A Dedicated Chronicler of Fashion

2012-02-02T08:00:00.001-05:00

Why didn't anyone include Gretchen Mol on their SAG awards best-dressed list? I thought she looked fantastic in a statuesque cream L'Wren Scott gown with a golden accents. The shape was '40s screen siren, but her makeup was low-key and effortless. She had an easy glamour, which is a tricky thing to achieve on the red carpet. (I also like her dramatic gold cuff.)

Photo from Style.com

God Save Couture

2012-01-30T12:28:00.006-05:00

Punk-rock looks from Gaultier, Givenchy and Chanel; photos from Style.com

Fauxhawks, nose rings, metal chains: Was this couture week or a Sex Pistols concert?

At Chanel, the models’ sported exaggerated, teased mohawks and severe black eyeliner. Givenchy designer Ricardo Tisci punched up his beaded, Art Deco gowns with exposed zippers, chains and lots of leather. And Jean-Paul Gaultier devoted his collection to the late singer Amy Winehouse, complete with candy-colored beehive wigs, leather corsets and a rockabilly vibe. During the show, the model Karlie Kloss vamped down the runway wearing a green trench coat tied at her waist. She then twisted and knotted the sleeves in such a way that it resembled the skirt of an avant garde ballgown. How DIY.

Check out my post and slide show of punk-couture looks on Forbes.

Rose Hartman's 'Incomparable Women Of Style' at FIT

2012-01-14T00:24:00.001-05:00

Bianca Jagger entering Studio 54 on a white horse. Photo by Rose Hartman.

Rose Hartman's celebrity and event photos, on view at the Fashion Institute Technology in New York City, are insider-y and deliciously voyeuristic, bringing us into the wild parties she documented. But they're also oddly intimate, capturing celebrities and socialites at their most unguarded, revealing them at their most petty, narcissistic, vulnerable and human. Read my review of her show, and see photos from the exhibition, at Forbes.

Will The Real Daphne Guinness Please Stand Up?

2012-01-10T00:34:00.001-05:00

We so often assume that an interest in fashion is a sign of vanity, but in fact it can be the opposite: a result of shyness or a lack of self-confidence. It also allows the wearer a chance to transform into a different person. Daphne Guinness despite its shortcomings — or maybe even because of them – presents an intriguing concept of personal style: that it isn’t just a means of self-expression, but of disguise and evasion. Maybe even of negation.

I reviewed "Daphne Guinness," an exhibition of the heiress' wardrobe, for Forbes. Check it out.

Steven Klein for December Vogue

2011-12-21T17:26:00.007-05:00

Am I the only person who thinks all of Steven Klein's editorials look the same?

From the latest issue of Vogue:

Image from vogue.com

From Vogue September 2008:

Image from Jezebel

2011-12-18T11:14:00.002-05:00

What makes a good fashion writer?

I would say be really respectful towards what you’re looking at because you’re making a living out of other people’s creativity and ideas. Take the time to really look at it. Also, don’t ever think something is too difficult from the point of view of either price or construction. Never dismiss things. The best fashion is about ideas, images, aspirations. I think it’s nice to approach fashion in a non-consumer way. You’re not patronising people saying "buy this or that", you’re saying "hey look at this, isn’t it amazing".

Susannah Frankel, in an interview for AnOther Magazine

Dressing Up for Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T09:00:00.002-05:00

I wrote the following last Thanksgiving, and I thought I would re-post it this year. I actually have this wonderful burnout velvet dress to wear this year. (It looks way better than it sounds -- I promise!) Nothing fancy, but it feels somehow festive.

Does anyone still dress up for Thanksgiving? I remember when we were little, my mom used to dress my sisters and me up in dresses of velvet and taffeta with ribbon sashes and lace collars (it was the '80s) for dinner at my grandparents'. My all-time favorite Thanksgiving outfit was a drop-waist dress with little purple flowers (kind of like a Liberty print, now that I think of it); a black velvet band separated the top of the dress from the skirt, which had three tiered layers (not ruffles, exactly, they fell pretty straight). The whole ensemble was finished off with an enormous lace collar, and I wore it most likely with tights and mary janes.

My mother has a photograph of me wearing that dress and sitting on my great-grandmother's lap with my sister. I think that was the year that my grandmother's turkey was so dry that I poured water on it in order to make it more palatable--to the amusement of my cousins and the consternation of my parents (I received an epic scolding from my father). My grandmother couldn't cook a turkey, but she made--still makes--the best chicken noodle soup on the planet; for Thanksgiving she served it in these glass turkey bowls, which delighted me as a kid.

We stopped going to my grandparents' for Thanksgiving shortly after that--we had moved to Pittsburgh, and driving seven hours to New York for such a short stay with three fussy girls proved more of hassle than it was worth for my parents. The good thing about Thanksgiving in Pittsburgh was that my mother's cooking was a vast improvement on my grandmother's; she also cooked sweet potato with marshmallow (my grandmother would have never allowed marshmallow into her house) and stuffing (something which my grandma still doesn't understand to this day). And the preparation process was more fun at home too: we would get up in the morning, have coffee, begin cooking--though I generally stuck to stirring and entertaining my sisters and mom while they cooked with my piano playing and interpretive dancing. But it wasn't long before we substituted our pretty party dresses with jeans or sack dresses (which allowed our stomachs to hold more food). It's certainly a lot easier, but as I get older and find fewer and fewer opportunities to dress up I have begun to feel a bit nostalgic for those days when it was okay to wear ridiculous party dresses for even something as mundane as eating turkey with the family.

Rooney Mara in a Dragon Dress for Vogue

2011-10-20T22:25:00.004-05:00

The cover of November's Vogue has Girl with the Dragon Tattoo star Rooney Mara in a black high-necke Ralph Lauren dress with a dragon snaking up the back. Funny or unimaginatively literal?

Image from Vogue.com

Merry-Go-Round Fashion Shows: Louis Vuitton vs. Chanel vs. McQueen

2011-10-09T18:36:00.008-05:00

The merry-go-round is sort of an obvious metaphor for a fashion show. Fashion is so cyclical, with trends emerging and fading and then coming back every few years, and its more cynical members consider it an endless cycle or regurgitation of old ideas. Indeed, Marc Jacobs, who staged his latest collection for Louis Vuitton on a merry-go-round, is the master at taking the old and remixing and appropriating it to suit the times (some people call it "postmodern"). For Spring, he took the prim shapes of the 1950s and '60s and injected them with youthful, girlish -- and some may say cloying -- sweetness.

Image: Vogue.com

Jacobs' merry-go-round -- all white -- was as pure and pristine as his lace-collar coats and frothy dresses. Karl Lagerfeld, at Chanel, doesn't have such a sweet tooth -- his presentations (and accessories) are full with sardonic wit, though he is dead serious about his clothes. Lagerfeld used a merry-go-round for Chanel's 2008 show. Instead of horses, his carousel had large representations of those familiar Chanel icons: the chain purse, the pearls, the double Cs. It was ridiculous and crass and ostentatious but kind of wonderful for it:

Image: Marie Claire

You get the sense that Lagerfeld's presentations have little to do with his collections, or they're just kind of a spectacle or joke. The clothes he presented for that 2008 show were not juvenile or cute or retro: They were chic, rigorous and did not revel in the past.

And then there's Alexander McQueen, who considered his presentations and the way he staged his collections as important as his clothes. McQueen is all about subversion. When he used a merry-go-round for his Fall 2001 collection, its horses had nefarious red eyes and nostrils, and his models weren't sweet naifs going for a whirl on the thing, but lascivious carnies gyrating on its poles. They wore clown makeup, and one had a skeleton attached to her foot trailing after her.

Image: Jesenia's Goodie Bag Blog

Trend-spotting: The Life Aquatic

2011-10-06T20:40:00.015-05:00

Haute sea creatures. From the top: Versace, Givenchy, Chanel, McQueen

Images: Vogue.com

The sea -- its creatures and colors and movement -- provided inspiration to four very different designers for the Spring 2012 shows. It started with Versace, whose underwater sirens wore skin-tight pencil skirts, studded jackets and goddess gowns came studded and printed with images of seahorses, starfish and mermaids. The theme continued at Givenchy. But these women -- in their sharp, skinny pant suits, iridescent eel skin and sea wolf and menacing shark-tooth pendants -- looked more like sea vigilantes than mer-babes.

Speaking of sea creatures, Alexander McQueen's last completed collection before his death imagined a world where the Earth was covered in water, and women had evolved into weird, scaley sea creatures with hoofed feet and horns. Sarah Burton, McQueen's successor, continued with the underwater theme for Spring 2012, bringing to it lightness and optimism. And man, were the dresses gorgeous: mother-of-pearl and coral-encrusted fantasias of undulating chiffon, cascading ruffles and lace, each piece more breathtaking than the last.

Karl Lagerfeld's collection for Chanel was less overt -- filled with light, wearable, lovely dresses and soft skirt suits, in shell pink and seafoam green, though his models wore pearls strewn in their hair and sea-urchin shells on their feet. Shiny techno fabrics, ribbons resembling strewn seaweed and amoeba-like ruffles further underscored the aquatic nature of the show.

Trend-spotting: Pleats, Please

2011-10-01T07:48:00.008-05:00

Pleats, please. Top row: Prada; bottom row: Prada, Bottega Veneta, Sacai
Images from Vogue.com

I am crazy about the accordion-pleated, elastic-waist skirts at Prada (which is shaping up to be one of my favorite shows of the season). They came in soft pastels, lipstick red and even in slick leather. The tiny pleats also appeared on Bottega Veneta's and Sacai's runways.

Trend-spotting: Bandeaux

2011-09-25T22:09:00.010-05:00

Bandeau tops! First row: from Bluemarine, Dolce & Gabbana and Versace
Bottom: from Prada, Versace and Dolce & Gabbana

Designers cranked up the heat at Milan Fashion Week, injecting some va-va-voom and sex appeal into the Spring 2012 season. The designers' main weapon of seduction: the abbreviated bandeau top. Miuccia Prada first showed them, with almost elastic-waist skirts with novelty car prints. (A hilarious send-up of those twin male fantasies: women and cars.) They subsequently cropped up at Versace (sexy, studded, with slim pencil skirts), Pucci (in peek-a-boo lace), and Blumarine and Dolce & Gabbana (in bold prints and worn with full skirts).

The Ball of the Century

2011-09-21T23:07:00.007-05:00

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor at the Academy Awards in 1970; image from Vanity Fair

I am currently reading Furious Love, about Elizabeth Taylor's and Richard Burton's tumultuous, grandiose, sprawling love affair. It's really wonderful -- not just a tawdry account of their raucous marriages and alcoholism and adulteries and insatiable appetites for sex and jewels and pleasure, but an examination of why these two captured the public's imagination and interest so intensely, as well as a deep double portrait of two complex individuals.

But of course, a lot of the fun is in the salacious details -- the excess with which the Burtons lived their lives. This particular passage, about a party the couple attended at the Rothschilds', brought to mind the extravagance of the court of Versailles, with Liz as a modern Marie Antoinette.

The Burtons returned to London in time to attend two great social events ... The first was the Proust Ball, given on December 2 ... in which all the guests were asked to appear as characters from Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu. Touting it as "the Ball of the Century," the engraved invitations requested that women wear jewels in their hair, as befitting la Belle Epoque, so, of course, Elizabeth needed Alexandre de Paris [her hairdresser] to accompany her. She came as the Duchesse de Guermantes, one of the rulers of Parisian society in Proust's novel, wearing borrowed jewels from Van Cleef & Arpels in addition to her emerald-and-diamond brooch from Bulgari, which Alexandre had skillfully woven into her elaborate coif. ... There were so many jewels entwined in coiffures that dozens of French policemen stood guard outside the chateau.

Cat Power

2011-09-14T07:03:00.006-05:00

Cat dresses from Victoria by Victoria Beckham, from style.com

Victoria Beckham -- can you believe it -- debuted her diffusion line today, Victoria by Victoria Beckham. And you know what? It was cute. Beckham freed up the body-hugging hourglass silhouettes from her main collection and sent out a line of breezy A-line dresses in poppy, bright blue and pretty pink.

But what most endeared me to the collection, of course, were the dresses with cat prints! Who knew that the icy, glamourpuss Posh Spice was a crazy cat lady at heart? The quirky prints, apparently, were inspired by the adolescent cartoon heroine Emily the Strange.

A Wedding Dress for Someone Who Hates Wedding Dresses

2011-09-05T08:07:00.021-05:00

Sofia Coppola -- the most elegantly dressed woman in the world -- got married last weekend in a diaphanous, lilac, knee-length dress by Azzedine Alaïa. She wore her hair down, with no veil, and hardly any makeup. As usual, she looked effortless and chic. I loved that she didn't wear white; and I thought the delicate fabric and light hue communicated those ideas of a new life and promise and happiness that white bridal gowns typically do in the West.

Let's be honest: I generally am not into the whole wedding gown thing. When we were little my sisters used to devour Martha Stewart's Weddings magazine and memorize Vera Wang's bridal collections, but wedding dresses -- which all looked the same to my impatient eye -- bored me. There were two exceptions. The first was a long-sleeved ice-blue winter wedding dress that was in one of the Martha Stewart magazines we owned. It was so simple and elegant and so different than anything I had seen; it made me briefly think that I wanted to get married in February (I normally abhor the winter). The second was the wedding dress that Gwyneth Paltrow wore in the movie Emma, one of my favorite films at the age of 13, which was delicate and easy and had an empire waist. (She wore it with a stunning lace veil.)

Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeremy Northam, in the wedding scene in Emma.

This meant that when I got engaged -- over 10 years later -- I was in trouble. I had no idea what sort of dress I wanted, and I dreaded the process of going to stores and trying things on while my mother or sisters or friends gave their opinions. I tried looking at wedding-dress sites -- New York magazine's guide; boutique sites such as Priscilla of Boston or Net-a-Porter's wedding section -- but I felt too constrained by the "wedding dress" moniker. Photos of actual weddings did little to stoke my imagination as well. I began to look at runway shows for inspiration -- at dresses that weren't necessarily marketed as wedding dresses, but could easily fill that role for me (something unique enough to separate it from a dress I would wear to a party or some other event, and a white or light shade, like champagne or pink or lilac). I needed to free myself of the idea that all wedding dresses had to be strapless columns or gowns with wide skirts.

I found that I definitely was drawn to vintage-inspired fashions. For example, I loved Comme des Garcons' wedding dresses from its Fall 2005 collection: deconstructed Edwardian rags -- delicate, haunting, with dash of kookiness.

CDG's deconstructed Edwardian gowns; images from Style.com

For Fall 2010 -- shown in February, around the time I was looking for my own dress -- Rodarte ripped off, quite beautifully, Comme des Garcons' "broken brides," with dresses made of a scraps of different types of lace, crocheted knits and chiffon.

Rodarte's broken brides; images from Style.com

But my favorite "wedding dress" of all time was by Alexander McQueen, from his Fall 2006 "Widows of Culloden" collection. High-necked, Victorian lace, with a cascade of ruffles, though all very close to the body. It was exquisite and old-looking and romantic -- the very qualities that made me fall in love with the dress from Emma all those years before, though it was radically different:

McQueen's ultimate wedding dress; image from Style.com

Another image that had an effect on me was an old photograph at my grandma's house of my great-grandmother's wedding in Cuba. She wore a short dress (right below the knee) and T-strap shoes. She was a flapper bride!

I don't think I mentally started compiling a list of things I wanted in a dress while sorting through these images, but I think they helped me know, instantaneously, when I saw the right dress. They also allowed me to accept the idea that just because something was white and long didn't mean that it couldn't express my individuality. At first, I was so adverse to the idea of a wedding dress that I had in my mind something staunchly non-traditional: short, or perhaps a lilac or pink color. But in the end I chose something quite traditional, but hardly conventional. It was, like all the dresses I mention above (besides the winter dress), vintage-inspired (late 1910s/early 1920s -- a period that both my now-husband and I are obsessed with, not just in terms of fashion but in art, literature and music too); partly lace (on the top); and quite delicate (the chiffon skirt is so diaphanous and filmy and romantic). It actually had a train in the back (something I did not expect at ALL), but was shorter in the front, ending in folds a bit past my knee. It was -- as my husband said -- ME.

My dress; photo by Annie O'Neill

And best of all: I never had to try a single dress on. I saw it online and was so sure it was the dress for me I bought it on the spot.

Bad Romance

2011-08-10T00:44:00.000-05:00

I wrote about Alexander McQueen, romanticism and the sublime for a rad website called The New Inquiry. Please check it out!

Jun Takahashi: Surrealist, Cat-loving Genius

2011-07-28T21:19:00.014-05:00

So, I wrote this blog post at Forbes about Jun Takahashi, the man behind the Japanese cult label Undercover, and how he's going to design a line for Uniqlo and how it's going to be SUPER AWESOME because Takahashi is one of the most innovative designers working today.

