You know the shot of Linus waiting in the pumpkin patch with the sign welcoming the Great Pumpkin? That’s sort of me whenever the time rolls around for a new Aimé Leon Dore collection to drop. I have this silly obsession with the brand founded by Teddy Santis in 2014. The brand fits in with the other like Rowing Blazers and Noah that blur the line between skater, hip-hop head and boarding school trouble makers. All three of those brands are constantly dropping things I consider taking out a loan to cop or possibly, even more desperately, pimping out my old-ass dog on Instagram and trying to make him a social media celebrity. I don’t know how I’d pull it off, but I’ve thought about it before, believe me. But the other thing about all three brands is that they all have some understanding that the preppy look doesn’t necessarily have to be “trad” or whatever. It’s not all vintage Brooks Brothers and madras (although I do love those things). The whole point of preppy, if you actually take time to look through your copy of Take Ivy is that it was all pretty irreverent. The whole reason those looks are timeless is because the young men in those photos who undoubtedly come from money all look cool because they really don’t care. As the years rolled on, the whole preppy thing basically became cosplay and the fun was eventually stripped of it. If you want to get an understanding of what I mean, check out this interview Charles McFarlane did with Jonathan Wertheim on Jonathan’s terrific Berkley_Breathes Instagram account.
The three brands in question, however, all took the preppy thing as a starting point, then twisted it and used other influences to make it something more interesting. Rowing Blazers is the closest thing to old-school preppy, but Jack Carlson gets that whole point of the look is to have fun, and he blends in all kinds of influences from the last 40 or 50 years to make rugby shirts and hats interesting. Noah of often reaches back to the hardcore and other weird fringes of the music world for inspiration, whether it’s Youth of Today or Fishbone, it’s obvious that the designers grew up skating and going to shows in weird venues.
Aimé Leon Dore, on the other hand, definitely reaches out to the hip-hop world more. If that wasn’t obvious when they worked with Nas on a pair of Clark’s Wallabees, the most iconic footwear in rap history besides Jordans and Timberlands, then the latest collection’s introduction by DJ Premier should leave no room for wondering what inspires Aimé.

Just like the other two brands, New York City also plays a large part in influencing Aimé Leon Dore. The Yankees and Mets hat that retail for $185 each and show up on the heads of the models should leave no doubt of that. But there’s also always little flourishes. The thing that sticks out to me the most is the vintage-looking “World’s Borough” blue corduroy jacket that I noticed was the first thing I would have liked to own that sold out the fastest.
Of course, the irony is that A.L.D. is very New York, but I could only wear most of the stuff in this collection for maybe two or three weeks of the season it’s designed for since spring lasts about four days in NYC and then it’s too damn hot. The perfect patchwork cardigan that is maybe my favorite thing in the entire collection, is maybe suited for two or three weeks of “spring” at best, and likely will see more time in the fall. The same goes with some of the other great knitwear and jackets that, if I could afford any of it, I’d probably not take out until I noticed the leaves on the trees turning red or orange. The only problem is I can’t wait until autumn to try pulling the trigger on any of this stuff because nearly everything Aimé puts on the site sells out immediately. So, alas, it’s just my favorite brand to admire at this point.
Nora Ephron’s Egg-White Omelette Essay
For no good reason other than I tend to think about Nora Ephron a lot, I looked up her 2007 essay about why egg-white omelettes are stupid that was originally published at the Huffington Post. Besides being 100% on board with the whole thing, philosophically speaking, I just really love remembering there was a time when if a person like Nora had a gripe that they were able to log on and use Huffington Post’s contributor platform that was one of the truly great free content scams on the Internet for a long time. I mean, everything is copy and all that, and I assume there was some sort of deal in place between HuffPo and the bigger, well-known celebrity bloggers like Ephron who helped popularize the website, but I really miss that kind of Internet in a lot of ways. Like, give me anybody kvetching about food choices over most of the other garbage I consume on a daily basis and I’ll be happy. This part really gets me:
I don't want to confuse this with something actually important, like the war in Iraq, which it's also time to put a halt to, but I don't seem be able to do anything about Iraq, whereas I have a shot at cutting down consumption of the egg-white omelette, especially with the wind of this new book in my sails. (The book is called Good Calories, Bad Calories, and it's written by Gary Taubes.)
I guess that’s part of the reason I’ve been enjoying Substack. I’ve seen a handful of writers I like (as well as some I really don’t…) just log on and kvetch. And if they aren’t kvetching, they’re sharing little bits of whatever. I know that’s what Twitter is/was/should be for, but in order to read anything on Twitter, you have to focus on the one tweet you might care about and block out 10,000 crappy ones. Many of which, I’ll admit, are often written by me.
I’ve been enjoying this sort of freedom to do whatever besides my actual writing for other publication. It’s a nice exercise, and it’s fun to be able to share stuff I care about in a more relaxed capacity. Like the ye olde days of blogging, I have zero idea if I’ll be able to even make a dime off this, but also like those Blogspot and Wordpress days of yore, I don’t think I care all that much.
Maidstone Revisited
Speaking of writers from the middle of the 20th century who probably wrote for Esquire and made movies (although some much better than others), I finally dialed up Norman Mailer’s Maidstone on Criterion instead of watching some crappy old bootleg version of it. And, honestly? I sort of enjoyed it this time around because I wasn’t watching it for the first time in a time to gawk at this weird film Norman Mailer made way. I certainly enjoyed finding this ad online that will forever haunt my dreams.
I’ve always been on the fence when it comes to Mailer the writer. I’ve never loved any of his books, but I’ve always found him freakishly weird and entertaining as a figure. Maybe watching and actually enjoying the whole very weird experience that is Maidstone will get me to revisit his works. At the very least, it gives me a reason to post the infamous fight with Rip Torn scene that is one of the most messed up and also incredible things I’ve ever seen.