Put It Up

Sometimes things burrow beneath my skin and I can't shake the ill feelings that they cause. Slights and grudges and misspoken words take up space I'd prefer not to give them. I wish it weren't the case, especially at those times when the discussion is, if I think about it for a moment, far removed from me and this life that I'm living. But some feelings can't be helped because I know that the words igniting them are tied to bigger, nastier ideas.

At 3:20 AM on Saturday, May 19th, I sat in a Lake Tahoe hotel suite with a small group of friends as we waited for things to begin. I had arrived only three hours earlier after a number of travel woes. Too exhausted to sleep, I snatched a 90-minute nap before the day's festivities. And so while running on fumes with a navy and white fascinator on my head, a lounging jumpsuit and fancy robe on my body, and my laptop set on the coffee table in front of me with Twitter open, I settled in to experience a wedding I'd been waiting months to watch.

For my own well-being, I have steered clear of most of the wildly racist commentary that has been, well, everywhere since the world became aware of the relationship between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. But there was always going to be talk that found its way around my carefully constructed walls. The smaller, insidious comments have a way of sneaking in, and I shouldn't have been surprised that these painful pricks arrived via an area of my life that I leave the least protected.

Fashion Twitter, of which I consider myself a marginal member, is full of nitpickers. Where else can one find people yelling excitedly about someone flouting the theme at the annual Met Gala? Generally I find this social media corner a comfort. Here are other people who care not only about clothes but also about what people are trying to say with their clothes. It was no surprise then that when Meghan and Harry was confirmed, and especially after her Vanity Fair cover and subsequent appearance by his side at the Invictus Games in Toronto, the fashion media sat up and took notice. Women in such positions have the ability to make or break brands. Sometimes the making can lead to the breaking. This wasn't only about pretty clothes. It was also about business and symbolism. To ignore her choices at that point would have been foolish.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (née Markle) is biracial and not in the business of allowing anyone to forget that she is half-black. I have no official data on this front but it wouldn't be wild to assume that there have never been that many black people in St. George's Chapel at one time. Despite my body feeling broken on that still dark Saturday morning, my mind was delightfully awake and looking forward to the black gospel choir, the black bishop, and the black cellist who were to be part of the ceremony. As we watched the guests arrive, I was full of joy and thoughts of romance. And then, all of a sudden, I was full of red-hot rage.

It took quite awhile for my somewhat adolescent giddiness to subside after the engagement announcement, and so it wasn't until her third post-engagement official event in a rainy Cardiff, Wales that I begin to notice that one of Meghan's hairstyle had been termed a "messy bun."

I didn't see anything messy about it but then, outside of the sculptural coifs I remember seeing in pictures from the hair shows my older sister took part of in the 1990s, I have grown a personal distaste for hairdos that are stiff and shellacked. To my eyes, her hair looked relaxed and protective, a simple fix for anyone who has to worry about the havoc humidity will wreak on naturally curly hair that has been straightened.

A spot of emotional rot began to bloom within me, and as I realized that the conversation after her first official event with that hair had moved beyond basic descriptor to whether or not said "messy bun" was appropriate my uneasiness only grew. "Why not call it a loose chignon?" a friend asked recently. It was a good question coming from a rational place. But then she was not part of the demographic I was concerned with. Most, although not all, of the criticism was coming from the mouths of white women. A tweet saying that the updo wasn't "royal hair" floated across my timeline soon after that Cardiff event, and I was left wondering what exactly constituted "royal hair." I already knew the answer. My ears are attuned to dog whistles about black people, especially those concerning black women and girls.

I have lived 35 years with my hair. I have had strangers and acquaintances and "friends" make comments that no one asked for or feel free to touch it without permission. I have watched news segments and read stories about children sent home from school because their similar hair styled in any number of ways was seen as untamed. Unkempt. Inappropriate. I knew I wasn't upset at nothing.

