Glistening With Style and Only Nine Seconds Long

Dress by Mayle, coat, boots, belt, earrings vintage.

Living in L.A. for so long, a So Cal native, I am super used to the way we wake up and collaborate on a sunny weekend at the drop of a hat. Sure, it’s a sprawl of a “city”, so it can seem like it’s hard to connect with creative and interesting people, but once you jump into the currents of a community’s moving ocean waters, you find that, happily, you can’t avoid them. My friend, Jodi recently shared this article, that talks about this “ready to collaborate attitude” that we are all so used to. She is intuitive and calls me at just the right moment when yes, I can run over and make a fashion graphic with you, throwing handmade papers, wabisabi jean bags, and who knows what else on to her bed, narrowly missing her fluffy cat who is hiding in a paper bag. But on the day pictured above, we were spontaneously shooting a little video for the company Jodi works for. No problem; I LOVE talking about clothes. Luckily, my love is skilled with the iphone video shooting and directing. He’s up for the fun of creating something glistening with style and only nine seconds long.

But what is the CLOTHES Story here? Buttons and trimming. I love the assignment. Jodi brings over a couple of gems first pictured above. Chanel buttons. Miu miu buttons. All vintage pieces with history of course. Seeing these, I get inspired to bring out my mom’s wool coat with “very serious career lady in NY” buttons. A Mayle dress from another friend’s closet has exquisite, “Paris art nouveau buttons”. My buttons were clearly bonded on the Concord in another life. They are the details that catch my eye. Lucky for me, whenever a piece of clothing was truly falling apart, my mom would save the buttons in a special jar. There was history there, and one or several of these buttons would pop back up on a sewing project in 1986, having waited there since 1969. It’s the kind of experience that makes me hold a nice suit coat in a thrift store, and think, “Nice, but could be even nicer if I switch those buttons out for abalone… or maybe walnut.”