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.

Some free legal advice:

Kirsten Kennis may be 5 feet 8 inches of WASP-y gorgeousness but don’t even think about downloading or re-tumblr-ing her beautiful face for your own enjoyment, artistic or otherwise.

If she’ll take Ezra and his boys to court, I don’t doubt she’d do it to all of us as well.

She didn’t need the rest of Rilo Kiley this time, and she didn’t need the Watson Twins either. But Jenny Lewis didn’t want to do it all by herself, so her boyfriend Jonathan Rice stepped in, and a new record will surely slither into our summer grass come August.

When it comes time, here’s hoping it’s she out of the two who hogs the mic.

“…in the world, on March 2nd get to a TV.”

Twenty one years ago tonight, I did just as the voice commanded and knelt my 7th grade self in front of the biggest TV in our house. The commercial for the commercial underlined just how serious it would be.

The fainter and closer to eternal loss that a memory is, the more I love it…

For a long while, I could still picture the diner dance party, the Catholic school girls, and the skunky striped hair-do as clearly as I did the burning crosses and the waxy black Jesus.

But when one set of chaste images is banned after only one airing, sending the blasphemous others into ubiquitous iconography, of course my memories are bound to darken at different rates.

At last, through the power and glory of internet video, all are again resurrected, forever and ever. A-men.

Just as I had promised, after an entire decade of exile, soft rock’s smoothest siren returns to the waves.

In 1986 I wasn’t old enough to wear grey or white double-breasted suits and flirt with danger and seduction in limousines and after-dark clubs, so listening to Sade cd’s lets me imagine otherwise.

Budded earphones like these cause me physical pain. But if your listenin’ holes are bigger and tougher than mine then these babies would look pretty Japanese ‘n clean. Indeed.

By AIAIAI and now online.

Over the years, Robert Palmer’s stud-muffin style and bouncy-boobed music videos stumbled into satire in pop culture, as if they’d been originally conceived in irony.

I’ve been slowly studying the star over the years and I think Mr. Palmer’s addictions to razor-sharp beats and even sharper suits were entirely earnest. Every single sight and every slinky sound he sent out was sex-drenched sophistication. An unwavering aesthetic that echoes today in the hot-lit, PG 13-porn of Purple magazine and Terry Richardson wannabes and FutureSexLoveSounds…

Robert’s dry-ice cool and wet-dreamy slick are attributes men and women both would be wise to play up, not parody.

This re-mix of my favorite of Mr. Palmer’s hits will prove my point.

Just listen to the dude bark – so rough, so right.

Any music that has any trace of Twin Peaks in its DNA always makes me feel far away and right at home, all at once.

A long-time pet project of film director David Lynch, Fox Bat Strategy features a cast of musicians who began collaborating with Lynch surrounding the filming of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.”

The same line-up of players appeared on Fire Walk With Me‘s two roadhouse cuts: “The Pink Room” and “Blue Frank” (as well as made cameos in the film itself). In 1994, these same musicians, with an invitation from Lynch, re-entered the studio for experimental collaboration. What emerged were these 6 tracks. For nearly fifteen years these songs have remained unreleased and unheard, slow-cooking in the ether of time, all the while retaining a uniquely modern sensibility. This release is a tribute to the album’s late singer and guitarist Dave Jaurequi, who passed away suddenly in 2006.

Released on June 30th. Take a peek, but with your ears not your eyes, right here.

Sometimes her sound is treated as a comedy punch-line but I have quite the soft spot for the softer-than-soft adult rock stylings of Sade.

There aren’t enough cds in the world that make you feel as if you’re being plied with white wine by some coke cartel and his bilingual wife at a bleached out beach resort in 1985. There really aren’t.

Fortunately, Sade is back in the studio, the papers say, for the first time in nine years. The proof is here.

Classic vinyl records dressed up as pretend-classic paperbacks.
For no good reason, but good nonetheless.

Peruse the rest of the stacks here.

“I don’t like this groove.
Try and give me somethin’ I can croon to.
Catch my drift?” 

My favorite album of the past year (and practically ever) is a mix cd I mastered myself using all 8 songs off Vanity 6′s only release, paired with the 4 best songs off Apollonia 6′s only release.

The two different bands share everything – sonic puppeteer-ing courtesy of early 80s Prince, lack of slacks or skirts in any and all marketing materials, Brenda’s bitching and Susan’s sex-pot-iness, and lyrics so louche it’s odd they were legal.

What the two bands do not share is lead singers, but the unique identities of their rosters’ main members matters little since the pair of trios were served up as little more than lingerie mannequins grinding around in dry and dirty dancehalls.

At surface level it sounds like the soundtrack to a feminist’s nightmare perhaps, but behind the tinted glass of the girls’ baby blue limousine, its clear Prince knew which gender really pulled the strings.

The ditz ‘n glitz disguised gritty male-baiting/bashing set to simple, slinky synth-pop. Perfect Prince-ish coulda-been hits the man himself was too backed-up to dish out on his own discs.

It’s the sound of snakeskin pumps but twice as tart.

>> mp3 : Ooo She She Wa Wa – Apollonia 6

The Vanity 6 disc was actually released on cd, e-bay’ll do it to ya. The Apollonia 6 album is stuck on vinyl or cassette, so sneaky searches for mp3s are what we’re stuck with on that front.

I’ve never been good at adopting music just because it’s hip and underground. So genuinely adoring Los Super Elegantes and their white-sandy brand of indie art pop lends my iTunes library a much-needed crackle of cool.

Without my knowing it, the swarthy-chic duo quietly released their third album Nothing Really Matters digitally to Amazon and iTunes on February 3rd. As a materialist, I’ve so far insisted on purchasing my albums in a tangible, tactile format.

Since that isn’t an option this time around, looks like I’m finally strutting into the mp3-flavored future to the disco blips and cantina clicks of Los Super Elegantes. Right about now, I’m just dripping in hip.