Dis Satisfaction

I was honored to be asked to write a piece for the first-ever labor issue of the online art magazine Dis, which is out this week. I wrote about the fragile economics of the modeling industry, and why I still owe my former agency Elite Paris a sum I can’t actually pay. This piece was a bit difficult to write, because both my debt and my almost spectacular lack of success in my old career are sources of residual shame to me, but the response so far has been mercifully gratifying — I seem to have attracted links from everyone from the finance blogger Felix Salmon to the models Dana Drori and Sara Ziff, whose own observations about the industry, offered through writing and filmmaking, respectively, I respect enormously. (If you’re not reading Dana’s column for Blackbook, by the way, which she writes under her own name because she is far braver than I ever was, you’re missing out.)

But you should read the whole issue. It’s full of astute people making astute points about the often depressing interactions of labor and capital within the cultural sector. There is this insightful piece that argues for the establishment of a union for all the art handlers and gallery receptionists who toil in this city; it goes very well with this photo essay of gallery receptionists at work and this art handling photo essay, hilariously named “How To Travel If You’re A Fetishized Commodity”; it also goes well with the insight, “In the post-BFA landscape, hot women get jobs filing and hot men get jobs lifting”; there’s this piece about the history of political art censorship in America and the recent decision by the new governor of Maine to remove a mural from the state Department of Labor following one anonymous complaint; this wry pastiche of New York real estate sloganeering; there’s this: “Do you feel exploited? Do you feel like the people who work for the man are constantly taking advantage of your je ne sais quoi so that their place looks really fucking cool/political/hip/totally not sexist/racist/classist/homophobic? You know what I mean?”

Oh, do I. And that’s not even the half of it. The whole labor issue is really good. Go ahead, click on over. There’s a reason Dis has long been on the very short list of publications for which I’ll come out of my “retirement.”

The very fabulous Tamu McPherson took my picture for her blog recently — what a sweetheart! This raises an interesting question, however: who’s that woman who matched her red fur vest to her red shirt to her red pants to her red shoes? She looks fun.

Some New Work

Programming note: Should you be looking for a spot of spring reading — perhaps you woke up this fine Sunday morning with urgent, unanswered questions concerning Yohji Yamamoto’s libertine sex life and Diane von Furstenberg’s views on feminism — I have new pieces in the current Bookforum and the March issue of Jalouse (which has just reached New York City). In Bookforum I review Yamamoto’s intriguing, if somewhat maddening, new memoir and Ligaya Salazar’s monograph for Yamamoto’s retrospective at the V&A in London. In Jalouse, I talk to von Furstenberg about her life, business empire, and working relationship with DVF’s new creative director, Yvan Mispelaere. Neither story is available online.

Who Knew Gwyneth Paltrow Had Strong And Almost Coherent Opinions About Gangster Rap?

The kale-eating one tells her friend Sean Carter that she fell for N.W.A. when she was 17: “I was fascinated by lyrics as rhythm and how Dre had a such different cadence and perspective from say, Eazy-E, who I thought was one of the most ironic and brilliant voices hip-hop has ever had.”

Five Easy Pieces

My friend Alice Baxley, who blogs at Clouds & Candy, does a feature called The Classic Series where she asks people to break down their style, focusing on five elements with which they build their look. When Alice came to New York City last week, I had her up to Harlem for a cup of tea, and she was kind enough to let me prate on about the clothes and accessories I like — scarves, good flats, pencil skirts, things of that nature — while she took some pictures. Here are the results.

W4W: Will You Be My Dress Form Buddy? [Updated]

I find that my interest in crafts cycles with the seasons. In winter, I’m all about knitting — almost nothing is better of an evening than pouring a whiskey, popping in a movie, and clicking away the hours. When the days get longer and I’m tired of scarves, all I want to do is unpack my Husqvarna, queue up some Radiolab podcasts, and sew a few new dresses.

My sewing machine — a Viking, bought used in 2003 for $399, an indulgent sum for a recent immigrant to the U.S. whose only jobs were working 15 hours a week at the local Hy-Vee and selling Cutco cutlery door-to-door — is one of the few things I managed to hold onto through the escalating peregrinations of university and graduation and modelling. (Well, I still use my Cutco sales kit. They’re fine enough knives, and I keep them sharp.) Over the course of several careless years, I lost nearly all the “good” things I had, in more hopeful frames of mind, acquired. Two beautiful Moroccan kilim rugs. An enormous oak-framed mirror I hung over the mantel and worried about during earthquakes. All of my useful kitchen things. The easy chair I reupholstered during a manic finals week in Iowa (those 4″ and 5″ long, semicircular sailmaking needles have subsequently proven to be of limited use, but I love the way they look, how their form expresses a purpose as specific as it is rare). For a long time, life was about dispersal. I took a certain wry pleasure in distributing myself over wide areas. I think I believed that moving was better than standing still, and that as long as I was moving, I was moving forwards. And what was I supposed to do, take a bunch of rugs and a potato-masher and a copy of Tess to Paris? I already had enough excess baggage.

I never let that machine fall from my grasp, however. Fall from use, yes. After I’d maintained a lease in San Francisco for nine months, a lease in an apartment, my then companion never ceased to remind me, that was large enough to count an extra room, a walk-in-closet-sized room that he’d allowed me to colonise as the “sewing” room, and where my Husqy had during those months done little more than sit patiently, awaiting my touch, my then companion rebuked me by saying, “You never even use your sewing machine anymore.” (This was true. I have to be relatively happy to sew.) But never was my machine at risk of being dumped on some street corner after an argument or sold on Craigslist for too little money or given to a charity shop. I wanted that machine. I was coming back for it. I just needed some time.

One December, in another hopeful frame of mind, I got on a plane with the Husqy tucked under my arm. And every spring since, I uncover it and it feels brand new. Still sews like a beast, too.

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I currently have need of an activity partner in the New York City area who shares my interest in home sewing. UPDATE: Starlee Kine has stepped up to the plate! Watch this space in the month of May.

Pretty Things

This is from a spread in the new Helmet, shot by Liz Ham. Ham is a great photographer, and this happens to feature a couple models whose work I tend to enjoy — Jenny Sweeney, whose Vogue Italia cover is still haunting, Zippora Seven, as well as the promising relative newcomers (and Kiwis) Georgia Fowler and Grace Hollows. I am not yet entirely over vintage-inspired lingerie, and I like that this spread takes inspiration from apple bobbing, sack racing, tugs-of-war, and egg-and-spoon races. I don’t know if those activities are popular in America — perhaps they are considered old-fashioned — but they all featured prominently in my antipodean childhood.