Need proof?

He makes Dali paintings come to life! (From Spring/Summer 2005)

He makes beautiful, sweet capes out of rosettes that -- when you look up close -- are actually skulls! (Spring/Summer 2007)

He makes the MOST STYLISH puffer jackets -- using NASA-developed technology to adjust to your body temperature! (Fall/Winter 2008)

And finally, from his latest collection, for Fall/Winter 2011:

A cat bag!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A designer after my own heart...

(And yes, the cat bag was what inspired me to break my months-long hiatus from posting on this blog.)

All images from Style.com, except the first, which is from my Forbes slideshow.

McQueen McQueen McQueen

2011-04-21T22:26:00.009-05:00

Image from Vogue.com; photo by Steven Meisel

I am trying not to get too excited for the Alexander McQueen exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute opening in a few weeks. McQueen, who killed himself last year, is my favorite designer, and the Costume Institute's last few shows have been so disappointing. Yet I'm still hopeful. First, the dresses will be amazing, of the highest artistry and beauty. And second, the Costume Institute tends to handle monographic exhibitions better than themed ones; I quite enjoyed the Paul Poiret one in 2007.

Vogue this month has a beautiful tribute to McQueen, with commentary by his right-hand woman and successor Sarah Burton (you can see a slideshow here). Burton's stories about McQueen's inspirations and the lengths his team went to in order to transform his dreams into reality are extraordinary. The dress above, made for his mental asylum collection, was made out of ostrich feathers and ... surgical slides. "We hand-painted them red, drilled holes in each one, and sewed them on so they looked like paillettes," says Burton. Amazing.

Things I Want: Prada Boots

2011-02-24T23:27:00.007-05:00

Images from Vogue.com

Prada always has the best shoes. Her two-tone python (and sometimes velvet) boots for fall are going to create a frenzy! You can see them all here.

Things I Want: Marchesa Rings

2011-02-23T22:04:00.004-05:00

images from Vogue.com

Rings from the Marchesa show, which was inspired by Miss Havisham from Great Expectations.

Viola Purse!

2011-02-18T19:15:00.006-05:00

The coolest accessory of New York Fashion Week: the violin purse -- or viola purse, if you wish -- courtesy of threeASFOUR. Indeed, the avant garde trio also showed a big wooden belt shaped like a harp, complete with strings, and several of their rounded half-moon coats had seams sewn to look like the f-holes of a string instrument. There was something surreal about the music references: They called to mind Elsa Schiaparelli's famous music-note dress and gloves from 1939. The last time I remember violins featuring prominently on the runway was for Viktor & Rolf's Spring 2008 collection, which included mini-instruments protruding from the models' ballooned, ruffled dresses. ThreeASFOUR's collection was much sexier -- which is fitting since string instruments are among the sexiest objects ever made.

Image from style.com

Compare-Contrast: Marchesa-Givenchy

2011-02-17T00:04:00.006-05:00

I actually loved the Marchesa collection for Fall 2o11. I usually find their dresses overwrought red-carpet drivel, but I thought this collection was breathtaking, dark and intriguing -- oddly it was the second collection this season based on the eccentric, tragic Miss Havisham from Dickens' Great Expectations. The diaphanous lace dresses, however, called to mind recent Givenchy collections.

Marchesa Fall 2011:

Images, Vogue.com

Givenchy Resort 2011/Fall 2010, Couture:

Images, Style.com, Vogue.com

Dejavu: Lace at Marc Jacobs

2011-02-16T00:29:00.008-05:00

Did Marc Jacobs' see-through lace dresses he showed on the runway yesterday remind anyone else of Prada's 2008 collection?

Marc Jacobs Fall 2011:

Prada Fall 2011:

Both collections had peplums too.

Trend-spotting: Hoods

2011-02-14T23:23:00.006-05:00

Looks from Victoria Beckham, Wayne and threeASFOUR; images from style.com

There's something monastic about the hooded garments appearing on the runway during New York Fashion Week. Wimples, peaked hoods and all sorts of ecclesiastical headgear have made an appearance in collections from designers as varied as the avant garde trio threeASFOUR and former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham. I write about the trend, and provide a bit of historical context, for Forbes.

New Title, Same Old Blog

2011-01-21T07:19:00.004-05:00

I changed the name of my blog! It was a long time coming. I used this new name -- which is a play on the Kinks' song "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" (which in turn is also the title of one of my favorite books of fashion writing, by Pittsburgh native (holla!) Holly Brubach) -- previously as the title of my Tumblr before I switched its focus from fashion to art. But I couldn't bear to part with it completely, so I co-opted it for this old blog. Hooray!

Paris Vogue's Latest Controversial Shoot

2011-01-05T23:17:00.007-05:00

Paris Vogue, "Cadeaux," image from jezebel.com

Paris Vogue has published an offensive fashion editorial. Surprise, surprise. Editor-in-chief Carine Roitfeld loves a controversy -- from a spread of Lily Donaldson playing pregnant and smoking to an editorial of Dutch model Lara Stone in blackface -- and this latest shoot, of heavily made-up little girls draped in jewels and designer duds, has provoked the ire of many a blogger, who have called it "gross" and compared it to "kiddie porn."

Jezebel comes to Paris Vogue's defense, calling the editorial "a parody and a critique of the fashion industry's unhealthy interest in young girls, not an endorsement or a glamourization of it." Parody, yes (it's rather obvious). And I do think the icky feeling the photographs elicit is intentional. Yet I find this parody hard to swallow when Paris Vogue itself routinely publishes images of highly sexualized 15- and 16-year-old models -- wearing, and peddling, clothing made for someone much older.

The shoot exposes and skewers the industry's obsession with youth, but it makes fun of it. Like most of the magazine's controversial editorials, it is bold but hollow -- an attempt to shock, or make you laugh at loud, but not much else.

Dressing Up for Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T09:36:00.004-05:00

Does anyone still dress up for Thanksgiving? I remember when we were little, my mom used to dress my sisters and me up in dresses of velvet and taffeta with ribbon sashes and lace collars (it was the '80s) for dinner at my grandparents'. My all-time favorite Thanksgiving outfit was a drop-waist dress with little purple flowers (kind of like a Liberty print, now that I think of it); a black velvet band separated the top of the dress from the skirt, which had three tiered layers (not ruffles, exactly, they fell pretty straight). The whole ensemble was finished off with an enormous lace collar, and I wore it most likely with tights and mary janes.

My mother has a photograph of me wearing that dress and sitting on my great-grandmother's lap with my sister. I think that was the year that my grandmother's turkey was so dry that I poured water on it in order to make it more palatable--to the amusement of my cousins and the consternation of my parents (I received an epic scolding from my father). My grandmother couldn't cook a turkey, but she made--still makes--the best chicken noodle soup on the planet; for Thanksgiving she served it in these glass turkey bowls, which delighted me as a kid.

We stopped going to my grandparents' for Thanksgiving shortly after that--we had moved to Pittsburgh, and driving seven hours to New York for such a short stay with three fussy girls proved more of hassle than it was worth for my parents. The good thing about Thanksgiving in Pittsburgh was that my mother's cooking was a vast improvement on my grandmother's; she also cooked sweet potato with marshmallow (my grandmother would have never allowed marshmallow into her house) and stuffing (something which my grandma still doesn't understand to this day). And the preparation process was more fun at home too: we would get up in the morning, have coffee, begin cooking--though I generally stuck to stirring and entertaining my sisters and mom while they cooked with my piano playing and interpretive dancing. But it wasn't long before we substituted our pretty party dresses with jeans or sack dresses (which allowed our stomachs to hold more food). It's certainly a lot easier, but as I get older and find fewer and fewer opportunities to dress up I have begun to feel a bit nostalgic for those days when it was okay to wear ridiculous party dresses for even something as mundane as eating turkey with the family.

Trend-spotting: Easy Access

2010-10-09T22:30:00.010-05:00

Looks from Lanvin, Narciso Rodriguez, Yves Saint Laurent, Haider Ackerman, Marc Jacobs and Prabal Gurung; images from Vogue.com

One of the most unforgiving trends to crop up during the Spring 2011 collections: the slit. To compensate for the longer lengths of skirts and dresses, designers slashed the fabric up way past the knee--and an alarming number used their scissors on the fronts, rather than the sides, of skirts. You can thank Belgian designer and critic's darling Haider Ackermann; he introduced the look on the runway a year ago.

Trend-spotting: Bearing Fruit

2010-10-09T09:20:00.001-05:00

Looks from Prada, Wunderkind and Stella McCartney

After a pretty tame beginning to the spring collections in New York, things went a little bananas in Milan. Miuccia Prada thumbed her nose at good taste with cotton shirts and dresses covered with bananas--or monkeys. Flower child Stella McCartney showed a collection of slim pastel pants suits, followed by boxy shirts and fly-away dresses printed with bright oranges and lemons. And nearly all of Wunderkind's short, playful dresses featured big red cherries. Yum.

Wild Things

2010-10-07T22:41:00.006-05:00

Fierce footwear from the Louis Vuitton Spring 2011 show in Paris; images from Vogue.com

Trend-spotting: Stripes

2010-10-04T21:16:00.010-05:00

Looks from Jil Sander, Celine and Prada; photos from style.com

Big bold stripes were a welcome reprieve from all the white and beige dominating the Spring 2011 shows. Even Phoebe Philo, the woman who brought minimalism back with such a vengeance, punched up her white boxy shirts or neutral-colored pants for Celine with wide stripes in blue and green.

Trend-spotting: Palazzo Pants

2010-09-28T21:05:00.011-05:00

Looks from Marc Jacobs, Richard Chai Love and Jil Sander; images, style.com

After years of skinny jeans, the super wide leg is back (a staple of my 90s wardrobe). Richard Chai was the first to show them in murky neutrals at his Love show at New York Fashion Week, followed by Marc Jacobs, whose brightly colored palazzo pants and jumpsuits were perfect for the disco. They made a few appearances in Milan too: Jil Sanders' were in taffeta and evoked Yves Saint Laurent, while MaxMara's channeled '90s minimalism.

A Trace of Celine at Rachel Comey

2010-09-19T07:58:00.004-05:00

Minimalism, trench dresses, camel coats: You can thank designer Phoebe Philo at Celine for these trends, which have--since she made her debut at the French fashion house for Resort 2010 about a year ago--dominated the runways. Her latest resort collection, for 2011 resort, continued with the minimalism, but added some bold color and even a few prints. I drooled over the floral tunic she showed with matching slim pants, so I was ecstatic when New York designer Rachel Comey showed a similar style in irresistible pink for Spring 2011. The best part: It will be a hell of a lot cheaper.

Celine's look:

Comey's more summery take:

Images from Style.com

Corrine Day and Truth in Fashion Photography

2010-09-07T00:00:00.002-05:00

Corrine Day, whose black-and-white photographs of a gangly, freckled 15-year-old Kate Moss launched the fashion model's career, died last week. She was 48 years old.

Most people know Day through her photographs of Moss. She shot those first, career-defining ones for The Face in 1990, of a fresh-faced adolescent girl laughing and smoking a cigarette and playing in the ocean wearing nothing very remarkable--and sometimes nothing much at all--save for a resplendent feather headdress; and she would continue using Moss as an inspiration and muse in various points in her career. Though Day deserves recognition for her other work--particularly her late fashion photography published in British, Italian and Japanese Vogue--the Face photographs alone would ensure her place as one of the great fashion photographers. They boldly rejected the prevailing high-gloss aesthetic of fashion editorials at the time (those larger-than-life glamazons in their flashy, big-shouldered Versace or Mugler jackets) for something grittier but also more personal. Some called it "grunge," but really it was more just about shooting something real.

Reality--depicting reality--was Day's obsession, and she ended up largely rejected fashion photography for the more "honest" pursuit of documentary photography. After an editorial she shot of an emaciated Moss wearing nothing but knickers, saggy tights and a groddy vest caused an outrage after it was published in British Vogue--critics accused her of promoting heroin chic, anorexia and pedophilia--Day retreated from the fashion world and began turning the lens on her own life. No subject was too grim to shoot, including drug addiction and her own battle with a cancerous brain tumor. "Photography is getting as close as you can to real life, showing us things we don't normally see," she told the BBC in 2004.

The greatest photographers show us things we don't normally see--or, perhaps more accurately, don't normally notice. Think of Robert Frank's famous photograph of a girl on an elevator or Dorothea Lange's image of a migrant mother, to cite two particularly famous examples. Day, through her fashion photography, routinely showed us things we don't normally see in fashion magazines, or that we wouldn't take the time to notice in real life: mainly young girls being young girls, being themselves. One of the things I love about point-and-shoot photographers like Frank is that they find the extraordinary and the beauty and profundity in the mundane. Day did the same thing with fashion photographs: She didn't try to transform these young, often awkward models into fashion plates; she celebrated and made us appreciate their most unextraordinary qualities, which in a sea of overly airbrushed, glossy models made them seem quite extraordinary indeed.

Day's fashion photographs demonstrate that she is partly wrong about photography, however. Photography is not about reality, but about the truth, and Day's "real" photographs--the ones of her friends doing drugs and whatnot--are no more truthful than of a young Gemma Ward in an inflatable pool in the woods or Kate Moss in Birkenstocks and denim shorts; they just convey different truths. There is truth in beauty--just look at Irving Penn and Richard Avedon.

And there is depth and emotion in beauty as well. In 2007, Day told the Guardian, "I wouldn't say that documentary photography is more creative than fashion photography, it's just that documentary photography is more important for me because it's something I've lived. It's much more deep. Whereas when you're creating an image, you're just using your imagination, so it's not so emotional." I think Day's own fashion photography has proved otherwise.

*All photos from www.corinneday.co.uk

What Makes A Good Fashion Magazine?

2010-08-29T22:26:00.008-05:00

It's 90 degrees today in New York, but early last week we were blessed with a rare, tantalizing brush with autumn weather in late August. For four days straight I wore rain boots or closed toe high-heel mary janes, long sleeves and even a light trench-like coat; it was heaven. I am craving that weather again. The stores are bursting with sequined cardigans, slim slacks, camel-colored coats and lace-up booties. The NYU kids are arriving back on campus. And the fashion magazines' highly anticipated fall-fashion issues have hit the newsstands, boasting "937 new looks" or "726 pages of sumptuous fall fashion."

Every year I dutifully head over to Barnes & Noble and snap up all the fall fashion issues my little arms can carry (I used to subscribe to all of them, but for the most part I've let my subscriptions lapse), and every year I read them with a mixture of excitement, exasperation, some joy, and, mostly, disappointment. I don't know what I'm exactly expecting to get out of some issue of a fashion magazine, but considering the September Issues' importance in the fashion and media industries--and the kind of frenzy they inspire--I often feel like they should deliver more--whether that's more substance, more escape, more beauty or something else entirely probably varies for each magazine.

But then this past week I had two epiphanies. The first happened while I was riding on the subway and suddenly began thinking of Richard Avedon--specifically a photograph he shot of Suzy Parker and Robin Tattersall rollerskating outside the Place de la Concorde in Paris. The image is so dynamic and stylish--but most of all it really fills you with joy. There's just so much energy, so much joie de vivre in the photographs he shot for Harper's Bazaar and later Vogue. Even his satiric ad work for Versace in the 80s--where he had the supers dressed up as Stepford-like wives--and his moving, sometimes disturbing, portfolio for The New Yorker, "In Memory of the Late Mr. and Mrs. Comfort," which chronicles the love affair between a beautiful woman and a skeleton, left me--the first time I saw them--breathless and elated about the possibilities and power of fashion photography. So one thing that is essential yet too often missing in fashion magazines: joy.

The second epiphany came to me while flipping through a Vogue photography book at the Strand. I happened upon an Edward Steichen image--one I had never seen before--of a woman sitting at a table with a man, her dress undone or unzipped, exposing the luminous expanse of her back to the camera. It was striking, modern and thoroughly surprising (still surprising, even though it was taken in the '30s or '40s). Not very much fashion photography--or fashion magazines in general--truly surprises me nowadays, yet that element of surprise is perhaps now more essential than ever. By the time the fall fashion issues come out we have already been inundated with images of these clothes from websites chronicling every single little fashion show and assembling photo collages of the greatest looks and trends. Magazines need to work very hard to surprise us.

And of course these qualities--joy and surprise--aren't just important in the editorials but in the articles and content as well. I'm not saying that everything should be puppies and rainbows or completely unlike anything I've ever seen, but as a whole an issue should delight and make us pause. Do the fall fashion issues this year do so? Some do, some don't. I have nearly read them all, and will be looking at each of them in the coming weeks analyzing them, determining whether they succeed in delighting or surprising.

Naomi Campbell Wears White To Court

2010-08-05T19:29:00.005-05:00

Photo from the New York Times

Naomi Campbell appeared ("fashionably late" in cream-colored Alaïa, as the AP put it) before the U.N. war crimes tribunal at the Hague this morning. The supermodel had been subpoenaed--after much resistance--to testify against former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who allegedly gifted Campbell blood diamonds after meeting her at a party in 1997.

