One of the things that I love the most about my job is that I am inexplicably surrounded by people who mean what they say and say what they mean. It is the oddest thing.
Well knock me down. Looks like I'm not the only one with a little fetish for a good looking man in a cravat.
Ever since I posted this yesterday, which was ostensibly nothing but a charming little post about all the various places that I like to hang out online, I have been visited, followed, friended, commented, and Tumblr'd by really rather a whole lot of you.
And it's all because of omgcravats.com.
Seriously? That's. Awesome.
For real. This is why I totally love the internet. How else would you ever find all the other people are who are freaky in exactly the same ways you are freaky?
I mean, assuming that going back to college is no longer an option. Which it really isn't. Pretty sure you're only supposed to graduate once. Pity.
Anyway, I just wanted to say THANK YOU and YAY! and also YOU RULE for all of your nice emails and comments and Tweets and such about omgcravats.com. It's pretty sweet to meet you all. Every last one of you.
And there are a LOT of you!
How great is that?
So anyway, let's answer a few frequently asked questions about omgcravats.com:
What's the deal?
Here's the thing. I've always had a thing for men in cravats. Always been a nut for the 19th century. I used to doodle ladies in hoop skirts when I was in elementary school, too.
Why do I like grapes? No idea. Just born that way, I guess. Same thing with this.
I came to the 19th century honestly, through the crazy Victorian house I was raised in, and stayed in it through books, museums, and historical reenact-y things. It was only much later that I was exposed to things like the BBC and PBS versions of things, wet shirts in front of Pemberley, and John Thornton's steely, steely gaze. Although I will say that those things were sort of the last nails in the coffin for me, as it were.
Who are all these people?
Right now, omgcravats.com mostly consists of real people -- that is, they are by and large portraits of real, actual men from the real, actual 18th and 19th century who either had their portraits painted or who painted their own dang portraits (there are more than a few artists in there, if you include the dozens or so that I already have queued up to post over the next few months).
I've been adding more pictures lately of cravateurs from TV and film and such, and I expect that there'll be more of that in the future as I exhaust my various sources of fine art images. Unless you start submitting them, too, which would be GREAT, and which is a topic I will cover in a second.
Why? Why? Why?
Well, it started out just as a bit of a joke, really. As so many of the best things do.
When the lovely and talented Melissa Averinos first designed the artwork for this blog, it was her idea to put my cravat-laden thought bubble front and center in the banner at the top of the page. I loved it, because it's such a dead accurate representation of me, so it stayed.
Then another lovely and talented friend of mine (who wishes to remain anonymous) started sending me, as a personal treat, a picture or two a day of some of her favorite men in cravats. This friend of mine has a fancy degree in art history and some real, live historian bona fides, so her contributions tended to slant rather heavily toward portraiture.
And after all of this had been going on for a while, I realized that I wanted to share my lovely collection of cravateurs with the world. Who was I to keep all this bold and daring neckwear hidden deep away on my desktop? I can't keep this many good men down!
So why a Tumblr?
Well, I really wasn't kidding when I said that I been wanting to build a Tumblr, and that this seemed like as good an excuse as any. I do social media and interwebby things for a living, see, and as Tumblrs started to get more and more popular, I realized that I probably needed to get my act together and at least learn something about how they worked.
And the best way to learn anything on the web is to take it out for a spin yourself. Well why not? It's not like you're going to break the internet.
Can I submit a picture?
Please do! I would love it if you submitted a picture! If it seems to fit with the general zeitgeist of what you already see over there, then I'll queue it up for publication. Submission guidelines are pretty simple. I welcome pictures of any real or fictional men who are wearing cravats. I might have already snuck in one or two who just looked like they might have just taken off their cravat or might be about to put one on. But for the most part I'm looking for straight-up men in historical 18th or 19th century dress. Historical dress that involves a cravat.
I retain the right to be whimsical about what I actually post. But I've already queued up every single one that I've received in the deluge of the last 24 hours, so submit away, because apparently I am easy.
Yeah. You probably already knew that.
Can I link to OMG Cravats on my website?
Heck yeah! Go ahead and grab that slick little badge I made, either over there in the sidebar to the right or up at the top of this post, slap that on your own site, and link it straight on over to www.omgcravats.com if it pleases you to do so. I'd be plum tickled to see scads more people join the Cravatted Army. The more, the merrier.
What else? What did I forget?
Oh, yes -- just like I mentioned in my earlier post, you're all very welcome to find me on Facebook, on Twitter, Flickr, or Pinterest, if any of those happen to float your respective boats. I love meeting people who share my insanely niche little interests, and I'm always online (always), so it would be great to see you around.
Long live the Cravateurs!