The World's End Trench

"Velkommen. Bienvenue....Welcome."

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

This week's post was inspired by Simon Pegg's character, Gary King, in the movie The World's End. Yes, the charismatic alcoholic, ne'er-do-well, anti-hero. Gary King is one of the most robustly written and acted characters I've seen in a long time.Though he'd aged, Gary hadn't changed at all. Same music, same clothes.....same old Gary. The fact that he still drives the same car he drove in highschool, "the beast," further illustrates the depth of his Peter Panhood. He's a deeply flawed, seemingly tragic figure and yet, he's very, very likeable. So likeable, he talks (deftly manipulates) all his well-adjusted high school chums into a pub crawl reunion that goes very, very hysterically, awry. Honestly, the movie made my top ten the second they played Whisky Bar by The Doors. If you haven't seen it, you must. I promise you a good time, and that is something Gary King and I both agree upon: we both just want to have a good time. 

Horatio Caine pose by Me. photo credit: Joshua Franzos

Gary King and I also have similar tastes in trench coats. I have been quietly obsessing about Gary King's trench coat since the movie's release (August 2013). During the course of my research, I discovered, so have a lot of other people. Start typing, "Gary King's" and google will auto-fill for you, "Gary King's Coat." Voila. Instant icon. I decided to NOT go the authentic route, with the "German-Army-Bundeswehr-AIR-FORCE-LUFTWAFFE-sergeant-uniform-coat" (it's available on eBay), because men's clothing is too big on me and I'm *trying* to be more feminine, so that means wearing things that are tailored and fitted. I don't know how I stumbled upon the amazing coat that I'm wearing, but when I saw the jaunty collar on this Yohji Yamamoto cutaway number, I knew my search for Gary King's charisma cloak +1 was over. 

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

Mr. Franzos and I shot this along the bike trail in Pittsburgh, colloquially known as "the jail trail," because of its proximity to the county jail, and afterward, we grabbed some beers in the strip district. I stood amongst a picturesque grove of ginkgo trees and found myself really getting into character for this shoot. I blame the coat. It brought out my high school glory days, the inner party animal, the wannabe rock star and, er, the drunken master in me. What, don't you do karate kicks in the air after you've had a few? Well, then, you haven't truly LIVED (or partied with me).

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

The funny thing is, this coat and The World's End also made me a bit nostalgic. I miss my childhood pals. I live so far away from them. I keep up with them on facebook, but some of them, I haven't seen the whites of their eyes for fifteen years or more. We came of age and left the nest of our small hometown together. We've all entered adulthood, some of us less peacefully than others. Some of them are beautiful writers, talented artists and/or hilarious jokesters. In highschool, we were precocious little punks with civil disobedience in our blood. We had vast vocabularies that we peppered with colorful swears. We spent many a night around a campfire, up to no good, drinking gasoline booze out of plastic bottles. We solved the world's problems, and forgot all of our solutions the next day. My heart often longs to sit across the table from them and talk about wherever the mad-cap river of conversation takes us. Lately, we've been throwing around the idea of meeting up...somewhere in the middle of the mid-west, somewhere between there and Pittsburgh. We've been talking about spending our nights getting completely snockered, blotto drunk and then during the day, working through some writing workshops with epic hangovers. Why do we circle back around to the milestones we've already past? Are we hoping to pull up those markers and underneath, find a treasure trove of purpose and direction for the rest our lives? Do you revisit things and places? Is this a documented anthropological ritual? Anyway, there's something beautifully human about it all and I hope we do meet up. I know exactly what I'll wear.

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
-F. Scott Fiztgerald, The Great Gatsby. 


What I wore: Trench: Yohji Yamamoto, here. Asymmetric tunic: Mossimo, here. Riding pant/tights: past season Lululemon. Boots: Palladium, here. Rock necklace: vintage. Dogtags: family heirloom. Sterling chain bracelet: vintage. Rings: vintage. Sunnies: past season, Diesel. 





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