Mother Earth

I’ve been fascinated with Minna Gilligan and her art ever since her first post on Rookie Magazine. So when I heard she was traveling from Melbourne to New York, I emailed her asking if she would be interested in having me be her personal tour guide. I don’t get very fazed by celebrities; however, I very much admire all of the people who work at Rookie --- they are my version of the Spice Girls. Needless to say, it was exciting to meet Minna and learn about her life back home in Melbourne and her work process.

Both Minna and her art are like looking into a lava lamp. Minna dresses like a peasant goddess from the 1970’s, informing her artwork to feel the same. She mixes these rainbow colored markings with collages, cutouts from many of the stacks of vintage 1960's/1970's catalogs and textbooks she buys from Savers, the discount chain back home in Australia, for illustrations that are pure homages to a childhood that I can only dream of. One of my favorite series are her pink tie-dyed washes that are extra trippydippy. 

Minna and I went flea-marketing at The Avenue A Flea Market in the East Village. There’s always something unusual to feast your eyes on in the East Village. This Mother Earth graffiti is one of the happiest ones, I’d say. The best part of it is the scribe of the right hand side with the list of different flowers and elixirs; I imagine it’s for a flower witch doctor or something. 

I feel like a man who wore a cocaine spoon necklace and hung out at Studio 54 in the 1970’s would have worn these. So basically everyone at Studio 54.

Super seventies housedress 

The soundtrack for the Broadway show, Follies has such inspiring album artwork. Whoever goes to The Avenue A flea market next, please find a good home for this and frame it!!!!  

In Fabulous Fanny’s, an always spectacular vintage store, I came across a rack of intricately embroidered denim bell bottoms and maxi skirts. They were all way above my price range (upwards of $250) and although I’d never seen such wacky embroidery, I can’t imagine spending that much on vintage denim. I love all of the silly phrases sewn on such as “hot lips” and “cute stuff,” and the circus-y balloons. I seriously want to meet the women who once made and wore all of these (assuming they were women) and become friends with them all. I told my mom all about the denim, and she said that in the 1960’s she was an expert embroiderer and always was embroidering peace signs and animals on her clothes and even made embroidery as gifts for her friends. I’m making it one of my summer projects to learn how to do embroider to this caliber. I think it would be amazing not only to be able to make something like this for myself, but to be able to have the trade passed down to me from my mother. 

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Psychedelic 17

I had a mini teen life crisis this week. I wish Avril Lavigne had written a spunky pop song about turning 17. Instead, one of the few songs of guidance I have is Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen,” which although applicable, is rather depressing and just suggests that I have " a lot to learn at 17." As if I didn't already realize that, Janis. But, in my restlessness of avoiding my birthday, I came home to a SURPRISE PARTY!!!!!!!!!

A perpetual dream of mine is to have a tea party with Andy Warhol, and this is just about as close as I’ll probably ever come. I’m still in disbelief that the it happened!!! Not sure at what point exclamations lose their emphasis, but this requires lots of them. 

My house was transformed into POP Art gallery: from the Campbell’s soup cans stacked up in a pyramid to British Invasion paper plates, Warhol posters, and even Lichtenstein door stoppers that my mom used as table decorations.  My mom bought all of my favorite candies that were visually “pop,” and retro popcorn bags for movie snacks. I already had a playlist called “Lava Lamp Grooves” on my iPod, so we were able to also jam out to Cream and The Kinks.

The best was of course THE VELVET UNDERGROUND CAKE! 

My birthday gifts were all 1960’s themed. I find gnomes so comical and also misunderstood, and collecting gnomes are like the alternative for the crazy cat lady.  My friend got me this vintage gnome-print maxi skirt from Paris; if you look closely there are satanic cats on it, which also speaks to me because I’m not a big animal person and I can imagine some little French women tending to her lawn gnomes as she wore the skirt.

I also got The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine DVD for my birthday. I’ve always wanted to see it because its the animation style that inspired psychedelic commercial artist, Peter Max. Above the DVD is a flower power dress from Etsy, which I would definitely wear had I the chance to be in Andy Warhol's actual Factory experience. I'd wear it with the white mod sunglasses, reminiscent of ones Kurt Cobain used to wear, that I got this weekend as well. 

Below the sunglasses are an Andy Warhol sticker book. The thing about this book is that usually with stickers I feel no remorse peeling off pages of them, but with these, I think I’ll be savoring each sticker for a while. 

Strangely enough, my favorite thing I got for my birthday was getting the chance to go in my building’s basement storage. My family hadn't opened our storage unit in nearly 20 years, and so this weekend, I went down there with my dad and uncovered all of his old records from when he was in high school/college. One of my favorite ones I found was The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour. Not only is it a great album cover, but it came with 24 pages of color pictures from the film.

It seems like people who made records put so much care into and had so much fun figuring out what unique inserts could be put in their albums, let alone the  front album artwork. Take when Andy Warhol designed The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers album art. It was so controversial at the time to put an actual 3-D zipper as a way to open up the record, but obviously paid off both The Rolling Stones and Warhol!

