Ann’s Office Outfit Makeover: Meghan Cadwallader & Brian Calhoon

Meghan Cadwallader is messing up the natural order of things by dressing this way for work and I want her to stop.

Her colleague Brian Calhoon is just as guilty.

These two work at The Boston Conservatory. Brian is an admissions counselor, and also a wickedly soulful percussionist and vocalist. Meghan is the director of admissions, and also a writer of sharp and luscious poetry and nonfiction, and a singer when she has time for that, which is not much lately, which irritates me, Meghan, because there’s probably no shortage of fellow musicians around town who would love to harmonize with your sapphirey vocals. Yes. I called you sapphirey. There’s probably also no shortage of band-friendly bars there in Boston.

Which, back to my point: You two are already in Boston. you don’t need to dress in urban muted tailored things. It’s redundant, and it makes life difficult for those of us in the Midwest where basic black is our single thick-muscled farm-fed leg up on sophistication.

And yes, just last week I told a fellow writer/musician/dayjobber here in Mankato do the opposite and wear some color, but speaking in general terms, a lot of us here rely on the sleek darks and preppy neutrals at Casual Corner or whatever to make us feel like we’re slightly elsewhere, and I think I have to protect that right. The last thing we need when we check out people from ACTUAL ELSEWHERE is to see you wearing that same stuff. Although I’m sure neither of these outfits came from Casual Corner. They came from boutiques next door to fromageries and genuine non-Pier One ethnic artifacts stores. Yes?

Meghan. Brian. Get out of your offices and go walk down the exotic block I’m sure is outside the hallowed oak-trimmed halls of the Conservatory — I’m pronouncing that right, “blahk,” right? — and stroll into the nearest salon and tell them you need to be citified in a way that makes life clear and simple for your friends on the prairie.

Extensions are a great start. You’ll also want color, color, color. Stripes. Metallics. Levitation! The Tupperware can stay but I want it filled with something that’s visibly heavy on saffron, not the macaroni salad Brian clearly appropriated from a Minnesota Unitarian church potluck.

Truly, you guys, if I understand university admissions — and I must, because for about ten years I worked in university marketing, and who loves each other more than admissions and the overpromisers? — you have to appeal to the demographic you’re after. You have to know what they want, and then be that. And I’m telling you, you are never going to meet your quota of middle-aged Midwestern cubicle workers who spend all day dreaming bigtime conservatory dreams, if you don’t start dressing how we very much want to believe it feels to be you.

Next makeover: Amy Rosenquist, everyone, the woman who taught me the art of writing down what I wear every day so I don’t repeat that same thing the next week. God, no, I don’t do that any more. I just do this blog which is obviously less obsessive.

Ann’s Office Outfit Makeover: Chris Fisher

Mar3

It’s Sunday morning and this is Chris Fisher and he’s going to tame your unruly manuscript without changing a damn thing he’s wearing.

Except the thermal. I suggest he switch that out to blaze orange in order to be fair to his opponents. Not that his clients at the author services firm The Editorial Department are opponents, but then again they are, kind of, and you know what I mean if you’ve ever been critiqued. Especially a paid critique where you say “here’s my $xxx go ahead and tear me apart” but what you really want is “Dear Writer, we cannot believe this, honestly, there’s nothing to change or add, nothing, we envy your work, thank you for allowing us to read.” Which, I don’t know, most of us have never received that kind of thing but Chris may have. He’s good. So let’s give him a challenge.

Let’s get him out of the spotless home office with not so much as a pile of laundry as an opposing force (did you catch the laundry? Bottom right, with a shirt or something artfully spilling out the top but I think that’s just for show, mostly it’s all tucked into the basket) and put him eyeball-to-eyeball with something worth his time, like blasphemous voodoo powder. Or a house of God crumbling in the crush of sun and abandonment.

See, then, how the jeans and thermal and the impassive stare take on an entirely fresh new look? Like, oh thank goodness, denim! Something to save us from this exotic and austere evil force. Thank goodness, flannel, a shred of compassion in the midst of devastation.

The whiteboard (from an alternate shot Chris sent from his office, which showed more of the room and honestly the only thing close to chaos was whatever was scribbled on the board, which was probably in alphabetical order) is optional but I favor accessories and in this case I think the board is better than a holster or hatchet or something more obvious. Anybody can look terrifying with an actual weapon in their hand. It’s the better writer/editor who can strike fear and inspire ambition without much ornamentation.

