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.

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)!

I'm alive (and so's the blog)

I have a bunch of ideas that I want to write about, but they pretty much all require my photos as illustration and I'm getting a bit tired of editing the wonkiness out of my bathroom mirror. (You friends who've been in my apartment know what I mean - you can make your face look like Eric Stoltz in The Mask then like a Steve Madden ad depending on the angle. Kind of cool analog effect, but not appropriate for this blog, really.. )

Anyhow, I'm writing with other photo illustrations while I work that angle out, and because I don't have a theme will be a bit more random than usual...

So, since I have lots of things I'm dying to show that I like, I'm going to write about things I don't like from NY fashion week, Oktoberfest and other stuff I've done in between. But also wanted to mention some things that I do like very much! (that doesn't require any of my photography - all images from style.com, btw...)

First show, first model - bowl cut. I don't like it (though the clothes were very nice). Maybe models, because they look like the skinniest 10 year old boys you've ever seen, can kind of pull it off, but no, I don't see this working in the mainstream. And because it's so obviously now, it also seems a bit lemming-ish and not very reflective of an individual style to me. Maybe I just don't get it, but I don't. So there you go...

Men's brogue-style shoes for women. Well, naturally, they don't have high heels, so it's like a foreign language to me, but they add further support to my suspicion that there's a "no trend left behind" campaign going on, because dig through old Vogue/Elle/Bazaars from 15 years ago and what you haven't seen people promoting as cool yet, you will. I'm still waiting for full-on Laura Ashley floral & petticoat to come back topped by a silly hat - I've already seen the high necked Victorian blouse in NY and Copenhagen (and have to say, it looked pretty cool the way I saw it worn - with high waisted, bell-shaped trousers.) But if the original 90210 (cropped t-shirt and paper bag waists and all) is being promoted as a fashion source (which I have read), guard your wallets.. A fool and his/her money, etc etc...

I saw all kinds of horrible new acid/stone wash jeans treatments in Germany, but that's such an easy target. I also saw a leopard print dirndl, which is just bad bad.. to paraphrase something I read a while ago, sometimes you don't want a variation on the theme, you want the theme. Guys get this right - I saw no '80s hair band influenced lederhosen. Just suede like it ought to be. Way to go, guys!!

Well, I hate to end on a negative note, so will mention something that I realized I like a lot as I was watching the fashion shows (aside from Matthew Ames' show, from which I've already mentally purchased about 4 things). Pants. Or trousers, but you know what I mean. I've seen some flowy pants and there's something about that look that just draws my eye. Maybe because there are so many dresses, shorts, minis, etc, in the show (and in my closet as well)... I don't know, but I like it.

The return of the '90s, part II

As I mentioned in my last blog, I've been in a pretty strict budget mindset. Even though I still enjoy reading Vogue, I have been feeling quite disconnected from fashion and often wonder what it feels like to work there, how the writers and editors can make themselves feel relevant when stores on Madison Ave and West Broadway are shutting after 4-month long sale seasons, when ads are down and much of their readership has seen a drop in salary - or (for the trophy wife readership) of spending money. It does seem as though every article talks about "budgeting" and "high/low mix", though these articles precede photos of $6000 suits with jaunty belle epoque hats. Adorable, but I mean, really... And anyhow, my latest trip was skiing, so what I really wanted for my head was a helmet.

So coming back to Manhattan during fashion week and going to a show right after getting back from a ski trip was a bit of a drastic jump, since I wore pretty much the same thing everyday and hadn't been in a clothing store in months. But interestingly, far from feeling disconnected, I felt like I was starting to get feeling back in some part of my body that had fallen asleep. I've never worked in the fashion industry, so it wasn't any nostalgia for that (though it is always fun to see my friends who work at Fashionhaus). It was more that I've been so focused on work, on saving money and preparing myself for bad times, that I hadn't really done enough enjoying the fun things in life - like beauty and design - just for the love of it. I think that's how the people at Vogue get through times like now. At least, that's what I hope. It's not just about shopping (though of course, is partly about that since it is a business after all) but is also about just loving style, design, expression, beauty, etc.

I was also interested in the kind of fashion at the show. The designer, Matthew Ames, is a young American whose clothes reminded me (not being a fashion writer) of Georges de la Tour, monks cloaks, and Obi Wan Kenobi; sculptural, almost monastic designs in rich fabrics. That expensive minimalism also reminded me of Zoran, who had been around since the '70s but who I only heard of in the '90s, when his clothes were always in Elle. I mention all that because thinking back to the '90s reminded me that the economic slowdown then led to a preference for understated fashion and less of the '80s trash/flash. Ironically, I think the clothes were actually more expensive - but the emphasis was on craftsmanship rather than broadcasting labels. Prada and Marc Jacobs emerged from that environment and I think that we may see a similar shakeout of trash (do we really need celebrity designers, for example?) and the rise of some real new talents.

I hope so, anyhow.




















Tough look for tough times...?