Mink Tongues

They told me, Francis Hinsley, they told me you were hung
With red protruding eye-balls and black protruding tongue...
Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One


Has anyone read The Loved One? Or seen the film version? (Ohhhh you must if you haven't. Liberace plays a casket salesman and if that isn't enough to make you run to your video store now, then we just can't be friends, okay?)  Certain movies are comfort movies for me (same goes for books, too); and I'm not sure what it says about me, since it's a satire about the funeral industry, but The Loved One is most definitely one of my staples.  I've seen it so many times that someone should do a remake and hire me to play a part, or maybe even 5 parts.

It's part of my capsule film collection like these black leather Converse deals are part of my capsule shoe collection.  This is a recent development, since I used to hate sneakers and until recently, rarely left my house in anything resembling a flat.  However, the Nike shoe project started me on this tangent thinking about sneakers, and I've gone from thinking that these are convenient and innocuous, to thinking of them as a staple.  Amazing the way these things sneak up on me.

When I bought them, they were simple, totally unadorned.  In fact, they were so boring I forgot to take a picture.  Whoops.  You can see them online here.  But yes, I decided I wanted to beef up the tongue.  With jet black mink.

Leather + slick black mink fur + dull black rubbery sneaker trim = ORGY OF TEXTURES.  Very few things excite me more than black on black textural orgies, by the way.  (Aside from Liberace playing a casket salesman, of course.)

Anyway, the end result reminded me of the Loved One, and so here we've come, full circle, back to the black protruding tongue!

Fairly simple, extremely gratifying.

I used an old mink fur collar.  These are fairly common, you can easily find them on ebay or even at thrift shops on old coats.



I cut it down to size so that it could wrap over the tongue on both sides, and finished the edges.  This makes for a meatier tongue, but also a more indulgent shoe.  (Also, because sometimes I fail to wear socks and the mink feels divine against skin. Things I should not divulge...)



I then sewed chamois to the back of the fur, the back of the tongue all the way into the shoe, and then partially down the front of the tongue, as far as I wanted the fur bonded to the tongue.  I didn't want to bond the fur completely down the front of the tongue...this lets you lace underneath the tongue should you feel like styling it that way.



The end result: