Tennessee Backroads

Photos by Drew
Dress: Vintage silk dress, bought from Better Stay Together
Tights: H&M
Boots: Rachel Comey
Sunglasses: Karen Walker

I’ll always take any excuse I can get to go to Tennessee, so when Lauren asked if we would go to Nashville to help her shoot her next Blooming Leopold lookbook I didn’t hesitate.  We’d been wanting to get out of Atlanta anyway.  So on Friday, Drew, Rufus, and I drove up to Tennessee, hung out with my parents for a night, and then went to Nashville for the shoot.  I can’t wait for the lookbook photos to come out.  Lauren’s new collection is my favorite of hers so far, so getting to help style the shoot was pretty easy.  Drew shot the photos (I’ve seen them already and like them so much that it’s hard to keep them under wraps) and Lauren’s beautiful friend Ashley modeled the clothes.  It’s going to be a good one.

At night Lauren and Neil took us out to City House, which is definitely our favorite restaurant in Nashville so far. We had some amazing cocktails, great food (the waiter had the soup veganized for me and didn’t even look at me like I was a weirdo when I asked), and lots of laughs.  We always have so much fun with them.

The rest of our trip was relaxing.  We just sat around with my family, making fun of silly TV shows, eating a lot.  My mom made us vegan pancakes, and we ate pumpkin bread that I brought—the first of the season for us.  When I made pumpkin bread I thought that I might be jumping the gun, considering it was still 83 degrees in Atlanta.  But the temperature dropped real quick, and I spent the weekend in coats and tights that I stole from my styling pile, and since this dress in the photos was the only long-sleeved thing I brought I ended up wearing it twice.

It was still cold when we went home.  My parents had told us about how beautiful the drive to Lynchburg, Tennessee was, so we went that way instead of the interstate, driving on two-lane roads that went through fields and by farmhouses and random graveyards.  Lynchburg is known for the Jack Daniel’s Distillery, which you can tour (it was already closed by the time we got there so we didn’t) and go to one of its many gift shops on the downtown square. But you can’t buy a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey there.  Lynchburg happens to be in a dry county, we heard a gift shop cashier explain to a sad German tourist—they can sell Jack Daniels t-shirts and shot glasses, but they can’t sell Jack Daniel’s.  The South can be a strange place.