A Treasury Of… Minneapolis Fashion and Interior Design Blog

I love and therefore own a number of dreary-hued tweed blazers and ties with flecks of techni-colors in them. But I almost never wear blazers or ties, and I’ve been wanting the same speckled effect in something more summery/less seasonal.

This confetti-laced cream chambray is just the thing. Vintage-y and vaguely Japanese-seeming.

The Men’s department at the Minneapolis Club Monaco store is a little…little – it’s sometimes better to search online, which is where I spotted the super shirt made out of this marvelous material.

I went up a size with it, so I could actually button the top button and look like some guy Melissa would’ve taken to an art gallery opening on thirtysomething in 1990-something.

Hurly says I just look Amish – but I can live with that vibe too.

During our trip to L.A., Hurly understandably needed a break from all the non-stop shopping, so we made an impromptu visit to Disneyland one morning.

The best part about The Magic Kingdom to me is that much of it never changes. Although It’s A Small World was closed for renovations in order to make it less racist/retro/worth it. It seemed the maintenance crews were in the midst of repainting/priming the ride’s facade and I thought the wintery colorlessness made everything all the more striking.

The last time I’d been to Disneyworld I don’t think Captain EO had even come out. There was a 25 year anniversary re-release screening and it was everything that was perfect and absurd about the 80s in under 25 minutes. And also, the audience was way over 80 percent Asian.

My favorite ride was as a kid was The Matterhorn. It maybe still is, although now half the reason is probably cause I’m all about Alps-ish type fonts.

And finally, I finally earned my first ever pair of MousketEars!

Everyone called me by my middle name, Scott, when I was a kid, so that’s what I had the grey-haired lady stitch into the back of my cap.

When she took it off the embroidery machine and showed it to me she exclaimed, “Oh, that looks real nice!” Maybe she says that to all the boys, but something in her voice made me believe it completely.

Since I won’t eat actual chicken anymore, I’m hoping these down home-style Chicken & Waffles potato chips are, somehow, weirdly vegetarian.

Whoever in Minneapolis finds me a bag first will become my boo.

My body-clock remained on Minneapolis time our entire stay in Los Angeles, which meant I’d wake up at 5:30 each morning, with empty hours to fill before any worthwhile shop would bother opening. So crazily early on Saturday morning we drove to the Chateau Marmont for an old-Hollywood style breakfast.

Two summers ago I’d slowly read a book all about the legendary hotel, so it was interesting to see it in person. It was more Gothic-y and Grandma-ish than I’d thought, but it was a dreamy reminder of the beauty that comes from keeping something the same, for years and years and years.

After I ordered my almond-crusted french toast, I tested the service bell on the wall behind me in the restaurant/bar and wondered how many times Dean and DeNiro and Dunaway might have done the same thing.

Once regular business hours resumed we hit Heath Ceramics hard.

Then swung by the other Lawson Fenning location where I flirted with at least five different chairs, especially this mesh ‘n leather one.

Since chairs don’t ever seem to stash that well into carry-on bags though, I opted instead for this vintage, volcanic-rock pot.

As far as our visit to Charlie’s Angels Headquarters, here’s a close-up of the bolt-holes where the Townsend Detective Agency sign had once hung to!

But the iconic building that was once the pretend home to the sexy sleuthing of Tiffany Wells, Kelly Garrett and the Munroe sisters is now a G-Damned vacuum store.

What a fucking karate-kick in the gut.

During our visit Hurly said, “I guess it’s true. You can’t go home again.” No, I can’t. And neither can Sabrina or Julie or Bosley! Obviously I miss everything about 1980 all the time, but never moreso than the day I stood, slump-shouldered, under that moronic Miele logo.

Ouch.

A lifetime ago I lived in Los Angeles for half a year. I’m nothing if not a nostalgist, so it finally seemed time to book a flight to LAX so I could stroll down Memory Lane/Ventura Boulevard.

The dozen or so retail spots that made up the bulk of the itinerary, however, weren’t a part of my past, but the path to future treasures, I hoped.

Straight from the airport, Hurly chauffeur-ed me to Silver Lake, where the first shop we stopped at was The Mohawk General Store. They had a Gitman Vintage shirt I almost bought, and bundles of sage to burn, and liquid soaps so super-natural there were actually chunks o’ stuff floating within.

Next up was the first of two Lawson Fenning furnishings stores we visited. The Silver Lake store was more affordable and antique-filled. They stocked incredible lamps, and hempy pillows, and tarnished wind chimes. So so So-Cal, I so totally loved it!

The store I was most excited to check out was RTH Shop, with its New Mexican brand of crafty chic. I was scolded by two separate staff members for taking photos, but I’m a rebellious little rascal when I want to be.

I thought I might buy all sorts of smocks and suede totes from RTH, but in the end I just picked up this over-sized greige pin I’ll probably fix to a duffle bag or display in a dish or something.

Sometimes a site is worth it just for its signage alone. Fred Segal’s font and ivy-covered storefront are throwback-y classics, and shap-shooting musts.

Our second day in L.A. brought us to the Santa Monica pier, where further font-fueled photo shoots were mounted.

And then!!! Not until we arrived in L.A. did the lightbulb go off in my head that we totally needed to visit the location they used as the exterior of The Townsend Agency in Charlie’s Angels, and shoot me in front of it for fourteen or fifteen hours.

Before we got around to that though, we drove past The Sportsmen’s Lodge near where I used to live in Studio City, and I was almost certain it’s where they filmed the episode of Angels where Jill goes undercover as a hotel maid, Sabrina poses as a near-sighted waitress, and Kelly makes a joke about Pat Nixon and a pot of chili.

