Deciphering dress codes

You may have noticed that I haven't posted in a while, not since before the World Cup started, which is not a coincidence. But it's over now (sniff) and I am slowly getting used to a world without a constant buzzing sound in the background.

..which does make it easier to concentrate

..and remember ideas for blog posts, such as

Wardrobe challenges

There are some occasions in life that are pretty easy to dress for (work followed by summer happy hour at a bar outside), some less so.




(what I wore to work, followed by summer happy hour outside)





For example, what does one wear to a rose tasting dinner (wine, not the flower, I don't know how to insert an accent aigu), followed by a band at Terminal 5 where you'll be standing during the show and dodging dripping beer from the mezzanine and sloshing beer from the cups of dancing fans?



(hint: comfortable heels that look good for dinner and offer better view at the show; take off the dry clean only jacket when the beer starts sloshing)




Or, to a reception for the Israeli ambassador to the UN hosted by a friend of my friend Christina, shortly after the Gaza boat incident, and, your own politics aside, you don't want to inadvertently offend anyone as you are a guest after all?

The red dress I'd planned to wear is "dressy work" and seemed appropriate for a nice cocktail reception and going out after, but isn't a red keffiyeh associated with Hamas?

(and was I just really over-thinking things because it's unlikely anyone would have thought that this is a protest outfit!!?? .. and yet, Madeleine Albright did use those brooches...).





Or a semi-formal wedding at the Four Seasons restaurant (dress code: New York fabulous) and, knowing your friend who is getting married, it definitely will be fabulous.. but it is at 1pm (so you can't be too dressy), though it is likely that the after party will carry on for quite a while, and you have one hour to get from LaGuardia (after a week's vacation), home, dressed, and to midtown.


(yes, you have seen this before, but I did say that I wanted to wear this dress again as soon as I could find a reason for it!)

In Living Color

Basic black has its place but I love color - especially now that summer weather is here (even if the season hasn't officially arrived yet). Since my brain has summer vacation-itis from this gorgeous holiday weekend, I'll keep this post mostly to pictures.

I couldn't wait to wear this blue one-shoulder dress since I saw it Matthew Ames' spring runway show months ago and even posted a photo of it on my blog. I wore it to the MoMA After Party in the garden last week and am thinking already of the next chance to wear it again. After I took this photo, I put on a pair of dangling earrings my parents gave me for my birthday this year, but with this dress' color and shape, I wanted to keep it simple. (dress is Matthew Ames, shoes are Sigerson Morrison from a few years ago).


Pastels, on the other hand, require a bit of toughening up for me. I liked this little doll print dress with slouchy boots and a military jacket. (Dress is Philip Lim 3.1, jacket is Harvey Faircloth, and boots are Isabel Marant)


I like the all pale look too - but unless it's a light little weekend dress, I think it looks better to balance floaty with tailored pieces to avoid looking like a giant flabby marshmallow. (Hache jacket, Malene Birger blouse, Marni shoes, Ter et Bantine skirt).


And packing for my 4-day work trip to China was made easier when I remembered that "red is a neutral" - something my aunt said a while ago and which I think is true - at least, I thought my red shoes worked with every outfit. I expected (incorrectly, as it turned out) to be in over-air conditioned spaces, so wore orange stockings with the dress. Nude hose would have killed it... (dress is Ter et Bantine, red shoes and belt are Bottega Veneta, navy suit is Ter et Bantine, as is ivory blouse, black jacket is Hache, and olive silk top and pants are Hache. Orange tights are Fogal.)

A minor slip up

Sometimes the perfect wow outfit that looked great in the store turns out to be a bit too much for my real life. Plunge necklines, sheer dresses, wide-cut armholes, etc. look amazing, but how are you supposed to wear them in public if you're planning to lean forward or raise an arm at any point? Wrapping myself in double-sided tape is a pretty unappealing thought...

And you can be surprised by even the most innocent looking clothes.. A knee-length floaty lined dress - how sweet and demure is that? Oh very, until it's steadily crept up your legs while you're walking and gathered itself around your waist like a bunchy shirt. A nice look for afternoon in midtown! I speak from recent experience. Thankfully in my case, I was wearing a wrap coat that I could hold closed until I could rearrange. So while I may have looked like a flasher, at least I didn't look like something worse..

All of these sartorial challenges can be addressed, however, with a bit of layering. The solutions are out there, though it's surprising how hard they are to find, given how designers have sent out season after season of sheer clothing. Everyone seems to want to sell you Spanx or some "shapewear" item. Do they think women are only walking around in tight fitting jersey? Somewhere there's a designer/lingerie company disconnect because that's not how women I know dress... But anyway, I have managed to find some layering pieces that have worked for me.

The floaty dress (by Hache) was tamed with a plain half slip (Commando) that is essentially a fashion band-aid (a guy friend of mine called it "insurance").. not particularly lovely - but it works! I'm wearing it here with the coat that preserved my modesty (also Hache).


