Posts filed under 'Fashion'
Not only with the full skirt, but with other even more tempting fashions this spring and summer, there are pockets! You need pockets. We have always needed pockets, but for too many years we have been denied them in most usable forms. Then a year ago they showed up in ball gowns and now they are back for real. After all, without a pocket, where will you hide that note no one should see when you hear voices nearing?
This is by Donna Karan who made a lot of full-skirted clothes, and might just have done the best with the look. Slim top, belt and full skirt, that’s all it takes. I’d eschew the transparent top, for work have a small sleeve and although I like this hat, it really isn’t big enough to be useful, so pump it up.
Blugirl did this terrific look. A short sleeved T, a belt and a skirt in the same color and what was an evening outfit goes daytime. I’m going to wear a high-heeled sandal with mine, with a sensibly wide heel to avoid looking a fool on the stone streets of Italy.
This is by Narciso Rodriguez, for the lucky one who can wear the short skirt. Look at those great shoes. Bronze and tie-up, both comfortable and smart. This dress would even look cute with a Keds sneaker for dropping into the cleaners and the market.
The top and skirt look I was able to copy at J Crew. The little floaty dress was well represented at Banana Republic, in spirit at least. 
February 24th, 2008
I started thinking the other day about fashion and clothes. I have a lot of fun when the runway shows are on and I love to talk about them and post pictures from them and surmise what will have the legs to reach the market that is us, more or less. It suddenly hit me that the “us” of whom I speak is no longer me. That “us” was a working professional with a need to look on top of things and as attractive as possible. The expense could be justified by that image thing and I had just enough of a social life, too, to make it a pleasure to think out pretty clothes and spoil myself a little. And I was a lot younger. It stymies me to realize that some of the nicest looks are denied to women my age. Just when we need to disguise our bottoms we are told that full skirts make us look like mutton dressed as lamb. Someone made fun of me for wearing a stitched down pleated skirt three years ago. It didn’t stop me wearing one, because they make too much sense and certainly don’t have to be worn schoolgirlishly, but it did make me start paying attention to that issue a bit more.
One thing and another, it all adds up to the idea that runway clothes can only be fun, like going to Chick Flicks. You go for fun, and you have no expectation that you will advance humanity or your understanding of it a bit. I like to see what can be pulled from the pool of insane creativity and used in a sane wardrobe. But it looks to me as if no one does that any more.
There are a few people who have websites in which they show what they design, adapt and sew to wear. There are others that shoot photos of street style in cities around the world. There are a few who report on wardrobe building, trends, fad avoidance, bargains… and I enjoy all of these ventures. One I love that is rarely updated is written/drawn by a fashionista rabbit who shows herself wearing her choice of runway fashion. I asked for permission to link to her, but didn’t get it, so you’ll just have to hunt if interested.
The real ground floor to this subject, however, is this: if you can’t buy it you can’t have it. That means that it isn’t runway fashion that is ruling us, but prèt a porter fashion. Many of us won’t spend the money for even that, and unless we are very creative we will have to settle for the bits that filter down a year or two later into what the British call high street fashion, or the kind of fashion you find in Main Street shops and department stores.
So I have been pulling together what it takes to see what there is in prèt a porter. By ten last night my eyes were swimming with images of what’s in the boutiques this spring for 2008. I wanted to get up and start cutting and sewing, but then I remembered I am really not very good at that and besides I can’t fit myself, only someone else. Another thing was the awful feeling that I might be a bit too old to get away with it. I need to go somewhere where there a lot of chic ladies of a certain age and see just how straitlaced I must be. I know I can wear big hats and big sunglasses, but it doesn’t seem enough.
The other discouraging thing is what women themselves tell me about what they really wear. There seems to be some idea that comfort can only be achieved in clothes designed for active sport. IT IS NOT TRUE. Comfort can be achieved with clothes that have form, with underwear in full complement, and with shoes that are made of leather and are not padded. Trust me on this.
Still, I hear from women that they “live in” yoga pants, sweats, running suits and balloon shoes. I despair. I despair of a population willing to all look that much alike. I despair of any group of over six people willing to wear baggy and odd-colored sets of things. That’s what basketball players wear, but they get paid a lot to do it. My own daughter tells me that no one wears anything but jeans at her techie workplace. She loves gorgeous clothes, but I know if they don’t go with jeans, she will never wear them, no matter how sincere her passion.
