Best of 2020

That’s right, I am calling it now: this outfit will be one of my favourites of the year. Maybe THE favourite. It may seem foolhardy to say that about something I wore on January 7, but I mean, just look at it. It’s pretty much perfect for me. It looks black in photos, but the Marie Saint Pierre dress is actually dark grey. It has some killer pleating which creates that fantastic bell shape. I added a light grey tulle skirt as a kind of petticoat because (a) I wanted to add length to the dress, and (b) visual interest. Rather than try to find a necklace that would compliment the unusual neckline, I decided to go with brooches; I am currently obsessed with star motifs, and these are statement-making without being gaudy. Last but not least, I decided to add a belt to further highlight the lines of the dress. It works. It all works.

Notes: Marie Saint Pierre dress (thrifted, $8.50); Everly skirt (thrifted, $8); brooches (Amazon, around $25); Greta Constantine x Danier belt (thrifted, $12); Cole Haan shoes (thrifted, $20).

The Splurge

I am constantly low-key stalking Dries Van Noten pieces on eBay; resale prices are typically high, so it requires a lot of patience to find a good deal on a piece I like. At the tail end of last year, I stumbled on this dress, which checks off a lot of boxes for me: midi length, sleeveless (easier to layer that way), interesting abstract pattern, nice colour palette. The price was pretty good (around $200CAD before shipping) and I was able to knock it down a bit further using the “Best Offer” option. Even better? I had saved up a good balance in my PayPal account from reselling clothes, so the dress cost me nothing out of pocket.

Side-note: I won’t lie, I still struggle with paying more than $100 on any single item of clothing, even if the money doesn’t come directly from my bottom line. But I have recently decided that, as thrifting supplies the bulk of my wardrobe and most of my clothing needs at a very reasonable cost, I am going to save up my reselling profits and use them on special “investment” pieces – i.e. things I need to pay up for. This would include pieces from my fave designers that are challenging to source through thrifting (Dries, Marni, Rick Owens, Issey Miyake, etc.) and expensive staples (like the MaxMara coat that I need to replace).

Back to the outfit: I kept things simple here with a black blazer as a topper, but I did add an extra pop of colour with the blue shoes. It works well with the yellow, I think. I don’t own a lot of yellow pieces but I like it in small doses and it does allow for some great colour combinations, like this one.

Notes: Dries Van Noten dress (eBay, $275); Theory blazer (thrifted, $13); J. Crew shoes (thrifted, $15).

Fun Friday

This is my take on casual Friday, sans denim. I know people tend to see a skirt and think “fancy” but it really isn’t. I mean, it takes the same amount of effort to put on a black skirt as it does jeans, and it goes with all the same things – like this sweater. Add a pair of mules, and you’re good to go. Easy, breezy, comfortable. I will say that my only 2020 resolution is to unapologetically embrace and express my inner oddball, so “extra AF” outfits will become more of the norm around here, hopefully, because that’s how my inner oddball likes to roll. An outfit like this tries to straddle the line between social expectations (casual Friday) and personal inclination (outfit with a twist).

Notes: Gap sweater (thrifted, $5); Crea Concept skirt (thrifted, $8); Eileen Fisher shoes (thrifted, $10).

Obligatory Witchy Lewk

Do I need to make this a recurring feature of these posts? I feel that maybe I do. Anyway, here’s the requisite “witchy” lewk of the week courtesy of a newly thrifted Oska dress (which is giving me real Issey Miyake/Junya Watanabe vibes) and my quickly-becoming-a-favourite embellished Blank NYC jacket. Note to self: find more star-print things. Maybe some earrings next?

Notes: Oska dress (thrifted, $8.50); BlankNYC jacket (retail, $63); Ecco boots (thrifted, $20).

“Sustainable fashion” has to be one of the biggest buzzwords in the fashion industry (and beyond) as we head into a new decade. Given that any discussion of the topic inevitably touches on things like environmental pollution and climate change, workers’ rights, industry regulation, and other socio-economic issues (including, once you start to dig down, classism and racism), it can feel overwhelming to try to figure out a nuanced and informed position that somehow reconciles all of one’s personal values. At times, it can seem as though clothes are simultaneously too cheap and yet not cheap enough; there are too many being produced, and yet some people still struggle to afford the basics. Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark, as they say, but I don’t know how one might go about fixing it. There are lots of fingers pointed at consumers – those gluttons of consumption – but that perspective is rooted in the classic capitalism notion that consumers are what shape and drive the market which, to me, is deeply suspect. Under late stage capitalism, what comes first: a desire to buy, or the desire to create a desire to buy?

