Not to sound preposterous, but I find myself wanting a new conceptual model of self in addition to new shoes. Who am I really, now that my knuckles are wider than my fingers? Gray hair, wrinkles, jowls, various tendon issues, somehow all of that felt like it was happening to the self in the mirror, not the one here, on the sofa. I think now the little spark of consciousness behind my eyes is having to adjust. Feels a bit fidgety, TBH.

I don’t feel sad, at least not yet. Were I to give voice to my reaction, which, obviously, yes, it’s a great big, “Huh.” I’m reading Honest Aging, by Rosemary Leipzig, as Kristin recommended, and thinking. Thanks, Kristin.

So much thinking.

But before we launch into a full post, or several, I wanted to hear from you. As many have pointed out, readers’ thoughtful (funny, iconoclastic) comments are one of this old blog’s best features, and it would make no sense to write at any length without your input. So.

• Did/does 70 feel significant? Or just another decade passing by?
• Did/will you take stock? If so, of what?
• Have you made any proactive changes as a result of thinking about it all? Or only in response to events and changes as they occurred – health, life, and so on?

I imagine you can think of questions of your own. Feel free to ask them. Or answer those unasked, for that matter.

Have an excellent weekend. Happy birthday to anyone who needs it.

The post Is Turning 70 A Big Deal, Or, Saturday Morning at 8:44am appeared first on Privilege.

One thing I did suspect, women in the professions need professional wardrobes. When my daughter told me she was ready for a new one, I thought, “Hooray!” immediately followed by, “What to wear, these days?” As a surgeon, in the OR, scrubs and clogs clearly. At other times, dresses and suits, dresses and suits. Same as it ever was, but the 2026 version, and not corporate. There’s more room for personal style, to a point.

What about this,

with Repettos? She was a dancer through school and college, after all.

Add simple – but not tiny – gold earrings and not a speck of other ornamentation except wedding and engagement rings.

I do love navy pointelle. I’m not sure about the Tory Burch T everywhere, though. As we know, controversially, I’m good with logos generally but at work not so much. Unless your work is fashion or design, where you want your clothing to say something about where you stand in that universe.

The only heels I wear comfortably enough these days are my Jimmy Choo wedding shoes and a pair of Paul Green pumps. So maybe these from PG? I like the way the nubbly bit would relate to TB’s pointelle. Surely, surely we all know navy and black are just fine?

For a conference, perhaps. So helpful of Me + Em to style this with a white coat. More pointelle. Am liking this trend.

That dress insists on pointy toes, I don’t know why, so with legendary Choos.

Now, suits, can we go lady? This color would be gorgeous if one happened to be a fair-skinned, pink-cheeked, blue-eyed redhead. Might want dark navy pumps or the afore-mentioned brown Repettos, black here being too high contrast for our doctor.

And if not lady, who makes our suits these days? Maybe Paul Smith, sized for a grownup and not a girl in her big brother’s clothes?

With a pair of suede loafers? Or Darbys, as the British call oxfords?

With that, I turn it over to you eminent knowers of the world. Any and all resources welcome. I have been retired for going on 15 years, and can no longer provide answers. I may not even have guidance, ideas will have to do. Have a wonderful weekend.

The post A New Work Wardrobe For A Newly-Minted Attending Physician, Or, Saturday Morning at 10:40am appeared first on Privilege.

I just returned from camping, with my sister, for three nights in the High Sierra. We are both in our later 60s.

It was just car camping, tents, cooking over a fire, a little propane stove, and so on. No real backpacking. But the High Sierra is high; at 7500 feet oxygen is a tiniest bit harder to come by, the sun, intense. Never mind the possibility of bears. Gotta put all the food and any scented toiletries in the special bear locker any time you leave the campsite or go to sleep. That’s a lot of carrying bins from here to there.

The High Sierra is also extraordinarily, or maybe ordinarily if we weren’t so civilized, beautiful. And thus, inspiring? Is that the right word?

Specifics include silver tip firs, fallen and standing, wildflowers, granite, and clear, clear water.