Campbell admitted to receiving "dirty-looking" stones from two men the night of the party, but that she did not know (at the time) that they were diamonds and was not certain they were from Taylor. Still, the prosecution hopes that Campbell's testimony, if true, will provide evidence that Taylor allegedly traded uncut diamonds for guns to fund Sierra Leon's civil war (one of the many crimes for which he is being tried).

Campbell's outfit--a prim knit dress and cardigan--as well as her '60s bouffant hairdo worked hard to convince the jury of her naivete in the situation (she had, before that party, never heard of Charles Taylor, "blood diamonds" or the country Liberia, she said). Sure, most people arrive at court looking their most modest. Celebrities particularly must carefully select what they wear, because they will be judged by their fans they don't want to lose their appeal or marketability (unless you are Lindsay Lohan). Think of Lil' Kim, almost unrecognizable in a powder blue suit, and Winona Ryder, in sweet, infantilizing Marc Jacobs. But Campbell--who is no stranger to the courtroom--usually appears in little black sheaths and slim pinstripe suits for past trials, her hair sleek and straightened--a kind of severe chic that emphasized her moxie and confidence, whether suing British tabloid The Mirror for invasion of privacy or pleading guilty for assaulting her maid. Then again, this was the Hague, and a war crimes tribunal.

So, in the end, did her spotless white dress succeed in rousing the public's sympathy? Doubtful--especially since she complained that appearing before the tribunal was an "inconvenience." Well, la di da.

Alber Elbaz Makes Vanity Fair's Best-Dressed List

2010-08-03T21:41:00.005-05:00

I have long loved Alber Elbaz's sense of style, so I was thrilled the Lanvin designer made Vanity Fair's International Best-Dressed list this year. His uniform consists of a dark velvet jacket, a loose ribbon bow tie, ankle-length trousers and the chunky glasses. It is sweet and unpretentious, yet utterly singular, and with a certain panache--a perfect reflection of Alber's own personality. He is a true style original. (For more on Alber's genius, click here.)

*Image from vanityfair.com

Not Just About The Clothes: American High Style at Brooklyn Museum

2010-07-31T11:34:00.014-05:00

Schiaparellis at the Brooklyn Museum; photo by Dante A. Ciampaglia

Three museums in New York City have paid homage to American fashion this year, and they each presented a different story about national style. American Beauty: Aesthetics and Innovation in Fashion, which closed in April, at the Fashion Institute of Technology, focused on the innovation and ingenuity--those classic American virtues--of the U.S. fashion industry. American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity currently at the Costume Institute at the Met narrates (or tries to anyway) the struggle of the American woman to escape from rigid European notions of femininity and class and forge her own, separate identity. And the Brooklyn Museum's American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection--which closes after this weekend and is by far the most moving and successful of these shows--tells the story of what American women wore through the history of the museum's magnificent costume collection, which comprises 24,000 items, including masterpieces from Charles James, Elsa Schiaparelli and the House of Worth.

American High Style begins with a series of late 19th century Worth dresses: a sweeping lavender taffeta gown, a black velvet and cream evening coat with an elaborate lace ruff, an Arabian Nights-flavored costume with ballooning blue pants and embroidered corset. But what makes their presentation extraordinary is the text accompanying them. It tells the story of Eleanor and Sarah Hewitt--the sisters who founded the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum in 1897. Suddenly the dresses transform from objects of art to these living breathing things worn by women taking an afternoon stroll or going to the opera. I can't think of another fashion exhibit that really succeeded in presenting clothing as something more than a static work of art.

Throughout there are stories about socialite and art patron Millicent Rogers--who is responsible for about three-quarters of the collection's amazing surrealist Schiaparelli holdings, which include the one-of-a-kind clear plastic necklace adorned with metallic bugs and a trench coat that uses recycled bullet castings as buttons--Emily Warren Roebling--who took over completing of the Brooklyn Bridge after her husband died and whose extravagant yellow silk gown with violet velvet cape is presented here--and burlesque dancer Gypsy Rose Lee--who wore several of the form-fitting 1940s Charles James dresses on display.

And as the history of the collection progresses, so do the clothes and the women who wear them: the fussy corseted Worth gowns make way for the lean modernist lines of a gold lame Lanvin flapper dress or the soft Grecian draping of a magenta Vionnet, which in turn cede to the ruched mermaid gowns of Charles James, which make way for playsuits and sportswear by Claire McCardell and Bonnie Cashin.

A Halston caftan; photo by Dante A. Ciampaglia

American High Style at the Brooklyn Museum has a bittersweet tinge to it, because this extraordinary collection will no longer belong to the museum. Not having the space or the resources to store its enormous holdings, it has sold the collection to the Met's Costume Institute. It isn't a total loss: Under the arrangement, Brooklyn will be able to borrow and exhibit any of the items from its former collection--a generous gesture on the part of the Met. But it's hard not to feel a little sadness as you pass by the last of American High Style's great dresses, because I had become so engrossed in the collection's history. I just hope that this exhibition doesn't mark a farewell to fashion at Brooklyn though, and can spark a new commitment to showcasing fashion at the museum.

Couture Is Dead! Long Live Couture!

2010-07-25T08:00:00.001-05:00

Emily Blunt in Dior Haute Couture, from Vanity Fair magazine

Twice a year, a handful or so of the world's most storied, illustrious fashion houses present their haute couture collections: a parade of intricate lace dresses and fanciful, crystal-encrusted ballgowns that take thousands of hours to hand-sew and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy. And twice a year, the fashion media publish a slew of articles pronouncing the death of couture. "Like perpetually dieting designers, haute couture is definitely shrinking before our eyes," wrote New York Times critic Cathy Horyn after the latest bout of couture shows ended a couple of weeks ago. The Sydney Morning Herald announced that "for the past 20 years Paris's Haute Couture Week has been dying a slow death"; while The Australian ran the more cautious--if not entirely optimistic--headline, "Haute couture hangs on."

Indeed, haute couture--the highest-quality made-to-measure clothing strictly regulated by the French government--should have been dead a long time ago. The industry--based almost entirely in France--was nearly obliterated during the Second World War. (The Nazis tried to relocate it from Paris to Berlin; they failed.) The rise of ready-to-wear, youth culture and the miniskirt threatened to topple it in the 1960s, and the British magazine Queen even pronounced the death of couture in a 1964 issue, running fake obituaries of designers Givenchy and Balenciaga. It didn't help when French starlet Brigitte Bardot--the sexiest woman in the world--snubbed Coco Chanel's invitation to dress her, saying that couture was "for grannies." And Pierre Bergé, the business and life partner of Yves Saint Laurent (whose creation is to the left), declared that when the great designer died--which he did in 2008--so would haute couture.

Yet despite these myriad obstacles--which have ranged from cultural shifts to globalization to recessions to wars--couture still survives. The thing that so many critics who are so quick to proclaim something "dead" forget is that the history of fashion--indeed the history of art and, well, civilization in general--does not go in this smooth, upward slope, but that it goes in fits and starts and that it sometimes needs to go crashing down in order to rise again. (In economics, this is called "creative destruction": the idea that old, stagnant ideas must be dismantled in order for new, creative ones to bloom.) Coco Chanel rebelled against Worth's ideal woman by transforming women into sexless sylphs; Dior responded to Chanel by padding their hips and whittling their waists; and Yves Saint Laurent rebelled against Dior by putting them in tuxedos and gypsy skirts and injecting some streetwear to her evening clothes.

Givenchy's Fall 2010 Haute Couture collection

But even if the naysayers are right and couture is indeed on its last legs, it is at least going out in style. The couture collections shown in Paris this summer (for fall 2010) were the strongest in a long time. Ricardo Tisci showed the best collection in his five years as creative director at Givenchy--an intensely personal, fierce collection of scandalously diaphanous Chantilly lace dresses, bleached monkey-hair coats and dégradé ostrich feather skirts--one that reflected the designer's gothic tendencies but in a new surprising way: the clothes, though heavily embellished had a lightness to them (due largely to their transparency). They also looked new. I think because Tisci was inspired by the human body (the skeleton was a prominent motif) and the artist Frida Kahlo (the embroidery, the lace, the darkness) instead of a particular decade--his last couture collection was inspired by the '70s, and felt like it--he was able to really let his imagination go wild.

Final looks from Christian Dior Fall 2010 Couture show; images, style.com

John Galliano finally got his nose out of the Dior archive and used his own wild imagination for a breathtaking collection inspired by flowers. The saturated violets and aquas (made by layering different shades of fabric on top of one another), the giddy explosions of tulle, the intricately feathered, ruched, frilled and dégradéd petal skirts, while they all invoked nature, they also seemed more like modernist interpretations of flowers rather than just mimicking flowers themselves. If any show makes a case for haute couture as a high art form, it is Galliano's: It demonstrates the skill of a master technician as well as his imagination and his ability to make the viewer feel something (awe, joy, a belated appreciation for nature).

This, for me, is what makes haute couture so important. Yes, it is wildly expensive and elitist, and yes, the fact that most of the creations shown on the runway will never be worn in real life does make it seem rather wasteful. But does anyone ever lob these complaints at painters or sculptors or other visual artists, whose creations--unless hung in a museum--are just as gilded and unattainable as one of Dior's flowers? Haute couture it is the one area in fashion in which designers don't have to worry about the bottom line (it doesn't make the big fashion houses any money); it is the one area whose manufacturing will never be outsourced to China, who will keep the tradition of skilled artisans (who sew and embroider everything by hand in an atelier in France) alive; and it is, in the end, the thing that gives fashion its glamour, its allure. Without it, fashion may just devolve into a rag-tag assortment of stuff that we consume and buy--it will no longer be an idea but just a commodity.

Clothing vs. Fashion

2010-07-14T22:42:00.003-05:00

I've always been into clothes, but I haven't always been into fashion. There's a difference. When I merely liked clothes I wore bad 70s polyester shirts and those crinkly peasant skirts and feather boas and leather cowboy boots, gleefully acquiring these little treasures completely impervious to construction or fit or even trends. I didn't care about the runways or Vogue. I didn't care about Coco Chanel or Christian Dior or Savile Row or Haute Couture or Birkin Bags or any of that. Until suddenly I did. Or maybe it wasn't so sudden. Maybe it started when I saw a Vivienne Westwood dress in a shop in Pittsburgh as a teenager and thought, "One day I want to wear dresses like that." A few years later I was buying my first "designer" item (a sage green Marc Jacobs jacket) and reading a biography on Coco Chanel (by Axel Madsen--highly recommended). And then I started writing about fashion and taking fashion classes and learning phrases like dolman sleeves and crepe de chine and ... well here I am.

"Fashion" is more than just the items of clothing that hang in our closets. But I also like to think that it's more than what's on the runway this season or in the glossies this month or in stores this moment--that it's something deeper, more complex and profound. Is it?

The Shape Of Things To Come

2010-07-11T10:55:00.010-05:00

Chanel couture, Fall 2010; images from style.com

If all the long flowing skirts cropping up at the Fall 2010 ready-to-wear shows weren't enough of an indication, Karl Lagerfeld's wonderful collection for Chanel couture should confirm it: The mini is over. The new shape: rounded, padded shoulders with either a pencil skirt that hits the knee or a full one that ended somewhere in the lower calf region.

Coming Up Flowers

2010-07-10T09:49:00.008-05:00

Christian Dior, Haute Couture Fall 2010; images from style.com

Florals emerged as a mini-trend during the Fall ready-to-wear collections shown in February. I loved how John Galliano took this trend to the limit for his fall couture show for Christian Dior, actually transforming his garments--and his models--into flowers. The images from the show are explosive: from the first electric violet tulip-shaped coat with a bouquet of ruched flowers for a collar, to the last enormous chiffon ballgowns in shocking turquoise, iris and pink with dégradé flower petal skirts. These were no shrinking violets.

Fit for McQueen

2010-07-04T07:05:00.019-05:00

The news that Gucci Group would continue producing the Alexander McQueen label after the designer's suicide in February seemed, at first, rather tasteless to me, especially when rumors that Gareth Pugh--who shares McQueen's gothic tendencies, but not his genius--would replace the late designer began swirling on the Internet. The idea of getting some buzzy name to helm McQueen seemed crass to me; it's one thing when you are trying to resuscitate some decades-old brand (like Halston or Rochas), it's another when the eponymous designer has committed suicide a few months ago.

I was therefore relieved when the house announced that McQueen's right-hand woman, Sarah Burton, who has worked at the company for 16 years, would carry on his legacy as head designer. Burton recently displayed astonishing grace under pressure when she finished and showed a magnificent McQueen Fall 2010 collection merely weeks after the designer's suicide. Last week she gave a taste of her vision for McQueen with a beautiful resort collection that stayed true to her mentor's legacy, while injecting some of her own personality as well.

Sarah Burton's debut for Alexander McQueen; photos, Style.com

The result: all the romance of McQueen, with a bit of a lighter, looser touch. An egg-shaped, sumptuous brocade coat managed to appear weightless (at least in photos); white ankle-length dhoti pants looked comfortable enough for a beach soiree; and a diaphanous nude corset dress fell away from the body in soft folds and was embellished with delicate lace. The collection feels reverential, but not in a forced way like, for example, Pier Paolo Piccioli's and Maria Grazia Chiuri's first collections for Italian fashion house Valentino: Burton worked so long and so closely with McQueen that it is only natural that her designs would closely follow his. I am excited to see the direction she'll take the McQueen brand, and how she will develop as a designer in her own right.

All photos from Style.com

Stately, Plump Buck Mulligan

2010-06-21T22:02:00.006-05:00

I love James Joyce, but I had never celebrated Bloomsday, a holiday commemorating the day in which his most famous novel, Ulysses, takes place. I had always had to work late or write a paper due the next day or some such. So this year when I realized that I would actually get out of work June 16 early enough to engage in some Bloomsday revelry I set to work finding some kind of Ulysses pub crawl or reading I could attend. But I found something better: A Bloomsday fashion show.

This was no ordinary fashion show. There were dramatic readings involved. And the collection--by Bronx-based nonprofit fashion label Goods of Conscience--was designed by a priest. Really.

The piè de résistance? A black jacket with tan trim with the words "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan"--the first of the novel--hand-painted around the bottom. And as if that weren't nerdy/awesome enough, the jacket's silk lining had the entire first sentence painted on it:

Photographer Greg Lord modeling the Buck Mulligan jacket, inside out; photo by moi

You can read my account of the event for Forbes here.

Anne Carson's Killer Kicks

2010-06-18T22:50:00.004-05:00

In Pittsburgh, where I grew up, I would always see women on their way home after working downtown in skirt suits and bright white tennis shoes. Seeing them shuffling about always made me so sad, and I think it influenced my aversion not only to suits but to dresses or skirts worn with sneakers in general. But I must say, poet Anne Carson rocked the look Monday evening at the Poet House's fifteenth annual Poetry Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. Carson kick-started the event with a poem by Robert Frank ("Steps," or the one about Lana Turner), and she wore hot pink Addidas kicks with a matching pink sundress and faded yellow denim jacket. Though the highlight of the event was undoubtedly seeing Bill Murray (he read Levertov, Prévert, Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti), Carson's was the sartorial statement of the evening: comfort with panache.

Summer in the City: Celine Resort

2010-06-15T22:17:00.013-05:00

Looks from Celine's 2011 Resort collection; images from Style.com

Phoebe Philo has--yet again--created the perfect city wardrobe for Celine's 2011 Resort collection: cool, slick, practical, but with just a dash of quirkiness to make each item special: Utilitarian trenches and anoracks, slim cropped pants that hit right above the ankle, short shifts in graphic prints and to-die-for mules with a wooden heel. I particularly loved a cream striped cape that looked like a Navajo blanket and a jumpsuit in a crazy, busy abstract spotted print. Oh, and the lady-like dresses with the pussy bows, and the floral tunic worn over matching slim pants. And the metal cuffed jewelry. And the bags. And... and...

I usually don't feel such ravenous desire for any collection not designed by Alber Elbaz. Well done, Ms. Philo.

Coney Island Baby

2010-06-13T16:34:00.007-05:00

Two photographers, two different threesomes in Coney Island.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1946, MOMA

Leon Levinstein, 1980, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Revenge of the Boater

2010-06-09T22:29:00.010-05:00

Oscar de la Renta Resort, images from style.com

First Jason Wu, now Oscar de la Renta. It seems that straw boater hats are the accessory du jour come 2011. Marc Jacobs--who sent boaters down the runway for his spring show two years ago--really is an oracle.

