Let’s Get Weird…

I’ve always hated the term “girl crush.” What, it’s like the lady’s version of “no homo”? Why am I having to prove my interest and fascination is appropriately non-gay? That digression aside, if I had a girl crush (or a talent crush, or a friend crush) it would certainly be on Laurel Pantin.

The first time I saw her- almost 15 years ago!- she was looking ultra eternal it-girl across a party. Her hair was short and bleached blonde and her outfit was mod but not in an ironic way and for a second I thought “it’s so weird that Edie Sedgwick is here at this daytime fashion event at a photo studio in the meatpacking district in the year of our lord 2012.” But no, it was not Edie but Laurel, summoning something essential about good style: it’s timeless (which does not mean bland) and it can transport you.

When I got on this app, what made it immediately addictive wasn’t just the chance to fire off musings at random (though I do like that.) It was meeting all these really compelling women- in some cases re-meeting!- and getting to go live and direct into their minds. I may have been too self-conscious to approach Laurel properly in 2012 (it was a real “she already hates me” era in the ole’ brain) but now I could get a sense, from her funny, tender and very cool newsletter Earl Earl- of just how expansive and inclusive her approach to fashion, and friendship, really is. I love that she makes getting dressed irreverent and fun, and how open she is about things like sobriety and aging and motherhood. She’s got zero “you can’t sit with us” energy. It’s more like “hey, do you want to borrow a dress?” energy.

And through this app, she’s become one of my favorite people to text with (and to shop with, through her kooky, kind jewel box of a store Earl IRL- and now Earl URL, so we can always go there in our hearts and minds!)

So I am absolutely thrilled to have her as the inaugural guest in a new feature here, “Let’s Get Weird…”

This is a space where I can scoot around in the brains of people who fascinate and delight me, and ask them the questions I’ve been praying for answers to. (And we will be getting more answers from Laurel in her forthcoming book, which you can pre-order now!)

Thank you, Laurel, for being so generous with your wit, wisdom and yes- style.

Before we dive in- some of my treasures from Earl IRL: the taffeta gingham pants are Donni, natch. The sunglasses are Selima Optique and the t-shirt with the perfect worm is an Earl IRL original, with a drawing by Laurel’s daughter Phoebe.

The red skirt (which we’ve found can also be a tube dress, which felt like discovering electricity) glitter button down and chunky gleaming scarf are Zankov (Laurel got me obsessed with his loony knits) and she also selected this Presley Oldham strand of primary colored glass beads, which feels very Le Corbusier, and a quartz pendant by Matthew Swope, which serves “Sedona magic.”

Okay Laurel, let’s gab!

Lena: You call things “lovely uglies.” It makes me think of the French term Jolie Laid, which translates to “pretty ugly” (and I truly believe is the secret to any male hotness, but that’s another story.) What does it mean to you, that clash of ideas? When’s the first time you remember recognizing it?

Laurel: I totally agree re:male hotness, but for me it’s kind of tender, like loving the underdog! I like things that connect me back to their maker, and when I see something so strange and singular, and that has so much vision and someone’s point of view so obviously in it, I can’t help but love it. I like to think that someone made that to show someone else something very private to them in a way that is vulnerable but isn’t so much so directly. But in a more obvious way - I just really do love sparkle and color, especially things like that that are on an otherwise classic shape. The Simona Vanth plaid flip flops are a good example, they’re so loud and intense, but then at the end of the day it’s just a flip flop!

My favorite movie is and has always been To Wong Fu, and I remember watching the beginning montage of the queens getting ready for the ball and seeing all the makeup and the costumes, and thinking....I want to be THAT.

You have beautifully emotional responses to objects- they move you. What’s the first item you remember feeling that kind of glow about? For me it was a pink night light shaped like an angel fish from the 1950s that my mother found at the Chelsea flea market- I used to kiss it on the lips goodnight.

Oh I love that so much! I had a Son in Law poster with Pauly Shore on it and I had the biggest crush on him, I’d kiss him on the lips on my poster! I can’t remember the first time though, I’ve always been very squishy like that, but my mom had a sequin tube top from the 70s and when I was little little, like two, before I can really remember, I had a very very emotional response to it and wore it all the time as a dress.

I remember going to garage sales with my dad and picking up little random things expecting that one of them was going to have magic in it and would be THE TREASURE that changed my life. I really believed in the interior lives of objects.

I love that your philosophy isn’t about being hot and young, and yet the clothes you curate DO make you feel hot and young. How do you think about aging in the world of fashion? What do you like MORE about getting dressed in your forties than in your twenties?

I like it sooooo much more now! And I do like to feel hot, but feeling hot to me now means yummy feeling things on my skin, nothing tight, everything kind of slinky and horny. The difference to me between getting dressed in my 20s vs my 40s is so big, it's almost indescribable. I really know myself now and I'm not trying to prove something, which I was then. Now I'm trying to express something. I think a big part of it also has to do with living in LA vs NY. In NY getting dressed isn't really a choice, you are definitely going to be out in the world around other people. In LA there's a pretty good chance you won't, so I can choose to do the thing I love (get dressed) vs feeling obligated to every day to maintain appearances.

