Lifestyle

Here’s your fashion horoscope for what to wear this Taurus season

Published

2 weeks ago

April 20, 2024

Press Room

Here’s your fashion horoscope for what to wear this Taurus season

pet-tree-kor’s Green Helicteres Isora Jacket.

(Photo Illustration by Beth Hoeckel)

We find ourselves in that time of year dedicated to the most sensuous and worldly of the earth signs — that is, Taurus season. We are so grateful for our baby bulls, because they remind us that food, drink, sex and money exist to be experienced in all their glory. And what better way to indulge in all these things than by traveling? Liberate your carefully selected and impeccably preserved vintage designer purse strings (we’re talking Taurus, after all) and go somewhere.

The ritual of travel is as visceral as it is spiritual. It’s the sweat collecting under your collar while you speed-walk to your gate (just to make sure it’s there, right?) as much as it is a 4 a.m. kiss on a starry beach accessible only by motorcycle. And the ritual before the ritual — packing — becomes a delicate, fraught dance of selection, a personal curatorial Everest that requires the traveler to dream, first and foremost, of how rainy the breeze might be on the way up the Eiffel Tower, how they might dress for both a rooftop dinner and a volcanic hike just outside San Salvador, if they’ll long for a stiletto boot at the Beijing opera or be too entranced by the show to care that they brought the flats instead. The careful balance of environmental factors in wardrobe selection, however, comes secondary to the crown jewel of functionality: the all-purpose travel jacket.

Trip jacket selection is an art and a science, best done elegantly, with attention paid to form, function, aesthetics and viability — as a pillow when folded into fourths or eighths on a long-haul flight. It should be able to take you to a museum and a visit to the botanical gardens with street food in hand on the same day. For this, may I suggest pet-tree-kor’s Green Helicteres Isora Jacket. The Shanghai-based imprint’s name is a nod to “petrichor,” a functionally and mystically perfect word that exists solely to describe the divine perfume that greets your nostrils after a rain (a smell that, allegedly, humans can detect more astutely than a shark’s nose can detect blood).

This garment, rendered in a tweed blend with a gorgeously mossy sheen, is both architectural in its structure and fluid in its silhouette. It looks at once inviting and familiar — almost like your most gallant grandfather’s jacket from the days he used to go out dancing with your grandma — and polished and elegant. It wouldn’t look out of place in a cozy diner on a rainy night in San Francisco’s Chinatown or on a dewy morning at the Rhode Island beach house of your friend with generational wealth. The shade of the jacket is an oft-underrated neutral, pairing nicely with virtually any other piece in your suitcase, maybe even amethyst or royal blue too. The Helicteres isora, the jacket’s namesake, is a vibrant plant from northern Oceania whose leaves dry in tawny-green curlicues, like nature’s fractals.

And nature’s most esoteric fractal you shall be in your pet-tree-kor travel jacket, cruising through the liminal space of LAX on the way to your next adventure. Does your manic pixie dream girl complex fantasize about an ethereal-looking stranger mesmerized in reverie as they gaze upon the dapples of fluorescent Tom Bradley terminal lights reflecting off this sumptuously swamp-hued fabric? Mine too. For all the grounding and presence that resets our nervous systems, our earthly vessels would be naught without the dream of a shimmery green.

Goth Shakira is a digital conjurer based in Los Angeles.

Lifestyle

Black lawmakers reintroduce federal CROWN Act legislation to ban hair discrimination

Published

2 hours ago

May 3, 2024

Press Room

Black lawmakers reintroduce federal CROWN Act legislation to ban hair discrimination

A number of Democratic lawmakers have reintroduced the CROWN Act, legislation that would ban discrimination based on one’s hairstyle or hair texture. Here, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signs Crown Act legislation on June 15, 2023 in Lansing, Mich. that will outlaw race-based hairstyle discrimination in workplaces and schools.

Joey Cappelletti/AP

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Joey Cappelletti/AP

A host of Black Democratic lawmakers reintroduced legislation Wednesday that would ban discrimination against a person’s hairstyle or hair texture.

Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., led a group of 84 lawmakers in sponsoring the reintroduction of HR 8191, or the CROWN Act (Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair) in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The bill — which was previously passed in the House in 2019 and 2022, but blocked in the Senate — aims to end race-based hair discrimination in schools and workplaces for Black Americans and other communities of color.

If signed into law, the act would prohibit discrimination based on hairstyle or hair texture that is coiled or tightly curled — including locs, cornrows, twists, braids, Bantu knots, Afros or any other hairstyle that is commonly associated with a race or national origin.

The House passes the CROWN Act, a bill banning discrimination on race-based hairdos

Watson Coleman said during a Wednesday news conference that lawmakers were introducing the bill again because “no worker, no student, no person should ever face discrimination because of how their hair grows out of their heads.”

“We can’t control the texture of our hair any way that we can control the color of our skin,” Watson Coleman said. “… and yet, Black Americans routinely face discrimination simply because of the way their hair looks.”

Adjoa B. Asamoah, a scholar and strategist leading the nationwide CROWN Act movement, told reporters Wednesday that “race-neutral” grooming policies reinforce Eurocentric standards of beauty, which she says are “problematic.”

“There is a longstanding history of racial discrimination against natural hair and protective styles in the workplace, schools, and society at large,” Asamoah said.