There is something that happens to some white women, an ugliness that rises from their chests, when a black woman is successful. The success can be big or small. It can be in any arena. All that matters is the fact that she is existing and thriving. The darkness is only amplified when the success occurs in the public eye and when the position the black woman occupies is seen as enviable. There are too many examples to list here, enough examples to fill a dissertation, but all one has to do is look at any of the coverage of Michelle Obama during her time in the White House or, more specifically if you'd like, the many op-eds that were written about Beyoncé after her most recent pregnancy announcement. I wonder what it takes to put fingers to keyboard and write something dripping with that level of irrationality and hate. But then I know the answer to that question as well.

"Words mean things," I say to myself at times while making my way through essays or news stories or the quagmire of Twitter. I'm not only speaking of definitions, although there are some who choose to ignore even that basic foundation. I'm also speaking of the text within the text. Words don't only mean things. They mean things. They have been dragged through history's muck. They are stained by it, especially when used to describe certain groups. Especially when coming out of the mouth or the pen of the powerful few.

I am not innocent here. As I’ve gotten older and, one hopes, wiser, I try to think about why I feel the urge to use certain words to describe certain people and things. But I don’t catch everything. There are times when I put my foot firmly in my mouth. In those moments, I feel shame, disgust, and remorse. These are hard feelings to allow to sit inside you. They are hard feelings to allow to do their important work. It is easier to violently push them away or ignore them. It is easier to lash out at the person who has taken up the sometimes painful task of calling you on it. It is easier to apologize without ever actually saying that you are sorry.

What would a true admission of guilt mean? That you are fallible? That you are susceptible to intellectual frailty? That you occasionally let society and the legacy of our world’s tortured history infect your thoughts? If that is what it would mean, then I welcome you to being alive and awake in 2018.

I expected there to be both positive and negative critiques of the dress. I would expect nothing less of my fellow fashion watchers, and yet my stomach was in knots even before the "messy bun" statements sent me flying into a rage. A couple of days prior while looking at pictures of Meghan arriving in Windsor, a thought popped into my head unwanted and unbidden. “I hope she wears her hair down for the wedding so I don’t have to hear anyone’s nasty complaints about it.” I berated myself for retreating to the box I subjected my younger self to in an effort to dodge scrutiny and criticism when in predominately white spaces. It is a habit that I've mostly grown out of at this point but there are moments when I backslide.

I was tired. I am tired. Physically obviously but also mentally and emotionally. A year or two ago I would have been able to brush it off. Brushing it off has always been part of surviving. Why should I care about the statements of people who aren't even aware of the shit that they have internalized? Who has time for those who want to live an unexamined life for fear of the work that living the opposite would entail? And yet here I am more sensitive ever.

Sensitive and in the right.

Thankfully the sometimes cowardly ways of a woman watching from nearly 6,000 miles away had absolutely no effect on the styling decisions that were made for that perfectly sunny day. She wore her hair up all the better to complement the neckline of the dress that Clare Waight Keller had created for her. And when her future husband lifted her veil all I saw was a face beaming happiness.



In the hours following the wedding while still too tired to sleep, I read a couple of pieces about The Dress. Both reached the same conclusion about what was being said with her choice.

At The New York Times:

It was not a Cinderella choice, not one that spoke of fantasy or old-fashioned fairy tales, but one that placed the woman proudly front and center. It underscored Ms. Markle’s own independence by divesting her of frippery, while also respecting tradition and keeping her covered up. It celebrated female strength in the rigorous nature of its line — six exactingly placed seams — the substance of its fabric (double-bonded silk cady), and the choice of designer: a British woman who, as a statement from Kensington Palace read, had “served as the creative head of three globally influential fashion houses — Pringle of Scotland, Chloé, and now Givenchy.”

At The Washington Post:

The dress, designed by Clare Waight Keller, was free of extravagant embellishments. It was not covered in yards of delicate lace. It did not have a single ruffle — no pearls or crystals. Its beauty was in its architectural lines and its confident restraint. It was a romantic dress, but one that suggested a clear-eyed understanding that a real-life romance is not the stuff of fairy tales. The dress was a backdrop; it was in service to the woman. The woman. That’s what the dress emphasized. Not bridal whimsy. Not princess tropes. Not royal pomp. The former actress, the former blogger, the formerly single lady, now has the title Duchess of Sussex. But she is still Meghan.

It's a conclusion that I also came to and one that I believe extends to her hair and makeup.

