Welcome to Wordy Bird!

The marvels of the universe, revealed to you one post at a time; no, this is not overselling AT ALL

Hi, and thank you for joining me on Wordy Bird. I really appreciate your support!

I’m launching Wordy Bird to have a place to talk about many of the things that interest me—namely, writing and reading; fashion and design; happenstance and serendipity and my ongoing effort to take stock of our strange and wondrous world. I’m sure to range far and wide, as is my habit, but I’m planning on a few very specific focuses. I’ve long wanted to meditate on fashion in a way that’s different from what I’m seeing elsewhere—fashion as memory, fashion as sociology, fashion as three-dimensional functional sculpture that has to stand up to repeated wearing—so that will be one consistent thread in these posts. I also always have a lot to say about writing, so that will figure in a big way, too. I’m going to include a little section called Show Notes that will be quick mentions of purely practical stuff (things to buy, tools to use, books to get) that I can’t resist sharing with you.

If you’re on the free list for Wordy Bird, you’ll get access to two or three posts each month. You’ll be able to comment occasionally on the posts, too.

If you are a paid subscriber, you’ll get all the goodies. Of course, you’ll receive all of my posts. I’m likely to keep most of the posts about writing exclusively for paid subscribers, so if you especially want to get those, please leap over the paywall and sign up for a paid subscription. Then you will also have the ability to comment and to interact when I do Q&As. I’m also cooking up some fancy add-ons that will include Zoom talks down the line for paid subscribers. Stay posted!

Why create Wordy Bird rather than publish this material in The New Yorker or in a book? Ah, great question. I will of course continue writing for The New Yorker, as I have since (gulp!) 1987, and I’m hard at work on a new book (which I’ll talk about here, for sure). But having spent a lot of time in the last decade on social media, I’ve come to love writing in a way that’s more immediate and more intimate than what I might publish in the magazine or book—writing that’s more personal and loose-limbed. What’s more, I’ve really enjoyed the social part of social media—the way even short tweets/Threads/Instagram posts feel conversational with readers. What I’m hoping to do on Wordy Bird is capture the vibrancy and informality that had made social media so much fun for me as a writer, but to enrich it. Having this expanded space and the possibility of other ways to interact really intrigues me.

Wordy Bird is a work-in-progress, and sure to evolve as we move forward.

So, welcome everyone! If you choose to pay for a subscription, thank you! If you’d just like to stay on the free list, I appreciate your interest as well. I’m excited to dive into this with you.

AND WHILE I’M ON THE SUBJECT…

A recent meditation on the topic of trousers

In the graveyard of book ideas that I have considered but never undertaken lies the bony body of one I tentatively titled The Perfect Black Pants. The idea for the book sprang from a genuine personal quest: Ever since I can remember, I have tried to find the perfect pair of black pants, ones that would always seem right, always make me look good, not be fancy but not be ratty, not be boring but not come with a fashion-y sell-by date. At the time—fifteen years ago or so—when I was considering writing this, I was living on a farm in the Hudson Valley, north of New York City, and I spent a lot of my time working at home and wrangling my toddler and taking care of my flock of chickens. But I also went into the city regularly: I had an office at The New Yorker that I visited now and then, and I taught a class at NYU. I wanted pants that could span my assorted roles as farm girl, parent, professor, city flaneur, writer, traveler, and fashion enthusiast. 

I was sure that if I owned these magical pants, they would simplify the task of getting dressed, which can be sometimes taxing or confusing or confounding or just complicated by the tyranny of choice. Every day, the lower half of my body would be encased in these black pants, and then I could pick anything I wanted for my top half; in this scenario I could almost picture myself reaching into my closet blindfolded, as if I were playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey, and whatever my hand landed on would be fine, since everything goes with black pants, particularly perfect ones. I loved the prospect of this new way of dressing.  It would cut the amount of clothing I had to fret over by fifty percent, or whatever numeric value you’d assign to the portion of your body from the waist up versus the waist down. The pants would be my foundation and everything else would be a frill, a flourish atop my reliable bottoms, an opportunity to go wild since I knew at least half of me was reliably set. 

I pictured the book as a sort of travelogue. I planned to scour the world for those pants and write about the undertaking. I would interview textile innovators in Japan, master tailors in Italy, pattern makers, vintage clothing scholars, contemporary designers, dye producers—anyone who could be instrumental in helping me find, or creating for me, the ultimate trousers that I would be happy to wear every day for the rest of my life, that would always be the right thing to wear, that made me feel like I looked like a million bucks but also, in a sense, were invisible, serving as the underpinning on which I could layer whatever else I felt like putting on. The book would look at the commerce and creation of fashion but also the way clothes can make us feel like something more, solving the puzzle of figuring out who we are. 

