In America, even the subs are super. As a Brit committed to the cause of underestimation, deprecation and bullishly blase back-footedness, I baulk at the insidious infiltration of that asinine adjective into the Queen’s E. Once the preserve of consonant-clipped, gym-slipped gals from Hampshire, super has been adopted by gloss-lipped, French-tipped, semi-illiterate US fashionistas and is now regularly to be found injecting a kind of affected, caffeinated excitement into our own magazines. It is a magnificent way of expressing enthusiasm paired with ennui. Perfect for a world where everything is eternally supernew, superhot. Supersuper.
One thing New Yorkers do superwell is effort, even in the midst of attempted effortlessness. Last Thursday I supercasually dropped into the VICE live music knees-up at Santos’ Party House on Lafayette (after some louche literary linguine at Elaine’s), and was plunged into a scene that could have been wet-dreamed into reality by those excellent online East Side street-dandy-spotters at ShitThreadsNoFriends and The Sartorialist.
Girls: shirts thick and plaid and shorts micro, circa Annie Hall 1977; nipples errant and hair long, loose and tousled circa Woodstock milkmaid 1969; specs oblong and black circa Buddy 1958. Boys: shirts thin and ratty and jeans skinny and grubby circa Blake Fielder Civil 2007; hair long, loose and tousled and beards thick and tortured circa JC 0BC; specs oblong and black circa Buddy 1958.
The music was angry fuzzy-fi nonsense, but hey – we wandered superlonely as, like, sexy left bank lumberjack supermodel clouds.
I heart NY.
[...] Paris may be the curlicued, calorie-controlled charmeuse with pristine avenue and trimmed bush; New York may be the earnestly on-trend ingenue with the lean, lubricious look; but our own ancient, [...]
[...] in their recession-hit pension pots; I’m talking about the sort of linguistic larceny that I once used as a smug stick with which to beat our transatlantic cousins but which seems to have infected the mouths, pages and posts of our own shores like a pandemic of [...]
[...] in their recession-hit pension pots; I’m talking about the sort of linguistic larceny that I once used as a smug stick with which to beat our transatlantic cousins but which seems to have infected the mouths, pages and posts of our own shores like a pandemic of [...]