There are teeny white and pink flowers hidden in this greenery, and often small orange butterflies flit about. I think Western Meadow Fritillaries but they rarely stayed still enough to identify.

We thought better of hiking to the very top of Inspiration Point. I was testing my limits, and the risks of over-extending here seemed high.

Lake Alpine, in the Stanislaus National Forest. We swam directly from the granite. Pretty (read: wildly) awesome.

Don’t forget your chairs. To rest, to gaze out across trees and mountains, and talk about how this time we are going to remember to buy a tablecloth that isn’t too small for the park picnic tables.

The trip was hard work. And also fantastic. It’s good to bump up against your limits, and then maybe find a way to push them just a little further out. Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

The post Pushing Limits In The Approach To 70, Or, Saturday Morning at 9:00am appeared first on Privilege.

In thanks for your support, and your time spent here that might on occasions require something more like tolerance, I am offering one of our regular readers a chance at this “sweatshirt.” Quotation marks because I doubt sweat is the use case, given the provenance, i.e. a collaboration between JW Anderson, and the artist, Patrick Carroll.

Don’t you love the way the asymmetry of the traditional “X” below the neckline?

Details of giveaway:

1. You must have commented on a previous post here, with a consistent email address or moniker so I can confirm you’re not, well, taking advantage. And my apologies, but given the current complexities of international trade, this is open only to readers in the USA or the UK, as I will have it sent to you directly from the JWA site.
2. Comment below with a line you like from either Blake or Chaucer. You don’t have to actually like it, pretending-in this situation-is allowed.
3. Entries will close at 7pm Sunday night Pacific Time, I will use a random number generator to pick a winner, edit this post to include the name of the winner (can be the alias you use for commenting) and email that winner to notify him/her.
4. I will ask you in the email if you would like the brown Blake or the blue Chaucer, for your size, and your shipping address.
5. That’s it!

Available in Walnut, or Blue, with embroidered lines from William Blake, or Chaucer, it comes in men’s sizes. To illustrate, here’s the Blue, on me, evidently.

I’m wearing an XS, and could wear an XXS, if I wanted a close fit. The sleeves are long.

A close up of embroidery. Thread ends trail. Embroidered grid represents warp and weft. The artist’s name on a label.

The interior. Not a regular sweatshirt, I gotta say. Cotton with some kind of magic knit.

And yes, I know that Jonathan Anderson, also the head designer of Dior, created the as-yet-unseen dress worn by Taylor Swift at her wedding, as well as the groom’s garb. It must be understood that I’m more excited about Patrick Carroll’s participation than the celebrity connection, given that he is my own dear son.

It’s a really cool piece of clothing. Design/fashion/literary history, I mean, it’s our gig, right?

I’ll be back here Sunday night Pacific Time at 7pm to notify you all of the outcome. Have a wonderful weekend!

Perhaps needless to say, however, I receive no compensation for this post or associated sales

The post Splendid Giveaway: JW Anderson x Patrick Carroll “Painted Birds” Sweatshirt, Or, Saturday Morning at 10:07am appeared first on Privilege.

I am writing this post to encourage you to help flip the House – and at a stretch the Senate – this November. I’m not going to go through all the dreadful things Trump and his backers (for he is by no means solely responsible) have done, you area already familiar, but let’s consider how we constrain him. It’s doable. Red, white and blueable.

First, Are We On The Road Now To Effective Midterms?

1.  Starting January 2025 Trump’s administration has attempted to impose as horrific a regime as we had imagined
2. The current Supreme Court majority turns out to want a world antithetical in many ways to what I, and most of you, believe in
3. The Republican-controlled Congress has ceded its power to Trump and his henchpeople
4. All signs indicate a plan is in place to prevent a Democratic victory in the midterm elections, and that plan is now being carried out to the best of the administration’s ability

This is where our list starts to look up.

