Yes, Mrs. Vreeland

Au Revoir Blogger

2007-04-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-10T09:39:00.000-07:00

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

2006-02-25T15:40:00.000-08:00

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)

2006-01-31T22:17:00.000-08:00

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

2005-10-24T21:02:00.000-07:00

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

2005-10-24T19:48:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-16T21:13:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-26T17:44:00.000-07:00

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."

An AC/DC Moment

2005-07-21T17:28:00.000-07:00

Jil Sander. Photo Marcio Madeira at Style.com, naturally.

Thank goodness we now have permission to going back to wearing black. After Donna Karan declared brown was the new black, one after another the colors lined up for a turn with fashion arbiters and designers alike wanting to be the one who broke the new color. The "[insert name of color here] is the new black" statement has become a running fashion joke.

Meanwhile ladies (and gents) have been valiantly dressing in hues ranging from Easter egg to jewel, all along knowing full well that no one looks as fabulous as when wearing a tuxedo or a little black dress. Tom Ford. I rest my case.

But this fall the non-color seeped down enough runways that black, it can be confidently said, is back. One need not thrust about any longer for his or her "color," (remember ladies having their "colors done"?) but can relax into black, the only color that's effortlessly chic. How do you wear it without looking goth? Sharp edges and tailoring. How do you spice it up with out adding color? Textures. A silk or satin will be animated by light, a boucle might play with it a little, and a cashmere knit might refuse light completely. Designers have included black-on-black quilting and embroidery, and even some beading.

Cut, line, and drape. It's dressing by Sharpie, all outlines and boldness. !
Sophia Kokosalaki. Photo by Marcio Madeira. Style.com.

Going to Lengths

2005-07-14T18:40:00.000-07:00

Writers can call it "gypsy" all they want, a word that invokes romance and mystery. But if you ask me, the tunics, the long skirts say one thing: hippie.

I'm not even going to post a picture. The seven tier prairie skirt in Pepto Bismol pink, while not hippie-ish in such a garish color, does look a lot like a tent. They are the Ugg boots of skirts. They were never a good idea, aren't a good idea, and if anyone loved these women, they would tell them to stop it.

(My mother once went out to dinner with my sister and father. Neither of them told her that she had curlers in the back of her hair. She discovered it in the car on the way home. Moral: for God's sake tell me if I have spinach in my teeth...or if I'm wearing something pink, long, and tent-like.)

As Mr. Geoffrey Beene says in Dodie Kazanjian's 1995 book, Icons, The Absolutes of Style, "I will not change hemlines," (he's referring to going longer), "for the simple reason that short dresses let people move more easily. And in a mobile society, in a fast-moving world, it's illogical to do anything that would hinder movement. Modern to me means less fabric. I'm simply saying I prefer to stay Modern."

And while I appreciate the notion of the 40's length skirt (straight as a pin). I like to be able to walk. I'll sacrifice mobility for heels (a little) but not for skirts.

How To Be Lovely

2005-07-10T22:07:00.000-07:00

It is a fine gentleman caller who understands that watching Funny Face makes for an ideal Sunday evening. Yes, Audrey Hepburn is lovely, but...

There are two stars in this movie. One of the stars never speaks a word: the wardrobe that Hubert de Givenchy designed for Hepburn, and especially the hats. We need oversized hats.

The second is the amazing Kay Thompson. Her portrayal of a Vreeland-esque fashion editor (she does a song and dance about a pink edict that references the Vreeland quote, "Pink is the navy blue of India," that further references Vreeland's propensity to dictate color choices to designers...literally deciding what would be available for American women to wear. Not recommending, but deciding.

But I'm supposed to be talking about Kay Thompson. Background: any of you who know little girls or remember being one, will know the character Eloise who lives in the Plaza hotel. Thompson created Eloise.

Thompson is fabulous in this movie, the most electric presence on the screen. She's kind of an elegant steamroller. One should watch it for her pink cuffs in one scene and her red coat with a back swing in another. Gloves!

Did I mention the hats?

Oh, Ossie

2005-07-06T15:25:00.000-07:00

In 2003, there was a retrospective of the work of Ossie Clark at the Victoria and Albert. I just finished reading the book published at the time, ossie clark 1965|74 by Judith Watt. It's an odd narrative seemingly cobbled together with very little editorial smoothing...a story of a white hot/quickly burning career. But the photos of his work!

