The Gloved One

Maybe you were like me, and capped second grade with a sacred ceremony to rival a chapel wedding in its grandeur. For my First Communion - a religious rite Caribbean Catholic households are known to fete with lavish receptions - my mother outfitted this 7-year-old in an ecru gown and wrist-length gloves of elaborate lacework. At the time, I hated that my dress wasn't looseleaf-paper white like every other girls' (lady had to be different!), but I remember loving my handwear. Never mind that I looked like a tiny cake topper - I was having a "Like a Virgin" moment. Now that I'm all grown up, I find something so devilishly naughty about white lace gloves. Say what you will about the former Mrs. Ritchie, but after all these years, she still owns the look. (W, March 2009)

See Spot. Run and Cop These Pants.

My life sometimes feels like a high-wire act, one that requires nimbly balancing any number of competing goals and desires. I've decided that if you're gonna go through life walking a tightrope, might as well do it in style! These cranberry-colored silk polka-dot trousers ($1,250, detail, at right) from Louis Vuitton's spring/summer 2009 collection, had me seeing spots when they were first previewed last Spetember. Enough to make a girl drop the bad-news Business section of The New York Times and join the circus. And now the parachute pants are everywhere: Model Jourdan Dunn sported them in a February 2009 Vogue spread; Lindsay pairs them with a boyfriend blazer and midriff-baring tee on the cover of Nylon's April 2009 anniversary issue, and Ms. Ciccone features them in the latest LV campaign.

Uptown, Monday Night

Where do you live? If you live in a city like New York, teeming with transplants, you'll invariably get asked that question and I've found it has far more loaded meaning for the person asking. As a native borne of and raised in this city, I don't take all that seriously the signifiers that people attach to its topography (e.g., hipsters live in Williamsburg, trust fund babies slum on the Lower East Side). Rather, you plant roots wherever makes you content. In BET's latest foray into reality programming, Harlem Heights, a group of upwardly mobile, black 20-somethings agree to have their lives taped and find out what happens when people stop being polite...oops! (wrong show). Unlike MTV's The Real World, which thrives on the inevitable clashes between seven disparate - if formulaic - personalities, this series pivots on the homogeneity of its cast.

And therein lies the flaw. In seeking to shine a light on the affluent Harlem, an endeavor that I agree is long overdue, the creators nearly erase the bustling Uptown of corner stores, incense vendors, hair braiders and weavers, and the aroma of greasy fried catfish and greens at eateries like Taste of Seafood. Panoramic views would help. And maybe a few more cast members employed in industries beyond media, fashion, and politics and educated at institutions other than the venerable HBCUs. As it is, Jason (aka 'Young Harlem'), a young dad with swag to spare sometimes appears out of his element.

Still, it's verry cool to see on camera the upscale spots that many have yet to discover: the airy Hudson River Cafe, bouncing club Body, Covo, Revival, and more. An incredibly photogenic cast that includes Kanye West ex Brooke Crittendon and DIME magazine editor Christian Grant-Fields (aka 'The Accidental Heartbreaker') makes the views all the more scenic. Fellow viewers have taken issue with how stilted some of the dialogue seems, almost scripted. Pierre, the Trenton, N.J.-bred success story who now works for a nonprofit, at times induces eye-rolling with his penchant for speechifying. But the underlying dramas ring mostly true: There are love triangles, broken friendships, career discussions, and so forth.

A Hungry Ghost

The New York Public Library hosted a reading by Kate Taylor, the editor of an anthology titled Going Hungry, which focuses on "desire, self-denial," and our shrinking appetites. On the first Monday in March, I braved a snowstorm in support of my former colleague, with whom I'd broken (low-calorie?) bread over discussions of body image and disordered eating and overeating. What distinguishes her book is that it gathers writers, authors, and journalists to address the topic and not, for example, embattled teen girls sporting red "ana" bracelets.

If ever there was a taboo subject, this would be it, and perhaps even more so in the black community, where conventional thinking has it that more is more once you step on the scale - and that the zaftig will be rewarded by longevity and male admiration. Real women have curves, right, not jutting rib cages? (At left, an image from designer Hedi Slimane's photo diary of Lindsay Lohan.) Yet increasingly I hear from chicks of colorful complexions who are anxious about their weight, staring down bottles of herbal appetite-killers and passing on dinner. In Tibetan Buddhism, the hungry ghost is depicted with a large, bloated stomach, gaping mouth, and a neck too small to pass food, a metaphor for those who can't grasp that to be full-filled is to go within. But going without, that nihilistic impulse to deny corporeal needs, ultimately just leaves you where you started...hungry.

