neon crayon

I'd like to live in a house with light, lots of light.

Lena Lencek: You Wish Your Professors Were This Stylish

I did this interview with the incomparable Lena Lencek in April, but thought I’d share it here as both a “hurrah” to that odd-yet-persistent tradition of students returning to school in the fall, as well as an excuse to shed some tears over the fact that she’s on sabbatical this year.
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AS: So I think we should start this interview by giving some of your background, since I think you’re known around campus for being quite fashionable. When was the first time you came to a sense of your own style? Did you have time to do this while you were in your studies?

Lena Lencek: Yes, I’ve always thought it was fun to dress up. It started, I think, in grade school, and maybe in kindergarten, when we all wore black pinafores and white collars. I went to nun school. I love their black and white, and I think that’s completely determined the color range for the rest of my life. Black and white, the simplicity. So I’ve always thought it very important to package oneself in a way that was harmonious and that was pleasing to look at.

AS: It’s funny that you mention the nun uniform because I think a lot of fashion shoots kind of subvert the image of the pious nun. You’ll see a model in the pinafore, but maybe in a more compromising situation. Do you think that idea is a cliché now, or does it still have some value?

LL: I think it’s a very powerful idea. The combination of an authority figure and a provocation, like a sexual provocation – to cross boundaries – is very powerful, and I don’t think it will ever lose its power. It’s a cliché because it continues to work.

AS: What do you think about clothing and the profession of teaching?

LL: I think that there’s a tradition in Anglo-American academia of dressing shabbily, or as if one were totally indifferent to one’s body. As if the body didn’t matter at all, and it was all about the brain. So in America, certainly, to pay attention to one’s clothing suggests that one is frivolous about the life of the brain. That’s stuff and nonsense, in my opinion.

AS: Mine too.

LL: One of the things I love about Reed and how Reed students dress is that they are so creative about putting things together. If fashion designers spent a week once a season at Reed, they would get a whole lot of ideas for the next look in fashion. Reedies know how to dive into the bins [the Goodwill outlet store, known as “the bins”] and come out with things that are retro. And they’re not burdened with a kind of history of how these things ought to be worn, so they wear them whatever way they think works for them visually. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But there’s always something really provocative and interesting about it.

I also think it’s imperative for the faculty to dress halfway decently because they’re always on display. I think it’s a sign of respect to one’s work and to one’s students to take the time to put oneself together.

AS: And I think that’s a topic we’ve seen in Nabokov or in a few of the Russian writers we’ve read, like Chekhov, who have discussed life in the academy, and professors being tired of dressing up, and the self-consciousness of it all. But I agree that it’s a sign of respect to dress well. Is there anything you want to say about your outfit today?

LL: Well, today I decided I wasn’t going to go black and white, because it was just really getting old —

AS: Is it old, or is it “timeless”?

LL: Well, the weather has been so relentlessly grey, and so I thought, “We’ve got to change the package a bit.” So I dove for an army fatigues suit, which always puts me in a good mood because I found it in a small shop in a town in Tuscany called Poggibonsi –

AS: Which means?

LL: Poggibonsi means “fortress walls,” or the “walls of the bonsi.” It’s right on the road between Siena and Florence. It was heavily bombed during WWII because they had a railroad line going through it. Now it’s a tacky industrial town, like everything else, that is curated and beautiful for tourists, but Poggibonsi is a nitty-gritty working town. I found it in a designer outlet store, and it always puts me in a good frame of mind. I thought, “We’ll wear green in celebration of the greening of the campus.”

  1. spookeasy reblogged this from neoncrayon and added:
    FILE THIS UNDER WHO...WILL NOT HAVE HER UNTIL SENIOR YEAR
  2. bonniegivemestrength said: UGH LOVE HER
  3. klempky reblogged this from unofficialreed and added:
    Lena Lencek appreciation life. REED IN T-MINUS LIKE LESS THAN TWELVE HOURS
  4. unofficialreed reblogged this from neoncrayon and added:
    Lena’s tiny poodle, Dylan,...Faculty Peter Steinberger (who is
  5. neoncrayon posted this