot. Instead, I walk over to the edge of the sidewalk and quickly snap a photo of my spot. I am awkward and nervous about people looking at me as I take a film photo of this moment and I think, this is my Tube Girl moment.
Employee of the Month by Ben Wignall
Previously published in the 2023 Brock University Creative Writing Anthology.
Sweat dripped from the little guy’s brow as he pedalled furiously. The humans were relying on him to keep going and he knew that if he failed, faltered for even a moment, they’d call an electrician and it’d all be over for him. Barnaby flipped his long white beard out of the way and leaned over the handlebars, his little legs in his little overalls pumping an olympic pace into the little stationary bike. He’d been working there for 30 years, one of very few gnomes still employed by the GEG, Gnome Electrical Guild. Since the 1950s human electricians had taken over the gnomes’ jobs, switching from good old gnome power to far less efficient, but admittedly more reliable, sources like fossil fuels, wind, and nuclear power. But Barnaby had resisted the changes. He’d been working long enough that underneath his jolly little clothes and charming little hat, he had a truly ripped physique. He’d tried his hand at bodybuilding back in the 90s, but Ronnie Coleman had accidentally kicked him off the stage and the concussion had kept him out of the gym long enough to side track those plans. But with his cyclist’s legs he could pedal all day. Barnaby and his bike could keep a block powered almost indefinitely, he just needed a break every few months for a hot cup of tea and to snack on some of the little mushrooms he grew on the back of the power outlet where he worked. Barnaby was a hard worker, and the guild had rewarded his service with a 30 year plaque back in January. He’d hung it right in front of his bike, letting it motivate him to keep pedalling, and push for 40.
Mrs Singh & Mrs Singh by Vasundhara Singh
For the past three years, Mrs Singh and Mrs Singh have lived, truly lived in Meena Kartiki, a stately bungalow on the highest point of Narinari Hill, unable to ignore, unable to dissuade themselves from ignoring all that Meena Kartiki sheds each year. The former Mrs Singh, Sunita can recognize its disappearing parts more easily than the latter Mrs Singh, Riya who hasn’t seen the bungalow in its age of perky abundant adolescence.
C-1,2,3. A peculiar number for a peculiar residence.
Mr Sen, a Bengali businessman, built the bungalow in the nineteen thirties when the British were regretting teaching the desis their sport of cricket (‘We were kind enough to build the railways. Why did we have to be such gentlemen?’) and Nehru was yet to meet the lovely Lady Mountbatten.
1958. The year had been bitter for Sunita’s papa. His wife gave birth to twin daughters, both of whom died during the dusk hours of their first day. But, when the girls were alive, her papa had decided on names: Meena and Kartiki; had purchased matching frocks lined with synthetic froth; had distributed boxes of boondi ke ladoo (‘only the freshest ones,’ he warned the Halwai) around his locality. Sunita’s mummy remained bedridden for three months and her papa, part of the lonesome club of husbands who liked and respected their wives, ached just as much as she did but wished for a return to normalcy, whatever that may be.
Mr Sen intended on moving to America, where his eldest daughter had married a German man. In post-independence India or post-partition India, the old aristocrats, bred and fed and taught in England with wine in their veins, harbored ambitions of building their mini-empires under the guise of democracy with obedient servants and tiger skins and teak furniture and dense copies of Chekhov and Lawrence. Mr Sen despised every one of them.
Mrs Singh tells her favorite part of the story with elegant hand gestures:
‘My papa waited for Mr Sen at the club for forty-five minutes (throws up her hands) forty-five minutes! He thought, this isn’t worth it. I’m going to leave but he did not (slams her hands on the table with a BANG!). When Mr Sen did finally arrive with his tight lips and briefcase, it took him five minutes (hands up to her side, palms, red and white) five minutes! To hand over his property to my papa.’
Sunita’s mummy returned to civilization a few days after her papa had emptied the house of Mr Sen’s belongings.
