There are few things I love more than a no-fuss mini dress I can wear sans bra, with sneakers. Réalisation Par is a front runner in this department. I’ve yet to meet a dress from them I have not loved.
And here are two of my current favourites:
The Devon in 70’s floral – This one is on the shorter side in terms of length
The Inez in black strawberry – This is my favourite cut they’ve done to date.
Half of these photos are shot on 35mm film, the others on iPhone. All of them are shot by my Mother, in front of a sheet in my parents backyard, during my post New York, pre-Berlin fourteen day quarantine. I love them mostly cause they were shot by my Mum, but also as they capture what was another intersection of my life.
But let’s move onto the jeans. “Faded blue and white vertical stripes recall summers spent in the French riviera” a description so inspiring I’m craving rosé even while writing this at 10am on a Tuesday.
Aside from the romantic appeal, I cannot stress how much I love the fit of these. The straight leg, falling somewhere between a cigarette pant and a wide leg, actually thins and lengthens your silhouette – a claim made by many but delivered by few. The material has stretch without sag and the high rise hits you right at the belly button, which in my humble opinion is where all jeans should fall. It just feels right.
So if you need some really great jeans. Click here.
They also come in other colours:
When I was seven my mother put me in a floral dress for a day of sightseeing while on a family holiday in the Saskatchewan Prairies. It was forty-odd degrees out, no breeze, no cloud in sight, just heatwaves radiating from the dry, flat land. My Uncle had rented an 11-seater van from a budget company called Wheat Country Van Rentals. The air conditioning didn’t work, the radio was patchy, and the windows opened outwards instead of down. Every seat was accounted for between our two families and our grandmother – who, despite the Saharan heat levels inside that vehicle, sat with her trench coat on and complained.
In retrospect my mother’s outfit choice for me was purely practical, an act of heat survival really. I however felt victimized.
How could she force me to wear this? She knew I had a ‘pants only’ policy. Coerced to conform to the female gender role I so adamantly rejected there was only one thing I could do. Protest.
After four stifling hours in the van we pulled up to a park for lunch. My ten family members scampered out to freedom but I, anchored by my own morals, would not budge. I would stay in that miserable vehicle until they worried for my safety. I would show them how they had compromised my identity and ruined my day. I would make them pay for the floral nightmare I’d been straight jacketed into.
Unsurprisingly this protest wasn’t the success I’d imagined. My mother simply shrugged her shoulders, popped a window and left me there, in the hell of my own making.
I’ve thought about this day a lot over the years. How upset that dress made me. I think it’s my first real memory of outwardly acknowledging that I didn’t want to be ‘a girl’. Not from an anatomical standpoint, but rather a systemic one. As far as I understood, being a girl was synonymous with sacrifice. It meant being cut from the boy’s hockey team, not because I wasn’t good enough but because I was taking a spot away from someone’s son. It meant staying in to help my Mum wash dishes while my brothers got to help Dad in the yard. It meant being called ‘obstinate’ by my teacher for standing up to him in class while my male classmate was referred to as ‘confident’.
I wanted to dress, act and look like a boy so that perhaps I may be treated like one. One time I even tried peeing standing up, which quickly backfired and showed me there were practical limitations to my efforts. Nonetheless, I stayed the course.
When I’ve told this story to friends I’ve been asked when it was that I stopped wanting to be a boy. But I guess thats not the right question… I haven’t ‘stopped’ wanting to be a boy. Instead I’ve learned to define my own gender identity. What I was rejecting as a child was not the floral dress, not my gender but the social constructs surrounding them.
It’s crazy to think that at the age of seven I had such a deep impression of male privilege within society and that I so strongly associated that floral dress with female oppression. I think about what it will mean to one day put my own daughter in a dress and I can only hope that she will look down and simply see clothing.
In collaboration with Farfetch.
Wearing: Galvan Dress
A few shots from one of my favourite corners of the city at night.
Shot by Nick Urteaga
Walking into the lobby of the Fairmont Copley Plaza, you are immediately transported into a world of opulence. (I immediately regretted wearing track pants). This historical landmark, designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, is an ode to Boston’s rich history. It feels like an escape from real life, which is one of the things I love most about travel and entirely the point of a weekend getaway.
I always think there are two types of hotels – the one you justify with “whatever we won’t even really be in the room” and the one you cancel your dinner plans for to stay in and enjoy the escape.
Between the luxurious room and the having access to the Gold Lounge, Anni and I blissfully passed our Friday evening wrapped in terry-velour, sipping Savvy B and pretending like we totally belonged there, track pants aside.
My favourite part of the hotel is indisputably the lobby though the entire experience, from the charming demeanor of the employees to their passionate attention to detail, is highly noteworthy. We also found ourselves frequenting the Oak Long Bar + Kitchen, known for its Sunday brunch, but equally as popular during happy hour. It was a fun addition to the overall experience.