So I had Hurly pull a sharp right into the parking lot, and we stormed inside. I don’t know for certain yet if The Lodge was indeed where they’d shot that episode, but the place was so gloriously stuck in 1977 still that the clues certainly seemed to add up, don’t they, Bosley?

Tune in tomorrow-ish to see what happens when I finally arrive outside the Angels’ office. It’s quite the shocker!

So the album cover’s gonna be all moody and un-vibrant, and its title is appropriated and appropriately baroque.

VW hasn’t released a song yet that I don’t like, so May 7th has a good shot of being the bestest day of this entire year.

This day is truly a historic one for this great country of ours. The heroically gifted actress Keri Russell returns triumphantly to American television sets, in a full-on drama, dressed in early 1980s clothes for every single scene!

The Artist Formerly Known as Felicity will have brand new things besides Ben and Noel to make her bottom lip shift and tremble so superbly, and I can’t wait to see just what they’ll be.

The Americans debuts/proves life is worth living: tonight at 9, Minneapolis time, on FX.

Realistically, would I have bought this campfire-colored Kelty Pack had the triple-peaked patch not been triangle shaped?

Probably not. Probably no.

Sometimes it really is the little things that make the biggest impressions. And what separates a modern design from a vintage (or re-issued) one. And what scores a retail sale instead of a snore.

It’s been a great while since I’ve pined for or posted about a camera. I’m not even positive that now is an appropriate time.

It’s possibly super inappropriate because…I already have two Canon digital cameras circa 2010, and Hurly has a digital SLR, and I shoot on 35mm film when I can handle the hassle, and everyone ‘n I just shoots everything on their phone these days anyways, and most of all: What does it matter what one shoots an image with today when the image can, and certainly will, be Instagrammed into faux importance anyways?

But here’s why it might be a completely appropriate time for me to pine for another camera. This Fuji XF1 exists.

And it looks exactly what everything should look like: Today making out with Yesterday, on a train, in a tunnel.

And, I don’t like my two newer Canon cameras and sorta never have. Neither of them takes photos as reliable or well as the older, more archaic Canon PowerShot A530 I had back in 2005 (oh, how its images glowed!) or the Nikon Coolpix 3100 I had in 2003. The flash on my newer Canons are always out of control, yet the images too dark. The colors always Kermit-y and sickly.

So…Is now an appropriate time to pick up a new camera? Maybe not.

But in a post-invention-of-the-iPhone world, it might not ever again be an appropriate time to pick up a new/actual camera. That’s what Today making out with Tomorrow would look like, and it’s icky and it’s ugly.

And Yesterday and I can’t sit back and let life look like that.

There’s a good month or so in Minnesota when getting dressed in the lightless morning has about zilch to do with trying to look good and everything to do with surviving the sub-zero temperatures outside.

I knew the happy-patterned Portuguese Flannel shirts from Gitman Vintage that Unionmade started selling right before Christmas would make getting dressed this January not only practical but purdy as well.

I ordered the shirts in two different patterns. One was super Me, one was refreshingly less Me – but the Me Me one looked better, and I’ve finally, just recently accepted the fact that you have to buy clothes based on how they actually look on you, not how you wish they would look on you. Optimism trumps realism in a lot of spaces and places, but don’t let it dupe you (and by you, I mean Me) when you’re making up your mind in front of a mirror.

I knew the boppy blue shirt I ended up keeping was gonna shoot me through winter’s darkest hours looking right and bright-eyed. The vintage flannel is thick but utterly un-stiff. Super, super soft – to the point that strangers start and then won’t stop snuggling you.

Winter’s really hard. Soft snuggles never hurt.

It’d been years that I’d intended to set a bottle of Byredo parfum on my bathroom counter. It just kept not happening.

Again and again, my ability to select precisely which scent to shell out for never timed up just right with the amount of bucks in my bank account. But then I spotted something which shot me directly into decision-making, debt-be-damned mode.

Byredo’s nouveau line-up of ultra-luxe, leather travel cases are so indulgently unnecessary – they’re essentially a must-have. Available in seven shades, I went for black, then committed to the dusky, honey-ed spiciness of the Accord Oud scent.

Slipping one of the three, 12 ml mini vials into their sleek leather chamber makes me feel like a sly, Helmut Lang-cloaked super spy. Though designed for a jet-setter’s lifestyle, the cases are too captivating to toss deep into a carry-on bag, or set, mundanely, inside one’s medicine cabinet.

Mine’s assigned permanently to the top of my dresser – personal fragrance disguised as home accessory. Or home accessory disguised as personal fragrance, perhaps. I can’t say quite yet, the case is just that clever.

I’m not sure I have it in me to grow an eight-inch beard or completely curtail some strategic manscaping, but otherwise I’m totally adopting Quit Mad Stop’s homeless beach hobo look once warm weather finds its way to me again.

Q.M.S. bags are big enough to literally tote your entire life in, which is of utmost important to the shelter-less set.

And the line’s pared down selection of jackets, polos, and trunks pair up perfectly (randomly) with richer men’s discarded dress shoes rescued from your city’s chicest dumpsters.

These silver painted linen shorts may shatter, slightly, the illusion of the impoverished existence I’m out to orchestrate – but they’re awesomely insane, which isn’t an entirely unwanted undertone when you’re going for that broken-down bum look.

So I’ll see you guys soon, down in the harsh and sandy shadows. You’ll probably pretend you don’t see me at all, but that comes with my new territory – I won’t hold it against you.