[Anthropologie Botanic blazer + trusted holey Alexander Wang t-shirt + B-Low The Belt Bellbottom Blues belt, completely obsessed + Report heels + Level 99 trousers.]
Listen. I never intended this blog to include photos of myself. No, I’m being honest. It didn’t even occur to me to add actual photos at first—let alone photos of myself. Eventually, with an agonizing foray into posts with photos of myself (in a week-long project to come to terms with one’s own life mistakes via the forcible wearing of old garments destined for donation), I saw this undeniable response: people liked ’em.
There was no turning back. I’ve come to loathe it in a way, like photos are a necessary evil to get to write stuff. Some days, I just want to age and gain weight like a normal person, not have to examine each and every shift in my physicality by sifting through photos for this blog that’s supposed to be from my bean—not some Awmee Fucking Song (jesus, she’s terrible) attempt at vague celebrity by attempting to be a model and alienate people with well-edited slices of my dreamy life. I’m not a model. I’m a writer.
The rest, as they say, snowballed away. There are good parts to it: I’ve learned my style in fast-forward, and am so 100% comfortable in my own skin (and own t-shirts) that I own my shit. I OWN IT. Also, it’s ok; I can absorb the accusations of vanity. The more difficult thing has been trying to reconcile putting up photos of myself and benignly tagging items of clothing with writing really heartfelt, honest stuff that has nothing to do with clothes. I never wanted to be a fashion blogger, I just wanted to write. And if you knew how impossibly horrible the photo-taking process is—the sifting through of unimaginably unflattering images, and the coming to grips with one’s flaws and aging through high definition photo software—all pretense of my doing this blog as an act of vanity (in the sheer physical sense) would vanish.
Ironically, the last year has been what I wish this blog had always been, if it has to be photos of me. Me in my house, doing what I do. Not posing on a sidewalk. If there’s anything I’m angling toward on this blog (and appreciate in your continued reading) is honesty with you.
What I do struggle with more is the fact that this crap all exists up here, like I’ve singlehandedly made up for the fact that my adolescence blessedly occurred without things like text messaging, Facebook, or cyberbullying. Instead, I get a massive online library of idiocy.
5 years of white mess-jackets.
I’ll keep the below brief, while sharing with you my favorite Bertie Wooster anecdote, thus giving everyone a fresh new parallel to make while examining negligible choices: both fashion-related and otherwise.
From Right Ho, Jeeves, I present to you the valet’s unwavering sense of right and wrong, in respect to an offensive item of clothing. For what it’s worth, I’ve always considered Rob my Jeeves in almost all matters. And I never take it for granted. This first bit occurs after Bertie’s come back from a vacay in Cannes. He’s tan and fresh from the shower—perhaps my most favorite way to exist, ever. But I digress.
I urge you to read the whole book, but […] shall denote omissions for the sake of bloggy brevity.
Now up to this point, as you will doubtless agree, what you might call a perfect harmony had prevailed. Friendly gossip between employer and employed, and everything as sweet as a nut. But at this juncture, I regret to say, there was an unpleasant switch. The atmosphere suddenly changed, the storm clouds began to gather, and before we knew where we were, the jarring note had come bounding on the scene. I have known this to happen before in the Wooster home.
The first intimation I had that things were about to hot up was a pained and disapproving cough from the neighbourhood of the carpet. For, during the above exchanges, I should explain, while I, having dried the frame, had been dressing in a leisurely manner, donning here a sock, there a shoe, and gradually climbing into the vest, the shirt, the tie, and the knee-length, Jeeves had been down on the lower level, unpacking my effects.
He now rose, holding a white object. And at the sight of it, I realized that another of our domestic crises had arrived, another of those unfortunate clashes of will between two strong men, and that Bertram, unless he remembered his fighting ancestors and stood up for his rights, was about to be put upon.
I don’t know if you were at Cannes this summer. If you were, you will recall that anybody with any pretensions to being the life and soul of the party was accustomed to attend binges at the Casino in the ordinary evening-wear trouserings topped to the north by a white mess-jacket with brass buttons. And ever since I had stepped aboard the Blue Train at Cannes station, I had been wondering on and off how mine would go with Jeeves.
See, there it is. The stubborn hint that we’re doing something off-color, but can’t be stopped! I like to think that my white mess-jackets have become more legal and less offensive as time has worn on, but this could probably just be clouded by my becoming more stubborn and convincing as I age. 33 is so hilarious. I relish bad choices these days.
In the matter of evening costume, you see, Jeeves is hidebound and reactionary. I had had trouble with him before about soft-bosomed shirts. And while these mess-jackets had, as I say, been all the rage–tout ce qu’il y a de chic–on the Côte d’Azur, I had never concealed it from myself, even when treading the measure at the Palm Beach Casino in the one I had hastened to buy, that there might be something of an upheaval about it on my return.
