Crochet, car shoes, the anatomy of a spring outfit
And one concluding thought on freedom; welcome to Letter of Rec #068!
Hey, how was your week? What have you been thinking about lately? What have you been wearing? I got a leather jacket from that French brand I included in the last Letter of Rec and can confirm it’s good. Rigid but worn leather set on a silhouette that is not overwhelming in size, or conversely, too precious.
9/10 recommend if you’re after one (falls at a good place on the hips too), with one point docked because I wish the pockets (which sit near the ribs) were a little easier to access and use.
Meanwhile, the weather gave me a nice lift on Monday/Tuesday, did you get a jolt of energy too? I forget sometimes how simple and accessible genuine pleasure can be: a long walk on a bright morning, the sight of tulips budding against the street, the smell of your skin, kind of sun soaked and sweaty, when you get home from a day spent outside.
On my mind now as far as clothes go are:
Crochet
Car shoes
The layers that go under a trench coat
Crochet
I’ve been looking for tiny, long sleeve crochet mini dresses since mid March to style under jackets of the same length, with car shoes. I’m not sure if this desire is a function of pregnancy (the bigger I get, the smaller I want my clothes to be), or if I’m breathing in something bigger in the air, but I do remember last year, around the same time, putting all my attention on small dresses and shorts. With crochet in particular, the right weave can feel like the summer equivalent of a winter knit which makes them versatile, reliable and in a way, comforting.
So far the best dresses I’ve found are:
This one from Sir. (Straight up crochet, non-stretch, less cozy knit.)
This from Chambre de Fan. (Definitely tighter, stretchier and a high rank on the cozy scale.)
And this from Courtney Grow’s Instagram — a whopping $28 from Amazon.
The higher necklines (options 2, 3) style better under a jacket because they look cleaner with the jacket’s collar, but there’s something feminine, dare I even say sexy, about the plungingness of Sir’s neckline too.
Leave it to me to fuck her up with a pair of car shoes!
Car shoes
The genesis of this micro trend, which I feel 90% confident will become as real a trend as mesh slippers did last year, can be traced back to the popularization of moccasins.
As far as relevant fashion brands, Hedi Slimane’s Celine and Isabel Marant have been making them the longest, but I think we have The Row to thank for the forthcoming explosion. No brand generates the sticky-effect with the same brand of precision.
There’s a piggyback effect in progress, too, with the soft boat shoes that Miu Miu released for Spring and examples of their spawn, like these.
As with any trend, it starts as a shapeless concept floating through the air until someone starts to feel it and begins the work of pinning it down. No doubt inklings of this iteration of the trend were starting to leak as early as last summer (see: Laura Vidrequin’s Minnetonkas), maybe even earlier (Jamie Haller’s camp loafer). Currently on tap independent of The Row’s Lucca: JW Anderson’s approximation.
But the more approachable way to give this one a try is no doubt with a style more similar to Tod’s Gomminos — which you can find loafer style or lace-up with so many other brands (see: M Gemi, Aurelien), or least not via the Prada-owned, original Car Shoe.
They’re all moccasins in their own right.
I’ve been wearing an electric blue pair in suede. (The Tod’s are great because of the way the colors.) They (as in the broader car shoe) are a good foil to ripped jeans, look less one-note than the other mocs with a fringe jacket, serve as a surprisingly complimentary color to light yellow or red (or both!) and they are a very good way to throw off layers of body-con clothes (see above) or a flirty dress.
Overall, they might be the ideal city summer shoe for anyone who doesn’t like sandals on the pavement (…but if you’re gonna do sandals, you’ve got to do these).
Spring layers, broken down
We’ve had some really nice days, but they’re still sprinkled between rain and a chill that can get you to the bone.
I am convinced that the best outfit workaround for this condition was highlighted in a recent send from
’s Consider Yourself Cultured.
The anatomical breakdown, potentially inspired by the Spring 2024 lookbook heard round the world —
can be approximated several ways. The easiest way to slice it (that is, most realistic way to recreate it with the contents of your own wardrobe) is as follows:
button down shirt (this is still the best one) or tissue turtleneck
lightweight white pants (I am biased but think my Soeur ones are the best; I do also have and love these from Leset and if denim is more your thing, these men’s ones from Jeanerica are straight and rigid as can be; for men’s denim sizing, a good rule of thumb is to go with two sizes bigger than your women’s size — so if I wear a 26, I’d get a 28)
and hat
shoes are a choose your own adventure; you can go the birk-slipper route, reg slipper route (if you like these, try sole-ing these), or try a fisherman, moccasin or sandal. Whatever makes the most sense for your closet.
I guess the last thing I have to say on fashion/fashion predictions here relates to the Dior show that took place at the Brooklyn Museum on Monday night.
Platforms are definitely coming for us, which means it’s a great time to start looking for a pair on The Real Real (before the algorithm encourages a price spike). I am personally v much looking forward to it, and in the mean time, giving my OB night terrors:
Freedom
Meanwhile, Passover starts at sundown on Monday and no doubt the most important conversation that occurs around this holiday deals in the currency of freedom. I remember walking to a seder at my mother in law’s home a few years ago, and on the way asking Abie what he thought was more important — your freedom or what you do with it.
The question occurred to me because I’d been spending a lot of time thinking about victimhood. About who among us are really victims, and who just assume the role because it’s been modeled — whether at home or by the culture.
One of the most challenging but important conditions of freedom is the recognition that you cannot have it if you are a victim. So much responsibility comes with freedom: agency over the choices you make, the directions you follow, the ways you stand up. To be truly free is to watch as your internal blaming system melts to the ground.
It’s no wonder the Jews spent 40 years in the desert between Egypt and present-day Israel. After 400 years of slavery, how could you possibly burn the victim mindset down to ascend into active agency so fast? The generation that preceded the one that made it back to Israel had to, quite literally, die off — but not without first passing down the gift of narrative we still reap today. It is a wonder to me still that at sundown on Monday and on Passover every year, Jews all over the world sit around their seder tables and do the same thing: retell (and in instances, relive) the ancient story of Exodus.
One key figure of the story is obviously Moses. Often the concept of freedom is discussed through the lens of the collective people within Exodus, but there is a meaningful message to take from the unilateral story of Moses and his own brush with freedom.