Hello from Berlin (still)!
I’ve emerged from writing jail, prematurely as I have not finished anything yet, but the weather is nice, and it was time.
In my day-to-day here in Berlin, I am noticing just how homogenous people’s dress is. People are basically dressed the exact same way as people in New York. And in both places, they’re all dressed the same way as one another. I’m reminded of Robert Smithson’s invocation of the second law of thermodynamics in “Entropy and the New Monuments”: “Energy is more easily lost than obtained, and that in the ultimate future the whole universe will burn out and be transformed into an all-encompassing sameness.” Perhaps this is where we are at: a totally entropic stage of aesthetic sensibility. Everything is permitted, so nothing is interesting. Everyone looks the same, but different, and different in ways that provide no useful categories or forms of significance.
It made me think that I should just wear all black until it’s over.
BF and I were talking about this and he said it made him want to revisit K-Hole and other analyses from the early to mid-2010s. I agreed. Return to ground zero. K-Hole’s normcore is sort of the base genetic code of the current paradigm–a fact acknowledged last year in Interview magazine, in the service of a hipster-logic (“I was there when/first”) proprietary battle over the concept. Base genetic code in that it’s not that people are dressing normcore, but that the structure of -core (ironically, the -core is always all surface.) and the underlying logic of the “mass” now controls dominant culture (which in a way, would seem to restore the original logic of mainstream/subcultural dynamics, but hasn’t). To quote Smithson again, he described “a vision of a crystalline (as opposed to an organic) all-consuming sameness that foreshadowed an entropic future whose eventual uniformity was inevitable no matter how violent or peaceful the ensuing years.” Thinking on this further, perhaps this all-consuming sameness is precisely because of the violence of our time. Anyway, this topic has come up with many friends. I guess we’ll just have to endure.
A disclaimer. I am absolutely allergic to applying a Tumblr Girl’s eye to cinema, which I guess is what a lot of this website is–screenshotting the costumes from French new wave films and, like, Italian Fascist architecture in Bertolucci and being like “*heart eyes* interiors inspire me.” It’s obviously the most reduced and impoverished/ing way to watch a film. And is an annoying way to think about clothing and costume design. But sometimes you contradict yourself. So, CUT TO: me, last week, watching Jacques Rivette’s late 90s and early 2000s films, taking pics of outfits in basically every scene.
“*Heart eyes* Jeanne Balibar’s clothing in Va Savoir (2001)!”1
This top calls to me. I thought long and hard about who might have made it; did a lot of Googling, to no avail. If anyone is That Type, the type who would be able to figure it out…help! I thought Marni or Margiela? Honestly could be anything from this period. Who am I kidding!
Maybe it’s all just Prada. Obvious relationship between the above fit and turn-of-the-millenium Prada runway colors.
In Up, Down Fragile (1996), the costumes for the whole ensemble of female leads are pretty great. I took way too many pictures of my laptop screen, and started to really loathe myself for it. But the recently-awoken-from-coma wealthy daddy’s girl played by Marianne Denicourt was really drippy:
Simplicity wins! Moreover, these late Rivette films are a pleasure to watch.
In other Berlin style news, I’ve been horrified to find that the Y2K trend is as rampant here as it is in NYC. With so much time to reflect, I have a few new thoughts about this. This trend is not unappealing to me because of its constitutive elements, it is because I was a tween and teen during the era of reference. I don’t want to dress like the normie girls from my middle school, or the celebrities I thought I was too cool to idolize. I don’t mind the later-stage 2000s, I guess “Indie” era, looks, but on that front, I’ve already done it!
I started thinking about different subcategories of Y2K style that are bubbling up in the present moment. The one look that I’ve been feeling like I can’t totally place or track has been the sort of baggy jean grunge look, grunge but not properly 90s inspired. Then I totally realized what it was. it’s the Notice Me? Girl!
The 2025 Notice Me Girl is probably doing this thing with a little more sex and panache than Hilary Duff did it onscreen in movies like Cinderella Story (above), Raise Your Voice, and the ur-notice-me-text Lizzie Maguire (so much time spent trying to get this guy to notice her, but what about this guy. Also Lizzie Maguire is actually a little bit not-this and more cotton-candy pop?). I’m thinking about this basic silhouette of thrifty little top, and low slung grungy jeans, which is pretty much a uniform out there right now.