So, Chris, you’re mostly good to go. Just switch the undershirt and wander the wildnerness till you find a more suitable workspace.

God, seriously. Do you not love how those orange sleeves make the hopeless hell of life on earth really pop?

Next makeover: Boston Conservatory’s Meghan Cadwallader and Brian Calhoon. That’s THE Boston Conservatory, but it’s ok, Midwestern readers, I’m prepared to explain prairie aesthetic and why the East Coast must yield to it.

Ann’s Office Outfit Makeover: Amy Kortuem

Mar1

Amy Kortuem slings hot copy.

Right, she’s also a concert harpist and she’s a rising literary starlet and blahblahblaaah. Everybody knows all that. It’s what she does in her day job writing catalog copy that’s the real juice, the real thing to envy. The thing you can’t do. For a whole lot of hours a week, Amy starts with nothing and turns it into this:

And this:

Amy Kortuem, I got your destiny right here.

Let’s start with some lucky color. I get what you’ve been going for, wearing tasteful black to work, because how else do you class up a cubicle? That’s what you think, yet the actual effect is just that you coordinate with that paper sorter. You can do better than that. If you dress right, you can turn the cubicle itself into a hot leather patio couch. I think that’s the big bold something fortune wants to hand you, and it’s going to require primary colors and a bare midriff and a cigarette.

I know you’re asthmatic. I know they probably don’t allow halfshirts in your workplace, whateverwhatever. Not your problems; your problem is figuring out how formidable champion greatness can overcome you and those plastic gray partition panels.

Get to work, Amy. I’m only coming to your March 16 pub concert at the Emy Frentz Arts Guild if you’re wearing primary colors, smoking a cigarette and dazzling with the unmatched fleeting greatness of hot scripty strength from deep within. Beret would be good too.

Next makeover: Libertarian gun-toting fire-brimstoney writer/editor Chris Fisher. This is Ann’s Office Outfit Makeovers and we are not messing around.

Ann’s Office Outfit Makeover: Cindra Kamphoff

Feb27

Cindra Kamphoff is the academic and spiritual leader of the new Center for Sport and Performance Psychology. She’s not saying the spiritual part; I’m saying that. It’s an entirely secular state-funded center, let’s be clear, in a really nice freshly painted office space in University Square which is the classiest of retail hotspots. This is no flake place. But its director is a pulsing beaming force with a superpretty aura, and I’d kind of like to see her dressed accordingly.

Here she is right before the decor was complete, the week of the grand opening. Texture + pattern + leather + graduate students, all very strong and good, very nice.

Premakeover Cindra in her prefinished Center.

Here she is at the opening. Powerful. Branded. Shiny!

Scarf matches the podium sign!

Cindra, though, I’m thinking, would you just go ahead and wear your chakras on the outside?

I think it would help the rest of us figure out what foundational pieces we need in order to dress appropriately for all this mental strength you’re talking about. I mean, maybe it would be useful to your clients to see your jade-green heart chakra constantly orbiting your chest, like the performance psychology equivalent of a basic silk shell? If that’s the case, some of us might go get such a shell, or a green sports bra. Not to be too matchy with your auras, just, like, aligned. Or maybe your light pink crown chakra is exceptionally huge and beaming, and that’s why you feel taller than you are? I’m not sure how we’d cop that, maybe pink Bondi Bands. Anyway. Some of us would appreciate knowing what to wear to complement the mantras you’ve got us all writing on our arms.

Give it some thought. It would be low-maintenance, it would look great in all seasons and you could accessorize with at least one grad student.

Next makeover: Amy Kortuem has left the building.

Ann’s Office Outfit Makeovers: Let’s start with Tanner Kent

Feb25

When Tanner Kent asked if I would write about spring fashion for the March issue of Mankato Magazine, I think his agenda was truly more like, oh my God, Ann Fee, will you please tell me what to wear to work?

Tanner Kent in his premakeover habitat. Photo by Robb Murray.

Tanner sent me this photo with the following reflection: “Observant spectators will note my post-industrial, pre-pragmatist flannel-lined jeans (perfect for starting a car in winter, or starting a dance party at the disco!) as well as a tastefully chosen undershirt for my red plaid button-up.”