It's funny because anyone who knows me knows I'm not much of a pattern girl. I'm solids. All those rayon birds of paradise in the 80s more or less ruined most prints for me. But I'm enthralled by the draped chiffon wonders Ossie Clark created, many with silk chiffon hand-painted in designs by Celia Birtwell, his partner.

Where are our draped, cut wonders like the above?

I'm feeling giddy.

La Reine

2005-07-05T08:17:00.000-07:00

Andy Warhol, Diana Vreeland, 1973

Stumbled upon here where you will incidentally find an interesting essay by Douglas Coupland on Andy Warhol's Polaroids.

Land of the Lost

2005-06-27T13:20:00.000-07:00

the Fabian by Eugenia Kim

We were reflecting the other day on entire sectors of the apparel and accessories industry that have very nearly disappeared.

Once it was the convention that gentlemen and ladies wear hats in public, and that ladies should wear gloves. Imagine the uncountable number of milliners who closed up shop when ladies and gents alike threw off their hats in the interests of modernity.

Now hats are worn at certain churches, at Ascot, by women of a certain age who are aiming for a certain wacky too-old-to-give-a-hoot aesthetic and by the sunfearing (I include myself in the latter category). It's too bad because hats can be a damn lot of fun especially if your name is Isabella Blow and you have your own personal milliner, Philip Treacy. (See more about the pair here)

Isabella Blow

Thanks to designers like Eugenia Kim, hats and the fine art of millinery are not dead. Viva hats!

Now I know it's a long shot, but let's talk about gloves....

What do you mean, "Who?"?

2005-06-27T12:07:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you would be reading this if you didn't know.

But then again, I have a friend who is twelve--a stylish girl and clever, too--and when I mentioned Coco Chanel, she said, "Oh, she makes perfume, doesn't she?"

So sometimes, we have to backfill a little and what better day than to-?

In the interests of answering the question, "Who?" may we recommend a biography of this blog's namesake, the singular fashion editor, Diana Vreeland?

The Farm Team: ♥ GEN ART ♥

2005-06-25T12:41:00.000-07:00

Brian Wood

Take a minute and be grateful* for 10 years of GEN ART, that presents and promotes work by emerging designers in cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

While other countries pour government funding into incubating the future stars of fashion as well as supporting and promoting major players (ever wonder why London is so hot now? why we know the name Central St. Martins? why Brits helm major continental houses?...no accident.) in the US, the story is different. When Congress is willing to try to pull funding from public broadcasting, you know the will to find funding for culture is at an all time low. And never mind supporting the blend of art and commerce that is fashion.

Griping aside, three cheers for organizations like GEN ART that offer terribly necessary notice for serious designers as well as filmmakers and artists.

Find out more here.

*(I almost said, "great-ful" and you should be that, too, but that's another story.)

More Words You Will Never Hear Me Say

2005-06-24T18:37:00.000-07:00

Fashion chat is full of crutch words and lazyisms overused to the point of absurdity as well as words that should never have seen the light of day in the first place. See earlier post on same here. I'm all for neologisms and expressive language, but laziness, never.

Here are several more words you will never hear me say:

must-have (as a noun or an adjective...never, ever as any part of speech)

chick

girly or girlie (or girl, for that matter...as in, "Girl, I'm tellin' you...")

so as a modifier ("that is so not your color")

I will also attempt to refrain from use of the word floaty...unless I'm talking about a rubber duck or water wings.

Get Me My Rattail Comb

2005-06-22T14:47:00.000-07:00

If ever there were a woman made for a look, it is Angelina Jolie who has been waiting her entire camera-loving life for the look seen here shot by Steven Klein for W. This Sophia Loren/Gina Lollobrigida heavy black eyeliner, teased and tousled hair look is Ms. Jolie.

Thank you Style.com.

Call Me: Double-Oh-7280

2005-06-06T12:46:00.000-07:00

Look what the cat dragged in. It's so beautiful, I could cry. A phone, a mere phone, I know (and camera and lipstick mirror and....), but it's the most magnificent phone I've ever seen.

