It’s autumn in the northern hemisphere, and you know what that means — put on some cashmere and be fucking seasonal. Don’t whine about how it’s 70 degrees out because the planet is burning. What are you, a pussy?
Pep talks aside, I do have to admit that this particular autumn is an especially tense time for many of us. The news cycle is a bit lively, truth be told. It all jars horribly with the October crickets and the mists and the mellow fruitfulness and so on.
This is why I think it’s important to go ahead and incorporate the news cycle into your seasonal agenda. If there is one thing I learned in therapy, is that the more you run away from something, the more power it has over you.
Keeping that in mind, here are my Autumn 2019 Decorating And Style Tips:
Dress as slutty institutional collapse for Halloween
Everybody loves a creative costume. Everybody loves looking slutty. Slutty Institutional Collapse is the perfect marriage of these concepts for Halloween. The possibilities with this costume are endless, but to simplify matters, you can just go as Aaron Barr in a MAGA hat and fetish collar.
Trade pumpkins for Trumps
I can’t fail to notice just how much the president resembles an angry pumpkin these days, on the other hand. It’s not just the girth, and the color, it’s also that peculiarly autumnal sense of rot.
In that sense, a Trump-o’-lantern is the perfect means of updating the tired old jack-o’-lantern, and certainly a more efficient way of terrifying children.
Try an Ivanka latte
The thing about pumpkin spice is that it used to be cool, and then dunking on it for being too basic became cool, and then dunking itself became uncool, and then pumpkin spice was briefly reclaimed, and now it’s best to just not talk about it. Like, if you enjoy pumpkin spice anything, it’s fine — it’s just that we don’t have to discuss it as either an aesthetic or culinary choice.
Yet how does one signal today that one is basic, or, for that matter, ironically basic? How do we update the cultural code? How do you get across a sense of beautiful hollowness and lack of true taste? I think an Ivanka-flavored anything fits this particular niche perfectly. The ingredients don’t matter — they could just be stevia and ground up Lululemon pants — what matters is the branding, as any Trump would know.
Stephen Miller-themed haunted house
Everybody loves a good scare during the blessed Halloween season — but do they want a really good scare? That’s the question. For a cheap and easy haunted house fix, you can just wallpaper a place with Stephen Miller’s face and play a tape of children crying. Oh, that’s too much, you say? Haunted houses are supposed to be fun? Please see the first paragraph of this article for guidance, then.
Ukrainian-American gangster chic
This season, gold chains and corruption are making a stylish comeback — as Rudy Guiliani would know! Incorporating this important trend into your personal style is easy, but incorporating it into your home decor will be legendary.
Here is what you will need to install in your home:
- A sullen young mistress
- An even more sullen second mistress whom you’re cheating on the first one with
- A shelf of cologne
- A mother-in-law whom you despise and whose borscht you will eat in spite of contemplating how it is probably poisoned
- Some pure-bred yet maladjusted animals (a Doberman is a perennial favorite)
- A marble bathtub
- Many kinds of slippers
- A bunch of homeopathic medicine your annoying cousins swear by, and which you keep around in case they start going through your cabinets and accusing you of never taking their advice
- Paintings evoking simple country themes and/or not entirely tasteful nudes, for you to contemplate while crying, remembering the long lost loves of your life who married hackers and Turkish businessmen, disappearing forever down the corridor of time
Get creative with Death!
Death is supposed to carry a scythe and dress in black — but this season, it’s time to build on that decorative concept.
How about the Death of American Prestige display? I’m thinking of a Kurds-and-Twitter theme here.
There is also the Death of the Planet. That one can be subtle, all about patterns — patterns featuring private jets. Or maybe old men who won’t be around when all ecosystems finally collapse.
Oh, and there is also the Death of Irony. That can be a free category, for you to get creative with. My favorite one would feature Twitter communists explaining how we will all rejoice when China finally takes over the world, and the frustrated mothers who still do their laundry for them (laundry is a bourgeois concept mom! But also, don’t forget the Bounce!)
Image credit: Mike Mozart