I stayed away from pieces about those items. I still had walls to maintain after all even if they were doing their job poorly. And I still had things to enjoy in spite of it all.

Images via, via

Second Skin

“I can’t believe I spent so much money on so little fabric.”

The dress didn’t look much shorter than my skirts and other dresses but once I tried it on I could see that it was cut closer to the body than I was used to. I gave my mother a smile and a thank you. It was easy to see why she had been drawn to it when looking for a present for me. It was a blue and white striped dress with thin lines of a bright yellow edging the blue stripes. In that way it was very me. The amount of blue and white striped clothing that I own borders on the obscene. Tees. Sweaters. Dresses. Blazers. Skirts. Too many items for my mother to not have taken notice of my addiction.

But that close cut kept me from wearing it until over a year later when I packed my bags and moved west.

After I bought my first pair of skinny jeans in my early 20s, I never looked back. I've dabbled here and there with a flare or a straight leg but for the most part my pants live close to my skin. I own more than one pair that requires me to hop around my room when pulling them on. But my skirts and dresses didn’t follow suit. The hemlines got shorter, much shorter, but they rarely sat close. If they did, they stayed buried deep in my closet. Even my pencil skirts, made of cotton and silk crepe, sit away from the surface of my skin. What rests beneath is only hinted at through the occasional, well-placed slit.

I wore that striped dress constantly during my first Los Angeles summer but that fact did not mean that I'd taken to it in the same way that I had to that first pair of skinny jeans years earlier. I loved it but was never exactly comfortable in it. My wardrobe was still in transition that first year, California Samantha still gestating, as my media-influenced ideas about Los Angeles style began to be replaced by the reality on the ground. I was surprised by the general looseness of everyone's clothes, especially the clothes of the people sharing my small corner of this sprawling city. The new pieces that entered my closet often took their lead from my neighbors' example. There were boxy shirt dresses and two jumpsuits with blouson tops. Seven soft and silky Everlane tees now live in my dresser. During my second summer, that striped dress made it out of my closet only twice.

It is possible to do something because you love it while also indulging in it because you fear its opposite.

A little over a month ago, I walked into the Urban Outfitters in Downtown Los Angeles in search of a pair of black ballet flats that I had seen on their website. They were nowhere to be found. I wandered to the sale section in search of nothing in particular and picked up a striped, knit skirt. When I stepped into the dressing room, I noted two things. Firstly, the skirt was longer than any I'd bought in the past couple of years. Secondly, it clung to every bit of me. To my hips and my thighs and my ass. If I were to throw a collarless tunic or a swing sweater on with it, as I often did with my skinny pants, it would look all wrong. There was no hiding in it.

I wasn't sure what I was thinking but I bought it. It was only $10 after all.

It didn't take long for me to wear it but then it never takes long for me to wear anything anymore. When I finally found a pair of denim overalls last Friday, I went home and immediately changed into them. I've learned that anything that I don't want to put on the moment I enter my door with it is something that I should return.

But just because I knew that I wanted to wear it didn't mean that I wasn't wary of it. That striped dress still sat in my closet waiting for the real heat of my third Los Angeles summer to descend or for me to get over myself, whichever came first. I thought of the skirt as a one-off. I was happy living my loose, swingy, and sometimes boxy life without much examination. But less than two weeks later, in a different store in search of a different item that was nowhere to be seen, I again wandered into the sale section where I came across a second skirt.

Firstly, it was longer than the last one. Secondly, it clung to every bit of me. To my hips and my thighs and my ass. There was no hiding in it. I wasn't sure what I was thinking but I bought it. It was only $10 after all.

I wore it almost immediately to a friend's reading on the west side that weekend. As I sat on the bus there trying not to fidget in it, I realized that maybe there was more to these impulse purchases. I sometimes forget that whimsy and happenstance should always be last on the list when I'm searching for a reason why I've done something. The skirts weren't evidence of a sea change per se but of a broadening of what I considered the right types of clothes for me.

Free from the worries and the turmoil of those years at home, an increased level of confidence has been creeping up on me. I shouldn't be surprised that it chose to manifest itself in my shopping habits.