Fist Bumps for the First Lady

If you haven't picked up this week's New York magazine, run! The cover story on Michelle Obama features briefs by writers including Edwidge Danticat, Margo Jefferson, and Terry McMillan on topics such as Mrs. O's transformation from "militant" to "princess"; her statuesque build, in "Her Body, Ourselves," and an examination of how this first couple engenders a new sexual politics. An online slideshow of artists' renderings (above, illustration by Kim DeMarco) depicting the mom-in-chief is a must-see.

Radio Killa Writes the Songs

Like a lot of people, I tend to tune my week, month, or just a particular moment to a certain frequency. I'll have a song, maybe an album that just plays on repeat either because it mirrors what I'm feeling or projects where I'm trying to go. Sometimes it's more about the music capturing a pre-existing mood - swaggerific, meditative, introspective, combative - that happens to be in need of a melody. This month, I've been letting The-Dream serenade me (when he's not dreaming up publicity stunts to promote his Love vs. Money) with "Rockin' That Thang."
You guess how I'm feeling. (laughs)

The Sweetest Words You Ever Wrote

Every week, Washington D.C.'s young, gifted and black wordsmiths gather at Busboys and Poets on 14th and V streets for "Sunday Kind of Love," a themed open-mic event held in the afternoon. On a wet Sunday in March, we drove past the popular meeting place and I couldn't help but think of the film that sparked a spoken word renaissance when it opened in 1997: Love Jones. Suddenly poetry and verse had moved beyond the literati, New York's Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and underground slams, and every would-be Saul Williams and Sonia Sanchez seemed to have a composition notebook buried somewhere.

In the Chicago-set romance, Nina Mosley is an aspiring photographer who has her eye on a gig at VIBE magazine, and Darius Lovehall (aka "Brother to the Night") is a struggling writer whose classic meet-cute with the lenswoman begins at a words-and-blues lounge. He freestyles his "Blues for Nina," and I imagine attendance at these events, at the time, swelled right along with the box office take. Moreover, the soundtrack was unforgettable.

Which brings me back to the Chocolate City: In the age of Obama, himself a Chicago transplant, one hopes this metropolis of alphabet streets and abandoned avenues can fully salute its inheritance. The soaring, renovated townhouses and brownstones of Eastern Market on Capitol Hill, of Columbia Heights, washed in red and pale blue paints, were a sight to behold even as they competed for space with the darker corners.

It Ain't Hard To Tell

This April marks the 15th anniversary of the release of Nas's seminal Illmatic. The 34-year-old son of Queensbridge was a babyfaced 20 years young when the record came out. Suffice it to say, anyone who knows this blogger, knows that I've been nursing a major crush ever since. Nasir Jones is the quiet boy in your third grade class who wrote your initials just above his, with a "+" sign in between, and left it in your book bag for you to find. He's that guy with his New Era Yankees cap cocked just so, who walked you halfway home, holding your umbrella above your heads and unfurling his brilliance along the way. There's a reason rap devotees called "God's Son" a prophet. Okay, maybe the messianic language was overblown, but regardless of what issue you might take with his flow or track record, no one in the game can more densely pack metaphors, similes, Five Percenter lore, egyptian history, street knowledge... into 16 bars. In hip hop, there's really no map anymore, we don't live and die by coasts, pledge our allegiances by borough. And it's been years since New York had the market on "real" hip hop, but if you can remember the first time you heard "The World Is Yours," it's hard not to get that old feeling. It's a "New York State of Mind."

Love Dying on the Walls

A few years ago, I read an article in Vogue about a socialite of sorts who had fallen in love and married a man whom she later divorced. Asked what she thought had gone awry in the seemingly fairy-tale setup, she said that marriage stuffs you up so close, you could practically see the "love dying on the walls." I must have read that phrase a million times. In 1961, Richard Yates's first novel, Revolutionary Road, was published. An alcoholic, modestly successful short story writer, Yates drew upon the stark reality of his own marriage to craft a masterpiece of an indictment of suburbia and matrimony in 1950s America. Yates lived part of his own married life in Connecticut, and the book's descriptions of Route Twelve, cottage houses, and commuter rail lines landing in Grand Central Station, seem eerily contemporary, even 50 years later. In finishing the book, I've found that I've had an experience that is increasingly rare (but perhaps hoped for by every novelist): The plot lingers. It's been hard to shake the bitter aftertaste. A couple, Frank and April Wheeler, comes together, love blooms, expectations are set then left unmet. ... The love gathers moss - as the two gradually destroy each other. For those who can't be bothered to read the book, the film (above, which I haven't seen) is in theaters now.

Americana

Now that First Lady Michelle Obama has given J.Crew her imprimatur, making it all right for black people everywhere to line their closets with wool gabardine, I thought I'd make a confession: For years, the mere sight of the J.Crew catalog in my mailbox has brought me untold, sentimental joy.