As to sex and romance, well, I won’t go there because I am told I don’t know what modern young men want, and that would be true. If they would tell me, I might believe them, but they always tell me they are looking for the right mind and soul. It was my belief that in “When Harry Met Sally” he ran away frightened after their first romantic interlude, it was not because he felt proprietorship and coupledom so scary, but because she wore those little white socks in bed. That is scary, that she could leap directly to bedsocks in one night. I suspect it would take me a lifetime.
So I am hoping that there are at least some of you who still have your latent princess within and still think that comfort is nice but beauty is equal. As I rip into the marketplace, once a week I will show you a look one can actually buy, now, this year, in 2008.
February 23rd, 2008
I have this wrap, from some years ago when a client bought it for a gift. Mine is softer velvet, so it is not only easier to wear, but not nearly as pretty, So, then, this is not news.
This, however, is news and is pretty and does represent what Galante did this year.
Fabrics were manipulated, embellished, altered and exaggerated to create something we’ve not quite seen before. Like this:
Or this: 
which may seem bizarre until you think of it as a topper over slim trousers and a tight turtleneck, or over a slim black columnar dress if you’ve a need for that instead. I’d wear it that way, would you?
See the rest of the UK Telegraph coverage.
January 24th, 2008
There’s something there, but the rouged eyes are preventing me finding it.
I’m not sure there is something or someone there. It reminds me of a nicely detailed sofa throw pillow. Nice workmanship, however.
January 23rd, 2008
Chanel has presented some very striking designs that are pleasant to look at, but I can’t think of anyone, even a celebrity, who will be able to wear them. The one above could too easily be taken for “wrapped up in a jeweled bedspread.”
This one seems totemic. Emblematic. But of what? I haven’t a glimmer.
Someone will wear this dress. It will be the wrong person at the wrong place and people will cluck and award fugdom. It starts out rather nicely “Madame X” before becoming insect screening rather too far above the floor, or perhaps rather not far enough from what we usually cover.
I hardly know anyone who couldn’t wear this silver outfit, nor do I know anyone who would. She doesn’t look very happy about it either.
See the rest of it if you like at the UK Telegraph runways report.
January 23rd, 2008
I love looking at the runway or catwalk shows of the great designers. No matter how nuts they may appear, there’s something usually being said about our times and our lives. I approach the seasons with glee. “Let’s have fun!” I cry, “Let’s rob them of all the good bits and use them in our personal style.”
And yet, the pleasure of seeing wearable clothes is a different thing. That reassures me that it’s alright to be me, that if I am willing to spend that much money, someone wants me as a customer for more than just the face cream and perfume. Armani just scored with me.
Does that not make more sense than any of those bubble skirts we’ve been seeing? Could not any woman within 20 pounds of normal wear a version of this architecturally superb frock? Does she not look like she is wearing it rather than it wearing her? Does it not, in addition, capitalize on the natural softness of a woman?
If you look at the brief coverage in this photo series at the UK Telegraph, you will see no embarrassing nudity and nothing that requires never-heard-of-before hardware to put on. I personally don’t need evening dresses anymore, but these are lovely and indicate to me that the day clothes are probably also fairly kind to the female who wears them.
January 22nd, 2008
This man has his eye on you, well, maybe not you, but someone like you who owns a salad bowl of any type.
It’s to make up for the fact that absolutely no human being could walk in those shoes.
January 21st, 2008
I’m old enough to remember that movie, and perhaps you are not. The phrase describes how I feel right now about retail fashion.
Remember I said that sometimes the search terms used to find me affect what I write about? Well, lately summer style 2008 has headed the list day after day, so I thought, time to post about what there is to wear this year.
I’m looking. And looking. Retail fashion does not care if you look pretty. So far none of the pretty and female (I do not say feminine because it often has overtones I do not intend) clothes that were on the runways has made it to the main street or mall shops. And yet if I look at street fashion sites I see girls and women wearing exactly those things.
The shops are filled with the usual shapeless or badly shaped separates. One famous chain on both sides of the Atlantic looks as if they found a great white sale in the sheet department of Bloomingdales. There is a complement of street hooker once more. There are low slung and too tight pants, adhesive and too short tops sprinkled with copies of 1950s maternity smocks.
