shopping - The Seventh Sphinx

I am currently browsing wigs like it is my favorite extra-curricular activity. I can trace the current jones directly to RuPaul’s Drag Race, as I watched several episodes (in an abbreviated way, skipping to the main runway event) and was totally inspired by the looks and, especiallyespecially, the wigs. It occurred to me that I had never explicitly searched ‘drag wigs’ in any previous wig investigations, and I was right in thinking this would yield excellent results.

I love my hair,* but the desire to be something new, something other, isn’t about liking or not liking my genetics, it’s about creation and play. And hair is a major player, make a drastic change and people will have a hard time recognizing you, meaning it is not only influential but influential in an easy, straightforward way. What I’m getting at is: I enjoy wigs. [Haven’t worn them recently, which I realize I need to remedy.]

*my hair:

So, going to show you the wigs I’m considering at the moment (you know when you leave a tab open with a cart that you occasionally fiddle with and just think about for a while?).

But first! A brief history of wigs wrt this site (images link to original posts):

A slightly tacky ponytail

An excellent Halloween

Bangs! This is the wig that made me want more, still darker wigs. They provide this incredible contrast.

Asymmetrical bob

Classic fro. [Gotta love these RayBans.]

OK, so I’m all about variety.

AND, now thinking about (images link to vendor pages):

Long, luscious curls. A little looser than my own curls but still riotous. Loved this one right away, definitely at the head of the pack.

Glossy layers with hint of wave, polished and healthy but not otherwise dramatic (unless you know what my hair is supposed to look like) dark strawberry blonde shade. Really, really want to see what this shade would look like.

Same model as above but in a dark brown shade with a few lighter shades blended in. I’m curious about the lighter shade but this one is singing to me. The color looks so lovely, and more natural as well.

I didn’t realize what a booming business there is for Kim Kardashian-inspired wigs. It’s no surprise, of course, because Kim’s hair looks phenomenal and always has. Love this voluminous style, though something a little shorter with more layers (that is, a slightly different Kim K style wig) appeals as well. This is in second place after the dark curly queen at the top of the list, or I think it is, though I keep turning back to

More body. Curls still loose but uniform rather than clustered at the ends. I hope you can see that this is totally, completely, so, so different from the wig above. There is a seemingly endless variety of curl types, and for me they genuinely have different effects, call to mind different kinds of characters. This isn’t what I was looking for (isn’t what I thought I was looking for) but I liked it immediately. The SassySecret wigs look especially natural [and SassySecret is just a hilarious name].

And then, the wild card.

I love this shape, full and not too slick with loose curls gathered at the tips. Actually I looked for the same style in darker shades for a while but only found some with streaky highlights. Alas. This is the if-only entry. I don’t think this ginger, Jessica Rabbit color would be any good on me, really, but it would be fun to try out anyway. And maybe it would be weirdly cool? You never know until you try, and I like wigs that represent hair styles I couldn’t have with my own hair, at least not realistically, not without major outlay, damage, and upkeep. Seems like I should have at least one red wig…

So what do you think? Tough decision, right?

Would you wear a wig?

[All of this thinking about change makes me want to at least cut my hair.]

I was returning from the Korean market in Union Square [too late to get donuts, sadly], preparing for a long Sunday wait for the bus back to Harvard, when I spied a door marked Loyal Supply Co., and next to it a window full of such miscellany as I cannot resist: small Farmhouse Pottery (which love, met their team recently at a design show and was so impressed) pieces, balsa wood airplanes, mysterious contraptions of leather and brass (keyrings? something cooler?), rustic soaps, beautiful scissors and rulers, fine pens and pencils and erasers and sharpeners, all spread out like jewels for the discerning craftsman.

You know those shops you enter and think, what do I not want from this shop? Or, similarly, I must be a patron of this shop. Loyal Supply Co., for me, is one such place.

Here is their description of themselves:

LOYAL SUPPLY CO. IS A DESIGN FIRM, RETAILER, AND DISTRIBUTOR OF HOME, OFFICE, AND STUDIO SUPPLIES. WE BELIEVE USEFUL, THOUGHTFULLY DESIGNED PRODUCTS MAKE LIFE MORE ENJOYABLE AND PRODUCTIVE. OUR SPACE, A MODERN TAKE ON A TRADITIONAL PEGBOARD WORKSHOP, DISPLAYS FINISHED PRODUCTS AMONG THE TOOLS THAT MAKE THEM. OUR HOPE IS TO INSPIRE AND ENABLE EVERYONE WHO WALKS THROUGH THE DOOR.

Well said, no?

Especially this: useful, thoughtfully designed products make life more enjoyable and productive. Just so.

It was not easy, as my personal stock of supplies is superb and I had already spent my monthly supply budget (and then some), but I was determined to walk away with something. I settled on this lovely pencil set from The Pencil Company.

They had me at “one carpenter, one bridge, one white wax, one no.2, one jumbo hex, and one jumbo round pencil”

Pencil names!

A bridge pencil I did not know! [For designing bridges? Does anyone know? Pencil aficionados?] Jumbo hex!

To think I’ve been missing out on such delights for so many years. I want a life the requires such pencils as these, with their warm, old-fashioned charm and modern, artisan-revolution aesthetic. Do you not?

It comes down to these details, in questions of style. The hair, the clothes, the bag, they are pieces in a larger—and, I hope, more grand—design. To live down to your bones, down to your pencils (and your plants, and the way you walk, the way you plan and execute, the way you turn your head), in your style. Not because you had to think about it, to decide on it (though you may have had to realize it) but precisely because you did not have to think about it. Not because it has been premeditated (though that can be the case, must this be then less authentic?) but because style is instinctive. Inevitable.

Yet, I believe, inevitable in a malleable sense, though perhaps what seems like malleability is only that peculiar kind of change which is not actually change, not most accurately change, but the sloughing off of extraneous possibilities to reveal an increasingly clear identity. And style born out of instinct (unquashed, not covered up or overcorrected) cannot help but be, at least in some sense of that slippery word, good.

Stamped in gold foil! My spirit pencils. And white. Yes. White always and forever.

Tag: shopping

switching it up

great find: Loyal Supply Co.