Thursday, April 18, 2024

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Yard sales proliferate in warm weather, but the one coming Sunday to Cambridgeport stands out: It is essentially a download from the mind of the art director of Okay Mag and her friends, teen girls with a group aesthetic that’s vintage, kitschy, artsy and riotously colorful.

One force behind it is Klara Ingersoll, who founded Okay Mag last year as a Cambridge Rindge and Latin School junior with a friend, Noa Mori. Daily Dot jumped on the story of the magazine, extolling its “femme aesthetic” and “a privileged peek into the subconscious of what it means to be young, creative, modern and aware.”

071616i-yard-sale-1“We’ll be selling a lot of pink stuff from the pink issue shoot,” Ingersoll said Saturday, referring to the second issue of Okay Mag (exploring a color that “evokes dramatic responses from almost everyone because of its long history of promoting the gender binary that the Western capitalist state sells”). Ingersoll’s feminist club at CRLS, Club 1, highlighted a culture of sexual harassment at the high school and was essential in winning this month’s change to its dress code, which targeted girls’ clothing for being “inappropriate.”

Ingersoll and some half-dozen others are passing on what they’ve collected over high school and displayed in Okay Mag’s pages – including intriguingly used diaries, gargoyles, religious iconography and triptychs, Lisa Simpson “slut ever” tees, shoes, books, art supplies, vintage toys and more – with tunes and cold drinks for the browsers and buyers.

“This is transitional. We’re all going off to either school or work in the fall,” said another sale organizer and zine producer, Charlotte Somerville.

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Look also for local band T-shirts – Okay Mag features a lot – and copies of the zine itself, as well as other local teen girl zines. (Somerville’s Vapid Slut, created with friend Kay Goodheart, is one of the more pungent titles to seek out.)

The perfect shopper for the yard sale, with its vintage sewing machine, late-70s motorcycle helmet and antique Grecian items, might be “an emotionally minded young Cantabrigian with a passion for quirky statement pieces and kitschy decor,” Somerville said.

That covers the people who older than 18 but want to ensure their approach feels young, or the next group of high schoolers with aspirations of making a difference with a sense of fun and style.


The yard sale is from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday at 283 Allston St., in the Cambridgeport neighborhood – a 10-minute walk from the Central Square stop on the MBTA red line. Information is here.