1. Mainstream media, which at first glossed over our terrible farce, has begun to report accurately if not passionately. Independent reporters and historians have stepped in to say out loud what many commercial TV stations and periodicals will not.
2. Lower courts, again and again, have repudiated efforts to weaken election processes. Local election officials in many states are resisting. Even the Supreme Court voted to allow counting of mail-in ballots arriving after Election Day.
3. Trump’s approval ratings are supremely low, with the New York Times’s “select pollsters” putting it between 30-38%. And the “best of the administration’s ability” doesn’t seem to be very good. Many of the people charged with executing this malevolent strategy are self-interested, incompetent and corrupt. This is terrible for governance, but good for our chances. We’re pretty competent.
4. Many groups around the country have plans of their own to inform, convince, support and fight for voters’ rights
5. We – just as individuals – can act in multiple ways and we are legion

Slightly Deeper Dive On What’s Been Happening 

Luckily for us, the New York Times has just published comprehensive reporting on, “The Many Ways Trump Is Trying To Tip The Scales For The Midterms.” Here’s a gift link. Please let me know if it doesn’t work for you. They lay out what Trump’s doing:

• Taking steps to nationalize elections
• Trying to tighten voting restrictions (Additional note on the SAVE Act: using reconciliation, rather than the usual process that the NYT addresses, is also likely to fail)
• Pushing for mid-decade redistricting
• Cutting election security (however, organizations are already informing local officials of what to do if troops were to show up at the polls)
• Undermining faith in the electoral system by questioning previous results
• Punishing those who have worked against election denialism

Again, very much worth a read, as a grounding.

A Deeper Dive On What We Can Do, Starting With Institutional Levers

Maybe America was established by privileged white men who just wanted to keep their money rather than pay it to a king across the seas, but somehow when they wrote a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution, it turned out they had to use higher moral values to justify their fight. And sensible people understand that to keep those values in place, you kind of have to apply them to everyone. Oops. So. What to do?

• Vote (No exclamation mark required. You just might want to check to make sure you’re registered.)
• Donate (Even if there’s no candidate you want to support, what about organizations like Swing Left, Indivisible, and the League of Women Voters. If that doesn’t appeal, one of the most impactful thing you can do is donate in support of local officials who are actually administering elections. Or fund the lawyers fighting the good fight.)
• Become active online, comment on public notices (For example, comment in support of mail-in voting)
• Advocate to your friends/community (For many of you this might be really hard. I have it easy, in a blue county in a blue state, with my blue family. I recognize that. But Marc Elias, the lawyer who’s been fighting the election undermining, in court, says it’s the one thing he asks us all to do. I’ll be wearing my We The People t-shirt to Spanish class next week. Small steps.)
• Volunteer with voting/activist groups (again, Swing Left will have a group near you, as will Indivisible. Take a look on their websites and they will show you where groups are active. They usually have Facebook groups. And guess what, they are mostly people pretty much like you.) You can:
  • Write letters (less effective than other actions, but also less effort, so, why not?)
  • Become a poll watcher (I am considering doing this at a poll inland of me. Have just begun to research. I’d do it with a family member – these things are so much less scary with a buddy)
  • Register voters (I especially love to do this on college campuses. I find the opportunities via my local Swing Left group, but they are also listed on Mobilize, where you can search by location. You sign up, a friendly group leader gets in touch.)
  • Canvassing (Scariest of all. Definitely take a friend. And here’s an anecdote. I canvassed two weekends ago in an area that was held by Republicans until California’s recent redistricting. I was struck by how passionate and informed several Democratic voters were, compared to when I canvassed in 2018. They all knew what was happening, and most notably, they all referred to being the “lighthouses” of their friends’ group. (I just made up that term, but I mean they inform and encourage their friends; they are leaders. I didn’t meet anyone like this in 2018.)

On Beyond Comfort Zones To Standing On Stairs?

I had vowed that if the Supreme Court overturned birthright citizenship I’d go stand on their steps with food, water, a sleeping bag and a sign, to stay as long as I was able. In an interview with Ami Fields-Meyer, the LOLGOP Substack reports that “standard democratic tools like courts and elections have a dismal 7% success rate against backsliding. Civil resistance boosts odds to 51%.” I have found Fields-Meyer series on Instagram, on how to become an activist, very informative. If we start with low conflict protests, say, becoming one of the little group of people on the corner outside the mall carrying signs of a weekend, move up to slightly higher conflict, say, No Kings marches, we may become prepared if more is needed. And we hope that never again will the Minneapolis sacrifices be required. Maybe just try a little activism, a little civil, if not disobedience, civil inappropriate. We do what we can, and then we learn to do more, has been my experience.

