Developing The Eye

Remember that awesome dress I wore to my awards dinner last month? Sometimes I just sit around and think about how awesome that dress is.

I know, right?

Well, one day I was sitting in my room thinking about how much I love that dress, and a lightbulb went off in my head. Hey! That pattern looks familiar! So I looked up at my bookshelf...

The wacky zig-zag pattern on my 2011 Anthropologie dress is an exact copy of a 1920s furniture pattern. My book had this to say:

"Block-printed linen furnishing fabric, designed by F. Gregory Brown, produced by William Foxton, 1922. This fearlessly modern pattern was one of the textiles shown by Foxton at the Paris Exposition in 1925. Not surprisingly, F. Gregory Brown was awarded a gold medal."

Not just any 1920s fabric- a gold medal fabric. How appropriate!

A few days later my Modern Textiles professor came in to Special Collections to do some research and I showed her my find. She was impressed, and told me with a tone of pride that I was "developing my eye." But then she pointed out to me that it was unlikely that the designer paid for the use of the pattern, and was just straight-up ripping it off. She/he can get away with it because so few people have the knowledge to call you out on it.

Then I started imagining myself as the lead in a fashion copyright detective show called "The Eye."

The Ghost of John Doyle Bishop

A few nights ago I had a dream about John Doyle Bishop. In the dream, I was aware of the fact that he was dead, so I guess he must have been a ghost, but he was introduced to me as if everything was normal. I told him how excited I was to meet him but he seemed bored with me.

Sometimes I wonder about my obsession with John Doyle Bishop. On the one hand, I think I’m doing a great thing by researching him and reviving his name. If I could meet him, he might gush with grateful thanks for all the work I am doing. But then again, how can I think I really know a person from reading newspaper articles and interviews? Can you really understand someone through anecdotes? Last weekend I ran his name through some ancestor researcher sites and was able to discover a listing for his family in the 1930 census, as well as his social security number. That’s right, I am such a creeper that I know his social security number.

U.S. citizen #441-09-7179

But I can’t help it. JDB is just so awesome. Sometimes I think I should start a twitter account under his name and just post all the hilarious quotes I have from him. I found out that he owned four full-length fur coats that he would wear around town, often to Sonics basketball games. When a second store at Southcenter failed he had all the labels cut out of the dresses and had them made up into a dinner jacket for him to wear. He pre-planned his estate auction, so that guests received invites on his stationary and were asked to wear black tie to the event, or at least “Doyle” green. Along with household things and giant photos of himself, the auction even included his white angora cat Shamrock.

A White Angora Cat!! When I was seven that was all I wanted in this world.

Explore-a-city

I keep vowing to go out and do things in New York, but since graduation I haven’t gone on a wild see-the-city binge. In fact, my tendency has been to savor being at home where I can take naps and work on my thesis. But this past week my cousin Laura came to visit, so I had reason to go tromping all around the island. Here is the highlight reel:

• Saw The Lion King on Broadway. Incredible. I have enjoyed following the train wreck that has been Julie Taymor’s latest foray into musicals- the critically maligned and critically injured stuntman extravaganza Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark- but seeing her costumes in The Lion King reminded me that when Taymor’s energy is channeled in the right direction, the results are staggeringly fantastic.

*Side note about the modern Broadway experience- The Lion King is now the second show I have seen where the audience behavior has been much more like that of a movie theater than a live theater performance. Based on the ticket price alone, it should be like going to the opera or a symphony concert. But at The Lion King there was a lot of audible chatting, infants sobbing, and the sound of people consuming the concessions they had bought in the lobby. Yes, that is right, concessions. When I saw Wicked you could hear the rattling of ice in soda drinks. Insert rant about society these days.

• When I started my Met internship this summer, I found out that my intern ID gets me in during off hours. So last Monday we visited the Met— when it was closed to the public. CRAZY. We were just wandering through empty galleries and going through roped-off areas. I was sure that we were going to get stopped and told that we were in an off-limits space but it never happened. Really I am amazed at the trust they put in their interns. I mean, I could have licked a painting or something.

• On Tuesday we took the Staten Island Ferry and decided to actually get off and see if there was anything to see. The main attraction seemed to be the Staten Island Museum, which boasted exhibits of science, art, and history. I can see why some Manhattanites feel like leaving the island is like falling off the end of the world. The museum was basically a few arrowheads, insects mounted on pins, and a booth where you could see rocks glow in the dark. There was one interesting area of oddities that featured a hairball retrieved from a cow’s stomach, but come on. I have been to many weird local museums in my time, and the ones out west usually have the decency to have a two-headed sheep or something.

• Tuesday night we went to see Anything Goes which was a very different but equally wonderful Broadway experience. It is just a straight-up old-school musical with fun costumes, ridiculous plot twists, and tons of tap dancing. TONS. You should stop what you are doing right now and watch this clip from the Tony awards. (This post is basically over, so you need something else to keep you busy anyway).