you complete me

i know i've mentioned this to several of my friends in the past, but i have noticed that the washington post will often run style and culture articles similar to ones that ran in the new york times a couple weeks ago. conversely, the times will often run political analyses or observation stories similar to ones that ran in the post a few weeks earlier. 

today i noticed what i thought to be the reverse. an article about something political (obama) that first appeared in the times on 24 December and then in the post on 2 January. upon further investigation, this one could go both ways: it was about how obama's calm temperament can be attributed to his embrace of the "aloha" mindset found in hawaii. while obama is the focus, it is about the hawaiian mentality.

anyway, that was simply an aside. what really motivated this entry was my frustration with the post style section. in addition, i don't understand who they hire to write their style sections. this all started when, out of curiosity, i decided to look at the post's list of what's "in" and what's "out" for 2009. 

let's start with what's "in" since that is what's most important to reference in conversation or to acquire on your next shopping trip. the first several items mentioned i don't have much of a reaction to because regardless of its "trendiness" i'm never getting hooked on books about vampires, i have never been able to consistently subscribe to any "novelty" blog like lolcats or stuffwhitepeoplelike for much longer than a week or so, and i don't really watch television that much.

but then certain items started catching my attention: vampire rights (who cares?), boyfriend jeans, hulu, ray ban wayfarers, chefs who farm, honeycrisp apples, rachel maddow, jason wu, steampunk, watching puppies, birdcage heels, fixies, fleet foxes and some more items. 

i guess what i don't understand is why these are considered "in" for 2009 when most of these things have been on people's radars since 2008 and earlier. jason wu was a vogue fashion fund finalist and they did a whole spread on him in one of the magazines i read earlier in 2008. fixies were super trendy among the hipster crowd way back when I was still in Portland and the nytimes ran an extensive article on them and on steampunk quite some time ago. we saw katie holmes in her boyfriend jeans earlier this summer, chefs who farm have been with us since alice waters, fleet foxes were on everybody's best albums of 2008 and didn't they take the puppycam down already?

When i think of these "in" lists, I'm looking for something that is cutting edge, something no one has heard before. I'm not looking for a trend from 6-60 months ago. There are a lot of cultured people in DC, so why is it so difficult to find style contributers who aren't a year behind the times? 

i actually don't even have the energy to look at the "out" list, but needless to say, many of these things have been old trends well before 2007 ended (bragging about flourescent bulbs, chanel sunglasses, sliders, expensive strollers, organic toys).