Just now I was riding in my sister's car, on the way to Babies 'r Us for diapers, when she initiated an important conversation: 'The whole bisexual/Ren Faire thing. How did it happen? Like, are bisexual people drawn to Ren Faires? Or do people begin doing the Ren Faire thing and everyone is like, 'We're bisexual', so they go bisexual, too?' Me and my sister provide crucial sisterly services to one another. Last night she spent an hour online showing me exactly how much memory RADAR needs to get on its new computer, and today I can help her unpuzzle the mysteries of bisexual Ren Faire culture. Except that I can't. No one can. It's a mystery wrapped in an enigma. After collecting diapers and various babyproofing devices and a couple of onesies, I made my sister, who I will call Kathleen, because it is her name, hit the Barbie aisle with me. I haven't checked Barbie out in a while and wanted to see what sort of lifestyle she was living in 2009. It was fascinating! Firstly, her body is different. Like so many women, she has gotten collagen lip implants. But in a reversal of current trends, her boobs are smaller. Feminism won! Barbie has a totally average, small-ish rack. And honestly, I missed the old one. It's too late for me, I was raised making large-breasted Barbies have sex with one another, and now it's just what I like in a Barbie. You could say I'm brainwashed. And I guess it's good that other girls will not grow up this way, with these ridiculous fantasy doll boobs colonizing their brains, but as someone who already has that space carved out, that particular cavern of my psyche feels a little bit emptier today. Anyway, Barbie's head has been influenced by the tyrynny of the Bratz doll; it's bigger, bobble-i-er. She has her own cooking show. She goes to space camp. She is a Baby Doctor (not to be confused with Pediatrician). She has tattoos! At least Totally Stylin Tattoos Barbie does. There is a super creepy-slash-amazing disembodied Barbie hands play thingie called Totally Nails Stylin Hands Playset, which are like plastic hands you can put acrylics on. The giant Barbie heads of yore have become a two-headed beast, unless you get the Barbie Wedding Day Sparkle Styling Head, which is solo. Barbie is still straight and still marrying Ken, but Ken has sort of lost his identity — on no part of the packaging for Barbie Wedding Day Sparkle Ken did it say the word 'Ken'. If you didn't know better you would think it was perhaps a late-90s Johnny Depp doll. In fact, Barbie in general is looking a little late-90s. Which brings me to -
McQ for Target. It's a capsule collection of McQ, which is the fake-cheap secondary line by Alexander McQueen, whose clothes are seriously not cheap by any sense of the world. Probably you already know that Target has this rotating collection called Go International wherein they invite designers out of reach to the common person to make some truly cheap clothing. Every time they announce a new designer — Proenza Schouler, Rogan, Thakoon — I get super excited about it, even though every time it's sort of a letdown. The collection that promised to be the most crazy, the most avant-garde, the darkest and strangest, was the Alexander McQueen one. For god's sake, he just sent his models for Fall-Winter out onto a runway made to look like a giant landfill. But the McQ for Target line was so awful it was almost offensive. Flammable polyester dresses printed with tired ass tattoo graphics? Really? RADAR's trusty administrative genius, Beth Pickens, could barely touch the garments lest they leach fabulousness from her person. 'I just sold a bunch of clothes that looked like this to Buffalo Exchange', she said, confused. 'This collection is has totally queaked.' Queaking, short for Queer Peaking, is a dreaded fashion phenomenon occuring when an individual rocks a trend so well that they decide to rock it FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES. Current manifestations include baby barettes, Hello Kitty shirts and wallet chains purchased in 1996. Also, most anything printed with skulls, especially pink skulls with bows on their noggins. Incidentally, straight people queak, too. A friend of mine calls this 'going cherries'. As in, 'That rockabilly girl looked so good in 1997, but her look has totally gone cherries.' McQ=McQueaked. I could not believe that we drove all the way out to Daly City for what looked like a capsule collection Hot Topic designed for Ross. We retired to Sizzler and consoled ourselves with giant slabs of cheese toast.