Jason Wu's Boater Hats: Not as Cool as Marc Jacobs'

2010-06-06T06:00:00.000-05:00

Marc Jacobs sent straw boater hats down the runway for his Spring 2009 collection. Jason Wu sent boater hats down the runway for his Resort 2011 collection on Friday. But Wu's headpieces felt a little stale--a little derivative. Too much time had elapsed for Wu to be continuing or even following a trend, and not enough time had past for the idea to be fresh again. The boaters were cute, sure, but they lacked imagination and verve. Jacobs' were a full-on fashion statement: full of insouciance and cheek. Wu's just seemed like a superfluous--if sweet--little topper.

Jason Wu, Resort 2011:

Marc Jacobs, Spring 2009:

Images from Style.com

Literary Chic: Stylish Guys at the Goodreads Pub Crawl

2010-06-05T10:00:00.000-05:00

The stylish Colson Whitehead, reading at Housing Works Bookstore and Cafe

It's pretty rare that I go to a literary reading and compliment one of the authors on his or her clothing--unless the reading is by my friend David Hajdu, who is always wearing some really cool vintage jacket or crazy glasses--but when I met Colson Whitehead (very) briefly at a literary bar crawl and reading (which I wrote about for the Forbes Booked blog), I couldn't help fawning over his style: skinny tie, cuffed jeans, lace-up worker boots. The tie looked vintage--slate blue with one lone gray sliver of a diagonal stripe (he said it was Rage & Bone--nice!). He wore it with a snug-fitting, short-sleeved starchy white collared shirt (the top button unbuttoned, if I remember correctly), which was tucked into one of the most perfectly broken-in pair of jeans I've encountered. I love that he wore them cuffed with black boots--it reminded me of how all the cool alternative kids used to wear their jeans in high school, which imbued the outfit both with this romantic nostalgia and with something edgy and defiant--and a no-nonsense utilitarian belt. And, of course, his hair--long braids pulled into a low ponytail--really brought the whole look together.

But Whitehead wasn't the only stylist bookworm there. I was quite impressed with the event's emcee, Goodreads community manager Patrick Brown, who was rocking a seriously awesome pair of brown brogues. "Duckie Brown," he said after I complimented them. Then he started laughing, "I feel like I'm on the Red Carpet."

Showgirl Dresses, Ceramics and Mojitos: Atlanta Shopping Day 1

2010-05-25T08:40:00.000-05:00

This past weekend I was in Atlanta for a wedding, and of course the first thing I did (after checking into the hotel and getting something to eat) was go to a vintage store with a friend. Fortunately there was one relatively close to our hotel midtown called My My My, which featured both vintage and "vintage-inspired" clothing. I wasn't too interested in the "new" stuff, though the store did have some nice bracelets from India that I considered buying, but the vintage was well curated and in excellent condition (not a lot of everyday items, however, mostly evening or party wear). I tried on the most fabulous jet-black beaded showgirl dress with big shoulder pads and subtle slits up the sides--I looked like a cross between Michael Jackson and a flapper:

Dress from http://www.mymymyatl.com

The saleswoman told us that you could haggle for prices, but considering the dress was marked at $225, I figured that even a negotiated price would be well above my price range, particularly since the dress served absolutely no practical purpose and would probably add about five pounds to my luggage. So I sadly put it back on the hanger.

We then decided to walk to Virginia Highlands (a long, arduous journey that involved an impossibly steep hill), but it was worth it, because otherwise we never would have stumbled across Urban Cottage, a gorgeous home goods store that had me salivating over the antique-looking, perfectly distressed wooden furniture, brightly colored ceramics, French soaps and sweet lingerie. (It reminded me of a non-corporate Anthropologie.)

Kitchen items from www.urbancottageatlanta.com

Having worked up an appetite from all our shopping, we decided to go to a tapas place down the street called Noche--where we got some mojitos and not terribly authentic (but still decent) small plates. The best part of the meal was our dessert--a cheese plate served with plump figs, sliced apples and twisted breadsticks that I washed down with some red wine. Heavenly!

Alber Elbaz's Guide to Life

2010-05-18T08:22:00.005-05:00

Style.com has an interview with probably my favorite living designer, Alber Elbaz, who designs for the Parisian fashion house Lanvin. I've always loved Elbaz not only for the chic cocktail dresses and big statement jewelry he designs but also for his soft round face, his floppy bow tie, his soft-spoken demeanor, his humble, self-deprecating attitude. I love that someone so unglamorous can create the kinds of frenzy-inducing wardrobes Elbaz does--Barney's Simon Doonan called his clothes "crack for women" in a New Yorker story about the designer in 2009.

In the Style.com interview--part of a series about the "future of fashion"--Elbaz not only talks about fashion but imparts lessons about work ethic and philosophy that apply to all creative fields. Here are some of his pearls of wisdom:

--I prefer being relevant to being cool, because if you're cool, you're also cold the next day. ... The one thing that always scares me is to be like the Miss America of the moment, because next year there is a new Miss America.

--Everybody wants to do everything, everybody needs to do everything, and everybody feels that he can. And I'm still feeling that a dancer should dance and a chef should cook and a singer should sing and a designer of clothes should do clothes. Because the moment we try to do everything for ourselves, we're becoming very mediocre in what we do, and we don’t go to extremes and we don’t touch excellence. And I prefer to touch excellence.

This is in response to celebrities who delve into fashion design--which I've always thought they've done more out of entitlement and narcissism or brand expansion than a true desire to create. Elbaz isn't advocating single-mindedness, nor is he discouraging exploring different interests. But I think that all people should strive for excellence in what they do. So many just do things just to do them, or to get notoriety, or as a means to something else (fame, money, validation, etc.). Speaking of excellence...

--I think that things that are perfect are dead. I don’t believe in that sense in perfection, because whenever it’s perfect, it means that it’s not moving and it’s not going anywhere. The fact that you wake up the day after the show and you look at all you have done the day before and you’re like, oh my God, this was bad—this is the one thing that drives you to start a new day and to start all over again. Because if you think that it’s all great, you’ll be maybe in the Bahamas with a martini or whatever.

I remember several years ago reading an interview with cellist Yo-Yo Ma; he said that no matter how great a performance he did, he knew he could always do better, and that he was forever striving to improve on his last performance. I found that so inspiring--this from the most famous, and arguably the greatest, cellist performing today--and it has really shaped the way I approach my work. I don't think of it as something terrible--perfection can never be achieved, so why even bother?--instead I think it's exciting because it means that your work will never bore you. If you can already play Barber Cello Concerto perfectly, what's the fun in revisiting it again and again? Complacency (sitting in the Bahamas with your martini), I think, is a dangerous thing.

--Fashion is not always about what's new, it's also about what's good.

A good philosophy for life in general.

*All photos from Style.com

Bountiful: Tanya Marcuse at the Julie Saul Gallery

2010-05-15T07:50:00.006-05:00

Tanya Marcuse, Normal Plant, 2009, at Julie Saul Gallery

I first saw photographer Tanya Marcuse speak at a symposium at the Fashion Institute of Technology for its 2006 exhibition Love & War: The Weaponized Woman. In addition to chain mail dresses and camouflage evening gowns, the exhibit included photographs from Marcuse's series Undergarments and Armor, for which she visited various archives and museums in the U.S. and England photographing the corsets, crinolines, helmets and breastplates she found in their storerooms. The photos are not only beautiful--shot in soft black and white--they are endlessly fascinating: alternative sculptures, or representations, of the human bodies who once wore them, kind of like the exoskeletons of superhumans (more padded, desirable, stronger, imposing than the body underneath). (Ironically, the women's caged crinolines and steel or wooden corsets are often much more industrial and functional than the warriors' ornate, sometimes delicate, chain mail and breastplates.)

Marcuse has a new project, currently on view at the Julie Saul Gallery in New York City, called Bountiful, a series of lush color photographs of waxed fruits and vegetables--vibrant red apples, plump cherries, a swelling--hilariously phallic--cucumber (caption: Best of All Ripe). The waxed figures were commissioned by Cornell University 100 years ago and are now at the Agricultural Experiment Station Library in Geneva, N.Y. The artist of most of the models was a man named John Lawson. According to Marcuse, Lawson had wanted to become a priest, but was unable to after losing his ability to speak. She portrayed him as some kind of recluse, obsessively working on his perfect waxed figures. "I think he even used his hair in some of them," she said pointing to a photograph of variously hairy and bruised carrots.

The photographs are gorgeous--large, colorful, as polished and glossy of the fake fruit they capture. But they also are funny and a bit sad and perverse--chronicling this obsession with preserving that which will inevitably die (perhaps Lawson's use of his own hair was a way to achieve some kind of immortality). Like the corsets and breastplates Marcuse previously captured, they are not only idealized versions of imperfect fruits and vegetables (or human bodies in the undergarments' and armor's case), they also represent their ghosts.

Bountiful runs through June 26 at the Julie Saul Gallery, 535 West 22 Street, in Manhattan. For hours, go here.

*Photo above to the right: Perfection, Tanya Marcuse, 2009, at Julie Saul Gallery

American Style at the Met Costume Institute Ball

2010-05-05T07:00:00.000-05:00

Frivolous frippery at the Met ball: Joy Bryant, the Marchesa designers with Eva Longoria Parker, and Blake Lively, all wearing Marchesa

Ruffles, sparkles and more ruffles (see above) largely dominated the red carpet at the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute Gala this year. The theme: the American woman--which made all the frippery seem particularly out of place, since American style is so often associated with no-nonsense sportswear and an easy kind of luxury exemplified in the slinky bias-cut gowns worn by Hollywood screen sirens. I guess you can make the argument that American style has changed--and that globalization, outsourcing and fast fashion have obliterated the notion of regional dressing anyway, but I think both views are overly simplified. Americans still dress differently than other Westerners (the French, the British, the Germans), even if they do consume many of the same brands, from Swedish fast-fashion brand H&M to luxury items from French house Chanel. And, just as Chanel or Lanvin remain quintessentially French--and as Burberry remains resolutely British--Ralph Lauren, Gap and Converse All-Stars all represent quintessential American style.

The Costume Institute's exhibit on the American woman examines six archetypes of the American woman--among them the sporty long-limbed Gibson girl, the patriotic suffragette, and the flat-chested lanky flapper--and what they wore, but it also tells the story of the American woman's struggle to escape from rigid European notions of femininity and class and forge her own, separate identity. The exhibit begins with "the heiress" of the 1890s, in her corseted Charles Worth gowns festooned with embroidery and beads and flowers and made of heavy silks and brocades, and ends with the '30s Hollywood siren, in her languid silk gowns that look simultaneously easy and glamourously sexy. Of course, Americans never really extracted themselves from Europe's fashion and beauty industry--about half the clothes in the exhibit are French--but you do get a sense that they did succeed in carving out a national identity.

So I was a bit disappointed that not more Met Ball attendees paid homage to American style. Still, among the big poufy ball gowns there were a few guests whose clothes adhered to the theme. While I would have loved to see someone dressed in vintage Claire McCardell ir Valentina, we did get some Halston Heritage, as well as plenty of all-American labels Calvin Klein and Michael Kors. Here are some of them.

No-Frills Minimalism

Calvin Klein and American minimalism go hand in hand. Zoe Saldana and Diane Kruger (at left, with Calvin Klein designer Francisco Cost) and Dree Hemingway (right) looked sleek and sexy in their Calvin Klein gowns. Lauren Santo Domingo (left) was similarly covered up and sleek in shimmery nude Proenza Schouler.

Studio 54 Glamour

Halston, whose name is inextricably linked to the louche glamour of the '70s and Studio 54, is widely considered the best American designer who ever lived. Sarah Jessica Parker payed him homage in a pleated Halston Heritage gown, while Chanel Iman channeled the disco era in a gold jumpsuit by Michael Kors.

The Screen Siren

Jessica Alba, Gwen Stefani and model Natasha Poly all looked like Hollywood stars of old in their slinky floor-length gowns. Alba chose a dusty rose silk dress by Sophie Theallet, Stefani wore a dress of her own design and Poly opted for Michael Kors.

The Free-Spirits

The bohemians. Alexa Chung looked effortless and cool in a 3.1 Philip Lim tux, while Kerry Washington looked like a seasoned art collector in a cinnamon Fortuny-esque pleated dress by Thakoon. Jamie Bochert had my favorite look of the evening: a dusty rose slightly Grecian gown by Rodarte with gorgeous floral embroidery and a touch of exotic Orientalism.

Belted Bathing Suits, Cool Ties

2010-05-02T23:17:00.006-05:00

Just because I was disappointed in MOMA's Cartier-Bresson exhibit, doesn't mean I didn't love the photos. One of my favorite things point-and-shoot photographs is the incredible and diverse fashions they display--and Cartier-Bresson caught some interesting dressers.

Coney Island, New York, 1946, HCB, from MOMA's website

I love this Coney Island photograph's casual eroticism. The way the young men's and woman's bodies are intertwined with one another and the rumpled blankets on the sand. It gives this really large, crowded public space an intimate feel--like these three kids are the only people in the entire beach. I was also fascinated by the young men's bathing briefs--which are knit and worn with a belt. (The briefs even have belt loops!) Those must have been hot!

At the Le Mans Auto Race, France, 1966, HCB, MOMA's website

Here we have another picture of young romance, 20 years later. The girl wears a wrinkled linen dress, a two-button cardi and spunky short hair. But my favorite is the guy's tie, decorated with three little buttons and (I think) a chain, and worn in a rather casual manner, with the last button of his shirt undone.

A Moment Wasted: MOMA's Disappointing Cartier-Bresson Exhibit

2010-04-25T16:26:00.001-05:00

Trieste, Italy, 1933, by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Image from MOMA's website

Three years ago, I went to the International Center of Photography in New York and saw an exhibition of Henri Cartier-Bresson's photographs. I remember walking out of it electrified--I was just getting into point-and-shoot photography at the time (due to a thesis on a street fashion photographer), and I found the way in which Bresson--often on assignment for various newspapers or magazines--captured the poetry and spontneity in the mundane or every day very profound: a young boy in Valencia, Spain, standing against a speckled wall and looking, transfixed, at something off camera; a woman clad in black giving confession to a priest in a shadowy church. It made me look at photography in a completely new way.

Alas, that was not the case with the Museum of Modern Art's current retrospective of Bresson, "Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century," running through June 28. Sure, the exhibit contains over 300 prints--60 of which have been previously unknown to the public--and the work, of course, is stunning. But there is no depth--no larger story that communicates what makes these photographs more than just pretty pictures. The exhibition in no way goes out of its way to demonstrate what made Bresson "modern" or how his photography shaped and influenced countless photographers around the world. Instead it opens with an enormous map highlighting HCB's extensive journeys throughout the world--as if the glamour of the life of a world-wide traveler were more important or enticing to museum-goers than the artistic merits and significance of the photographs hanging on the walls.

The exhibit is organized rather haphazardly--it starts chronologically then switches to groupings by region (East, West, France, USSR, etc.) and then to some vague, shallow themes such as "Portraits," "Beauty" (a very narrow definition of beauty, consisting of a few photographs of women's bodies) and "Modern Times." The wall text introducing each section is virtually nonexistent--some sections have no explanation whatsoever. There is no space devoted to HCB's influences, nor how he influenced others. Furthermore, there is no mention of "the decisive moment," a term that HCB coined and which encapsulates his philosophy on picture-taking--the fraction of a second in which the perfect photograph opens itself up to you.

Romania, 1975, image from MOMA's website

Art isn't created in a vacuum--and Bresson, who traveled the world, hung out with artists and intellectuals and was captured and put in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II, was certainly not some isolated hermit making pictures outside the system or completely out of touch with the rest of the world or society (like, say, Miroslav Tichý). Sure, Bresson's photographs stand on their own--but the function of a museum is not only to display art, but to educate the public and to introduce new ways of looking at or understanding art or even the world at large. Bresson's rich work offers ample opportunity for this kind of reflection and examination--it's a shame that MOMA didn't make something extraordinary of it.

Can Critics Be Collectors Too?

2010-04-07T21:47:00.007-05:00

Is it OK for art critics to write about the work of artists they collect? Or is it a conflict of interest?

This question was posed by one of the art bloggers I follow on Twitter, @museumnerd, and my gut reaction--the reaction of most journalism-school grads, I imagine--was no, critics should not write about the artists they collect (I'm referring to contemporary artists mainly). But then I got to wondering, well, what is the function of a critic? Is it to tell you what show you should check out this weekend or what new artist should be on your radar? Is it to instigate and engage in a broader or deeper discussion of art and its relationship to our culture or history? Or is it to champion brave new artists or ideas? Moreover, what's even the definition of a critic? Someone who writes reviews, someone who writes in general about art in a magazine or blog or whatever, or someone who edits an arts publication? Finally, what does it mean to "collect an artist"? Does it mean you have one or two pieces by him or her, or does it mean you actively buy or acquire quite a bit, perhaps even being friends or at least chummy with the artist whose work you collect?