If you loved me you'd help me feel ten-times more like an international espionage agent than I already do by buying me this little trinket. I stumbled across the Nokia 7280 while researching a fashion gadget piece and bemoaning the demise of Siemens Xelibri line (One phone looked like a compact, another like a pendant on a necklace. Cool!). Thank the powers that be that design innovation—as it so often does in the world of consumer tech—didn't end with snappy shell colors but went deep enough to hurt. The interface, the shape, the display, all move the mobile forward, or sideways...with an elegant lurch.

There is something to be said about everyday objects deserving great design. I'm grateful to Target for setting Michael Graves on toilet brushes, for example. There is something else to be said about the secret ingredient in design, the X-factor that ignites desire turning something as utilitarian as a handbag into a gravitational force. I don't understand it, but I experience it, and I love it the way I love a good healthy crush. Yum.

Until I can shoehorn my bits into a black catsuit, I can at least call you up on my 7280 and whisper about it.

http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/7280

Aside: I do have to say that the Nokia 7280 theme song does make me want to kill someone. And not in some kind of sexy James Bond way, in more of a thuggish, unglamorous way...with something blunt.

Most People

2005-06-06T11:08:00.000-07:00

What do I think about the way most people dress? Most people are not something one thinks about. — Diana Vreeland

One of the brilliant secrets of couture—custom-made garments as opposed to ready-to-wear that we buy off the rack—is that the couturier, with seams, padding, and other tricks, can camouflage the body's flaws and emphasize its good points. Fixes might include adding curves, diguising or drawing the eye away from bad posture, a stomach, sloped shoulders, a short waist, etceteras.

Women with style, women with many different kinds of bodies, instinctively know how to emphasize the good and downplay their less than optimal features. Those of us who are unable to benefit from the couturier's tricks of the trade can follow their lead in a clever fan dance of reveal and conceal. It doesn't take expertise; it takes experimentation, a sharp eye, and honesty.

I was at a fashion show a year or so ago in which the willowy women modeled what amounted to fragments of silk held together with bits of string. Of course they made a lovely show of it. These models, as a good model should, made the clothes (and I'm tempted to put that in quotation marks, but I won't) look better than they were. Even I could drape fabric on those beauties and make you sigh at the result. In real life, it's the opposite. Clothes are required to make us look better than we do without them.

A side point here is the fact that clothes, in general, and their designers should be in our service...working to make us more fabulous, not the other way around: that we wear clothes in service of designer's vision. (I will feel free to contradict myself on this at some point when my pendulum swings away from practicality and toward art. Hang on.)

All of this is because I OD'd this weekend on seeing women with hips exposing same between the waistbands of their low-slung, sausage-casing jeans and their shrunken t-shirts.

I can't really cast the first stone—goodness knows I've donned my share of ill-advised ensembles—although, like a reformed smoker who becomes an anti-cig evangelist, I'm tempted to make it a boulder . I just thought it might be useful to remind self and all of the assumption that we dress to become more beautiful versions of ourselves, and the corollary that sometimes concealing is the more attractive option.

Certainly danced around that one nicely, didn't I?

I get in a mood sometimes where I want to go around doling out the black rectangles* to put over the eyes of all the "Don't"s I see on the street. Instead, to conserve energy, I recall Mrs. Vreeland's words and put on fashion blinders.

*Glamour magazine

Oh Angelica

2005-05-15T22:06:00.000-07:00

Angelica Huston shot by Irving Penn is a style primer. Thank you Style.com.

Contact High

2005-05-15T13:05:00.000-07:00

There is the de rigeur thumping house-co (house meets disco) soundtrack, flash-bulb fireworks, skinny, sassy, and occasionally gawky models that glide, strut, or do that peculiar Tennessee Walking Horse highstep in a variety of evening wear and lingerie with a pinch of daywear thrown in to wake up those whose eyes were rolling back in their heads, ODing on so many nearly naked women. And there are rows upon rows of crappy plastic folding chairs arrayed around the oversized aisle that serves as a runway snaking through the massive warehouse for this one-night-only multi-designer show.

Who are all the people in all these chairs? What brought them out to this warehouse in the middle of nowhere? Sure there are friends of the models and designers, there are proud moms, possibly buyers, and there are (I know because I talked to them) gentlemen who deeply enjoy watching models striding the runway in lingerie. But in looking at the many spectators--women of a certain size who will in all likelihood not don curve-hugging silk charmeuse evening gowns or stretch lace side-tie boyshorts and camisoles any more than they will wear the fabulous fire-engine red polyester coveralls with giant shiny black buttons--I realize that this night is not just about the clothes...or whether any of us besides the lovely twigs will ever wear them. It's about the addictive and viral nature of glamour: that merely being in proximity makes the imperfect, overly-madeup, and ill-clothed among us feel fabulous.