A road of concrete led the young hopefuls inside the compound. The place was a place for the rich, and in the naked whispers of winter, it seemed to mock them. Sunita’s papa was well-to-do but the first in his family to live in a house without a shared bathroom and he shivered at its creamy sight. But, when he heard his wife giggle at the tall stalks of maize to their right, he had joined her and they returned the shivers of mockery by taking in, in their own time, the grandness of the double-storey bungalow with front facing windows under a sloping roof crowned with a balcony overlooking a lawn.
Since then, on a February day in 1958, Sunita’s papa named the bungalow: Meena Kartiki, C-1,2,3.
Mrs Sunita Singh, born in Meena Kartiki, discovered the superiority of her appearance at eighteen when she posed against the Gulmohar tree, acting like her fiery matriarch. A glimpse at her photographed self and Sunita noted her slim waist made prominent by the damning black of her waist-length hair, the caterpillars of her bushy brows, her collar bones dipping down to her chest, her mummy’s gold bangles holding her delicate frame in place, never did it waver or blur away, her superiority has followed her into late middle age.
The matriarch, Gulmohar, has witnessed almost all of Sunita’s glorious, fortunate, messy life events.
In the autumn of 1978, Mrs Singh leaned against its bark and watched through the window of the master bedroom, her papa trembling to death. During the pale December of 1980, she had, in a moment of immense grief, buried her wedding ring, no longer of any use, under its canopy, tearing through the soil and grass. By the summer of 1992, the tree and its macabre red blossoms had seen the Singh family burn into ashes, dark and grainy. Mrs Singh, her family’s last leaf, stubborn and so very alive. She named the tree Jeevan or life, for it represents everything she wants from her life: a loud bursting beauty, uncontrollable and urgent.
(1978-1980)
During this time, Mrs Sunita Singh was Mrs Sunita Singh. Mr Singh...what was his name? was a wealthy contractor, a family friend, a victim of an ill-timed cardiac arrest. She lived in Delhi for the brief duration of her marriage and returned to Meena Kartiki as a young widow. A glance around the bungalow—the lizards, the wild felines, the seepage, the damp wallpaper, the cracked windowpanes, the overdue dry cleaning, the abundance of tomatoes, the shortage of water, the silence—and she sobbed, grunted and returned to Delhi.
There, Mrs Singh took to tutoring. She was a gentle, patient teacher; Her students, spoiled and entitled; the fees, exaggerated but necessary. She taught British English to children who would eventually fly off to England and make use of it.
That’s how Mrs Singh met Mrs Singh.
To most people, Mrs Sunita Singh is Mrs Singh, but to Riya, Mrs Singh is ‘su-suuu!’ Riya’s voice wakes her up each morning with the obedience of a rooster.
The rooster, Riya. The estranged wife, Riya. The faithful companion, Riya. Riya, quietly resilient, a late presence in Sunita’s life. The only presence in Sunita’s life.
Mrs Riya Singh despises being photographed and seeing her photographed self framed and propped up on a wall, makes her retch. At eighteen, she had posed, helplessly, for the rickety camera at Santosh photo studio. Her lanky arms folded in modesty, her maroon pupils dilated with boredom, her block print sari boasting of an army of elephants. The photograph soon reached her husband-to-be who, in true civil servant pride, said, ‘yes, I approve.’
Mrs Singh did not look at the photograph. She was weary of finding out why someone, a man, would approve of her. Riya’s beauty is of a quiet kind, a stream of clear water running in noiseless turns through an isolated village, away from the hoo-ha! of the city.
(1978-1999)
During this time, Mrs Riya Singh was Mrs Riya Singh. From her marriage, Mrs Singh has held onto almost everything except for Mr Singh. The chullah, a present from her husband’s long dead Aunty and Uncle. The quilt passed onto them by her grandmother in solemn hope of a grandson. ‘Quick and easy,’ the grandmother had said. ‘Four of my grandsons owe their lives to this quilt.’
Unfortunately for her, the quilt had produced a granddaughter, Chotu.
And the oil painting of a village woman and the gold coin and flowery crockery and Banarasi silk saris.