For whatever reason, I put the book idea aside (at least for now) but I never put aside the mission. I continue to look for those enchanted slacks. But I’ve also had a revelation, a sobering one, which is that they can’t actually exist. Fashion is a rushing river. Certain things are constant—white button-down shirts, straight-leg blue jeans, t-shirts—but everything else is in flux. Our eyes adjust, like the changing aperture of a lens, and what looks good only lasts for a rather short period of time. Every time I’ve thought I found the thing I’d love forever, I was right for a while, and then inevitably there comes the day when it just feels wrong or off, and you’re done.

In fact, I have many times been convinced that I had found the perfect black pants and staked my soul on them, and for a while they were ideal, and then they weren’t. In the early Eighties, right after I graduated from college, I fell under the spell of a New York store called Reminiscence, which produced its own line of clothes. One of the popular items was a pair of pants with a side zipper and barrel legs and a slightly nipped in ankle. I fell in love with them; bought them in black; and eventually amassed them in every other fabrication available. Just to give you context, I had spent most of college wearing muslin painter’s pants that I bought at hardware stores, so these Reminiscence pants were a whole different version of my self-presentation. They seemed cool and grown-up without looking too ladylike, and I bought a million pairs because I thought they were eternal and would never look like they belonged to a particular moment in time so they would always be right. But indeed they did belong to a particular moment, and as the visual clock ticked forward the barrel legs started to look slightly clownish compared to the skinnier pants that emerged. I felt betrayed by my instincts: I was so sure that these Reminiscence pants were the endpoint in the arc of fashion, but they were just one of the millions of waypoints instead. 

And ever shall it be. More than any other article of clothing, pants iterate. Legs get big, get slim, get pleated; hems hit above the ankle and then drag on the floor; waists go up and down like elevators. Even if you aren’t slavishly on fleek, your eyes adapt to what looks current. Clothing isn’t the only example, of course. There’s a reason the cars of the Fifties look old and the cars of today look contemporary. There’s nothing inherently “old” about bulbous front ends; we’re just attuned now to the edgy angles of today’s cars.

I scoured the Internet for an image of those Reminiscence pants but no dice. These might be a pair, but I don’t think so — the Reminiscence pants came to the ankle and were looser in the leg. I think these are a pair of Gap capris that I really loved for a long time and actually wore out. (Photobombing courtesy of a goofy child.)

So where does that leave me with pants? Recently, I fell under the spell of High Sport kick crop pants. If you haven’t had the pleasure, they are a close-fitting pull-on pant with a ridge along the center of the leg and a sharp flare at the ankle. The material is deliciously thick and slightly stretchy, with a subtle checkerboard weave. They are ridiculously expensive -- $860, to be exact – but fashion writers swooned over them. Easy as leggings but so chic! I was activated in the worse sort of way. The pants were well beyond my budget but then again: What if they were these perfect black pants I had been looking for since the beginning of time? Then they would justify the price, since I would amortize it over the countless times I would wear them. I ordered them, knowing I shouldn’t, and hyperventilated as I opened the box when they arrived. I tried them on. They were very nice. If they really were this unicorn, the pants I would wear every day for the rest of my life, they were worth it, right? Looking at myself in the mirror, with the snug pants and their elfin little bell-bottoms, I time-traveled to another pose in front of my mirror wearing my beloved Reminiscence pants. They were the High Sport pants inverted, with their roomy thigh and pinched ankle, and at the time, in 1980, they looked just as flawless as the High Sport pants did now. And then the wheel of time creaked forward, as it does without fail. My Reminiscence pants are lost to time. I packed up the High Sport pants and returned them. 

SHOW NOTES:

--Lest you think I am immune to timely looks, let me assure you that I am not.  I wanted to scratch my itch for a pair of fitted kick flare pants but I knew I shouldn’t kid myself that they would be what I wanted forever, and therefore worth the crazy High Sport price. I ended up with these Spanx kick flare and I’m happy. They actually fit me better than the High Sport, which were too long for me and can’t be shortened.

--What comes around often does go around, though. Today I’m wearing a pair of super-wide Stephen Burrows jeans which I probably bought in… 1990? I honestly can’t remember, but it was when I still lived in New York and Barney’s still existed, so it was a long time ago. During the intervening years when pants shrank into narrow tubes, barely distinguishable from a pair of opaque tights, I gave these big pants a time-out. I considered getting rid of them, because I couldn’t imagine that wide-leg pants would ever look modern again. For whatever reason, I kept them, and now, decades later, I think they’re amazing. Ha! Everything always comes back.