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WELCOME TO THE LONGHOUSE
NOTES ON ELENA VELEZ’S FASHION SHOW
Simon P. Siegfriedssohn
Hopping out of the SUV, the whole squad was dressed to the nines. We looked like the mob rolling up on some 1950s nightclub, only with more Anglo facial structures and in more modern attire. There was a line about a mile long at the door, full of a wide variety of freaks, but also a pleasantly surprising quantity of normal-looking people. Irrespective of appearance, they all ogled us disembarking from the car as a herd of gazelles would a pride of lions as they mount on the high point of the veldt. Our top guy, you probably know him, was deliberately dressed like the gas station man from the “niggers could be here” meme. I’m not sure if he already owned that exact dark blue suit and light blue shirt, plus the shades, or if he had purchased the ensemble for the occasion. As an homage to his muse, his shirt was unbuttoned to just above the navel.
It would have been commensurate with the aesthetic of the moment for us to be allowed to enter directly. Here we were, seven or eight very handsome guys, dressed in a proper manner, looking very elite, looking very jacked. In an ordered world, we would’ve been immediately whisked away by a Japanese woman in a long black dress, down some back staircase into the VIP lounge where we would smoke opium and be given relaxing massages before the show. Instead, we were immediately longhoused by an obese Latina who, after reviewing our tickets with that bemused look of self-satisfied, baseless skepticism with which we’ve all become all too familiar, told us to get in line with the riffraff.
We trudged halfway down the block to the back of the line. Some darts were ripped, a few fags blasted as we waited. As it was a fashion show, I expected the line to proceed at a trickle as each guest was individually shown to their seat along the runway, tiered like an auditorium or one of those Anglican style churches where the parishioners face one another across the aisle, so that everyone could see the merchandi—I mean art.
But then something strange happened: the line collapsed in on itself, and within moments we, despite being at the back of the line, were inside the doors, hoovered in by the vacuum of the mob. This meant, of course, that my imagination had gotten wildly ahead of itself, this wasn’t like in the movies, there were no seats at all. Instead, the crowd gathered around the runway like around the stage at a punk concert, the line between art and observer–between subject and object–intentionally blurred.
The trouble with this was that, as the models began to emerge from some human storage facility, I couldn’t actually see the clothes they were modeling. From their faces and shoulders I was able to discern that they were ambling uncomfortably—strange given models’ famed bipedal ability—although this was to be explained later on. I made friends with a fellow on my right, a blond author named Jim, enjoying the modern pleasure that is an indoor cigarette. Decadently, I joined him. He was, it pains me on his behalf to note, something of a manlet, and it fell to me to describe to him what was going on on the runway. On my right was a beautiful girl of a San Joaquinian persuasion. By which I merely mean that she was mestiza, and in a most charming way. We chatted and it was clear that she was of an exceedingly above-average IQ for her race. Perhaps she was one of those rare Judaeo-Mexicans one sometimes hears about… the Zimmermans, the Trotskys…
I saw a woman walking down the runway bedecked in gray furs, arranged in protrusions out from her person to an almost Mesoamerican effect. Her hair burned red and her face seem to have been painted white. I said to the Mexican lass, “that one looks like the goddess Freyja,” pronouncing the last word with great Scandinavian lilt and emphasis. “Yes, she replied, the designer’s daughter’s name is Freya.” “Well, what a coincidence!” I thought. Next I saw a woman with blonde hair and very large breasts, generously exposed atop what seemed to be a corset. I leaned over to my companion again, “is that Mommy Milkers?” I asked, referring to the woman behind a twitter account as famous for its owner’s interesting takes as for her voluptuous bodice.
“No! Mommy has a much better rack than that!” she replied with serious admonishment.
The procession continued for about ten or fifteen minutes. As I say, I didn’t quite catch most of the outfits. But the models were all of fascinating physiognomy, including some Africans of what looked like unalloyed Dinka stock. I later learned, to no surprise at all, that it was our own Anna and Dasha who had cast the models. They seemed to have chosen mostly skinny specimens with big tits, but also some that were skinny with small ones. What clothes I did see were best characterized as adhering to the theme of “19th century bride, midway through the consummation of her nuptials.” I was put in mind of the poem “Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes” by Billy Collins, which gets into the complicated task of disrobing a woman of sartorial Puritanism… “clips, clasps, and moorings… catches, straps, and whalebones stays… sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness…” but neither was this theme particularly consistent, there seemed to be all kinds of different pieces whose common thread I, a layman, was unable to discern.
This was The Longhouse fashion show, by designer Elena Velez, whom I met later on and found to be very warm and charming. The connection to BAP’s idea of The Longhouse, his symbol for of the matriarchal and communal social structures of the Neolithic European agricultural communities prior to the Aryan expansion, was described to me later in the night by one of Velez’s (extremely gay, but in a way that almost made me nostalgic for the 2000s) collaborators. I shall relate that explanation in due course. First, more on the show.