The gummies are supposed to match these iron-on fried egg boobs that me and my bff both have.

Had I known about the party ahead of time I would have gone full-out in a Go Go outfit, but suffice, I wore a vintage halter-dress passed down to me from my friend Lyris passed to her from our friend Julia of Supercute!

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Sockhop Flashmob

Sasha, F.Scott Fitzgerald Book Club aficionado

On Saturday, I got in my time machine and turned the dial back to a sock hop in Central Park. My friend Delilah was filming a silent film and asked us all to dress-up like were from the 1950’s. It’s safe to say we were convincing, because mid-shoot, a jogger ran through saying, “GREASE LIGHTNING, YEAH MAN!!!”

The premise of the plot was that the protagonist, a teen girl, is extremely lonely, causing her to start imagining all of these couples from the 1950’s wherever she wanders. She dreams of living in their world and being one of the couples she encounters. However, *spoiler alert,* in the end of the movie, she finds a boy who loves F. Scott Fitzgerald effectively allowing her to leave her 1950's dreams behind and join a new dream filled with Fitzgerald and him. I personally think it should end with a sock hop version of a High School Musical dance number, but this is also a lovely ending. 

In the video, my job was to be part of one of the couples seen in the girl's dreams. I’m wearing a red bandana skirt that was handmade by Ruby Moriarty, a vintage bandana-as-hair-tie from TIME Magazine, Repetto patent loafers, a vintage lace button-up blouse my grandma used to wear, and a denim jacket from Park City Utah that is 100% not from there (I’ve never been skiing, It’s from a thrift store in Woodstock. The same place I got my picnic basket purse).  Note that Isaac is wearing Converse. Delilah REALLY wanted to stress that Converse were integral to the plot development. So I want you all to know he is in them.

  These are also our “DID WE REALLY JUST GET PINNED?” faces. We did not get pinned. This was followed by a scene where my friend pulled out a switchblade and carved a heart into a tree. *~*~*vintage teen angst *~*~*.

Delilah filming the silent film with *gasp* film

The 1950’s are often criticized as an era of conformity, but post-World War II,  I think many were looking for that sort of simplicity.  People didn’t want to have to deal with rebellion again, and for the time it was held off (you know, before rock 'n roll, and the juvenile delinquency that came along that also characterized the era). This makes sense why fashion of the 1950’s was more conservative: pastels, poodle skirts, bobby-socks, etc. Everyone has their own era that they wish they were a part of (basically the premise of Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris) and while for me, its 1960’s San Francisco, I still find the video dreamy.

Nostalgia has a hold on everyone. So I find it interesting though that back in the 18^th Century (and perhaps even earlier), those who were nostalgic were likened to someone with a mental illness. If that was really true, our whole society would have to be “diagnosed.” Still, it’s interesting to think about how nostalgia really is a state of mind, which has certainly evolved over the past couple of centuries. 

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May Day

I’m excited that it’s spring, not only because my 17^th birthday is in a few days, but because it means that I can break out all my Technicolor flower power dresses. Okay, so I pretty much wear through the winter anyway... the difference now is that spring is a non-stop color party where I just want to dress like a packet of Skittles 24/7, you know? So I’ve been referencing the episode of Lizzie McGuire when she attempts to dress like a tween from the 1960’s to appease Gordo and also Peter Max's early work and Factory Girl vibes a lot.  

My friend Emily photographed some of these spring things, and I thought I’d share  some that we’ve come across in the past couple of weeks while hanging out. 
For some reason, there are quite a number of cacti shops around the East Village (you know what they say about hipsters and cactuses… The East Village: great place for thrift, coffee, records, and cactuses.) I personally think cactuses look like herbal aliens (in the best possible way), but I had never seen such colorful cactuses before.  Since I am not a cat person, I can see myself, later on as a Mature Young Lady, harboring cactuses. Obviously only in the East Village, though.

Rookie Magazine, back in January, ran an article about places us teens get food at 2 am in NYC. I had suggested via Twitter that they scope out Big Daddy’s, which me and my friends hangout at quite a lot. It’s one of  a chain of diners in NYC, and it’s made to look as if it's forever frozen in the color portion of the movie Pleasantville. My favorite thing to get at Big Daddy’s is their Key Lime Pie Milkshake and dip French fries in it. The first time I ordered it, it was, in fact, almost 2 am. My friends all thought it was going to be disgusting, but this is a photo of Delilah being put under the spells of the magical pie-milkshake combo. So HA! Diner Wicca! I think I might just have a celebratory one for my upcoming 17^th birthday.   

Me and my friend Lyris, a midst a deeply philosophical conversation. You can tell because Lyris is looking down with her eyes closed, which is the ultimate indicator of depth.

I’m wearing a velvet turtleneck leotard and glitter star-shaped sungasses. This is a screen-cap from a project that I’ve been working on, started by one of my friends. I’m looking forward to it coming out soon so I can share more about it. 

All of these spring motifs manifest in this watercolor stationary I recently made for Etsy. 

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