Back in Black

"Dress on a dime" was a little too depressing for our latest Style Issue.

by Brian Howard

I think the most exciting thing about putting together this year's Style Issue was how easy it was to put together. Which is not to suggest that it was easy at all. Quite the contrary. When Felicia D'Ambrosio, Carolyn Huckabay and I first sat down to talk about what the hell to say about style in this, the season of closing boutiques and budget everything, we thought the idea of a "dress on a dime" issue was just too depressing. We figured, why don't we have some fun with this?

We came up with a wish list of trendy Philadelphians, taste-makers in their respective fields (though not necessarily fashion). We wrote their names on a whiteboard. Then on the other side of the whiteboard we listed our favorite local stylists/designers/fashion plates and drew lines from one side to the other. Cool, we thought, though I don't think we were sure we could actually make it work. I mean, we were talking about coordinating photo shoots with seven really busy models and six really busy stylists, one very busy photographer — the inimitable Michael T. Regan — hooking them all up with hair/makeup folks from Jean Madeline Aveda, and making it all happen at locations that were generally, you guessed it, busy.

We crossed our fingers as we turned our Meal Ticket blogging dynamo, Felicia D'Ambrosio, loose on the project. And then, like Storm of the X-Men, Flea conjured all these disparate forces and made them do her bidding. We got Chifa chef Chad Williams (styled by Catzie Vilayphonh). Dance icon Nichole Canuso (styled by Susie Hawkins). 700 Club impresario Kurt Wunder (styled by Matthew Izzo). Star illustrator Kris Chau (styled by Shari Roulin). Rhymesayer Ethel Cee (styled by Donja Love). Artist/photographer Amber Lynn Thompson (who styled herself). And in something of a coup, we even landed coverboy Duncan Black, aka Atrios, the juggernaut blogger at Eschaton (styled by Gina Faiola; peep his clothes' credits here).

I asked Black, a guy read by millions but who keeps a relatively low profile, what it was like to be dressed up like a doll.

"Gina was great, good at making sure I was at ease and comfortable," said the man who can launch a thousand comments with a single sentence. "I told her I was game for just about anything she came up with, and had fun with her choices."

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

Though he's been photographed for publications before, this is the first time he's been asked to wear anything other than his own clothes, which he says he prefers to be "comfortable and easy to wear."

Black isn't one of those pajamas-wearing Internet recluses. He's known for being quite socially active. Yet he can still move around Philadelphia pretty surreptitiously.

"I get recognized every three months or so, which is about the level of public recognition I'm happy with," says Black. "I don't hide my identity, but I don't put a picture up prominently on my site either, so only people who care to search for it will see what I look like."

He'll likely be a lot more recognizable now. Is there a twinge of vindication — given that he's been rather critical of the media on Eschaton — of being on the cover of a newspaper?

"Oh, I honestly find the attention bloggers get, approving or disapproving, to be somewhat amusing," says Black. "Vindication that what I do has some value comes on those rare moments when I see that an idea I've come up with or given attention to seems to have some small amount of influence on our discourse and the world."

So was the experience at all enlightening?

"After finally coming to terms with the fact that dark jeans were in fashion," says Black, "I was informed that light jeans are coming back in style."

(bhoward@citypaper.net)