A Treasury Of… Minneapolis Fashion and Interior Design Blog

An editor by nature, and by trade, I’m a real sucker for any “Best Of” list since they efficiently illuminate what was or still is relevant and radiant, while whittling away the extraneous.

Unless we count my nearly two years of Treasuring as one giant list itself, I’ve never posted a proper list. I thought I’d look back through the digi-pics of 2010 to tally up the top 10 treasures I’d measure as “The Best of The Year”.

1. Favorite Accessory
My new, U.S. issued Aviator Kit Bag. After one machine wash, and one mini-trip to New Orleans, it’s proven itself to be the perfect carry-on suitcase in terms of size and studly style.

2. Favorite Flashback
A TV junkie, just about everything’s been re-runs since early December. But Universal’s HD cable channel, roster-ed with random re-runs of hits from all eras, has been providing me with a dozen Charlie’s Angels episodes a week. It was my first favorite show as child, and it’s finally aged enough now to no longer seem dated and dull (which it did to me a few years back). Now every single tunic, discotheque, and Tom Selleck cameo highlights how chic and swanky the late 70s and early 80s were.

3. Favorite Finger-Painting
The J. Crew shorts I cropped myself then coated in 5 different colors earned me internet high-fives as well as veiled death threats, but I wore them rogue-ly and regularly all summer, to that magic point on the far side of self-consciousness. These shorts and the sideways glances they brought on taught me that if I’m not making someone’s eyes roll over what I’m wearing, I’m just not doing my job.

4. Favorite Follow Up
After two whole albums and a boat-shoe-box’s worth of B-sides, I’ve never heard a Vampire Weekend song I didn’t like. The CONTRA album was more Californian and yet noticeably colder than the New York band’s debut disc, but the sound of shivers in the sunshine made me happy and happily sad, over and over and over this year.

5. Favorite Mistake
I’ve ordered a lot of treasures over the internet these past years, but these vintage black boots were the only package that never arrived. (NOOOO!) I’m still too torn up inside to tell why I loved them so much, or type up all the outfits I would’ve worked up around them. Rest in peace, black boots. I know, without you, that I won’t.

6. Favorite Flavor
The black licorice macaron I chewed in slow motion on the windy steps of a church somewhere in Paris.

7. Favorite Escape
No one saw this coming, not even me, but somehow I became a fan of prison break books. Papillon is the ultimate, the tall-tale-sized autobiography of a Parisian criminal’s repeated escapes from prisons in French Guiana, including the Devil’s Island colony. The protagonist’s will is so strong and sturdy that even when he must endure years/chapters trapped to sunless, solitary confinement, his tone remains brave and bright. The Steve McQueen movie version of the story isn’t criminal, but it lacks the disarming charm of Papillon and his incredible adventure.

8. Favorite Fad
Reddish-orange pants, or orangey-red jeans. But we all already knew that.

9. Favorite Forty-Four Minutes
The best “hour” of TV I saw all year was Mad Men’s season four episode “The Suitcase”. There’s always been a “Will they or won’t they?” tension to Draper and Peggy’s relationship. Not “Will they or won’t they?” fall into bed, but “Will they or won’t they?” fling aside the stressed charades of their 1960s social roles for forty five seconds, and just look at one another for who they actually are. In “The Suitcase”, they finally did just that, puked-on dress shirts and all. It was a long time coming, and it was a sweet and needed relief.

10. Favorite Fantasy
Lying on the beaches of Mexico on an extra large, linen deck-towel- shaped island. I got the towel in August, the plane ticket in November, and soon enough my fantasy will turn reality!

2011 has a lot to live up to.

The Minnesota State Fair starts today, and I’ve been counting down the days since the second I left it last year. For a few years in my life I wasn’t so into the fair because I felt it never changed, and it was always the same, the same, the same…

But now that’s one of the main reasons I fancy it so much. Every year there’s some new strange indulgence deep-fried experimentally or served on a stick to prove that a new year really has rolled around, but aside from that, the fair looks and feels exactly the same as it did when I was a kid.

And, aside from all the overalls and three-piece suits, it looks and feels not too terribly different than it does in all these decades-old photos.

Lessons learned last year:

1) Full funnel cakes are a better value and better tasting than funnel cake-bites.

2) Just bite the bullet and buy the big jar of honey with the handsome, green label, even if you have to lug it around for a few hours. It’ll brighten up your cupboard and your cereal for months.

When it comes to music there’s a seemingly endless stream of songs for us each to love, a measurably smaller flow of entire albums to cherish, and an even narrower trickle of artists to treasure whole-heartedly.

For me, one of the few musicians I treasure whole-heartedly is Nina Persson, whether she’s fronting her famous band, The Cardigans or her almost famous band, A Camp.

Its been three years since Ms. Persson has shipped out any material album-sized in scale, so I look forward to February 3rd when I can order via Amazon the Europen import version of A Camp’s sophomore album Colonia. No way a Treasurer worth his salt could wait almost three additional months to nab a copy stateside, where the disc won’t be released until April 28.

The band’s website states that Colonia draws from a variety of historical inspirations including, “The opium den to the Belgian Congo, from the Namibian desert by starlight to Victorian New York by gaslight.” Later they tease that Colonia wears an air of, “Electricity, wig powder, and laudanum.” Hot damn!

The reasons to treasure the works of Nina Persson’s bands reach beyond their masterful melodies for which Swedish pop acts are now expected to provide. There’s a flinty force of narrative and protaganism Nina brings to her every song, all of them tingling with the sting of despair, and the buzz of something un-bruise-able and hopeful. Her albums routinely choke me up, sometimes from joy and sometimes from sadness, and sometimes for reasons less clear but all the sharper.

I’m counting down the days…