As someone who writes about clothes as a hobby, I have no real business wading into waters as deep as these. I encourage everyone to read up on the subject (and do so from a variety of voices and points of view), but I don’t feel I have anything worthwhile to add to it. In general, I favour a “stay on the sidelines, listen, process, evaluate, recalibrate as needed, repeat” approach, and that sort of approach doesn’t lend itself to public pronouncements.

And yet.

Today I have, well, not exactly a pronouncement but some thoughts to share on a tangential topic. To wit: is thrifting sustainable?

As a dedicated thrifter, you can imagine that my knee-jerk reaction when I first heard the suggestion that thrifting isn’t sustainable. “It SO is, too! It’s the definition of sustainable.” The second R is “reuse”, after all. Thrifting takes already-produced goods that have been discarded by their original owners and re-purposes/redistributes them, keeping them in use and out of landfills. This is a Good Thing in my books, and I will never feel guilty about buying thrifted (or secondhand) goods – or buying lots of them. As far as I am concerned, the potential negative impacts of high consumption of secondhand goods is that there is less for others to buy, and prices are being driven up. The first may be a legitimate issue in some areas, where the secondhand market is small and under-supplied. In my city, that is very much not the case; there is a plethora of stores, and they are filled to the rafters with stuff.

The price thing is an issue here, however. Prices are, unarguably, higher than they used to be even 4-5 years ago (even accounting for inflation in the costs of operations), and I think we are reaching a tipping point where it’s becoming cheaper to buy new fast fashion. For people who shop secondhand out of necessity rather than conviction, this is an important consideration and I think thrift stores (especially for-profit ones who are the most at fault when it comes to over-pricing) will eventually start to see a share of their consumer base move away. I know people love to blame resellers for higher thrift prices, but I think they are a very small segment of the market. As thrifting has surged in popularity, more folks are going to thrift stores, period; stores are seeing increased demand and responding accordingly. Personally, I don’t mind “paying up” for items that are truly worth it, but thrift stores are not generally equipped to reliably identify those items and price them in a reasonable manner. That’s how you end up with H&M stuff that’s more expensive than retail, and designer items under $10. However, as long as fast fashion exists, there will be something of a check on thrift prices.

Which brings me back to the sustainability piece. Thrifting does not contribute to the fashion industry’s environmental issues. It simply doesn’t. The relationship between supply and demand is not direct. Demand does not necessarily create supply. Thrift stores aren’t filled to the brim because they have a lot of customers to serve; they’re filled to the brim because people discard a lot of stuff, constantly. In that sense, supply does have a relationship to the fashion industry. It is not a coincidence that, while thrift stores have been around for a long time, their inventory has skyrocketed in the last decade. It’s not a coincidence that I can regularly thrift items that were in retail stores within the previous 6 months – or, sometimes, that are still being sold in retail stores. The fashion industry has created a mindset wherein clothing is disposable, and that feeds the supply that has made thrifting such an attractive option. So, in that narrow sense, one could argue that thrifting in its current incarnation is not truly sustainable because its supply depends to a (large?) extent on unsustainable practices.

I don’t see this as an indictment of thrifting. Thrifting is not a solution to the world’s clothing oversupply problem, and people do it a disservice when they try to frame it as such. It’s a way to mitigate (to a small extent) the impacts of that problem. Call it a bandaid. As a consumer, sometimes that’s the best available option.

I don’t know what the future of thrifting looks like, much as I don’t know what the future of the fashion industry will look like. It is encouraging to see that more and more people are becoming interested in finding new ways to create a circular economy – clothing swaps, for example, have exploded in popularity in my area. I have written before that I use thrift stores as a kind of “lending library” of clothes (and other items, for that matter) – I take things that spark my interest, and re-donate them when I no longer wish to use them. I am still waiting for someone to take this paradigm and create an (easily accessible) app or service around it, and it’s only a matter of time before it happens.