Wait, where did Mr Singh go?
Here? no. There? no. Sigh.
To others, Mrs Riya Singh is Mrs Singh, but to Sunita, Mrs Singh is ‘ya-yaaa.’
Morning hours in Meena Kartiki sound more animal than human. The cats, wild and imposing, fill the air with their purrr-ing cry. Sometimes, a black-grey cat or a brown-white cat sits at the kitchen door, in expectation of a piece of meat or a bowl of milk and sometimes, when it is offered neither, the cat hunts demure snakes that slither out of crevices in the poor soil. During the hunt, the resident peacocks cry out like injured trumpets. Their calls, creaking and cracking, every so often. They are creatures of habit. At half-past six in the morning, a muster of peacocks, squawking ceremoniously, patrols the lawn, their stride heavy yet measured. Eventually, the peahens emerge, disoriented and undecided, searching for the peacocks who relax on the ledge of the boundary wall. Their arrogant calls announce morning in the ink-black darkness of grandfather night as if attempting to beat the sun at its own game.
Jalebi soaked in sticky syrup, masala poha from Shiv’s roadside stall. This is not what one expects two greying ladies to be devouring for breakfast. The calories, the cheap vegetable oil, the detergent-contaminated salt are not kind on their bodies and they are aware of this.
‘I shouldn’t have eaten three jalebis,’ Susu laments.
‘Yes and the poha, too oily,’ Yaya adds.
Although Susu ensures they detox with fresh orange juice. Yaya slashes the oranges in half and she pulls down the steel lever of the ancient juicer, fingering the device for seeds blocking the holes of the convex squeezer.
Their interactions follow a rhythm, peaking and dipping, mountain and valley.
‘Do you want to take a walk?’ asks Susu.
‘Hm,’ says Yaya.
‘Quiche for lunch or aloo gobi?’ Susu. Peak.
‘Hm,’ Yaya. Dip.
‘We ought to dust the bookshelves,’ Mountain.
‘Hm,’ Valley.
This rhythm is due in part to Yaya’s self-consciousness of the English language. Somehow, more terrifying spoken than written. And due in part to Susu’s ineptness of the Hindi language. Over time, there has been an uneasy barter of languages between them and a voluntary barter of lived experiences.
Mary, their alcoholic maid, cast off to an outhouse on the thick brown margins of the vegetable garden, remarks, ‘how these two came to live together. I will never understand.’ Her daughter, Francis, who lives with Susu and Yaya in their house and is seldom allowed to see her mother, remarks, ‘why these two live together, I will never understand.’
Besides Mrs Singh and Mrs Singh, no one ever does.
Children, toothless and bow-legged; hawkers, old and young; women, foggy eyed and sharp tongued, stretch their necks over the boundary wall, hoping to discover the women moaning into each other’s necks. Instead, they see an expanse of overgrown dry grass, mustard under the shade and silver in the sun.
Mrs Singh and Mrs Singh are aware of these eyes and leave them be, for if you shoo them away, they return with renewed hunger and a parched curiosity.
‘When a widow and a married woman live together, like this, in this bungalow, this happens to them,’ Mrs Singh explains to Mrs Singh.
Each evening, as the leftover scraps of the day curdle into a wearisome mush, the women convene in the dining hall. Susu rocks on the rocking chair, rocking ever so gently and Yaya stands at the verandah door, eyeing, ever so lovingly, the giant gray ghost of the Mahogany tree. Swaying to a song while crushing open the hard shell of walnuts and sipping cups of tea, they rock and gaze, rock and gaze.
Susu lets Yaya play a cassette of her choice. A melancholy tune from a bygone era, the lyrics written by Yaya’s beloved poet, Sahir Ludhianvi. Susu nods along to the gentle bends and curls of the song but says nothing, for she understands nothing. She feels, however, a prick of longing as the song sinks at the chorus.
‘जानेक्या तनु ेकही...’
Who knows what you said?
‘...जानेक्या मनै ेसनी ू ...’
