In New York Paris Tomorrow

Louboutin, Big Old Lines, Neiman Marcus and Love

2012-02-04T08:53:00.000-08:00

Just another designer showing at Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills? I think not!!! That 2pm - 4pm signing? It looked like the line at Studio 54 back when Bianca and Halston were dancing and smoking. Counting the red soles was beyond possible as the perfumed Louboutin-clad ladies and that cool dude (Jackson holding his shoe box lid and yes he wore his basic Loubs, not the spiked leopard spotted ones or his way-mean black and spiked version) visiting the heart of the Loub madness only to discover Neiman's doesn't do mens Loubs (how many times can I stick that in one sentence, oh grammar fairy help). At the very end of the line chatting it up with the coolest Neiman's shoe salesman, that line ended with me being told, since it didn't move at all in the twenty minutes I patiently waited, that it would probably be 6pm before all were signed. Ladies (and a couple of guys) wanting their red soles signed.

Party time as cute waiters passed out drinks to the line snaking past accessories into cosmetics and perfume. Parking lots and valet completely filled, no more room signs planted. Jackson and I left, sad we'd missed the Manolo Blahnik event in the '90's when he signed shoes there, male models reclining in gigantic fishtanks clad in white Speedos. Events, Disneylandish big things and fun to get the shopper back in the shop.

Graffiti and urban art, gorgeous and impactful in the week that David Choe, link is to my post, cashed out to the tune of $2,000,000.00; after Mark Zuckerberg had him do a few paintings on Facebook walls, David agreed to be paid in Facebook stock not cash. Delicious paydays are what dreams are made of and he can now buy all the Loubs he wants.

Having valet parked, keep the Jeep up front please, at a different Wilshire Boulevard department store, we walked through the mens store and counted three shoppers. A for lease empty shop next door. Not easy days for let's-retail-like-it's-1999.

Urban art is a whole lot like Holga pictures: each is interesting but not all are important. Between Banksy and Marc Jacobs working with Stephen Sprouse on the graffiti-inspired LV pieces, it's here to stay and if you have a teenage boy, chances are you need to check his socks for hidden markers.

A Poetic Steampunk Hand Made Dress

2012-01-11T17:48:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it's just one poetic dress that matters. This one, one of many Jenny Eve lives with sold under the name of Madame Chic de France, link here.

Her description ...

"Black rayon/viscose fabric
The applique in front the dress is like a half dress . I made it with a cream linen fabric and beads applique ( silver and white colours ) , tulle hand dyed with tea and pleated + black ruffles in black rayon/viscose
Vintage finest lace ribbon from Belgium, dating early 1900s , hand dyed with tea , to adjust the black dress on the back.
The long sleeves are in black rayon , the padding shoulders with linen fabric and tulle , like the front part of the dress .
They are fixed with black metal snap closures . You can wear the dress without sleeves .
In pictures n°4 sleeves " work in progress " One of a kind.

To work with beautiful materials , to sew by hand in Europe , to create one of a kind garments, it costs money and time .
I cannot make garment for 50 USD .....

Many garments which I create are conceived to adjust themselves to the sizes S , M and sometimes L
They adjust themselves with pleats, darts , straps .
Design , creation and realization are made with this idea of free size for a garment piece unique .

All my fabrics are washed before using them, and when garments are finished, they are hand washed."

The accessories ... exquisite.

Dancing Not Fashion, Perhaps A Myth Or A Fairy Tale

2012-01-11T17:20:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it's not about fashion, it's about dancing. Or fishing. Always music. Archetypes, fairy tales and myths that touch our collective unconscious before morphing, but have mattered. Reaching through the language of myth, afternoons curled up with a set of Joseph Campbell books and videos and a bit of time.

We dress methodically, hunting for what we need and want, and some things we love. Sighing over the perfect Manolo Blahnik black faille shoe, the one with a rhinestone buckle, or a vintage evening bag that we changed from vintage then to somehow now by replacing a single chain with silk ribbons. There were clothes that our teachers and parents rolled their eyes at and that made the wearing better, I think.

