Yesterday I was sent reeling. I was introduced to something that I just can't seem to wrap my mind around: Magnolia Pearl.*I was shooting video for my buddy, Clover Carroll, out at Marburger Farm at Round Top yesterday for a web show he's putting together when we stumbled across a booth that was just buzzing with activity - Magnolia Pearl. There were women in what I would describe as various states of undress and disheveldness pouring through racks and shelves of what I thought were feed sacks. It turns out the feed sacks were clothes. And they were seriously lapping them up with gusto.
The interior design blogger we were filming, Holly Mathis, was well familiar with the brand, as was Rachel, Clover's wife (and co-host of the show). They both loved Magnolia Pearl.
To me, Clover and our sound guy, it looked like... well, just old tattered crap. As we were sitting around at lunch talking about it, Clover summed it up pretty well. He said it looked like they should've broken out in a chorus of "It's a Hard Knock Life" at any moment. My thoughts were a little more raw and less poetic, as usual. I thought the clothes looked like what old west hookers would wear when they were hanging around the whorehouse during the day.
I've been thinking about it some more. If I had to describe Magnolia Pearl I would say it's "Sharecropper Shabby Chic." I happen to like the Shabby Chic look (I got to meet Rachel Ashwell while we were there, too... and couldn't help but wonder if she hangs around in Magnolia Pearl - I doubt it, but who knows?)When I got home and mentioned Magnolia Pearl to Kristi, she, too, said she loooooved their stuff.
Say what??!!?
How could I not know that the woman that I love - the mother of my children - has a secret desire to dress like she's straight out of the Industrial Revolution? It's bad enough that we're poor enough to BE sharecroppers, but does she really want to look like one, too?
I was truly shocked. How is it that all these ladies not only were totally in tune with this brand, but also looooooved them some Magnolia Pearl, and none of us guys had ever even heard of such a thing?
Shocked. Just shocked. I'm not shocked that something like Magnolia Pearl exists - I'm floored that ladies absolutely love it.
I get the irony of it all - it looks old and tattered and cheap, but it's actually new and expensive ($250 for a pair of bloomers). I guess I can't see people actually wearing this stuff out anywhere - to the mall or to church or to the movies. The ladies I saw walking around Round Top looked, well, ridiculous to my eye. Maybe it's just a "working around the house (or around the farm?) kinda thing. I guess that's one thing. Maybe that's Magnolia Pearl's niche - "what to wear around the house to be comfortable when your furs are out being cleaned..." People would think I was nuts if I bought a pair of $250 ripped up and worn out sweat pants.
I make fun because I still just can't understand it. But then, I'm a jeans and t-shirt kinda guy. I've never claimed to understand women's high fashion.
*Note: if anyone from Magnolia Pearl ever actually reads this, three notes about your website:
1. it's buggy in Chrome and Safari and scrolls very, very quickly by itself so that you can't actually see the images. Could've been a Flash player error, but that's actually worse because your low-bandwidth site gives a 400 bad request error. In fact, almost every page other than the front page on your store gave me a 404 error. You might want to look in to getting that fixed.
3. Try as I might (in three different browsers) I couldn't seem to add white bloomers or a white dress to a shopping cart. Rose bloomers? No problems there. But I had loooots of problems with your shopping cart. Seems like a kind of important thing to have working properly, no?
3. Please, for the love of all this holy, make it easier to turn off the music on your site. Sites that begin playing music by themselves are the worst things. Ever. Sites that play music and have no easy way to turn it off are even worse and are on par with those websites you go to where there are fifteen animated ads all flashing at you at the same time.
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