What the fuck's that racket?

Sheri loves orange and transformed her new, beige apt. She said the apt. was  ‘beiger than a digestive biscuit.’

When she arrived at her new apt. in Glasgow, this is what it looked like. She said, ‘I already had in my head what I wanted. There were these Glasgow Caledonian buses around in the sixties, with this creamy green and orange – and I always thought the color combination was so beautiful.’

A hefty lick of paint in green and orange made all the difference.

Secondhand items give a plush 60s vibe.

Even the wallpaper was picked up secondhand.

Once the living room was done, it was like everything started to fall into place.

Next, the kitchen.

The kitchen is a Mondrian, 80s video game, Americana diner themed dream.

She took everything from her kitchen, and separated it into piles. There were 27, so she reasoned that she needed 27 cupboards. She found a company that “got it,” and they designed it.

Now, everything has a place, and the kitchen is divided into specific stations that work for Sheri’s ADHD and the colors make her very happy.

After the kitchen came the hallway – more bright colors, with a real Simpsons vibe.

And then came turning a smaller room into a magnificent walk-in wardrobe. ‘I had this vision of a big orange womb,’ Sheri explains. ‘I wanted it to be my happiest place.’

The mirror was a DIY project.

The bathroom when Sheri moved in.

The bathroom hasn’t been fully done up yet, but it’s next on the list, to be followed by the bedroom.

There is always magic in the forest.

Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.

The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.

Mervyn O'Gorman :: Girl (Christina) with a bunch of flowers, ca. 1913. Autochrome. | src getty images via Flickr

so what this is isn’t an expansion of what’s appropriate in everyday life but a contraction of the semantic domain of clothing. there’s simply less difference across the board in what someone wears for any given situation than there used to be, and the normalization of athleisure is the latest expression of that. expanding what one wears in private moments alone in the home to what one wears outside the home in public doesn’t add to the ways one can express oneself through dress, it effectively reduces the number of distinct dress contexts. same reason “casual friday” doesn’t really mean anything anymore: gee boss, you mean I get to wear jeans and a polo shirt after a long week wearing khakis cut exactly like jeans and a buttondown shirt made from the same material?

why does any of it matter? the reason i’ve gotten more into fashion over the past couple years is that I love design and it’s the easiest way to design yourself. there’s a whole world of screwing with proportion and color and density and fold and drape that you can use to look all kinds of ways. flattening the semantic domain of clothing combined with the preoccupation with fitness and bodybuilding creates a world in which the only way you can design yourself is by dumping tons of free time into working out. is that the world you want to live in? are the two options on the table shrinkwrapping yourself in slim jeans and bike shorts if your body looks the way you want or hiding in formless hoodies and basketball shorts and joggers if it doesn’t? of course there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of those things - i’m writing this in sweatpants right now - it’s the standardization of it all to the exclusion of other options that poses a real threat to peoples’ ability to look the way they want to look or even perceive their looking another way as a real possibility.

it’s untenable, and i predict a coming reaction to this that resembles a lot of young millennials/older gen zs’ reaction to the death of tv and dominance of superhero movies by turning to 70s-80s new hollywood, 90s sitcoms, columbo, horror, hong kong action, and writing about it all on letterboxd. in fact I think it’ll be directly informed by that. there’s only so many times you can see guys looking like this:

and wonder why it is that when you put on your khakis and your button down shirt from old navy you look and feel like this: