In the Mood for a Rohmer Summer (Again)
It involves a lot of well-dressed long lunches and talking
I won’t say that this is a particularly original idea, because let’s face it, most good ideas—getting a dog, dessert, comfortable shoes, etc.—really aren’t, but it is a very good idea.
It’s technically a little early to be thinking about summer, maybe, as it’s still merely April (newly spring!) and in many places, still rather dreary, but just as many of you are back from spring break and greedy for more fun in the sun, and not to stress you out, but many of my most organized friends already are done with planning their farthest-flung travels for the summer months. Look, I envy organization almost as much as I prize freedom and spontaneity! (Which of these aspects of my personality have won out is clear to me at least.) One way we can be organized in advance? Get the mood of the thing down first.
Which brings me to the point of this particular missive: sensuality, by which I mean in the broadest sense of pleasing and fulfilling the senses, is important in the summer. It’s a season fundamentally about (in this hemisphere, at least) bared slightly sticky skin and ripe fruit and suntans and swimming in the ocean and lazy lunches that sprawl through afternoons into evenings that roll out from there; a sense of postponing reason and what one ought to do until one really has to do it, and even then... I’m talking about falling in love with your life, okay? (Remember when people on TikTok were talking about “romanticizing your life?” It’s like that, only less about hanging eucalyptus in your shower and more about a sense of presence, of fully holding the moment.) Summer is precious because it’s fleeting. One has to make it count. The endless summeriness of California is why people think that we who live here are spoiled. (They’re not entirely wrong!)
Éric Rohmer’s films have this feeling—this gauzily warm sun-drunk daze—down pat. Here’s how the New Yorker described his modus operandi: “people talk to each other with dialectical precision, intellectual flair, and a stylish offhandedness, on location in striking settings (usually a comfortably tamed nature and architecturally distinctive urban locales), about their emotions and their ideas in pursuit of love and sex, not always with the same person—and do so filmed in images that are both fluid and taut, relaxed and precise. The action meanders but seems held together with a relentlessly unifying purity of cinematic style and idealistic intentions.” (So, you’re saying it’s a movie….) I will say accurately and entertainingly depicting people just being people, talking about emotions and what have you, is one of those things that sounds rote but is actually something like a quadruple axel. And if you watch these movies, which you really should (they’re on Criterion!) if not just for the vibe they invoke, you’ll also likely notice that they’ve probably inspired every clean-lined gently sporty vaguely 90s summer outfit you’ve liked in the past decade. (For men, too!)
I had this all in mind recently, when I had an advance look at Sézane’s latest drop (out today!), and realized that they’ve also got this whole easy, romantic, sensual summery thing down pat. Maybe with like, a touch of Bertolucci (the florals, especially the micro-florals, are giving me Liv Tyler in Stealing Beauty, and about that I will never complain), and that scene from Great Expectations with Gwyneth in green at the park.
Anyways, it’s all in stores as of today, and because the prices are not absolutely batshit like everywhere else it all always sells out, so here’s what I liked for us and our gently cinematic summers ahead. Let me know what you get?
Clockwise from top left: I love this little “combishort,” (much chicer than “romper,” thank you) which is both very “running around LA” and very “July” everywhere else; this silky top and pant are what I meant when I mentioned GP in GE, though this is a gentler leafier golden green and you could easily mix and match with other pieces from your closet; this is the Stealing Beauty top (not to be confused with the Stealing Beauty dress, below); a very, very good party sandal; a very, very good dress for a variety of seasons, actually; the perfect raffia bucket hat to top it all off with.
People underestimate a good summer pant. This one with a chic little tank? A little crochet cropped top? J’adore. If you don’t have a good basket bag, this one is pretty perfect. This easy dress with its lovely fluttery shoulders comes in a variety of colors but I find white hard to resist in the summer. (Me and Daisy Buchanan?) A chic summer jean to show off your new sandals. THIS is the Stealing Beauty dress. And this one is, in plum, is deceptively simple in design and attitude, which means its perfect for that lunch that turns into a late afternoon walk that turns into your next great love. Or you know, whatever your summer holds. Can’t wait.
Citizens of Humanity is one of those brands that I love to wear and work with and talk about because they really put their money where their mouth is, and where their mouth is is everywhere I happen to care about: the climate, civil rights, maternal health, equality. Progress. (And, you know, really good pants.) The new issue of their annual magazine, HUMANITY, is out (free in some retailers I believe as well as online in PDF version!), and for it I was thrilled to profile some incredible members of the American regenerative farming movement, as well as some incredible people making a difference in their respective fields that weren’t necessarily actual fields: I spoke to Christy Turlington about her work with Every Mother Counts; Arizona Muse about her regenerative soil project, Dirt; the artists Simon and Nikolai Haas about the various ways in which they combat inequality and give back on a local level here in California and beyond; and with thinker/maker/activist/artist/social engineer Theaster Gates, whose multi-disciplinary work you really have to see to believe. Rarely have I been involved in such a roundly inspiring project. I’m going to pop in an excerpt from my conversation with Gates below, which hopefully you’ll be able to read clearly. Images are by the fabulous Paola Kudacki. I really encourage you to check out the whole issue if you have the time and are interested in the best plan I’ve heard so far for combating climate change and/or listening to how really interesting people think about the way they spend their time and move through the world. I’m really proud of it.
