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In case anyone missed it, I am an enormous dork. Evidence, of course, is leaked all over this blog in the form of literary inspired fashion, poetic quotations—or those taken from theoretical articles and citations, and inspirational book covers. Not to mention that these days it is decidedly uncool to trot around a college campus or mall dressed up like a French school girl, librarian, tea-time visitor, or other preciously quaint and whimsical identities. But I'm also a dork of a totally other kind. I'm not really entirely sure where to begin this kind of thing because there are so many dorky facets of my life and personality that picking one as a defining characteristic is a daunting task, not to mention impossible.

I'm an enormous fan. My whole life I have had rabid hopeless obsessions with things. Weird things like Victorian wasting diseases (who doesn't love a good one of those?), musicals, 18th century novels, fantasy (always), historical persons or events, cartoons, movies, books and book series, the color orange. I think one of my first obsessions was Les Miserables. I was eight and I saw the Tenth Anniversary Concert on the local public station when they were doing one of those drives, and was hooked. I tried to read the book when I was a pretentious 13 year-old, made costumes, bought every CD I could find, and spent hours on the internet. I was also uncannily good at roping uninterested companions into playing my current obesession games. This habit has not changed. It's been Les Miz, CATS (musicals were especially enthralling), Sailor Moon (hmm), Titanic, Tamora Pierce books, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and many other things I can't even force myself to remember. These escapades involve a total immersion for months, sometimes even years at a time. Sometimes I miss the totality of these kinds of things. It's like a love affair in a way, but I'm not going to force that analogy farther than that. One of the important bits about these phases is that they resurface throughout my life. In recent years there have been very few new ones. Instead I notice the resurfacing of the old loves, although now they are mildly bittersweet and somewhat detatched.

This is getting long. I don't know that I care! The thing is, like anything else these phases are so strongly associated with my aesthetic and emotional memory that my reactions to them are visceral. I'm being melodramatic. But that's the idea anyway. It's that whole bit about how a certain song can transport you through memory to certain feelings in your stomach and head, smells, visions, just those intangible feelings of the state of body! I've been avoiding my point here. I'm experiencing a revisiting of my Lord of the Rings love. My boyfriend, not realizing I was in possession the the extended editions of each film, suggested we have a marathon of the films (that was a bit of a struggle). Since then I've had them on in the background almost non-stop, just as I did back-in-the-day. I'm a big fan of the cast commentaries on these in particular, they're sort of awesome and in some ways usurp the films themselves.

But do you know, they just thrill me? They make me so happy I think I just want to cry, or pretend, or something. The first, Fellowship, has especially strong memories for me and it's definitely my favorite. Oh, but I can't describe it! It is the very pinnacle of my dorkish sensibilities! The feeling it gives me is simultaneously one that I would have gotten anyway just from the experience, but then also doubly of that I had when I was a sophomore in high school and my best friends were equally obsessed. Late nights with movies, websites, food and weird inside-jokes about LotR are so dear to me that the whole thing almost breaks my heart.

Of course, the costumes are endlessly fascinating—since it seems necessary to bring this back around to questions of style (although, honestly, it's not a stretch as for me, and I think for most bloggers, it's something we almost always notice. I am sorry, coma, to abuse you thus)--and make me envious. Of course the male costumes are wonderful and interesting, but to tell the truth the women's costumes tickle my fancy! They're sort of nostalgic in a way, reminiscent of all the kinds of dresses princess seemed to wear in stories, and the kinds of outfits I always doodled in my notebooks: improbably fastenings, long sweeping sleeves, trains, delicious embroidery and braids! I love it, the sort of regal Medieval look. To be fair though, it does touch on something much more Pre-Raphelite—which of course is so inspiring and exciting and pretty that I think I might pass out.