I see this girl all the time. The look seems to be popular with college-age and just out of college girls. Back in the day, this look seems to signify interesting, but insecure. Guys like her, but she doesn’t know it. Maybe in 2025, this girl is a little cooler, like she knows that guys (people) like her, but she doesn’t care (does care but affectively doesn’t).
This got me thinking about the Notice Me Girls’ counterpart, the Popular Ho, a girl archetype that needs no introduction. She’s on a pretty uninterrupted continuum with her 80s and 90s representations, but in the 2000s she gets really slutty and evil (I thought about using Mean Girls as an example, but looking back on that, it’s weird how preppy they are and stylistically that’s not actually the look). This girl grows up to become “HOTTIE #1” or “SALESGIRL” in an episode of Entourage (I’m riffing here so I’ve confused myself about whether I mean she will grow up to be an actress playing these roles on Entourage or the girl such actresses are hired to play). This is probably the most rampant look in terms of downtown-y manifestations of turn-of-the-millennium styles (I refuse to type out Y*K). It is also the one I have the least tolerance for, because I obviously identified with a Notice Me Girl sensibility, which would mean I was trained to view the popular ho a mortal enemy, long before I ever encountered one (truly by the time I got to high school, this logic was already starting to give way to a junior version of a “hipster logic” where the popular girls were not necessarily philistines and high school social strata no longer dictated people’s access to sex or alcohol/drugs in reality or in representations).
Now, of course, in the viscous goop of contemporary culture, the popular ho is no longer mean and popular and boring–terms and conditions require us to say that everyone is interesting and special in their own special way. The popular ho look has been taken up by women who actually are probably largely interesting and intelligent, maybe even kind, maybe not popular, maybe not even having a huge amount of sex! I think that this look found its legs as long ago as 2014, when Normcore got blown up as a concept, and cool people needed a new steez. What better solution than to dig deeper than ‘normal’ or ‘normie’ in an everyday sense, e.g. nondescript items and ‘dad-brands,’ and instead draw on the Normal (normative/hegemonic lol) characters who antagonized the quirky and misunderstood protagonist. If you can’t be cool by dressing like a rando, dress like someone who makes sensitive and introspective teens wish they’d never been born. Dress like Megan Fox in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. Become invincible.
It should go without saying, I’m half-joking about all of the above. I get so nervous that some random person will read something like this and think I'm believe myself to be a fashion scholar. But, look, I do think there is something here…We’ve now passed through the stage where cool people are dressing this way, and have entered the stage where your random normal person is dressing this way. The really crucial is the fact that, when you spend some time observing random people’s style these days, you often see these two feminine archetypes combined. They’re old enemies, now often merged into one look. Everyone is both Hilary Duff and Megan Fox?2 Which is just funny, in terms of nostalgia operates. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how the uneven and complex flow of time and events becomes history.
Soooo…the early to mid-2000s were a strange period for women’s fashion (when isn’t it?), especially in the United States, especially in media. On the one hand, it got very permissive and almost campily-femme, on the other it was a time that really did the Adult Woman dirty as a concept. The youth obsession that accelerated in the 90s reached full tilt, and we ended up with daisy dukes, micro-minis and baby doll dresses for all (alongside more and more movies about uptight single professional women?) Again, I’m more averse to these silhouettes because they personally remind me of being a gawky 14 year old looking for a dress for the fall dance than I am averse to them for some truly feminist reason.
Anyway, writing this post and looking for that Jeanne Balibar top gave me an excuse to look at a lot of runway shows from 1996-2003, and maybe I take it all back, and I love “Y2K,” I just love the womenswear not the juniors section.
Moving on: In my solitude last week, I became a little (belatedly) obsessed with how tabloids were worried about Justin Bieber but now it seems he’s okay and he was just molting? Now he’s kind of a run-off Draingang pixelated guy-entity. It’s crazy he hasn’t released anything since 2021. Justice was a pretty good album.