Where Is Hope To Be Found In Voting, When We’re Cynical?

Here’s the thing. The Supreme Court, and traditional leaders of American industry, along with the Trump-instigated MAGA crowd, might want to roll us back to 1950. However, there is no “rollback” as such that gets us to zero elections if we are to remain America. They can only take us back to when voting was denied to many, with an added fillip of “this election was fraudulent.”

I’m not sure even immoral powers that be (the sane ones) want a country without elections. I doubt they want full-on martial law. Not very fun. I think they’d like their full set of 1950 privileges back, but perhaps not at the cost of chaos. (I believe those who voted for this, and don’t have power, wanted their path to privilege cleared of help given to those who start further back. I don’t think they can get in the way of elections too much, because, power and lack thereof. After we win, we can help them.)

As a result, making it clear that hell no we won’t go, matters. Boycotts, strikes, protests, and most of all citizen civil disobedience like we saw in Chicago and Minneapolis, Portland and New Jersey, even California (and maybe elsewhere but it hasn’t made the news) matter for our future elections.

Finally, if your patriotism is questioned, I found this, on Critical Patriotism and its long history in our country, heartening.

We can do this, you guys. Or if we can’t, at least we will have tried our best. Have a good weekend. I’m sure it’s not lost on anyone that it’s the Fourth of July.

The post To Do The Possible Is Better Than Sitting Frozen On The Sofa, Or, Saturday Morning at 11:00am appeared first on Privilege.

Arranging flowers made my mother anxious. Her mother, the original Grande Dame, had traveled a good deal and after a trip to Japan (I believe, one is never sure), became interested in ikebana. Somehow in the mysterious smoky halls of mother-daughter relationships Nancy decided she was No Good At Flowers. Given she was very good at decorating houses and wearing clothes, this was likely not true.

Related, perhaps, my idea of flower arranging is to slip through my garden, quickly cutting, and then cram my findings into whatever container or containers feel right in the moment. Random florist vases, on the whole.

Up top, I cut all orange flowers in a pot because they were getting close to done and I didn’t feel like deadheading, jammed them into a red vase because it was a good shape, thought of pink, got some.

Below, rescued sprays of white roses that risk fungus or other depredations. Just look at those thorns – wound me plenty, dissuade rose disease not one whit.

In the brief period where the snowball viburnum wilds out, I once thinned a magnolia to keep it abundant company.

Sometimes I grab a fragrant pink tea rose and shove it in a perfume bottle whose stopper I lost decades ago (also who decants perfume these days?) to keep company with a few David Austins in a hotel water bottle. Yahoo! I probably cut the David Austins because they were hanging over the edges of the raised bed. Who knows? Impulsive decisions lost in the sands of time. Hooray!

And sometimes, I surrender, with an array of small glass friends and family also keeping each other company, to wistfulness. Passiflora vine – with its 24-hour flower life – is always willing to remind us, without much moaning and groaning, that years pass and messy stuff can be beautiful, along with others lessons I am probably missing. I am sure you have some to hand, passiflora or lessons, either way.

This is not a post about how to arrange flowers.

Have a wonderful weekend!

The post Variations In Multiple Tempos On A Garden Bouquet, Or, Saturday Morning at 9:04am appeared first on Privilege.

The worst decline of democracy ever recorded could have been worse. If not for you.

I hope you have an excellent Saturday.

The post And So It Begins, Or, Saturday Morning at 6:46am appeared first on Privilege.

Elissa’s Top Two:

Xero

I know these are doofy, but only marginally more so than my SAS and New Balance – why not double down on doof? Also, they’re all white, so we inherit something like the presumption of cool.

Vivo Barefoot

Their sneakers are too high-backed for me (insult to injury, my Achilles hurt when compressed), but what about these, for camping booties? Lost in the forest for the trees, no one sees. (Apparently questionable rhymes must also have their day.)