There are all different types of critics--and I am using the most narrow definition of the word here, one who reviews or writes criticism, not someone who is an arts reporter or who edits or curates an arts magazine or website. There are the faceless ones you read in the Times or The New Yorker whose names are big but whose pictures you never see in the art-gala round-ups in Vanity Fair. Then there are the champions, like the notorious Abstract Expressionist cheerleader Clement Greenberg, who, indeed, also was a great art collector (all gifts from artists whose careers he helped launch) and who was a sort-of art superstar in his own right--or at least his mythology makes him seem that way now. Surely you need both kinds, and there's nothing wrong with having a favorite artist or promoting one who you feel is very talented. But the critic's job is not foremost to help the artist (though that can be an added boon), it is to serve the reader, and to best serve the reader the critic has to be honest with him or her. Sometimes that means just sticking in a "full disclosure" in parenthesis (such as when you know the artist or are a pretty avid collector); sometimes it doesn't require saying anything (if you own a couple of prints, say, or are reviewing a show of, I don't know, Picasso or Andy Warhol and you happen to own other pieces by the artist); and sometimes it means you should pass on writing a "review" at all (such as when you are good friends with the artist or you actually own a piece--or multiple pieces--in the exhibition). But by all means, if you have a friend showing whose art you think is good, feel free to write a blurb or announce on your blog--just don't write a review of it in The Wall Street Journal, please.

Angels and Demons

2010-03-21T08:00:00.001-05:00

Images from The New York Times

After Alexander McQueen's death--announced during the beginning of New York Fashion Week--it was difficult mustering up the energy or desire to look at anything coming out of New York. Nothing could match McQueen's genius--his boundless imagination, his exquisite constructions, his fantastical shows--and much of the clothes shown throughout "Fashion Month," which includes fashion weeks in New York, London, Milan and Paris, felt hollow in comparison. Fortunately, McQueen's team showed what was completed of his last collection during Paris Fashion Week, and the 16 looks presented were among his greatest works, which, for McQueen, is saying something. After a ruthlessly modern collection for Spring 2010--digital prints and sci-fi shapes--McQueen "wanted to get back to the handcraft he loved, and the things that are being lost in the making of fashion," his right-hand told Sarah Mower of Style.com. The designer had cut and draped each of the pieces himself.

McQueen is a bit of a romantic, and a lover of historical dress, and for his last collection he drew inspiration from the Middle Ages. He ordered paintings of religious iconography--angels and demons--to be digitally printed on hand-woven materials, and gold embroidery on heavy jackets and tulle skirts recalled Byzantine art. One standout was a tailored nip-waisted long jacket, made of gold feathers, paired with a white tulle skirt embellished with flecks of gold embroidery at the bottom. Yet there was also something modern about the collection: the sculpted jackets--one jacquard pant suit looked a bit C3PO-ish--the long, clean lines of breezy long chiffon dresses in shades of gray, the punk feather mohawks the models sported. The clothes--in their embellishment and almost rarefied grace--were unlike anything else shown on the runways, which were dominated for the most part by minimalism. Yet McQueen has never been on the same wavelength as the rest of fashion, which is what made him so special--and what made his clothes so extraordinary. His last collection is a fitting, if bittersweet, swan song: a celebration of beauty, craft and fashion's rich history, as well as of McQueen's own legacy.

Terry Richardson Scandal Exposes The Fashion Industry As Anti-Woman

2010-03-20T10:35:00.010-05:00

This week, Terry Richardson--an overgrown hipster with a camera whom people like to call the bad boy of fashion photography because he likes to take grimy-looking pictures of models without clothes on--has dominated the New York tabloids and fashion blogs with allegations of his exploiting young models for sex. It began when model Rie Rasmussen confronted Richardson at a bar during Paris Fashion Week, excoriating him for his unethical behavior. Then followed a slew of testimonials from other models and industry insiders about his (un)professional demeanor. But perhaps most disturbing is the fashion industry's response to the whole situation, which has been shockingly blasé.

A sort-of insider, Jacob Bernstein--a reporter who used to work at Women's Wear Daily and W--came to the photographer's defense in a column for The Daily Beast. Bernstein wrote of the numerous allegations: "It could be a major shock ... But it wasn't, first because everyone in fashion knows Terry Richardson, 44, messes around with the girls he photographs, and second because they know it directly from Terry." Wait, what??? He goes on:

In a delicious profile in The New York Observer, Richardson said, "A lot of it starts with me saying to a girl, 'Do you want to do nudes?' And they're like, 'I don't want to be naked.' So I say, ' I'll be naked and you take the pictures. You can have the camera. You can have the phallus...And since I'm in so many of the pictures, aren't I objectifying myself a bit?"

This may be why so few people in fashion can muster any outrage as the New York Post embarks on a search for the women who got naked for Richardson and now claim not to have wanted to.

So, first Bernstein suggests that what Richardson does is OK because everyone knows about it, which is just mind-boggling. It would be one thing if he was having consensual sex with adults but if the allegations are true, he has been forcing women to not only strip for his camera but to also give him handjobs--while in a "prefessional" setting. This is sexual harassment, akin to having your boss tell you you will not get promoted unless you perform sexual favors on him. And it is wrong whether it is done illicitly or out in the open.

Second, Richardson's tactic of stripping so the model will then feel more comfortable stripping herself is not one that puts him on equal footing with the model--it tells the model that there is no way he is going to photograph her unless she gets nude. By giving them his camera Richardson is not ceding control but trapping them. And the suggestion that these girls all actually wanted to strip for him is total B.S.--they might have been afraid that Richardson would call the shoot off and then call the agency to complain about their behavior had they not complied with his demands.

A few days after The Daily Beast article was published, a reporter at Fashionista asked several fashion industry workers their thoughts on the Richardson scandal, and their responses were equally delusional and offensive. "The bigger issue is underage models," said one, "and I think at some point it would just be better to say models need to be 18." And this has anything to do with Richardson sexually exploiting models how??? Unless this is implying that he is doing it with underage girls, which is, of course, illegal. Another industry insider compared the Richardson sex scandal to the Kate Moss cocaine debacle a few years ago. I'm sorry but using your power and influence in the fashion industry to coerce young girls to take off their clothes for you and perform sexual favors is NOT the same thing as doing blow in the back room of some bar.

But implicit in all these excuses for Richardson's alleged behavior--and for the industry's tolerance of it--is the idea that models are second-class citizens, idiots or sluts and that they deserved whatever they got. This from an industry ostensibly devoted to making women feel more beautiful and better about themselves. Sure, you can argue that the fashion industry has long been cruel toward its models, but every industry has treated women horribly in the past, and most of them have taken great strides in adjusting their behavior--at the very least they have implemented serious sexual harassment policies. Yet it seems that this so-called woman's industry is the most anti-women of all. Says a fashion-world insider to the Daily Beast: "This is an industry filled with crazy people and big personalities. The boundaries are different than they are in a purely corporate enterprise ... it's a business with beautiful girls, sex, and malfeasance. ... We traffic in women’s bodies." Utterly reprehensible.

Leopard Ladies

2010-03-05T09:03:00.008-05:00

Looks from Lanvin's 2010 pre-fall collection; images, style.com

For Lanvin's pre-fall collection, Alber Elbaz drew inspiration from "the leopard lady"--a real-life Parisian who is never without her leopard coat, even in the summer. While Elbaz's collection divided many critics, the motif has surfaced in a few collections so far in Paris. Cat spots were perfect for Balmain's club-hoppin' girl, and the print showed up in toppers to skin-tight leather pants and in flared pants flecked with gold. Dries Van Noten's spots were big and almost abstract in soft knotted fur scarves and coats, which gave his military-inspired threads some luxe. And Marc Zanini's '60s-inspired collection for Rochas had a vintage-looking leopard print coat, worn with flared leather turquoise pants.

Fall 2010 looks from Balmain, Dries and Rochas; images, style.com

Caped Crusaders

2010-02-21T11:45:00.007-05:00

Capes from Wayne, Duro Olowu and Kinder Aggugini

Avant garde capelets, cloaks and coats are a fierce, fashion-forward outerwear option for Fall 2010. Wayne showed a sumptuous caramel colored one in fur in New York. On the London catwalk, Duro Olowu--fast becoming one of my favorite designers--showed a rather confounding but totally cool black and gray dress/cape contraption and relative newcomer Kinder Aggugini's showed a fantastic military-inspired, double-breasted coat with cape-like sleeves.

Flower Power

2010-02-21T01:07:00.012-05:00

Looks from Ralph Lauren, Duro Olowu, Preen, Anna Sui, Lauren and Peter Som;
images, style.com

The return of boho chic? While most designers at New York Fashion Week showed structured jackets and basic black, a few made a compelling case for flowers and ruffles. Ralph Lauren's bohemian rhapsody included Edwardian collars and cascading ruffles. Anna Sui's hippie chic was--as always--a bit punk rock, with black boots, heavy knits and chubby furs tempering the sweetness of the prints. Peter Som's loose-fitting, mismatched-floral outfits were inspired by Ang Lee's most recent film Woodstock, while Preen's flowered frocks, with cut-outs or sheer black netting overtop, looked more Courtney Love than Marianne Faithful. The trend has continued in London Fashion Week, where Nigerian-born designer Duro Olowu showed one of his signature hooded floral dresses in a diaphanous chiffon.

Trend-Spotting: Chartreuse

2010-02-18T00:47:00.007-05:00

Chartreuse at VPL, Chris Benz and Marc Jacobs; images, style.com

Though black has certainly dominated the runway this fashion week, a new color has been cropping up in several cool-girl collections shown in New York the past few days: the acidic, quirky chartreuse. Victoria Bartlett at VPL featured the color in some lamé minidresses and her standard sports bras and panties. Chris Benz--a longtime fan--showed a chartreuse sheath speckled with sequins (worn with a camo-printed fur jacket with leather trim and sequined sleeves--yikes!). And Marc Jacobs--the biggest trend-setter at New York Fashion Week--used the hue in an appealing snuggly sweater and a glamorous floor-length iridescent skirt.

What the Doctor Ordered

2010-02-16T23:34:00.011-05:00

Purses from Marc Jacobs' Fall 2010 collection, Style.com

I normally don't go gaga over handbags, but I loved the sober, classic ladylike styles in ostrich and crocodile Marc Jacobs showed for Fall 2010 (though I wasn't crazy about the ones covered in fur--too overtly luxe for me). I particularly love the plain black mini doctor's bag--so sturdy, understated and chic.

The Long and the Short of It

2010-02-15T13:00:00.000-05:00

Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti, Lyn Devon, Richard Chai Love
Rachel Comey, Vena Cava and Peter Som

After seasons and seasons of microscopic hemlines, it looks like some designers are finally thinking long. The silhouette at Philosophy was lean and languid in the more formal looks and '70s bohemian for daywear. Vena Cava and Peter Som continued with the '70s vibe, with abstract-printed maxi dresses and clashing florals sweepers, respectively. Richard Chai's Love long knit skirts worn with chunky sweaters and slip dresses recalled '90s grunge, and Rachel Comey brought on the librarian chic with calf or ankle length jumpers and skirts with crazy prints.

All Hail McQueen

2010-02-14T22:42:00.026-05:00

A fairy tale set in India, McQueen's Fall 2008 collection

I found out Alexander McQueen died on Twitter. I was at work, editing an op-ed about a German auto company when I logged onto Twitter and a stream of grief and shock and sadness confronted me. It's so weird to feel such loss for someone you don't know, but I felt hallow all day, and when I offered to write an op-ed about the designer to my boss for Forbes, it felt weird and slimy and opportunistic. Why the second when someone dies are we expected to assess his legacy and make pronouncements about his life and work? I felt that I needed time to mourn, but I carried on, finished my work for the day and began working on a piece, which you can read here.

Shalom Harlow having her dress splattered with paint for Spring '99
(c) Niall McInerney

Writing an obit, or, well, a reflection (I didn't write a straight obit) is a really weird experience; I had never done it before--not for a place that wasn't my blog. At some point it's like you morph from being this vulnerable human being to being a reporter. You read all the previously written articles about this person who just died and mentally check off the things that will enhance your argument. You wade through online archives of his work and begin choosing which ones you will use for the slideshow. You accumulate facts (did I get his age right? was the bumster collection '94 or '95?), you think of a provocative angle. And you find that you are enjoying having an excuse to spend hours looking at photos of his clothes, which make you breathless and intoxicated with their beauty and then a second later fill you with sorrow when you remember there will never be another collection from him again.

Iconic McQueen looks--all from style.com

A couple posts ago, I wrote about the difference between Karl Lagerfeld and John Galliano, how Lagerfeld was such a formalist that his collections, while beautiful, could be rather cold and how Galliano was so emotional that his clothes could feel a bit out of touch with reality. McQueen's collections struck a perfect balance: innovative, historical, different, daring, heart-stoppingly beautiful, personal, emotional. He could make a dress out of shells (at left) seem like something you would long to own or wear; he made shoes that looked like horses' hoofs (something he had never intended to produce off the runway) a covetable item among fashionistas like Daphne Guinness. His shows were as transformative and fantastical as his clothes--perhaps that is why he could get away with staging such crazy feats, arranging his models like pieces in a chess game or staging a choreographed dance inspired by the film The Shoot Horses, Don't They:

Don't you wish they still staged fashion shows like that? And then there was his mental-asylum collection, where the models were encased in a glass cube looking out into the audience like prisoners:

Mental asylum collection, Spring 2001

Lots of designers have elaborate sets--Lagerfeld's Chanel ones come to mind as particularly lavish. Yet so many times they seem cute or publicity-driven in this sort of cynical way. McQueen's never did--they fit with his highly theatrical, emotionally charged clothing and seemed to reflect his current state of mind or preoccupations. I can't imagine him ever staging something in a hokey barn like Lagerfeld did for his Chanel Spring 2010 collection.

The Darwin collection: Spring '09, images style.com

McQueen's suicide was such a shock because it seemed to come at a time when the designer was, at least creatively, at the top. His last several collections, from his wonderful tribute to his friend and muse Isabella Blow for Spring 2008 to his wildly romantic and gorgeous Indian empire collection for Fall 2008 to his final, technologically advanced sci-fi warrior collection for Spring 2010 (at left). Just when you thought he had reached his pinnacle he would deliver something even more outrageous, innovative and beautiful the next season. The man was on a roll.

An early collection, Fall '99 (c) Niall McInerney

Moreover, he had his pulse on the future of fashion, experimenting with digital prints for his dresses and livestreaming his runway shows for free on the Web, which many designers--including Marc Jacobs, Alexander Wang and the Rodarte sisters--are doing this year. He had recently embraced Twitter and seemed enthusiastic about the changing fashion landscape. That someone so established and so dedicated to old-fashioned craft--to the couture techniques he learned during his five years at French fashion house Givenchy and the menswear tailoring he learned as an apprentice on Savile Row--would be a trailblazer in the democratization and Web-ification of fashion is astounding. A true innovator, craftsman and artist. We will miss you, Lee McQueen.

*Images, from Style.com, except for photos by Niall McInerney, which are from Contemporary Fashion Archive

Team Tavi: In Defense of the Style Rookie

2010-02-09T23:49:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, Fashionista posted an item about the infamous 13-year-old fashion blogger Tavi Gevinson, who has been getting a lot of heat for sitting in the front row of couture shows, missing school to attend the couture shows, wearing funny hats at couture shows and--allegedly--becoming a mouthpiece for fashion brands that shower her with free goods. Tavi has responded to her critics in her latest blog post, and Fashionista asked its readers: "Do you feel compelled to respond to Tavi's defense?"

Well, yes, thank you, I do.

Now I have defended Tavi before, saying that I think her writing is quite good and that she brings insight and thought into her evaluations of collections and ruminations on fashion. Furthermore, she is not just a cheerleader for the industry, criticizing designers like Balenciaga's Nicholas Ghesquiere. Yet since my post last month the Tavi backlash has reached a fever pitch due to her presence (and crazy headgear) at the couture shows.

There are three major sticking points with Tavi's critics: 1. That she used to be genuine and cute but now that she is getting free clothes and front-row seats to all the shows she is just a mouthpiece for the industry. 2. That she's 13 years old and should thus be in school instead of attending fashion shows. 3. That her outfits are ridiculous.

OK, first, anyone who thinks that fashion editors do not receive free items is delusional. Indeed, most cultural writers get free stuff. If I had to buy all the books I review or pay to attend all the art exhibits I review I would not have very much money. Does this mean that I feel obligated to give these freebies good reviews? Not at all! (I tend to be pretty selective with my Forbes reviews and generally choose to write about things that interest me and that I would most likely like anyway, though I did completely take down the Met's awful Model as Muse exhibit last year.) Sure an exhibition catalog isn't quite a Comme des Garcons outfit or a pair of Rodarte tights, and getting free clothes to then post on your blog is a different sort of ethical conundrum that fashion bloggers have the responsibility to evaluate on an individual basis. But fashion magazines get free stuff all the time. I remember when I was an intern--an INTERN--at a fashion magazine, I got so much free makeup and perfume that I probably didn't have to buy another birthday present for over a year. One time my boss asked if I wanted a pair of jeans that had either been sent to him as a gift or that he used for a mens photoshoot and then was allowed to keep (they were too big for him and too small for my boyfriend, so I declined). Further, there are all sorts of weird hagglings within the fashion magazine world: advertising vs. placement in a magazine editorial, for example. It is certainly not the industry with the most integrity.