Sunny Side

My memory holds on to pieces of days and events and images with an iron grip that I sometimes wish were a little weaker. Although I don’t know why it holds onto so much, I am often aware of why at times it chooses to push some of its collected fragments to the forefront. A song plays. A pleasant and familiar smell fills the air. The sun filters through the trees in just the right way. And then something inside me stirs. But it’s only often that I know the source of the push. Often but not always.

The site that I use to sift through the various collections out of the various fashion capitals is changing directions come fall, so I spent a large part of a somewhat recent weekend sitting cross-legged on my bed and swapping out pictures on posts labeled “Fashion Month.” There were over 250 to fix. I was, for a time, rather prolific when it came to such matters. The reasons were two-fold. I was learning, still am, and the collections were part of my education. And I needed to keep my underemployment-induced boredom at bay. Or to at least dampen its effects.

Though exhausting, the image replacement exercise felt anything but dull. I was able to experience how much, and how little, my opinions have changed. My growing love of florals and suits. My initial distaste for brights. My brief flirtation with them. My recent rededication to all things navy and gray and cream. It was when going through a collection featured in a long ago Favorite of the Day post from the Spring/Summer 2012 season that I rediscovered a much-loved dress.

While examining it again, I came to realize how much it resembled one that I’d recently added to my closet.

Most of my clothing purchases happen accidentally. Shopping trips with specific goals in mind, especially when undertaken with others in tow, often end in frustration and terse words. But then it’s easy to shop accidentally when one’s curiosity leads to frequent store wanderings. I like examining clothing stores, their layouts and their merchandise, and thinking about what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong. It’s a habit with roots that stretch back before my four and a half years in apparel retail, a habit that existed even before my internship at a small buying office in Manhattan in late 2008 and early 2009. I step into stores noting where they keep their menswear section and lightly touching garments that catch my eye. I return home full of questions and conclusions and, sometimes, with a gift for myself.

It was on one of those accidental shopping trips a few days before my most recent birthday that I wandered into a Madewell. Yet again I was in the middle of, though not yet aware that I was in the middle of, a dress buying moment. After years of skinny jeans, it seems that I’ve come back round to the dress. I never abandoned them really. I’d simply come to buy them at a slower rate. But unlike the dresses that I’d collected during my years of living at home, dresses meant for a certain type of work life or peppered with girly confections, the dresses I’ve found myself drawn to for the past few months are much simpler. No bells. Barely any whistles. A few sequins. Navy and black and white and little more. I’ve been gifted dresses that fall outside of these parameters but gifts are another matter altogether.

That day I picked up a shirtdress from the sale section with a boxy silhouette and a block of navy at its bottom that cooled off its bright white top half. Navy and white in combination is a staple of my wardrobe but boxiness is a characteristic that I generally avoid in my clothing. It rarely does my body any favors. But my curiosity often leads me to try on those things that normally make me wary. The size was off at first. I held out little hope that the one I needed would be found in the back but asked for it anyway. When the sales girl returned waving it above her head, I did a little dance in front of the fitting room. While contemplating whether or not I should make it mine, I took a picture and posted it on Twitter.

The connections appear to me often but not always.

I woke up the following Saturday, the day after my birthday, possibly still drunk and definitely suffering from a shameover of immense proportions but with somewhere that I needed to be. Having a friend with a birthday close to yours can be fun when you're younger but my just turned 32-year-old body responded with anger that I was making it do anything but stay in bed watching romcoms and eating pizza. I calculated how long it would take my Uber to deliver me to the scheduled brunch and a Bloody Mary and thanked my overachieving self for choosing an outfit the previous day.

I had worn something more complicated for my own birthday. A jumpsuit. My first jumpsuit. But for a day about someone else, I'd decided to wear that week's purchase and take the more laidback California Samantha out for a spin. Because that was what I had been doing unconsciously doing with all of that dress buying. Getting to the heart of whom I wanted California Samantha to be. And all those years ago, long before I knew that I would pack up and leave my family, my friends, and my books for a life here, an image was already being created. And it started with that dress and that Jenni Kayne collection (and many Jenni Kayne collections that followed).

