Issue #80: How to Build a Uniform for Spring (or Any Season)

The outfit I wear nearly every day.

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📺 “Daisy Jones & the Six” on Prime Video: I can’t tell you how relieved I am that this mini-series, based on the bestselling novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid, is actually good. The show borrows its format from the book, written as a collection of transcript-style interviews with fictional bandmates who had enough hits and drama to rival Fleetwood Mac (one of the songs created for the show is a clear nod to “The Chain”). Watching it can feel like playing ‘70s music bingo—there’s a quick conversation with Jim Morrison at Whiskey a Go Go, Hare Krishna on Sunset Boulevard, Laurel Canyon, a line out the door of the Troubadour, and plenty of crochet crop tops—with a compelling story at its core.

🎧 “Women Without Kids” Podcast: In this podcast, writer Ruby Warrington explores her decision to not have kids, within the context of steeply declining global birthrates (the 2020 U.S. Census revealed the steepest drop in over a century). In conversations with experts, she explores the path of non-motherhood through deeply felt questions of legacy, identity, and ethical decision-making. I particularly enjoyed her episode on the taboo (and practically unspeakable) topic of women who regret having had children. I was so compelled by the podcast that I spoke with Ruby last week about her upcoming book, and will be sharing our conversation soon!

📚 Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson: As soon as you’ve finished binge-watching “Fleishman is in Trouble,” move onto this new novel, which addictively recounts the lives of a wealthy Brooklyn family (inspired in part, according to the acknowledgements, by this New York Times article). When Sasha marries Cord, she becomes a witness to the Stockton family’s “bizarre WASP rituals,” which are all the more magnified by the fact they they live in his family’s brownstone. Read if you enjoyed Charlotte and Bunny’s scenes in SATC, Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep, or any Plum Sykes novel.

“You know, you can have both,” my manager at the clothing store I worked at in college rolled her eyes at me when I walked out of the changing room for the sixth time. Despite being only a few years older, she easily doled out style advice with a no-nonsense wisdom that came from being the oldest of three sisters.

“I can’t afford them both,” I said, hitching up a pair of jeans I’d spent the last fifteen minutes of my shift deliberating, “Do I go with the comfortable pair or the cuter ones?”

“No—you don’t have to choose between practicality and style,” she said, pulling a maxi skirt off its hanger, “You can always have both. It’s just a matter of figuring out what works for you.”

She held the skirt to her waist, comparing it in the mirror against the one she was already wearing. They were barely decipherable from those she wore every day with a French-tucked tee and military-style jacket, an outfit that looked effortlessly Bohemian in a way that perfectly suited her California lifestyle. Her uniform was living proof of her ethos: practical and chic, but also completely her.