Who knows what I heard?
‘...बात कुछ बन ही गए’
But something was said between us, nonetheless.
Yaya’s mind wanders to the memory of her mother sitting on the divan, fanning herself with the day’s newspaper, listening to this song on the radio, clicking her tongue at every crunch of static. Susu remembers Meena Kartiki during its days of callous fertility when it bloomed and bellowed with the possibility of endless glory. A glass bottle shatters in the outhouse. Mary shrieks for Francis. Susu glares at Yaya.
‘Francis?’ asks Susu.
‘She’s upstairs, sleeping,’ says Yaya.
At quarter past ten, Susu leaves for her bedroom, giving Yaya’s shoulder a squeeze and Yaya flashes her a tender smile and continues to stare at the dark verandah before she too heads to her room.
Lights off.
Mrs Singh and Mrs Singh sleep as the cats and peacocks of Narinari Hill wait impatiently for the first crick, crack, coo of dawn.
Autumn, 2011 by Nicole Mae
I used to wear a heart locket
and Jackson Pollock acne.
He:
holes in his jeans.
I remember buying 99¢
gas station ramen.
And in the absence of plastic forks,
we ate with coffee stir sticks.
Drip.
Drip.
An ugly kiss for two
ugly kids.
Cream Soda Dissociation by Nicole Mae
I should be sleeping.
But I ended up in a florescent convenient store
staring at
OUT OF ORDER
slushy machines.
I feel everything.
Am reminded that I’m actively bleeding
as cherry syrup leaks onto tiles.
Am reminded of you
as I read the janitor’s name tag.
Maybe I should be
out of order
too.
Feathers, Fringe and Diaphanous Dresses: All of the Highlights from Spring Summer 2024 by Kiran Gill |
After a bevy of fashion shows, presentations, and parties, the Spring Summer 2024 season has almost come to a close for the fashion world. High level, we can anticipate the return of the oversized handbag. Truly, a boon for the bookishly inclined who can look forward to toting around a book for every mood come spring. In addition to purses, there was a resurgence of feathers and fringe embellishments as well as sheer fabrications from gauzy, lightweight tops to ethereal, skin-grazing dresses. Below, you’ll find my breakdown of New York, London, Milan, and Paris. I hope you enjoyed this season as much as I did and, be sure to tell me what your favorite collection was.
NEW YORK FASHION WEEK:
The marathon that is Fashion Month began in New York City and featured a barrage of thunderous weather. Nonetheless, the rain could not keep people from the over fifty shows that graced the city. The week kicked off with the most anticipated show: Helmut Lang. Peter Do, the company’s new Creative Director, played with the brand’s 90s motifs. The collection of suits and sleek separates gave a nod to yellow cabs and slogan tees. Models also strutted down the runway where a poem by Ocean Vuong was written on the floor.
Truly, a boon for the bookishly inclined who can look forward to toting around a book for every mood come spring.
Amongst this debut, New Yorkers had the opportunity to celebrate the return of both 3.1 Phillip Lim and Ralph Lauren. The latest from Phillip Lim presented a modern uniform of New York codes. After a four year hiatus from the runway, the latest from Ralph Lauren played with classic Americana themes with denim and button downs as well as metallic gowns.
Christian Siriano’s 15th anniversary show was a star-studded affair with notables like Janet Jackson, Kesha, and Avril Lavigne. Speaking of star power, the infamous Anna Delvey joined forces with industry veteran Kelly Cutrone for a show hosted at Delvey’s residence as the former heiress is under house arrest.
Amongst the glamor of celebrities and heiresses, Elena Velez brought the grit. The Wisconsin-born designer, whose New York Times feature on the economics of making it in fashion took the industry by storm, continued her provocateur activities with a runway that doubled as a mud pit and concluded with a brawl amongst the models. Velez’s design ethos; equal parts raw and feminine, showcased a collection of neutrals and raw hemlines.
