Au Revoir Blogger

This marks the end of my relationship with Blogger. This is a good thing. Slowly, old Yes, Mrs. Vreeland posts will migrate to her new home at http://www.ultrapdx.com/yesmrsvreeland

Other projects include managing ultra at, http://www.ultrapdx.com For almost two years now ultra has covered Portland fashion, style, design, and culture (visual art and performance) with a small, dedicated team. I love this little city and the creative action that flourishes here.

The F Word

I read. A lot. I have been reading, among many other things, some very smart writers writing about fashion. Holly Brubach's A Dedicated Follower of Fashion and a Halston biography were two recent reads. I'd interviewed a chick-lit writer not long ago who'd said something to the effect that she was smart and shallow, giving herself (and me) permission to indulge in and enjoy the more frivolous things in life (fashion) as a side dish for our thinking life. Talking with this woman, reading thoughtful, smart writing on fashion, Robin Givhan getting a Pulitzer, all were adding up to making me feel that there are others like me who are smart...and shallow. That there need not be a conflict between my love of Italian Futurist artist/writer/agitator, Fillipo Thomas Marinetti and a delectably-curved 3" heel. That these interests aren't mutually exclusive.

Then I had the misfortune to read bits of another book. I say bits because I'd flip it open, read a bit, be appalled, read a little more to see if it really was this bad (it was), close it in disgust, then open it again somewhere else out of perverse curiosity. How could it be so bad? Who let this be published? It's a book the title of which I'm loathe to record here because it contains a word I refuse to use. Starts with f, ends with -ista. (Oh, okay it's The Fashionista Files: Adventures in Four-Inch Heels and Faux-Pas) Whatever it was about that word that rubbed me the wrong way, was illuminated and explicated by this book, page-by-page. Essentially, it's two female journalists, friends, clotheshorses, delivering a melange of first-person advice and experiences. It's 1/3 fashion diary, 1/3 field guide, and 1/3 (overbearing, simplistic, and annoying) instruction manual: how to be an f-, how to spot an f-, their adventures at/with fashion week, weddings, gay friends, and embarrassingly, their spending/credit problems. I can't tell if they're being ironic when they deliver an illustrated how-to on air-kissing.

The upside is the joy they clearly take in clothes. The downside is all the talk about acquisition, the sale, the price, the hours spent chasing the thing.

When I think about fashion, I think first about making. I think about Cristobal Balenciaga's shapes, or Poiret's drapes. I think about the man or woman in front of the toile, moving a pin. Or that same designer running his or her hands through lush fabrics.

I think second about the magic of fabulous garments. Their transformative effect on the wearer.

I have always been in a world of makers and when I look at a garment on the runway, I think about how it was made. I appreciate the craft not merely as something luxurious to own, but for its craft.

Now, I know that the engine doesn't run without the consumer. But to have the wanting, the seeking, the acquiring so foregrounded makes fashion, and in particular my appreciation for it, seem more than shallow, makes it dirty.

If anything, the book may have cleared the way for me to begin using the f- word. Of course, I'll be using it as the slur that it is as defined in 339 pages by the authors.

My Fashion World Standing On Its Head

What is happening in the world when I loathe a Prada show and love a Versace? Has the earth's axis shied away from plum? I've long admired the tenacity with which Donatella hones to a certain garish glamour, both in person and in her designs. I thought Madonna was in the recent white on white Versace ads. I think Jennifer Lopez' plunging-past-the-navel green frock circa Grammys 2000 certainly did its job and got the paparazzi snapping. I've just never been a Versace girl. I might appreciate, but I would not participate (ooo, I'm starting to write in rhymisms like a Southern Baptist preacher). But oh, Fall 06. I do believe I'm a convert. From her liquid long and short dresses with intricate Gres-esque wrappings, to her mod-wear, Donatalla nailed it in look after look.

Au contraire, I have long admired Miuccia Prada for the vision that can turn left 90 degrees, look fresh as hell, and drag the rest of the fashion world along behind it in trickle down effect for seasons to follow. I would argue that her influence trumps all others for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that she is free to make those turns, not being beholden in any way to the legacy of a house, as many younger European designers at the major houses are. she has an unerring sense of what works now, what looks fresh now without looking Galliano costume-y.

But for Fall 06, I'm not afraid to say the empress has no clothes. Anyone who says otherwise is too close to the glow at the center that is Prada. I'd love to say I loved it, but there is no way to spin the mess of balloonish parka-inspired whatnot, oversized animal prints, and general shapeless, lumpy, ill-proportioned drek that was the fall Prada show. If this were the word of the high fashion dictator, you'd just as well throw in the towel and wear sweats and your dad's puffy down jacket like the rest of America (oh, but with really nice shoes).

The looks that worked--little black dress, layered grey and black sweaters over pants, long black coats--were simply unremarkable. I don't even want to talk about it.

The Fever (and tangential footwear notes)

As the dark days have begun to add up and make one wish for spring or a hint of it, one must guard against the coming onslaught of spring fever. Last year, I blame the fever for the not one, but three graphically patterned (floral, no less) skirts that will look terribly last year this year. I blame the fever for the palette shift of the Easter Egg women. In particular, I blame the fever for last year's ubiquitous grass green (which is already starting to look appealing, damn-the-fever!) and any incidence of butter yellow.

I blame the fever for what we used to call "thongs" before that word was co-opted for underwear. Now commonly referred to as "flip-flops"--although I recall that among other names including "zories," "go-aheads," a Midwesternism, was my favorite term for them--they belong on the beach but are now found on the urban sidewalk.

