I have a serious case of born-in-the-wrong-generation. While I know that life in 2010 has its perks, there is a part of me that has always longed for things like handwritten letters, dances on weekends, and long drives in cars without seatbelts. This longing is never more evident than during the visits I have with my grandmother. Although I don’t see her as frequently now that I spend most of the year away at school, I try to visit as often as I can. My favourite conversations are the ones about what her life was like when she was my age.

One particular evening, we were talking about hair – specifically, the things we do to curl it.

“We used to stick a six-inch nail right in the fire!” she said, holding her hands up to show me how long the nail was. Later, she told me about how her mother used to make rollers for my grandma and her sisters out of paper: “If you twist and twist and twist,” she said, making the motions with her fingers, “the paper gets stiff, and you can wrap your hair around it.”


“We used to wear rag curls, too. Do you know what those are?”

I smiled. I am very familiar with rag curls. I spent many evenings with my mom standing over me, wrapping my hair around strips of old towel or t-shirt until I had knots of fabric dangling all over my head. I always began with the hope that afterwards, I would look a little more glamorous and grown up – but the process inevitably ended with my looking like a poorly groomed poodle instead.

In photos of my grandma as a young woman, though, she always looks enviably classy and composed – all soft smiles and mysterious eyes and the kind of grace that refuses to suffer the indignity of unkempt hair. After I left her house that evening, I was determined to give rag curls another chance. If she could do it, so could I.

All I needed, really, was a little patience. Rag curls involve wrapping sections of hair around a long piece of fabric, and tying that fabric in a knot to keep the curl in place. The end result is usually very tight ringlets. I’ve found, however, that putting your hair in curls when it’s dry, rather than wet, keeps them from being too crazy. It also helps to give yourself a lot of time for the curls to loosen. Instead of poodle hair (which I’m sure has its moments as well), I’ve started to end up with soft and lasting curls.

Rag rolls appeal not only to the part of me that wishes my hopelessly straight hair would stay curled for longer than five minutes, but also to the part that wishes I could have gone to dances every weekend and waited for letters in a mailbox instead of my inbox. I know that the past has flaws, but my grandmother’s generation is one that I still long to understand. My evening visits help me feel closer to my grandmother, and being able to relate to her stories about curls connects me, in the smallest way, to the girl she was before I knew her.

- Hailey Siracky

Chances are, if you have even a passing interest in industry fashion, Tavi needs no introduction. Since starting her articulate fashion blog Style Rookie in April 2008, the now fourteen year old has become something of a celebrity both online and off. Case in point: when she wrote about her visit to the WORN Offices last month, I got no less than five e-mails from people I hadn’t spoken to in years saying some variation of “OH MY GOD CONGRATS FOR GETTING MENTIONED ON THE STYLE ROOKIE!” (for the record, friends of mine from middle school, we wrote about it here first).

Tavi was in town for Toronto’s Idea City, at which she spoke about the need for a Sassy-esque teen magazine for the new generation. We had a chance to talk to her about about the state of fashion today.

Is there a difference between fashion and style? If so, what is it?
There definitely is, but I’m not sure how to pinpoint it. I think style has a much clearer definition than fashion, which is such a broad term… I think the difference that is the most clear to me is that style gives more opportunities to be subversive while fashion usually entails rules. If you’re stylish, you’re creative and original, and if you’re fashionable, you know how to look attractive and uncontroversial.

When evaluating a fashion collection, do you think the aesthetics or the context of the clothes are more important?
I think about this a lot. I’m really not sure. I think it’s very difficult to project ideas through clothing, and I like that designers are creative with their sets and music and hair and makeup. It makes it more fun, plus fashion is very much about presentation. And, even if a designer chose not to use these elements at all, they would still be making a statement, I think? So I guess that when I look at a collection, I use the theatrical elements to help me interpret the designer’s message, but I interpret the strength of the actual collection by looking at how well the clothes can stand on their own without being dependent on the set and music and all that.

Has your opinion on any fashion labels changed after meeting the designers and learning more about the ideas that go into their lines?
Yes. Seeing Kate Mulleavy talk about her dresses (which I was seeing in real life for the first time, which is quite an experience) and about all the work and inspiration that goes into them put Rodarte even higher up on my favorite designers list.

I love Prada and Comme des Garcons forever, but learning that there was more of a team and less Miuccia Prada and Rei Kawakubo doing the designing was a bit disheartening. I suppose it was ignorant of me to imagine them sketching in a dark room with a single lightbulb alone at night, but still.

What level (if any) of responsibility and accountability do you think the fashion industry should have in presenting a diverse image of beauty? Do you think it’s important? Why? Where do you see opportunities for change (if you think change is needed)?
Oh man, hefty issue. It all goes back to the Charles Barkley quotation about being a role model… on one hand, I don’t think artistic vision should be compromised, but on the other, these images have influence whether those behind them want them to or not. Change is certainly needed but I’m not sure how to go about that. Something is definitely to be said for the way blogs and the Internet could help this movement.