The show ended after ten or fifteen minutes. The final act was quite fascinating. The same models all came out, wearing the same pieces (so far as I could tell). Assembled all together on the runway, a shriek was suddenly let out, which was followed by a great melee, and a catfight, wherein four or five of the models were embroiled on the ground, tearing the wonderful clothes off one another (breasts were thrillingly bared), and covering one another in brown mud. I now realized why the models had had such trouble ambulating: because the runway was quite literally constituted of wet mud that looked like it had been dug out of the nearby East River (I will be consulting with my doctor–Dr. Benjamin Braddock—on strategies for detoxifying my body after this doubtlessly carcinogenic exposure).
This—the mud—was the most tangible connection that I had thus far noted to the Longhouse as I understand it. Outside the longhouse there is always a muddy potato patch, a “three sisters” garden of corn, beans, and squash, dedicated to the generation of the materials for future slop for the sustenance of the Den Mother’s voluptuousness. Into this mud is ground the spirit of young men, wherewith it is manured. At least, this is how I saw fit to interpret this artistic gesture. I was later informed that the openly pedophilic design outfit Balenciaga had done something similar, under the aegis of the tagline, “we have to get back down to earth”, or something equally cringe.
At the afterparty, it was explained to me that the catfight in which the show culminated was representative of the tendency toward acrimony and éclats of drama wherever two or more women are gathered, on any time scale of sufficient duration. Before we got there, though, there was the reception. There was a long, gothic table, decorated with candlesticks and a feast that appeared, for all intents and purposes, to be poisoned. Cheeses, grapes, breads, etc. I ate some grapes and have thus far survived without gastric distress. At the reception, I talked to some fellows who were skeptical about the supposed ill effects of seed oils, citing the Chinese consumption of soybean oil and asking for an explanation of their longevity in spite of this. “Do I look like a Sinologist to you?” I asked before walking away in disgust.
The place cleared out after an hour or so, and we went to find the afterparty, which was at the now-famous Sovereign House, site of many an online right event, including Dasha’s famous bitchslapping of Mike Crumplar. We were there early, and made easy conversation with a similarly well-dressed chap from Columbia. The night wore on, some conversations were had, but few of note, although I did get the telephone number of some very attractive blonde minx. The rooms started to fill up, in more or less equal measure with weird-looking, alt-queer types, dressed in all sorts of strange garbs, with their bizarre penchant for tattoos, disparately located all across the body, that look like unfilled-in cartoon coloring book prompts. The general scene looked like what you might imagine a left-wing gathering to be. People of every race, several trannies, interspersed with blonde girls who looked, by their attire, like they might’ve come from their jobs as foreign debt analysts at JP Morgan. Add to that a couple of strapping young lads in suits and ties, and you have the whole picture.
Towards the end, I got engaged in that conversation I mentioned with Velez’s right hand man. He was a hairy chap, husky, sporting a mustache and a wifebeater. He kind of looked like a Mexican (shorter) Freddie Mercury. Behind him lurked a lanky, heavily-pierced gay who said nothing. Despite the tell-tale gayness of his voice, I was amused to hear him using the word “liberal” pejoratively; I tuned in more intently. He soliloquized for a while about how the fashion industry is itself a longhouse these days. “You can’t even like express your own actual feelings and opinions now! The women and the liberals, they won’t let you, man!” He said with a shit-eating grin, his body swaying backwards and forwards like trebuchet. He didn’t seem under the influence of anything, just excited about what, to him, had been a smashingly successful evening. “Oh yeah, we’ll be in Vogue,” he assured me. He said that he himself didn’t align with a lot of what he described as either “the gay narrative” or “the gay agenda”, I can’t remember which. “Oh really, in what way?” I asked with sincerity. He gave some meandering answer about how being gay wasn’t originally “supposed” to be about identification as an “oppressed.” Logically, I then asked, “would the gays be better off if you all were back in the closet?” The response came with a look of great shock and concern: “No. No way. Absolutely not.”
The night ended with a rencontre with that aforementioned blonde girl. At this point it was nearly 2 in the morning. She said she was leaving but I found her by the door talking with some other young ladies. One of them was trying to make a point about the Aztecs, and how the Spaniards were motivated in a ambiguous way, between the monks who wanted to Christianize and end the beastly human sacrifice, and the soldiers who wanted to find El Dorado, to bathe in jaguar milk and fuck brown women (I’m editorializing somewhat here). I asserted that in the 16th century, no such distinction would have existed, and furthermore that she was retroactively superimposing modern moralisms onto a past that would not have shared them. She rolled her eyes and turned away. I turned to the other blonde.
She said something about how Cortes’ men were motivated by greed. I said, “not so much greed, since they didn’t know what they might find. I think they wanted adventure.”
