HEY SKANKS, I HAVE INSOMNIA.
It’s 6am and I’ve been awake for the last, I don’t know, three hours, I guess. Got a few solid hours of sleep but then I woke up and started staring into the abyss, then staring at my phone until I remembered that nothing on the internet has ever successfully shut off my brain, so I got bored instead. Then I decided to start typing. But not in a productive way. God, no.
I’ve been trying to embrace slacker lifestyle as anticapitalist revolt. Trying to melt into my bed for hours, not move, not stress. Live like an animal and forget that I have a credit score. But unfortunately my genetic makeup is, like, half anxiety-ridden people-pleaser and I was born to people who sincerely believe in the American Dream so often, I wake up in a sweat at 3 a.m. going “Okay but isn’t there something you should be worrying about?” or “You have a writing degree, how do we write about this? How are we moving forward?”
Answer to nagging question one: Obviously.
Answer two: newsletter. lol
Remember that era of the internet when cool girls were defending their shoplifting with evolutionary theory, being like “it’s my hunter gatherer roots!!!” and other girls were like “yas bitch, i feel this in my pores. we stan a shoplifting QUEEN. winona 4ever. LiLo pls stomp on my face”? This is kinda like that.
I need to gather. Idk if it’s compulsive or evolutionary but my impulse to shop browse is strong. These days I’m trying to ~bE f!sC@LLy r3sP0nsIbLe~* and N0t spEnD $$$ on Fr!v0lit3s (slacker lifestyle = slacker budget) and (SADLY!!) I’ve outgrown shoplifting, so the gathering impulse has just become kinda tragic.
So I’m transmuting it here. Gathering shit from around the internet and presenting it to you for no real reason other than I need an outlet. And this feels better than doomscrolling memes for hours.
I hate clever transitions so let’s just get right into this…
OKAY SO: what I want more than anything in this world right now is luxe goth knits. The vibe is best encapsulated by Rodarte’s F/W 2008 collection, which was inspired by Japanese slasher films.
(Sidebar: the era of Agyness Deyn and Karen Elson!! What a spree! Who remembers!?)
The dresses are fantastic. Particularly this red, white and black cobwebby number that is so fuckin impractical, I would wear it absolutely anywhere. With, like, stripper pasties and I don’t know, edible underwear or something. It’s slutty. It’s luxe. It’s moody. All the things that I adore.
This dress has been on my mind since 2008. A few pandemic cycles ago, I told myself I was going to learn to knit, with the intention of recreating it. Obviously that hasn’t happened because obviously I haven’t dedicated the time to learning how to knit anything besides a basic-ass scarf. With impractical hope, I’ve had this pattern from Morph Knitwear open on my computer for weeks. But I still haven’t bought the proper needles for it.
(Maybe I need a knitting circle? Idk. Cool knitters: any tips for making this less boring? I used to sew and kinda loved that because of the constant low simmer danger of getting ur fingers impaled by the needle. Is there any dangerous knitting??)
I’m finally admitting to myself that I probably don’t have the focus (or desire, honestly) to complete this knit on my own, so I’m looking to other designers who are recreating the Rodarte hot slasher vibe on their own terms.
First up is Kepler. Some seriously GORGEOUS pieces in pipedream budget. The pieces are this really unique blend of medieval knight and post-apocalyptic cool. There’s definitely some fencing school drop-out energy here, too. Like someone who used to sincerely shout “engarde” but now just kinda lazes at home all day with a beer and trauma stories that you’ve heard a million times before. (Or is this just me projecting…?)
Last year, Marc Jacobs’ stole-all-their-ideas-from-my-mind-somehow? line Heaven began making webby loose knits. It feels like the natural answer to the Billie Eilish set seeing their queen at the Met Gala. We’re still moody goths, but we’re sexy and luxurious now. We still wear clothing with holes, only we’ve rebranded it as “negative space.” (We’ve become intolerable snobs!)