Bieber thoughts got me thinking that I should post playlists with my entries here, like I did in high school, back when I regularly posted on Blogspot. Those were mp3 downloads, because it was the golden era of the blogosphere. This is a Spotify playlist because I always forget that Apple music exists and because we live in hell:
Other notes:
I stumbled upon this evil business (what do we call start-ups that are not tech-related or start-up-coded? These boutique dumb-ass middle-man services that pop-up every other day in major cities?) called Monday for Wednesday that seems to be the equivalent of a CSA membership, but it costs $250 to join, payment for the actual vegetables etc. not included. I am rarely full-on disgusted by something, but this got me. I was alerted to its existence by my friendly neighborhood Cute Cafe’s Instagram, which surprised me because in all other regards they cut a very woke-gentrifier profile. Maybe this is just a sign of the way the neighborhood is going, full neo-nimby…Is this targeting a new kind of New Yorker who has an excess of disposable income, is somehow afraid of the Green Market experience, but also wants to support local farms? Maybe this profile marks out a contemporary equivalent to a very old kind of New Yorker, actually. A Gilded Age New Yorker?
I am reading Kirsty Bell’s The Undercurrents, and enjoying it. My current reading spread this week: I read Tonio Kroger by Thomas Mann in the morning and The Undercurrents at lunch time. Sometimes in the evening too, but lately my evenings have been filled with work calls to catch Los Angeles colleagues. After long blocks of these calls, I am braindead and often end up watching my new favorite show Ghosts. I cannot justify my enjoyment of this program.
A friend recommended Malaparte’s The Skin at dinner the other night. In Rivette’s Va Savoir, there was a good joke where one (French) character pronounced Malaparte French-ly (silent ‘e’) and another, Italian, corrected him. “Malaparte.” I choose to take the fact that he’s come up twice as a sign and will read this book now that I’ve finished Tonio Kroger.
I am soothing/exacerbating my feelings of homesickness–which are centered on my boyfriend and my friends and not at all on that sickly factory that we somehow tolerate living in–by following along on Instagram. Getting a really great bird’s eye view on how much cultural sewage is being pumped out of little old New York City these days, and I’m not sad to miss out on any of it! Like the Lorde video. Do people even listen to Lorde? Sorry.
Back to clothing. I have not really been shopping very much, though I permitted myself to buy two items from Pineapple Factory Gallery. A puffy-sleeved, linen Philo-era Celine top. a new cut for me (flouncy?), but works for summer? And then I got these Marithé + Francois Girbaud pants that are very comfortable and great for avoiding jeans. See below:
APC raincoat, Yohji Yamamoto sweater (similar), Kiko Kostadinov baird sleeve halter top (worn as scarf) , Marithé + Francois Girbaud pants (similar), Nike Superfly sneakers, Dries van Noten sunglasses Eva asked me what I am thinking about sunglasses this summer. Incidentally, I’ve been thinking about getting a new pair soon; I’ve been relying on one pair of cat eye Dries Van Noten shades that I got at James Veloria last year. I love them, but they need new lenses (super scratched up). I have a pair of Chloe aviators that I got around the same time, that I thought would be fun/ny in light of the Y*K thing, but they are a little too period for regular use. Good for bitchy poolside bikini time though. I’m thinking more cat eye though; I always feel good about the Dries ones, sometimes even wearing them on my head when I have no intention of fully wearing them, just for a little pizzazz. I love a mid-century starlet shape/size. I have a pretty big head, so such glasses are ideal for me. And rounder the better to soften the face. Tortoise shell or a fun color over black any day. I’m fucking with these Loewes (though I never like a big logo on the temples), these Linda Farrow x Jacquemus (though I have a major blegh thing about Jacquemus, so the logo problem x2), and these Retrosuperfuture x Marni (I think I could tolerate “a “Marni” emblazoned temple). Lowkey, Retrosuperfuture is always a good option, especially for people who lose sunglasses and scarves and things (me). Also, all the Marni collab eyeglasses are pretty cool. Glad I poked around… These are the Dries (comp? comp?). In a way, was this post just about Marni all along?
Deuces. xx
And yes, Jeanne Balibar IS Etienne Balibar’s daughter. Does everyone already know that?
Oh man, this thought led me down a rabbit hole, all the way to re-reading part of Tiqqun’s Introduction to Civil War and Theory of the Young-Girl. The latter is a dangerous text to link anythign to in casual settings where intellect is a currency, because people love to run with it. But just pinning this thought here, that if you wanted to use Tiqqun’s framework, this entropic state of style/consumption almost seems like its incorporated the bloom figure into the young-girl. Anyway…can’t believe I’m gonna reread Tiqqun. Nooooo…..!!!!