The fashion show is a beauty revival meeting in which every spectating one of us experiences a laying on of the glam. We are raised up--hallelujah!--by the sheer beauty and audacity of the models, the hair, the makeup, the clothes. We clap and stomp our feet. We give praise and are momentarily healed from whatever beauty or fashion ailment with which we are afflicted. The charged atmosphere, the driving music, the smell of hairspray surround us each with our own glowing force field. We are mighty (and possibly a pinch taller, definitely thinking about working on posture, especially not slouching in folding chairs...oh, and throwing our shoulders back when we walk to the bar...again).

Downside: One got the feeling that any one of us could hang wisps of chiffon and swaths of stretch lace on these bodies and make something the folding-chair faithful would applaud as fashion.

Comme Il Faux

2005-04-26T11:35:00.000-07:00

A note on another of my stable of double standards.

It has long been one of my design dicta that the material should be itself and not attempt to pretend to be otherwise. I require honesty of materials. Integrity.

The faux woodie late-60s Ford Country Sedan with the woodgrain ext- and interior that you would bubble in the sun and that you could peel off if you were enterprising counts as a prime example. So does every piece of furniture from IKEA: particleboard clad in veneer. Others are vinyl stamped to look like crocodile, polyester masquerading as silk shantung, stacked heels that are not in fact stacked heels but plastic painted to look like wood, and fake fur, ugh. Fake fur, especially when it has some sort of pattern approximating spots, is never right. It's not even PC for the PETA among you, because if it's good enough to look not horrifically faux, then might not someone mistakenly think you are actually supporting the fur trade? Almost as bad is fabric printed to look as if the design were woven into the fabric.

Let my enormous cream-colored plastic bangle be honest about its plastic-ness and not pretend to ivory with a painted-on grain. If a piece is cut glass, let it be proud of it's glassness.

Which brings me to my exception: pearls. Fake pearls are so lovely now, so luminous and even weighted so nicely, that I'm going to wear buckets and mix them with real. Dicta be damned.

Luxury

2005-04-20T21:23:00.000-07:00

"Luxury is not the opposite of poverty;
it is the opposite of vulgarity."

--Gabrielle Chanel

Laying on of the Hands

2005-04-16T12:48:00.000-07:00

Elegance is refusal. — D.V.

Pile on as much frosting as you want, it won't make a bad cake a treat. And no matter how amazing the garment or accessory, if it is draped on a less than optimal armature, the end result is less than.

So on Friday morning, I'm lying face down on warm cotton flannel sheets under just enough layers of oatmeal-colored cotton terry. The room thrums with a subtle soundtrack of hammered strings and bamboo flute played against the trickle of the tiny pebble fountain on a side table. For the next two hours, my skin will be massaged, hydrated, warmed, clarified, scrubbed, and generally coaxed into being its best.

This is a birthday gift of sorts, coming as it does as I tick ever closer to forty. I do look forward to being a fabulous woman of a certain age. But I'm also not going to do needles and cuts, so it's time to swing for the fence in taking care of what I was born with.

Note: I regret, Mom, that I didn't listen to you better when I was 17 and busy getting sunburned and using handsoap to wash my face or not washing at all and definitely not moisturizing like I should have.

In her job description as an esthetician, Sherry Okamura is charged with not only cleaning and perfecting skin, not only with relaxing me in the process, but with beautifying. (Esthetician is also defined as "a philosopher who specializes in the nature of beauty"). Indeed. A perfect representative of the beauty that it's her business to create, Sherry Okamura has near perfect skin that is so smooth and glowing, you want to touch it to see if she's real.

But hers is an easy beauty that matches her demeanor—open: equally communicative and listening—that makes her instantly your best friend and co-conspirator in your efforts to get lovely. Sherry asks me questions about my skin and soon after, I'm wrapped in a towel, face down on the table. And so it begins with a laying on of her hands pressed palm down on my back.