LONDON FASHION WEEK:
While the weather oscillated from overcast to gloriously sunny, the fashion set saw Burberry’s various marketing initiatives take over the city. The “Burberry Streets” campaign consisted of saturating the Big Smoke with the brand’s new, blue hue. Known as Knight blue, this punchy shade was pulled from the archives and has been used ad nauseam. The brand turned the Bond Street train station into Burberry Station and graced commuters with a curated playlist of songs by British artists.
Train stations were not the only place Burberry exerted their creative vision. For the entirety of LFW, they took over Norman’s Cafe. Known for its classic British fare, the cafe got the Burberry treatment with the Knight blue check covering the interior and exterior, as well as the menus of the establishment. I wanted to check out this breakfast spot (it’s truly beloved!), but the distance was too much for a girl based in London’s West side.
When it comes to the shows… The Completed Works presentation starred model extraordinaire Erin Wasson who waded in a pool of some mysterious, unidentifiable liquid while wearing the brand’s sculpted pieces alongside three other models.
Simone Rocha’s show at the English National Ballet in East London saw men and women gracing the runway in glorious, ephemeral tulle. The collection, an ode to love, played with wedding tropes: something borrowed, something new, something blue, icing clad wedding cakes, and a recurring floral motif which saw roses embedded under sheer garments. It’s the mix of the coquettish and the melancholy which makes a Simone show a delight to watch. Special shoutout to the footwear where we saw the first iteration of the latest Crocs collaboration. These clunky shoes got the Simone treatment with pearls, crystals, and bows.
Meanwhile, David Koma and Erdem turned to nobility for inspiration for their latest collection. The former, known for his sexy, sultry, skin-baring gowns, used Queen Elizabeth II as his muse while the latter turned to the life and garments of the Duchess of Devonshire, Deborah “Debo” Cavendish. Pulling from textiles from her Chatsworth estate, Erdem Moralioglu spliced these fabrics together into garments, and with the aid of Barbour, the brand opened the show with a series of waxed cotton jackets for a quintessentially British look. As the youngest of the six Mitford sisters, Debo followed in the footsteps of her writer sisters Jessica and Nancy, and penned a handful of books. In the coming weeks, I plan on picking up her memoir, Wait for Me!
We can’t talk about LFW without mentioning JW Anderson and Chopova Lowena. The eponymous designer turned to childhood and nostalgia as he sent pieces constructed by plasticine (the UK’s answer to Play-Doh down the runway) alongside dresses that bounced and moved in a way that would have made Teletubbies envious. The insider-favorite Chopova Lowena’s sophomore runway took place at a skatepark and blended folklore with streetwear. This was also the first time the brand revealed shoes and bags.
Milan Fashion Week:
The home of the Duomo and The Last Supper, saw Ferragamo turn from an oversation of red to a sage green, not quite hunter green but definitely not mint. On a floor that was painted with a map, Bottega Veneta's latest runway show continued Creative Director Matthieu Blazy’s exploration of material and structure. The most abstract iteration of this exploration took the form of a crochet dress embellished with giant raffia pompoms. Design duo, and forever cool girls, Gilda Ambrosio and Giorgia Tordini, hosted their first ever runway show on the streets of Milano under the glorious Italian sun. Seated on oversized, leather couches attendees watched as towering models clad in oversized coats that dragged on the ground strutted down the street. The garments felt directional: modern, fresh, and always sexy. All in all, it's a whole new, and incredibly cool, wardrobe for the party girl.
While the sun shined on Attico, it rained at Diesel. Models walked under a downpour and the brand sent out a lookalike Bella Hadid model that had many thinking the youngest Hadid sister had returned to the runway. In actuality, the model clad in a two piece: a black bra top and skirt that hung low on the waist, was the London-based Dalton Dubois.
It cannot be MFW, without Prada and the show, one of the most anticipated, was a delight. But, I have heard some whispers on the internet and ir that have got me looking carefully at the collection and asking, are the clothes really wearable? Do shorts need to be encircled by a skirt of fringe? Regardless of the haters, I’m a Prada girl at heart and was enamored by the diaphanous dress that floated down the runway amidst the walls of clear slime that fell from the sky. The dress walked down the runway eight times in gloriously soft shades from a feminine pink to a delicious mint and more.
