Meet Tara Riesner, a writer in New York with a rigorous style plan.

This lady is hardcore. She wears tights through winter.

I am always interested in people who choose one aesthetic and stick to it.

There is a certain boldness and conviction in surrendering your image to a style of the past like mod.

Layering excites me. Geometrics and color mixes… I get hot just thinking about it.

When she unwraps herself, it’s like each layer is a new gift waiting for you underneath…

Medical dudes were all asking for her number because they saw how she owns it.

Shall we step inside her home?

Witness the total aesthetic immersion.

Note Mondrian peeking out

Only the hottest men

The most dashing aristocrats

Vintage pieces pinned up inside because she’s so petite:

As you can see we have a particularly gifted colorist here.

And is it just me or does the aesthetic enter her writing too?… An excerpt:

From the pool, I heard a sliding glass door open on an upstairs balcony, and I knew it was our balcony and Del, but I didn’t feel like opening my eyes.  He’d been reordering his records by album cover color.

“Roy G. Biv,” he’d said, slotting Madman across the Water behind The Beatles and Frank Ifield.

“Like the rainbow.”

“Like the person.”

“Good luck finding anyone that way,” I’d said, my back to him, unplugging the electric skillet and dumping leftover oil down the kitchen drain.

“I’ve got a photographic memory, babe.”  He sandwiched a foot between the records to hold his place while he tapped his head with his index finger.  “It’s all up here.”

In the pool I floated in a blank stillness and the water spread out under me, balancing the outstretched limbs of my body like a star shape or like something big, simplified to five points and drawn in crayon. I waited until the sun had moved on to open my eyes, and then I waited for everything to look less dark and sun-purple.

A mother had come out and settled herself in a lounger, pulling down the straps of her bathing suit and fanning through a magazine, looking for her place.  Her little boy stood near the edge of the pool’s deep end, staring at me, tugging at the elastic waist of his swimsuit, which was orange like a Creamsicle, even through my purple haze.  He moved a hand to hoist a stack of diving rings up the opposite arm, but they fell back down to his wrist and banged against his hip like a set of his mom’s bangle bracelets.

“Don’t throw them too deep, baby.”

He pulled his goggles down, his ears sticking out from under the rubber strap, before throwing everything in, all his rings at once, and jumping in after them.  I flipped over onto my stomach and opened my eyes under the water, watching his legs kicking thin and smooth, breaking the water open. Even in the dead underwater silence, I never heard the water churn.  The boy swam toward the reds and blues and yellows of the rings, and with an impossible reach, picked them up.

***

I will present some more aesthetic-immersion dressers for you in future.

If I myself did aesthetic immersion, I might go in a Karl Lagerfeld direction.

Anyway I was thinking about it all while reading Umberto Eco on Dandyism and I thought:

Are we the new dandies?

Eco writes:

Life was not to be dedicated to art, art was to be applied to life. Life as Art.

More on this next time.

Dances of Vice parties are just the best.

I attended “Trouble in Toyland” last month.

These people are so creative!

I think I will let the pictures speak for themselves… And there are more to come

Let us indulge in some retrogressive Summer clothes-viewing from festival season last year, and also some current stuff from sunny Sydney.

It’s so convenient having another hemisphere up one’s sleeve…

Cute boys wearing necklaces are one of the world’s great bounties, n’est-ce pas?
No idea where this parrot trend came from but I saw it twice in a day so it must be happening or somefing.

Oh Tylor you are a handsome boy.

They are also infesting the stylish homes…

Meanwhile I spotted the flower child below in the crowd entering the Grizzly Bear concert on Brooklyn waterfront last (Northern) summer…

Asked her to pose and guess what, it was Mischa Barton!

Obviously professionally styled to look ‘festival,’ but even from afar she looked totally striking, and I too would like to wear the cosmos…

Here’s No.2 best sighting from that day - all the way from Mejico, even

But as usual the kids win, and they know it.

You should let some raid your wardrobe… Good way to pick up ideas, actually

I pose a question: What’s wrong with this picture?

