Asia Street Style | Frivolous Universe

STAYIN’ ALIVE: A bit broke, a lil’ Brut, and a whole lotta Bangkok

By: Kim Philley

10-04-2012

Bangkok is a city of extremes. One day you’re hospitalized with an acute respiratory tract infection; 48-hours later you’re on top of the world.

Literally. Sipping Brut because Vertigo’s Moët et Chandon is slightly outside your 20-baht-fashion price point and taking in the Moon Bar’s lightning rod’s-eye views.

All this hat-trick requires is one melodramatic F’book status update and a friend who is gorgeous enough to hop the next available flight from Phnom Penh to Bangkok. During the Civil War the Army of the James had Clara Barton. I have Pedro. There are friends and then there are friends. Nobody dies on Pedro’s watch, and the sickbed service includes California Brut.

Sexy Maitre d’: Brown Herringbone dress tailored by the talented Pin-Pin of Hoi An, Vietnam

Wide belt: COLOR, Phnom Penh’s first and only vintage clothing store

What can I say? I followed the Thai doctor’s orders. She gave me a bag of drugs and wrote two recommendations on my Rx: “change environment” and “fresh air.” I wish this blog could convey the sound of me laughing my ass off.

Breathe the fresh air in Bangkok — doctor’s orders! And while you’re at it, enjoy a kosher cheeseburger! With so many impossibilities at my fingertips to restore me to hale and hearty, I barely knew where to begin.

Like Smilla’s varieties of snow, Bangkok is a smorgasbord of air: putrid air, steam bath air, pungent-garbage-underfoot air, heavy-particulate-matter air, Freoned-within-an-inch-of-your-life air, hooker-just-blew-menthol-in-my-face air, but fresh air?

For such an ethereal commodity there’s only one thing to do. Scale Mount Meru or climb the sixty-odd floors to the Banyan Tree’s rooftop. Both are mythical places, but only one serves the bubbly.

And while you’re up there, definitely check out the eye candy.

Braided gold earrings & bracelet: mosstories, Terminal 21, Bangkok

Faux pearl friendship ring: Ciga Shop, Terminal 21, Bangkok

Lil’ Black Dress: COLOR, Phnom Penh’s new vintage store — check ’em out!

There’s nothing like a 2:00 A.M. bathroom photo shoot to bring out the minx in me. Take an Asian hemline and press it to my mantis gams and subtly slutty is what you get.

Jingle-jangle earrings: Lumphini MRT street stall, Bangkok (for 20 baht, a.k.a. 65 cents)

Leather clutch: In Retrospect, Boise

Faux pearl friendship ring: Ciga Shop, Terminal 21, Bangkok

Yeah, I’m finally writing about the clothes.

The best thing about taking the high road to recovery? At the end of the evening, the concierge at the Banyan Tree gave me — a Brut-swilling non-guest — a free bottle of fancy hotel water. “Water from my heart,” he said.

I HEART THAILAND

I HEART VANESSA BOOTS, A.K.A. PEDRO — thanks again for the epic pics and the eleventh hour rescue!

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ELEPHANTS DO IT BETTER: A classic little black dress and a black-and-white BCBG Max Azria get me nowhere. Thank goodness for great friends and ice-cold coconuts.

By: Kim Philley

20-03-2012

Kim

Girls, boys, girl-boys, boy-girls, and pachyderms — it’s been a difficult week. I just mustered all I could recall of my high school/Phnom Penh-cuss-out French to send this text message to someone I perceived, until moments ago, to be an honorable Frenchman: Je ne suis pas une putain. Pour médiocre boom-boom, je crois Rue Cowboy!

My facial expression pretty much sums up how I feel about the men I meet when I get all gussied up to go out on the town in Bangkok. No offense, Mr. Fancy Elephant, but when I ask you, How was your Thai massage at Wat Pho? “I just want massage do by you,” is not an elegant elephant reply. Please stop it with the sexting.

Who said chivalry is dead? Here’s hoping it’s just frozen in the Greenland ice sheet, it’s DNA soon-to-be-revived by global warming.

A hot Thai photographer snapped this actual Polaroid of me at The St. Regis Bangkok on Friday night. If I had my Sharpie-druthers, I would hand-caption it, When I was a copywriter in Bangkok . . . To remind myself that all situations are temporary and that my time on earth is fleeting.

