PaperGirl Blog by Mary Fons

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22 Jun 2014

Fashion Is Fun Again! Thanks, New York City.

by | posted in: Fashion, New York City | 0
This was Anna Wintour's first Vogue cover. It is credited with helping to launch the "high-low mix."
This was Anna Wintour’s first Vogue cover. It is credited with helping to launch the “high-low mix.”

It was only upon finding it again that I realized I had lost a sense of fun in regard to fashion.

I love clothes. Rather than expound on why fashion is not frivolous or how different clothes make me feel like completely different people (this can be great or a nightmare) I’ll give you three of my favorite quotes on the subject from people who say it all far better than I ever will:

“Fashion is the armor to survive the reality of everyday life.”
— Bill Cunningham, New York Times fashion photographer since 1978, best known for his “street style” candid photos

“Why are people scandalized by spending money on clothes? I think there is something against fashion in the world. Everybody is so passionate about this, there’s a resistance to fashion, an idea that to love fashion is to be stupid. I think this is for two reasons. One is because clothes are very intimate. When you get dressed, you are making public your idea about yourself, and I think that embarrasses people. And two, I think that fashion is seen as women’s work. My conclusion is that because fashion touches your intimate life, it embarrasses people.”
— Miuccia Prada, from an interview in New York Magazine last year that I cut out and taped inside my closet.

“Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.”
— Jean Cocteau, 1936 and he probably wasn’t talking exactly about fashion but clearly.

In New York City, the very same sentiment that can make a person feel isolated and lonesome (“Nobody cares what I do!”) can also set her free (“Nobody cares what I do!”) That second take on it, when applied to fashion by a fashion lover, creates potential for extreme joy.

In my former downtown Chicago bachelorette life, I got pretty fancy. I knew just where to find fabulous, high-end designer clothes on the cheap. And find them I did. The tailored jacket, the well-turned high-heel, the lined, custom-fit trouser; I rocked that classy-sassy look because I wanted to, I could afford it, and I think in some small-but-probably-huge way, I needed to prove to the world that I was making good, that I had transcended my awkward, pasty Iowa self, that I was cultured and polished and that I gave a damn about art.

But in New York City, unless you live on the Upper East Side or in TriBeCa and have a record deal and/or a plastic surgery practice and/or a driver, etc., being fancy isn’t that big of a deal. It’s actually a bit outre, honestly. Here, and especially where I live in Lower Manhattan, it’s all about the high-low mix, or blending fancy pieces with vintage, super-cheap, or borrowed/begged/stolen items to create a kind of “yeah, whatever,” layered look that is exactly right. I mean, I can’t wear my Celine suit on the subway! Are you nuts?? I could sit in gum! Better to wear a pair of ripped jeans with just the Celine jacket! Ah, yes! And some bangles. And the real diamond earrings I have. And sneakers.

Discovering — remembering, perhaps — that I don’t have to search so hard for head-to-toe designer apparel has made fashion fun again. I’ve come back ’round to the truth that that a shirt from Target with pineapples on it (my new favorite shirt!) is totally acceptable and actually preferable to a discounted-but-still-pricey Alexander Wang tank top. I love pineapples! To eschew the pineapple shirt because Marni had nothing to do with it is madness.

New York, thanks. I’ll wear real Keds and fake pearls for you any day. Why, I’m wearing them now!

 

21 Jun 2014

Karen, Nicole, Popcorn + Me.

by | posted in: Day In The Life | 4
Adobo and Peanut Roasted Popcorn, from Nicole at PopCorn.org's discomfittingly up-to-date blog.
Adobo and Peanut Roasted Popcorn, from Nicole at PopCorn.org’s almost discomfittingly up-to-date blog.

I made popcorn on the stovetop tonight. To me, this is the only way to have popcorn at home.

