Category: fashion

CALL ME CURIOUS!

Virginia Jones got to appear on the CALL ME CURIOUS podcast this Halloween, on the topic- Have adults taken over Halloween? You can listen here or anywhere you find podcasts. They booked me with another goth, the amazing Linus Owens, an academic who studies the role of Halloween in American society, and who writes on how a pagan holiday was adopted as a way for kids to get candy, and how young adults use it to try on identities. Anyways it’s a fun listen, take it from Virginia Jones, goth!

Would-Be Reductress

Here’s my packet that is not going to be used by Reductress, because they told me it wouldn’t!   

  1. Science News: Clean Energy Source Burns Unwearable Dresses You Bought Online

  Scientists have created a power utility from America’s infinitely renewable resource, useless crap you bought online.  Did you know? A poorly beaded dress can heat a house for fifteen minutes, a giant quilted puffer coat that says “QUEEN” on the back can power a Roomba for a day.

Story Type: Science News

  1.  Your Baby Will Roast Your Highschool Style By Kindergarten

   In today’s rapidly  accelerating culture, your newborn baby will be roasting your best highschool outfits by the time they are out of diapers.  Take a deep breath and prep to get read!

Story Type: Fashion & Style

  1. Trendy Night Trainers: Squeeze Some Cardio Out Of Your Walk Of Shame

A listicle of great trainers to wear out so you can get home without too much trouble tomorrow, including:

  1. Sleek black sneaks that look great with everything, including toting your carcass home on the El
  2. Bedazzled Chucks, for when you get dragged out to find the D in Long Island. 
  3. Metallic Platform Trainers: the space age option for when you need to get home and get some of your own space

Story Type: Fashion & Style

    5. Woman In Your Office Opines, “I Hope I Look As Good As Helen Mirren When I’m 60”, But Does Not Look That Good Now

  Story Type: Celebrity 

  6. Guess What’s Wrong With Your Vagina Now?

   From grooming to jade eggs, there’s always something more you can be doing to make your vagina acceptable- get on it, bitch!

  Story Type: Beauty & Health

7. “What Are You Looking For On Here?” Asks Dude Seeking Reply, “Casual Sex With A Hideous Man”

   It’s every dating site dude’s opener, a seemingly innocent question that lets you know you shouldn’t expect too much, nay, anything from your interaction.  If he were asked the same, he would not, reply not, answer honestly.

   Story Type: Dating & Sex

8. “Why Can’t Women Be Chill?” Asks Man Whose Reproductive Capacity Ends With Death

  Why can’t women just hang out for eight or ten years before getting all uptight about commitment and kids, asks a man who has no timeline on kids whatsoever.

    Story Type: Dating & Sex

9. Dazzling Two Hour Ritual For The Perfect Dewy, Highlighted, No-Makeup Look!

  Starting with extensive exfoliation, then rubbing your skin all over with a little roller, and ending with blending your pores out of existence, this is the perfect look to pretend you’re low-maintenance and attract men who think saying women shouldn’t wear makeup is any better than saying they should wear lots of makeup!

   Story Type: Beauty & Health

10: “Why Can’t We Have Chill No-Strings Sex And You Don’t See Other People”, Non-Boyfriend Demands.

   There are so many new permutations on offer for dating scenarios that don’t exist, see also single polyamorous guys and girls who are very sexually conservative up until the day they meet you.

   Story Type: Dating & Sex

11.  “I Have No Boundaries” Says Woman, Like It’s A Feature

    “I absolutely say the first thing in my head, and I treat everyone like my best friend”, says Sharon Sluyter, as if it’s a positive asset and not absolutely terrifying to everyone around her.  

12. “I Guess I’m A Self-Sufficient Loner” Says Guy Whose Mother Still Does His Laundry

  “She likes to do it,” says Jordan.  

13.  “GUILT-FREE SNACKS: DID YOU KILL SOMEONE TO STEAL THOSE SNACKS?”

  Did you steal the snack?  Did you commit a murder to get them?  Great, it’s guilt-free!

14. “STEP BY STEP: 10 SQUATS THAT WILL DISTRACT FROM YOUR PERSONALITY FLAWS”

JUST! KEEP! SQUATTING!

Trendy Trainers For The Evening Before The Morning After!

Trendy Sneaks Squeeze Some Cardio From Your Walk Of Shame!

Great trainers to wear out for a wild night out that will get you home safe tomorrow, including:
black suede trainers for evening out
  • A classic! These sleek black sneaks look great with everything, dresses, jeans, or a kicky jumpsuit. They’ll keep looking great while toting your carcass home on the El in the morning!
bedazzled chucks trainers
  • These glitzy Bedazzled Chucks dress any outfit up and help you get back for when you get dragged out to Long Island to try to find the D. 
platform trainers stella mccartney
  • Metallic Platform Trainers: The supercool space age-option for when you need to get back in your own space! Great for hooking up with the guy who won’t stop talking about Elon Musk!

Science News: Online Impulse Buys Are The New Energy Source

New Clean Energy Source Burns Unwearable Clothing You Bought Online During A Pandemic

  Scientists have created a new power utility from America’s infinitely renewable resource, useless crap you bought online. 