Ann’s Fashion Tarot readers will recognize this as smack in the grip of The Chariot, the card that says great power comes from yoking together forces outside yourself. Unlikely forces. Forces you maybe thought you were mocking, with your funny little graf, but actually, you know, it works. The notion of a signature style that’s combo car-starter/dance party suddenly seems basic, obvious and critical. It’s spring. We need these things. Tanner, it’s time to yoke.

Keep the flannel, but let’s go silky underneath. Silky! Travolta silky. And let’s get serious about the neckwear. If you’re wearing something up there, be bold. Be aggressively sparkly. Bury your puka beads in the snow like so much last season’s trash, and go with gold. Are you seeing how that works with the flannel, with the cap? It works.

Also, would it kill you to use some bronzer? Clinique makes some for men. Clinique Non-Streak Men’s Bronzer. It works well in a nonmakeupy way that wouldn’t threaten your flannel or the hat, Tanner, not at all. It can only make you stronger. And sunnier!

Your new glow will complement the lava lamp, which you’re going to steal from your neighbor’s cube, and the giant candle, which you can probably get from wherever you got your flannel-lined jeans. Mood lighting is the new focal point of your new simplified workspace, which is the dark spot under your desk. Kick the recycling bin or whatever out of the way, and take the candle and the lava lamp, as well as your phone so as not to miss important calls like people asking if the magazine could please have more fashion guidance. Grab those things plus some writing utensils and get down there. Get yourself some ambience.

I’m not saying the natural state of a Free Press cubicle isn’t charming, I’m just saying, Tanner, it’s spring. Or it will be, soon, once you take some risks. Once you yoke together a little silk, a little flannel. Once you just please do the newsroom and the town the favor of starting up the very post-industrial/pre-pragmatist dance party we need.

Mankato Magazine‘s March issue, featuring my fashion forecast “What’s Hot for Spring is Spring,” comes out later this week. Many thanks to Tanner for asking for it and for considering bronzer.

Next makeover: Stripmall mystic Cindra Kamphoff.

How a one-man bar band is exactly like a hardworking healthcare advocate

Feb4

Acoustic folk-rock-roots-blues guy Jim McGowan played the Wine Cafe in Mankato right before he headed across the country to advocate for kids with diabetes.The program he was promoting is called Safe at School, and it helps ensure that kids get the care they need whether it’s a regular day or a field trip or there’s a sub or whatever, and that they get it without feeling too much like a weirdo. That description is not endorsed by Jim or the American Diabetes Association. Probably endorsed by any kid who’s ever shot up in the lunchroom, though.

I’ve never seen Jim do his thing as an advocate. I’ve only seen him perform. I am sure, though, that he’s similarly genuine and compelling, and whatever the advocacy equivalent of “Thank God I’m A Country Boy” is, I bet it brings the house down.

At both kinds of gigs, there’s stuff to work around. Other people’s stuff. You have to stand there and deliver like you’re not knee-deep in crap there’s just nowhere else to stash. You really have to act like you’re the main thing happening here, right now, or nobody’s going to buy it. I am guessing Jim would say this is where being a bar band and being an advocacy director come together.

Of course, yes, people always sit in front and text. I don’t know the equivalent on the advocacy floor. Or maybe it looks literally exactly the same, just like this. There’s always a chance that the phone-user is reaching out to their friends/their legislators, saying “this music is amazing”/”oh my GOD get down here and fund this program.” There is a chance. I kind of think you can tell which performers hope for the best in that regard. They’re the ones who watch the phone-users really close so that as soon as they look up, they’ll make eye contact, with the singer looking like, “well? well?!” I mean why not. At minimum, you’ll get a smile, and that’s a start.

It’s good for kids with diabetes that Jim does what he does to make it easier to get care during the school day. It’s good for bars and for music lovers that Jim puts folk-roots-blues-rock-John Denver covers out there with so much sell and hope and integrity. Thanks, Jim, for the work on both fronts. Thanks also, LeeAnn Thill, for making up Diabetes Art Day and prompting us all to think artfully about such an unartful condition. Thanks too, Amy Stockwell Mercer, for being a longtime bridge between the art world and the diabetes world with passionate writings on both. You guys are the best. You guys make clear that the only way to deal with a weird mix is to wear it really, really well.

The Frye is at The Wine Cafe — the premier venue of diabetes-affiliated Minnesota bar bands — next Saturday, Feb. 9, 9 p.m. – 1 a.m. I might still be wearing this.

Still life with insulin part two: Needles make the outfit

Jan18

My Type Two retired professor friend bequeathed me this brooch and twenty-five others, all silver, all exquisite. She’s not dying but she’s probably closer to it than I am.

