Being Big in Japan - Girls Season 5, Episode 3

 "I don't even really care about people in America anymore." - Shoshanna, Girls Season 5, Episode 3: 'Japan'.

There's a quote floating about Tumblr or the world or something about how you can be your truest self once you don a mask. The moment you adopt some sort of anonymity or disguise is when you are not hindered by the presence of the outside world's gaze (and judgments) nor your own inner monologue that has dictated who you are, who you should be and how that affects what can and can't go on in your life. You wear a mask and you flirt with the wrong kind of boys because you are no longer you. You keep your Twitter avatar as an egg and troll people on the Internet because you're no longer constricted by the fact that your boss could see it. You move to a different country and engage in sadistic sexual acts because no one (you know) is watching.

That's what I loved about the latest episode of Girls, as well as what made me realise that despite my desire to be a Jessa (minus the being a shit friend thing) (she's just so cool, you know), I'm very much a Shoshanna. From her incredibly fast speech (which she's, like, never been told about before) to her apparent commitment-phobia (God, watching Scott trash his 'Shosh is the Most-sh' sign and flowers broke me), all her outfits (that halter top over a blouse thing was inspiring) and, finally, running away from her problems in America to become her best self in Japan; where no one knows her, no one ties her down, no one has checked boxes of who Shosh has to be.

Which isn't to say that Shoshanna moves to Tokyo (and that rad apartment) and completely transforms in a "New Year, New Me" style -- she is still very much Shosh: spoiled, self-involved and redeemably inconsiderate. But she also appears to be gaining the growth and experience that everyone constantly tells you your 20s is all about, she's making beautiful memories and exploring the world. And at the same time, she's somewhat abandoned her (not so great, IMO) friends in America and her very lovely boyfriend, which while the romantic in me wants to strangle her (SHOSH IS THE MOST-SH, you guys), I completely adore and admire.

Now that I'm, like, totes growing up and adopting my own Tokyo Shoshanna in college, where I'm given the freedom that means I don't really have anyone watching or anyone to answer to, I admire the idea of dedicating your youth/20s to self-service and self-interest. Not so much in the way that would leave me a vacuum of callous narcissism and apathy, but one that would mean that I am the first person I take care of.

At the end of the day, my own well-being and growth and development should be my number one priority. I am the only person I really have in this world, and while some days are very hard, I'm actually beginning to like my Tokyo Shoshanna and I want to make sure she's OK.

I hope Lena Dunham gives us more Japan adventures for Shosh, as well as a lot more screen time for Yoshi (like, omg, so many heart-eye emojis) and less of Marnie's "marriage" or her ridiculously white tourist pronounciation of Ecuador.

Also, while I didn't really care much for the non-Shosh aspects of the episodes, I would like to add that I loved the pseudo-Elementary tie in (more Lucy Liu all the time please), Elijah's general Elijah-ness ("Try ones with a coy smile... like you know a cake is coming later,") and while extremely childish, Hannah's comments when she was deleting Fran's ex's nudes were absolutely hilarious ("Oh, hey, indie nipples,").

Sahara Nouveau Via SA Menswear Week

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Not more than four days ago, my creative design teacher expressed how lucky I was to be interested in designing menswear in this day age because of how much it's all changed since she was making men's clothes. For one, sex and gender issues are at such a fore in our popular culture that designers have more leeway to explore gender neutrality and some even moving towards postgender (Gypsy Sport comes to mind here). In addition, the idea of functionality being the defining trait of what makes menswear is taking a backseat to more notions of decorativeness and aesthetics that women's clothing fully embodies (think of the amount of prints, patterns, silhouettes available to women, versus the often solid colours and linear cuts of men's clothing).

Of course, this isn't to say that functionality is being abandoned to the scale that it often is in women's clothing. In fact, current menswear is made all the more innovative and interesting by the meeting point of aesthetic and function, or as Vogue's Maya Singer puts it: Practical Peacocking.