"In the middle of the table, against the woven cloths upon the wall, there was a chair under a canopy, and there sat a lady fair to look upon, and so like was she in form of womanhood to Elrond that Frodo guessed that she was one of his close kindred. Young she was and yet not so. The braids of her dark hair were touched by no frost; her white arms and clear face were flawless and smooth and the light of stars was in her bright eyes, grey as cloudless night; yet queenly she looked, and thought and knowledge were in her glance, as of one who has known many things that the years bring. Above her brow her head was covered with a cap of silver lace netted with small gems, glittering white; but her soft grey raiment had no ornament save a girdle of leaves wrought in silver. So it was that Frodo saw her whom few mortals had yet seen; Arwen, daughter of Elrong, in whom it was said that the likeness of Luthien had come on earth again; and she was called Undomiel, for she was the Evenstar of her people. Long she had been in the land of her mother's kin, in Lorien beyond the mountains, and was but lately returned to Rivendell to her father's house."

-Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien






This one has nothing to do with anything, other than it's my favorite Waterhouse (which, I suppose it sort of works. He's sort of vaguely Pre-Raphelite, no? I seem to remember there is some debate over that. Oh well!) ever. I love it. I need to have this dress, it is constantly in my dreams! 

As usual, I've been vaguely outlining and composing this post in my head for a few weeks. Now seems the perfect time for several reasons, the most prominent of which is the newest issue of Lula magazine (which we, of course, don't have access to just yet. Its oozing onto various blogs and such slowly, subversively, and making me pouty and jealous) and it's article with all those gothy little illustrations of our favorite heroines. Add to that the impending twitches of inklings of Halloween costumes and it would be unnatural of me to hold this kind of thing in any longer.

We, or at the very least I (but I know I am not alone in this), are fascinated and jealous, inspired and in deep meaningful love with Weird Girls. They're our fictional bosom buddies, different from fictional boyfriends (I have lots of literary fictional boyfriends—that is, literary crushes—I am a fictional slut) and in many ways better because we don't particularly care that they don't exist. There is always something about them, and like the literary 1920s heroines in my most recent essay-ish post, we're inexplicably preoccupied by what the wear and their strange mannerisms. More important are their strange quirks that instead of being just plain weird, are charming and original and drive us to form our own strange mannerisms, habits, and penchants. We know that is best to let these things come naturally, as it so often does for them, but all the same I can't deny my own habits for attempting to adopt those silly quirks and things for myself.

I somehow had a harder time coming up with a fair number of Weird Girls that either haven't already covered in some capacity or who satisfied me enough with the personality and aesthetic I had dreamed up. By definition of course I shouldn't be able to come up with lists and lists of them, but I'm a bit particular really. She's got to be sullen, so it helps to have those outsider somewhat antisocial tendencies, usually some kind of depressive that hipsters can't help but fawn over, the spawn of Franny Glass type deals. This led me to eliminate such heroines full of fairy tale whimsy such as Alice Liddel and Madeline, although I can't explain exactly what sort of thing they were missing that made me ostracise them so!

The two most obvious to me are Margot Tenenbaum and Wednesday Addams (who are of course feature in Lula, I swear I had these thoughts before!). Both undeniably sullen and pouty, with instantly recognizable aesthetics. Wes Anderson movies, I have notice, seem to cater especially to this kind of thing, reaching into such bits as Natalie Portman's character in Hotel Chevalier. Which, at that thought, brings me to one I hadn't thought of: the wonderfully if somewhat cliché Sam in Garden State. But, I digress (I blatantly ignore proper use of this word! How scandalous!). I've long considered trying to wear a fur coat normally, and you've witnessed my attempts to bring penny loafers out of my high school uniform experiences and into real life a la Margot. I think at one point I attempted to find one of those bulky portable TV sets, which sadly won't work anymore after a while, and did adopt my own habit of soaking in the tub for ages and ages (before I broke the faucet and killed that leisurely activity).



"I can't even begin to think about knowing how to answer that question."



