Leg-of-Mutton Liftoff

Back after I graduated college and moved a couple days drive from home, I bought my first dictionary. I consulted the inordinate number of librarians in my life and the unanimous vote recommended the American Heritage Dictionary. I loved that thing, pored over it, slept with it next to me and my book in the bed. It was the concise form replacement to the shelf of World Books I had growing up. Mind you, the internet was but a babe in these mid-late 90s. The book had selected visual aids in black and white. At first this annoyed me, I was above it. Quickly I grew to treasure the side page picture panels.

Certain pages would turn up again and again. One of these, inexplicably, was leg-of-mutton. I spied that puffy sleeve picture as I flipped through the pages on the regular. Even the next edition, now in color, retained the illustration. I guess because it is a middle of the alphabet letter, it folded in to the page-flip repertoire.

Fast forward twenty-odd years and I suddenly start to see the style all over the place, sweeping the nation as I like to say. First I spy the fashion plate in a five-year-old in Atsuko Okastuka, my new favorite name in comedy. Next, swoon, Emma Stone turns up in all kinds of sassy sleeves in the new Poor Things, for which she’s already won a Golden Globe. A quick gander gathers articles on the arms in Harper’s Bazaar, Slate, NYT, Movieweb, artnet, the list goes on. There’s even (well, of course) pinterest. I mean, I’d wear this:

The bottom line is, prepare for leg-of-mutton liftoff.

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