Yeah… Welcome to Sydney

A very … classy place

…full of style…

Yea verily the Santa suit has become some kind of Dionysian theatrical mask, which allows the wearer to get loose and transgress social boundaries.

Anciently December was also the month of Saturnalia, the Roman celebration of tomfoolery and subversion.

Co-incidence? I think not!!!!!!!

See I could have said to these Santas, “Io, Saturnalia!” (”praise to Saturn!”) and they would have been like “What?” but I would have been totally right.

Anyhowz I was moseying along reflecting on the cultural morphology of the Santa suit when I happened upon THIS tremendously bizarro situation

Ah yes, the Hare Krishnas have really upped the ante this year.

Choreography! An incredibly catchy song! Winning smiles!

A delicious lollipop rainbow.

Plus a harmonium - such the good accessory.

(Got given one myself for Christmas in fact and I’m going to wear it with everything)

I stalked em for a while because it really was a catchy song… Made me want to join the movement, really…

but then this crazy HAIR quartet emerged from the shadows

…and I was like, heck, Sydney is a jungle! What next?

My Japanese source informs me these are cosplay (costume play) kids who dress up as characters from video games and manga.

They were cute and shy and awesome and carried a massive key that could probably unlock some massive castle.

And speaking of jungles, round the corner in the Galeries Victoria I discovered this masterpiece of assemblage bedecking a hip lady…

and she calls it her ‘jungle’ (adorable)

Some Tatty Devine jewellery, some trinkets from Japan, a Bolivian finger puppet or two… All very casual

I thought, jungle indeed, I could aspire to that, jungle bells, jungle all the way.

I might have to revisit her and see what she does next. Maybe she wears other climate zones too like alpine tundra, boom-tish!

Anyway back on the street a bus suddenly disgorged this striking creature before me

Are you sensing the red theme pervading this blog post? I guess it’s subliminal variations on Santa or something.

Czech out that lustrous raven hair.

Czech out those lustrous raven shoes.

Very nice work.

But we’re getting a bit normal, aren’t we…

If you’ll just travel back with me through time and space, here is an epic costume from a Dances of Vice party in NYC the other week:

Krampus the Christmas demon? (He’s so hot right now)

And just to prove my Santa theory, I conclude with further pictorial evidence of Saturnalian tomfoolery, this time in New York.

Happy Holidays!

It’s the simple things, friends… remember that

Biting the rosary…such the hot move.

“That’s my kid!” said b-daddy when boyo took the floor.

Okay let’s get tribal.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox. I didn’t see his face but I still find him damn foxy.

Did you know about the new film? That yellow is so Wes Anderson . . .

This was good. Satan walked up to them yelling, “NO WAY! It’s the POPE!”

Jesus avec iPhone. (Wish I’d scored his number!!)

When I asked for a picture he cried, “Of course!”

…It was so Jesus.

Very creative. Mother and child are but ONE man!

I enjoy the conviction in baby’s expression.

Co-ordinated right down to the shoes! Solid.

Would you look at the innocent, hopeful smile on that penis?

Friends reported seeing him in the subway later, tripping over his balls.

I’m glad this is out of focus, it’s much scarier. (Err I planned it.)

They said they had swine flu, and coughed loudly.

This last one gets scarier the longer you look at it. Observe the breakdown of infrastructure: the escaped convicts, the haywire signage.

Plus everyone is a lurching zombie.

Beautiful outfits from the Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governor’s Island this September!

Michael Arenella and his Dreamland Orchestra played old tunes so we could all do the Charleston with great abandon…

It happens again next June, y’all should come!

They just make it look so easy.

This dapper dandy is John. Czech out his style blog!

http://www.nydandy.blogspot.com/

In my mind the gentleman is a poet, and she is his muse, Mondrianne.

He wears his own line…

Matching!

McBryde does her own Marcel finger-waves.

The two below somehow evoked the era most thoroughly for me.

A kimono, tea cups, artful draping, a picnic blanket fit for a luxe boudoir. They inhabit the old world.

(For more on that, see this article - I am secretly quoted…)

My last post on the Met Gatsby party covered the bright young people who, in interpreting the theme, dressed romantically.

Here are a bunch more who introduced a modern edge, some unexpected details, a bit of fusion & eclectica…

And did it so well!