I was an undergraduate when I first started grabbing the seasonal books; they'd be in piles next to stacks of the Daily Orange, at the entrance to our dorm. After months of pushing to get through a particularly brutal upstate winter, I ordered a candy-striped cashmere sweater with streaks of pale blue that I thought would cheer me up. And it did - for a while. But I soon realized that I derived a heady kind of contentment flipping through the pages of the retail mag itself. The WASP-ish model with freckles and beach-battered skin, clad in my cashmere sweater, seemed a world away from the stresses and concerns of life on campus.

Indeed, the genius copywriters and art directors at J.Crew (which launched as a catalog in 1983), have created a blissful world untouched by recession, environmental crises, you name it. Houses are built on the water, couples perch on a front stoop perusing The New York Times or The New York Observer. Weddings are on Martha's Vinyard, receptions follow in Nantucket. Now, I know this is a feat in advertising as clean and calculated as Ivory's well-known "99.99%" campaign, but I fall for it.

Ms. Keri, baby

Someone I know once said that he never listened to R&B because all that performers ever did was to snivel about love lost or unrequited. Sure. But that isn't accidental: Sometimes love knocks you down, as Keri Hilson says. This has been so since humans evolved the concept of romantic love as the basis for marriage and courtship. Either we sing about it, give ourselves over to it in dance - or risk taking a drubbing.
On his latest podcast, the New Yorker's resident music critic, Sasha Frere-Jones, argues that our well-greased American pop/R&B machine simply cannot produce "witty, brash" singers. Instead, he says, the Britneys and Beyonces are "ciphers" rewarded for hewing as close to the Stepford Songstress packaging they get coming off the industry assembly line. So while the UK's Lily Allen drums up clever symbolism to excoriate bloodthirsty bloggers and paparazzi, our Beyonce wags, shakes, and J-Sets to a catchy riff on marital aspirations. But in Keri, who marries many of the seemingly opposing virtues of red-white-and-blue pop and Britpop, I've found a defense. The wordplay is spot on if not erudite (does it need to be? check her well-placed jabs at Sasha Farce and Ciara), the music infectious, thumping, and always comes together in flawless 3-minute bites (Hello, Timb). Album 'drops' March 24.

'Good Girl' Don't Cry

What makes the storm engulfing Rihanna and Chris Brown (who's now something of a fallen prince), all the more tempestuous is that so many among their fans had percieved Brown as a force for good in her life, a playful (age-appropriate) presence. From where I sit, just about five feet from my window is a kiosk whose display case is lined with celebrity tabloids carrying pictures of a forlorn looking Rihanna. The record-label conceit that the black leather-clad pop&B chanteuse was a "Good Girl Gone Bad" had been challenged by photographs in the aforementioned weeklies that showed the couple frolicking at an amusement park, munching on french fries - all the sweet, ordinary things you do with your BF. Of course, these were chart-topping, platinum-selling etoiles. Was Rihanna out there "Livin a Lie," as she sang on The-Dream's Love Hate record? While we all wait for the verifiable truths to emerge, I'm keeping the Def Jam princess in my thoughts.

Chanel No. 1

Back when I barely had a notion that I might one day find my name and affiliation taped to a front row seat at Fashion Week in New York, I used to watch the shows on the local cable channels, daydreaming, wishing I were there. So much of the thrill of the shows to me was about the (black) models, whom we knew then by name: Naomi, Veronica, and later, Alek, Liya. At the top of the current crop of generously pigmented beauties is Sessilee Lopez, Arlenis Sosa, Jourdan Dunn, and Chanel Iman (pictured). Chanel happens to be one of my favorite posers right now. A rash of commercial and editorial work has followed her, from GAP campaigns to coveted spreads in Vogue and Teen Vogue. The girl can do Neutrogena-scrubbed clean as effortlessly as high fashion Marc Jacobs. The 20-year-old biracial model has been tabloid fodder for her dating choices (Ryan Leslie, Kanye), both real and imagined, but it's the strut that got my attention. She's gangly and almost equine (impossibly long limbs) off the runway, but under the flashing lights, playing dress up, she does her dual namesakes proud.

