Summer Odds and Ends
Ushering in my least favorite season of the year with a few things I love.
For someone who hates summer, mine is shaping up to be insanely busy. I have warm weather work-related travel — namely getting scuba certified in the Bahamas which is equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. I wouldn’t say I’m a bad swimmer as much as I’m not a confident swimmer, so we’ll see how this plays out in real life. Upon my return I go straight into something potentially even more terrifying, namely teaching a course to high school kids for two weeks at The School of the New York Times on streetwear. Being an overachieving student my entire life, I weirdly feel like I get these kids and of course I was equally as overachieving in planning out my course schedule. Anyway, the funniest parts of this project are: 1. I will have to return to a pseudo-professional setting and 2. I have to dress for said pseudo-professional setting. On a positive note, it makes for great newsletter content.
My mind is, to say the least, a bit all over the place courtesy of all the various responsibilities I’m juggling at the moment. So it only makes sense that this newsletter is also all over the place — a reflection of all the odds and ends that define summer 2023 for me.
Hot Weather Non-Cooking Cooking
It’s been thankfully NOT 90 degrees with humidity to match, at least over the last few weeks, but I’m dreading when it does feel like that. Cooking involves copious amounts of sweat, even with the air conditioner on. In past years we’ve done some sort of cold noodle recipe whether it’s the classic Cantonese sesame version or bibim-guksu frequently. The combination of spicy sauce with cucumbers and whatever protein we have on hand is our summer comfort food. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure slurping non-stop carbs day-in day-out is probably not great for my long term health so the other non-cooking, cooking we wind up doing is making salads galore.
This approach to eating is probably the opposite of decolonizing ethnic food and the belief that it’s not healthy but also, I could probably do without making rice or noodles for every meal. To bribe myself into eating more greens, I try to make these salads as aesthetically pleasing as possible — namely this gray Heath Ceramics salad bowl I found at the outlet. The only thing I haven’t bought yet are complementary serving utensils but this Dinosaur Designs resin has been mainstay in my brain. Unfortunately they’re not dishwasher-safe, which isn’t a deal breaker per se but I’m inherently lazy and would like to wash as few things by hand as possible. I love that they come in a multitude of colors although given a choice, I’d do black or white (big surprise).
Speaking of Melting…
Sometimes you wind up somewhere on Instagram and have no clue how you got there, which is how I stumbled upon Ulysse Sauvage. The glassware company is based in Paris and their pieces are made via heating up borosilicate and letting it harden into these blobby, melted looking forms. I love the idea of drinking chilled wine out of these as they bead up with condensation. Prices start at 35 Euros although unfortunately it looks like everything is sold out. I don’t even know if they ship to the U.S. to be fair, but it doesn’t really matter — they’re more of a summer mood if anything.
Systematic Obsession
My friend Dora informed me that System magazine put up their entire archive for free online, all you have to do is give them your email. It’s a clever way to gather up people’s emails but I clearly was sold the second I saw that there was a Rei Kawakubo issue. Her interview made me laugh out loud — she’s not an easy subject and you can see the poor interviewer, Hans Ulrich Obrist, an art curator, struggle to get anything out of her that isn’t, “Nope, I don’t do that.” Half of this interview is literally her shooting this poor guy down no matter how many ways he approaches the questions. I love being that ornery — may we all have the same energy when faced with something we clearly don’t want to do.
Legs, legs, legs
Sale season has been remarkably good for my closet and absolutely terrible for my bank account. The most unexpected purchase was the Prada mini as seen above, something I really did not expect to buy. Raf at Prada is divisive, to say the least, but I’ve been a loyal fan since his Jil Sander days, amassing odds and ends (including my wedding dress!) from his time there, as well as pieces from stints at Dior and Calvin Klein. The Calvin Klein pieces are kinda meh but everything else I truly do love, including his work at Prada.
Buying this mini is surprising because for the longest time I was against anything above my knee. I blame it on someone that I knew professionally who mentioned that she thought short skirts were a bad idea after age 25. That’s not true by the way! Now I’m deprogrammed and the pendulum has swung back, making the idea of a short skirt feel appealing again. I attribute my new change in attitude partly due to a recurring joke on TikTok about East Asian women have very sturdy, muscular legs with toned calves. Anyway this is to say, newsletter on the merits of short skirts to come!
Summertime Skin
Over the weekend I stopped off at Teso Life while in Long Island City. They’re a chain of Japanese-ish stores that sell a mix of snacks, housewares, and my favorite: beauty products galore. I say Japanese-ish because they’re technically Chinese owned as far as I can tell plus they carry K-beauty and Chinese beauty brands, the latter of which is much less common to find in NYC, paradoxically enough. I’d say the choice in makeup is so-so — I’d never get foundation or concealer there because the shade range is extremely limited. But the lipsticks, blush, and eye makeup offerings are pretty great, even for someone like me who can only do a very basic glam on herself.
What I do love there, besides all the snacks obviously, is the skincare selection, especially these three items:
This hyaluronic acid comes out thick and sticky but once you rub it in you really feel your skin plumping up. I won’t use this during the day because I run oily and this is not ideal for my skin under makeup but I LOVE it at night, layered with moisturizer. You wake up with hydrated, glowing skin and I swear my fine lines (I have one that drives me INSANE on my forehead) are less prominent.
Everyone in my DMs was raving about this Vitamin C and E serum when I took a pic of it in Japan and they were so right. It smells like fresh lemon juice and absorbs quickly into my skin. I’m extremely careful to do everything I can to reduce hyperpigmentation, including Fraxel (newsletter on skincare interventions to come!) so I think of this as overall maintenance.
Speaking of skin maintenance: Asian sunscreens »» American sunscreens. The one I’m currently using is harder to find in the U.S. but this Bioré Japan one is also really good. I know some people are particular about mineral versus chemical but I’ve had better luck with chemical on my face, at least under makeup. It just works better for my oily, medium-toned skin!
Somehow this hodgepodge turned out a bit longer than I envisioned but let me know in the comments if this format works for you. Until Sunday, which will be a deep dive into black Hermès silk scarves — a feat that is truly easier said than done because 99% of them feature some sort of color in the print. Of course, because it’s so incredibly difficult to find the right one, I want it even that much more. More to come this weekend!
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Love this! I actually have that System issue! Bought it for my birthday some years back when my husband and I were visiting our old NYC neighborhood. That image grabbed me right off the sidewalk.
this was especially fun!