The Plastics

Feeling guilty about my blog this week. It is not that my mind is blank, but that this month’s Vogue, which had several enraging features, is not yet fully online except for Blake Lively, bathing suits, clear plastic. So I will tell you an anecdote. The suits she’s wearing (by Michael Kors) reminded me of my Outward Bound experience in Maine, Summer 1990. I was on the trip because I wanted to do something nonacademic before I went to college. Half the rest of the crew (we were learning to sail and rock climb) had been sent north to shape up after minor drug busts. My favorite person on the trip was Blake, who had been dealing pot at his Orlando high school to kids like Ruth, a girl so freckled and cute and (reader, I must say it) dumb that when told she was not playing with a full deck replied, “But I don’t play cards.” I kid you not. She also packed, for her wilderness experience, a black maillot cut down to there and infilled with clear plastic. It fogged when the temperature climbed above 75. An effect Vogue should have considered for this shoot.

Also fond of plastic: Lady Gaga. So until I can complain about how Vogue’s prose is worse than the script for SATC2 and show you my new most-hated decorator, read DCrit student Aileen Kwun’s argument for Gaga as today’s Gropius. He’d be rolling in his grave, but the idea is worth consideration.

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By Alexandra Lange

Alexandra Lange is an architecture critic and author, and the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner for Criticism, awarded for her work as a contributing writer for Bloomberg CityLab. She is currently the architecture critic for Curbed and has written extensively for Design Observer, Architect, New York Magazine, and The New York Times. Lange holds a PhD in 20th-century architecture history from New York University. Her writing often explores the intersection of architecture, urban planning, and design, with a focus on how the built environment shapes everyday life. She is also a recipient of the Steven Heller Prize for Cultural Commentary from AIGA, an honor she shares with Design Observer’s Editor-in-Chief, Ellen McGirt.