fitforafemme.com

Libertine for Target dress | Asos earrings | Parisian Red Butter Shine Lipstick from Clinique

Meet one of Brooklyn’s finest femmes, kittens! Here’s the delightful Bevin Branlandingham of FemmeCast and Queer Fat Femme. She and I ran a little workshop at the Femme2010: No Restrictions conference last Friday morning. We met for the first time in June at her incredible Re/Dress & Size Queen event in Oakland, after becoming fast internet friends through our mutual love of fashion, all things femme, and involvement on our respective committees with the Femme Collective earlier this year.

Also, her tomboy friends have the cutest puppies, don’t you think?

Of course, her outfit rules. This is one LBD that refuses to be outdone, and the little tart hair clip was quite the cherry on top of her ensemble. Here’s her really impressive bio, since it says it way better than I could:

Bevin Branlandingham is the Host and Producer of FemmeCast: The Queer Fat Femme Podcast Guide to Life. She is a flamboyant femmecee, writer, drag king, burlesque and comedy performer. She is Co-Head Madam of the Femme Family, the New York Chapter of the Femme Mafia, on the steering committee for the Fat and Queer conference and the media committee for the Femme Conference. In 2008 Bevin received a Commendation from the Mayor of Jersey City for her work with the LGBT community. Her writing has been published in numerous periodicals and she has performed throughout North America. Her mission is to make the world a safe place for people to love themselves, regardless of their marginalizations. Her website (including blog, calendar of events and workshops) is found at QueerFatFemme.Com.

She also blogs at Butch-Femme.com and The Femme’s Guide to Absolutely Everything and performs throughout North America.

This has to be one of my most favorite collages ever. Adorable puppy? Check. Pretty, multi-talented femmes? Check. Dildo? Check. Fancy hair ornaments? Check. DONE AND DONE.

I need Bevin to chime in on her outfit particulars, but here are mine:

Dress: Calvin Klein
Shoes: MaxStudio
Bag: Betsey Johnson
Earrings: Vintage
Necklace: Culp Baubles
Feathered Hair Clip: Buffalo Exchange

Waiting for Rufus Wainwright. After the closing remarks at the conference, M fetched me from the hotel and we set out for Napa. It couldn’t have been a more perfect evening. The temperature was perfect, the light falling softly at sundown was perfect, dinner was outstanding and Rufus Wainwright was absolutely wonderful, as always. At one point during the show, M whispered to me “How is he even a real person? His albums sound so good, but then you hear him live up there and he’s somehow much, much better than all that!” and I nodded with my tear-streaked face.

He made corny Napa jokes and told a few stories between songs, and he played La Complainte de la butte and Memphis Skyline (two of my favorites). Zebulon undid me completely. His sister brought the petite onstage and they all sang together (well, the petite cooed), and it was really lovely. I cannot wait until he’s back in November with the SF Symphony for Five Shakespeare Sonnets.

I am going to go every single day of the 3-day series, come hell or high water.

It is Friday! Pardon my weeklong absence, dear readers. I’ve missed you!

We are upon a three-day holiday weekend, which is wonderful because I’ve scarcely had time enough to recover from the last.

Last night M & I celebrated five years, to the day, of the exact night that we met, with French 75s and premature Valentine’s Day candies.

Yesterday morning I woke up (late, of course, bangs sticking straight up, shuffling sleepily from the bedroom to the french press and my – well, M’s – laptop) to a world without Lee Alexander McQueen, a true genius, a would-be visionary, a brilliant legend. Ever the late bloomer, I explained to a dear friend that it wasn’t until it dawned on me that I was a lesbian, at long last in my very early twenties, when I truly became interested in fashion. Not in any deliberate, studied way, at least not that I can remember. So it’s really just the last decade or so that I have lived with this heightened sense of it all, the awe and skepticism and obscurity and blatantness.

It is more than enough time to recognize that the man was really and truly something else. It’s not fair to lose that mind and all the incredible, staggering, in-your-face beauty it produced. Loving what he made often required you to bend and twist your mind in ways other designers haven’t and won’t, and I’ll miss it all dearly.

You were beautiful and terrible, McQueen.

Y’all love hard on Sunday, you hear?!?!

Because I said so.

PS. Silly me. The ring is also Laundry by Shelli Segal and the gloves are vintage.

This week has flown by and dragged on at the same time, hasn’t it? In any case, it’s just about Friday and I can get down with that. Today, I saw a man just hanging out with his chicken (like, an actual living chicken) on Van Ness Avenue, leaning against a street sign wanting money or something and catching some of the fleeting sunshine we had today after days and days of rain or drizzle or haze or fog or slick, slick wet.

It was especially strange because I am in the middle of a short story collection called Instant City (it’s Issue No. 6 and I picked it up from one of my favorite vintage / antique shops, Gypsy Honeymoon – the black dress in the back would fit me perfectly, I can tell just by looking at it and it is a DREAM made of wondrous elegance and vaporous black chiffon. The lady who owns or runs it or both has little birdies in there chirping happily and she is a very sweet sort of flower child – Stevie Nicks type), by and about San Francisco writers, and most of the vignettes feature these sort of random, only-in-San-Francisco scenes and stolen moments. So much so that before I told this story I had to really think about whether or not I read it or truly saw them, but I promise you that I saw them with my own eyes.