Who is California Samantha? Well she is evolving. She likes simple dresses in easy shapes. She likes skirts of a similar fashion. She has been stripped of the layers that previously dominated her life. When she decided to cull her closet last month, all of the items she consigned or gave to friends were colorful and printed and, in more ways than one, restrictive. Her skinny jeans have lost their place as default. 

She appears relaxed even when she is not.


Photos via

Shifting Natures

In the month of May, I added six dresses to my wardrobe. I soon assigned half of them to the Work side of my closet. I don’t need to dress in a business-like manner for my job. But during all of those years in retail, I collected clothing meant for the life that I desperately wanted but that I believed might never materialize. Casting those items aside seemed foolish.

It wasn’t simply the possession of the dresses that made me want to create a definitive style for Work Samantha. It was that I needed her. Work Samantha is an outlet for the more restrained side of my fashion nature, the side that dominated in my previous life. Work Samantha wears shift dresses and stripes. She wears skinny, olive wool pants and gray, glenplaid skimmers. She is structured, penned in, and held together. Sometimes she will wear a print with some color in it. Her presence allows me to continue wearing the clothes that I am not yet ready to part with while I explore who exactly California Samantha is and, in turn, what she likes to wear. But that's not the entire story. In recent years, I've rarely been one to choose how she dresses based on necessity alone. I also want Work Samantha, or at least elements of her. Those years back at home were so muddled that I like the idea of creating two style sides to myself, one serious and one less so.

It might seem disingenuous, this conscious play with the multiplicity of my nature, but the self is many things and sometimes I need to let one of the many parts of myself out for a bit of air.

  

I went back to Boston a few weeks ago for the first time since Thanksgiving. It was a relaxing trip, which I wasn’t exactly expecting for a number of reasons that aren’t worth exploring here. When I visit, my mother always tries to send me back with things. This habit was easier to indulge when I lived in Brooklyn. You can load someone down with food and beauty products when they are taking a four hour trip on a questionable bus. But flying cross country does not lend itself to such gifts. So I turned down the roasted Cornish hen that she offered and any number of other things but in the end decided to take a dress along.

My mother wasn’t sure that I would like it. This is a game that we’ve been playing for years. The things that she thinks I will love, I look at askance. The things that she is unsure of, I take to enthusiastically. It springs, I think, from our rather different styles and the rift in the mother/daughter relationship that often appears during the latter’s move into adulthood.

But I loved it instantly. The shape of the dress was simple. A shift dress with a high neck. Perfect for work in an office tower. On it was a print, one of those hand-drawn renderings of a stereotypical, pretty European streetscape. A street that one might see on a Rick Steves’ program on PBS. A picture that a freshman might buy from her college’s poster sale and put on her wall.

I never did that. I’m not a “pictures on the wall” person. The street scene that covered this new dress instead reminded me of an old dress. A very old dress. A dress that I believe still lives somewhere in my mother’s house.

Once I began attending a private, girls’ school in the fifth grade, the first day of school outfit became a big deal for me. My education prior to that had taken place at a small Catholic school where I was hemmed in by the constraints of my little plaid uniform. So it was with much thought that I approached this new opportunity. For the first few years, most of my ensembles were composed of pretty standard fare for a child of the early 90s. Pieces from Limited Too. White Keds worn with purple socks that I scrunched excessively. But eighth grade would see me finally break from all of that and transition into…Delia*s.

It wasn’t a unique shift in any way. It became obvious at the time of the brand's recent, and short-lived, demise just how important those clothes and that little square-shaped catalog had been to numerous others who had also come of age in the 1990s. But it was still a treat when my mother said that I could pick something out of it for that first day of school. 1996 had already been a big year for me. I turned 13. I got contact lenses. I had my first real crush. I wore my first, and last, crop top, which led to my first, and last, grounding. I felt ready for something that was not the dress of a child. Something that screamed ADULT.

The one that I chose was a shift dress covered in a print. A print of a stereotypical, pretty European streetscape. It was a little snug when it arrived but I dealt with it. I wasn’t going to let the continuing weight gain that started soon after I entered puberty stop me from wearing it on that first day. I had the rest of my adolescence to deal with those types of internal arguments. And I did feel like an adult in it. I stood up a little straighter. I walked a little differently.