Once I knew about barefootness, I found other friends were talking about it too, or at least about “minimal” shoes. Basically wide toes boxes and good soles. Now I’m thinking:

Vibae

These + Eileen Fisher pants miiiiiiggghhhhhttttt be too much for me. But with a linen dress, can do. Or maybe slim EFs? The leather looks like you could eat it with a spoon.

Be Lenka

Finally, a pair of Chelsea boots (roughly speaking) that could perhaps work for camp and also for the semi-regular tricky weather forays I make to the East Coast.

Now I’m just going to mull. Perhaps visit a shoe store or two to see what I think. I guess, wait for it, this shift warrants terrible jokes,  I’m dipping my toes in the water.

All my best and have a very comfy weekend.

The post Follow Up On Feet, Or, Saturday Morning at 8:24am appeared first on Privilege.

Where In The Hell, Laramie Dennis’s (a younger friend of mine) debut film, is streaming on Amazon. A road trip, essentially, in which one of the two protagonists is looking for her girlfriend, who seems to have slipped away from their Northern California motel in the night, and the other – a young Asian man – is trying to make it to Canada for an audition. All of this while traveling through the extraordinary scenery of remote California locations during the pandemic. Dialogue and cinematography and general feel are A+.

To watch if you:

• Appreciate a side of subtlety with your poignant humor
• Love good art direction and a trip through places both ordinary and unfamiliar
• Prefer optimistic endings that don’t package up your feelings like a grab-and-go sandwich
• Love watching new actors deliver extraordinary performances, especially when they haven’t had plastic surgery as far as you can tell (not to take anything away from Joohun Lee but Cam Killion is a star)
• Like it when narrative of any sort stays with you for a while
• Are happy when good movies win awards
• Want to close your streaming window in a state of belief

Andre Is An Idiot, arriving on Netflix June 17th, is about a man who turns down his best friend’s plans that they get colorectal cancer screening together, and subsequently dies of the selfsame disease. Yes, really. And it’s not sad. Really. A documentary about a wildly creative, irrepressible, and probably difficult man who died as he lived, we follow him, his friends, family and therapist through his last years. It’s not sad but it is funny; a portrayal of human growth and change when it’s too late but still matters. My brother, Peter Carnochan, is the therapist.

To watch if you:

• Enjoy watching someone truly live their own life
• Believe that being willing to admit your mistakes and keep trying to do your best is one of the best traits in a human being
• Are willing to enter someone’s reality all the way
• Feel science and logic cannot and should not explain everything we experience
• Are glad that wisdom is available
• Are happy when good movies win awards (in this case, the U.S. Documentary Audience Award and the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival)
• Want to close your streaming window in a state of belief

And with that, here’s to art, as always. Have a wonderful, wonderful weekend!

The post Two Movies To Set Things Right, At Least For A While, Or, Saturday Morning at 10:01 am appeared first on Privilege.

I had a vision; it would be neat and small but butterflies would come and so they did. Last week a Swallowtail, a Monarch, a Mourning Cloak, a Red Admiral all annoyed the Gulf Fritillaries that live here along with various Skippers. Delighted me. I have no photos as none stayed put in time to raise my phone.

Neat and small, though, not so much. Today.

I have surrendered architecture to details. Also bugs, plus the occasional hummingbird.

Details. Vervain, a weed my Plant It app tells me is wild hedge parsley (like a hedge witch I wonder?), also salvia, California poppies and native milkweed.

I turned this pot upside down when the little floating fountain I’d bought stopped working, and the resultant still water brought mosquitoes. There are bugs and then there are bugs. I suspect the coyote mint you see against it may eventually climb up and over. Giving up architecture for archeology.

This bronze fennel looks pretty awful from a distance, because as you can see in the top photo I kept the dead stalks as winter habitat. But close up, pretty and feathery. The Anise Swallowtail loves it.

The passiflora, host plant for those Gulf Fritillaries I mentioned, shows up and shows out consistently.