On that note, I would like to know if it’s wrong of me to have zero desire to eat at that Tommy’s Sandwich Joint (Joynt?).

BACK TO THE CLOTHES. I love these shoes. I love these socks. They serve no practical purpose, in fact, they’re kind of scratchy and that irritates me, but they’re so damn sassy. Here’s the modcloth.com Crewel scarf again, this time paired with a kicky little suede + fringe Lonesome Dove pendant in a forest green, and this amazing black satchel that I am newly in love with. My new bangs and I got into a bit of a tussle this morning, clearly, and they went all Peggy from Mad Men on me (damn cowlick), but I am mostly pleased!

So, who’s got big plans this weekend? We have none, nada, which is spectacular as we’re going to need lots of R&R before our next round of fabulous house guests arrive next weekend. It will be epic.

CONFESSION: My mama’s vintage scarf again. I love it anew. I know y’all have seen this same GD LBD 84,000 times before, but not this epic wool pea coat from DKNY, all sharp and boxy. I like it a lot paired with the shoes. We had to dress up for a tea dance with friends last Saturday and I just wanted to be warm and comfortable without that meaning jeans, etc. I hope y’all are making do on the Monday back after a long and lovely holiday weekend: I’m happy to report that I scored 5 tops and 2 skirts for…let’s see, appx. $15 at the thrift store. Best picks are a Kensie sweater in a perfect shade of asparagus green ($2.50), a NWT drape-y, vintage tank in cobalt blue lamé ($1.50) and a floral print corduroy Esprit miniskirt ($4). It will be tempting to wear them all at once!

CONFESSION: Today was a day for the bank. I attended a private tasting of Dalmore’s 12, 15, Gran Reserva and King Alexander III single malt scotch whiskys, plus a very special bonus tasting, at the methodically handsome Laszlo in the Mission. The dear Scottish man who led the tasting said that I reminded him of a lovely, elegant Lowlands single malt scotch whisky, when he wasn’t spitting onto the floor at any mention of the French. (You can eventually read more about all that here, at my “other” blog. I don’t want to spoil it.) They were kind enough to let me pop upstairs before and after the tasting to take some super awesome FFAF photos, hurrah. Just a moment ago the UPS guy arrived with a very important package, and I was so excited that M said I made a big old ruckus of “kitten noises,” whatever those are. It contained a new dress (not-so-LBD) and super badass new shoes. I can’t wait to show y’all! M is well enough to drink a bottle of cava with me (finally!) and lasagna is baking in the oven with some fluffy garlic bread in hot pursuit. DREAMY.

SCENT: Tom Ford’s Black Orchid. I must confess something. I broke up with Tom awhile ago, but after reading about his directorial debut starring Colin Firth (and Julianne Moore) in A Single Man, I’ve realized something very, very important: My love for Colin is greater than my hate for Tom. Does that make sense? Of course it does. (He’s Mark-bloody-Darcy, after all.) I digress. Black Orchid is a hot, heady, stunning mess. The jury is out on whether or not that’s a good or bad thing. The opening is almost like scorched black licorice drizzled over jasmine and sundry florals, like in Absinthe or Drambuie. It does kind of smolder, all bared teeth, glossed lips and super dangerous bedroom eyes. This smells like the kind of woman you should stay away from – you know better, of course – but you can’t help yourself. I’m going to have to come back to this, because it’s too complex!

Here are some notes, FYI: Black Truffle, Ylang, Bergamot, Black Currant. Then the black orchid, dark florals, rich fruit, Lotus Wood. At last, there’s Patchouli, Incense, Vetiver and Vanilla Tears, Balsam and Sandalwood.

Watch this and tell me you don’t find it completely gorgeous. Seriously.

And since it was one of the most beautiful stills:

When: Tues., February 10th, 2009.

What: H&M dress and orange knit arm warmers. Black tights from Old Navy, satin blouse from Libertine for Target, satin bow headband from Claire’s (shut up). Black peacoat by Blanc Noir and boots by Lamica.

Scent: Serge Lutens Un Lys, oh. Since most flowers are obviously girls, let’s imagine a dear lily stumbling upon a fetching lilac, falling madly in love and living happily ever after. ON MY WRIST. Until a vicious, cruel and incurable case of LBD sets in (read = the dry down) and all that’s left is the sickly sweet memory of what once was. Still, the love here is so, so pure and stunning. Lily and Lilac share the kind of love that makes everyone around them want to be in love, too. After a few hours this turns into creamy vanilla and just the whisper of floral left…too sweet and flat. If this fragrance were a grainy old foreign film, it would be absolutely perfect.

Confession: AYL! I have decided that I must first clean my room before I even think about taking photos of my closet. Both are an absolute wreck, but I’m working on it! Also? Y’all, tomorrow is the anniversary of the day (night, really) M and I first met four years ago! DREAMY. Let’s just all take a minute and thank Dolly that she and I met one night so long ago, because neither of us believes in the Oxford comma, God or neglecting booze! Soulmates!

Happy anniversary, angelface! I love you so!