Pitching a Tent at Fashion Week

Fashion Week kicked off on Friday the 13th and appropriately so: With magazines folding, editors and reporters bidding adieu to corporate cubicles, and the well of invites and pre-recession freebies running dry for some, the mood has been a bit somber at Bryant Park. On this sunny Tuesday morning, I ducked (sans notebook) under the great white tents to catch a glimpse of the Fall 2009 presentations, beginning with the Badgley Mischka show. The front row was decidedly light on star-wattage- I mean Kim and Khloe Kardashian and a country-singing American Idol also-ran were the most recognizable bold-faces, which I found utterly depressing. But the fashions were notable, particularly since I'm not typically a fan of the red-carpet staples that are the stock-in-trade of BM. But these gowns and frocks were heavy on black in a variety of textures, including boucle, georgette, and satin chiffon. It model Sessilee Lopez was here (and everywhere) showing floor-sweeping evening numbers paired with, in many cases, opaque black tights and chunky, open-toe jeweled platform stillettos. It was unusual but I warmed to it- a little grunge at the gala.

Love of My Life

Met a guy a few months ago on a New Jersey Transit platform. Asked whether I was a Delta, and did I like long walks, jazz clubs, Barack Obama. Said I seemed like the kind of girl who could only be with a guy who was visionary, ambitious, creative. I've often been drawn to the dude with the most eclectic record (see Mp3) collection; with the obscure, imported comic books preserved in a box; with his notebooks full of charts, prose, and rhymes; the one slinging his guitar like an ax, his camera like a gun. In a city like Gotham though, it can be hard to distinguish the humble, thinking, creative type in a sea of pencil jean-wearing boys who can shop like a m'uu'r but whose minds are hollow. connecting can be confusing. If you swab the relationship trajectory of someone such as Erykah Badu, you'll of course turn up a predilection for MCs -Andre 3000, Common, the D.O.C., and most recently Jay Electronica (pictured) - sweeping aside for a moment her grasp on family values. Lady clearly has a yen for men who commit. To the art that is. And I can understand it.

Tools of the Trade

When the dust from the media layoffs, downsizings and closures has finally settled, this year might well be remembered as the one in which the print landscape confronted its future. The Web has encroached upon traditional media, leaving newspapers on life support and magazines reeling from the sharp decline in advertising revenue. Still, through it all, I find myself going back to why wanted to be in this business in the first place. After graduating from college, I talked my mom into buying me a laptop. Like a carpenter with his tool belt, I thought any writer worth her salt should first invest in the tools of her trade. She acquiesced and got me a PC - not the citrus-colored iMac I had seen the fictional Carrie Bradshaw writing her relationship articles on for her New York Star column, in early episodes of Sex & the City. But I was thrilled to have the clunky book; took some turns in publishing and eventually learned the gratification of reporting, the dignity of honest work, chasing stories, and the quiet satisfaction of a page 1 byline. "Don't you just love the newspaper life?" our editor-in-chief would ask. Still do.

Blue Magic

I'm not the first to fall hard for a pair of blue suede shoes. A certain peanut butter-and-banana sandwich-loving rock 'n' roll icon famously warned that you could do just about anything but step on his beloved footwear. For spring/summer 2009, Christian Louboutin's Ron Ron shoe in turquoise suede (blue pump, above) is an instant pick me-up. The powdery hue plays off the signature red soles to perfection. Walk hard.

Forget the Chocolates, Fellas

If the quickest way to a man's heart is through his stomach, then the straight path to a woman's left and right ventricles is surely through her feet. Just in time for Valentine's Day, Kanye's design collaboration with designer Marc Jacobs, who is at the helm of the house of Louis Vuitton, has been unveiled. A particularly generous BF can pre-order the monochromatic red sneaks (all men's sizes, so convert) at a recession-defying price point, available at LV stores in June. If these don't keep the keep the love on lockdown, don't know what will.

I Want Pastry!

If you've tuned into the rather disappointing 'The City,' then you've probably caught 'Daddy's Girls,' which directly follows the limp, Sex & the City-manquee. On 'Daddy's Girls,' sister act and rap scions Angela and Vanessa Simmons are NYC- (Saddle River, N.J.) transplants go Hollywood. Think of 'Three's Company' (yes, I'm a little too familiar with '80s sitcom lore), but with an all-girl pad, and instead of Mrs. Roper, clad in print-heavy caftans, dropping by, fashion-forward neighbor Alycia shows up to talk ex-boyfriends, make plans, and engage in general tomfoolery. Like most 'reality' shows on MTV, this show too, while refreshingly realistic, functions as product placement for whatever the girls are hawking - in this case, their nascent clothing line Pastry. After watching them do everything from hike to date in pieces from the range, I had the Bow Wow Wow's 'I Want Candy' re-mixing itself in my head: I Want Pastry! But incredibly, a cursory look at the Pastry section at retail turned up none of the toothache-inducing Tees featured on the show. Just a bunch of neon-hued castoffs covered in animal prints. Not a cupcake in sight.

January 20, 2009

In hip hop circles, we've had Nas and Kelis ... Jay-Z and Beyonce ...but black love never looked as good as it does on this pair.