OFFICIAL BLOG

Fieldnotes

Wednesday Martin on Manhattan's Manic Style

Published by Wednesday Martin
Illustration by Tripat Kaur Kang
Illustration by Tripat Kaur Kang

In the city that never sleeps, fashion, too, has insomnia. “Being fashionable in New York can be a blood sport, especially now that designers are feeling the pressure to make their clothes immediately available after runway shows,” observes Bob Morris, frequent contributor to the New York Times’ Styles section and Town & Country magazine. “Who gets her hands on the signature Proenza Schouler skirt or Marc Jacobs dress before it gets into the stores all those months later?” Like so many things in Manhattan — spots in elite kindergartens, getting into Stacey’s 8:30 a.m. Soul Cycle class, the Hamptons summer beach pass quest — it’s a race.


Studying the Rich

Published by Wednesday Martin
In her manifesto "Up the Anthropologist," Laura Nader called for social scientists to study not only the poor and disenfranchised, as sociologists and anthropologists long have, but also the powerful and wealthy.  She referred to this as "studying up" and noted that in concert with studying down and studying sideways, it helped generate a full portrait of a culture. It also helps us understand how elites reproduce their privilege and what Antonio Gramsci called cultural hegemony.

Wife Bonuses? Try Sexless Summers in the Hamptons

Published by Wednesday Martin

Nothing could be more foreign to the tribe I studied and lived among than giving up on their own personal upkeep—the zealous, dedicated striving to be a particular kind of fabulous, fit, and chic Manhattan Geisha with children. The type of women who get “wife bonuses.” But what was the point of all this effort, this endless fighting and trying and depriving and especially all this working on and working at our selves? It certainly wasn’t sex—you could call uptown a sexless Sahara.