Once the dramatics of the first day passed, I returned to the normal, everyday clothes one might expect of a young teenager not trying to make all that much noise. (There was a lot of Gap.) And for all of that excitement surrounding its arrival, I don’t remember wearing that dress more than once.

When I returned to Los Angeles, I wasted little time before I wore its cousin to work. As is always the case when I wear a color or a print, it got a handful of compliments. Instead of the usual clipped Thank You and subtle head shake that I usually give in response to such praise, I smiled broadly.

Favorite of the Day: Gareth Pugh

Fashion as art is not a new concept. In fact the idea is often trotted out in defense of collections that are too much. Too expensive. Too detached from the real world. As if being "art" explains away the excess that can come from a lack of vision.

But there are some who deserve to have the clothing they make described as such. Gareth Pugh is one of those few. Season after season he presents collections that transport you to a sculpture garden.

But he also takes those skills and create pieces that are wearable. 

Beautiful. Dramatic. Breathtaking. But also wearable.

Photos via

Favorite of the Day: Antonio Marras

Antonio Marras has been doing the best print work in Milan for years now.

Pre-Fall 2012

Pre-Fall 2013

Fall/Winter 2013

Resort 2014

Fall/Winter 2014

Resort 2015

So it was no surprise to see him continue that streak in his most recent collection.

Always a little off and a little odd in the styling. But in the end, pretty above all else.


Photos via

Favorite of the Day: Preen

I was feeling a bit of exhaustion after the end of the New York season. It's a fairly normal occurrence for me. After sifting through so many looks in that many shows, I can't help but feel a bit muddled. But this time the fatigue was laced with weariness brought on by a season that inspired only sporadic excitement. Perhaps unfairly some of that feeling bled into my thoughts as the proceedings moved to London. It wasn't until the third day, and the Preen collection, that I was finally shaken free of it.

Preen did what it, and London, do best. Prints. Patterns. Combinations of the two. Here and there you could see the athletic thread that remains a force in the industry. Details that called to mind the collars and cuffs of letterman jackets. A callback to a classic tennis dress.

But it was never too much.


Photos via

Favorite of the Day: Carolina Herrera

Child Samantha was always drawn to the "pretty pretty". The big skirts. The sweeping trains. Adult Samantha isn't as easily impressed by such things. But there are some designers who do that work so well, who can still draw out my slumbering love for drama.

Carolina Herrera produces those types of ensembles every season, but in the midst of a season of black and white and utility they stood out even more than usual. Not just for their beauty, because so many of the clothes presented during this week are beautiful, but for the way that they spoke to one another.

Everything felt connected. Each piece told one part of the same story.

Photos via

Favorite of the Day: Alexander Wang

New York Fashion Week is at the halfway mark, and I find myself bored. Everything started to bleed together almost from the beginning, and it's been hard to become excited by collection after collection of the same old thing. But the Alexander Wang show provided me with a jolt.

I watched the livestream in my room and found myself standing up. Bouncing around. Dancing to the music. The clothes were thrilling. The girls sped down the runway. He was playing with the prevalent sporting motif but that has always been his wheelhouse, and unlike most others he continues to provide fresh takes on it. These were not off-duty yoga looks, devoid of shape or life. 

They were sharp and tailored and hard and sexy. 

Photos via

Favorite of the Day: Tomas Maier

New York Fashion Week started fully yesterday and as editors and buyers and bloggers wandered the city covered in the latest trends, I observed all of the goings on from afar. When it comes to my personal style, I've settled into a life that has become less and less concerned with those ups and downs.

Marveling at things I only see working on others is second nature at this point, but I still love a collection that I can imagine living my life in. And on day two, Tomas Maier presented exactly that.

It was a perfect slice of Samantha through and through.

Photos via

Favorite of the Day: Whit

Even on the day of its soft opening, it was already obvious in what direction the Spring/Summer 2015 season in New York would be moving. But because it was so early, I decided to ignore all of that. The prevailing winds and the dominating trends. Instead I relished the simple joy found in the best types of summer clothing, which were all on display at Whit. Vibrant and light and playful. Maybe moving west has made me a breezier person.

Or maybe it's just made me more accepting of breezier sensibilities.


Photos via