“…I have worked tirelessly to pass the CROWN Act and shift culture to mitigate the physical, psychological, and economic harm caused by race-based hair discrimination,” she added.

California was the first state to sign the act into law back in 2019, and has since been joined by 24 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Texas is the latest state to implement a version of the law. The legislation has been proposed in 20 additional states and Washington, D.C.

Senate Republicans have previously blocked attempts at passing the bill; in 2022, the legislation didn’t get enough support from Republicans to override a filibuster from Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul.

News of the reintroduction of the CROWN Act comes months after the ongoing battle of Darryl George, a Black high school student in Texas who was suspended for more than a month for wearing a natural hairstyle, was brought into the national spotlight.

A Black Texas student sues after he was suspended over his hairstyle

The 19-year-old senior at Barbers Hill High School in the Houston area has faced numerous suspensions since the start of the 2023-24 school year due to what school administrators say is a violation of the school’s dress code.

George’s natural locs fall below his eyebrows and ear lobes, which school officials say violates the district’s dress code for male students.

The 19-year-old was suspended just before the Texas law went into effect statewide on Sept 1, 2023. Later that month, he and his mother filed a lawsuit against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the state’s attorney general, saying they failed to enforce the law.

Lifestyle

President Biden's L.A. Visit Cost LAPD Millions in Staffing

Published

3 hours ago

May 3, 2024

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President Biden's L.A. Visit Cost LAPD Millions in Staffing

President Biden‘s got a nice chunk o’ change for his campaign war chest after visiting Los Angeles, but it did the opposite for the city … draining millions from the budget.

According to documents, obtained by TMZ, additional LAPD staffing costs to keep POTUS secure during his December trip, cost L.A. just north of $2.6 million … with much of it going toward the boots on the ground.

Biden LA Visit_sub_Getty

The biggest cost, by far, is the $1,833,818.07 paid out to regular police officers — the cops who blocked off roads and provided security for events. The next biggest expense was salaries for sergeants and detective supervisors … which totaled $540,720.22.

Lieutenants earned about $113K, captains and civilian labor cost around $50K each … and the expenses got progressively lower for commanders, assistant chiefs and the deputy chief.

Motorcasde for Biden_sub_Getty.j

The grand total came out to $2,633,847.66 for 19,485 hours of labor for the President’s 3 day visit from December 8 to December 10.

The fundraising trip included one huge star-studded event in Holmby Hills, which Pro-Palestine protesters disrupted

Keep in mind, it’s common for cities to run up huge law enforcement bills when a president, or former prez, comes to town — so, $2.6 mil is not an outlandish number in relative terms.

And, if you’re wondering, the answer is no … law enforcement sources tell us the feds do NOT pay back local cops for those costs.

Lifestyle

Peloton is laying off workers and replacing the CEO — again

Published

9 hours ago

May 3, 2024

Press Room

Peloton is laying off workers and replacing the CEO — again

Peloton hit the skids after its pandemic boom, struggling to figure out how to grow beyond sales of luxury fitness equipment.

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Peloton hit the skids after its pandemic boom, struggling to figure out how to grow beyond sales of luxury fitness equipment.

Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

In a Peloton déjà vu, the fitness-equipment company is cutting 400 jobs and looking for a new CEO as it struggles to shape a business model beyond selling expensive stationary bikes.

Just two years ago, Peloton replaced its co-founder John Foley in the CEO seat with Barry McCarthy, formerly of Netflix and Spotify. That shakeup included laying off 2,800 employees, or about a fifth of them, followed by other rounds of job cuts.

On Thursday, Peloton once again announced layoffs — this time of 15% of its workforce, or about 400 positions. It will continue to close physical showrooms. And now it’s McCarthy’s turn to step down; another CEO search begins anew.

“I once described turnarounds as a full contact sport; intellectually challenging, emotionally draining, physically exhausting, and all consuming,” McCarthy wrote on Thursday. “From where I sit today, that pretty much summarizes my experience these last two years.”

About the layoffs, he said Peloton “simply had no other way to bring its spending in line with its revenue.”

The cost-cutting comes as Peloton tries to stop losing money and grow past its identity as a seller of luxury fitness equipment. Under McCarthy, with his expertise in subscriptions, Peloton has tried to focus more on corporate wellness, removed the free app membership option and struck deals with companies like Lululemon and Hyatt hotels.

McCarthy said Peloton was able to improve a key financial metric of free cash flow. But a subscription revolution did not happen.

Peloton’s stock value has plummeted more than 90% since the pandemic-era boom, when lockdowns had people splurging on Peloton’s $2,000 stationary bikes plus a monthly fee for video-streamed classes. As people returned to their gyms and fitness studios, Peloton’s equipment gathered dust.

Then came a series of safety crises. Peloton tussled with federal officials over an eventual recall of treadmills. They had caused dozens of incidents including a death of a 6-year-old. Peloton’s handling of all this resulted in a $19 million fine. Last year, the company also recalled nearly 2.2 million bikes.

Peloton sales continued to wobble throughout. Now, the company is approaching a deadline to refinance more than $1 billion in debt. Executives count on the new restructuring plan to cut expenses by more than $200 million by the end of its 2025 fiscal year.

McCarthy will remain an advisor to Peloton until the end of the year.