Grace & Style Read online

  Hobo/Slouchy

  YOU: You’re a free spirit. You’re passionate and uninhibited. You’re organically spontaneous and naturally fanatical. You’re happy-go-lucky and happy-to-go-anywhere, at any time. There’s more to you than what people assume and you often impress others with the amount of knowledge you hold. You’re a collector. A gatherer. Some say hoarder; you say “prepared-for-anything-er.” You’re well-meaning but sometimes too assertive. You’re tough but you have a soft side. You’re flexible but sometimes a little awkward. You’re sharp but sometimes uneven. You’re messy. Period. You’re cluttered. Minimalism is just not in the cards for you. You think about too much too often to have empty space in your life. If cleanliness is next to godliness, it’s a good thing you don’t identify with any specific religion. You’re on a mission of success and self-discovery. And it’s a mission you’ve chosen to accept and you’re impassioned to complete it. You’re the Tom Cruise of self-actualizing.

  YOUR LOVE LIFE: You’re not meant to sow your wild oats just yet. You’re too busy growing your own oats on your organic, freerange, cage-free, meatless farm. You crop it like it’s hot. Monogamous love, to you, is like a music festival. It’s a lot of hype. It’s hard work to get into, it’s kind of boring and uncomfortable when you’re in it, and you sleep better when it’s over. Eventually you’ll settle down, but for now, you’re a migration station. You’re all about that spring fling. And that summer fling. And that fall and winter fling, too. Most of your romantic interests will get lost in the sauce, but the most interesting ones will add layers of flavor to your life.

  YOUR FUTURE: The indigo moon meets with Mars and lets you know that business is booming in the third quarter. Have ideas about a start-up? Well, start it up! And put your friends to work! Friends are like family, but better because you got to choose them. And you’ve chosen them to lay the foundation of your fiscal success. Brrr, it’s going to be a rainy season in the financial department for you this winter. This summer Saturn lays eyes on the fourth house of Pluto; expect a rash. A weird one. This year is all about health and wealth. Remember, your body is a temple. And there’s a price for admission.

  Backpack

  YOU: You’re timeless. You’re a people pleaser. You’re a hard worker. You strive to make others’ lives easier. You pride yourself on being rational, reasonable, and prepared. You’re loyal to no end. You want the people close to you to know you’ve got their back. You’re not necessarily described as stylish, but your fashion stems from your function. You like to blend in. You’ve gone through some phases here and there, but you always come back to your center. You’re not one for stuffy, formal occasions; you prefer getting down and dirty in some fresh air. You’re a family person; and even your friends say you feel more like family to them than most of their own relatives. You’re dedicated to your work, and it pays off. Finishing projects is in your blood. Granted, it’s not the most glamorous work in the world, but you like it. You’re most comfortable when you’re working. You’re great at focusing. You stay away from dramatic situations. You’re able to compartmentalize your feelings. It’s a blessing and a curse. You tend to be robotic at times and that can push people away. But sometimes you’re happiest when you’re alone.

  YOUR LOVE LIFE: You like your relationships like you like your rustic abode: full of mahogany . . . I mean monogamy. BOTH. When you’re in a relationship, you’re in it for the long haul. You’re more traditional that way. You like being paired up, you find comfort in having a companion. You’re pretty set in your ways, so the best relationships are the ones that challenge you and push you past your comfort zone. Be wary of the ones that try to turn you into something you’re not. Rather, celebrate the partners who push you to your potential and appreciate everything you do. You’re not afraid of hard work at work, so don’t shy away from the effort it takes to maintain a happy, fulfilled partnership. You’re best when you’re balanced. All work and no play can make you dull, so don’t be afraid to “loosen the straps” on occasion, if you get what I mean? . . . You don’t, do you? Yeah, you’ve never been the best at getting a joke. I mean be sexy. Don’t be afraid to unpack the goods and let loose!

  YOUR FUTURE: Jupiter heads into the sixth floor of Venus, so be prepared for a winter of love. Clean out those closets and call the chimney sweep because it’s time to lighten the load and stop kissing toads. Lady Luck flies into your new moon this spring with some helpful news about a loved one’s illness—it’s cured! But that doesn’t mean you care. Don’t be afraid to get a pet to heal your anxiety. Stay away from bagels, they always lead you astray. When Venus finally resurfaces on the thirtieth, make sure you’re not going to a surprise party, or you’ll really be in for a surprise: scabies! And not in the place you expect them. Keep ham in your refrigerator.

