Cool people like cool things, which is why we asked Annie Armstrong to share a taste of her taste on Perfectly Imperfect.

Annie Armstrong is the New York City-based mind behind artnet’s gossip column, Wet Paint. It’s been just over a year since she took the reigns from Perfectly Imperfect alum Nate Freeman and in that time she’s written about everything from our friend BlakeTheMan1000’s impromptu concerts and Genevieve Goffman’s most recent show, to the lame private art club Zero Bond and Eric Adams getting COVID after a night out in the art world. In a few months she says they’ll be dropping a new take on the iconic orange and red Wet Paint hat and I’m hoping she’ll send me one. Annie is an expert at all things art and gossip, and lucky for us, she’s here to share a taste of her taste with us.

Without further ado

Annie Armstrong (instagram, twitter)

💌 Keeping Stamps In Your Wallet

So many restaurants in New York give you amazing postcards at the end of your meal. A good lifehack for good free art is postcards–I have several framed in my house (one I got from Dimes of ladybugs having sex and another of a Mike Kelley piece from the Whitney are my favorites). I like to share the wealth and send good ones to my friends and my mom. Perfect way to entertain a table after dinner is to pick someone to send a postcard to and actually drop it in a mailbox after the meal. Who doesn’t love getting mail? 

🍭 Gene Wilder

It’s rare for men to have je ne sais quoi, and I am obsessive about the ones who I think do. The depraved, roguish charm of Serge Gainsbourg has fascinated me for as long as I can remember, and so has Rod Serling’s ability to careen between sinister and comforting. I already regret saying this in a public forum, but when I interviewed Larry Gagosian, I detected a lot of that nameless quality in him–probably from his ability to self-efface freely with a fox-in-the-henhouse twinkle in his eye. Most recently, I’ve become completely enraptured by Gene Wilder’s peculiar energy, which ping-pongs irrationally between mellow yellow to tempestuous. The “Puttin’ On The Ritz” scene in Young Frankenstein makes my heart swell–imagine that man, with those watery, cornflower blue eyes, describing you as “What was once an inarticulate mass of lifeless tissues, [who is now] a cultured, sophisticated, man about town”...? 

( .Y. ) Underboob

I understand why, but it's so strange to me that parts of the body go in and out of style. Lol. I know boobs are decidedly *out* right now but I love showing off my underboob during the dog days of summer with these Sandy Liang tops. Peak ventilation! Excuse me, sir, but my eyes are down there. 

🍸 Another Round (2020)

In my line of work, it's tempting to drink a lot. I like to watch this movie every now and again as a check-in to see where my relationship to alcohol stands. Am I having fun while I’m out? Is it making me more gregarious, more impassioned? Or has it been isolating me, making me unreliable, making me down-right sad? This movie is excellent in many ways, one being that it spans the gamut of what booze can do for you and to you. When in doubt, tag yourself. 

🦷 Cocofloss

A very smart ex-boyfriend of mine once told me that when you want to start incorporating something new into your life that feels like a burden, start by doing it in the most fancy, expensive way so that it doesn’t feel like a punishment. At that time, it meant buying only Whole Foods groceries for myself so that I’d make myself stay home and cook. Now I’ll cook whatever’s on sale or laying around. I used this for exercising too, starting at boutique classes and then graduating to free Youtube workouts. I hate flossing but I applied this mentality to trying to force myself to do it, and these flosses come in obnoxious DTC packaging and in shishi flavors like Cara Cara Orange and Pineapple Upside Down Cake. Making the flossing process a financial burden and a little bit more dynamic has improved my dental hygiene significantly.

🐩 My Best Friend Becky

I met Becky in middle school in Atlanta. She was instantly popular, I was a mixed up little wallflower. Still though, we clicked, and when she moved away during high school, we became pen pals. Fast forward to 2015 and I’m living on her couch in Nolita and we’re both doing some of our first internships in media at *lowers voice* Vice–me at the art section, her in the food section. We’d walk across the bridge to the office together every day. Around this time is when we somehow found ourselves on a Twitch stream with Martin Skhreli and he called us the Moron Twins. 7 years later, people still call us that. I love Becky so much that I call her my dog’s name, and I call my dog Becky. It’s the same kind of unconditional love and instant happiness upon seeing her, like a puppy dog. Get you a best friend like Becky.

Follow Annie on Instagram and Twitter.

Read Wet Paint on artnet.

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