Greedy to see the pictures of Dorothy's glittering slippers, Audrey Hepburn's LBD from Breakfast at Tiffany, everything Elizabeth Taylor at Christie's auction. The wild innocence of a flapper with bobbed hair even as you knew she was naughty at a speakeasy, the harsh slash of lipstick and darken brows and shoulder pads that borrowed from Joan Crawford's imperious movie star image in the forties, the modern stay-at-home (ha!!) wife and mother of the fifties whose cinched waist and pastel house dresses were as cute as her daughter's poodle skirts and sweater sets. Hippies and elegance in the sixties, mini skirts and sheaths and little hats that segued to Halston's jerseys and caftans, false eyelashes and party nights while the pret-a-porter exploded in Paris, YSL and Le Smoking. Boys too ... spats to cowboy boots and Elvis.

"Polka Dots Are A Way To Infinity" Yayoi Kusama

2012-01-10T17:26:00.000-08:00

Yayoi Kusama. Avant-garde artist, fashion designer, writer, woman and now beginning a collaboration with Marc Jacobs that will be in shop in July '12. Clothing, accessories, bags ... art and commerce as Marc did with Stephen Sprouse, Murakami, Richard Prince.

Yayoi Kusama is not a young woman although her eagerness and condensed excitement and compulsion cannot be suppressed. Once as important as Andy Warhol, perhaps more so, she was forgotten by the art world when confined to a mental institution in '75 in Japan. A beautiful woman with lovers left behind .. perhaps Joseph Cornell and Donald Judd. Art that sometimes originates in her hallucinations. She stays near the institution even as her work is found again, shown in major retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Walker Art Institute in Milwaukee, Tate Modern in London and the Whitney in New York.

Her beautiful world. Her website is linked here. Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama is linked here.

"A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol ofthe energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of themoon, which is calm. Round, soft, colourful, senseless and unknowing.

Polka-dots can't stay alone; like the communicative life of people, two orthree polka-dots become movement.

Polka-dots are a way to infinity.

It was not so simple, not so easy to come up with this wayof living that I've had. I was given a sad life by fate, but I think I won ahappy life.

Not one day has passed when I didn't think of suicide, butI'm very glad to be alive now.

Most people are so preoccupied with theirillness, sickness, and they live a very ordinary life.

I was so involved and soengrossed with painting, and knew from my childhood that it could help me toovercome unhappiness.

If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long timeago."

The 'Extravagants' Of The Market: A Diana Vreeland Memo

2012-01-09T16:29:00.000-08:00

Memo fromDiana Vreeland

February 24, 1969

Ithink that the most completely constructive thing that Vogue can do for itsreaders is when we show a group of inexpensive clothes for summer — we do agroup of really cheap dresses.... for example — JUNE if we can do 10 pages ofdresses for under $30.00. You say it is not possible to dress for under$30.00.......

Toput it frankly, everybody wears them — it is just that we don't show it.

Whosemarket will have these clothes? I am speaking of Banlon houses like Nestroy,etc. I cannot believe that by interesting a certain group of the market —perhaps they are Kezia's houses — please — check — that people would beinterested in doing something for us as this special price.

Withhealth, a good figure and brown skin in the summer, people should spend verylittle money on their clothes.

Couldthese people investigate at once.... I understand that we are now through withthe selection of the extravagants of the market... until we start going intoautumn. By through, I mean we are through looking at them though certainly wewill put some of the beautiful organzas in, etc....

Nylon,dacron, synthetics, hersey....

Iwould like to have an answer from each and every one of you as to where thesethings could be found, and what you are going to do about them....

Inthe case of Babs and Baron de Gunzburg — they will certainly say "this isnot my market". The point is that it is your Fashion Department and youshould make suggestions to the girls....

Mrs.Mellon can make suggestions from her shirt collection — the shirts done incotton this summer.

Visionaire 37: Vreeland Memos [Box Set] [Hardcover]

Available at Amazon.com link here

The mysterious package of over 400 memos dashed off by Ms. Vreeland to her secretary as she made up for the day, sent anonymously to Visionaire, became the red boxed set of 160 memos of Visionaire 37 in 2002. And made me fall in love with her all over again. Frivolous, imperious, whimsical and extraordinarily pragmatic ... her delicious why don't you's and joyful understanding that perhaps even a color could define a season and all the grand collections.

Why not a summer dress, a cotton shirt, the "nylon, dacron, synthetics, hersey" ... (I think hersey referred to a particular textile manufacturer, not the name of a new fabric).

Forever David Bowie

2012-01-08T11:55:00.000-08:00

David Bowie's 65th birthday, Elvis Presley's 77th birthday and while it's not Mick Jagger's birthday, he is a hardy 68 years old.

Forever young ... but actually getting older. Azzedine Alaia, Rae Kawakubo, Karl Lagerfeld, Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren ... aging.