"She was known for her extreme secrecy. For example, none of the Tenenbaums knew she was a smoker, which she had been since the age of 12. Nor were they aware of her first marriage and divorce to a recording artist in Jamaica. She kept a private studio in Mockingbird heights under the name 'Helen Scott'. She had not completed a play in seven years."
-The Royal Tenenbaums

Wednesday harkens back to me childhood a little bit more, and tends to cater to that somewhat vaguely goth aesthetic (similarly shared by Emily the Strange who, I do admit, I have a certain lingering fondness for). As fictional characters they can carry these strong looks effortlessly, be these funny strange girls on the page and on film with their missing fingers and decapitated dolls.



"I'm a homicidal maniac, they look just like everyone else. "



Then, there are girls like Clementine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, with all that colored hair and the orange hoodie (I searched high and low until I found one like it!) and weird conglomerations of outfits. She's not particularly nice, but I can't help but be drawn to her, and the personality that 'promises to take you out of the ordinary'. Maybe it's just because I always wanted, at some secret level, to have insanely colored hair. But there is something about her, just like in all of them, in her manner of speaking and thoughts and ideas that is deeply appealing to me.



"I'm sorry I came off kinda nutso. I'm not, really."

At the Kennerley's in Mamaroneck that spring, Arnold Genthe took a photograph of her standing among the blossoms of a magnolia tree in full bloom. Wearing that linen dress, she just touched the branches of the tree, her glance away from the camera and slightly downcast, her long curling hair caught in a know at the nape of her neck. She looked winsome and young and fragile, as if at any minute she might become a wood nymph (115).



I also really love these biographies for their pictures. There is the one which is her high school graduation picture, with giant bows on her hair and neck, although my absolute favorites are those of her wedding to Eugen Boissevain.
“On July 18, 1923, Edna St. Vincent Millay married Eugen Boissevain in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. She was ill and looked worn as Norma took the mosquito netting from the porch and, pinning roses from the garden on it, made her wedding veil”.



Despite the illness, I think they are just glorious pictures. The kind of lethargic, effortless (although not really so) practicality to build something pretty and frivolous and romantic fills my tiny heart with aesthetic joy. I cannot of course, hide that the tiniest part of me is thrilled to bits that all of this takes place mere hours, minutes, and all that from where I've grown up. The moments I've chosen are from earlier in the biography, but be assured that throughout the rest of the books there are many equally divine interpretations and descriptions of garments and inspirational bits (not, of course, limited to clothing, but still). It is part of what makes me feel wistful and bitter that I don't live in a time when everything I wore was darling and beautiful and looked like the things in the pictures. It is what I strive so hard for, and yet it does get interrupted by terrible alien invasions.

I must admit that I was not quite as taken with Zelda, or Zelda. There is something sinister about her, I have always thought, although that did not make the biography any less interesting, I suppose it is in that I do not, in the middle-school mentality and desire, feel a particular personal connection. I don't think she's the type of person I would particularly like, but of course there is no possible way not to be at least the tiniest bit fascinated. Pictures of her are slightly less loose-around-the-edges in manner of dress, more in-fashion and smart and shining, more movie-star and red carpet like.

“Graduation was held at the Grand Theater the evening of May 31. There had been a lot of discussion about what the girls should wear, some wanting expensive dresses and no flowers, while others thought that dresses for which the materials were not more than five dollars would be best, with each girl carrying red roses, which were plentiful and cheap. One of Zelda's classmates, Lucy Goldthwaite, said, 'None of us had too much money in those days in the south, and our vote was finally for the five-dollar dresses with flowers.' A few of the girls were disappointed but in an era when store-bought clothes were scarce everyone set about getting their seamstresses to make the prettiest dresses possible within the five-dollar limit. That evening as they gathered behind the stage for the procession, Zelda turned up in a magnificent white silk dress with a tunic of chiffon floating over it, and a large-brimmed hat with long streamers down her back. 'You can't imagine how lovely she was,' Lucy said, 'but of course we were all shocked and some of us were resentful. I mean, it wasn't fair.' No one knows why Zelda ignored the five-dollar rule, or whether she had told her mother, who had undoubtedly made the costume, about it, but everyone agreed that it was just like her” (23).