PARIS FASHION WEEK:
It’s been a week of surprisingly warm weather, so warm many have bemoaned their packing list, as their usual essentials of coats and sweaters and warm, cozy knits aren’t appropriate in the heat.
The highlights of Paris include a new creative director at Ann Demeulemeester plucked from within the company. Stefano Gallici’s debut show, which was an hour late, was worth the wait. This new chapter is dark and glamorous with split hem pants, subversive harnesses, and sheer tops. The color palette of black and white was punctuated by a blue color which appeared a total of three times in the collection.
Nina Ricci’s show at the Palais de Tokyo saw Creative Director Harris Reed’s sophomore collection reference the house’s archive. Reed played with duchesse satin and taffeta. Gowns, paired with elbow length gloves, were emblazoned with polka dots and bows.
Balmain continued with their show following the burglary that occurred less than two weeks before their show. More than fifty pieces were stolen, yet Olivier Rousteing still prestend a collection of over fifty looks. While the theme of the spring show was a groundbreaking floral motif, the shapes of the collection were retro, pulled from Pierre Balmain’s archives from the late 40s and early 50s. The accessories of the collection were playful, almost surreal. Fancy a bouquet of roses, anyone?
After a fourteen-year long tenure at Alexander McQueen, Sarah Burton bade farewell with a collection that paid homage to the memory of Lee Alexander McQueen. Her collection played to her strengths with masterful tailoring and gothic elements.
The Rick Owens show took place outside at the Palais de Tokyo and was a religious experience. Amidst plumes of pink and yellow colored smoke, rose petals fell from the sky. Not enough to kill us as in The Roses of Heliogabalus, but just enough that I walked out of the show with petals in my bag and scattered through my hair. But, there were no regrets on my end because the visual drama of the show, paired with an incredible remix made by Owen of Diana Ross’s latest single, “I Still Believe,” was married with clothes that told a story and presented a strong point of view. Models were clothes of leather and silk. The garments featured elevated shoulders, net headdresses that covered the face, and a shade of pink that felt both hopeful and invigorating.
Loewe’s latest collection took place in an white box in the courtyard of Paris’ Chateau de Vincennes. Helmed by Anderson, the latest collection was inspired by Anderson’s interest in the work of Lynda Benglis. Six of her bronze sculptures were scattered around the space and models wore jewelry designed by her. The pieces played with dimensions: floor-length cocoon knits and trousers that were not just high-waisted, they were super high. Shorts were held in place by a single over-sized, nearly foot long, pin. It’s the kind of accessory that would incite conversation wherever you went.
Preselling Out by Ben Nardolilli
Invest in me today, I promise you a future
that will be transformative because of it
These are not remote opportunities,
more than décor, it will be an intimate change
Whatever covers your reality now will recede,
in its place my dreams will spread out
Just give me the gap year that I need to settle,
or gap decade if the checks keep clearing
Your donation will make all the difference,
even now, a little bit of hope is emerging in me
Only after asking for help, imagine me
when I raise enough to stay out of the office
You cannot see me, but my posture is up
as if I am talking straight to you, face to person
Line Go Down by Ben Nardolilli
400 and falling, I don’t know what the measure
is supposed to target, but it’s bad,
putting it on a graph just makes it look like I’m sinking,
even if I switch the color line
from red to green, or from black to blue,
the number is decreasing in a curiously constant measure,
which means the acceleration is nearly zero,
quick, let’s make a unit out of that
(named after me) to show the worried world
something in my life is staying stable
if I can’t find leading indicators of strong fundamentals
My Personal Roman Empire by Cait Barlowe |
I’m addicted to TikTok, as I’m sure most of us are if we are being honest with ourselves. For the past few weeks, the trend has been to record yourself asking your boyfriend how often he thought about the Roman Empire. Quite quickly, the trend pivoted to asking women, “what is your own personal Roman empire?” The most common responses included the Salem Witch Trials, the Paul Mescal/Phoebe Bridgers/Daisy Edgar Jones potential love triangle, Sylvia Plath, Princess Diana, and the Romanov family. But I found that there was someone lacking in the equivalent categories for women, someone that is very important to me: Laika the Russian space dog.