Second, the school issue. I am going to illustrate this with an example from my own adolescence:

In another life I was a classical musician--or training to become one anyway. It began in earnest during middle school, when my parents would drive me all over the city of Pittsburgh to perform, rehearse and take music classes. Then, in high school I began auditioning for music festivals, which took place around the country, and spend entire summers with other crazy classical musicians playing Brahms and sight-reading string quartets and practicing like mad. During the school year I started playing in competitive regional and state orchestras, for which we would get to skip school and go to, say, Philly (if we were lucky) or Hershey (if we weren't so lucky) to spend about six or seven hours a day playing in orchestra and most of the evenings goofing off and going for late-night swims in the hotel pool or giggling with your roommates way past curfew. My senior year I missed so much school from these various endeavors, as well as through traveling with my dad for conservatory auditions, that my teachers had the option of failing me. Of course they didn't: I was a good student, always asked for any reading assignments and homework in advance of my musical escapades, and managed to get mostly As while taking a considerable number of AP classes and maintaining a healthy social life. Now I certainly wasn't a prodigy--this was just what every teen who was serious about pursuing a career in classical music did. And it was fun! And enriching! Sometimes it could stressful and sometimes we were forced into competition with one another, but when I look back on my teenage years I am so grateful for those experiences, and I certainly don't wish I had went to class more or ... I don't know what else, taken AP physics instead of more music classes? (Classical music kids aren't the only ones who miss a lot of class in order to further their careers, but actors too.) Yes, going to Paris to cover the couture shows for Pop magazine is quite different than taking a bus to Philly to play in an orchestra with a bunch of kids your age--and WAY cooler and more glamorous. But I am saying that it is possible for a kid to miss school for something she loves and still be a responsible student. That is something, as Tavi says in her post, for the student, her parents and her teachers to figure out.

Third, her outfits--namely that her hats obscure the view of the runway. I wonder if anyone ever voiced similar complaints about the eccentric headgear of the late, great Isabella Blow.

Chanel's Space-Age Baroque

2010-02-06T19:00:00.017-05:00

Chanel's space-age romance, images from Style.com

When I first looked at pictures of the Chanel couture show I was initially too horrified by the Minnie Mouse hairdos to really pay attention to the clothes (okay I know the hair was supposed to evoke Napoleon mistress the Countess di Castiglione's signature bouffant, but the silly bows bifurcating the models' hairdos seemed more Lolita than countess). The second time I was a bit perturbed by Lagerfeld's latest take on the classic Chanel tweed suit: as culottes (pleated too!).

Now when I look at the collection I can't imagine how I could not have fallen in love at first sight with the icy colors (pistachio and sherbet and the palest violet) or the liquid silver gowns (example at left) or that perfect, pink egg-shaped cape entirely composed of what looked like flattened rosettes. The collection, with its shimmery tights and space-age mirrored heels, was a bit futuristic, without devolving into retro kitsch--thanks in part to the expertly cut tweed jackets and delicious pastels and sugary chiffon. The juxtaposition of the sci-fi with the romantic (I think the collection was dubbed "Neon Baroque") was unexpected and, surprisingly, worked. I loved the glam-rock silver jackets worn with yards of ruffled diaphanous chiffon and the slinky silk draped gowns resembling kimonos, wrapped with strips of shiny crinkled foil (or what looks like it anyway).

The starting point for this latest couture collection was technique: how to make a dress that appeared to have no seams. New York Times critic Cathy Horyn reports, "The method he used requires four hours of handwork to cover a length of two inches, but the effect of flat, random stitches on pastel wool bouclé dresses and jackets was successful enough to make the seams appear magically erased." Impressive!

***

A few days ago I blogged about the Dior couture show, which--like many couture shows this season--took inspiration from the past. While Lagerfeld plays with familiar tropes of the Chanel lore--the tweed suit, the shift dress, the costume jewelry--his latest collection feels much more modern than Galliano's. But what I think is the most fascinating difference between Lagerfeld and Galliano is the way they work and conceive of collections. Lagerfeld starts with a technique; Galliano starts with a person (Millicent Rogers for his last show) or artwork (Vermeer or Madame Butterfly for previous collections) or some image. Lagerfeld is technical, while Galliano is emotional. Of course Lagerfeld can elicit emotion and desire and evoke a magical world through his clothes, and Galliano is one of the best tailors working in couture today (he made his name with his ability to make the perfect bias-cut dress). But the way they arrive at their work is radically different--and it shows. It's funny in most art criticism or scholarship you talk about some artists being formalists while others are realists (not in the sense that the stories or scenes they depict are realistic but that they make you forget about or not notice the formal qualities of the art). I haven't really heard of fashion design discussed in this way (fashion photography, yes; design, no). Perhaps it should be.

Giametti Was Right: Valentino Couture Was Ridiculous

2010-02-05T21:22:00.009-05:00

Yesterday the fashion Twittersphere went a little crazy with the news that designer Valentino Garavani's long-time partner Giancarlo Giammetti criticized the most recent Valentino couture show, which in the past few seasons has been designed by duo Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli, on his Facebook account. Giametti wrote that he was “not sad ... just surprised. ... We have always supported the new designers and we love them, but this time we have to distance ourselves from this ridiculous circus." He concluded that he and Garavani "are always supportive of the designers of Valentino, even if we don't approve of their effort to be cool at all costs." Yikes! (Giametti has since taken down his post.)

But ... well ... he's right. The Valentino couture show was a disaster. Not because it was too edgy or youth-oriented, but because it was, unimaginatively, blatantly, a rip-off of the hip and trendy and arty punk/goth young American design duo Rodarte. Why would anyone buy a haute couture item, which costs hundreds of thousands dollars, that is an imitation of non-couture item that is, well, still very expensive, but not quite hundreds of thousand dollars (more like thousands, or tens of thousands). The collection just seemed so forced, especially since Chiuri's and Piccioli's previous outings for the Italian house skewed more traditional and conservative, which makes their new ostensibly edgy collection all the more suspicious. One expects more from couture, and, gaffe or not, one could hardly blame Giametti, who has much emotionally invested in these collections, for venting his frustrations, for speaking--er, facebook-ing--the truth.

Mining the Past: Galliano's Dior Couture

2010-02-02T21:49:00.007-05:00

John Galliano saved fashion.

That is what the very prolific and always-engaging blogger Eminence Grise announced last week after seeing pictures from the British designer's haute couture collection for Christian Dior. Indeed, it was an intoxicating sight: haute riding habits, duchesse satin ballgowns in magenta, mocha and forest green, and jaunty top hats by incomparable milliner Stephen Jones. The models evoked glamorous movie stars and society mavens--the sort they just don't make anymore.

Galliano is a rather controversial figure in the fashion world. Before, people complained because he desecrated the Dior name by putting camouflage and brillo-pad-accented dresses on its runway and citing such outre muses as the homeless and Wonder Woman for its collections. Now that Galliano has largely shed his bad-boy image and turned out rather uncomplicatedly beautiful collections inspired by, say, Vermeer or 50s model Lisa Fonssagrives, critics are complaining that he is stuck in the past. Sigh, you just can't win, can you?

As New York Times critic Cathy Horyn pointed out in her wrap-up of the couture season, many designers' collections were particularly backward-looking. Ricardo Tisci at Givenchy sent out a homage to the disco '70s, Josephus Thimister looked to the Russian Revolution (by way of '90s grunge) for his first foray to couture in 10 years and even Anne Valerie Hash built a collection around the concept of nostalgia, asking fashion-world fixtures of beloved articles of clothing she could transform.

There are all sorts of reasons why designers would rely so heavily on the past. There's the sort of tired explanation that in times of economic turmoil we tend to recede to happier times (I think Hash rather eloquently did this in a way that was sweet and fresh). There's the rather cynical one that the designer just can't think of anything else to do (which I think may be true of Tisci at Givenchy). Then again, all collections reference the past in some way or another. After all Christian Dior's post-war wasp-waisted "New Look" wasn't really new--it was just a reaction to the prevailing sleek modernist lines of Art Deco and Chanel at the time.

Galliano is an interesting case. He doesn't see to reference the past in any sort of postmodern, ironic way, nor does he even attempt to make it look modern (at least lately). His gowns swathed in yards and yards of satin gathered in elaborate folds and poufs would present a challenge to even the most seasoned red-carpet fixture and seem the stuff of dreams or museum collections. Yet I feel Galliano can get away with it because a) his dressmaking and tailoring skills are impeccable (those razor-sharp jackets!!!) and b) his stuff, no matter how heavy on the historical references, always feels wildly imaginative. Nothing is too ambitious for him: How many designers actually take it upon themselves to interpret the sumptuous outfits painted by the Old Dutch Masters?

I thought Galliano's most recent collection for Dior was beautiful, but it was not one of my favorites of his. I thought, like many critics, that it was a bit too literal--not entirely unexpected. For example, I loved the shocking acidic hues and unexpected shapes from the spring 2008 collection or the outrageous origami gowns from his Madame Butterfly collection for spring 2007 (probably my favorite of all time). These collections are just as impractical, theatrical and ridiculous, but they surprised and astonished me. This most recent one didn't really.

So did Galliano save fashion? I am not sure. (Horyn would probably say that Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel did.) But whatever Galliano's flaws, the fashion world would surely be a much duller place without him. Every art form needs its romantics and dreamers, and you couldn't ask for a more deft spinner of dreams and desire than Galliano.

Puffy

2010-01-17T17:29:00.007-05:00

One of the most frustrating things about New York in the winter is that since you have to walk everywhere, you are stuck wearing the same enormous puffer coat every day, and while some girls carry their big bulbous coats with elan, I always end up looking like a big lug. Perhaps because many cosmopolitan cities require lots of walking, designers seem to be experimenting more with the Michelin-esque puffer. Junya Watanabe did almost an entire collection of the material last season, using it for sausage-link ball-gown coats, avant garde capes and trash-bag dresses festooned with gold chains. For his recent pre-fall collection, London designer Giles created a chocolate-colored puffer mini skirt (at left), which actually looked quite cute--and wearable.

Image from Style.com

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

2010-01-09T13:24:00.006-05:00

There's a joke among fashionistas and taste-makers that once a trend is written up in the Times, it's pretty much dead. Just two weeks after the Times wrote about the hard-edged, model-off-duty look, Style.com wrote, "For Spring, designers kicked their youth obsession up a notch by indulging in some Lolita fantasies." Pastels, florals, gingham, pinafores, virgin lace, plastic shades and ruffles. "The only thing missing," says the fashion site, "was a cherry lollipop." Sigh, I guess cute is back after all.

Image: A Chanel lace dress, from Style.com

Fashion, Media and Thirteen-Year-Old Bloggers

2010-01-05T18:30:00.003-05:00

13-year-old blogger Tavi Gevinson; image from Style Rookie

Last week, The New York Times published its "Year in Style," mostly filled with either mind-numbingly obvious or defiantly contrarian articles--such as "gee, the androgynous/rock star/model-off-duty look is really popular now" (duh) or "Sarah Palin dresses better than Michelle Obama" (huh?). Probably the most ridiculous of these articles was the one about fashion bloggers invading the front row, a story that, as Gawker pointed out, has been written myriad times before.

But the issue here is not just one between old media vs. new media, as both The New York Times and Gawker wrongly assert. If it were, you wouldn't have websites like Gawker or Fashionista dismissing some of the bloggers who have benefited from this more, ehem, egalitarian development in the world of fashion. Or, well, dismissing one blogger in particular.

At the heart of this conflict is a 13-year-old wunderkind named Tavi Gevinson, author of the fashion blog Style Rookie. This pint-sized blogger--who possesses Mia Farrow haircut and some serious personal style--has taken the fashion world by storm: She sat in the front row for Marc Jacobs and Rodarte, shot a video about the design duo Rodarte's collaboration with Target, and flew out to Tokyo for a party for label Comme des Garcons. Most recently, Tavi penned a round-up of the spring 2010 shows for venerated fashion glossy Harper's Bazaar, which really seemed to get lots of industry vets' panties in a bunch; Elle editor Anne Slowey called HB's hiring of Tavi "a bit gimmicky." Meee-ow.

But Slowey's opinion is not unique among fuddy-duddy print editors and writers. Look at how Gawker sums up the lessons learned in the print vs. online debate:

Old age and treachery are of no use in the world of fashion writing ... Neither are intelligence, creativity, or writing ability. Fashion writers and the people writing about fashion all fall behind a 13 year-old girl.

Or look at some of the comments on Fashionista's post about Tavi's HB gig: "boring. so over wonderkids [sic]. what about trained professionals? where did the love go for those who put in their time..."; and "get this stupid demon child out of my face and send her back to school. who cares what some 13 year old playing dress up with her grandma's sunday bests [sic]... i mean, with amazing personal style has to say about the shows [sic]?" So, new media vs. newer media? Established blogs (or bloggish websites) vs. rookie blogs? What gives?

I must admit that when I first heard of the fashion world's infatuation with Tavi, I rolled my eyes and assumed that she was another one of fashion's unabashed promoters who had nothing more profound to contribute than "OMG!! I <3 Marc Jacobs!"--something akin to Bryanboy's blog (Bryanboy also scored seats to some of Fashion Week's biggest shows, including Marc Jacobs). But I checked out her Harper's Bazaar piece and found it rather delightful--reminiscent of the sort-of crazy musings of Diana Vreeland on the old pages of Vogue. "Raf Simons at Jil Sander presented dresses and skirts that appeared vulnerable from their frays and shreds," Tavi wrote in the column, "and Francisco Costa showed crumpled pastel dresses that looked as if they'd been stained with tears at Calvin Klein." (By the way, I agree with Slowey that it did sound suspiciously precocious for a 13-year-old--Slowey told New York mag "I’m sort of fascinated in the same way the world was with JT Leroy," (linking Tavi with a supposed writer who turned out to be a fake. "You look at her video, and the writing doesn’t sync up with the way she talks about fashion." But I will give Tavi the benefit of the doubt--besides, most writers not only have editors but show their works-in-progress to a friend, colleague or other discerning source for feedback. And anyway, how many of us really write the way we talk?)

But not only is she a good writer, she knows a lot about fashion history--way more than the writers at Fashionista, Fashionologie, Jezebel or Gawker--and she can be discerning and thoughtful. She was nonplussed about Nicholas Ghesquiere's Spring 2010 collection for Balenciaga when so many others were gaga over it (and she was right, it was fine but not particularly exciting or fresh), and she outright dislikes Christophe Decarnin's luxe-Forever-21 duds for fashion house Balmain, another popular designer in the blogs and magazines.

So, then, the beef with Tavi is not because she is a blogger, but because she is 13--which explains why other websites and bloggers are quick to dismiss her. And age has always made those in prominent positions of authority nervous and hostile, in every industry, long before the Internet.

Sequins and Snow

2009-12-31T17:07:00.006-05:00

It's New Years Eve--what are you going to wear? One of my favorite fashion plates, Maggie Gyllanhaal, is wearing this vintage Yves Saint Laurent dress (left) to ring in 2010. I am supremely jealous. Some of my graduate school friends decided to watch the fireworks in Central Park, which will be lovely but which--on account of the snow--won't allow for much cute dressing. I will mostly likely be sticking to my seven-year-old J. Crew riding boots, skinny jeans and a warm wool/cashmere blend cardigan (with my ever-present gigantic, warm, boho-print scarf that I stole from Mom), though I may wear a sequined shirt underneath, just to feel festive.

Cheers!

Photo: Lee Clower for The New York Times

Man of Style: Robert Downey Junior

2009-12-27T12:11:00.006-05:00

Jude Law, Rachel McAdams and the very dapper Robert Downey Junior

Let us now basque in the fabulousness that is Robert Downey Junior's dandyish bespoke tweed suit (complete with trim button-down vest), accented with pink tie and patterned pocket square.

Swoooooooooooooooooon.

F for Fab

2009-12-20T12:05:00.006-05:00

Artists Elmyr De Hory and David Walsh; photo: Pierre Boulat/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

One of my favorite things about F for Fake--Orson Welles' last feature film that is ostensibly a documentary about art forger Elmyr de Hory but ends up a dazzling stream-of-conscious rumination about deception, art and myth-making--is de Hory's individual sense of style. In his more casual moments, he wears a slacks and a slim black sweater with an elaborate (studded or perforated) wide-banded leather belt worn over it at right above the hip (he finishes the outfit off with big sunglasses and a wicker basket/man-purse when basking outdoors in sunny Ibiza). Tres '70s chic!