May all flip-flop wearers experience the pointed unpleasantness that a flat-tire affords the flopper.

I destroyed more than one pear of flip-flops of the rubber variety by either being victim of a flat tire or stubbing the toe of said sandal without flat-tire assistance and ripping the strap right out of the footbed.

I detest flip-flops for the same reason I would not wear bedroom slippers in public and for the same reason that I detest mules (outside of the bedroom): scuffing. There is nothing worse than scuffing rather than walking, dragging the heel of every step.

It's all very charming to slowly shuffle out of the bedroom into the kitchen to receive the cup of coffee your lover has poured for you in the morning. It is another thing entirely to scuff along when you should be striding out in the world.

Mules in public are for the woman who wants to appear helpless or half-witted.

It would be convenient to blame the fever for mules, but they are not spring fare alone. No, it's bigger than the fever.

Separated At Birth

Why is Rick Owens so successful on the continent? Is it because of his artfully draped, hide-and-seek, well-cut, muted tone collections? Is it because of Kembra Pfahler? Or is it because he's a more of a tough-guy (in Prince-meets-Wild-West boots) version of John Galliano who is much beloved. Go ahead and draw on the pencil thin mustache, put a pirate hat on him, thin out those beefcake arms and that's Galliano.

Mark My Words

What you'll be wearing.

It's an interesting dog-chase-tail-chase-dog phenomenon that your future fashion desires are generated and possibly engineered in concert with the invisible hand on the rudder of futurestyle.

Trends come and go. Example? Poncho. New today, gone tomorrow.

Styles are slow-grinding, incremental, paradigm-shifting pushes and pulls. Example? The shape of a pantleg, the width of a gentleman's tie, a skirtlength.

So, I'll ID fluffy boots as trend. But I'll put rounded (or toe-boxed like ballet shoes) toes and platforms into the style category. It's so interesting that again for Spring 05 both Miuccia Prada and Alber Elbaz at Lanvin are both showing not 70s platforms, but platformed, narrow heeled, round toed pumps &c. Ladylike, devastatingly sexy, urban and...AND if you think the look is outre and Fleuvog today, it will look, to use the ubiquitous phrase be "must-have" tomorrow. I'm tellin' you. That's how a style grinds forward. It's on a couple of runways, a few photo shoots, hits the boutiques, gets knocked off, the cycle comes round again, more runways...that's a ground shift.

Look at boots right now. Buckets of pointy toes everywhere you look. Is it a trend-shadow or style. I'm going to call it a style. It's lasted long enough that it's not a trend. Trend is season. Trend is the horrid spring ice cream colors which infect the giddy, seasonally. Style is the muted-palette nearly across the board for both Fall 05 and Spring 06.

You will be wearing gunmetal, ivory, greyed taupe (I LOVE the word "taupe"), the color of my walls which is "Brindle", charcoal and black, baby. I don't need to hypnotise you to tell you that. And it won't be because it was dictated to you thro the fashion rags. It won't be because that's all you'll find in stores. It will be because of the mysterious alchemy that through some combination of invention, marketing, editorial (and the ego that goes along with that), viral spread (and the peer dynamics that go along with that) develops a style (or styles) over time until it soaks your brain enough that you'll think you thought of it yourself. "Muted tones looks right this year," you'll think. As right as mini-skirts in the late 60s/early 70s. So right that any other hemline looks dated or dowdy. It's that subtle, that pervasive, that powerful.

Sorry, Mom

Yes, my mother said that if you can't say anything nice, you ought not say anything at all. However, somebody has to say, "Dear god in heaven, there is just no good reason, not one, for handkerchief hems." Even when the hippie aesthetic--which we now are apparently referring to as "gypsy" to disguise it--is on the wane, the handkerchief hem still slips into various collections. And now, with tiered skirts and their ilk sloshing around on summer sidewalks (and if you can get women to wear Ugg boots in broad daylight in cities, oh and the pants-under-the-skirt look, then a hippie resurgence is certainly in the works) the handkerchief hem is experiencing a(nother damn) heyday, at least on the streets. I'm seeing them even on women who from the waist up seem to know better.

Sure, Stevie Nicks had her appeal, but we don't have to dress like her. Let me try to say something nice...okay, handkerchief hems play a nice hide and seek with legs. But here's the real problem with them: have you ever seen photos of raunchy pin-up girls in ragged chamois bikinis? No? (Come to think of it, why have I?) Well, picture ragged hems on abbreviated camel-colored loin cloths. I don't care how refined the materials or the cut, the handkerchief hem still evokes this kind of Raggedy Ann, Frederick's of Hollywood thing.

No picture for you. Why encourage them?

Sorry, Mom.

Speechless, Almost

image: vera wang shot by marcio madeira for style.com

The satin coat, the ivory tulle, the belted silhouette with flared skirt, the abbreviated sleeves...I could cry.

Revision/Addition 8 August 05
Note: There is a reason we use speech to communicate. One makes one's meaning clear when one says what one means rather than beating around the mulberry bush. There have been questions about my intention in above comment about shedding tears. To clarify: It's not often that I'm at a loss to say what needs to be said about an extraordinary piece of art or a design achievement like this dress. It is possible that I was just being lazy. Or that I counted on a picture to say a thousand words. There are so many things right about the dress (and there is another photo of it in last month's Vogue), the light reflecting off of the satin, the shape, the peak of tulle...it is, to quote one of my favorite poets, Ted Berrigan, "feminine, marvelous, and tough."