Honey No. 15
Feat. a list of current faves, some things I wish I could text you, and merch as fashion's future
Hi my friends! How’s everybody doing this week? I feel like everyone I know is sort of being put through the *wringer* these days, and my little ass is no exception. Everything’s ok! It’s just also…a lot? So I thought we’d take it easy this week and get into some lists- one of bits and bobs I’ve been enjoying recently, and one of updates I have wanted to tell you guys if we were all on a group text thread, which, does this one count? Tying up loose ends and bringing in something new. It’s spring, after all!
BITS AND BOBS
Have you seen Problemista, the new A24 movie written and directed by Julio Torres, starring him and Tilda freaking Swinton?? Jesse and I went to a 945 showing the other night after we were convinced by our friend Jacob (see below) that we could stay up that late, and I’m so so glad we did. I thought it was so funny, so inspiring, and so beautiful. So so so!! When we walked into the theater it was empty (because it was the middle of the night), but the next two people who walked in were my friend/neighbor and their girlfriend! The two people who walked in next were strangers, but based on everything else that was happening I think that all 7 of us would have gotten along. Lmk if this also happens to you!
I first heard about Renee Frances Jewelry from my friend Grace, a visual artist with an eye for beautiful things. Since then, it is going on the wishlist BIG TIME- look at these gorgeous, unique rings! These earrings, or these, or this necklace?! It’s all going on the board.
One of the best parts about moving in with someone, other than hopefully being with someone you love, is gaining access to their entire book collection. I’ve been working through Jesse’s copy of The Warmth of Other Suns, an incredible book that tracks the historical exodus of around six million Black southerners migrating north and west in America. The author follows the stories of three individuals in this Great Migration, and I’ve been hooked for the past 400 pages (200 more to go and I will be sad when it’s over). An intense read, but an essential one.
Alison (creator of last week’s Troll Goblin Monster short), Jacob (of the 945 movie and this week’s guest essay) and I co-hosted a clothing swap at my place yesterday, and if you don’t have one coming up I highly recommend making your own! It was such a fun, low-stress way to see friends, meet new people, and get some new clothes. Al and I have similar coloring and similar taste, and through our years of clothing swaps have created an unintentional ritual of taking each others offerings and returning them to a swap months or years later. This year I reclaimed some shorts that I loved my first year in LA, relinquished to Alison via a swap in my second, and discovered anew when she offered them up yesterday. I hope to wear them in excellent health in my third year here (April 1 anniversary is coming up!), and then probably give them back to her sometime after that.
New Adrianne Lenker and Waxahatchee albums released this week, wowie! I haven’t sat down with Adrianne’s yet because I think I need to be in certain emotional space (aka not hormonally weepy? unless this is what she wants?!?) but I can’t wait to get into it. Just listened to Waxahatchee’s and had a nice time! I think I prefer her last album, St. Cloud, but that one got embedded into me in an intense pandemic period, so I’ve got to give this one some more chances.
UPDATES TO THE GROUP CHAT:
There haven’t been any more cocoons-as-potent-methapors in our yard since that last one, but there has been an absolute burst of life in our garden. All of a sudden, in the barren dirt patch behind our house, wild grasses and weeds and flowers are blooming. There are new blossoms on all of the fruit trees that were hacked into submission before we moved in, and overall there is a lot of hope in our garden. There are also mysterious patches of matted grass that we find in the morning, like some creatures are finding refuge in our backyard overnight. OR, could John Wayne, the huge-balled, sex-crazed maniacal squirrel we share the space with, be hosting some frisky get-togethers? I sort of want to borrow a night camera to see, but then again….do I?
From a long-ago gift guide Portland vintage store Maven Collective is having a 25% off the whole store sale starting today! Missoula favorite Aporta is closing their brick and mortar store :( but will still have their wares available online! As they’re closing down the store, they are marking down lots of inventory, including 70% off a rapidly dwindling sale section!!
Remember when I told you that seafood is a sensitive subject for me? The other night Jesse and I went out to a nice dinner in our neighborhood and ordered a half dozen oysters and some scallops to start- I was being extra brave!! But when our server came out, he was buckling under the weight of one dozen oysters. When we told him there had been a mistake, he said that they were ours free of charge. And guess what? I housed a full half dozen and they were delicious 😎, shout out Queen Street! Also I feel like not enough people are talking about how scallops are the gnocchi of the sea? A more intensive thought piece to come.
Merch Madness
I met Jacob Blumberg when he was living on a houseboat in the Bay Area, which is why he’s in my phone as Houseboat Jacob to this day. He is one of those creative wizards who do just about everything so it’s hard for me to understand What He Does. He works in music, he works in film, he started The Virginia Woolf Book Club, of which I am a proud member, he does not have social media. Do you love him?
I made some hats for my book club. I drove 16 minutes to LA’s Fashion District to a place called World Of Hats that had no web presence to speak of. I picked out a faded blue cotton cap, white embroidery thread, and emailed a logo image of Virginia Woolf’s head I had made on Dall-E. I handed $110 in cash to a man named Israel. It’s hard to explain the feeling I had two weeks later when I walked out of World Of Hats with a bag of 25 hats, all bearing the same logo. This is maybe a rumination on that feeling, and also a manifesto for merch. Long live merch.