Revenge of the Cute

2009-12-17T21:00:00.002-05:00

Awww, a panda! Picture from Vanity Fair

In December's Vanity Fair writer James Wolcott lashes out against our culture's obsession with cute. I wrote my own anti-cute rants on this blog back in 2007 (see here and here), and it's amazing how our culture of cute has intensified in two years. Before we just had the infantile baby-doll confections of designer Erin Fetherston, the twee posturings of Zooey Deschanel (though I do find her irresistible in Elf and All the Real Girls) and hipsters' sudden obsession with owls (guilty--I have a silk-screened owl skirt and a patchwork-owl cashmere sweater). Now we have countless blogs devoted to cute critters in helpless, compromising situations (Stuff on My Cat, Cute Overload, et. al.) as well as myriad YouTube videos on cooing babies (which I find somehow more disturbing). (Indeed, there is a movie coming out in 2010 called, simply, Babies, which appears to be one long extended baby YouTube video.) Even Darth Vader, Wolcott writes, "does not lie beyond the reach of cuteness. The ultimate movie villain of the last three decades is now available as a cuddly plush toy. 'Squeeze him into your world today!' says the ad copy."

My umbrage at "cute" fashion stemmed from its infantalization, regression and complacency it seemed to symbolize. I wrote, "Our cultural embracing of 'cute' seems to come from the desire to -- in the face of war and globalization and terrorism and all these complex issues -- revert back to childhood: we are reveling in nostalgia because we are in denial or do not want to deal with the complexities of the world around us. Youth and counterculture have, in the past, pushed fashion (and not just fashion but music, art, and film), if not always forward, in a direction that stands in opposition to (or that confronts) the mainstream." It bothered me that youth now just seemed determined to stay in perpetual childhood, or adolescence. But I was mostly talking about my generation. But while choosing Lolita as your style icon is unequivocally disturbing, I don't really want to banish all cuteness from my life.

Granted the sheer height of cute mania is ridiculous, but I would be lying if I said I didn't occasionally (OK, a little more than occasionally, but definitely much less than frequently) look at an animal picture and felt cheered in the middle of a hectic work day. And while I get the link between cuteness and sadism ("The process of conveying cuteness to the viewer disempowers its objects, forcing them into ridiculous situations and making them appear more ignorant and vulnerable than they really are," wrote Daniel Harris in Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic), the dismissal of films like Wall-E as "movies designed to exploit our caretaking instinct" just seems a bit extreme--it's a kids movie! And it's about loneliness and climate change and takes place in a post-apocalyptic trash-ridden earth. It's no Brazil, to be sure, but it's hardly a Shirley Temple film--nor is it as treacly as the insufferably "cute" Garden State. There are lots of cute things that I love: The Madeline books (which are actually not as sweet as all that: appendix operations, orphanages, near-death experiences), Babar (to all those colonialist interpretations, I say pooh-pooh), '60s French pop, kittens. I do believe that too much cute is cloying and could maybe turn our minds mushy, but, man, a life without kittens would certainly be a rather sad one.

Anyway, all this cute stuff got me thinking about fashion and how it's not really that cute anymore. Well, some of it is, like the feathered and bowed headbands popularized by Gossip Girl character Blair Waldorf. But most of fashion is dominated by the hard-rockin', heavy-partying skinny downtown looks of Alexander Wang or Balmain or Balenciaga (the best by far of the three). And Target has enlisted the rather gothy design-duo Rodarte to design a fashion line for the big-box retailer--as part of its immensely popular Go International program; the collection includes a sequined ribcage dress (at left).

Of course the Spring/Summer 2010 runways also included a very Lolita-inspired show from Prada (messy pigtails, silly sunglasses) and the mysterious appearance of cats on the Miu Miu and Azzaro runways, but the Prada and Miu Miu collections were largely ironic, and, for the most part, cute seemed to have eluded the fashion world for the coming season. How odd. Perhaps the tide really is turning: Have faith, Mr. Wolcott!

Style Predictions: 2010

2009-12-14T20:30:00.002-05:00

Leather, sci-fi prints and Sophie Theallet.

Shopping

2009-12-13T16:25:00.004-05:00

I have found trolling the vintage shops at online handmade retail central Etsy far more enjoyable than trolling the fashion websites and blogs lately. Indeed, I am downright addicted and after countless hours of ogling made my first purchase this morning: a slim black silk crepe jacket with sequin trimming (you can see a picture here--it is the fourth image in the post).

I have actually amassed quite a few vintage (or at least used) pieces lately, thanks largely in part to my friend Julianna and to living so close to my grandmother, who still has some clothes from when my mom and aunt were young, including an oversized Annie Hall-ish trench coat and a couple of ruffled, shoulder-bearing crepe chiffon dresses (including the peachy floral one at left, which I wore for a wedding over the summer; my mom also wore it to a wedding back in the '70s, with a big floppy straw hat). Then there are the vintage Ferragamos purchased for $15 at a consignment store in Park Slope, Brooklyn, as well as those great vintage West Coast dresses and skirt I got while I was in California. As far as new clothes, I am mad for J. Crew jeans (I got a baggy pair of what they call "vintage slims" on sale for $30), especially the toothpick ones, which are great for tucking into boots for the winter.

Donatella: Unequivocal Destroyer of Versace Brand?

2009-11-16T23:17:00.006-05:00

Donatella, at the Versace women's Spring 2010 show

Within two days of each other, The New York Times and Newsweek published articles about luxury brand Versace's dire financial situation. "Fashion Disaster," read the headline of Newsweek's exposé; the Times's was far more sanguine, declaring that the company was "restructuring." Either way, the numbers aren't pretty: The fashion house has laid off 26% of its work force (about 350 jobs); it expects to lose $45 million in 2009, with no return to profitability till 2011. Newsweek's Dana Thomas writes: "Versace has watched its sales plummet from $1 billion in 1996 to less than half that today. Major retailers such as Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman have dropped the line. The company has lost both its prestige and design influence."

While I am not a huge fan of the Versace aesthetic (sexy, tight night clothes), it is always sad to see a fashion brand suffer. I am not one to normally advocate for the continuation of old and irrelevant brands, particularly after the namesake has died or left the house (Gianni Versace, the house's founder, was murdered in 1997; his sister Donatella has been at the helm since), but Versace's woes highlight a disturbing trend in the industry: that of small, privately owned labels languishing while mega multinational corporations (such as LVMH) grow more and more powerful. Then again, perhaps designers at smaller labels shouldn't throw galas at the Whitney or live such a high-flyin' jet-settin' life as Donatella--as her brother Gianni before her--is wont to do.

At the center of this debate is Donatella and her role at the house. Thomas seems to believe that Donatella has no business running Versace (one of the juiciest bits of the article suggests that Gianni may not have wanted to keep the brand in the family and was looking to take it public), and that she is largely to blame for its downfall (not only because of her extravagances and her prior drug habit, but because of her design aesthetic). Guy Trebay in the Times's article, however, has quite a different take: Donatella is the house, the Versace brand personified. So which really is it? Destroyer, or possible savior?

On the surface, Thomas makes a more compelling argument. But it's at times--when she's not using numbers and data--a misleading one. Take the article's lead: Thomas begins with a recent Versace men's show, writing, "The scene was positively dead compared with Versace shows a decade ago: no celebrities posing with Donatella for paparazzi, no bodyguards holding back the throngs, and no pals swilling champagne."

Gianni and Donatella Versace, 1992

I have two problems with this. One is that men's shows are hardly ever celebrity-filled extravaganzas (think about the coverage men's fashion week gets vs. women's fashion week--practically negligible). It is therefore not only unsurprising but downright normal that a recent Versace's men's show would be a low-key affair. A fairer comparison would have been a Versace woman's show now vs. 10 years ago. Or at least provide some context. (You can see my friend Lauren Sherman's and my comments about this on her blog here.)

But the second problem is that it would also be fair to compare Versace with other luxury brands today. The fashion industry is reportedly in funk across the board (even perennially popular Marc Jacobs has severely cut the amount of celebs in his front row)--so how does Versace's dwindling reception, then, compare with, say, Christian Lacroix on one end of the spectrum (he declared bankruptcy this year) or Chanel on the other (still going strong). I don't know if any of the big fashion brands are doing better now in 2009 than 10 years ago, much less are putting on bigger more extravagant shows , but what may have been a more accurate--and telling--metric is how much Versace has suffered compared to other brands of its stature and price point.

Thomas gives several reasons why the brand has lost its relevance--poor management, drugs, etc. But the most interesting is the design itself. Versace is a brand in not only financial straits but aesthetic ones too--a fair assessment but also troubling. She says that after Gianni's death, Donatella began to "dismantle all he had built" and had transformed the brand's "signature sexy chic" to "something far more conservative and girlish, in a pastel palette." She then writes that during a 199 interview with Newsweek, Donatella "was ... unapologetic for imposing her own creative vision. 'I had two choices,' she said. 'One was to take the work of Gianni and update it. The second was to take the collections further.' Clearly, Donatella chose the latter." As if wanting to think for yourself instead of rehashing old ideas were a bad thing!

Furthermore, while Donatella's designs were more conservative than Gianni's black clingy gowns held together with gold safety pins, her designs were hardly prim and proper. From the description above, you would think Donatella designed pale pink skirt suits with matching pillbox hats, yet this is the woman who put Jennifer Lopez, for the Grammys, in a brightly colored jungle-print dress with a V-neck that opened all the way past her navel and a slit up the front that barely covered her lady parts. I'm not defending the look--I'm just saying you can hardly call it conservative. But even at her most subtle, Donatella's look always has a sexy undercurrent--that woman all this time since Gianni's death have craved a more overtly sexual, hooker-inspired (yes, Gianni's words) look seems a little insane and perverse.

Yet perhaps it's true. Donatella's last show, for spring 2010, was closer to Gianni's aesthetic than anything she's done: short, tight, brightly colored, with chain mail. The collection received raves from critics, but usually a brand going back to its designer roots or "DNA" is an ominous sign for the company's financial and commercial prospects, as well as for its creativity. Curiously, neither the Newsweek nor The New York Times's article mentioned this, despite it being the most poignant symbol of a brand scrambling to avoid creative and financial disaster.

Scat! In Vogue!

2009-11-13T19:48:00.003-05:00

In the November issue of Vogue, or on editor Hamish Bowles' blog, you can read all about Hamish's outdoor survival adventure, in which the wonderfully urbane, dandyish European editor pulls a Divine and eats (gasp) "scat"--bear scat to be precise. The verdict: "It seems incredible to relate, but it really was rather tasty."

Now that is something that I never in my wildest dreams imagined I would read in the so-called Bible of Fashion.

Jean Jeanie

2009-11-06T20:45:00.005-05:00

Eric Wilson's article about designer jeans--or, ehem, "premium" jeans--in the New York Times last week basically confirmed most sane people's suspicions about the prices of overly expensive denim: They're completely made up.

During the modern gilded age, the spiraling prices of designer clothes had more to do with driving profits than the actual design or construction of a garment. Designers found they could charge a lot for the perception of prestige. ... But with jeans, it just felt more obvious that some kind of game was being played; the basic elements, after all, had not changed substantially in decades: five pockets, cotton, some rivets. ...

“Charging $600 for jeans for no reason at all — those days are over,” said You Nguyen, the senior vice president of women’s merchandising and design for Levi Strauss & Company.

Funny he doesn't mention the $1,000 Balmain jeans

Confession

2009-10-25T22:09:00.003-05:00

I like American Vogue better than Paris Vogue.

The Mighty Penn

2009-10-17T22:20:00.006-05:00

Cafe in Lima by Irving Penn, Vogue, Feb 15, 1949

Irving Penn shot my first favorite fashion photograph. In it a young woman sits at a little white-topped table with a shadowy male companion (his back toward us and his face, turned slightly to the right, obscured) and--pensive, distracted--chews on her pearl necklace. There is so much I love about this photo: The intricately arranged tiles on the old-world cafe's floor; the tilt of the model's smart straw hat and the way she unselfconsciously kicks off her heels; the clean black and white parallel lines reflected in the mirror; the story it tells, perhaps of a young woman realizing she is no longer in love with the man sitting across from her.

I thought of this photo--and so many others that Penn shot for Vogue during his 60-plus years there--when I read the news that the great photographer died last Wednesday morning at the age of 92. Though I know his images will live on and on in coffee table books and museum walls and vintage copies of Vogue, it is difficult to imagine that he will never create a new photograph again. His passing does feel like the end of a certain era of fashion photography--a time when fashion photography was not about celebrity and commodity but about beauty and art. But, then again, that era probably ended long before Penn's death, he just chose not to notice.

One of Penn's iconic Vogue covers

Penn was a rigid formalist. (Cafe in Lima, an early photograph, is actually quite different from most of Penn's later iconic photos.) He photographed his women--including, most famously, his wife Lisa Fonssagrives--in pretty dresses as if he were shooting a still-life or sculpture. You aren't struck so much by the styling or the clothing or even the personality of his subject but in the composition of his pictures; it's almost as if he abstracted the model and dress (or any other object he would photograph) into a series of angles and curves and folds. He stripped the fashion--and celebrity--photograph of everything except aesthetics, its form and shadows and textures. I can't think of any other fashion photographer who created such pure images. Penn's great rival Richard Avedon--who died five years ago and was another, though entirely different, artistic genius--imbued his fashion photographs with social commentary, and his images reflected the concerns and culture of the times (whether the strong, glamorous women of the '50s and and early '60s with their couture gowns or the youthful gamines of the swinging '60s leaping and jumping in their short mod shifts or haute hippie threads). Other photographers Helmut Newton's and Deborah Turbeville's fashion photographs explored psychology and sexuality. Edward Steichen, who shot for Vogue in the '20s and '30s, was the closest to Penn, with his modernist aesthetic and clean lines, but even he can't compare to Penn's singular, uncluttered vision.

When Penn started at Vogue fashion photography was still considered a commercial venture, and not regarded as high art. During his time there, it has been elevated into one of the most popular and revered art forms, shown in museums as well as on the pages of magazines, and he, no doubt, had a large hand in this. But though his work greatly changed people's perceptions and expectations of fashion photography, how has it inspired later generations of photographers? Who is following in Penn's footsteps? Who is seeing beyond the logos and glamour and celebrity and finding the poetry in the fold of a sleeve or the curling plumes of a hat? No one I can think of.

"It" Dress

2009-09-24T23:57:00.006-05:00

Looks from Duro Olowu's Spring 2010 collection; photos from style.com

Duro Olowu's ruffled hooded wrap dress, which comes long and short and in chiffon or crepe, is, hands down, the best dress of the season so far. I love his sense of color--that deep royal purple--and prints used throughout the collection--sweet florals and bold ikats. And he actually showed dresses and skirts longer than five inches above the knee!

Here Come The Fanny Packs

2009-09-19T17:00:00.002-05:00

Fanny packs at Marc Jacobs, Rachel Comey and Wayne; images, style.com

Didn't they try resusitating the fanny pack two years ago? Though, I can't believe I am typing this, that Rachel Comey one is kind of not bad.

*Addendum: Marc Jacobs also showed skinny hipslung belts with packs attached to them, so we can safely say this could be a full-on trend.

Buckethead, Take 2

2009-09-17T17:29:00.005-05:00

Deja vous? Thom Browne, Spring 2010 and Narciso Rodriguez, Fall 2009

Thom Browne took a page from Narciso Rodriguez's fall 2009 show and plopped some strange, face-shrouding helmet-gear onto his models' heads for his spring 2010 collection. Brown's hats look goofy and a little emasculating, while Rodriguez's look sleek and dangerous.

Best-Dressed

2009-09-14T21:57:00.003-05:00

Fashion week, smashion week. By far the most eccentric outfit I've seen this week was not at the tents, but at the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday in Brooklyn Heights. Film director/artist/writer/general renaissance man Melvin Van Peebles (who directed the seminal 1970s film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song) arrived to a panel wearing a pin striped suit with a hot pink ribbed top under the jacket; a leather newsboy cap, tinted round-rimmed glasses; fisherman's sandals worn with hot pink socks; and a plastic Spongebob Square Pants backpack. Andre Leon Tally has some serious competition.

Vermeer's Timeless Heroine

2009-09-13T20:22:00.004-05:00

To celebrate 400 years since Henry Hudson's historic voyage from Amsterdam to Manhattan, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has loaned Vermeer's beloved masterpiece "The Milkmaid" to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it will be on view through Nov. 29. I wrote about the exhibit for Forbes, so please check it out here!

Image courtesy of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Real Life and Fantasy (Or Fall-Fashion Deluge Part 3: Vogue)

2009-09-12T21:26:00.012-05:00

1940s glamour, shot by Steven Meisel for Vogue

For a magazine devoted to peddling couture fantasies, Vogue's fall fashion issue this year started out on a particularly realistic note. First was Galt Niederhoffer's introspective essay about her father's financial downfall(s) and how they have shaped and defined her. Then came Kennedy Fraser's excellent essay about Irving Penn's "Small Trades" series, a thought-provoking meditation on work, nationality and identity, particularly resonant now in this great recession. (The series--comprising 252 portraits of people in their work clothes--is now on view at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.)

