Tariffs and Handbags

Or why we should be careful what we pick and choose from the past

Requiem for a Nun is a Faulkner novel I’ve never heard of before yet I do know this line from it, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” The line sprang into my head out of the blue today as I was shooting a vintage-style bag for a grandma-core brand, but I think it’s haunting me like an unmelodious ear worm because I’d been reflecting on grandma-core in general, trying to decipher what that means for the sake of attempting to create clever, compelling content for the brand but also to explain my own personal connection to vintage bits and baubles. As in is grandma-core simply wearing librarian-coded sweater vests and brown wooly maxi skirts, making your own jam, which is SHOCKINGLY easy to do by the by and explains why my kindly French grandmother’s most bitter insult was accusing other women of buying their jam in supermarkets, or is grandma-core something more?

I needed to interpret it to create content, but I’m always reflecting on why I’m drawn to clothing from the past, all while not viewing the past with rose-colored glasses whatsoever. That disclaimer aside, I also always feel as if I need to apologize for my frivolous love of fashion, and I’m trying not to do that here but I have to admit politics and fashion do make for odd bedfellows in this day and age of MAGA monster Republicans who eschew style in preference for a hideous kind of status— very expensive and very ugly blow-up, over-filled sex doll lips, cheap polyester red hats with expensive suits, hair extensions and a Rolex worn while cavorting for the cameras in front of prisoners. A very expensive and very literal war crime.

To MAGA men and women, style is only status and so their costly status looks cheap, because fashion is wearable art and self-expression, and they’re not expressing themselves; they’re expressing Donald Trump’s self. Bill Cunningham called fashion the “armor to survive every day life” and I suppose that’s also why MAGA fashion is so monstrous, because so too is their vision of the world.

One of the most beautiful parts of finding your style is feeling it draw out your own essence, making the you that is you even more tangibly you. Still, fashion in the context of our burning planet times seems sometimes silly, almost unnecessary. But I would put to you there are ways in which our costumes define us whether we like it or not: you can often spot a Trump supporter in the wild, maybe because of the freshly-spilled blood hue of their wicked caps or the painfully bleached blonde hair that so many conservative women adopt. My theory about that: they’d rather look like a damaged version of the white supremacist ideal of femininity than like themselves. What is looking like oneself? That’s very hard to say. Is wearing vintage looking like myself when I’m just imitating another look? I think it’s a little different for me. It’s about care and detail and beauty.

In the past, everyone seemed to dress up. When you watch old candid films, you rarely spot a man or women without a jaunty hat, the men in pressed trousers and a tie, the women in nipped-waist dresses they probably sewed themselves to their own measurements. I think that’s what I like about the past: there’s a care for their own clothing that’s evident in those old, eerie street scenes. And yet so much from the past is horrific: the racism, the lack of understanding of mental illness, the homophobia, the tariffs. It’s funny how Donald Trump and I can both look back at the past and take such different things from it. Me, a handbag style. Him, ruinous economic policies. Is it the very different images we have of ourselves, our style that causes us to pick and choose such different things from the past? I seek beauty and meaning, he seeks status and oppression. Or whatever you’d call 19th century-style tariffs and the tactics of erstwhile monarchies. Knowing all that, I still can’t shake my admiration for tailored clothes or a keen wish to bake my own banana bread. Perhaps it’s that Trump has taken from the past it’s macro power dynamics, and I have taken its desire to care for the littlest of details. To learn to sew, to grow my own tomatoes, boil my own jam from fresh fruit from my co-op, bake banana bread— all shockingly easy things our grandmothers can do but few of us can accomplish nowadays. I know there’s a slippery slope when you look back at that past with too much nostalgia. Before you know it, you’re shaking off the flour from baking bread and suggesting baby bonuses to birth more babies. I would like to state I believe in vaccines and human rights, but I also think it’s a shame more of us can’t mend our torn socks or grow a seedling in a pot. These are talents most of our grandmothers had. There are good things from the past, too.

As for the bad… Here’s a few of the rotten, retrograde things the Trump administration got up to this week:

Monday- Pope Francis’s death last weekend and his funeral this week took up most of the news this week as did talk of who the conclave of cardinals might pick to be the next Pope. This was my favorite, and a frankly hilarious, take on the subject.

Israel sanitizes its culpability in the slaughter of 15 first responders and paramedics by blaming “professional failures” for the gruesome incident. M’kay.

The big battle last week between Harvard and the Trump administration has turned into a farce with the Trump administration pretending they sent their letter of demand in error, while simultaneously doubling down on their demands and making plans to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status.

Tuesday-

It was Earth Day, and no one I knew in the environmental activist community wanted to celebrate it this year. Many asked the question instead, “Shouldn’t every day be Earth Day?” If your answer is no, you should probably read this piece. It’s about the world’s most Arctic airport, and how its runway is melting. Yikes.

Great hit piece on scumbag billionaires from Robert Reich.

60 Minutes top producer quits, saying he’s unhappy about the environment. But not that environment. He means because he lost his journalistic independence.

In happier journalistic news, a jury found that the New York Times did not libel former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Wednesday-

On Earth Day, the Environmental Protection Agency fired or reassigned hundreds of employees charged with ensuring that federal policies, grants and initiatives protected underserved communities from disproportionately experiencing negative health and environmental impacts from pollution and climate change.

A New Jersey wildfire has spread to over 8,500 acres. It is still only 60% contained as of now. Seems like a FANTASTIC time to be gutting the EPA.

Those crazy, radical liberals over at the International Monetary Fund (joking) issued a stark warning about President Trump’s unpredictable tariff policy and countermeasures by American trading partners: If the situation persists, US prosperity will suffer. Thanks, MAGA! Are we winning yet?

Pete Buttigieg sits down for an interview with the podcast Flagrant, gets roasted for it online, offers this explanation.

The U.S. pushes forward a peace plan that favors Russia, and I am frankly SHOCKED. Shocked. (No, I am not.)

Thursday-

In more fantastic environmental news, according to a new report, harmful bleaching has grown to include 84% of the ocean’s coral reefs. Can I get another hip hip hooray for gutting the EPA?

Kyiv hit by massive Russian drone and missile attack. As for Crimea, Trump wants Zelensky to give the territory up, saying on Wednesday that Crimea "was lost years ago", while Zelensky pointed to a 2018 "Crimea declaration" by Trump's then secretary of state Mike Pompeo that said the US "rejects Russia's attempted annexation". Meanwhile, a Ukrainian woman whose apartment was badly damaged in the latest attack on Kyiv told the BBC (the source I site here) that she fled twice from her hometown in the east of Ukraine, an area that is now occupied by Russia.When asked whether Zelensky should give up those territories to get a peace deal done, she said no, because it would be "against our constitution".

Had to share, although I’m trying to keep this short. The Ukrainian people inspire me so much with their guts and courage.

Friday-

George Santos is sentenced to 87 months in prison for federal fraud charges.

The Trump administration weaponizes the FBI to intimidate judges by arresting Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly obstructing ICE’s attempt to kidnap a man from her courtroom.

Did I miss any important stories? What stories are you following this week or next?