I Live On A Catholic Block

So like most gals these days (I’m talking about the rookie mag readers and the fashiony gothy teen tumblrers) I find comfort in religious iconography even though I’m nowhere near a practicing Catholic.  If something at a tag sale/vintage shop/99 cent store has a cross or a Virgin Mary on it I just gotta have it.  I got the ratty plastic rosaries like Cat Marnell, Precious Moments Easter stickers, and kitchy homeware stuff that Spanish church ladies probably owned before me.  I still have my communion dress and try it on from time to time because I’m a weirdo like that and imagine that it kind of looks like an Anna Sui mini and if a fashun collection ever repurposes anything resembling nun/shrinery garb I feel the urge to drag all of it onto my desktop.

It makes sense because I’m from the Bronx where even tough guys with fitteds have giant glittering crosses on their necks and are all tatted up with weeping virgins and rosary beads around their biceps.  It's a place where religion and hedonism are as simultaneously trendy as they are in kool manhattan clubs.  It's a wonderland of botanicas and ugly religious lawn statues.  Everyone goes to Catholic school because the public schools suck and whether you're Irish, Italian, or Spanish you have a little grandma who has a little room with a bunch of little saintly trinkets and palm from Palm Sunday five years ago.

Anyway that's why when I saw this skirt on etsy I was gagging.  It looks like something a pope in drag would wear or a tablecloth at a church dance/an old wedding veil/aka everything that I'm about.  It's all ripped up too so it makes me feel like a ghostly bride.       

Mattie's sunglasses, vintage top and skirt from etsy, vintage chain purse from Beacon's Closet

      These are some pictures I've taken in my hood in the past year for some Catholic vibes.