“And do you want adventure?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you already have my number.”
Hopping out of the SUV, the whole squad was dressed to the nines. We looked like the mob rolling up on some 1950s nightclub, only with more Anglo facial structures and in more modern attire. There was a line about a mile long at the door, full of a wide variety of freaks, but also a pleasantly surprising quantity of normal-looking people. Irrespective of appearance, they all ogled us disembarking from the car as a herd of gazelles would a pride of lions as they mount on the high point of the veldt. Our top guy, you probably know him, was deliberately dressed like the gas station man from the “niggers could be here” meme. I’m not sure if he already owned that exact dark blue suit and light blue shirt, plus the shades, or if he had purchased the ensemble for the occasion. As an homage to his muse, his shirt was unbuttoned to just above the navel.
It would have been commensurate with the aesthetic of the moment for us to be allowed to enter directly. Here we were, seven or eight very handsome guys, dressed in a proper manner, looking very elite, looking very jacked. In an ordered world, we would’ve been immediately whisked away by a Japanese woman in a long black dress, down some back staircase into the VIP lounge where we would smoke opium and be given relaxing massages before the show. Instead, we were immediately longhoused by an obese Latina who, after reviewing our tickets with that bemused look of self-satisfied, baseless skepticism with which we’ve all become all too familiar, told us to get in line with the riffraff.
We trudged halfway down the block to the back of the line. Some darts were ripped, a few fags blasted as we waited. As it was a fashion show, I expected the line to proceed at a trickle as each guest was individually shown to their seat along the runway, tiered like an auditorium or one of those Anglican style churches where the parishioners face one another across the aisle, so that everyone could see the merchandi—I mean art.
But then something strange happened: the line collapsed in on itself, and within moments we, despite being at the back of the line, were inside the doors, hoovered in by the vacuum of the mob. This meant, of course, that my imagination had gotten wildly ahead of itself, this wasn’t like in the movies, there were no seats at all. Instead, the crowd gathered around the runway like around the stage at a punk concert, the line between art and observer–between subject and object–intentionally blurred.
The trouble with this was that, as the models began to emerge from some human storage facility, I couldn’t actually see the clothes they were modeling. From their faces and shoulders I was able to discern that they were ambling uncomfortably—strange given models’ famed bipedal ability—although this was to be explained later on. I made friends with a fellow on my right, a blond author named Jim, enjoying the modern pleasure that is an indoor cigarette. Decadently, I joined him. He was, it pains me on his behalf to note, something of a manlet, and it fell to me to describe to him what was going on on the runway. On my right was a beautiful girl of a San Joaquinian persuasion. By which I merely mean that she was mestiza, and in a most charming way. We chatted and it was clear that she was of an exceedingly above-average IQ for her race. Perhaps she was one of those rare Judaeo-Mexicans one sometimes hears about… the Zimmermans, the Trotskys…
I saw a woman walking down the runway bedecked in gray furs, arranged in protrusions out from her person to an almost Mesoamerican effect. Her hair burned red and her face seem to have been painted white. I said to the Mexican lass, “that one looks like the goddess Freyja,” pronouncing the last word with great Scandinavian lilt and emphasis. “Yes, she replied, the designer’s daughter’s name is Freya.” “Well, what a coincidence!” I thought. Next I saw a woman with blonde hair and very large breasts, generously exposed atop what seemed to be a corset. I leaned over to my companion again, “is that Mommy Milkers?” I asked, referring to the woman behind a twitter account as famous for its owner’s interesting takes as for her voluptuous bodice.
“No! Mommy has a much better rack than that!” she replied with serious admonishment.
The procession continued for about ten or fifteen minutes. As I say, I didn’t quite catch most of the outfits. But the models were all of fascinating physiognomy, including some Africans of what looked like unalloyed Dinka stock. I later learned, to no surprise at all, that it was our own Anna and Dasha who had cast the models. They seemed to have chosen mostly skinny specimens with big tits, but also some that were skinny with small ones. What clothes I did see were best characterized as adhering to the theme of “19th century bride, midway through the consummation of her nuptials.” I was put in mind of the poem “Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes” by Billy Collins, which gets into the complicated task of disrobing a woman of sartorial Puritanism… “clips, clasps, and moorings… catches, straps, and whalebones stays… sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness…” but neither was this theme particularly consistent, there seemed to be all kinds of different pieces whose common thread I, a layman, was unable to discern.
This was The Longhouse fashion show, by designer Elena Velez, whom I met later on and found to be very warm and charming. The connection to BAP’s idea of The Longhouse, his symbol for of the matriarchal and communal social structures of the Neolithic European agricultural communities prior to the Aryan expansion, was described to me later in the night by one of Velez’s (extremely gay, but in a way that almost made me nostalgic for the 2000s) collaborators. I shall relate that explanation in due course. First, more on the show.