My Time is the name of package I've signed on for and it includes taking care of the skin on my hands, feet, and back as well as my face. I can list the treatments that smoothed my cheeks and hands—the vitamin C facial, the eye and lip rejuvenation, the glycolic hand treatment, and the scrubs!—but what I really want to tell you about is lavender and gardenia and mint and warm wet towels and potion after potion applied by Sherry's hands. I want to tell you how her hands picked up various parts of me, my thumb, the base of my neck, my forehead, and put them back down measurably better than they'd been before. How lovely that the care of the person—relaxation and massage—is merged with the care of the surface to make a better whole.

It is two hours later, and I have been polished until I shine. My muscles have been ironed smooth and I am even and whole. A couple of dozen gloriously warm wet towels and quantities of magic potions later, I smell like a Provençal garden and sit still while Sherry—thoroughly true to her mission as she is—brushes clean, pretty, mineral-based (and therefore pore-friendly) makeup on my face. She finishes and throws back the crimson velvet curtains to reveal a mirror. I look like a Photoshopped version of me, glowier, smoother, and healthier. And I'm grateful.

Afterward I ask to see Sherry's hands. They are, as you'd expect from their hours of immersion in all of the best and most lovely potions, fine and smooth and...

beautiful.

Find Sherry Okamura at Sunseekers Skin Care http://www.seersnetwork.com/spahome.php Tell her Mrs. Vreeland sent you.
http://stores.ebay.com/preferrednatural

Ruination by Couture

2005-04-03T09:23:00.000-07:00

About couturier, Cristobal Balenciaga, it has been said that, "Women did not have to be perfect or even beautiful to wear his clothes. His clothes made them beautiful."

Yesterday I had an experience that has nearly ruined me for clothes, at least the kind I can afford. Spend two hours in a couture atelier and you'll never be able to look at the clothes in your closet the same way again, even if they are from the finest ready-to-wear lines.

I had the good fortune to meet yesterday one of the last practitioners of the art of couture in America. Hubert de Givenchy once admired the design and workmanship of a garter she'd created for a Texas bride. In today's parlance, the word couturier is confused with fashion designer and the word couture used to mean fashion.

As opposed to ready-to-wear or manufactured garments, couture garments are handmade specifically for the wearer. The creation of a couture garment involves hundreds of hours of tiny invisible stitches and multiple fitting sessions where the fabric can be cut right on the body. The aim of couture, besides making the finest garment it is possible to make with the finest fabrics available, is to create a garment that flatters the wearer no matter her body shape or posture. It is to make a woman beautiful.

Regardless of the design of the garment, the focus is on accentuating what is best about a woman and camouflaging the rest. The focus is on the way the fabric floats and drapes. And it takes into account the experience of the wearer. In a Dolly McFadden dress you will not be fussing with a strap whether you'll trip over your long gown (you won't, she cuts them slightly higher in the front).

In the studio of American couturiere Dolly McFadden, I saw the secrets of couture--the hidden aspects and elements that make a design curve to the body in just the right places and drape freely in others: fabric cut on the bias, linings, interfacings, interlinings, beading not merely as decoration but as weight, strap details on a gown to ensure the strap wouldn't slip from the wearer's shoulder. I also saw the nonessential touches like embroidery on the inside of a skirt hem that yes, gave it weight, but had the added bonus of making the inside of the hem even more lovely than the outside--a secret between maker and wearer. And Dolly talked about principles of architecture and bridge engineering and their employment in the creation of the ideally fitted garment.

Years ago, I'd checked out every book in the library on couture and couture techniques but nothing can prepare you for the immediate experience of holding a weighted hem in your hand, feeling both it's exquisite softness and substantial weight. It's but one feature of the gown as ethereal suit of armor.

I was wearing an accordion pleated light wool Cynthia Rowley skirt that I'd just got back from the cleaners. Walking out of Dotty's atelier, I looked down to see that the presser had pressed some pleats more vigorously than others making it hang in an oddly corrugated fashion. I hadn't noticed before. I also won't ever again be able to wear that silk skirt in which the zipper arcs out from my hip. Never mind about the couple of cheery cotton skirts I'd picked up on a spring whim that now look like home ec projects. Grr.

I'm ruined.

Flying the Flag

2005-03-27T18:58:00.000-08:00

She bears it like the standard of a proud clan. It is brandished, clutched, casually displayed even as it shoots off a flare into the fashion ionosphere for those who care to know.

