fashion

Happy Birthday, Bethany!

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This summer I visited a friend I hadn’t seen in a while, and the first thing she said to me was, “How do you know ArchedEyebrow?,” which thrilled me because I love Bethany Rutter, and I think everyone should know her.

And since the internet told me that today is her birthday, I decided to answer that question for the world wide web.

bethany rutter

Bethany in front of the Brooklyn Museum, spring 2015

I met Bethany at a wedding, waiting in line for appetizers––they had these little food stations featuring different cuisines in addition to a seated dinner and multiple desserts. It was food heaven (or as I like to call it, heaven. Because if it’s true we get to create our own version of heaven, mine will consist of grocery stores, farmers’ markets, kitchens, and restaurants).

Back to the wedding buffet…

When I met Bethany, I was spending a lot of time with super cool women who unfortunately had terrible relationships with food (like a lot, if not most, women living in our patriarchal, body-hating society), so social eating situations made me apprehensive. (It’s hard for me to hear people make negative weight-related comments about food, especially when I’m about to eat, and all I want to do is enjoy it!) I didn’t realize how much I had come to expect fatphobic food talk before every meal until I heard Bethany exclaim, “This is delightful!”

We bonded over how excited we were to try everything, and honestly, that interaction was enough for me to love her. But that wasn’t all! She was also wearing a dress I still daydream about. And she was the wedding DJ. And she played ***Flawless by Beyoncé for me, so by the end of the wedding, I had a major friend crush.

She lives in London, so I wasn’t sure if I would get to see her again, but somehow we ended up going to see the Kara Walker exhibit in the Domino sugar factory before she flew home. All of the art was made of refined sugar and represented Black bodies, and at the exhibit, there were lots of non-Black people doing awful things to the sculptures (like taking photos in front of the art while making lewd or violent poses). Bethany took in the scene and said, “Someone should take pictures or make a video to expose all the racist things people are doing.”

I decided on the spot that we were destined to be friends, even if she did live across the Atlantic. (Later we learned Kara Walker had been filming us all along because she’s brilliant.)

It’s been two years since that dreamy wedding, and I’ve only found more reasons to love Bethany, including her fabulous fashion blog, her hilarious twitter, her sense of fun, and the way she doesn’t just stand with her arms crossed when she sees something unjust (see, for example, her “You Look Great!” campaign in response to one of the worst examples of fat-shaming harassment I’ve ever heard of).

edama me

arched sushi

Happy birthday, Bethany! I’m so glad you exist.

 

Happy Birthday, Bethany!

Chihuahua II

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When I went home this summer, I got to visit Santiamén, a new boutique specializing exclusively in Mexican design. Everything sold there is designed by Mexican designers, made in Mexico, and it is all beautiful.

frida hayek
I fell in love as soon as I walked in and saw this mural. Is it Frida Kahlo or Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo? I can’t decide.

The experience was very special to me because I grew up in a city and state full of maquilas, factories that make things for U.S. (and some other international) brands. I could point to factories where American cars, greeting cards, blue jeans, and a huge number of other things are made. But these things are not cheap to buy in Mexico. In fact, they are sold at a huge mark-up because they are ‘foreign’ even though they are made right there! Furthermore, they are designed far away, so most if not all of the Mexico-based employees of these companies only get to realize someone else’s vision rather than playing a role in the creative process. And most importantly, the profits of these companies leave the country and end up in the pockets of executives abroad. In fact, the only reason they manufacture things in Mexico is because it’s cheaper; and many companies have moved their operations to Asia because there the production costs are cheaper and the labor regulations, more lax, meaning that they can pay and protect workers even less.

Oh, perfect black top, I think of you daily.
Oh, perfect black top, I think of you daily.

I dream of a world where national economies are truly independent, manufacturing things where they are and dealing directly with the people who make what they sell. I know it would be better for our environment, and I believe it would be better for our societies because it is harder to ignore injustices that happen down the street than it is to ignore those that happen on the other side of the world.

colorfulshirts
Patterns that seem to dance on the fabric.

When I am in Chihuahua, I make it a priority to support the Mexican economy. My younger cousins laugh because before buying them any junk food, I make sure that it is made by a Mexican company and that we are buying it from a Mexican store. When we go out to eat, I ask to go to local restaurants. Until now, however, there wasn’t a place to buy clothes and accessories other than the traditional things from our region. Santiamén offers an exciting new way to support the Mexican economy, and I hope it is the first of many local stores that adopt this model (think of all the other possibilities: bicycles, furniture, linens, electronics, cars!). And did I mention it was beautiful?

florals
I’ll take one of everything, please!
Chihuahua II

Hommage Outfit Reveal Post!

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Okay dudes, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this week is unusually blog-heavy! Typically I reserve Sunday as my day to blog and write once a week, but the holidays have filled my brain with things to share. Tomorrow I start preparing for my favorite kind of post: Year In Review!!!! The thought of sharing a year’s worth of pictures chronologically is one of the big reasons I decided to start a blog in the first place.  Nostalgia! Organizing! Captions! What did I do this year, anyway?!

Before I get to that, I must reveal which cultural artifact inspired an outfit I wore a couple of weeks ago. Remember when I did my first outfit post and asked people to guess the inspiration behind the clothes? I realized afterward that it was a tough guess because usually outfits are inspired by other outfits worn by other people. I asked a lot of my friends in real life, and they just couldn’t move past that, no matter how many times I said, ‘No, no, it’s inspired by a thing. Not a celebrity or a movie. A thing. A physical object that you could hold in your hands.’ Blank stares were elicited and groans were grunted. No cigars.

The Outfit
The Inspiration

Does anyone other than Dated Technology even remember the iBook? I’m a little scared that you don’t!

Dear Internet Friends Alive Right Now,

The iBook and iMac are a crucial part of our shared history. Without them we would not have enjoyed the vibrant translucence so crucial to tween culture in the early ’00s.

Remember when everything--toothbrushes, backpacks, discmans, calculators, picture frames, everything--looked like this? We owe it all to the iBook and iMac.
It was a world where everything was brighter, rounder, cuter!

However, even if you did not love living in a slightly more Technicolor world and the aesthetics just aren’t your style, you might still want to revere the iMac/iBook   for what they added to our linguistic landscape. The iMac/iBook heralded the arrival of the iConvention. One upon a time, putting an ‘i’ in front of a word was new. Everything from computers (duh) to pillows and lipgloss was made instantly cooler by adding an ‘i’ to the front of its name. Now we take our iLives for granted. But we don’t have to.

We can choose to remember and pay hommage with our outfits!

Sincerely,
kristy

Hommage Outfit Reveal Post!