I prepared to be firm.
Here’s where we come nose to nose with those who know better. Bad move. “Carey, wear sunscreen.” “Carey! More coke to rum, not the other way around!” “Bearino—just do not put in to writing that which you might regret down the line.” “Head-to-toe J.Crew as an original look? Interesting.” “Ma’am, you want to trade in this classic first issue Green Day CD for this Candlebox CD? You’re sure?”
“Yes, Jeeves?” I said. And though my voice was suave, a close observer in a position to watch my eyes would have noticed a steely glint. Nobody has a greater respect for Jeeves’s intellect than I have, but this disposition of his to dictate to the hand that fed him had got, I felt, to be checked. This mess-jacket was very near to my heart, and I jolly well intended to fight for it with all the vim of grand old Sieur de Wooster at the Battle of Agincourt.
“Yes, Jeeves?” I said. “Something on your mind, Jeeves?”
“I fear that you inadvertently left Cannes in the possession of a coat belonging to some other gentleman, sir.”
HA-HA-HA. Behold this gentlemanly exchange:
I switched on the steely a bit more.
“No, Jeeves,” I said, in a level tone, “the object under advisement is mine. I bought it out there.”
“You wore it, sir?”
“Every night.”
“But surely you are not proposing to wear it in England, sir?”
I saw that we had arrived at the nub.
“Yes, Jeeves.”
“But, sir—-”
“You were saying, Jeeves?”
“It is quite unsuitable, sir.”
“I do not agree with you, Jeeves. I anticipate a great popular success for this jacket. It is my intention to spring it on the public tomorrow at Pongo Twistleton’s birthday party, where I confidently expect it to be one long scream from start to finish. No argument, Jeeves. No discussion. Whatever fantastic objection you may have taken to it, I wear this jacket.”
“Very good, sir.”
He went on with his unpacking. I said no more on the subject. I had won the victory, and we Woosters do not triumph over a beaten foe. Presently, having completed my toilet, I bade the man a cheery farewell […] Sort of olive branch, if you see what I mean.
I’m all about owning one’s choices, but things with this mess-jacket got, well, messy. Beware the yes-men of your respective Drones Clubs!
“You’re all wrong about that mess jacket, Jeeves.”
“These things are matters of opinion, sir.”
“When I wore it at the Casino at Cannes, beautiful women nudged one another and whispered: ‘Who is he?'”
“The code at Continental casinos is notoriously lax, sir.”
“And when I described it to Pongo last night, he was fascinated.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“So were all the rest of those present. One and all admitted that I had got hold of a good thing. Not a dissentient voice.”
“Indeed, sir?”
Without additional commentary, let’s see what happened next.
You remember that [Jeeves] caught that 12.45 train with the luggage, while I remained on in order to keep a luncheon engagement. Well, just before I started out to the tryst, I was pottering about the flat, and suddenly–I don’t know what put the suspicion into my head, possibly the fellow’s manner had been furtive–something seemed to whisper to me to go and have a look in the wardrobe.
And it was as I had suspected. There was the mess-jacket still on its hanger. The hound hadn’t packed it.
Well, as anybody at the Drones will tell you, Bertram Wooster is a pretty hard chap to outgeneral. I shoved the thing in a brown-paper parcel and put it in the back of the car, and it was on a chair in the hall now. But that didn’t alter the fact that Jeeves had attempted to do the dirty on me, and I suppose a certain what-d’you-call-it had crept into my manner during the above remarks.
“Oh?” I said. “You do, do you? Well, be that as it may, it doesn’t alter the fact that you’ve put out the wrong coat. Be so good, Jeeves,” […] “as to shove that bally black thing in the cupboard and bring out my white mess-jacket with the brass buttons.”
“I regret to say, sir, that I inadvertently omitted to pack the garment to which you refer.”
The vision of that parcel in the hall seemed to rise before my eyes, and I exchanged a merry wink with it. I may even have hummed a bar or two. I’m not quite sure.
“I know you did, Jeeves,” I said, laughing down from lazy eyelids and nicking a speck of dust from the irreproachable Mechlin lace at my wrists. “But I didn’t. You will find it on a chair in the hall in a brown-paper parcel.”
“You might just slide down and fetch it, will you?”
“Very good, sir.”
“Right ho, Jeeves.”
And presently I was sauntering towards the drawing-room with me good old j. nestling snugly abaft the shoulder blades.
I hope you don’t think I’m calling you a Drones Club crony because you’ve been such a wonderful, loyal and supportive readers. I just hope you’ll forgive me my mess-jackets, as I forgive those who have mess-jacketed against me.
Breaking code: how rad is this hideous floral jacket?
I thought so.
-C.
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