You’ve been working on a book, just started a website and have had Earl IRL for almost a year. Plus you’re a mom of two hilarious angels and you’re constantly writing. You said, in a really lovely way, that you credit all of it to being sober. I feel the same way- every good thing in my life comes from that place. But I’m curious- has it changed your taste at all?

It has definitely made me more confident in my own impulses and tastes. I had so much self-doubt when I was drinking and I just felt like I was a piece of shit, generally. So taking that away and starting to realize there was really nothing there to feel weird about in the first place has made me so much more me. I second guess myself a lot less and go more on gut than on brain. I'm like 99.9% gut anyway and my brain barely functions. You know how cockroaches have mini brains on their legs that can respond before their main brain (or nerve bundle or whatever they have) registers what's happening? I'm like that.

If you could only wear one color for the rest of time (any shade, but one color) what would it be? To be clear, the only alternative is to be Marie Antoinetted, sadly.

I love sequin and color, but I do love navy. Either hologram silver or navy.

What is the coziest time of your day? What’s the least cozy?

I sleep with my kids basically every night, I fall asleep alone and then they either come into bed with me or I go to them in the night. That’s the best. I’ll hear them wake up and in my head I’m like yessss.

The least cozy is when I have to do anything finance related, which is often because I have a store. I hate it so much.

When I first met you, almost fifteen years ago, I was intimidated because you had a bleached pixie cut and that seemed, to me, like the epitome of New York fashion girl dominance. I was spending sooo much time feeling like whatever the opposite of that was. So it was fascinating to learn that you also found the New York of that time challenging. What did it take for you to be comfortable letting go of some idea of what working in fashion looked like and creating your own? I think a lot of women labor under the idea that there is a way their life is “supposed” to look, and coming up with your own vision is really the bees knees of freedom.

Oh boy that is so NOT how I remember it, or myself! I also felt like the opposite of what I was supposed to be but I think a lot of that was that I was an alcoholic and didn’t recognize it and I carried around a lot of undiagnosed shame. I felt very dirty and not in a hot way.

I never ever wanted to move to LA, I actively hated LA when I’d visit, but covid, kids, etc etc, we wound up here, and I fought it for a long time because I think part of me felt like the only thing that “qualified” me was that I’d had cool jobs in New York and could do New York. I wasn’t sure what value I could add without it. And I had a hard time figuring it out, there was a lot of feeling like I’d given up, or I’d lost out, etc etc. I didn’t realize how hard working and how motivated I really am though until then, because I just couldn’t sit with it and I got busy instead. Little by little I started building a new path for myself here, and figuring out what my relationship to fashion, style, and writing was if I wasn’t part of a bigger media machine. It was tender because when you write your own newsletter and someone unsubscribes, or a brand doesn’t want you to go to their show or whatever, it feels like a direct attack on you, whereas when I was at a magazine it was about the magazine. That was hard to work through. But eventually I realized that it was easier for me to do all of this if I kind of put blinders on and don’t really read what any of my peers are doing, or if I mute them on Instagram, and just try and swim in my own bucket. That has been amazing and has released a lot of my self-doubt and self-consciousness. I love social media and I love substack but for other things. My IG feed is mostly mice, anteaters, clips from really weird surreal movies from the 60s and 70s, and pimple popping.

If you could enter someone else’s life for 24 hours - any time period, any human, you get to do all their stuff and sleep in their bed and touch their things and even kiss their spouse- who would it be and why?

This sounds so asshole-y but I’m pretty happy here! Or maybe someone who has a little clothing shop on an island in Greece or someone who’s a really fabulous surfer. I’d love to know what it feels like to be a good surfer. I’m also so scared of heights so maybe a skydiving instructor so I can feel what that’s like without having to do it. When I was younger I really wanted to be a marine biologist, I went to biology camp most summers in high school. I’d love to be someone living on a research ship studying invertebrates. Or the girl who goes to the deep sea in a submarine and gets to see all the deep sea creatures. Probably something with animals.

And then what’s the first thing you would do when you got dropped back into your own life? Snuggle my kids on the couch. I love to have them both laying on top of me at the same time, they call it “kitty pile”.

When you imagine yourself at 80, what are you wearing? What’s happening with your hair? My mother thinks women cutting their hair off after fifty is a form of tyranny and she got really into massive blingy jewels and brocade after a lifetime of minimalism. I like to think I’ll be in overalls with a blouse and platform sandals, holding a scepter. I’d love to hear your vision.

Ok, I saw myself at 80 at the Hollywood farmer’s market - I have a buzzed head and it’s dyed with leopard spots, and I’m wearing loose pants by Dries and a big button down with most of the buttons undone. I’m wearing a lot of bracelets, and really fabulous glasses, and I have pet rabbits. I still don’t cook, so

I have breakfast at a diner with my husband or a friend every morning, and then spend the whole day either reading quietly alone, or reading quietly with a friend and going on walks. Basically myself now except with a buzzcut and rabbits and reading quietly!

Love to my beautiful uglies,

Lena