 

While designers use soft, girly colour palettes or maxi-skirts and assymetrical hemlines, there's a harder emphasis on straighter, harder line, dramatic movement, and toying with structural fabrics. This idea of functionality has kept more avant garde designs from appearing completely dandified or cross-dresser lite but retained a signature look exclusive to menswear. 

 

From NY Menswear Week and London Collections Men, I've seen  the Rude Boy or Dark Prince aesthetic (a la McQ Alexander McQueen and Siki Im), abstracted atheleisure, postmodern deconstruction by way of Greg Lauren and a new clean cut Mr Man look (think Public School) or a rougher, street smart prepster like the Theory or Orley man.

 

Interestingly enough, local designers at South Africa Menswear Week didn't blindly follow suit as many popular designers are prone to do. While the influence of international aesthetics like the Rude Boy and prepster could be seen, they only served to enhance an inherently South African look: a look that varied from a haute couture safari adventure from an African gaze (like Jenevieve Lyons), initiation/bush school retreats (Pilgrim), references to South Africa's huge Eastern/Arab/Persian culture (Imprint) to pop cult, Internet culture tones like in Dicker, Maxivive and Blanc.

Clockwise from top left: Dicker //  Dicker // Blanc //

Clockwise from top left: Maxivive // Augustine // Maxivive // Blanc

Clockwise from top left: Blanc // Blanc // Taf the Taylor // Jenevieve Lyons

Clockwise from top left: Jenevieve Lyons // Jenevieve Lyons / Jenevieve Lyons // Maxivive

Clockwise from top left: Maxivive // Dicker // Pilgrim // Imprint

Clockwise from top left: Imprint // Maxivive // Martin Kadinda // Martin Kadinda

Clockwise from top left: Martin Kadinda // Imprint // Augustine // Augustine // Dicker // Dicker

Martin Kadinda.

Clockwise from top left: Blanc // Pilgrim // Pilgrim // Taf the Taylor

All photos are from SDR Photo.

Things We Lost in the Summer

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Beginning my final year of high school this time last year was a game of beating the clock. I'm not sure when and I'm not sure how but somewhere between sixteen and seventeen I was very sure that I was going to die before I saw the end of 2015. Ever since I was six, I've been able to visualise things that were going to happen. Even if it was just an idea of the boots I'd be wearing on the date I had planned for Saturday or knowing that I was going to be very tired of my friends when we had lunch on Freedom Day. Things couldn't exist if I couldn't at the very least vaguely picture them. Now that I am still very much alive and, through some intersection of divine intervention and the sheer force of will, out of high school I recognise that as the arrogance of youth. The assumption that everything in the world was possible in relation to me, this was my world and everyone was just living in it.

The universe has since shown me otherwise.

I. When we last spoke

I've watched too many cult-classic Tumblr films because the only way I knew how to prepare for my completely ridiculous death was to avoid it and "live in the now". But "living in the now" looked a lot like blocking my ears when my friends spoke about leaving me, hiding under the covers when I was supposed to be sending in university applications and living life as a secondary character, away from blogging and art and writing. At some point I figured avoiding real life and avoiding myself, or the very things that made me most myself, would mean that the Khensani who was meant to die would not exist and therefore could not die. And, wow, what a waste. In the time since I last inhabited this here Internet space, I witnessed a revolution, I had my heart broken (again) and I tasted the very same magic that made Marina Abramovic risk her life for her art. I'm upset that I refused to let Khensani embody all those things in the ways she knew best.

II. Tears dry on their own

Today, I listened to this song by Tshepo and I was reminded that I have never (and will never) have an original feeling in my life. The parts of me that all but erupted when my heart was broken in a hazy November try to tell me that I have felt all the pain in the world and no one can understand. These parts, held together with gum and bobby pins, they screech and howl all night looking for guidance, for answers. They tell me I should never love again. They tell me I need to find love again. They tell me I have never found love, again and again. Before, I ran away from these cries. Death was too imminent for me to carry on about a boy I'm not sure ever knew me, let alone loved me. And now, as I watch my friend begin to feel his feelings fully so that they can dissolve, I am beginning to realise that I am OK with this, that I am OK.

III. Letting go

I cried about him once in the summer. But I cried about me all year.