There’s also Swedish knitwear artist MEGA MIKAELA, who has made some jawdropping iterations of the torn knits (particularly paired with this deconstructed-Paco-Rabanne-vibe disc skirt…holy shit, so good). If they ever remake “Blade Runner” again and I’m the costume designer, everybody is wearing some version of this aesthetic. Idk whether to call this post-glamour or dystopian glamour. It’s like walking through the streets of Soho and seeing that somebody used a Chanel shopping bag to throw out their trash. Incredible visual metaphor.
And may the lord bless and keep V4K. This unreal “Holey Dress” has everything that I loved about the Rodarte dress, made slightly more wearable for an only-slightly-delusional person in the world today. It’s a look that says “society is falling apart and so is my dress!!”
J’adorable is also churning out some sick knits recently. I’m focused on this pair of “Aetherius distressed flares” which I’m seriously, deeply, profoundly hoping are named after the Aetherius religious movement.
According to the only source my lazy ass has referenced (obv Wikipedia), the new age religion emphasizes “altruism, community service, nature worship, spiritual healing and physical exercise.” And aliens. Of course there’s aliens.
I cling to this hope because I don’t want to be the only one linking fashion to spiritual movements.
Lately, I’ve been listening to Ram Dass lectures while trying to fall asleep because I’m caught up in meaning of life shit. And the episode I was insomniac-ing to last night involved him visiting death row, being surprised at how spiritual the inmates were and speaking about it to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross (yeah, that Kubler-Ross) who responded, “We’re all on death row.”
And yeah, my little macabre sweeties, the line keeps slapping my mind. I’ve realized that I miss being a goth teen and dressing with one eye in the mirror, the other on my funeral. Memento Mori 4ever. Skulls and black eyeliner till I die. Give me torn fishnets. Give me grown-up Hot Topic. Give me it all.
I was going off about the podcast episode to one of my BFFs, Alicia, the other day and at the end of my spiel, she brought out her copy of “This Life” by Martin Hagglund. The book basically argues that as soon as you realize that everyone currently on this planet only has one life and This Is It (let’s disregard reincarnation for this discussion), you automatically should become at least a fucking socialist. Like, bare minimum.
(Alicia is one of the only people whose book recommendations I trust, so I’m prob gonna pick this one up soon. LMK if you do too. [Is this a book club? Am I starting a book club? JFC.])
I’m obv intrigued. Slacker lifestyle for everyone. Make labor less of your life and enjoy your life more. (As a materialistic brat, I’m also prone to fully-automated luxury communism type of thinking.)
A few days ago, I spent two hours on the phone with my brother trying to defend decay, demise and doom. He’s very much of the “we should be using science to develop immortality” vein of thinking and I am very much not. That’s because we profoundly disagree on the point of life itself. He is a musician and finds meaning through writing songs. What’s admirable about his thinking is that it’s not the product that drives him (glory, immortality through work, whatever) but the act of creation itself. He wants to live forever so that he can keep playing music.
I lack this drive. Most of the time, I absolutely hate writing. Loathe it. I only do it as catharsis or therapy — which I know people ridicule but whatever. Let me get this off my chest.
I love parties. I love glamour. I love talking to funny strangers and just being alive in the spring, seeing the leaves burst back from the trees and men jogging without their shirts and women shortening their skirts. I love the pigeons who fuck outside my window in the morning, coming home at sunrise to the grisly cooing of their orgies. But what I love most is how despite all the reasons to stop — despite pain, loss, senselessness, violence and endings — life just keeps going.
So I guess that’s why I don’t mind futility: I can romanticize anything. And I guess I do.
Now we’re getting into the point of why I think I’m actually writing this newsletter…it’s not evolutionary and it’s not bc I’m bored………………….it’s bc I can’t resist using aestheticism/materialism as a route into less tangible conversations. Idk babies…the older I get, the less I am able to resist interpreting everything as a sign, signal or symbol. My most toxic trait is that I can’t resist the impulse to make everything a lesson. I could blame that on the fact that my mother was a teacher. I could blame that on my Virgo moon. I could blame that on a lot of things.
But instead, I’m going to end this newsletter just as it’s getting good. (Gotta give u something to come back for. kiss kiss)
In conclusion: someone pls buy me some slutty goth luxe knits. I think they’re cool.
xxC