It may cost upwards of the equivalent of 1000 reuben sandwiches at the deli (maybe more).

It is unfortunately employed to make something of an outfit that may otherwise consists of gymwear, to elevate jeans and beach shoes, to excuse the supermarket ensemble, saying, "I certainly do not always look like this."

No, normally, she says, I rise to the occasion of my handbag.

Handbags in the aughties are what designer labels were in the 80s, the lazy woman's ticket to fashionable comportment. I say fashionable rather than stylish on purpose: you can buy fashion, but you can't buy style. Even mass market consumers are buying as much handbag as they can afford, possibly more.

Never has so much care and concern been invested in what amounts to a carrying case for your money, keys, and other essential whatnot.

An example: Lynn Hirschberg in the NY Times Magazine (March 20), Style: The Things They Carried used a recent museum show of bags that featured archeologists' finds next to modern bags as a launch point for intellectual contortions -- "a collective unconscious of handbags," indeed -- meant to make sense of (or justify) her love of terribly expensive handbags.

And if you can't have expensive, you will have flashy. Or you will have expensive and flashy (Murakami I like, but on my handbag--yeah, if I were 17). And if you wave it high, it might say something (or other), may be your entry ticket, your secret handshake, or best of all may distract from whatever else you are or aren't wearing, eh?

If it's going to be leather goods, I'll take shoes.

Wrists Writ Large

2005-03-25T16:29:00.000-08:00

In our overexposed times, to paraphrase Diana Vreeland's comments on the bikini she introduced to American readers: today, the only piece of information about many a girl left unrevealed by her fashion choices is her mother's maiden name.

What's left after we've seen it all? It isn't news that mystery generates interest. Our curiousity is aroused by a hint, not a blast on a bullhorn. And frankly, dressing is every bit as fun as un-.

It's in this spirit that parts of the body whose allure has been ignored or upstaged by the more obvious components, are receiving new attention.

Now when we say waist, we are referring more often to the dress nipped in at it or the fact that it's accentuated by a flaring skirt rather than experiencing it first hand through sheer fabric or more often lack thereof.

And ankles in recent years--with the resurgent love of shapely heels--have begun to reclaim their once all-important seductive charm.

But this will be the year of the wrist. Whether smothered in oversized bangles (wood, yes but don't forget Bakelite!) or dripping with dozens of tiny gold bracelets, framed most wonderfully by 3/4 sleeves, clothed in lovely ladies' gloves (which we'll see much more of come autumn), the wrist takes center stage.

The fulcrum of gesture, the wrist is equal parts vulnerability and strength. It really is, as they say, all in the wrist.

Good 70s Bad 70s

2005-03-23T12:55:00.000-08:00

Somebody please make her stop. As much as I appreciate Lucky magazine, Andrea Linnett's personal aesthetic is becoming a problem. (I should say that as of last month the new, Vitals, is my current favorite for its smarts, wit, and information about things you'd never thought to ask about--it is McSweeney's meets Vogue in a glossy shopping bag).

In print at least, Lucky's creative director is equal parts hippie and 70s LA burnout (rocker+stoner) with leather fringe and silver skull rings. On the page devoted to her picks there's guaranteed to be the equivalent of a brown suede fringed moccasin boot that never should have been worn 30 years ago, let alone revived.

Good 70s = Diane von Furstenberg's wrap dresses and Halston sheaths
Bad 70s = hippies

Words You Will Never Hear Me Say...

2005-03-20T12:01:00.000-08:00

...nor will I have any part in using them in print (excepting just this once).

fashionista
One part WWD and one part anti-red propaganda. In its faux Latino way, it wishes it were as sexy as Fidel Castro but it's really as goofy as Ricky Martin. The word doesn't connote style devotee as much as victim of labelism and trend. Coined by Stephen Fried in 1994 and preparing to enter the OED, it's a word whose 15 minutes are more than over.

classy, class
By talking about it, one demonstrates its opposite. Q.E.D.

diva
Banal catch-all that is slung around like a handful of silver confetti. What once meant an extraordinarily talented and demanding or difficult performer—recall Maria Callas—has been diluted to mean either a celebrity who acts out or a climber who wishes she were a celebrity who had the luxury of acting out sans consequence. The current usage ignores nuanced differences between the famous, the talented, the demanding and the wish-they-were-any-of-the-above.

bling
(or the double/serial usage of same unless I am describing the sound a bell makes when struck, somewhere between a bong and a ring) Fitting maybe for the cheap way in which even fine jewelry can be crafted and/or worn.