Did you know?

A poorly beaded “flapper” dress can heat a house for fifteen minutes, a giant quilted puffer coat that says “QUEEN” on the back can power a Roomba for a day.

You have nowhere to wear a giant puffer coat that says “QUEEN” on the back. It will only look good in a music video with a model in stiletto heels.

It will not look cute over your sweatpants with the uggs you wear in the snow. You will look crazy. You do not need it. Burn it. Then, you can use the energy to make a smoothie!

Simon LeBon’s Astonishing DNA Test

My daughter, Saffron, gave me a genetics kit for my birthday this year, and I know it’s a bit cheesy but in the tradition of middle aged dads everywhere, I’ve been working up the old family tree. 

 I’m pleased to have found a great many writers and poets in my bloodline!

The First LeBon

  The first LeBon arrived in London in the big Huguenot emigration of the 1590’s, and published the Elizabethan period poem below:

Thou has se’en me– stood’st at the corner of thy street

And O!  A fire makes for flashes on thy stone sill

To be solitary pleases you not

So thou wouldst seek out pleasure

And sooth- thou would knows’t wherefore and whyfore 

Nay, pray not for me today

Prithee, pray for me on the morrow–  Francois LeBon

American LeBon

Next, I found an American whose family settled in Louisiana.  We have a great-great grandfather in common.  He loved the SF beat poetry scene so much he moved out there in 1953. 

Antoine LeBon wrote the following,  published in a zine called Street Poems in 1957:

I finally bugged out yesterday

Couldn’t peep my hillside pad

Maybe I’ll head there in a year

Maybe I won’t

I can feel you diggin’ on me, cat, day and night

I’m hep to it, the art and incantations

I dig it, it’s a gas

There’s a dream, a fantasy maybe

Stringing down this road we call our home

There’s shards of glass everywhere

It cuts me, cuts me deep, and finally I say 

Hey man, hip me to it

What do I gotta know? 

Japanese LeBon

Perhaps strangest of all is a British girl whose family moved to Japan in the 30’s, and who wrote pretty little haiku like this one, this is Belleanne LeBon from her school poetry journal:

Cherry blossom lips

Smear in a line as she falls

Into blue water

Amazing stuff.  I showed it to Yasmin and said, look, babe, we’ve always been poets and she said, love, you’re not a poet, you’re just a clotheshorse who got lucky.

Well, I’ll add more if I find more!

‘Til then- Simon

Fall Fashion Preview: It’s Plaid Again, Morons!

Photo by Godisable Jacob from Pexels

A Letter From The Editor of Vogue Magazine

Welcome to our big Fall Fashion issue! It’s HUGE and HEAVY and GLOSSY and you could really knock someone around with it. 

We’ve got food, diet, and skin trends, but let’s face it, you’re all here for the same thing- the FALL FASHION PREVIEW! It is LEGEND. It is the Christmas Mass of fashion magazines- everyone shows up once a year!

The Wind-Up

After this editor’s letter we’ve got the table of contents, a list of the celebrity photographers who aren’t cancelled yet, a Gucci ad, another Gucci ad, and BOOM here it is, it’s been gossiped about and worried over for six months: what’s the hot trend for fall? 

The Pitch

It’s plaid again, ya dumbshits! It will always be plaid! It’s back to school, so every woman alive is dressing like she’s showing up to Saint Lucy Of The Bleeding Eyes. 

It’s because men keep this fantasy of women with knee socks and short plaid skirts long after their own kids graduate college.

I mean, if you want to know- that’s not really why. 

It’s because in 1945, the UK wool industry, drunk on military production, had overruns they could not handle. They convinced Vogue Magazine to promote wool plaid for Fall 1946. Business being what it is, we HAVE to do wool plaid as a fashion trend EVERY FALL or the ENTIRE INDUSTRY WILL COLLAPSE. We have all signed a binding document, witnessed by Harry S. Truman and Winston Churchill, tying us to this unending, infernal cycle.

That’s a secret, which you’re not supposed to know. But after all these years, I know that NO-ONE has ever read this far down the letter from the editor.

The Home Run

Fall is also when everyone’s Goth, because New York starts getting dark and that’s where the fashion editors live- so there’s gonna be a shiny dominatrix boot and a smoky eye as well. Leather skirts. Spikes on handbags, the least scary place to put spikes. Spank me, Daddy! I work in marketing!

Next is the makeup section, where some poor fuck photo stylist has sliced up a tube of Gucci lip lacquer with a length of dental floss and stacked it up in an uneven, wabi-sabi tower of tiny red grease slabs and drizzled the whole thing over with a clear gel, because there is nothing interesting about makeup.

The Victory Lap

But don’t forget about plaid! We’re doing plaid! Did you know it has different names? It’s Stewart Tartan, Black Watch, or Burberry. You’ll get it in skirts and on bags and blouses and jackets. It’s on ties, headbands and shit, let’s do panties too! Now get out there and get mad for plaid!

Life is long, children. Life is long.

Signed, Anna Wintour