  Clutch

  YOU: You’re feisty. You’re fashionable. You’re forward-thinking. You’re a free spirit. You can’t be chained down, but you love feeling close and needed by the ones you love. For a brief moment of time. You’re a social butterfly. You’re able to float from social scene to social scene with ease. You don’t hold grudges because you just don’t have time for that. You live life in the fast lane. You’re always on the go. You pride yourself on being able to handle anything, even though some say you need to get a handle on yourself. You work hard, you play hard, you work out hard, you lay hard. HeYO! You get bored easily, so you have to keep things spicy. Occasionally you push it a little too far and might lose yourself. But it’s nothing a detox can’t fix. You’re attracted to fast, fancy fun. It happens. You’re a minimalist. You try to surround yourself with only the essentials; extraneous things (like extraneous people) slow you down. People tend to love you or hate you, but that’s never bothered you. Some might tell you to get a grip. But to you, that’s jealousy talking. You’re clutch.

  YOUR LOVE LIFE: Your love life is hot and cold; you can be held too close one second and tossed aside the next. But that’s how you thrive. You’re used to moving forward and not looking back. Your ability to transition from one significant other to the next is impressive, but it leaves you less than fulfilled. Maybe it’s because you’ve always operated with next to no empty emotional space for others to occupy. Your internal access is restricted, and if someone is able to break through, there’s no room for him or her to stay for long. Which is fine because you’ve taught yourself to believe that the intense life you live is satisfying enough. You’re more attracted to success than sex. The only anal you’re into is your own anal-retentiveness.

  YOUR FUTURE: Beware the ides of March. When Neptune unleashes its third moon rising into the zenith of Mercury, a career initiative you thought was stable is about to face an earthquake. Find a suitable doorway to stand in now. Tomatoes will present themselves in mysterious ways—pay attention to them. This spring/summer might be the time to clear your brain of all of those relationship cobwebs and dust off the old cowboy boots. The fall harvest will truly be a harvest indeed. Farmers, farmers, farmers! But don’t forget to stop and smell the roses. But don’t stop for too long because you’re on private property! Look into real estate as a new outlet. You might find love in hopeless hallways. Love it, don’t list it!

  Novelty Bag

  YOU: You cannot nOT express yourself. You eat, sleep, and bleed artistry. If you stop your creativity, you’ll die. And not in, like, a performance-art-piece kind of way. How cliché. Your whole life is one big creative process. You think outside the box, you create outside the box, you might have actually lived in a box for a month or two—it was a social experiment! You’re so quirky that ukuleles fall apart and suspenders snap if you get too close to them. You invented the mustache. You can be a LOT for people to handle. But you already know this and you don’t try to make any apologies for it. You surprise people with your self-awareness. But you have great relationships with the people who can handle you. They don’t mock your art, they appreciate it. You either come from a huge family or a tiny family. And if your family i
sn’t present, your friends have fulfilled that role in your life. You live for attention, you exist to be seen, you thrive on eyes. You’re a great party guest and the epitome of a “plus one.” Just by association you make boring people seem interesting, you make unexciting events seem stimulating, you’ll probably never read this book because you’re too busy turning a full-sized wheelbarrow into a necklace.

  YOUR LOVE LIFE: Your love life is as imaginative as your platonic life. Love is another form of expression for you. You love passionately. But you have difficulty maintaining anything long term because, quite frankly, you’re a flight risk. Potential partners are weary of your wandering. But your whimsy has never ceased to attract others. Your freedom and eccentricity are electrifying to those still stuck in their own ways. You don’t “love ’em and leave ’em” per se, you just “love ’em and playfully move on to the next creatively stimulating thing.” You don’t limit your capacity for traditional romantic relationships, but your fanciful way can sometimes be a crutch to keep yourself from ever getting hurt. Don’t be afraid to make yourself vulnerable. Exposing and challenging that insecurity can be very artistic.