Laika was a stray, found on the streets of Moscow and launched into space aboard the Sputnik 2, on November 3rd, 1957. She was an unfortunate casualty of the Space Race, dying after four days (or five hours, depending on who you ask) on board her craft after the cabin overheated. She was the first living creature to orbit earth. According to a Space.com article, Laika was chosen after researchers became too attached to another dog, Albina. I wonder about Laika’s temperament: was she cagey, was she unaffectionate? Would either these traits mean that she deserved to die? I think of my own mean dog, his bared teeth, his growl. These things that only make me love him more.
Laika was, thankfully, awarded some small acts of kindness before her flight. Researcher Vladimir Vazdovsky reportedly took her home one night because he wanted “to do something nice for her: She had so little time left to live.” A female scientist fed Laika a small amount of food before lift off even though it was breaking protocol to do so. I wonder if they wept when she was launched into space or if they thought about her when they went to sleep that night. The Sputnik 2 was never intended to land back on Earth; Laika was always destined to die. The spacecraft continued its orbit for five months after Laika passed, a strange, metal coffin.
This summer, I took an astronomy class. I have always been deeply fascinated with space. It’s one of the most important things to me in my life. I often wonder about the existence of aliens…surely we can’t be the only living thing occupying this gaping wound we call our galaxy? If aliens exist, they would have watched this desperate act of cruelty and deemed us hopeless, beyond saving. I’m ashamed of what we have done in the name of science, the things we have sacrificed in the pursuit of knowledge. Laika died alone, no longer a creature of this Earth.
Laika, my Roman empire, she deserved so much more love. I hope what came after death was kinder to her than life was. I hope that space embraced her spirit, caressed her fur, and soothed her racing heart. There is something comforting in this idea that she became somehow cosmic, maybe she is out there still, watching us from the stars. We can’t ask her forgiveness, but maybe she is praying for us. I know I am.
Maybe by Kyra MacFarlane
I guess I was a going concern. I was running around telling men about my menstrual cycle, and imagining my eyes would fall out if I wasn’t urgent enough about that sinister side of my body. A lot of people who menstruate try to celebrate the process of periods - how it connects us to the world, and to each other. My periods were always wrapped up in the notion that I was leaking like a broken teapot. As if some tick-laden deer blood was copiously pouring out. Viscous and vicious.
Anyway. I don’t think anything warranted me sitting in an Emergency Room for six hours, only to be turned away, labeled “peculiar at best,” and sent home to choose all the wrong crayons for an “adult coloring page” that a counselor gave me. I wrote all sorts of words on this one. Mostly things like “I see, and my eyes bleed,” and “they can tell, you know.” All I know is I feel very vitally connected to these miscommunications. Misfires in my brain leaving me stagnant and trapped in a house, with a padlock on some very important inner emotions.
Last night I had a dream I was a banshee. I screamed and screamed, and woke up to a hoarse throat, and a crumpled up t-shirt on the floor. I must have taken it off in my sleep, I realize, as I sit there trembling with the shedding of clothes like the shedding of uterine lining (maybe I do talk about my menstruation too often.) When I was younger, everything was more vivid. My manic ramblings separating me from the stability my body craved. Mania is a wild beast; unlike the horse-tranquilized stupor I currently stumble around in. I still know mania like the back of my psychic-examined hand, but I have other concerns.
Last night I had a dream I was a banshee.
Other concerns. Romance, maybe. Spending hours in my room listening to Syd Barrett? Much more likely. I figure, might as well distance myself even farther.
I don’t get many phone calls, but today, a girl I knew well once, phoned me to tell me she was happy about an embryo in her uterus. I didn’t know what to say. I used to spend nights with her, close and cuddly. Now she was leaving me behind for some beautiful boy, and the product of pregnancy.