You'd Better Dance

2005-03-20T11:19:00.000-08:00

We can attribute the origins of the popularity of heels to diminuitive style-makers like Catherine de Medici or Louis XIV. But we can look a lot closer to home for the story behind the current piles of round-toe ballet flats for spring 05.

It was Diana Vreeland who promoted black ballet flats during the Second World War, for two reasons: their purchase did not require rationing coupons during the war, and she loved to dance and when she walked, to glide as if she were dancing.

Flats have been greeted with relief by many. Heels, after all, hurt. But I for one adore a woman's leg in a heel. I will never get enough of it, trend come what may.

My mother tells me about an interview she saw with an old jazz player who said if he could do anything differently, he'd never have worn those pointy shoes, "My old feet are killin' me." There may come a day when a kitten heel is all I can manage (I mistakenly typed "hell" for "heel" there...interesting slip.). But on the day when I can only wear a loafer on my sore old feet, I'll go barefoot.

Round-toed shoes can look demure and dancerly, yes, or can make feet look truncated like the pigeon stumping around on his pink knuckles.

All I can say is if you you must wear flats, and if you must wear them rounded, by God you'd better dance.

Blood

2005-03-17T09:06:00.000-08:00

In a season in which the mags would have us going a bit native in dress, a bit international bazaar, (really it's couture colonialism, but who's counting), we are invited to go to town with accessories. If the maharajah is inclined to provide you with baubles in velvet lined boxes, let them be bloody red.

Yes diamonds are young, are light and crisp. Pearls are like butter, familiar and comfortable.

But show me a woman who doesn't look infinitely more dressed, who doesn't look exotic and striking in
carnelian, a deep coral, or ruby. There's a reason why red is the color of roses for the beloved. There isn't a girl who doesn't look radiant holding a clutch of red roses beside her face. Red has something to say. A good red doesn't shout, it seethes. Take the words "crimson" and "scarlet," they're the kind of words that have the sound of something about to happen.

WWJD?

2005-03-14T10:54:00.000-08:00

There is a scene, the best really, in La Femme Nikita in which the legendary French actress, Jeanne Moreau, educates the young formerly strung-out street punk Nikita in the art of femininity. It is to be another weapon in her arsenal as a newly-minted government agent/assassin. It is a scene elegant in its brevity, as the director only hints at what might have been communicated from the Master to the student. It started with a smile.

I was reminded of this scene by an ad in the front of the most recent Vogue for Saks Fifth Avenue and Derek Lam. In it, a young lovely in presumably a Lam dress applies her lipstick under the tutelage of (and as a mirror image of) a beautiful woman of a certain age with her hair unmistakably styled (and her perfectly manicured hands as well) like the late Diana Vreeland. The young woman mirrors the old, lipstick in hand.

This is relevant now more than ever because of flood of "ladylike" fashions in recent seasons. Cardigans, skirts, blouses, trim suits. We are dressing like women. You'll recall ribbons, satin, etc. As we dress, so should we...

The magnificent Jeanne Moreau is a reminder that ladylike does not equal feminine. Ladylike implies a buttoned up prudishness or manufactured restraint, while feminine implies a combination of alluring vulnerability and undeniable toughness. Which of the two words in the common expression precedes the word "wiles"?

Skirting the Issue

2005-03-13T17:54:00.000-08:00

Skirts for spring are newly full and lovely and the graphic takes the day. Weighted darkly at the hem looks especially good, flowers less so (these florals in this shape will be one-year wonders), but it's spring so who's to blame us.

The secret of secrets is that unlike circle skirts, the best shape for most of us who do not need extra bulk at the waist and upper-hip is fitted with darts at the waist and flaring below the hip. Luckily, this seems to be the dominant M.O. Length matters, mid-knee or better, just below. Too long and it doesn't look modern, too short and it risks being Shirley Temple.

Easter Egg Hunt

2005-03-13T14:26:00.000-08:00

I ran into a number of nurses tumbling out of the sidedoor of their red brick hospital today in all manner of Technicolor scrubs. Purple, mixed blues, a busy primary mish-mash, and what looked like a jungle/zoo print.