Merch, a more playful rework of the distastefully capitalist term “merchandise,” sometimes connotes a feeling of in-group exclusivity, filial belonging, or a shortcut to identity and self-expression that bypasses much of the messiness of “taste” and “style.” Wearing merch feels like both the most concentrated form of high fashion brand signaling and the lowest-brow desecration of style by allowing yourself to become a walking billboard. These days, it can be hard to spot merch in all the different approaches brands try to market themselves. Think of exclusive fashion brands partnering with Uniqlo, or white t-shirts that cost $100. Merch can be anything, anywhere, at any time. Merch, it may be said, is a state of mind.
Long before I made the hats, or started the book club, I had been telling people that I believed the future of fashion was merch. I was watching all around me merch take on a life of its own. The ubiquitous Joy Division t-shirt or New Yorker tote bag had been haunting indie scenes for years, but around 2014 I began clocking what to me seemed an undeniable trend - the minor league sports team apparel, the vintage tour shirt, the Outdoor Voices tote - merch was transforming my fashion landscape at large.
Overnight, everyone now seemed to be asking you to become an advertisement for their band, coffee roastery, or succulent shop. Bookstores that sold rare books that only the gratuitously wealthy could afford would happily sell you a $40 t-shirt that said “Winona” on the front. Brands like Braindead and artists like David Shrigly that sold expensive and exclusive clothes and art now ran online merch stores that looked oddly similar both in their user interface and price point. Merch promised something similar to what I imagine the Industrial Revolution might have promised the proletariat back in the day - “soon you will be able to buy cheap products that make you feel rich!”
This might not seem like anything that revolutionary at first. Isn’t all fashion just performance, identity-creation, and cultural signaling? What makes merch so special? Clothes are a status symbol, and that status used to be pretty directly related to how many jewels you owned. Does merch simply fill a void for the aspirational masses? The maxim coined by Marshall McLuhan - “the medium is the message” - reminds us to look not at the naturally-dyed cotton, the hand-stitched detailing, or the shiny jewels, but to the carriers of these cultural and aesthetic contents. If merch could be said to be our generation’s own, late-capitalist textile medium, distinct from fashion trends of the past, what could its message be?
Merch messaging excels in its directness. Telling people that you are wearing Balenciaga is a lot harder than having a shirt that tells them for you. Merch populates in our culture the way memes on the internet do, quickly and increasingly self-referentially. And like a meme, merch works best when it is specific.
However, the sheer amount of things being merchandised at us has resulted in an oversaturation of signs and signifiers. The New Yorker tote bag no longer means anything about your cultural status without also being paired with Birkenstocks with socks. Your Yankees hat is a confusing blend of cultural locations, ironic references, and the earnest need to block the sun from your eyes. In 2013, the trend forecasting group K-HOLE attempted to describe this overwhelm with the terms “Mass Indie” and “Normcore” in a pdf called “Youth Mode.” They saw “Mass Indie” as an additive experience of the previous generation’s indie subcultures, the piling on of identities and aesthetics to create new social groups founded on a blend of diversity and sameness. In contrast, Normcore was a centripetal force rejecting diversity in exchange for infinite adaptability and belonging. Mass Indie culture attempts to embrace the chaos of our modern merch landscape; Normcore merch tries to tame that chaos into blandness.
What makes merch cool? K-HOLE states that “Normcore moves away from a coolness that relies on difference to a post-authenticity coolness that opts into sameness.” Merch could be thought of as a tool of the Normcore moment, where what matters is less being an authentic individual and more having an array of merchandise that confirms your existence via belonging.
I read the message of merch as one of both belonging and abstraction. You may never own a David Shrigly print (€3000) but you can belong for the price of a t-shirt (€39). Abstraction here is a money-saving shortcut to meaning. The art has been abstracted into design which has been abstracted further into a shirt, keychain, or salad tong, but the original intention of the art is somewhat (hopefully) preserved.
There is an earnestness to this gathering of tokens and souvenirs. For a generation that thrifts and recycles much of its fashion, purchasing new merch feels more like casting a vote than voting. And today, clothing brands like Fashion Brand Company, Online Ceramics, and 69 recycle (and abstract) the aesthetics of merchandise into new fashions for consumption. They are, at least in part, looking to capitalize on this earnest, democratic emotion and in the process further the abstracted messages of merch into head-spinning meta-levels. Merch, like memes, democracy, or God, is ever-changing, self conscious, and accessible to all.
Is this why I made the hats for the book club? Because I wanted to feel like I was part of a group? Because I wanted others to think my coolness was “post-authentic?” Because I wanted to feel closer to God? Maybe I wanted to prove to myself that a $4 hat could bring me as much joy as a bejeweled crown; it certainly does a better job of shading my face. Whatever the impulse, ten more people joined the book club after they saw the hats.
I’ll see you next week my friends! The last Sunday of March, can you believe it? This week I am working a ton ton, but Jesse and I are also seeing Mitski in concert, so! A glimmer in a marathon of a week. Love ya! Pray 4 me!
xx Olivia
jelly of the Mitski! and I preordered the vinyl of the new Waxahatchee and gave it a first spin yesterday, I’m really enjoying it!