Then again, I’m more diabetic than she is.

At her age you would think diabetes is just something else in the mix but it’s a bigger deal than that. She dreads the finger-sticks. She asks how often I do it. I do it a lot. I tell her to rotate which finger so the pads don’t turn hard and spotted.

Her ring fingers each have a diamond ring from Tiffany & Co. in Chicago, where she has shopped every Christmastime of her adult life. Some of the brooches are from Tiffany’s. Some are from Memphis, Scotland, Washington. She loves them but she doesn’t need them any more. Now that she’s retired, she no longer wears navy blue pantsuits with pins that say, “I’ve been elsewhere. I’m here at this university on the prairie, wearing this pantsuit, but don’t make the mistake of thinking I stay here at Christmastime.”

She’s hoping I can give the pins some new life. I’m doing my best, trying to make them work with my style.

I’m Type One and I recently quit the insulin pump — my pancreas ex vivo — and went back to needles. You would think multiple daily injections would be more cumbersome than a pump but not really. Needles are classic and versatile. Needles are simple and sleek. They leave marks, but you’re going to get that. Even with sterling Christian Dior from Tiffany’s, you’re going to get that.

Many thanks to LeeAnn Thill’s VIAL Project for the prompt. Thanks also to Scott for cutting me out of the duct tape.

What The Frye wore to Memphis

Jan3

The basics.

Thick skin.

Semigloss.

Hot fonts.

Ashes, fleshtone, fleshtone, a wool-blend zip-front sweater.

Vision.

Reverence.

Thirst.

The Frye was proud to play at The Poplar Lounge December 14, 2012. Story here. Upcoming shows here. What to wear to see The Frye here.

Ann’s Fashion Tarot: The World

Dec22

In regular Tarot, The World says you’re headed for balance, completion, fulfillment. In Ann’s Fashion Tarot, The World says listen up, sister, your shins are ruined but these $3.99 stick-on crystals will fit right in the channels and the sum might be better than a regular pair of legs.

I mean, in case you were on the way to a fancy lunch meeting and your toe caught the inside of your long black skirt and you pitched forward and slid knees-first down a brick staircase.

And then maybe it didn’t heal well. Maybe you should have sought actual first aid instead of holding a couple paper towels there and tying them with the ropes of your espadrilles? (So you could get through the fancy meeting, I get it. I know. Because you were all dressed up and everything. Long black skirt! Rope espadrilles!)

See also: Judgment. See also: The Tower.

See that you could have done things differently. You could have done this better but you didn’t. In a flash, you did exactly this, and the result is permanently not what you want to wear today.

For the next year you wear long skirts (yawn). For the year after that you try leg makeup (corpsey).

Then maybe you say, ok, well, I guess these are my legs now.

I guess these are my gougey little mistakes and they deserve some crystal stick-on redemptions. I guess my indelible marks of dumbass should have, at least, accessories. They deserve to feel whole. To catch the light. To be all done with the last trip and ready for the next.

Ready. Scarred but sparkly. Whole. This is who you are today.

The World is sponsored by Ann’s Fashion Tarot, offering free readings forever. Truly. For real. The future looks supercute on you.

Ann’s Fashion Tarot: Judgment

Dec21

Here’s the thing. You have to just come out and say it.

That’s what Renee did for me in 2009 after I went to Hair Police in Minneapolis and told them to do “whatever!” and they had no context at all except that I was some lady from downstate who didn’t look very adventuresome by Hair Police standards.

Before.

So what did I get? I got the 2009 Midwest lady bob.

After.

I knew it wasn’t good, but I kept telling myself: Maybe this is good??? I called Renee, who is my real actual longtime stylist and the kind who will take you back after a one night stand with Hair Police. She got me in right away. She took one look and said, well, it’s not the shape I would have picked for you.

Which was the best gift anybody could have given me at the time, because it set me free to fully hate what I’d done and focus on how much better my life would be six months down the road when there could at least be a stubby little ponytail. Maybe. In the meantime, I tried to shape it here and there with a disposable razor. I did that late at night in my bathroom with a drink while I listened to John Diliberto’s “Echoes.” Honestly. It was a bad look for me.

Truth is a gift and today is the day you should give it.

Judgment is sponsored by Goth Mom, who is right now folding laundry and thinking about death. You can see that for yourself when you visit Goth Mom on Facebook.