Michael Bastian S/S '14

I liked Michael Bastian’s S/S ’14 show. I wasn’t there, so I couldn’t tell you if the soundtrack was appropriate. I listened to some old Hatebreed while I flipped through it, so maybe that’s the trick to creating the correct audio environment to enjoying the show but I wouldn’t know since the experience cannot be repeated. 

But regardless of what crap is going through your speakers, the clothes looked pretty cool. The pineapple pants were probably the end-all for the event as a sort of final putsch of the excessive utilitarian thing that I know I was snorting. I could continue to discuss various pieces and looks but you could probably just read some NYT writer who is more talented at conveying what exactly leopard print pants mean (masculine ferality and our general symbiosis with fleas). It’s supposed to be, like, french holidays or whatever but I think somebody else can give you a better press release.

You’ve already seen all of these looks but I’ll post the pineapple pants for reference and then tell you a subjective sense of what I got from the show. Hopefully you’ll have something to relate to it but, if not, I’m sure the next thing on the internet will be genuinely entertaining for you.

About two months ago, my brother and I were at a Holiday Inn near Hammondsport in New York. Hammondsport was built up fairly well as it was an old vacationing town surrounding a finger lake but there were few people to see. It was a large echoing shell of a town, sort of like Wildwood in November. 

They’re really nice places, Holiday Inns, if you don’t get a smoking room. My brother and I had a non-smoking room on the second floor that some folks perceived to be a smoking room so, subjective views had overruled the objective rule set in place by the corporation and it smelled of American Spirits (fancy). Despite being old, with liquid marks on the wood stain from big glasses of sweating water or just big glasses of sweating cheap gin and an AC unit that rattled just like in the movies or when you stayed at that Red Roof, the room had that youthful “fuck you” to it that you only find in kids who know they’ve got jack shit to look forward to. Perhaps that was just the cigarette smell speaking. 

At the same time as we were in the hotel, there were clowns residing on the first floor. They were there for a Rotary Wounded Veterans event. It was a community event. 

Around 6:30am one morning, we met an elderly woman, about 80, and her mentally challenged daughter who had been living at the hotel for about a year. Their house had burned down the previous fall. The hotel coffee was watery. 

One of the evenings we stayed there, I turned on the TV. The local channel was showing old French movies, with no subtitles. The TV could not change channels. The actors in the films were superb. I felt rather like a fancy cinephile, being able to interpret each eyebrow raise and excessive arm gesture. 

The next morning I rode a bike around the lake. It was the middle of July and the town wasn’t quite what you would call busy. Cars were more sparse than my small hometown. Old boats creaked in the grass of the nostalgia of probably just a decade or two ago. A bar looked like it got sort of busy at night. The town looked good. The air smelled good. You’d think the town could sell nostalgia to just about anyone. 

You’d think, right?

For some reason, when I flipped through the pictures of the show, I thought of my weekend in Hammondsport. I hadn’t thought of it in a month. The weekend didn't end well for my brother or me. The nostalgia of some other vacationing family was quirky and delightful but I’m not sure I’d go back. 

No, I wouldn't go back. I didn't have anything there.