Thursday Beth and I embarked, hopeful once more, to H+M, rather early in the day, to get our hands on some of the Matthew Williamson capsule collection. I had foolishly waited a week before checking out the Comme de Garcon capsule this fall, and when I showed up all that was left were some button-up shirts and wool sweaters. Which I bought, in case I ever feel like changing lifestyles and getting a cubicle downtown. Beth and I did not get there as early as we planned; we were going to slink downtown under cover of darkness. I love getting up super early to do things, it reminds me of sleeping out for Ratt tickets when I was 15, or protecting women's clinics from maurauding christians when I was 21. But we slept in a bit and got there a touch after the doors opened, and that shit was already completely torn through, mostly by people who had been waiting since 5am to buy clothes to resell on eBay. Bad people! Really, really bad people! People who are the opposite of good! All that was left were a bunch of lousy butterfly-printed t-shirts, some bright cardigans with peacock feather beading that were planning on falling apart in fifteen minutes, and silk jumpsuits that were too fashion-forward for most people. The shrunken leather jackets, the best pieces of the collection, were totally gone; even the ones on display had been sold, informed a worker who came upon me wrestling with a headless manniquin. The H+M workers were so calm and good-hearted in the midst of the chaos, which was not as frightening as a Walmart stampede but bad enough to make Beth apologize to strangers for acting like a child. You see, employees kept coming out from the dressing room with cast-offs, and we shoppers would gather around them frantically yelping our sizes and snatching new pieces from their hands. Which is how Beth and I wound up with a few items to bring back to the dressing room. Beth tried on a chiffony, layered dress that was pretty and colorful, but there was just something wrong with it, something too subtle to put your finger on but too strong to prevent you from spending, like, $200 on it. An even more expensive tunic fit each of us oddly. A tunic! I don't care if it's sequined and comes in a silken garment bag, nobody goes to H+M to spend $200+ on a dress. You Could Find Something Awesome At Barney's For That Price, I steamed. And it was true! We checked! There was a golden-buttoned Marc by Marc Jacobs trench AND a fantastic Phillip Lim dress with a woven hem and 3-D anchor on it, each for $200!
I tried on a Matthew Williamson polyester dress with sequined sleeves and a peacock print that was sort of cute at the beginning, but the longer I kept it on the longer it felt like I could have gotten it at Forever 21. Really, what was so special about it? And the scarf I'd grabbed, would I have even thought about it if it didn't have Matthew Williamson's name on the tag? I pondered my rarely opened scarf drawer at home, full of much cooler, thrifted scarves. The collection was unraveling before my eyes! I Wouldn't Look Twice At This Shit If It Didn't Say Matthew Williamson, I said. In the end we both bought the same neon puce silk blouse covered with ribbons looped all over to form a peacock feather. We will wear it twin-style next time we have to make a presentation to the San Francisco Arts Commission. I got a cincher the size of a wrestling belt, covered with super tacky fake gold studs and whatnot. I will probably never wear it, but the way my fellow shoppers had gasped when I snagged it made it feel so valuable I felt I ought to buy it. Capsule collections are pretty much guaranteed downers. But I am still excited about JC Penny's I Heart Ronson. I can't help it. It IS JC Penny. Maybe Hot Topic will do a colelction for Ross after all?
But, pray tell, what does all this bullshit have to do with RADAR? Well, it just so happens that RADAR is presenting, on May 26th, Sew Literary — fashion shows and literary readings from writers who design and designers who write! In the glamorous Koret auditorium, it will feature Savannah Knoop, author of the memoir Boy Girl Boy and designer of the line Tinc; Meliza Banales, author of the poetry collection Say It With Your Whole Mouth and designer of Never Never; fashion-activist-performance artists Faction, and writer, DJ and designer Chelsea Starr. With local geniuses like these, none of us need ever queak or go cherries! Will I wear my lovely sheer black t-shirt from Tinc, or my avant-garde capelette from Faction designer Angie Dix? Heavy decisions, dude.