A Man's POV: Shopping Like a Detective

Blogging sure is great. Julia bothers with things like grammar, editing, photoshopping, real shopping, interviewing, and Pinteresting (both a verb and an adjective, e.g., “oh, that’s so Pinteresting!” when you see an unexpected mason jar filled with something not food), and then, at an entirely unpredictable moment, I’ll upset all of that and vandalize her blog with some words. I’m not exaggerating when I say that my process is less defined. I have two sources of inspiration: irrational anger and pretty girls. My anger-based ideas begin with a pitch to Julia that goes something like, “I was just the victim of some grave offense to humanity and I need to use your cute blog as a platform to seek justice and vent my petty frustrations.” They are vetoed immediately. That’s why they’ll never see the light of day until I start my pissy bad mood online rage journal. I’ve already written my first piece, “Cupcakes and Communists,” a rant about the ineptitude of spam posts that originate in Eastern Europe in the comment sections of fashion blogs.

My successful ideas come from my muses. These pretty girls can be real people, fictional characters, or those girls who exist along with ghosts and dark matter in that mysterious extra dimension between earth and hell called popular culture. Thanks to the Large Hadron Collider and creeps in the bushes with telephoto lenses, we can detect celebrities’ presence in the physical world but science still can’t explain the physics behind their existence. Now that I’m married and loosely affiliated with a fashion and beauty blog, I see all women as mannequins for potential blog posts and Christmas presents for Julia.

My new favorite muse is fictional New York City homicide detective Kate Beckett. She’s the no-nonsense, kick-ass babe from the TV show Castle played by actual babe Stana Katic. I know a thing or two about smart girls with long legs and awesome hair (see: wife), so in episode 301, “A Deadly Affair,” when Kate Beckett was solving a murder case while looking straight-up smoking in a purpley pink Burberry shirt I immediately thought, “I confess! Julia would look awesome in that!” Fortunately, I have some sick amateur detective skills, which must be of a caliber comparable to mystery-novelist-turned-NYPD-homicide-consultant and Kate Beckett’s love interest Richard Castle (played by Nathan Fillion from Firefly, the show that produced this iconic beanie) because I know how to use Google. There I uncovered a site completely dedicated to documenting all (ALL) of Kate Beckett’s outfits (reminder: a fictional character) into a monumentally helpful virtual wardrobe. I almost went on my first shopping spree. “Hey! Those are the leather boots Kate was wearing when she chased down the perp from the Soho triple-murder crime scene that would be perfect on Julia for a San Francisco date night!” and “That’s the leather jacket Detective Beckett wore during the arsonist’s autopsy that Julia can pair with her new ankle booties.” The internet is so useful and powerful. And I need to figure out how to join the NYPD because either detectives are shockingly well compensated or most of Beckett’s wardrobe comes from the Upper West Side precinct’s evidence locker.

Luckily, I discovered this site right before Christmas and tracked down Beckett’s Burberry shirt just in time to put it under the tree. Julia loved the shirt and the real-life detective work that went into it. Also, she doesn’t mind if I have a muse if it means new clothes.

An interesting thing about Stana Katic, other than the fact that she can swear super offensively in her native Serbo-Croatian language (gracias, Google Translation), is that she’s an ambassador for the Alternative Travel Project. I’m mostly sure this is the effort to not drive a car for one day every week, but on Twitter it seems to be the movement in support of taking pictures of your shoes. Julia is already an expert at that, so I’ll just go ahead and ride my bike to work every Friday. So, thank you, Stana, and you’re welcome, environment.

Now that I’m done buying women’s clothes until next December, for my next post I can focus on menswear, so be sure to tune in and find out what happens when I catch a man wearing dress shoes with no socks!

Burberry shirt and bag. Rag and Bone jeans. Latigo booties. Valentino sunglasses. David Yurman necklace and bracelets. Michele watch.