As always, would love to hear your thoughts on these issues, especially in regards to future trends. Where do you think we are heading in this next decade in terms of sustainable fashion practices?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my thoughts on rewatching the 1994 movie adaptation of Little Women. Over the holidays, I had the chance to watch the new version directed by Greta Gerwig. It came out to overwhelmingly positive reviews, good word of mouth, and solid box office. I was fully sold on it before walking into the theatre because I adore both Saoirse Ronan (Jo) and Timothee Chalamet (Laurie) and, of course, love the story. Well, I walked out with mixed feelings about the movie. I wasn’t planning to write about them (because I did enjoy the movie a lot and it didn’t seem worthwhile to focus on the quibbles) until someone on IG asked me to share my thoughts. I guess this does serve as a bookend to my previous post, so here we are. Read on and feel free to disagree in the comments.

First up, the good stuff. The cast is, for the most part, absolutely fantastic. In many cases, I would say they’re an improvement even over the 1994 version (which was superbly acted). Off the top of my head, Professor Baer is infinitely better cast here, as is Aunt March. Old Mr. Laurence is wonderful. Florence Pugh as adult Amy is amazing, far better than Samantha Mathis. Timmy Chalamet was perfect as young Laurie, though I feel that Christian Bale looked more age-appropriate for older Laurie. Saoirse was phenomenal, no less great than Winona Ryder.

The main exception? Emma Watson. I am, admittedly, biased because I don’t think she is a great actress is general. I thought her Meg was a charisma vacuum, and it made me deeply uninterested in her subplot, to which the movie devotes far more time than the 1994 version.

I also think that having Florence play both young and adult Amy was a mistake. She is a very dynamic performer, but she does not look anything remotely like a 10-12 year old, nor does she sound like one. Her voice is absolutely lovely but quite deep/gravelly. When Amy throws a tantrum because she can’t go to the theatre with Jo and Meg, the scene played off to me; Amy looked just as old as her sisters, and the whole thing only made sense if you already knew that she was supposed to be much younger.

This brings me to my other major quibble with the movie: it relies entirely too much, in my opinion, on the audience’s presumed familiarity with the story. Rather than following a linear narrative, the movie is largely a bunch of flashback scenes. In the “present day”, Jo is already in New York, and Amy is in Europe with Aunt March. Jo eventually travels back to Concord because Beth is dying, all the while thinking about the past. To me, this approach of inter-cutting different timelines drained the story of its emotional impact to a large extent; I wasn’t watching “little” women grow up, I was watching an adult woman reminiscing about her childhood. There is emotional power in that kind of story, but that is not what Little Women is for me. Your mileage may vary, obviously. I still enjoyed the movie because I knew the backstory, and because the individual flashbacks were so wonderfully acted, but I can’t say that I loved it in the same way as the 1994 version.

Another director’s choice that I didn’t enjoy was the ending, and specifically 2 aspects. One, there is an added scene where Jo second-guesses her decision to turn down Laurie’s proposal long after it was made. I have no idea if this was in the book, but it wasn’t in the previous movie and I feel like it muddies the waters unnecessarily. I think this version did a better job than the 1994 one of showing that Jo only loved Laurie in a platonic manner and that she was better off either alone or with someone like Baer. This new scene undercuts all of that. I understand wanting to show that Jo is rethinking her whole I-will-never-marry stance, but to go down the path of Laurie-was-the-one-who-got-away? The idea of Jo pining after her sister’s husband is icky to me. No, thanks.

Secondly, I did not like the resolution of Jo’s story with Baer. The way it was presented was too ambiguous for my liking. Did she truly end up marrying Baer, or was it all just a fiction? I liked the scene where Baer shows up at Jo’s house and interacts/bonds with her family; I thought that was lovely, and it showed how well he would fit in with the March extended family. But then the umbrella scene immediately thereafter felt rushed and much like an afterthought – and too meta. We all know that Alcott paired those two characters mostly so that people would stop griping about Jo not being with Laurie, but the decision to basically insert that very fact into the movie felt off to me. Little Women is not about authorship to me, though it clearly is what interested Greta Gerwig. That’s fine. I wish we had gotten a more satisfying resolution to Jo’s love story, but I guess it’s a minor quibble. (And we do have the “happy ever after” montage at the end which would suggest that Prof. Baer did, in fact, stick around in some capacity.)

Overall, it was a very enjoyable movie filled with great performances, and my quibbles with it are solely of the “creative differences” variety – I admire how beautifully Gerwig shot the movie, but I don’t agree with all of her narrative/directorial choices.

If you have watched the new Little Women, I would love to hear your thoughts.