And the ferns, lining our exterior house walls, despite neglect, are game. A good cutting back of dead fronds, some dedicated watering and presto change-o garden math. The answer to everything is in this pattern I just know it.

All this is a private wilding, round the side where no one goes but me. Out front carries on all civilized, albeit a little more exuberant these days. I planted a violently pink tea rose against my fence. Then I liked the flowers so much I sacrificed my kitchen window view for vase light. Probably refractions hold the secrets to the meaning of life that ferns relinquish.

Finally, even out front in the land of appropriate, this California Tortoiseshell, a butterfly I have never seen, plonked itself down on a few apricot shrub roses. I’d planted them in an ostensibly white rose bed, thinking they were, yes, white. Surprise!

Apparently the fires in the Santa Cruz mountains between my suburb and the Pacific Ocean have made room for Tortoiseshell’s host plants, ceanothus. Let the lepidoptera rumpus begin.

I love the way gardens change. You can plan but you can’t control, and that’s a way of being I’ve come to late.

Have a gorgeous weekend.

The post My Pollinator Garden 10 Years Later, Or, Saturday Morning at 9:47am appeared first on Privilege.

I don’t object to aging; I am fascinated by the process. But my feet are unhappy more often than I’d like. What to do? As I said to a friend, “I can’t go to the doctor because my feet hurt. That’s too silly.” No disease applies. What to do?

If I net out my reaction to this physical experience of aging, altogether, it’s very similar to how I felt with a newborn. What books should I read? Where is the conceptual model? Can I go to graduate school and get an MPA? A masters in personal aging; I want it.

Here’s the list of my specific physical issues:

1. The very beginnings of osteoporosis. How annoying that having kept my weight in check puts me more at risk for breaking bones. I’d much prefer a larger trouser size, thank you.
2. Cholesterol numbers that threaten if I even so much as breathe near carnitas.
3. Weird heart flutters are within normal range but make drinking too much tea and almost any wine infinitely less pleasant than previously.
4. A recalcitrant sacroiliac, still resentful of my having given birth to a son with a big head, transmitting outrage to various ligaments on my left hip and leg.
5. The afore-mentioned feet.

None of this, as far as I can tell, puts me at particular risk. I could be wrong. Medication for osteoporosis; control cholesterol by eschewing meat, embracing beans, and hiding flaxseed in granola. The no-added fat granola to be sure, that might taste like horse food, but strawberries fix a multitude of sins.

However, my relationship to the medical profession feels uncomfortable.

Can you imagine getting pregnant, only society has yet connected the dots around the phenomena, and then you find yourself in a series of disconnected doctor’s appointments for:

1. Trouble keeping your breakfast down
2. A strange lump in your lower abdomen
3. Your period stops

You get the picture. I want the equivalent of an OB for getting old. You’d think was a gerontologist, right? The medical practice I’ve gone to since I was 4 years old, except when I was on the East Coast, only offers the gerontology option if you are really sick. I was literally told, “Oh no, you are way too healthy for a gerontologist.”

So here we are, just a girl, standing in front of her doctor, asking to be seen as someone with a natural condition of life. Someone who is willing to buckle down, to do the Healthy, who – even though she finds cardio exercise incredibly boring – will buy a health wearable to bring her to account.

And when the doctor can’t oblige, the girl asks her community, my friends, do you have any particularly intelligent resources for understanding aging?

Note:

1. I do not want to jump out of an airplane with a parachute on my back
2. I already know what healthy diet and exercise look like, to my great annoyance

What can I read to better understand the larger process of what’s happening? Thank you in advance.

Oh, about my tootsies, the Internet tells me that since I don’t have diabetes probably it’s just that I shouldn’t go barefoot in my house, as my foot fat pads are now insufficient. Fine, fine, fine.

Have a wonderful weekend. Back to my slippers. Conceptual model checks out.

The post What’s That Thing Again, Aging, Is That It, Or, Saturday Morning at 10;10am appeared first on Privilege.

Recently I bought this bag, excited for my daughter’s wedding.