The cherry trees and plum are sporting Pepto-Bismol pink chubbies and all the daffodil and croci stalks have Easter hats. It's spring, nearly, and a girl's thoughts turn to not love, but color. Grass green, pink, tangerine are everywhere. Women who might think better of it go ga-ga over color. It's as if, after a long grey spell, we could will a little sunshine through the purchase of a garment in sherbet hues.

I'm not opposed to color. I've even worn melon, lavender, and ice blue. But in the end, I've decided that there are certain colors that look best on 10-year-olds. There is a reason why the little girl's section of any store is chock full of pink, aqua, sky blue, lavender and more. Women of style whom we admire do not skip around like so many popsicles.

Some girls can make it work. My friend Gretchen recently layered a pumpkin tank over a butter yellow tank with a turquoise cardigan and jeans. Her earrings were turquoise stones dangling from long silver chains. Gretchen's skin is olive and perfect. Her choice of proportions were body hugging and sleek.

A couple of season's back when Isaac Mizrahi began to design for Target--the best thing to happen to a working girl's wardrobe since I don't know when--he did a decidedly unfitted blouse in panels of his green, pink, orange, and yellow. I might be making some of it up, but it was a color statement to say the least, like a Baskin's Robbins 31 Flavors refrigerator. It was very Boy George circa mid-80s, and I couldn't help feeling, Isaac, that you were trying to put one over on Middle America...to see a few larger gals don this circus tent and giggle into your yellow bandana.

Do you remember ladies getting, "their colors "done"? Newly-minted color consultants determined whether you were a Spring, Summer, Winter, or Fall based on your eye, hair, skin tones and recommended a complimentary palette. All well and good, but even colors that may optimally flatter can send messages we'd rather not send.

Messages like, I lost my head, it's Spring. You can really only wear a grass green trench for a couple of weeks, and I'd argue that you can only wear a statement pink dress once or twice before people will start thinking of you as the pink dress girl. (I have a friend who is the aqua girl).

If we must be exuberant, let us at least think twice about being mistaken for the prize hidden in the grass at an Easter egg hunt.

Obsession

2005-03-10T13:19:00.000-08:00

It's common to read that one fashion-talker or another is, "obsessed," about this shoe or that eye cream. It is as if they'd all been recently released from a sanitorium in upstate the way every girl who enjoys a good purse is practically clinical over it.

According to the word-lover's tool, Hyperdictionary, obsess is defined as
1. [v] haunt like a ghost; pursue; "Fear of illness haunts her"
2. [v] be preoccupied with something; "She is obsessing over her weight".

Preoccupation, okay. I've definitely had a skirt-on-the-brain before. But obsession has to be overstating the preeminence placed on the fashion/beauty object or tool or else the aforementioned fashion-talkers are 2-inches deep indeed.

Just for fun and flavor, let us be arrested by the object, compelled by it, enchanted, engaged, enthralled by it. Let us be fascinated, held spellbound by or in the grip of, let us be infatuated with it. Let us be mesmerized.

Smells Like Envy

2005-03-09T14:24:00.000-08:00

Caught a whiff of Gucci's new Envy me from a magazine foldover. According to the lyrical product description on Sephora.com, Envy me eau de toilette ($40 per ounce) is a, "dazzling blend of sensual peony, jasmine, and pink pepper is melded with notes of sweet litchi and effervescent pomegranate and pineapple, and smoothed with soothing musk, white tea, and warm woods." That's a lot of stuff in a little bottle. Envy me also happens to smell exactly like the new and improved Pantene Pro-V Smooth & Sleek Shampoo ($.27-.34 per ounce), now with "amino proteins."

I think someone is going to get fired.

Meanwhile, one could potentially coordinate one's shampoo with one's perfume, just like purse and shoes.

The Slack Rope

2005-03-09T12:06:00.000-08:00

Let there be a balance between maverick style and good taste. As the pendulum swings, girls go flying off on either ends, while the majority cling to the center for dear life. I'm interested in the very few who balance on one leg, elegantly, swing after swing, as if they were not stiletto-heeled on the deck of a pitching ship, but on the sidewalk in Vreeland flats.

As much as Mrs. Vreeland loved theatrics in editorial, as much as she was an original in her own style— accessories, oh my!—she was, every inch, immaculate taste.

Daring without style makes for clowns and circus performers.

fashion