Letter of Rec #076: Would you wear a nightgown to disco?

Party negligees, dead stock crochet fashioned into a dress, a range of good resale at Club Vintage, the ideal sweet white corn summer salad and more: welcome back to Cafe L

Carine Gilson lamé negligee top, Ghesal crochet dress, Ralph Lauren vintage suede jacket, the best ballet flats, Cafe Leandra x Tresse sun plate and swim briefs (CDLP)

1. I got in touch with this California-based, Afghan designer late last week who hand-makes clothes using vintage and dead stock fabrics. The brand is called Ghesal — have a look at it. I’m nuts about the crochet horse dress she posted a couple of weeks ago.

   ghesal__

   

   A post shared by @ghesal__

   It’s premature to be thinking about wool suiting, but can’t imagine wearing it (or one of these) any other way.

2. In the realm of premature ogles: this vintage suede fringe jacket from Ralph Lauren.

3. Or this new one from Bode. Which I’d love to see styled with a negligee, sleep shorts and ballet flats.

4. The next street report will be from the Union Square farmers market and I have either been spending too much down there or these aquatic looking gardening shoes, a portmanteau between Garden Heir’s classic and the jelly shoe that has swept the summer, are an ideal negotiation if you want for the look, but on your own terms.

   

   Garden Heir, $52

5. Anna Gray’s Club Vintage, which is where I sell (and buy!) a lot of my clothes, has been running some goooooood sales lately. Last week, CV featured a bounty of good pieces from Krissy Jones and Eva Alt’s closet and this week, Emilia Petrarca’s stuff is up for sale too. Some of the best from all 3 (in my opinion) are:

   1. This Sonia Rykiel polo ($145; Eva)

   2. This LV bag ($350; Krissy)

   3. This Norma Kamali mini dress, which would, tbh, be good styled with these Toteme pedal pushers ($125, $210; Emilia). Maybe better, actually, would be the item a, the polo with these pushers.

6. I was on CDLP’s website earlier this week and came across these men’s swim briefs (née underwear). A pretty good way to get the Spring Miu Miu look with your own Bermuda shorts if you’re still after it. If not, this shirt is worth considering. (Imagine it under a mini silk slip.)

7. To the parentheses above, I mentioned a negligee and sleep shorts earlier, but have actually fallen down a full-fledged rabbit hole. This is the one I can’t stop thinking about for: the first postpartum hurrah with sandals (how great are these satin flips from A. Emery?), the last holiday party cheer with sheer tights and EP’s Leandras, New Year’s Eve upstate with a suede shacket and, idk, maybe it will look cool styled over the right pants. (Alex Mill has some great khakis incoming for August.)

   

   $248//$194//$487//$260 (she comes in white too)

   But anyway, it (the dress) has also led me to this nightgown, this sheer babydoll thing (if you’re still in the market for your sheer thing, I either recommend the above links or Peter Do’s shift dress) and Frankie Shop’s ‘Madeline’ dress. Are we approaching peak sheer? Or entering a new Boudoir era. In June I reported that silk b-down shirts were going to eclipse poplin, maybe this is part of that transition.

8. Ideal timing: the Upper East Side’s Peress is closing.

   

   For no reason other than that the owner is 89 and ready to chill. Let his boring girl summer commence! Everything in the store is 50% off and there are plenty of negligees and silk sets present. If you’re in New York, don’t sleep on it (pun sooooo intended here) — and if you want a deeper dive re: what to expect,

   Becky Malinsky
   shared this post last night in-app.

   PERESS NYC IS CLOSING

9. I’m still waiting for my sun plates and pasta bowls from the Tresse collab, but that hasn’t stopped me from going hard on summer bowls. Why does it seem so much more pleasant to make food when it’s warm out? I know the produce is better and the sun is more likely to pour through your kitchen windows, and that def helps but I think what I really like about summer “cooking” is that it’s mostly assembling. Dinner last night, for example: a salad of boiled white corn, feta cheese, left over chickpeas and zucchini from the night before, black olives, basil, cilantro and mint. (Alternative, v solid dish, no oven necc., lunch yday: butter lettuce, fig, green olives, parmesan cheese, leftover donut peach from the morning if you want, crushed pistachios/flax/hempseeds and red fruit vinegar/olive oil over a bed of avocado mash (mixed with nothing but lemon and smoked salt.)

   

10. On the topic of collabs, in case you missed it: Blanca Miro and I birthed two pair of sunglasses for her eyewear brand, Delarge on Wednesday. They’re the classic “rongle”shape (my fav of her loot) in two new color ways (red and blue, tortoise and green), which I’ve been begging her to make for like, two years. We’ve only produced like 25 pair of each, so get them while they’re hot!

    

    Red and blue rongle here

    

    Brown and green rongle here

11. Lastly, here are two outfits I’ve had on repeat this week, both revolving around a pair of Khaite sandals I bought from The Real Real.

    

    Refine silk tank top (I found it on TRR; here’s a mini slip version of it in black), Matteau striped shirt around waist (vibe’s right here), Alfie silk boxer shorts, Khaite sandals (not the same but I love these) and a vintage Fendi bag from Kira Vintage

    An orthopedist I know said they’re okay to wear even given my Foot Injury, so I took the blessing and ran (walked slowly and cautiously).

    

    Salon Reading silk top, Maria McManus shorts, Khaite walking sandals, Prada sunglasses, Altuzarra straw tote (this one’s cool too)

    Observing them now, the outfit formula evident in both is almost exactly the same: delicate top (the silk shine seems essential) with functional shorts that provide coverage but not too much of it (both pair hit about 3-4 inches above knee) and utilitarian sandals (reg Tevas are the answer).

The last thing I’ll say/recommend is this essay,

Your phone is why you don't feel sexy

which seems to be making the rounds on Substack (I keep seeing it shared in the app). I get why: it’s tender, feminine, honest and gorgeously written. The basic principle echos so much of what the internet discourse of the last few months has been circling around with boring girl summer and leaning into leisure and the general distaste it seems people have for being on their phones all the time.

Not only is it killing us does the author posit, it’s also making us feel less sexy — disconnecting us from our intuition, bending the wires of desire and curbing our respective risk thresholds. I’d add that it’s also restraining the opportunity for new connections in real life because so often, so many of us rest of the laurels of the digital personae we’ve crafted to adequately convey us. With less output energy, there is also less input communion.

But where my mind keeps going is to the same place it went when I realized there’s a genre of discourse forming around “fashion Substack.” With the pandemic out of the way and the general feeling of relief that came with it, how much of what we’re experiencing within the various zeitgeists we follow and contribute to making is our own respective feelings of fed-up-ness with how much has gone back to exactly how it was? We’re more addicted than ever to our phones (although it does seem like we want off this hamster wheel more than we used to) and there is so much content out there again.

I actually don’t think the very genre of critical zeitgeist writing is immune from the question, and I will be curious to see what happens to our industries and interests and the way we think about what we make over the next 18 months. It does seem like a big shift is coming. Either way, if you haven’t read the piece, it’s worth the time spent on phone to do so. I’ll be curious to hear what it brings up for you.

What are your plans for the weekend? Think I’m going to bead a few more camp shirts for my kids, do some string stitches, prepare an iced coffee, flail my arms til they hurt!, maybe wear one of those mini negligees with a silk button down left open over and read a few of the Mercy Watson books. She is one hell of a pig!

Have a great one,

Leandra