I continue to look. I am steaming here. I feel like I want to draw what should be in those shops, tag them with fabric samples and post that. But what good would that do? I can’t make them for you, even if you liked them. On Sunday January 13, 2008, I have not yet found good clothes except those we’ve already seen on the runways of the major world designers. And that makes me mad.
January 13th, 2008
I plan to do some research on the state of coral today. I know that it is a material that has become very tightly controlled in order to protect the reefs, and I know that every scrap in Italy is accounted for and that coral workers have to have permits. I don’t really know exactly how that works or what present figures for any part of the “industry” are.
Carved coral parure of bracelet and necklace with a sculpted pendant. I would wear this with anything.
Meantime, I want to acquaint you with what I’ve been seeing based on a visit I made to a shop here in town recently. Diego Pincardini has a shop and a workroom here in Città di Castello. I first met him when he was participating in our Medieval Artisans days, sitting outside his shop in Medieval costume and working coral with traditional tools. It stopped me in my tracks. In the shop windows behind him were some of the most luxurious and gorgeous pieces I had ever seen. The workmanship went far beyond the “factory” type work I had seen in the south, where coral is a commoner material.
Then I lost him. I never seemed to find him went I went to the shop. The windows grew sparser. The lights were off and the iron gates closed. I purposely went to the next Artisan days to find him. “Why are you never here?” I asked.
“I’m here, but I am only working here. I’m away a lot to sell my work in bigger cities where work like mine sells better than it sells here. If you want to see me, you have to make an appointment.” He whipped a business card from his Medieval gown and handed it to me. So that’s what I did. I called, I went. I went for the pleasure, because he has a safe in the workroom full of treasures beyond belief, and he’s willing to open drawers and show me half-done pieces he is working on. It’s my kind of candy store.
So the other day I went to see what is on the bench. He asked me why I come to see him. I told him it’s because he works in colors. Diamonds may or may not be a girl’s best friend, but except in the case of pavé, where tiny diamonds trace a shape in gold (I don’t like pavé on white gold) I like colored stones better.
I’d inspired joy in Diego Pincardini! Out poured a treatise on the rare and the colored: turquoise, coral, ebony, amber, rubies, emeralds, sapphires and the panoply of what nature colors and hides from us. Shared joy is a wonderful thing. Heaps of colored gems are the last fillip.
This is black coral beads formed into a bracelet with gold links and a red coral cabochon clasp. I would wear it with a black cashmere sweater or a taupe linen dress.
He offered me a CD of photographs of some of his work, a CD he carries to augment what he can carry in his little black bag when he speeds around northern Italy placing his work in the great jewelry stores of the country. I took it, reduced the size of the photos and I am, with his permission, sharing a few of them with you. The original photos were enormous, so that a jeweler could see the details in scale from 200% and up.
Angel skin coral worked as a pendant and a bracelet with a clasp like the pendant. Fabulous with cream silk.
I have watched him carve the stones. Coral is so precious nowadays that even the bits carved off to make one of the major pieces are used to make beads or tiny carvings.
A bracelet of carved links and an intricately carved clasp. I would like this with a sky blue sweater or top that would call attention to the intricacy.
Antiqued brooch of silver and yellow gold, with carved coral details. This cries for something substantial behind it, such as tweed, or a textured stole, maybe a bulky oatmealy sweater. I think this could become a family heirloom piece.
He works in other materials too, and shows Italian turquoise and semiprecious stones. Yesterday he was working on carved ebony, and showed me in great detail how he would make the heavy earrings become light as air. Sigh…
These gold bracelets took my breath away. I would wear them all the time, everywhere, even to do the laundry. Unfortunately, gold bracelets form no part at all in my schemes to survive the dollar crunch and stay in Italy.
I’ll just add a series of thumbnails for more pictures, and you can decide whether to take a closer look by clicking, or not. I’d love your ideas on how you would wear any of these pieces. I need ideas for my daydreams.
I’ll post again, because I have only shrunk a small part of the pictures, and for me this is like living in a museum!
The shop is DP Coral, via della Pendinella, 06012 Città di Castello (PG) Italia. Call ahead if you’d like to visit. (39) 339 382 0718. Or you can shop the great jewelers of Rome and north to the borders and pay a lot more!
December 6th, 2007
The article has just gone up this morning.
This fall we were in Florence and Umbria, catching the drift of what they’re really wearing, and what there is to buy. The photo above is Giusi, from “Atena”, my favorite local shop, wearing her own clothes.
November 27th, 2007
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