Vietnamese tailors | 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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F^%K PROPER! A Bangkok tale in which I nearly starve myself to death in an AXARA Paris dress, kiss Ryan Gosling AND George Clooney, get María Félix off my chest, and eat a knuckle sandwich

By: Kim Philley

06-03-2012

Kim

Bangkok is to food as the Kentucky Derby is to mint juleps. If your well runs dry, it ain’t nobody’s fault but your own. Here I am at my favorite food stall on Soi 38, buggin’ like a skinny meth man. It’s 11pm at night and this coconut shake is the first bit of sustenance to cross my lips since my breakfast noodles.

I’ve been working carpal-tunnel inducing hours, and I let myself get shanghaied into pinch-hosting an evening poetry reading. I worked through lunch. I skipped dinner. Blood sugar in your shoes? Who the f^%k cares — as long as they’re velvet.

Dress: AXARA Paris

Gold and pearl earrings: Norma Puga (Margot, Mexico City)

Pre-street food I got really kvetchy, and then I almost fainted. It took the coconut shake ( + duck noodle soup + som tam + mango avec sticky rice) to restore me to meaning and to sense. I looked around and then it occurred to me: f^%kin A, I’m in Bangkok!

F^%k tight polyester-blend dresses. F^%k skipping meals. F^%k pinch-hitting. A billion random, portentous things are happening in this city at any given moment. Why is his head wrapped in a red bow? Why does that boom mic look like a fuzzy dildo? What the F are they filming? I don’t need to know. I don’t even care. But if I miss one minute of it because I’m off somewhere being ‘proper,’ doing as I feel duty-bound, I’m gonna regret it.

It’s time for a threesome with Ryan Gosling and George Clooney. It’s time to go nuts in an elaborate mock-up; to match my teal jeans to my diorama. It’s time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions . . . . In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Do I dare disturb the universe? There’s only one thing to do on ‘Prapa’ Street. (Note the posh accent, bitches.) Jump up on the bridge-over-the-stinky-klong railing. Strike a pose. Make sure you’re rockin’ a María Félix t-shirt. If you’re going straight to hell, rest assured it’s always Ladies’ Night.

Doña Diabla

Why settle for mild-mannered Clark Kent when you can be Salvador Dali? Where I am it’s always summertime, and the living should be easy. Pedro smuggled my María Félix shirt all the way from Mexico City to Bangkok via the usual cartel route — Kampuchea. The rose petal, like me, was a refugee from Valentine’s Day. And the gold-leafed earrings set me back 20 baht (about 70 cents) at a street stall near Lumphini MRT.

White linen pants: Pin-Pin (my favorite tailor in Hoi An, Vietnam)

Belt: FlyNow (Bangkok)

Handbag: good ol’ Dooney & Burke

It is impossible to say just what I mean! I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas. Shoulds and more shoulds are all you get for time served on Prapa Street. Below: I am wearing incredibly comfy hidden-wedge J. Crew Cece suede ballet flats in Mulberry to match Maria’s lips.