The plunge neckline (Matthew Ames jumpsuit) was made admittedly less dramatic (but modest enough for me to be more comfortable) with an American Apparel body suit. (American Apparel is great for layering pieces.) The shoes are Acne.

And I'm wearing this Hache sheer double-layer dress over a tank top, and under a Ter et Bantine tuxedo jacket. The boots are the Chloe buckle ones I wrote about last summer. And yes, I have definitely gotten a lot of wear out of them - and they've held up beautifully!





Now, I don't want to talk people out of being daring - I saw a girl on Saturday night wearing a tank top with wide-cut arm holes over a black bra. It looked cool (though my friends thought she looked like she was trying too hard). Maybe. It all depends on your comfort level. I'm a bit klutzy and tend to move my arms around a lot while I'm talking, so I want to feel like I have a full range of motion without having to worry about revealing a bit too much of myself to strangers (or friends). If you're more composed, or more daring, good for you! But if not, those are a few layering pieces that work for me.

Just Dandy

The alternate title of this post that I’d considered - then rejected - was “Men with hats”, but it’s not just about men with hats – though that was certainly the inspiration.











Pork pie (left) Fedora (right)


There’s a whole thing going on in men’s fashion.. grunge is still going strong, but parallel to that (and sometimes intersecting, when it appropriates facial hair and plaid) is The Dandy. The most frequently spotted element of dandy-ism (sometimes incorporated into a head to toe look, sometimes on its own) is the hat.

And in my empirical, non-objective study of the downtown bar and street scene, I’d say the pork pie and fedora have decisively replaced the trucker on men’s heads. And not just downtown.. I was in Brooklyn on Sunday and can cite a pork pie and fedora spotting there too. Will this look move uptown as many trends do? Could the trucker’s balding frat boy cousin, the baseball hat, be next? (yeah, ok.. not likely. That might require caring on the part of the wearer first..)

I admit I chuckled a bit when I counted 8 guys wearing a pork pie or fedora in a bar last Friday (ca 15% of the male population in the bar, a fairly high ratio), but if it reflects a bit of effort on a guy’s part, I applaud it. And walking around New York on Easter, I saw some really impressive efforts – a fedora paired with a 3 piece suit? If you can pull it off, try it – it can look fantastic. (In the case of the bar on Friday night, it turns out the 8 guys were an Irish stag party, none were in 3 piece suits, and one of them has a cousin in NY who is a hair stylist and she bought their hats, so I’m not sure it counts as a style statement as much as a costume..) But that was certainly not the sole example.

As I mentioned, this look is sometimes head to toe –the toe part of the look is often brogues (which they’re still trying to push onto women, by the way) but sometimes, and in fewer cases, high boots. A guy friend of mine asked me what I thought of men wearing pants tucked into riding boots and I said they’re great if you’ve just come off a horse or about to get on one. I have noticed a couple men wearing jeans tucked into green rubber Hunter boots (wellies) and it didn’t look bad. But I’ll tell you how else it also didn’t look: straight. Depends on what message you want to send.

But all kinds of men are wearing hats again. I’ve even seen 10 year old boys wearing hats (granted, they were Tribeca kids). I am guessing the original influence was “Mad Men”, though maybe “Mad Men” caught on because it reflected our desire to dress up a bit more. Chicken or egg? The wellies, I think, come from the Freeman’s sporting/hunting aesthetic, or maybe the floods upstate. In any case, men with hats are here and if the 10 year olds weren’t convincing enough, here’s the final nail in my argument – not only are new hat stores are opening up, but you can find a pork pie and fedora at every street vendor on St Marks.

Maybe you can explain to me...

...because I just got the Bergdorf shoe catalog and I don't understand


$900 clogs

























$600 flip flops





















$650 flats






















Is this supposed to be inconspicuous consumption? The impact of the Great Recession on consumer behavior? We wear peasant shoes but pay kings' prices for them?

Now, I haven't worn clogs since I was 10 (when I was the height of sophistication in my Olaf Daughters clogs, knee socks, corduroy gauchos and cowl necked sweater) and am not going to start again now. But if I were, I'd go for Swedish Hasbeens or something like that. And surely for an unconstructed shoe with no support at all like the Manolo flip flop or Giuseppe Zanotti flats, there are cheaper options? I mean, you're not buying the latest shoe technology here..

Maybe I'm just a height-ist.. flats are second class shoes and should be lots cheaper than heels.

Anyone agree? Yes? No? Anyone buying the Chanel clogs? Or Swedish ones? Dutch ones?



Now THAT's a fashion statement!! :)

What I learned from Art Week

I went to the Armory Art show preview and MoMA after party on Wednesday and still feel the after affects of sensory overload (and maybe wine, though that's worn off by now). Having been to a couple of shows during fashion week, I have to say that the art event crowd can give the fashion event crowd a good run for their money.. Maybe it’s because much of the art I saw was not at all restrained, perhaps that expressiveness inspired people in how they dress. Or maybe it was just the fact that it’s a bigger, more diverse crowd (more people over 50, more straight men). In any case, with miles and miles of art and people watching, it was easy to shut down and just stand in one place simply because you didn’t know what direction to walk or look in. How clever they were to scatter champagne bars around the exhibit!