Many years ago, my friend Karen Kowalski showed me how to make stovetop popcorn just right. I had (very) recently moved to Chicago and into the strange-but-cheap building where I paid just $420/month. Karen chose the same building for the same reason, and we met one night because she heard me crying in my apartment all the way from inside own her apartment. In the fuzzy, despair-soaked fury of my tears, I heard a little “knock-knock” on my door. I opened it to find radiant, twenty-something Karen looking at a scrubby, wet, twenty-something me with deep concern and compassion.

“Do you want a beer or a cigarette or something?” she asked. We were pretty much best friends after that and we lived in that building for two years, more or less together, sharing our units like one space.

We were broke. Karen was an AmeriCorps teacher, I was a poet and a waitress. Pride kept us from asking our parents for anything — my mom bailed me out exactly once on rent and Karen never even asked her folks. We did fine, though, and we had good snacks on Friday night to go along with our bourbon + Cokes. Karen showed me one of those Friday nights that the best popcorn is made on the cheap, on a gas stovetop with a pot and some muscle. Here’s how it goes in ten easy steps:

Karen’s Stovetop Popcorn (serve with bourbon + Coke for everyone)

1. Set out a big bowl for your popcorn. Have it nearby your little work station. Then, get a big metal pot with a lid. An actual stockpot is a bit large; go with a large soup pot.
2. Put in some olive oil. Generous tablespoons, roundabout. Heat the oil a minute or so. Get it hot. Keep your flame on high and be careful: you’ve got a flame on high.
3. Put in popcorn kernels. You’ll make a lot of batches before you figure out how much popcorn to put in, but note that the kernels always seem to make more popcorn than you figured. So err on fewer kernels than you feel like eating. It’ll come out about right and if you don’t put in enough, hey, just make more when you’re done with the first batch.
4. Put the lid on the pot. Get some potholders or some oven mitts; grab hold of the lidded pot on either side.
5. Swoosh it all around.
6. Lift the pot up a bit and rotate it side to side and around a bit so that your flame hits the bottommost edges of the pot. You’re going for a pressure cooker, here, and this helps get the pot heated high, heated evenly. It also means the kernels inside the pot are getting coated with the oil.
6. Set it back down on the flame. The do the rotate pick-up again. Just work with it. Feel it.
7. When the popcorn begins to pop, smile. It’s happening!
8. Listen carefully and continue to manipulate your pot. Watch that flame. It’s gonna be going gangbusters. You also need to make sure your lid doesn’t pop right off with all that beautiful white, fluffy, oily corn coming up the sides. Yum! When the popping winds down and you hear just one…one more…pop…p-p-paaaaap, then you quick as a wink, throw the lid into the sink and you DUMP that corn into your big bowl. We do not want singeing corn.
9. While the corn is still hot and the oil hasn’t all seeped in, yet, salt generously.
10. Enjoy hot, with a bourbon + Coke, while Karen tells you about her crazy family. You are so lucky right now.

In my search for an image for this post, I discovered Popcorn.org, which is exactly what you might imagine: an association for makers and distributors of popcorn and popcorn-related products. Everyone needs a voice; the popcorn industry’s no different. I had some fun there, especially when I spied the association’s “Encyclopedia Popcornica.” “Popcornica” is a delicious, ridonkulous word that someone has to use somehow on a large scale so we can all go ’round saying it. (Any aspiring sci-fi novelists out there? Popcornica might be a character name or a distant galaxy. It’s yours! Go!)

On the Popcorn.org site there are FAQ’s and projects, and there’s a blog that is maintained with sincere dedication by a person named Nicole. Week after week, though there are few comments to encourage her in her task, there are posts about one thing: popcorn. Usually, Nicole posts recipes, and they all sound fantastic, including the pictured Adobo and Peanut Roasted popcorn, the Coconut Ginger Popcorn Truffle, etc.) But there are glimpses into Nichole’s life, too (e.g., she fell off her diet, she watched the Times Square ball drop with friends Susan and Todd, etc.) and then you also get her perplexing/fascinating take on things like winter:

“Could it be that winter is the new summer? Once defined as a time of quiet hibernation, winter has come into its own, in a social sense.”