Hogan McLaughlin .. twenty-two. Brilliant and coming up. His website here.

Cloudy Moody Skewed Beauty

2012-01-08T11:03:00.000-08:00

Slightly ominous, cloudy dark beach days skew the light and the images are removed from anything banal. A plastic camera leaking light, a Holga or a Diana, with oversized square images shattering the edges.

Lagerfeld shocking the light meter with his white hair and darkness, contrast muted.

Unlikely and suitable for threatening plain white walls.

Lovely Aesthetic Ghosts

2012-01-07T22:03:00.000-08:00

"... everyone needs aesthetic ghosts in order to live. " YSL

Ropes of pearls, little black dresses, white gloves, ruby red lips, Shalimar perfume, khaki and plain white T's, corsets, ballet flats, languid silk flowers, charm bracelets, Levis 501's fragile from so many washes, crisp white blouses, pencil skirts, black faille mules, armloads of bracelets, over-the-knee boots, smoky smudged eyes, a Kawakubo intricate skirt, a Rick Owens cardigan, crocheted shawls, black bad-ass skintight jeans ... the images don't change. Always the things I bring home to fondly place next to others very like them.

My mother asked for extra butter on her popcorn and we always sat in the last row at the movies. I have to remember to ask others where they want to sit having come to understand that not everyone likes extra butter or the last row. When she was very weak and drifting away, those last days of hers, I showed her pictures of glamorous women in opulent evening dresses. She thought they were too revealing and she frowned. I sat on the carpeted floor of a store dressing room when I was small listening to her stage-whisper to another woman that she shouldn't chew gum in public. I looked away, not knowing that decades later I'd notice a woman chewing gum in the car next to me and those memories would rush back.

Life wasn't grand, not when you're wearing a navy school uniform with a (terrible) white blouse with an anemic Peter Pan collar and aren't allowed to roll your white socks down below your ankle and your saddle shoes are scuffed. I followed my mother through the basement at Ohrbach's where the copies from the Haute Couture hung and wondered whether she'd scowl at loose buttonhole threads or worse. It pleased and surprised me that salesladies were more eager to please my mother, bringing armloads of dresses for her consideration, than some of the other women shopping. She thanked them graciously, telling them she would think about a dress or two.

It's a sunny day and perfect to see a movie, wander into a shop. I could use a white T, maybe black jeans, All Saints skinny black jeans that is.

Popovers ... Really

2011-11-20T08:16:00.001-08:00

Neiman Marcus popovers are served hot from the oven, risen maybe 4" and accompanied by the most decadent amount of butter whipped with fresh strawberry preserves. Sumptuous, decadent and so satisfying, gorgeous airy things. Memories of your mother's delicate department store tea room, the kind that had lovely fashion shows at lunch, flood in. Small discreet pleasures of food and memories.

Sometimes when it's cold or the world seems too large and chaotic, I read recipes and old cookbooks. Chasen's Hobo Steak, the Bistro's Chocolate Souffle, an early Martha Stewart cookbook with cranberry pie and another with a yam soufflé.

Oops. A period of ignoring my blog, again. Big mistake, because sending bits of fashion (and just this week) a bit of the more romantic, some long-gone great dishes is almost as satisfying as chocolate pudding or just roasted French coffee, smoky and deep.

Ingredients

3 1/2 Cups of Whole Milk

4 Cups of All-Purpose Flour

1 1/2 Tsp Salt

1 Tsp Baking Powder

6 Large Eggs, at room temperature

Place milk in bowl and microwave on high for two minutes or until warm to the touch (yes, of course you can gently do this in a saucepan but it leaves a scummy film that I hate cleaning)

Sift flour, salt and baking powder in a large mixing bowl

Crack eggs in another large bowl with an electric mixer and whisk on medium for about three foamy frothy minutes (or whisk forever by hand, satisfying in a peculiar way but your arm must ache terribly before it's done). Turn down mixer speed to low and add warm milk

Gradually add flour mixture and beat for two minutes. Let batter rest at room temperature for about 1 hour

Preheat oven to 450 degrees

Spray popover pan generously with nonstick spray (yuck, really .. you can wipe with a nice light oil with a towel, what are nonstick sprays made of ???). Fill popover pans almost to the top with batter and place popover pan on cookie sheet. Transfer to oven and bake for 15 minutes before turning oven down to 375 and bake for 30 to 35 minutes more, until popovers are deep golden brown.