On to the recommendations!
It can be hard to distill the magic of good editors, who can coax and guide and whittle a rambling piece of work into something water-tight and gloriously taut. (As Jhumpa Lahiri just told The Paris Review: “you know how when you go to the sauna, you sweat, and you get rid of all the toxins in your body? Whenever I send a story to the New Yorker, I tell Alberto ‘oh, the story went to the spa.’”) Look no further than this 2007 New Yorker blog post, wherein you can find the iconic Gordon Lish’s edits to Raymond Carver’s classic short story “What We talk About When We Talk About Love.” There’s something cheering about seeing a real master’s relatively rangy first draft, and how much of it was left on the cutting room floor. (And what an enormous, and beneficial, difference it made.)
Two very good films that have nothing in common really besides being very good: Love Lies Bleeding is very gory, definitely strange, very funny, and extremely 80s, in the best way. And: Kristen Stewart! Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World is brilliant, strange, angry, devastated, political, hilarious, and Romanian. I went in knowing only that it had received rapturous reviews from critics I trust and I am so glad I did. Ilinca Manolache, who plays the lead, is magnetic. (Be warned, it’s 2.45 hours and avant garde. You should definitely see it in a theater.)
James by Percival Everett. I am a huge Percival Everett fan. (True HWG-heads may remember I recommended his last novel, Dr. No, as well as American Fiction, which was based on Everett’s novel Erasure.) What I am not is a huge Huck Finn fan. If you want to talk classic American fiction there’s several other places I’d personally rather go. The Mark Twain of it all here—James is Huck Finn from Jim’s perspective— had me worried. I needn’t have. Everett is maybe a genius? I don’t use that word particularly lightly, except in relation to like, snack and wardrobe innovations. (If you want more on him, this profile of him from the New Yorker was excellent.) I couldn’t put this novel down, and then bought my dad (something of an expert in the American fiction genre and more into Twain than I am) a copy. We await his review. Either way, I highly recommend.
Are these the best bonbons one can order online? Look, I certainly wouldn’t be mad if you sent them to me.
The cruise ship is a popular trope in essay-writing, because a cruise ship is an insane place to be and also because people tend to act insanely while on it. (I, too, wrote a cruise ship essay in November 2016 [lol] and I think it remains pretty good, if a fascinating artifact of the weird ricochet between the hopeless/hopefulness of that time, immediately post-election, when people came together to howl and grieve and talk.) The thing about cruise ship essays is that you often feel like you never need to read another and then you read another and are usually glad you did. Anyway: Gary Shteyngart entered the chat in early April with a banger of an essay in which he bears witness to the maiden voyage of the world’s largest cruise ship, the Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, for the May issue of The Atlantic, who paid at least $19,000 for him to have the privilege (and he doesn’t even get an ocean view). It’s a really good, really funny piece. “The ship” he writes, “makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots.” It’s true that these seafaring constructions are kind of inconcievable, even from land. I remember when they’d slide into New York harbor, like skyscrapers turned on their sides; it felt like they might blot out the sun. Anyway, Shteyngart thinks this should be the end of cruise ship stories. I completely understand why he feels that way. It definitely won’t be.
In Very L.A. Recommendations: I know it seems like everyone has a supplement line right now, and maybe they do? But I tried the powders from The Absorption Company (which come in “restore,” “energy,” “sleep,” and “calm”) and they’re…delicious? And so far they seem to do what they say. They come in travel-ready little packets, too, which is definitely a boon in my world (versus parcelling my various vitamins out into baggies I’ll eventually have to explain to TSA, hopefully somewhere they speak English). And then in the Erewhon checkout line the other day (yeah, yeah, I know) I came across Chelan freeze dried cherries, and now have ordered their whole range (honeycrisp apples, blueberries, cherries, oh my!) twice. I don’t know how they’ve done it but they are crispier and more robustly flavorful than any other freeze dried fruit I’ve ever tried. Perfect snack. Satisfying crunch. Throw on top of some yogurt. Eat by the handful. A wholesome delight! Cancels out those bonbons from earlier. If it’s not quite spring where you are, try adding jam into your life. These, made in Sherman Oaks in delightful and sometimes decadently unusual flavor combinations, cheer up everything from chia puddings and toasts to cottage cheese and cocktails (brambles, baby). Five stars.
As you read this I am currently back in Hawaii, which I am absolutely thrilled about. (Different island, more on which to come.) I am not quite Rohmer-summering (Rohmmering?) yet, but I am preparing. I am also going to Rio in a week, if you’d like to send me any recommendations for things to eat/see/do while there!
As always, thank you for being here, and as always, I’m here if you need me. Unless I’m on a plane and the wifi goes out. xx