Before things got too introspective and somber, though, William Norwich came to pull us back up to the normal stratosphere of fall fashion frippery as he chronicled It girls and socialites and Vera Wang wedding gown fittings and swarovski-crystle headbands blah blah blah. Further head-scratching ensued with the story "What Price Fashion," which seemed to be trying to convince me that $1,000 dresses were affordable. I mean, I get that Vogue is supposed to be "aspirational" and all, but come on.

Grandma, what big eyes you have! Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott for Vogue

Still, Vogue's fall fashion issue is far ahead of its competition (other mainstream fashion magazines like Harper's Bazaar and Elle)--despite its completely banal cover story and photo shoot (Charlize Theron, photographed by the ridiculously overrated Mario Testino). Its feature articles are varied: Georgia O'Keeffe's abstract paintings, new conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Gustavo Dudamel, tennis champion Roger Federer, cuckolded politician's wife Jenny Sanford. I can't think of any other fashion magazine that covers a such a spectrum of topics outside of fashion or the trendiest art and music scenes. Oh, yeah, the editorials are pretty good too. Particularly the ones styled by creative directing whiz Grace Coddington: A sumptuous Little Red Riding Hood editorial, with some of the most vibrant red clothing you have ever seen, shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott; and a romantic ode to 1940s glamour shot by Steven Meisel that recalled the drop-dead-gorgeous 1920s-style shoot from two years ago.

Not-So-Smart Sex (Or Fall-Fashion Deluge Part 2: W)

2009-09-08T21:22:00.012-05:00

Photograph by Steven Klein for W

Fashion photographer Steven Klein really really wants to be Helmut Newton. Yet what so many photographers--like Klein--fail to realize is that Newton's genius did not spring from his desire to shock, nor from his frank portrayal of sex or sexuality (a woman's foot squeezed into fetishistic heels, a blond model miming sex with a swan, lots and lots of nudes). His genius is in the almost poetic, haunting beauty that comes across in many of his photographs--and in his wit. One of my favorite fashion photographs of all time has two models wearing similar white dresses and flowers in their hair dancing together atop a volcano, a pile of records and a record player a few feet from them. It is an image that is tender and lovely yet fraught with ambiguity. There's another that I like of two models caught in an erotic embrace while sword fighting:

Newton could be very subtle; he could also be very frank. Yet, his images were always interesting (well composed, creatively shot, with depth and meaning). They were almost also always seductive. I also think by making them so sexy he could really raise provoking questions about sexual behavior and impulses and psychology.

Perhaps this is what is wrong with Steven Klein's photographs. They not only don't seem interesting, they don't appear seductive or sexy to me. For example, I did not think the controversial Bruce Willis and wife S&M-tinged spread was alluring or intriguing in the least, it mostly just seemed icky.

For W's September issue, Klein has another sadomasochistic-inspired editorial, this time starring model Lara Stone as headmistress of a dark and twisted all-boys academy. Lara's beautiful, the clothes are great (lots of Prada's '40s-style coats), but the editorial left me cold and bored. There's nothing new or surprising--just more of the same Helmut Newton lite. The editorial's opening photograph even has a shot of the boys having a meal of raw meat, instantly evoking Newton's famous photograph of model Jerry Hall holding a a slab of uncooked steak to her eye.

"Sunday in the Park," photograph by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott fot W

Sex is the mini-theme for W's September issue, which I guess makes sense. It's a recession, sex sells, so why not? The cover has a big-haired, pouty-lipped Kate Moss smoldering with the headline "Smart Sex" on cover: an interview with fashion's high priestess Miuccia Prada (Moss models Prada's "smart sexy" clothes inside). The photographs are alright--you can barely see the clothes, which seems antithetical for an editorial focused specifically on a designer's fall collection. More disappointing, however, was the interview--or feature--itself: an overwritten puff piece that ironically reveals absolutely nothing about the guarded designer. Example: "That [Prada's] sons feel free to express themselves should come as no surprise, parented as they are by two strong-willed, opinionated people." Seriously??? Pardon the expression, but VOM!

"Sunday in the Park," shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, has lots of shirtless boys and seductively dressed girls (garters, bras and thigh-high waders), an idyllic weekend in the countryside that ends up in (one would surmise) an orgy. But the autumn colors are beautiful, soft and muted. It felt wistful and romantic and mysterious and decadent. For some reason--perhaps the lesbian undertones and otherworldly feel--it made me think of David Lynch. I'm sure there are more apt comparisons out there, but there you go. Perhaps if David Lynch decided to do a British period piece, though, it would look something like this.

Juergen Teller's "Woodstock," for W

Speaking of orgies, I though Juergen Teller's irreverent Woodstock shoot, with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Dree Hemingway, was a hoot. It didn't glamorize the hippie culture of the '60s but made it look like some strange blissed-out religious/sex cult. Perhaps this is what more of these fashion magazines need: a sense of humor.

All This Useless Beauty (Or Fall-Fashion Deluge Part One: New York Magazine)

2009-08-29T10:29:00.009-05:00

Models at the Lanvin show; photo by Marcus Bleasdale for New York Magazine

New York Magazine's Look -- a special publication devoted to the fall and spring collections -- shuttered after only two issues. Its demise was, perhaps, inevitable. A magazine solely devoted to the collections is surprisingly (for a magazine with such a popular and fast-paced fashion blog, The Cut) antiquated. Why would we buy a magazine rehashing collections from a few months ago (and not presenting them in new ways through editorials, as Vogue and its ilk do) when we can log onto Style.com or, yes, The Cut mere hours after a show and watch a video of it, click through pictures of individual looks and read the commentary from various observers, critics and fans. Look seemed a vain attempt to embalm and preserve -- intact and in its purest form -- a particular moment. But fashion doesn't work that way and it (and we) have moved on to pre-fall or couture or whatever.

New York proper, though, already has two issues throughout the year dedicated to fashion. And it looks like the current Fall Fashion issue has absorbed some of Look's features. There aren't any editorials, for one (perhaps a cost-cutting measure?); instead we have the Look's cut-and-paste collages of runways looks grouped around trends (they work better online). These collages had a sort-of charming amateurish quality in Look. Here, however, they look rather frumpy and sad--I think it's New York's vaguely grimy paper stock (Look's pages looked and felt more like a glossy's).

Fashion's "exquisite circus", photograph by Marcus Bleasdale for NY Magazine

The other photographs here, part of a portfolio aptly called "Exquisite Circus" and shot behind the scenes at the Milan and New York catwalks, are simultaneously sexy and beautiful and a little bit haunting--they make the fashion world seem a lonely, vacuous place. It's like under all the beauty and glitz and excitement there's just this great big emptiness. It's certainly much better than the dull, unimaginative editorials in New York's last few fashion issues.

The content is better too (though that's not really saying much). The Coco Chanel/Audrey Tautou piece was serviceable, if not surprising. The same writer's article about haute couturier Christian Lacroix, however, was a loving and tragic tale of an artistic genius' inability to survive in this bottom-line, profit-driven contemporary world. But then, as we see elsewhere in this same issue, even the most resolutely commercial "artists" are in financial duress.

Lacroix's haute couture show in Paris last July; Gueorgui Pinkhassov/Magnum for New York Magazine

Actually, there is a mini theme in this issue -- the unraveling of a carefully maintained and manicured facade. In many of these features, we see the fashion and celebrity world not as something aspirational and glamorous, but as something ugly, lonely, unfair and cruel. I don't think this is intentional or subversive, merely unavoidable due to the ongoing financial crisis and its consequences. If even the fashion industry has no room for pure, unabashed aesthetic beauty--for Lacroix's gorgeous fairy-tale confections--then, well, what does?

Stylish Basterds

2009-08-25T20:50:00.004-05:00

A scene from "Inglourious Basterds"

Though I wasn't crazy about Inglourious Basterds, I must say that Quentin Tarantino's films always have style. There was Diane Kruger's black sequined dress and tailored skirt suit, of course, but I particularly loved Mélanie Laurent's outfits--her liquid red dress worn with a black-netted-veil cap and her cropped baggy worker's pants (which looked a lot like Rei Kawakubo's signature pants for her brand Comme des Garcons. The sets are also quite extraordinary. Though I didn't love the film, there is something refreshing about a war movie shot like an old film, without the distracting artificial clarity of CGI. Flavorwire has a fascinating Q&A with the film's husband-and-wife design team (who have also worked with Wes Anderson and Michael Mann).

Lazy Saturday

2009-08-17T22:52:00.005-05:00

I woke up on a Saturday morning and, for the first time in a while, had nothing planned until late in the evening. Of course, that's not to say I had nothing to do: weekend bags that had yet to be unpacked from various trips throughout the past couple months remained scattered throughout the living room; my refrigerator was distressingly empty; several deadlines loomed over my head. Yet after spending a couple hours reading Mad Men Q&As online while a word document--my art review--remained minimized and empty on my computer screen, I decided it was going to be a wildly unproductive day anyway, grabbed a book and walked to Prospect Park--a gorgeous 30 minute stroll lined with brownstones and trees. In the park, I passed by countless groups of families or young adults holding barbecues and picnics, and I felt a little lonely as I shuffled by glancing longingly at their corns on the cob and volleyball games and picnic blankets and their joie de vivre. I got lost and then lay in the sun and then got lost again. I was hot and my feet in their dilapidated white gladiator sandals were sore, and I wanted nothing more than to sit in the shade with a cold beer, but I was alone and feel funny walking into drinking establishments when I am not with a companion, so I did not venture to the Gate, a beer haven with a lovely, bustling outdoor patio, even though I really wanted to. As I made my way back to Seventh Avenue--a cute little street filled with cafes and too-expensive boutiques--I walked by a chalkboard sign. "Join us in the garden for a raspberry mimosa," it implored with inviting pink curly-cued script. I was sold, though I dithered outside for about two minutes wondering if it really was OK to sit outside by yourself drinking mimosas while reading a book about motorcycles. But I soon found out that there are probably few better ways to spend a late Saturday afternoon.

Their Generation

2009-08-16T12:04:00.002-05:00

Finally, a boomer acknowledges his generation's death grip on culture and the media! Rolling Stone's Greil Marcus tells WWD in a story about creating the Woodstock myth:

My generation has worked really hard to insist that its history was privileged in a special way. ... We lived in what we considered to be the most glorious of all times and have devoted the rest of our lives to making sure no one ever forgets that. The result is to trivialize everything younger people have lived through, and part of the reason we’ve been able to do that is that every time this history is sold back to them, people line up to buy it. It’s tremendously destructive and sad.

Amen! Now can we move on?

Why Is a J.C. Penney in Herald Square So Shocking?

2009-08-13T21:39:00.005-05:00

You might have heard, Cintra Wilson wrote a Critical Shopper column on the opening of a new J.C. Penney in The New York Times. It offended lots of people--mostly due to its "snobbery" and uncomfortable--indeed pernicious--jabs at the overweight. Plenty outlets have devoted screeds to Wilson's, ehem, insensitivity.

But what I find most strange about the article (that a fashion columnist may be elitist or, um, "size-ist" is really not the least surprising to me) is that, well, what makes J.C. Penney's presence in New York, in Herald Square (a particularly ugly and what some might call "déclassé" stretch of midtown) so perplexing? Wilson writes:

Why would this perennially square department store bother to reanimate itself in Manhattan — in the sleekest, scariest fashion city in America — during a hair-raising economic downturn, without taking the opportunity to vigorously rebrand itself? Why would this dowdy Middle American entity waddle into Midtown in its big old shorts and flip-flops without even bothering to update its ancient Helvetica Light logo ... ?

The thing is, what makes J.C. Penney so different from Kohls or Kmart or Strawberry? Or, hell, even the slightly more upmarket Macy's (a bastion of mediocrity if I ever saw one)? Midtown is already a veritable suburban mall, filled with Victoria's Secrets and Forever 21s and Abercrombie & Fitches. And tourists are not the only ones who shop there. Not everyone who lives in New York is a sleek fashionista; nor is everyone in the little island of Manhattan a member of the bourgeoisie. The city needs middle-market and cheap outlets for its myriad denizens who can't afford to shop at Barney's or Bergdorf's.

Also--going to a small but rather irksome detail in the article--the concept of "masstige," or, basically, licensing, is not particularly unique or original to J.C. Penney. Before Penney's collaboration with Halston the designers Christian Dior and Pierre Cardin were slapping their names on everything from house slippers to blow dryers. To blame Halston and Penney's for this trend is just wrong.

On Models and Muses

2009-07-26T22:19:00.006-05:00

muse: a source of inspiration; especially a guiding genius

My fascination with muses--and eccentrics--probably began with Zelda Fitzgerald. Though she suffered from mental illness and, likely, alcoholism, I found her tragic life quite glamorous: the weekend parties in Long Island, the fringed dresses, and her writer husband. Mostly, though, I found the idea that she lives forever in the books of her husband romantic and wonderful. To live forever through the work of a genius, to inspire genius, was, I felt, as rare and important as being a creator.

Indeed, a muse is somewhat of a collaborator. Would Pierre Bonnard have painted such luminous, tragic nudes without his paranoid recluse wife and muse Marthe de Méligny? Would Andy Warhol have made Poor Little Rich Girl without Edie Sedgwick? Would Paul Poiret have created his sumptuous harem pants and draped dresses without his petite, lithe wife Denise Boulet?

Model-muse Jean Shrimpton in the 1960s

The idea of muse as collaborator, though, was conspicuously absent in the Costume Institute's "Model as Muse" exhibit at the Met. Indeed, many of the models featured, or mentioned, did not even seem to be muses; they did not inspire works of genius. Is, for example, Christie Brinkley really a muse, despite her popularity? (Though I guess she did inspire "Uptown Girl.") And while Beverley Johnson is historically important as the first black model to grace the cover of American Vogue, the exhibit did not strongly make a case for her as a muse. Instead of a few biographical sentences on a bunch of individual models, I would have liked to see an in-depth examination of a few model/photographer (or model/designer) relationships: Richard Avedon and Dovima (who once said she and the photographer were like Siamese twins), David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton, Steven Meisel and the "Trinity" (or Christy, Linda, and Naomi).

And, of course, the exhibit, by focusing on the period after WWII, neglects two of the greatest model-muses ever: Marion Morehouse (at left), whose angular frame and saucy demeanor exemplified the garconne and inspired modernist Vogue photographer Edward Steichen and who later married e.e. cummings, and American beauty Lee Miller, who became Man Ray's assistant and muse before blossoming into a respected surrealist photographer and photojournalist in her own right.

Then there are the model/designer relationships. The exhibit unfairly concludes that the model as muse is an anomaly nowadays, but while movie stars have largely replaced models on the covers of mainstream fashion magazines, models still play an important role in the atelier. There is Shalom Harlow's relationship with design duo Viktor & Rolf, Sasha Pivovarova's with Miuccia Prada, and (for better or worse) Agyness Deyn's with Henry Holland of House of Holland.

First picture of Lisa Fonssagrives, shot by her husband Irving Penn

Models and Post-Conceptualists

2009-07-20T09:28:00.004-05:00

Studio 54 mannequins in YSL and Halston, from the Costume Institute's "Model as Muse" exhibit.

Museum press previews are usually pretty low key. They tend to be in the morning (if you are lucky, with breakfast treats and coffee) and rather quiet. I am often the only person under 40 there (especially at the Met or Frick), and any photographers or videographers go about their work unobtrusively. The previews at the Met feel particularly empty; the cavernous, enormous museum building is meant to hold throngs of visitors and tourists, not just a smattering of critics and media people.

The press preview to the Costume Institute's "The Model as Muse" exhibit, however, was quite different. There were far more security checkpoints than usual, and I thought I saw more flash from cameras than actual photographs or clothes. The crowd was different too. It was raining that morning, and I came in wearing skinny jeans and rain boots and an oversized white T-shirt and a scarf. Boy, did I feel out of place. The bohemian bag ladies were replaced by women in five-inch stilettos and little black dresses--this at 10 a.m. I saw Bill Cunningham in his blue work smock and Fran Lebowitz.

I wrote about "The Model as Muse" for Forbes (along with the Met's excellent "Pictures Generation" exhibit). There is, of course, more to say, including that the curators apparently don't know the definition of "muse" and that the exhibit felt a bit like an ostentatious ad for Vogue magazine, but these points are for another time.

Behind the Times

2009-07-11T21:49:00.003-05:00

The New York Times begins an article about peroxide-blond British model Agyness Deyn with this:

ONCE or twice a decade, it will befall a young lady of supreme good looks to accidentally embody her moment in time. She becomes the visual articulation of our culture's unspoken hopes and latent desires: a now-ness that contains the hint of a tantalizing future — to wit: we don’t know what's next, but whatever it is, it looks like her.

I feel like the Times is about a year too late with this observation.