A Treasury Of… Minneapolis Fashion and Interior Design Blog

I come from a family filled with “Bill-for-short” Williams.

When my mother was a child, for some silly reason, she craved crazily this miniature horse-shoe that hung on her brother Bill’s bedroom door.

Careful and cunning, my mother patiently waited five long decades before secretly confiscating her prize during a summer trip to her hometown of Detroit.

She handed it over to me immediately, and although I’m always a William or a Will and never quite a Bill, I’m still excited to pound a nail above my clothes closet and hang up this highly coveted horse-shoe.

One rumor had it that the Filson for Urban Outfitters bags would be at select brick & mortars only. But they’re on-line as of today!

The tote in cream, and the duffle in navy.

I’m now on the lookout for a creamy shawl-collared cardigan, just like Simon’s…

…to bust out on shivery but sophisticated late summer nights, in place of a blazer.

Sofia Coppola’s new film Somewhere will be shot at the famed Los Angeles hotel this coming June and July.

Loveliness will surely abound.

The oft-mentioned MUJI brand has now launched their on-line store. When I found out, I immediately made my way to the site, certain I’d find a basket’s worth of minimalistic marvels to purchase or post to the Treasury.

Dutifully digging through each category of merchandise, the only things I came up with, however, were this blood orange umbrella and a set of colored pencils.

Let down, I was. (Yoda was too.)

I’ve never been in a MUJI retail outlet, but looking at photos of the stores on the MUJI site, I began to think that maybe the merchandising and mood of their stores was imperative to the brand’s success. An army of perfectly arranged, well-lit travel bottles on a glass shelf are elevated to product-as-art status, encouraging a purchase – whereas one on-line photo of the same boring bottle inspires little more than a shrug.

I think many other brands can transfer their brick and mortar merchandise to an on-line source in a simple and straight-forward site and the appeal of each product can remain primarily intact. The MUJI web shop needs something more imaginative, innovative and atmospheric in its design to properly uphold the revered reputation of its physical stores, I think.

Another, simpler to state disappointment with the site – none of the stores’ apparel is offered.

..I’d jam all the money I had (minus $295) into my new envelope wallet from Postalco.

But I’m not a rich man. My money’ll get jammed into something less snazzy.

Oh well…

Four or five years back, I spotted this desaturated denim suit by APC in an issue of Wallpaper. I attempted to order it from the New York store, but the pants they sent me were cut like a 5-pocket jean, not like the trousers depicted in the magazine.

I had been excited to have a suit, an entire suit, and to wear it every day, as a uniform, un-precious and underplayed. It wasn’t meant to be though.

This Kostym by Cheap Monday suit at Alter reminds me of my dashed APC-styled dreams. But again, the particulars of the pants involved are proving pesky. 

In all my life I’ve only owned one suit and I’ve worn it less-than-zero times. One of these years, that’s all gonna change!

I’ve been wanting to button my button-ups as up as they go. But I must have a weirdly wide neck. I can never button my tippy-top buttons without impaling my Adam’s Apple so forcefully that I fall into a fit of teary-eyed gagging. (Not glamorous.)

Even when a shirt seems to run a little on the loose side for me, the collar will still be cruelly constraining. So far the least lethal neck dimensions for me have been found at Club Monaco. I can survive in their shirts, but I’d rather thrive.

Does anyone else suffer my same fate? Does anyone have any guidance?

The latest, and decidedly greatest issue of my favorite magazine had a little layout called Perfectly Boring which assembled together banal basics from sources no more exciting than Banana Republic in order to create looks that were no more exciting than…err…a trip to Banana Republic.

There was something inspiring about the story though. I’m dared now to dress as dull and Dad-ish as possible (for a day, not a lifetime) just to see if such overboard boring-ness might oddly, inversely, then become intriguingly interesting.

Tossing out anything that can’t be considered the most base basic – and accessorizing in nothing more than an utterly anonymous wrist watch.

It sounds so clean and cool and courageous, the more I type about it. I’m strolling the aisles of WalMart in my mind already, imagining the blandest watch and crispest, cheapest khakis I could find to make my self-served-dare a real-done deal.

To be continued…

It might drive some people crazy, but I like to accidentally stumble into a movie on TV somewhere in the middle, fall in love with it, and then get to go back and re-watch it again from the beginning, at some later date. It’s like green-lighting your own happy little prequel.

Today I fell into the second act of Mon oncle Antoine, apparently considered the best Canadian film ever. From what I’ve seen so far, I can certainly imagine there’d be other Canadian films that could be better…but not that seem more boy-blog-worthy.

The mellow, mischievous film centers around an untraditional family who works at a general store…
In the 1940s…
In francophone Quebec…
On Christmas Eve!

A movie after my own heart.

I couldn’t find very amazing images on the internet. None of the screen-grabs presented here even feature any of the 4 main characters. (Consider it non-spoiler-ing at its boldest?)

But trust me, the film offers enough plaid flannel, wooly britches, dark denim, and slushy sloppy snow to kill your spring fever and get you jonesing for winter again and its macho, fashion classics.

I like these Vans at Oki-Ni – very much so.

But I ordered them in boring navy blue instead from somewhere else.

It’s been four weeks now, and I’ve resisted shaving my first semi-successful moustache. It’s grown in enough now that I’ve had to figure out how exactly to groom and shape it. There’s so many options, I’m realizing, it might take a while to find the right role model that actually works for me and my funny face.

I’m ruling out the mannered moustache of the fellow pictured above, but I might pay homage to his tattoo, braces, and pipe at some later date.