sandy liang chokehold, drinking out of seashells, friendships, and loving pedro almodóvar

Sandy Liang has a chokehold on me. I first discovered her on the Vivienne Westwood Y2K side of Tiktok. An unboxing of a jade New Jeans-esque bunny pendant on a red thread, packaged in a floral Chinatown coin purse. Nostalgia drove me to the site only to see that it was sold out.

For some odd years, I lived in Chinatown in San Francisco, an SRO with about as much room to move around in as a walking closet. Though, when cozy, I’ve managed to have friends over for buzzball pregames. Every morning, before heading to work, I would stop by my favorite dim sum spot for fried dumplings, congee and fresh youtiao, all for under $5, lunch for the day. On my commute, I would pass souvenir shops, seeing the exact pouches that house Sandy Liang’s jewelry.

It’s all built from nostalgia. Nostalgia is proof that time is non-linear, a patchwork of the past and present, creating little trinkets like wishes and hopes for the future. Daydreams. And here, Sandy has been able to make daydreams her playthings, combining the personal with aesthetic. There’s a charm to her work that fleshes out the girl. The dream in her sleepy eyes and the dreaming in her bed head. I think of an unmade bed, morning light glimmering on bed posts, dust motes. Think sucking flower stems for sour lips and crafting animals from clouds. Think Sofia Coppola.

It’s not just through her fashion, but her life. She’s one of the few designers that mixes the personal with the craft. I think of brands like Paloma Wool, Maryam Nassir Zadeh, or even Jacquemus. Their Instagram stories, for the most part, are flooded with images from their day-to-day. On the ground. With the people.

Recently, Vogue put out a coverage of Sandy’s wedding, themed after Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. Bows. Frills. Pearls. And these seashell martini glasses I can’t stop thinking about. I want to drink white wine out of them. I plan to host soon, drink too much with too much music. Perhaps paired with a disco ball humidifier? It’ll be a good time. But you see that her life aligns so closely with her craft. She lives the art. Makes it out of her life. Because it’s all of her life.

This locality mixed with my history, geography, and nostalgia, y’all KNOW I had to jump on the Sandy Liang x Baggu collection. A friend and I stayed up ‘til 1 AM for it, a school night, and yes I took a nap just for this canon event. But within minutes, the eye-on-the-prize bow bag sold out within minutes. Over our Facetime call, we screamed. Made slurs. We scrolled under Baggu’s promotional Instagram posts, looking at all the hate comments that people made about the bag selling out before it was supposed to drop.

Though Baggu quickly saved itself with a pre-order, I was lucky enough to find that my friend managed to pick up five of the bow bags from the store. Because, yes. She’s one of those crazy Baggu girlies who has a Baggu for her Baggu. She actually stood in front of the SF location an hour before opening just for the bag. Two in blue, three in black, one of which was for her. She threw me and a few other mutuals in a group chat asking if anyone managed to cop the bag. None of us did, and she was more than willing to have us buy them off of her. Except there were six of us. Four bags, six friends. She scheduled a Facetime call for us, and, literally, allowed us to make a case for ourselves to prove our friendship to her. A fight to the death. Insane. But hear me out, I had to do it for the bag. It was worth everything. We each took turns. Waterworks here and there. All of us meaning well. And it got me thinking, what is a friend? How much value do we put on a person? Especially in a canon event like this?

In a podcast by The Atlantic, What Do We Owe Our Friends? was a question that realigned what people mean to me and how we should reshape what we ask of each other. What we take and what we give. How we are vessels and shouldn’t be shameless about what we need or want from our friends when it comes to favors or even advice. And here, we fought to the death. Our want for this bag became a need. And let me tell you, I gave a very good case in securing the black bow bag. Let’s just say there were many house parties where I had to hold T’s hair back as she yacked in toilets from the Mission to the Sunset, from Oakland to San Francisco herself. There were even times where I had to wash her hair out. Because she had bad aim and too much hair. And if that ain’t true friendship, I don’t know what is! After all the puke, she would look up at me, eyes full of misery, and say some kind of mix of thankyouiloveyou. I was always there. Perhaps not always upright, but I was always there. And no one else would do it. Everyone else, all the other girls in the call, were either too busy mooching off free PBR’s or accumulating follows on socials. Who else was supposed to save her? You see, you can’t get the need met if you’re scared to make it known. She always asked for things with her eyes. If she had boy trouble or if you ordered a large Mcdonald’s fries and she hadn’t had a thing to eat that day, her eyes would drop lay low in in the tear ducts, and she was always on the brink of crying, keeping them there to evoke desire. Let me tell you, she was the masterclass in smizing.

You can’t get the need met if you’re scared to make it known. 

These days, I’m a lot better at this. If the friendship is true enough, it doesn’t hurt to make your wants and needs voiced. I’m up front. Because if there is a bump in a friendship forming, I’d rather flatten it out and make use of a more wholesome future, for us. If you want to enjoy the rewards of being loved, you always need to submit to the mortifying ordeals of being known.

Anyway, what’s a cute bag without a cute date? Every sabbatical, I make it an effort to try out a Donna Summer summer affair. I deserve it. Something light, something fun. Something that ends at the turn of the season. Short and sweet. But this year, there was so little time. So, I’m filling up the rest of August with Pedro Almodóvar, the next best thing to hot and sexy. His worlds, his women. He creates psycho-sexual thrillers somewhere between Alfred Hitchcock and Elena Ferrante. Melodramatic in telenovela flair. Though they are serious, there’s a bit of humor too. That’s what makes his work so literary, so human. He understands the desires buried so deep within us, beyond the wants and the needs. All set up in technicolor wonder, it makes life so decadent, it makes having worries fine and sexy. It’s okay if you’re manic and down and out, just as long as you’re parading around in a cute outfit!

Thanks for making it to the end of this piece. Next time it won’t be as bloated. I was just excited to share these moments and measures with you. I’ll trim the fat and give you all the gory bits. For now, I hope you have good company, manageable baggage, good fits, and a fine bag to stuff everything in.

As always,

Be well,

do good work,

and

keep in touch.

<3

N