“You could pretend to be happy, Mel,” Astrid said.
“I could do a lot of things,” I said.
Look. I know I’m an asshole—this is not news to me. You can rattle off whatever flaws I may certainly have, but I do know one thing. I would never grow like Astrid—my stomach would never sway with the weight of something special like that. The only thing that will sway me is my ego.
I don’t remember it, but apparently I swallowed about 50 antipsychotics last night. Ironically enough, the doctors told me that I must have been in a psychotic haze. “Sounds about right,” I said. They sent me to the psychiatric ward.
I was here, and I was there. Rocking back and forth, trying to see perspective. The ward let me have an ancient iPod (without earbuds of course), so I listened to Syd Barrett, and other things that numbed my brain like a balm. I was an electric eel in a small enclosure—surviving on spite, and the occasional zap of a five year old kid. Luckily, for multiple reasons, there were no mirrors in sight. I could only hope that I looked better than I did during that acid trip I took about a year ago; my eyes grew dark, and my movement Parkinsonian.
“How are you today?” the nurse asked.
“I’m here, right?” I said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I don’t know exactly yet, but there are shapes that have no names,” I said.
“I’m going to remember that, Melanie,” she said as she left the room.
I washed my face in a puddle like a raccoon. They let me out of the ward, and there was no one to collect me, and the nurses trusted that a woman with an iota of self-awareness was healthy enough to be back on the street. I couldn’t remember my name or where my house is, but hey, they upped a medication that will probably give me grief.
“Nauseating, honestly,” my friend Gary remarked, in reference to my room.
“It is what it is,” I say lifelessly.
“You’re going to have to start helping yourself.”
“This morning I saw two birds fighting for a crumb—it was massive, more than a crumb, really, but the Raven clutched it and flew off. The sparrow lost the fight and even though there were other crumbs, the sparrow wanted that one. Histrionic as hell, I reckon.”
“Jesus, Mel.”
My hands are chronically cold. I can’t hold my arms still, and I can’t move my head. The glamor of it all. I function on coffee, and the lack of “constructive criticism” the world feeds me. Because they feel bad. But not in the way that I feel bad. No one will know about that, myself included—I see myself looking down at a little “me,” and I don’t know what she’s doing, or where she’s going, but I know she’s alive.
“Mel?” Petra asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I’ve missed you so much!”
“Me too, but I don’t like the phone, you know.”
“I can’t be there for you this time, Mel.”
I was in the hospital again, using the ward’s phone, as if it was my one free phone call at a jail. That’ll cost ya, one of the voices in my head said. I told him to shut up, and that he needs to pay rent if he keeps on living in my skeleton. All the bones bent and bloody—a cracked spine, a rotting corpse animated like Frankenstein’s monster.
I was out of the hospital. Petra came and picked me up.
“When did your voice become so drained of life?” she asked.
“I didn’t win the fight.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why do people keep asking me that?”
I used to be a better writer. I used to have a higher IQ. I used to be someone to depend on. Now I hop on random buses and find solidarity with people speaking to their hallucinations. Just like me. All of us are just waiting—to feel better, or to disappear. I’m one of the lucky ones. I don’t know where or why I go.
“Like a window pane that keeps getting foggier?” the psychiatrist asks
“Sure,” I say.
“You seem distant,” she says.
“I’m right here. The light’s just dimmed.”
So, Astrid had her baby. I found out through a letter that she sent out to me, and me alone.
“You would love her, Mel,” she claimed.
“I know I would,” I answered. But it was true. I love Astrid more than she could ever know, and if her baby is anything like her, I would certainly love her too.
The medications were starting to let emotion pass through. I was feeling less distant. Gary congratulated me for cleaning my room. Maybe there’s something to the whole starting anew thing. Maybe I could piece myself, and pace myself. Maybe I could be a good kind of peculiar; a productive kind, perhaps.
Maybe.
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