In a Fashion vacuum, the Hyacinth Girls are here to bring Fashion

Vivienne has spent much of her evening dealing with a great deal of UNFASHION (where are you, wise and benevolent spirit of Anne Carson, to save me from the UNFASHION?!).  So much UNFASHION that she’s halfway convinced that the entire WORLD OF FASHION has been SUCKED UP INTO NOTHING BY THE NOTHING.  So much UNFASHION, in fact, that she and Zelda just had a Most Fashionable Conversation of Rage in which many Fashionable Discoveries were made, which may soon reach the blog, but, in the meantime, Vivienne is so unhinged by the UNFASHION she was forced to face that she cannot even talk about it, for spreading such UNFASHION to the world would be a serious act of UNFASHION.  And Vivienne detests UNFASHION.  And Vivienne instead loves Fashion.  And Vivienne loves you.  And so she gives you a Scene of Fashion, from Wigstock 2000:

And so she gives you a Fashionable Pet Shops Boys AbFab Mix of Fashion:

And so she lets you in on one of the Most Fashionable Revelations of The Evening, which is that PATSY IS FABULOUS with this Sponge Osmosity created from AbFab clips.  Enjoy, and remember, kids: BE FASHIONABLE AS OTHERS SHALL BE FASHIONABLE UNTO YOU.

Lacroix, darling.  Lacroix.

Sweetie Darling The Stairwell

California lovely the roof off lovely
over it the road the road lovely

there used to be here your language
watch you foul you language I am

thin a bee is it where is it find it
we need more don’t leave right well

then a bee a bee is it a small hello
cut it off he’s very nice cut it off I have

to get out of here darling Mummy’s here
sweetheart I’m going to call the filth

the pigs just drink it sweetie no fabulous
no fantastic no I like this one no this

one is the one this one here what is this
sweetie we tried didn’t we we didn’t want is this

They call me the wanderer, yeah, the wanderer, I roam around around around around around around around.

Vivienne will make a confession in order to provide this Fashionable Poemlogue of Fashion with proper context: Vivienne does not DO scary. I mean, she absolutely does not DO it, in any form: books, comic books, newspaper articles about ghosts and goblins, movies, television shows (excepting, of course, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for she knows that Her Future Husband Giles will always keep her safe), stories about men with hooks told around campfires during Girl Scout camp outings. In fact, Vivienne never joined said Girl Scouts, just because she knew said stories would be required, and she does not DO said stories.

Therefore and thusly, Vivienne avoids Scary Books — including but not limited to Stephen King, Dean Koontz, The Goosebumps Series, and the Baby Sisters Club Mystery Series AND Mystery Diaries — like the plague of her subconscious that such books are. Therefore and thusly the second, Vivienne was quite shocked and surprised when, upon finishing the last sentence of Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, she felt herself overcome with a cold sweat and a feeling quite like a scream rising in the back of her throat as she realized, right then and there, that she had just read The Most Terrifying Book Ever.

Another brief digression: see, Vivienne often likes to visualize herself, in the midst of The Single Life, as herself living the life of, say, Patsy on Absolutely Fabulous, bumbling around saying unintelligible but nonetheless miraculously witty things, happily puttering about her apartment above the OddBins and making conceptual art out of empty vodka bottles, smoking fashionably in fashionable outfits and heels which would never be practical for pushing a stroller, and somehow maintaining a Fabulous Career of Fashion in the meantime. But then Vivienne remembers that Ab Fab is a comedy, and that the reason Patsy is so funny as a character is that the general population is glad that they are not her. And Vivienne feels that strange echoing sound of sadness within her, the same sound she heard amplified ad infinitum after finishing Housekeeping and realizing that, just as the characters drift, she drifts, and drifts, and drifts. For weeks — I am not kidding you — for WEEKS Vivienne awoke in a cold sweat, moaning and sitting upwards in bed after dreaming that her apartment was filled with stray cats and newspapers and wild strawberry stems — and Vivienne does not DO that kind of nightmare.

Anyway.

Vivienne has recently had a number of Experiences (she will, for once, exercise restraint in not giving The Specifics here) that brought this feeling back, and is bracing herself for tonight, when her subconscious will surely throw back at her those cats and those newspapers and that old car of an unidentifiable color. And so, for tonight’s OuLiPoPoem, I’ve done what is essentially a sacrilege, for, no matter how unspeakably terrifying it is, Robinson’s novel is also the utmost in perfection: I’ve performed line stretching with two sentences from Housekeeping.

Keeping

She was not inclined to move.
Her eyes inclined themselves

upwards, counted the stars
spackle-blown to her ceiling. She counted

each ceramic girl caught mid-twirl
by their molds. She thought she could

hear her hands complain, their soft
urgent wish to be wings.

She was stillness until she became motion.
She knew what chores to do. She folded

the tea towels, tidied the spoons sunk
in the silverware tray’s shallows. It occurred

to her that the window was a screen
on which her face was projected, distorted

but clear. She could hear, if not the particular
words and conversations, at least the voices

of people in the kitchen, the gentle and formal
society of friends and mourners

that had established itself in her house
to look after things. They took her towels

to their own homes, laundered them, baking
soda and water. They tucked sprigs of lavender

between silk slips and underwear. The shelves
shone dustless, each ceramic figurine

a good little girl, happily motionless
in her happy motionless dress. She envied them

their plaster, their staid and solid calm.