The show ended after ten or fifteen minutes. The final act was quite fascinating. The same models all came out, wearing the same pieces (so far as I could tell). Assembled all together on the runway, a shriek was suddenly let out, which was followed by a great melee, and a catfight, wherein four or five of the models were embroiled on the ground, tearing the wonderful clothes off one another (breasts were thrillingly bared), and covering one another in brown mud. I now realized why the models had had such trouble ambulating: because the runway was quite literally constituted of wet mud that looked like it had been dug out of the nearby East River (I will be consulting with my doctor–Dr. Benjamin Braddock—on strategies for detoxifying my body after this doubtlessly carcinogenic exposure).
This—the mud—was the most tangible connection that I had thus far noted to the Longhouse as I understand it. Outside the longhouse there is always a muddy potato patch, a “three sisters” garden of corn, beans, and squash, dedicated to the generation of the materials for future slop for the sustenance of the Den Mother’s voluptuousness. Into this mud is ground the spirit of young men, wherewith it is manured. At least, this is how I saw fit to interpret this artistic gesture. I was later informed that the openly pedophilic design outfit Balenciaga had done something similar, under the aegis of the tagline, “we have to get back down to earth”, or something equally cringe.
At the afterparty, it was explained to me that the catfight in which the show culminated was representative of the tendency toward acrimony and éclats of drama wherever two or more women are gathered, on any time scale of sufficient duration. Before we got there, though, there was the reception. There was a long, gothic table, decorated with candlesticks and a feast that appeared, for all intents and purposes, to be poisoned. Cheeses, grapes, breads, etc. I ate some grapes and have thus far survived without gastric distress. At the reception, I talked to some fellows who were skeptical about the supposed ill effects of seed oils, citing the Chinese consumption of soybean oil and asking for an explanation of their longevity in spite of this. “Do I look like a Sinologist to you?” I asked before walking away in disgust.
The place cleared out after an hour or so, and we went to find the afterparty, which was at the now-famous Sovereign House, site of many an online right event, including Dasha’s famous bitchslapping of Mike Crumplar. We were there early, and made easy conversation with a similarly well-dressed chap from Columbia. The night wore on, some conversations were had, but few of note, although I did get the telephone number of some very attractive blonde minx. The rooms started to fill up, in more or less equal measure with weird-looking, alt-queer types, dressed in all sorts of strange garbs, with their bizarre penchant for tattoos, disparately located all across the body, that look like unfilled-in cartoon coloring book prompts. The general scene looked like what you might imagine a left-wing gathering to be. People of every race, several trannies, interspersed with blonde girls who looked, by their attire, like they might’ve come from their jobs as foreign debt analysts at JP Morgan. Add to that a couple of strapping young lads in suits and ties, and you have the whole picture.
Towards the end, I got engaged in that conversation I mentioned with Velez’s right hand man. He was a hairy chap, husky, sporting a mustache and a wifebeater. He kind of looked like a Mexican (shorter) Freddie Mercury. Behind him lurked a lanky, heavily-pierced gay who said nothing. Despite the tell-tale gayness of his voice, I was amused to hear him using the word “liberal” pejoratively; I tuned in more intently. He soliloquized for a while about how the fashion industry is itself a longhouse these days. “You can’t even like express your own actual feelings and opinions now! The women and the liberals, they won’t let you, man!” He said with a shit-eating grin, his body swaying backwards and forwards like trebuchet. He didn’t seem under the influence of anything, just excited about what, to him, had been a smashingly successful evening. “Oh yeah, we’ll be in Vogue,” he assured me. He said that he himself didn’t align with a lot of what he described as either “the gay narrative” or “the gay agenda”, I can’t remember which. “Oh really, in what way?” I asked with sincerity. He gave some meandering answer about how being gay wasn’t originally “supposed” to be about identification as an “oppressed.” Logically, I then asked, “would the gays be better off if you all were back in the closet?” The response came with a look of great shock and concern: “No. No way. Absolutely not.”
The night ended with a rencontre with that aforementioned blonde girl. At this point it was nearly 2 in the morning. She said she was leaving but I found her by the door talking with some other young ladies. One of them was trying to make a point about the Aztecs, and how the Spaniards were motivated in a ambiguous way, between the monks who wanted to Christianize and end the beastly human sacrifice, and the soldiers who wanted to find El Dorado, to bathe in jaguar milk and fuck brown women (I’m editorializing somewhat here). I asserted that in the 16th century, no such distinction would have existed, and furthermore that she was retroactively superimposing modern moralisms onto a past that would not have shared them. She rolled her eyes and turned away. I turned to the other blonde.
She said something about how Cortes’ men were motivated by greed. I said, “not so much greed, since they didn’t know what they might find. I think they wanted adventure.”
“And do you want adventure?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you already have my number.”
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