The Magic Of Tying Something Around Your Waist

I know a lot of you loved my friend Charlotte’s diary of what she wore to Jury Duty (if you haven’t read it yet, you should, it’s great), AND! She’s doing a one night show at The Groundlings in LA, on February 25, with some really incredible people (Edi Patterson I love you!) reading her material. You should come - I’ll be there, laughing my ass off and cheering on my friend. Get tickets here.

I’m also going to say, the contents of this newsletter and the video do not match - the video kind of talks through my thought process of styling myself with tricky things, and this essay is… something else? But I have all the links and the credits in here.

On Super Bowl Sunday, I was with two of my best friends (one of them was Charlotte), and one of them told me this little factoid, that more or less says - your cognitive ability goes down by 20% when your phone is anywhere around you. It basically needs to be turned off and in a separate building for you to get that 20% back. I didn’t fact check it but I believe it because I’ll believe basically anything this woman tells me.

The loose theme of this letter is around tying things on - around my waist, neck, whatever. I got a little crafty - I went to this thrift shop in Beverly Hills and picked up two plaid shirts, but then! I went to Joann’s Fabrics and got a few yards of navy tulle, a few yards of neon green silk, some rope and trim, and some fake flowers, and my whole approach this week was - let’s go in without a plan. Just to fuck around and play. I explain it better in the video. Anyway, here, I’m wearing the plaid shirt from the thrift store (this does a similar thing, or try this), a basically perfect Row long jacket (you can also try this one), this exceptional leopard print skirt from J.Crew, and some truly great flat sock boots from Co. Around my waist is the Tibi nylon blazer from last week, along with a long black rope I got at Joann Fabrics. I got three yards.

Also, the best way to break your phone addiction is to turn it on greyscale, because all those beautiful colors are in there to keep you hooked, and if you can leave it on greyscale for like, three weeks, your addiction will be broken. The people who she heard this from said that after three weeks the test subjects were like, yeah I don’t care about my phone anymore and by the way, fuck you. My friend told me that when she tried it, an hour later she texted her husband saying, “I feel like I’m dead.” Of course, I tried it - all Sunday night, and all of Monday (until I shot my newsletter) I had my phone on greyscale, and it was WILD. It feels like literally all the color has been sucked out of the universe. On my drive to school morning I couldn’t figure out what was different, until I realized all the cars I saw were either grey, white, or black, and the trees were kind of greyish green, and the sky looked grey - it took me another minute to realize that wasn’t true at all, my phone had just ruined me.