InStyle: A Found Poem

Anna N. — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:30:00 EDT

There's just so much advice in this month's InStyle. Things to want! Rules to break! Rules for breaking those rules! After a while the sheer volume of contradicting imperatives begins to seem poetic, yet absurd. InStyle cries out to be made into a Dadaist poem! As you may know, a true Dadaist poem actually requires that you cut out words from the source material and pull them out of a bag at random. But since InStyle reports (twice!) that there is no "it" bag for fall, I wasn't sure which bag to use. And so I have created a found poem instead, using only actual phrases and images from the magazine. See the results — and add your own — after the jump.

Be a free spirit
match your necklaces and bracelets
mark your calendar and race to a store

Forgo the grand flourish
keep the colors up top subdued
choose a gown boasting more yardage than anybody else's

Stand up straight
moisturize as you cleanse
add further funk with contrasting tights

Join the costume party without losing your shirt
you don't have to spend a fortune
cheap shoes will bring the whole look down

Brush black powder from the lash line to the brow line
coil remaining hair into a loose bun
fill it with red gum balls!

Think you can do better? Got another magazine or website you want to try the found treatment on? Poetry is what comments were made for! Have at it.

"It Shoes" Are Apparently The New "It Bags"

Jennifer — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:00:00 EST

Know how all sorts of fashion types are screaming from the rooftops about the death of the It Bag? Did you believe them? Cause if you did, well, then keep dreaming: Rising from the ashes of the It Bag is the It Shoe! (Even Miuccia Prada says so, and whatever she says goes.) "The obsession with handbags has finished a little now. It feels over. It's about shoes now," says Prada. Adds Michael Lewis, head of design for Kurt Geiger: "For women, shoes are still about fantasy and dressing up — shoes can make you feel something special in a way a bag really can't. Shoes can give you a different persona." Shoes, of course, also give you bloody heels, hammertoes, bunions and collapsed arches — which leaves us wondering what it all really means.

Says handbag designer Orla Keily: "Looking forward, I think the whole idea of it-anything will be questioned, Whether it's a bag or a shoe, do you really have to have this thing at all? And what about making a personal choice, rather than one that's been dictated to you?" Well fashion is never about need; it's about want. And there will always be a new objet being shilled by the fashion industry, something designed to stir desire in consumers worldwide and simply sell more expensive shit. Expensive shit that everyone else already has.

But if it shoes are the new it bags, we may as well check 'em out: Do you love or loathe the Spring 2008 Prada shoes? After all, if you can't beat 'em...

Make Way For The It Shoe [Independent]

Earlier: Fashion Blogger Announces That "It" Bags Are (Finally) Dead

Jezebel: 'it' bags

InStyle: A Found Poem

"It Shoes" Are Apparently The New "It Bags"