  YOUR FUTURE: Well, well, well, if it isn’t Venus’s fifth dimension exploding all over your full moons this upcoming summer. Expect social circles to become squares, so don’t cut corners. It might seem like your life is becoming a reality program, and that’s because it is! Cancel your subscription before it starts. Hats are your best friend when an experimental haircut goes awry. Don’t forget to back up your hard drive. When Saturn’s left ring descends into your third town house, love is going to jump at you like a dog in a burrito store. Apologies go a long way this winter, wear yours loud and proud and plowed!

  No Bag

  YOU: You didn’t buy this book.

  YOUR LOVE LIFE: Either very normal or very abnormal, but it doesn’t make too much sense for me to try to explain it because you didn’t buy this book.

  YOUR FUTURE: With Mercury in retrograde, you’ll spend your time doing anything other than reading this book.

  THE SWEATPANTS DIARIES #4

  Saturday, Oct. 31, 2015

  Dear Diary,

  I have a limited amount of time to spend with you right now. But trust me that this cinched time we have isn’t a waist. See, I’m calm: I’m still making puns. I’ve been stupid-busy, Diary. The combination of my normal class schedule together with my secret fight against the anticlassist schedule has been a difficult balance. I never thought I’d spend my first few weeks at the MOA leading a “material” militia, but here I am!

  Tonight in the BFF (the Brain Fart Fort—I know, I wish the acronym was different, too), a familiar voice came from the shadows saying they’d been waiting for a sign. That voice was Dr. Scholls’s.

  I didn’t understand what was happening. I thought I had eaten some undercooked pork from Benihana and was having a very unimpressive fever dream as a result of food poisoning.

  But Dr. Scholls continued to talk with me. He grabbed my drawstrings and started to lead me away, and when I looked back at Birk and Rees, they looked like they were trying to ignore the fact that I’d just audibly farted. And that’s when I knew this conversation between Dr. Scholls and me wasn’t an accident.

  Dr. Scholls told me that G-Wind had made sure that he knew I wasn’t dumb, and given that, he should expect me to have suspicions as to why all of this cloak-and-dagger stuff was happening. I said, “Well, obviously it has something to do with Black Friday?” Everyone in the BFF shivered. I looked at them and said, “Oh, you’re surprised? Have you really not read my diary!? Get real, misshapen Crocs, I know you have!”

  Dr. Scholls continued to try to calm me down. He said that I had a much bigger purpose here than taking classes. He could see that I had the same seemingly passive but completely aggressive attitude as my G-Wind and that that was the fire they needed once again to lead their revolution.

  “Again?” I asked.

  And then Dr. Scholls went into a very sweet story about G-Wind. It was a story G-Wind had never told me. A story of their passion and their fashion. When they were freshmen at the MOA, they were department-crossed lovers, connected by their determination to assert fabric freedom. G-Wind was in Nordstrom and he was in a Sears department store, but they quickly formed a close bond when they passed each other every Wednesday in the hallway on the way to different body-splash seminars. Eventually, G-Wind threw a note at Dr. Scholls asking him to meet her behind the Alpaca Connection. And that’s where their relationship began.

  G-Wind would tell Dr. Scholls about her unhappiness with the MOA hierarchy and the newly implemented price-tag systems. She would yelp about department democracy and even tried to take a meeting with the son of her Nordstrom department head, Nordstrom Rack. But it turned out Nordstrom Rack was less than capable. He spit a bunch of randomly discounted tickets and tags at her without rhyme or reason. She went to the student-body presidents, the Brooks Brothers, to talk with them about a retail democracy day. But they wouldn’t listen to her. They were too buttoned up.

  And that’s when she got physical. G-Wind and Dr. Scholls gathered outsiders of all kinds and herded them to the Alpaca Connection. With a good-sized group of unsatisfied garments, she started the Mall Walkers Club. A collection of clothing that gathered on Friday mornings to walk around the grounds as a way to send a message to the more dominant departments. And Dr. Scholls was by her side to make sure her arches were ready for their marches. What a love story!