Back in 2009, when I anonymously began writing here, I admitted to having bought a Louis Vuitton Monogram Vernis tote. I have since given it away. It wasn’t particularly comfortable to carry.

This post dripped with High WASP mortification. As I wrote, High WASPs did not show off, as that would be “tacky,” which I have since come to understand as code for “declassé.”

So where did my embarrassment go? Blog exorcism. Here I have revealed, deconstructed and thereby let go of, much of my family’s historical culture. In addition, I’ve educated myself about designers, and developed a set of strong likes and dislikes. As one does. I thank you.

In my current oscillating-between-humble-and-proud opinion, a logo as the mark of a creator you respect is to be honored. A logo as a stamp of one’s capacity to purchase, well, not so much.

Because, think about it.

• We wouldn’t want creators not to sign their works. They have that right, and even responsibility.
• Beautifully designed logos are only one step closer to “showing off” than are recognizable design elements. Consider the recognizable intrecciata of Bottega Veneta bag, Valentino’s pyramid studded shoes, Missoni’s knits and Miyake’s pleats. The only difference is the breadth of the audience, and the precise message communicated. But it’s all makers and identity and community.
• Just because consumers and cheap production made it possible for someone to stamp BALENCIAGA in block letters across a t-shirt for corporate profit, doesn’t mean we have to feel shame about our logos. Someone shrieking doesn’t mean we stop singing.

I’ll put this soapbox back under the lectern where it belongs. Behold a couple of logos I respect. The Cartier Panthère design is legendary, historical. Also kind of gorgeous as a bag clasp. Cartier might be playing catchup here but “Goooaaaaallllll!”

Jonathan Anderson is both a life-changing supporter of my son’s work, and a wild, wild genius. He has taken on the tradition of intellectual design, in the tradition of Miuccia Prada (who has persisted) and Christopher Kane (who sadly has not,) and exploded up and across the landscape. I feel he’s evolved Dior from dainty, prancing Instagirlies, and the closets of Grandes Dames, to something new. I never would have bought a Dior bag when it was all about the Ds. But this.

The toile! The medallion! The bow! The trim! Elevating an entire half-century of prim to art.

This, however. Unremarkable bag; ugly logo, Bruno Cuccinelli has taken over Silicon Valley and so I don’t like him one bit. Rational or no.

The distinction is not always so clear. Jacquemus, a brand I do appreciate, has a similar logo. Regard! What a gorgeous design! Avant garde! Snappy! Does the logo represent the great design chops?

I believe Jaquemus are saying, “We aren’t part of 1990s Logomania and consumerist display.” But they could be well-served at this point by a logo with an affirmative message rather than denial, i.e. “We *are* (name your poison.)” I don’t know. It’s possible to have strong opinions and still understand you might be wrong.

As for design elements, well, just for fun, Missoni. I’d love to wear these at some point, if I manage to live a good long time.

And Roger Vivier. Sigh. Like, with jeans and a backpack. Remember insouciance?

And one last logo. Christopher John Rogers, a Black man who has one of the most distinct styles in fashion today, collaborated with Old Navy on this. Also comes in pink and red. Booyah.

In case it’s germane, I have no idea what the model is wearing on her head. So, back to the topic sentence of our exam answer. Why?

I revere Yves St. Laurent. His Rive Gauche perfume design defined a 1970s aesthetic, never mind rainbow crewneck sweaters in New Jersey winters. He was the first man I ever understood to have a male partner, and he suffered from many with that same understanding. His large black spectacles launched an entire design era. Buddy, thanks for the black and blue, of all sorts, and for the tassel now hanging on the back of my closet door.

OMG those stripes. See what I mean?

Meaning is created in real time, by the author and the reader, the wearer and the community. As long as you feel that logos represent your loves and beliefs, and they do not serve as a weapon against those with whom you are in community, shine on. Define your community widely, goes without saying.

Have a wonderful weekend.

(I will say that my family in real life, in modern times, does not actively embrace the culture I’ve talked about. We were *of* it, but not *for* it, if that makes sense. I alone needed to deconstruct to finally make my own choices, and my family have been remarkably good-humored about this thinking out loud.)

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