This is my go-to little black dress. I bought it off the sales rack at the Boise Macy’s, but the brand is nearly un-Googlable. The label reads tiff by Tt and it’s Made in Los Angeles. Someone is selling one on eBay. And that “Tt” ain’t Trina Turk — not for what I paid. The lace chevron cuts much lower in back, so I’m sorry the St. Regis photographer failed to snap a rearview. As my Twitter-friend Tommy quipped, i’m bringing sexy back. to the store. because it’s broken and i’ve hardly used it and i want my money back.

Thank goodness for good friends. The night, and the St. Regis dress, were redeemed by a good ‘ol Soi Nana crawl with the so-much-fun-they-should-be-illegal Gabi and Skip Yetter and the lovely Miss Eliza Chute. Most tourists visit Nana for the boom-boom. We went for the Thai young coconuts.

And no, salacious Frenchman, that was not a euphemism.

The Dress Below: BCBG Max Azria

Earrings: Lumphini street stall, Bangkok

Bracelet: Wooden snake, Indonesia

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When suddenly Pedro gets the feeling he’s being surrounded by corsets, corsets, corsets, corsets! Coming in in all directions white shining corsets with their tutus in tatters . . . .

By: Kim Philley

13-03-2012

Kim

He saw corsets, corsets, corsets, corsets, corsets, corsets, corsets, corsets.

Do you know how to pony? Like bony maroney.

Do you know how to twist? Well it goes like this, it goes like this:

It’s 10pm in Bangkok and, rest assured, I haven’t eaten dinner, I’m blogging from a shopping mall, and I’m rocking a neoprene wrist support on my right mouse-clicker (back in the olden days they called them ‘hands’). The mall rat smack has hit my veins and it sounds a lot like Patti Smith singing horses, horses, horses, horses.

But Bangkok’s new Terminal 21 shopping mall — each floor themed after a different international city — exerts a loopy alchemy. Suddenly I get the feeling I’m being surrounded by corsets, corsets, corsets, corsets! Perhaps I’m paranoid. Or perhaps Pedro and I have lingered a little too long on the Tokyo floor, home of happycorset.com:

My figure has been more Smith than Monroe as of late. All I do is work; my ass is beginning to take the shape of my cheap, sunken office chair. No offense to Patti, but I’m over being a gay man’s muse.

Part of my family’s lore is a story about my great-grandfather wanting to get some sleep after a long day’s work. He stumbled into the bedroom he shared with my great-grandmother. When he saw all his wife’s ‘underthings’ strewn about the room, her corset included, he barked, ‘Gracie, get those women off of my bed!’

I want my women back. I want hips like María Félix when I don my little black dress.

For this week’s post I found a beautiful woman with a gorgeous figure to fill my size-10 shoes. Don’t let the name Pedro dissuade you. ‘He’ is definitely 100% La Doña. Pedro looks smokin’ in his Happy Corset. And that Tibetan breastplate sure don’t hurt — a dramarama accessory I believe FU has singlehandedly put back on the fashion map.

Black corset: Happy Corset, Tokyo Floor, Terminal 21, Bangkok

Tibetan breastplate: Bethany Walter’s fabulous online jewelry store, Armor Bijoux

Copper bracelet: The Gold Mine, Ketchum, Idaho

Strappy heels: Geez, Pedro — where’d ya get those sweet heels? Fill me in when you got a sec.

How have we gone from ooh la la guitarra to Victoria’s Secret in 50-odd years? It must have been the Fin de siècle.

Thank God there’s a burlesque dancer to redeem us all: the mermaid-pale, azure-corseted Dita Von Teese:

Well color me purple. Next time I draw you a Liger, Pedro, I’ll make it all Gotham-like. Ligers are like a lion and tiger mixed — bred for its skills in magic. Just like mating an antique Tibetan breastplate with a cheap Bangkok corset. Same species, Pedro.

Dear Pedro (a.k.a. Vanessa Boots),

Thanks again for all the sweet hook-ups and for letting me be a lazy blogger. If you don’t come back to visit soon I’m going to have to grow some T&A along with a midnight work ethic. I’m just so tired — gosh!

Peace out,

Napoleon