I didn’t take any photos, but there were a few stand-outs – most of whom I saw both at the Armory and at MoMA later. There was a woman in sheer orange knee socks and a bright floral sleeveless dress, matching her companion’s orange jacket and blond-tipped hair. They were like a bouquet of flowers. I loved her outfit. It was like spring! Another woman looked like a Moscow party girl in high grey Rodarte boots (which I still want, but will just add them to my dream wardrobe and admire them on my friend Michele who does have them), short dress, fur stole and glass of champagne. She looked great, too. It sounds like a cliché, so 2006, and maybe was, but it worked. As always there were some ‘80s new wave glam rocker-types with the long on top Pink/Rihanna/Robyn kind of hair, some slightly bouffant-haired ‘60s art student types, both attracted photographers. Maybe that’s interesting. I saw better. There were a lot of bad prom dresses too at the party (but not the Armory).. why? Why? WHY would you wear that????? Selling bad prom dresses should be banned. No one benefits from fashion victimization. (Though my post would be 5 sentences shorter if that were the case.) There was also Chuck Close whose girlfriend wore sequined jeans and layered t-shirts. She looked cool and about 30 years younger than him. He looked like Chuck Close and since he had a retrospective at MoMA years ago can wear whatever he wants (black t-shirt, black pants.. totally appropriate).

Phew, excuse me! I think I was channeling Cindy Adams for a minute (NY Post gossip columnist for those of you who aren't familiar). Back to style.. So was I inspired? Well, what I liked were directions I’ve kind of been exploring already – the colorful knee socks, well, I like colored tights. Knee socks, maybe, but it has to be in a way that is very very very far away from how an 8 year old would wear knee socks. I’ve seen it done (my friend Anne in Copenhagen can pull this off!) Colors – yes! And I have a fake fur stole that I occasionally wear with a jacket or dress. I’ve tended to play it a bit more retro/classic.. Moscow party girl isn’t really my look, but I might try it with edgier/tougher clothes for something new.

I planned to go to the Pool art show last night - the so-called Salon des Refuses, so younger, funkier crowd.. What to wear? Pulling a few inspirations from Wednesday night (colorful hosiery, "fur", '80s, pouffy hair), this is what I came up with...


But in the end, I felt like dressing like a bee.

(and in the end end, I stayed too long at the bar I went to before the Pool show and never ended up at the Pool show.)

What I learned from Fashion Week

I normally don't comment on Fashion Week. Usually I write about what I feel like wearing, what I saw on other people and was inspired by, or what I just think is striking or funny. But this time, that all sort of ties in to Fashion Week.

I went to a couple of shows this year (Matthew Ames and Ports 1961) and both shows, in addition to showing beautiful clothes on the skinniest people you will ever see (seriously, every time I go, it pains me to see how thin the models are.. please let those girls eat!!), both shows also gave me a bit of inspiration on how to see and wear what I already have a bit differently.

At Ports 1961, a lot of the models had big curly hair. Big BIG curls. And messy. Hurray for messy! It suits my style better and takes less time! Plus, if it gets messy during the day, it stays the same, right? I've been doing messy hair and a single braid (a style Prada has made popular again) ever since my office asked all of us to get to work earlier in the morning. With the alarm set for 5am, it was either my social life, my sleep, or neatly styled hair that had to give first. What would you pick? Btw, if you wonder, as I have, how to pull your hair back when you're going to wear a hat and don't want to look like you have no hair - a loosely pulled back braid is your answer to that as well...

At Matthew Ames, there was no mess, but strong lines and clear colors that make me want to pair colors you wouldn't think would go so well together - and to wear more light colors in winter. Pale aqua and caramel, or aqua and yellow... so much cheerier than all the black the audience was wearing! And a couple of outfits were all in pale ivory. Really beautiful.

It's always also fun to see what the audience is wearing, too. How do fashion show attendees address snowy streets? Lots of high heeled boots - I think they made the same decision that I did to ignore it. Maybe they also hadn't found a satisfactory fashionable solution. My friend, Elena, had a great pair of solid Prada boots - very cool-looking in their sort of military practicality. One of the best solutions I've seen so far!

I was surprised a photographer asked to take my photo outside the Ports 1961 show - she took a couple, one just of my blue tights and and ivory lace-up shoes. I had originally thought of ivory tights when I was getting dressed that morning, but changed to blue last minute as I didn't want to look like a nurse. But some of the most beautiful outfits I saw were pale monochrome, so maybe I'll give that a try next time. I think the way not to look washed out with all these pale monochromes is to wear bright lipstick, which I'm also really into. Orange, red, purple, hot pink. I noticed a lot of this in the audience, too..

Well, hey, I'm going out tonight. I think I'll go mess up my hair, put on fuchsia lipstick and wear head to toe ivory (or as close as I can get)!