Hm. I’m open to this idea. I need more. But I’m open, Nicole. You bring popcorn, I bring the beverages. See above.

19 Jun 2014

Booster? You Brought’er.

by | posted in: Day In The Life | 7
The Carlisle 71100 Red Dual Seat Booster Seat. Too much to ask for?
The Carlisle 71100 Red Dual Seat Booster Seat. Too much to ask?

I have a chair-to-table distance problem.

Have I mentioned the NYC apartment is furnished?** It’s tastefully appointed, thank goodness, but there are quirks. For example: the dining room table stands about 2.5 ft. tall. This is Yuri’s calculation, and he used his actual foot as a measuring stick, but it seems about right. The chairs at the table, the seats of them, they come up about 1.5 Yuri feet from the floor. This means that when I sit at the table, I have a Munchkin thing happening. It’s one thing to eat a meal eye-level with your food, but this set up is terrible for typing.

Presently, I am sitting atop a large stack of cushions. The large stack of cushions has replaced the small box of books I had been using all week; the box is breaking open and all squished, which let me tell you does wonders for my self-esteem. A delicate flower I am not.

I require a tuffet!

Or a booster seat.

Seriously, I need a booster seat. Because buying a taller chair is not an option. I live in Manhattan and I am not rich, therefore there is no room for extra chairs lying about. That’s precious square footage, comrade. If I could replace a shortie chair with a taller chair, well, then we’d be in the business, but these chairs do not belong to me. They stay.

As it turns out, there is a market for adult booster seats, though none of them I’ve found are for people who need a good, old-fashioned boost at the dinner table. There are adult booster seats for diminutive folks to put in the driver’s seat of their respective automobiles (good idea) and there are booster seats for the infirm or aged. Some of these boosters come spring-loaded, making it easier to get up out of one’s chair. That sounds like great fun. I’d love to spring! out of my chair whenever I felt like getting up, but these chairs don’t seem to add much height — their “boost” is a boost out, not up.

I worked at Pizza Hut for two years in high school. One of our “sidework” jobs was to “wipe down the boosters.” Oh, the accumulated hours spent sani-wiping sauce- and parmesan cheese-encrusted red plastic seats. I’ll never get that time back. Of course, I was a junior in high school and failing Algebra II, so I don’t think I’d take it back if I could.

Yuri says he’ll buy me a booster seat. It’s turning into a kind of “If I can’t buy my baby a booster chair, what kind of man can I be?” thing, but I actually don’t know if we’ll have luck. The car seat things are ugly and might not work in a wooden chair. The geriatric versions are not exactly right so far. And as much as the man appreciates my, um… As much as Yuri enjoys watching me leave a room, he has to admit that my bum is not going to fit into a child’s booster seat. Which would be weird of us, anyhow, and probably intensely uncomfortable for me.

Should I make something? From scratch? Should I make a tuffet from scratch??

These are the questions.

** It has recently come to my attention that I repeat myself. My sister made it clear last night at dinner, exasperated that I had told her a certain something at least twice before. It has recently come to my attention that I repeat myself. My sister and I were having dinner. 

18 Jun 2014

Shipshewana Quilt Fest 2014: Let’s Do This!

by | posted in: Day In The Life | 2
Look at that lineup! It's Shipshewana 2014, folks!
Shipshewana Quilt Fest 2014 is almost here! Just look at that lineup! Google “Shipshewana Quilt Fest” and you’ll get where you need to go.

Next week, starting Tuesday evening, the little town of Shipshewana, Indiana is descended upon by quilters from near and far. What do they come for? Well, sit a minute and I’ll tell you.

:: pulling you up onto my lap ::

Is this weird?

:: you nod; I take you off my lap and set you down on the floor instead ::

Yeah, that’s better. What was I talking about?

Ah, yes! The Annual Shipshewana Quilt Festival!

