My Instagram Discover feed is best described as a meeting place for Timothée Chalamet fan accounts and reptile videos. I have no idea why I’m attracting all this footage of lizards, though my friend Grace recently speculated that my feed is influenced by those I spend a lot of time around… as if implying that I’ve been passing long hours in the company of geckos and iguanas. Either way, when I’m not deep in the digital weeds with salamanders and Call Me By Your Name film stills, there are a few non-reptilian things that find their way into my line of sight and are ripe for the bookmarking.
In the spirit of Amelia and Haley’s recent archaeological digs into their own Instagram saved folders, I recently decided to take a peek into mine. When it comes to bookmarking, I abide by a couple of rules for what I collect: anytime I see someone wearing headwear that could pass as a red cap, be it a beret or a fez or a bowler hat, I hit save. I also must bookmark all instances of butter.
When I’m not busy worrying about my butter collection, these are the other accounts and subject matter I tune into, such as:
1. Foods other than butter!
Here is my ideal meal covering all of my main food groups, which Instagram has kindly served in three portioned courses:
First, please give me the biggest, briniest oysters on your menu.
This recipe covers all of my main food groups (save for a few vegetables):
And, eeeeeeeek! A sinfully tall tower of meringue.
(This is why I can’t write about food; it makes me hungry.)
2. Art!
This is the art that is making me feel acquisitive, featuring the first sweatshirt I’ve ever seen depicted in a painting, and a millennial pink knitted composition by a Danish artist.
I also adore Rebecca Clarke’s portraits in Alice Neel-ian colorways. Her work always reminds me that the one superpower I wish I had is to paint likenesses of people in a tropical range of colors.
Adi Goodrich is a set designer and her work is neat-o with a capital N. Look at how she transformed a wedding altar into a resplendent punch of Pop Art:
I am afraid of dogs, except when they are sea captains. Cut to: the pug. In a boat.
3. Witty Women!
Aminatou Sow, Molly Young and Happy Menocal are what I’d consider the perks to having an Instagram addiction: they break out of the singular voice seemingly everyone adopts when captioning their Instagrams, and instead entertain with their brief, droll insights.
Then there’s author Stephanie Danler for reading recommendations, and The OA‘s producer/creator/lead actor Brit Marling for keeping a close eye on the progress of the Netflix series’ second season as I impatiently await.
4. Window shopping!
Can you help me decide which Annie Lee Larson sweater I should buy?
I haven’t been able to decide since I started following her around 2014. I’m partial to the first one with a totemic arrangement, in light a recent hypothesis.
I love the editorial direction of this new start-up Rebecca Allen, which makes nude pumps across a spectrum of skin tones for women of color.
And then I have dreams about these new Jesse Kamm overalls (and the entire Napa Valley lifestyle that comes with them)…
…while being enchanted by this dress, which looks like it’d also make a good bedfellow.
LA-based manufacturer Everybody.World makes a flight suit (like a boiler suit, but when you’re airborne!) that can come personalized in any custom Pantone color. How will I ever decide on a shade? Head-to-toe robin’s egg blue? Camel? Mint green? Gen Z Yellow? Help me!
I want to dress like Luke Edward Hall. I have never had a “style icon” and avoid Pinterest like the plague but LEH’s style struck me. He is the British incarnation of my self-described part-prep school, part-art school, Polo-Bar-meets-Dylan’s-Candy-Bar aesthetic. He won me over by his apt power-clashing and colorblocking exhibited here (which also made me realize I should be buying 100% more menswear):
Fashion photography can start to seem repetitive after looking at too much of it — this campaign by Edun for Summer ’18 jumped off the page though, completely striking in a sea of images.
5. Home decor!
I remember listening to the Oh Boy episode with Christene Barberich while I was making dinner in my college apartment a few years ago, and she spoke about how her career in media related to an early exposure to the book Gnomes, which profiles forest gnomes as if they are a subject of a National Geographic cover story. I instantly DM’d her and told her I shared her affection in that strange, niche book — never in my wildest gnome-ridden dreams did I think we would meet on a photo shoot years later! My point being, I really love lawn gnomes and definitely want one in my future maximalist-marbled bathroom.
Prepare to be completely enchanted by Andrew Baseman and his practice of inventive repair: he collects and documents ceramics that have been “restored” by cobbling together parts of other cracked vessels and plates to make the objects “whole” once more.
Maybe @bigstuffed is to blame for my reptile videos? I don’t know. But I am sure that I want to amass a fluffy aquarium with these supersized stuffed animals.
Feature image by Cait Kelly for Rebecca Allen.