What role do you think magazines have in fashion?
They have become more sacred now in the age of the Internet. Now you know that what you’re getting in the magazine you’re buying is really good, because it made print and didn’t go on their website. They’re part of the conversation in a way they weren’t before… I think magazines now play the role of inspiring as opposed to acting like guides, since it’s more convenient for everyone if trend reports and all that remain online. There is a need in magazines for timelessness, now that fashion moves even quicker than usual because of the Internet. The role they play is to give the readers the best of the best of the best; what is special enough to print. I think there’s also something to be said for the way print is becoming an increasingly more intimate thing… I know that my favorite magazines that I buy in print and cherish deserve tangibility either because they’re so beautiful and inspiring and high-quality or because I relate to them and that’s more special to hold in your hands. Olivier Zahm just complained about how bloggers don’t allow editors to have points of view, and this isn’t true — editors just need to strengthen theirs (I am certainly not saying all editors in general, I mean the ones who are getting nervous). When it comes to bloggers vs. editors, it’s the best content that will be the most successful. But really, I don’t think there needs to be any winners. Different people like different things and have different taste, and I think there can be something for everyone. Let’s all just coexist together. Man, I’m such a hippie!

interview by Anna Fitzpatrick
photography courtesy of thestylerookie.com

Last weekend, while I was sprawled on the bed editing photos, my husband Ted was working his way through old VHS tapes, transferring them all to DVD to preserve the hours and hours of TV he copied though his life. He’s got some great stuff, but the best of it is old episodes of The New Music, hosted by the great Jeanne Beker. Every outfit is fantastic, but this one, from the early 1980 episode, is my absolute favorite. How awesome is this?

hearts, Serah-Marie

It all started with beige. Beige in the grandiose dining room of the Recchi villa, beige in Emma’s knit sweater and khakis as she prepares for her father-in-law’s birthday dinner. When the guests arrive, Emma changes into a conservative rich purple dress of a 1940s silhouette, her hair down a la Grace Kelly. She is silent as the men are talking business and speaks only to play the part of supportive mother. The wardrobe that follows is a range of light gray-blues and whites, worn as Emma performs her daily errands.

I have adored Tilda Swinton ever since I saw Orlando (Sally Potter, 1992) – mainly because of the film’s total dependence on costumes to denote its narrative progression. In Io Sono L’amore (Luca Guadagnino, 2009), costume plays a similar role and Swinton succeeds in wearing them to enhance, not distract, her character development.

Clad exclusively in Jil Sander, Swinton plays Emma Recchi, a porcelain-clean trophy wife of an Italian textile tycoon and a loving mother of two. She spends her days picking up laundry and visiting her husband at his office. Io Sono L’amore speaks of the repression of individuality within the shackles of rituals and order.

The dialogue is minimal and the acting style is bare, but these are compensated by a rich compilation of stylistic elements. John Adams’s operatic score voices the feelings of anger and betrayal that are never properly expressed. The cinematography fluctuates between blurry and bleached out (symbolizing ecstasy) and detailed and revealing (truth). The colours are sometimes muted, sometimes incredibly vibrant. These changes highlight the stages of Swinton’s character development.

This motif is even more obvious in the mise-en-scene, revealing Emma’s true colours. Raf Simons’s sleek, minimalist silhouettes and the emptiness of the setting around her at first echo the quietness of the film. But it is unsettling how Emma’s elegant wardrobe and pale skin set her apart from the rest of the cleavage-bearing and tanned upper-crust Italians. Over the course of the film, this incongruity hints at how Emma’s lifestyle has never been an appropriate fit for her identity or character.

One afternoon Emma, dressed in a vivid blue dress, finds Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini) – her son’s friend and a talented chef – in her kitchen. (It is similar to her dinner party ensemble, the night of her first encounter with Antonio.) Their interaction reaches a higher level as they share a love for cooking. Emma’s wardrobe and character are growing bolder.

Their third encounter occurs when Emma lunches at Antonio’s family restaurant. The food arrives; a spotlight is fixed on Emma. She is distinguished from her companions, and appears to experience a deliciously orgasmic experience induced by Antonio’s dish. For this scene, Simons has coloured his grey F/W ’08 dress into a rich, vibrant red.

Emma’s desires and impulses progressively dictate her actions, paralleled by a bolder change of colours and scenery. She drives away to Sanremo in a bright orange dress and in her second visit she wears a pair of orange pants. This major palette change is extreme at first and even out of character – but it soon reveals that being a wealthy trophy wife is not part of her identity after all.

Io sono l’amore (I am Love)
Dir: Luca Guadagnino, 2009
Review by Marsya Maharini