  Eventually the peaceful protests weren’t enough. Clothing still had a class structure. Fabrics cost stupid amounts because a particular person asked someone to ask someone to ask someone to pay someone to force someone to force someone else to sew a piece of cloth into a certain shape. How dumb! So G-Wind needed to take real action. So she concocted Black Friday. A day on which all clothing and accessories were more accessible to the public at reasonable prices. G-Wind and her fashion faction printed sales stickers, discount tags, and clearance signs and put them everywhere: on objects, in store windows, in dressing rooms . . . you name it, it was discounted! They alerted any media they could, and all the media they couldn’t get to was aware of the markdown mayhem within hours. The news spread like wildfire.

  And it was all because of my G-Wind.

  Dr. Scholls finished recounting the story with a heavy sigh, and it all made sense. He and my G-Wind had had an intense and radically political romance. How beautifully tiring and tragic.

  Black Friday was meant to be a brilliant celebration, but instead it became a dark day. The crowds and pandemonium caused by reduced prices resulted in chaos in the fashion food chain. Upper-class apparel freaked out and G-Wind was kicked out of the school.

  “I was crushed when she left. It felt like someone ripped out my sole,” said Dr. Scholls.

  His pun, Diary, not mine!

  But Dr. Scholls went on to tell me that he believed G-Wind’s legacy lives on. G-Wind had started a movement, and although it seemed to die out after a while, it turns out it’s only been waiting for a comeback.

  “The anniversary of the first Black Friday is less than a month away. Underground apparel has been hoping for an uprising for years,” Dr. Scholls said. “They’ve just needed someone competent and comfortable enough to take the lead.”

  “And what’s more comfortable than sweatpants?” asked Rees, walking into the room like I WOULDN’T THINK IT WAS THE MOST CONVENIENTLY SEXY THING HE’D EVER DONE.

  Rees was followed by what looked like tens but quickly became hundreds of pieces of misfit merchandise, all of them looking at me. Up until this moment, not a single person, other than Birk and Rees, had acknowledged my presence in this academy, but once they find out I’m the granddaughter of G-Wind, I suddenly have the weight of an entire wardrobe on my hips. That’s an insane amount of pressure.

  But you know what? My hips don’t lie.

  “Let’s print the price tags,” I said, and the eccentric ensembles exulted.

  A
nd I’m pretty sure Rees gave me a sexy look, but all the single socks kept throwing themselves in the air and I couldn’t get a clear look at him, and it was pissing me off. Anyway, gotta go prep for the revolution. TTYL, Diary!

  Sincerely,

  Sweatpants

  my BFFs

  BEST FEET FRIENDS

  When I like something, I don’t just “like” it.

  I reaLLY LIKe IT. I like it to the core, continuously, until I hate it. If you haven’t registered by now, I binge. I binge on “sh*itty” pop songs, graphic T-shirts, TV shows, varieties of hummus, you name it. I also binge on shoes. When I get a new pair that I love, I wear them with everything and to everything I possibly can, until I’ve worn them out completely or have found another pair more interesting. What does that say about my love life? Eeesh. Stop analyzing. I go for basic shoes that can be worn with a decently wide variety of outfits. Of course, “can be worn” is subjective, but so are what I actually consider “outfits.”

  HERE ARE MY CURRENT BFFS (BEST FEET FRIENDS)

  Black Booties: Flat, black, pointed-toe ankle boots from Zara ($30 on sale). These have been real champions for me. They’re comfortable, they look like I care more than someone wearing sneakers, and they go with everything. I’ve worn these friends to meetings, to the movies, and to red-carpet events. They have a pointed toe, which for some reason always makes me think about kicking people in their scrotums, but in the world of fashion the pointed toe looks posh and powerful. They also have zippers on the inner heel, which make getting them on and off extremely easy. I’ve had ankle boots without that feature and they’re the worst. Getting them on is like trying to get your dog to talk with you about your concerns for Sonja Morgan’s new luxury clothing line on the upcoming season of The Real Housewives of New York. It’s a struggle. But these are great! They give off that self-aware-wicked-witch-who-knows-you-can’t-get-as-much-wickedness-done-in-heels meets Victoria-Beckham-on-a-rest-day vibe. They’re also just high enough that you can wear ankle socks with them without worrying about the socks poking out like weirdos. And socks are necessary for a shoe like this. These things are the breeding grounds of beefy feet odors—do not go command-toe here.