IV. There is gold dust on my fingtertips

Not long ago, I told Motheo that I was a void. Somewhere between five glasses of whisky, an inability to say "no" and becoming a daughter of the night, I had become this black hole. Every day felt like the heightened youth and drama and hedonism of Lana's This Is What Makes Us Girls, felt like the scene in The Vampire Diaries where Elena flipped her switch and Damon loved her all the more it. It was this midnight world that I had always fantasised about, this midnight world where adventures and memories were made. A place full of 3am conversations and fleeting forrays at love and I was just a giant vaccum of it all. Nothing mattered. Nothing held any significane. The entire summer was one long night and I couldn't sleep at all. 

V. The begiining of the end

I guess all of this sounds sombre or that I've given in to losing my way, or, I don't know, one long completely teenage cry in fear of the future. But it's not. I laughed this summer, I cried this summer, i love this summer. And all of this is me trying reconcile the fact that just like a life after high school, I can't visualise who I am growing up to be. I can only experience it. This morning I realised that I've managed to go almost 15 days of this year not wanting to die. And I think that means something good.

VI. I'm eighteen this year.

I'm looking forward to discovering more feelings I'm certain no one in the history of the world has ever had, I'm looking forward to making friends and making art, I'm looking forward to not anticipating my death. 

If anyone asks, my New Year's Resolutions are to get money and fuck bitches. 

Yours

Khensani

A Crash Course in Cape Town Cool

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With Spring and both SA and Mercedes-Benz Fashion Weeks around the corner (along with the subsequent "omg how am i gonna prove to jozi cool kids that, you know, if i try hard enuf i could be one of them" sartorial panic), I've been pondering a very cliched renewal and refresh. Mostly in the case of my level of cool barely cutting it in the mainland and what that could mean when I'm trying to coerce -- I mean convince -- kids into being my friends should I make it to the shores for the afterlife (read: university).

Boy, am I going to have to develop a great personality or something equally as insipid because I do not have the juice like that. I don't know if it's that early 2000s Old Money tendency towards pretending you bought your Ralph Lauren and Chanel that moth-eaten and hand-me-down-y, or maybe the mother city's infamous winds or just that everyone on the Atlantic seaboard is so ready for a tsunami or some wild, wild waves that they're wearing all their favourite items at once.

While Joburg Barbies are moving closer and closer to that clean-cut, hard line geometric minimalism that sees the second coming of the Adidas stripe, careful proportion play and athleisure neoprene and net fabrics, I'm still stuck in that circa 2008 time warp with a bigger is better soundtrack. I've expressed this sentiment earlier in my give me a new millenium post but no one has locally been feeding me the vibes and aesthetics I really crave.

Well, at least until I finally caught up on July's Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Cape Town bookmarks.

Nina Milner at MBFWCT (source)

Marianne Fassler (source)

MBFWCT was one of the first fashion week instances when ready-to-wear designers were sustaining my life force much better than the actual street style. I guess my resistance to change hasn't reached all the high street trend setters (note: I am also partly jelly because I can't bring myself to not mix patterns or grasp minimalism beyond the position of voyeur). But Marianne Fassler, Habits and Nicole West were giving me that #YOLO wear all your favourite things at once / Old Money "moth eaten" silk / proportions and fabrics lighter than the weather / circular sunglass framed artisanal coffee shop alternative rap/rock cyber kasi / pseudo-safari(ugh that should so be a thing) look. This has also always been my favourite aspect to Cape Town cool kids like Daisie Jo and Tony (who I will never stop referencing).

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Tony Gum doing all of it (source)

Daisie Jo (who's also my favourite Elle Rising Star finalist)

Habits (source)

Habits

Habits

Habits

Habits

Nicola West (source)

If anyone needs me I'll be investing in large quantities of chiffon, organza and rainbow spectrum prints and patterns. Should you spot me in your neighbourhood craft beer garden or roaming the meeting points of Johannesburg's Dutch and English architecture, don't be swayed by my carefully constructed look of disdain or that I've had Cherry Bomb on loop - I'm still very obviously a loser kid.