(Also, at a certain point it just devolves into me photographing boyz wearing suits…because this practice should be encouraged at all costs!)

She made this necklace herself!

“the sun don’t know when it’s glowing”

Love you people. Keep dressing.

The most happening crowd of London’s Jazz Age in the 1920s - the crowd that made stylish partying a way of life.

Sometimes we approach Bright Young Peopledom here in New York. The College Group at the Met threw a Gatsby party of such multifoliate glory recently that all who entered the Egyptian atrium gasped, “OMG!”

It was titled West Egg on the East Side. Candles lined the fountain, radiating light bespangled the walls, the ruins glowed amber and magenta. A golden gleam spilled off the back of the grand piano and shimmered on the water.

The mummies were silent, the band played loud!

And people dressed. This was the first event of late that made me think, “You know, the kids are alright.”

Dapper young men… Can anything beat that?

And in the draperies of the women, there is a longing.

We don’t want mass production, we want ye olde ornate, handmade and unique: everyone was wearing their hot grandma’s clothes.

Is this some kind of post-bourgeois thing, this longing of ours?

“I breathe in and I create.”

Kudos.

The Zeitgeist of the 1920s was youth, I guess…

The transience of all things, the enjoyment of ephemeral splendour that is all the more beautiful for being subject to decay.

D.J. Taylor’s marvellous book Bright Young People chronicles the Jazz Age crowd that established this particular party ethic.

Brenda Dean Paul is quoted regarding the infamous all-night Bath and Bottle Party of 1928; her memory is of “turgid water and thousands of bobbing champagne corks, discarded bathing caps and petal-strewn tiles as the sun came out and filtered through the giant skylights of St. George’s Baths, and we wended our way home.”

Of course this Met party last week was rather too softcore to be classified as a true Young Bright People affair because NO ONE EVEN BATHED IN THE FOUNTAIN. Slackers.

Gatsby’s Daisy?

The goal of a Bright Young Person is to be known, to be admired… To be glittering, to be beautiful!

Forget everything else!

Young people in mature dress = class. I’m going to aim for class in the everyday wardrobe.

You can’t go wrong. It takes you to a higher plane.

Harmony in contrast.

I’m all for matching pairs and group outfits.

Or as here, a higher form of pairing dress - where another person amplifies your outfit through contrast, thereby making you both appealingly eclectic.

There is something regal to her.

Boyz should still do the Grand Tour.

They need ze Kultur.

I have seen her again and can verify that this lady always looks sharp.

Whoever you are, young gentleman, get in touch because I think I luff you.

Apparently they did not plan this Matching.

Matching is a high and noble enterprise, for it encourages Bonding.

And Unintended Matching is the highest of Matchings, for it betokens a ~~Subconscious Bond.~~

Here endeth Part I. Since we all need more guidance in becoming Bright Young People, further Parts will follow. More Met pictures to come!

Shouldn’t we therefore be more concerned with Process than with Product?

I hereby launch my Behind the Scenes series…

Music videos often summarise the direction style is going, in under three minutes. They present us with ~~mystical glamorous tableaux~~ and then we all dress up to look like we too inhabit their imaginary world.

I was in Young Love’s new video filmed at Webster Hall NYC, Get Me Up (very catchy). Of course I was fwightened because these are Cool People and how do you deal with Cool People?

But Kendall here was wearing a DIY headband look that I’d seen around in London and failed to capture. So I got brave and documented ze whole thing.

Just do it. Rock the multi-ethnic ensemble.

With Erik Tonneson on keyboard, dressed by Diesel.

Band frontman Dan Keyes. I love long necklaces on boys.

Ray Ban Clubmaster specs. See my forthcoming post all about glasses.

This is a good piece: the chain waistcoat. Because it’s not like we wear waistcoats for the fabric - they are about linear definition.

Look at those colors pop… I want to do this every day of my life.

You know who else does red and blue?

The Virgin Mary. She is so clever.

As I learned when I did this painting study… Because who doesn’t luff a random Biblical reference.

It’s a wrap!

Director Charlie Nordeen did a great job.