Oh, there is so much to see and do, quilter. The whole town gets involved. Heck, surrounding towns get involved. There’s a big quilt show with lots of prizes — the Best In Show purse is $3,500! There are lectures and classes, “schoolhouse” demos all day, there are “sewlebrities” and autographs to get, if you’re into that kind of thing and you should be, because it’s really fun to have your book signed by the author (:: cough cough ::). There are events in the evening and supplementary daytime events, too, like garden tours and special exhibits and even outdoorsy things if you get tired of quilts, which you will not, but go ahead and get in a kayak for a minute, if you must. We’ll wait for you to come to your senses.

:: waiting for you to come to your senses ::

But perhaps the best part is that there is so much fabric at the Shipshewana Quilt Festival. So much. There’s a “Backroads Shop Hop” that takes you to a slew of quilt shops in the area and there’s the big kahuna, Yoder’s Department Store, in Shipshe proper. I have spent large sums of money in that shop, let me tell you, and I’ve never regretted a fat quarter of it.

So come on down to Indiana next week. I’m one of the featured presenters and I guarantee to put on a good show. You’ll make new friends, you’ll spend some of that money that’s burning a hole in your pocket, and you’ll get out of town for a minute. It’s summer. You’re supposed to do that.

Now, who wants a lolly?

16 Jun 2014

My Life As Alabaster.

by | posted in: Day In The Life, Fashion | 9
John Hoppner, "Mary Robinson 1758-1810 as Perdita." Oil on canvas, WikiGallery imprint on screen. Pale skin recognized by author.
John Hoppner, “Mary Robinson 1758-1810 as Perdita.” Oil on canvas, WikiGallery imprint on screen. Pale skin recognized by author.

I do not tan.

Oh, how I’ve tried. In my twenties, like so many undergraduates, I donned those weird winkie things and lay back in tanning beds — not enough, I hope, to wreak significant UV damage. (I knew better and it never worked for long, anyhow.) But I didn’t stop chasing a tan, no way. I’ve bronzed. I’ve lotioned. I’ve spray-tanned a few times. But the fact of the matter is, my half-Viking, half-Scots-Irish self ain’t gettin’ nut brown for long. I am a pale thing.

When I’m in yoga, my near-albino-ness is more evident than usual. There’s more of my skin to see in the yoga room; in Bikram, you’re one sweaty strap away from nude. Even in winter, when most yogis are not actively tan, I stand out in the room as though there were a beam of moonlight shining on me. This observation is not clouded (milky?) by the fact that I’m commenting on my own body and it’s hard to be objective about oneself. No, it’s really true that I’m vampiric compared with everyone else in the room.

All through school and into my adult life, my palest pale skin was a source of shame for me. I was enraged that I couldn’t manage to turn more than barely-toasted marshmallow for more than a couple days. All these honey-colored girls seemed to prance about without a care in the world from May to September, their bare, sun-kissed shoulders tossed insouciantly at recess. Then the girls became women and were effortlessly tan at parties, at bars, at charity events.

But growing up is highly recommended. As years go by, you (hopefully) start to care slightly less about such surface things, or maybe you start to love yourself more. Sometimes it’s as simple as meeting more people — because the more people you meet, the more likely you are to meet people who are totally into what you’ve got going on. That’s the best discovery of all. Being told that my pale skin is pretty, even beautiful, is a great way to get over it. Someone told me my near-translucent skin was “gorgeous” once and that very day I stopped feeling like a cocktail shrimp.

Whatever physical difference you’re annoyed about, don’t forget for a second that there’s someone out there who thinks you are seriously hot precisely because of the thing you’re freaking out about. There’s someone out there who will howl at the moon for you and try very hard to take you out/kiss you/marry you/etc. because you’re so unique. Trust me on this. I don’t know a lot but I know this is true.

And so today, in beautiful New York City, as all the Soho fillies passed me by in their short shorts, enjoying their Coppertone souls, I donned a cute, lacy white dress I got at Neiman Marcus that perfectly matched my pale skin. I turned a few heads, too. Probably because the sun actually glinted off me. That’s what sunglasses are for, people.

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