San Francisco, made in New York
Plus, I'm probably not the first person to tell you to read "Stay True" by Hua Hsu
Brand to look for at the thrift store/when shopping secondhand
I didn’t find this brand at the thrift store; I found it looking up the history of another (still-in-production but ubiquitous at second-hand stores) brand called Boutiques San Francisco. However, as soon as I landed on San Francisco Clothing’s website, I was much more interested in the brand run by Mindy and Howard Partman.
Operating out of a their store on Lexington Avenue, the Partmans designed and produced unique but functional clothing from the 1960s to 2010s. They moved between different styles (going from “antique sweaters, cowboy shirts, and Mustang jeans” to “evolving classic” workwear), but were always masters at playing around with prints and draping. Their website states that Howard and Mindy combined “their skills, passions, and visions to create something far greater than the sum of their individual parts. San Francisco Clothing was part store, museum, living room, and salon.” Nowhere on their website does it explain why they called their brand “San Francisco” despite the clothing being “proudly made [and sold] in New York” on the Upper East Side, but for some reason that makes me love it even more.
During the 50 years they were in production, they played around with different aesthetics and logos for their advertisements. Two of my favourites are shown below:
Throughout 2020, the designer-owners kept a blog called At Home w/ Mindy & Howard where they posted casual updates on their lives during the early pandemic. One post, titled “Cooking for the Holidays,” includes a photo of Mindy cooking up “Grandma Roz’s special holiday brisket recipe” along with a snapshot of their truly covetable collection of dishware (left). Another post titled “Always a good time to sketch!” features 3 drawings by Howard, including one of their storefront (right):
Howard’s sketches, and the pictures of their storefronts on their website, reminded me so much of visiting New York City with my mom when I was 16. It’s the kind of storefront my mom would pull me towards, the kind of clothing she would gravitate to in her window-shopping. Although I realize I was probably never the target demographic for their designs, I still feel drawn to their ethos (creating pieces that were both durable and eccentric) along with the fact that they switched directions unselfconsciously throughout the brand’s existence (their tagline was “San Francisco Clothing: Because Fashions Change, Classics Evolve”).
Although they closed the store over a decade ago, they have continued to design clothing under the “Partman & Partman” label, like this satisfying line-up of striped shirts below that I will now be coveting in every colour:
It’s a lot harder to find authentic pieces from San Francisco Clothing on secondhand sites like Depop, Poshmark, Vinted, or Ebay, mainly because “San Francisco Clothing” is such a generic search term. I had a little more luck searching “Howard Partman” or “Mindy Partman,” and even then, most had already sold (which is why I’m not including my usual list with links). I debated deleting this section and writing about a different, more accessible brand, but in my deep-dive came to love the Partmans too much not to feature here. If you ARE on the hunt for true vintage pieces from San Francisco clothing, look out for labels like this:
An article in a 1984 edition of The New York Times on summer fashion features their designs along with a quote from Howard Partman: “to look right this summer, you've got to look nerdy … Like Dennis the Menace who's spent all day pumping up.” I’m genuinely keeping this in mind for my summer 2023 style.
What I’ve been reading
Recent Pulitzer prize winner Stay True by Hua Hsu.
Stay True is a memoir, an ode to friendship, and a reminder that the “act of remembering [can take] on a desperate air” in the wake of tragedy. Reflecting on the friendship he forged with a Ken during his early undergraduate years at Berkeley, Hsu captures the urgent desire to transform yourself coupled with the reassurance that there will be more and more nights spent going down collective Internet rabbit holes, more parties you can choose to leave early, more traditions and inside jokes to be created tomorrow.
“At that age, time moves slow. You're eager for something to happen, passing time in parking lots, hands deep in your pockets, trying to figure out where to go next. Life happened elsewhere, it was simply a matter of finding a map that led there. Or maybe, at that age, time moves fast; you're so desperate for action that you forget to remember things as they happen. A day felt like forever, a year was a geological era.”
This is what I remember from my first years at school: the feeling that I could stop paying attention for a little while – to my professors, to my friends, to my parents, to basic bodily necessities like sleeping or eating or drinking water – and come out unscathed. And then the scrambling feeling later on, trying to recall certain details, and wishing I had listened to the lecture, been more patient with a friend, called my parents. For Hsu, this scrambling feeling came during his third year, after Ken was killed in a carjacking. As an “act of remembering” his friendship with Ken, he turned to writing.
In detailing the seemingly mundane, intimate moments of a friendship he didn’t realize would be cut short, he reminds us how lucky we are to witness the goodness of our friends in the moments before our memories are “placed along some narrative arc” by time. Stay True does not scold the reader into “rooting around in the past and look[ing] for” meaning, but allows the reader to imagine “a future that’s multi-hued, a future that balances memories of great times with memories of sadness.”
Recipe(s) on repeat
My blood orange, cornmeal & olive oil cake with honey labneh and blood orange lemon curd.
I love a cornmeal cake, and I LOVE a citrus-y dessert, but I always find that a) getting the right texture on a cornmeal cake can be difficult (they easily err on the dry, dense side), and b) citrus desserts are never citrus-y enough. The crumb on this cake is airy yet rich (thanks to the olive oil and yogurt), and doubling up on the citrus zest ensures you won’t be missing out on any flavour. You can find the recipe on my website.
Way to say “I love you”
Ask the person you love what about their fashion wish list, then keep an eye out for the items they want at the thrift store. This is almost like a little game I play with myself; I ask people close to me what they’re coveting (making sure they’re very specific), and then I keep a list on my phone to review whenever I’m secondhand shopping. You’d be surprised how often the specific items they’ve been thinking about show up, and then you can surprise them with it, often for under $10.
Things that feel important, but aren’t
Your daily step count
Buying something from SSENSE just because it’s on sale
Trendy cookware (I do 95% of my cooking in a Lodge cast iron skillet that I got for $30)
Things that don’t feel important, but are
Prescription sunglasses
Knowing your friends’ coffee orders so you can just surprise them
Keeping some sort of prepared protein (meatballs, tofu, chicken nuggets, whatever) in the freezer for nights you don’t want to cook