BLOG #19: FASHION DNA MEMORY (ALT TITLE: BIG PEPPER)

Snow day

Last Saturday I watched Chronology of Water directed by Kristen Stewart. I saw it at Angelika with my new friend Akosua (I am inherently against Substack except for my job and select friends including hers called Consumption Report read it here) and her friend Joel. There is a lot to say about the guts of the film, like the mechanics or like, the organs and how they function in a more body-functional way. But the most interesting guts are the ones like chutzpah, as in the film’s innards; how the first of the movie’s five parts cuts the plot’s fleshy torso open, and how the next four parts are spent spilling the offal, splashing in their associated viscera, and then eventually closing it back up with a level of acceptance thot doesn’t feign closure because, well, in this world that’s not real. Things keep going. Lidia Yuknavitch is a real person. Stewart recognizes that adapting Chronology of Water the memoir into a movie cannot bring anyone closer to Lidia or to herself or to the world or to pain that doesn’t belong to them. And so what she does so expertly in this directorial debut, is she does not pretend to understand; she leaves room for perspective and reflection on pain writ large, the kind that keeps going even if it’s passed, through Lidia as the vessel. As reported from Vogue, Lidia hasn’t actually seen the movie yet. And on sharing her story with Stewart to be able to adapt for the screen, she says: “What she made for the screen is all hers.” And what Stewart urges us to feel is all ours; no pity, sorrow, sympathy. Story. Character. Two key and unfortunate elements that lack for most women characters in film.

No spoilers; because I want everyone to go buy a ticket to see this movie and support. The first part of the movie’s five is really heavy about these memory flashes, brought back when Lidia is writing her dissertation, only to when she moves on. But, importantly so, her moving on is not “getting over it,” it is flowing, like water; a premise in the book that Stewart expertly represents in the film (apart from a few pacing issues that honestly are neither here nor there for me, someone familiar with Lidia’s work). The central question we as viewers are left with is, what is water? What is our water? 

 

Water is memories, and for Lidia to connect herself to those fragments she’d dissociated herself from, she must attach them to material. That’s what we see in so much of the visual cohesion in the film, it situates us in Lidia’s perspective; the orange of her swimsuit against the blue of the competitive swimming pools, the pink tile of her childhood bathroom, the wet of her first orgasm after telling her father fuck you motherfucker. They’re all water. Free flowing, unable to become time, and the best possible way to explain this life of Lidia; that’s the premise of the book and the movie does so visually with these cues. An expert treatment makes that metaphor come to life, makes that adaptation all the better.

 

It also does this through the styling…both colors and through the clothing (name clothing). The DNA memory Lidia has in her clothing; there’s a moment where right before she goes to Texas for college she smells a striped poplin-looking pair of what seem to be pajamas from her sister who ran away; it smells like Joan of arc, the bath, protection, orange (the color). There’s a line Lidia writes in her notebook as a teenager: my room holds the dark and deep of my body, it smells like sweat and chlorine. Chlorine, it unlocks a flash within me, the viewer, my own Lidia if we called Lidia Maya. I think about water. my own chronology. Synchronized swimming. My own relationship to Kathy Acker. How I nearly couldn’t finish My Mother: Demonology because I have such a healthy relationship with my father but I felt it just the same. The time I drowned just a little bit but it wasn’t an emergency. Concussion. Hell. Violin rosin. The first boy to think I was pretty. Orange (the color the blossom). In my hand a practice suit elastic crumbled 17 years old its dust now rattling in the straps like the cartilage in all my joints. I get back in the pool again last year . And I get out because the cold wet is DNA memory. It smells like my early fear. It tastes scared. 

 

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DNA memory isn’t to be confused with a sense of nostalgia, which is what I think Jonathan Anderson is getting very wrong with his Dior. His Fall 2026 menswear was full of…choices. Most of which, stand-alone, I am actually not mad at. The fruity flapper-era sequin tanks, like yeah. Those khaki puffers with the funky curtain pull tassels as the fasteners? Also yeah. Certain mainstays he’s installed like the piccadilly collar and other little English tailoring bits, like yeah I’m wet for those especially when done more relaxed; that’s dope. It’s just truly if I see another Hussar jacket/military inspired whatever mixed with some rock the casbah ’60s psychedelic Zandra Rhodes flowy opium mumu bullshit, I’m going to show Stephen Miller what a real domestic terrorist looks like. (This is 100% a joke please do not investigate me I am a harmless broke freelance writer). Anyways this look is just recycled Megsuperstarprincess and House of Iconica 2021–2023 with Dior budget and some Junya Watanabe wigs sent down the runway. Put together like this is…a bit schizophrenic, and not in the good way. Which is weird, because usually I feel like the Jonathan Anderson touch is being able to make things that otherwise can’t work work; see the men’s angel wing naked-Loewe, all the leathery stuff he did for women’s Loewe. Maybe the 14 collections a year is finally catching up to him. Jonathan, do you smell toast? Are your arms stiff? 

 

Or, maybe I’m ignorant and out of touch. Maybe JWA is tapping into his DNA memory of art-school, perhaps following a lineage/free-association of such codes of Rei Kawakubo (and her associated acts) styling conventions that just didn’t fully materialize. This over-adornment thing is somewhat all the rage at the moment, where accessories seem to extend into the realm of heirloom but you can tell that they definitely are something new and purchased from a store, like those Dior cabochon logo belts. I do quite like the giant messenger bags, I will not lie. And the snakeskin club foot-y loafers. What is it with you and those big galoot shoe silhouettes, Johnny boy? Anyways.

 

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Where do all of these things connect? They come together with where you feel them. Their guts spill out when you dare to remember, and remember through an object. For me, and for Lidia, and for KStew, and for the most sentimental fashion designers (imo), you’re remembering through the clothing as you create it. It’s a conduit as much as a vessel for the future. That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever written but I just started drinking as I finish this and it’s 100% sincere so it’s allowed. 

 

I’ll tell you what I will remember about this moment right now. I am in my nice poplin pajamas under a microfibre blanket while Harry makes us mapo tofu. He just said “Yeehaw.” It smells like delicious spicy fried pork. It is snowing outside, a so-called unprecedented snowstorm that worried me yesterday because it made me think of seminal Jake Gyllenhaal film The Day After Tomorrow (2004). We are listening to a playlist I made called “Mucus Membrane.” Harry just said “Mm, mm, mm.” Because he knows his tofu is good. I am going to eat some now. I am happy.