“It was the first garment bought after the marriage ceremony and again the months have unsymmetrically eaten the nap off the seat of the skirt. This makes fifteen years it had been stored in trunks because of our principal of not throwing away things that have never been used. We are glad—oh so relieved, to find it devastated at last” (66)




The world and clothes described in this one are different, somehow more decadent although the circles cross and are indexed in different points in each, and out of the two this one makes me inexplicably (have you noticed this is one of my favorite words? It makes me self-conscious but I just love the job that it does) pine for underpinnings reminiscent of vintage underwear.

I am just nearing the end of Life with Picasso, and although it is stranger and in some ways vastly different, something about the crowded pack-rat-ness of it applies and is so similar to the previous books. It's both a biography and an autobiography of sorts, and so it enters, I suppose, into a strange world of literary theory (if we want to bother going there, that is) and makes me simultaneously interested in several people at once.

This book in particular lends itself well to fashionalities since, honestly, and I am certain it's subject would detest this kind of thing, it's about visual art. The descriptions of faces and bodes are fascinating and stupor-inducing.



“We were still at table when Picasso and his friends left. It was a cool evening and he put on a heavy mackinaw and a beret. Dora Maar was wearing a fur coat with square shoulders and shoes of a type many girls wore during the Occupation, when leather, along with so many other things, was scarce. They had thick wooden soles and high heels. With those high heels, the padded shoulders, and her heiratic carriage, she seemed a majestic Amazon, towering a full head over the man in the hip-length mackinaw and the beret basque (15).

“On the other side of the room I saw Picasso, surrounded by six or eight people. He was dressed in an old pair of trousers that hug loosely from his hips, and a blue striped sailor's jersey” (17).

Despite this ever-present jersey, most of the snapshots of Picasso in the book feature him shirtless, although many of them are beach scenes which even in black and white make me pine for sand and foamy, salty water despite the simultaneous yearning for crisp autumn days. I find myself reading this book and leaning forwards and perking up at the mention of clothes. I suppose it is because clothing is really so personal. It is what touches us, wraps us up, it's why many of us love (or I suppose, for others, why they are weirded out by) vintage clothing. It's the history, as is there anything as close to a person as the fibers that lie on them? It's deeply personal, these fabrics, clothes, that caress and fold over bodies. Perhaps that's making it all out to be somewhat more sensual than I mean, but not really.

This biography is short on clothing descriptions for ages and ages, and then all at once there are long passages of insight.

“Pablo had no problem buying shirts of shoes, but buying a suit caused him a great deal of trouble. He was fairly broad in the chest and shoulders, and had the proportions in that area of a much larger man, but since he was very small otherwise, he couldn't buy a suit off the rack that fit him [...] 'It turns my life upside down,' he explained to me. 'I can't paint when I know I have to go to a fitting.'” (224)

The thing is, I don't know. I am fascinated by it, I think most people are, we are constantly fascinated by what people wear. I find, in reading, that I want more, I want detailed descriptions of those outfits and dresses and trousers for which pictures aren't included. A tall order, I know, but I feel a compulsion while I am reading about lives on pages to be able to construct them in my head. Somehow, and bloggers and magazines and all sorts of people have pontificated much more eloquently than I on this very topic, it is that intensely personal nature of style, of what one is wearing that is so important. I remember when I was a kid, scribbling and writing funny little stories, it was always too important to know what characters were wearing. It drove me mad not to know exactly, I had to record every detail about it because every one of those little bits was terrifically important and dimensional. It also ties in to something else down the line, the quirks and effortless things we attempt to acquire in the way we dress. The mismatched, iconic piece, the knack for putting something together, something that is significantly 'you'. And all the same, we still borrow from others!