HEADLANDS

Finally, a blog post about one of my all-time favorite places in the Bay Area: the Headlands Center for the Arts. There are a few reasons I love this place: 1) It's absolutely gorgeous... out in the middle of Marin, the Headlands Center is one of the most idyllically Californian places I've seen. 2) The Headlands is one the foremost art organizations in the Bay Area, and hosts incredible residencies with huge, sun-flooded studios for visiting artists from around the world. 3) The Headlands was an old fort that was repurposed in the 70s by the artist David Ireland, another Bay Area favorite. 

All the buildings in the Headlands complex have been sort of half-way restored, in typical David Ireland fashion. The walls are sealed, cracks and flaking paint and all, with Ireland's signature ocher varnish. The whole place is in a perfect state of preserved disrepair, which I find to be super beautiful, moving, and (oddly) invigorating. The preservation of the building's natural state of decay resonates deeply with me as it is reminiscent of the sort of honesty I often seek in dressing. A natural, stripped back way of dressing that doesn't seek to hide one's natural imperfections is much like David Ireland's treatment of the old buildings that make up the Headlands complex. Ireland recognized and highlighted the grace in entropy. 

This was my second time visiting the Headlands during one of their biannual open house events, and I knew I wanted to really take advantage of the setting to wear this incredible yellow dress I had just found at a little thrift store in Berkeley. It is one of my holy grail finds: it fits me like it was made for me, and is one of those amazing anachronistic pieces that makes you feel like you're living in a movie. The sun shone on the sea and the breeze shaped my skirt just so and it really felt like the hills were alive with the sound of music.