Remove from oven and pop out popovers on a cooling rack.

Serve with Strawberry Butter, yum.

To make the strawberry butter, place 1 1/2 cups of butter at room temperature in a bowl and beat in 1 cup of strawberry preserves. That's it.

Drag out gorgeous crisp white napkins and admire.

What to wear? Jammies are nice. Anything will do. There are thankfully no fashion rules here.

The Exoticism of Rifat Ozbek

2011-10-30T13:24:00.000-07:00

“Four or five years ago, if you were lucky enough to meet Robert Forrest, the marketing director for Rifat Ozbek, he would give you a ticket to see the fashions of the Turkish-born designer. The small showings were held in a loft in the unlikely-sounding Haunch of Venison Yard, an alley between Claridge's and Bond Street. Buyers and reporters would ascend four flights of stairs and enter a Turkish fantasy, where tea and fruit were served while models paraded Mr. Ozbek's exotic styles.

Now Mr. Ozbek has been in business for five years, and his shows have become the hot ticket in British fashion and one of the more compelling reasons for the fashion faithful to come to London at all.

He still operates out of Haunch of Venison Yard, but as a measure of his success this season Mr. Ozbek held two heavily attended fashion shows in a West London television studio.

The intensity of the debate over his fall collection - split down the middle between lovers and haters - is another index of his importance.

Mr. Ozbek has had to grapple with many of the problems that confront young American designers, as well as some that are peculiar to London. ''When our volume increased, we couldn't get the right commitments from our English contractors,'' Mr. Forrest said. ''They pushed the collection through in half the time, and it just wasn't made as well. It's part of the fashion malaise in English factories.''

The designer clothes are now produced under a licensing arrangement with Aeffe, an Italian manufacturer that also produces the Franco Moschino line. Mr. Ozbek's company, a partnership between him and Gulf International, expects to have about $4 million in sales this year of his designer clothes and his casual line, called O and made in Turkey.

Unlike other London designers, however, Mr. Ozbek is selling more and more to the United States, Mr. Forrest said. His largest accounts are Saks Fifth Avenue and Madeleine Galley, a Los Angeles store.”

Source link here.

Rifat was British Designer of the Year in '88 and '92 with exotic gorgeous clothes that sometimes sold straight out of the shipping box. Rifat worked with rich colors and textures, embroidery and decoration, slashes of silver buttons or leopard against rich colors. Very rich bohemian clothes.

Campbell Soup Company: Lessons About Copyright And Art

2011-10-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

That was then ... it's very hard to understand fashion designers policy regarding copyrighted material being loosely woven into a work of art. Louis Vuitton sued, twice, a Danish art student, Nadia Plesner, for using an image (not even an LV) to raise money for Darfur orphans. A stylistic take-off on the ubiquitous image of Paris Hilton holding a designer bag in one hand while cuddling a tiny yipping dog in the other.

Curiously Louis Vuitton itself was sued for fraud for selling Murakami framed works of art which were discovered to simply be the material used for its bags during the collision of art and commerce at the Murakami exhibit at MOCA in Los Angeles.

Louis Vuitton is supporting young artists again through its Louis Vuitton Young Arts Project.

Lessons that should have been learned from Campbell Soup.

In Which Chanel Diversifies: Holland & Holland

2011-10-30T09:16:00.000-07:00

Chanel. Designer guns? Well actually yes. Chanel purchased the world's finest, most expensive gun house in 1996. The kind of rifles and shotguns that can and do come in at over 100,000.00. Sport guns, not evil hand guns. Collectors who (hopefully) will display these beauties (sans bullets) that are incredibly collectible, as are Samurai swords which one sincerely hopes are not played with but safely hung on a certain kind of wall. The company was founded by Harry Holland back in 1835.

Not to fret. Holland & Holland is very much about fine gentlemen's and ladies fashion, classical, very English upper class and totally cool. Ready to wear jackets around 1600.00 and bespoke mens suits from 3000.00. Exciting to know that the foray into Chinese manufacturing (why does this happen???) failed and tailoring has returned to Great Britain, where it completely belongs. An example that Levi Strauss could emulate and should because national treasures are inspirational and we all need a good shot of pride.

Holland & Holland from Holland & Holland on Vimeo.

the Haute Couture Silk Flowers & Feathers Of Legeron

2011-10-30T08:21:00.000-07:00

Long ago, in the era prior to WWII, there were as many small houses in Paris serving the Haute Couture as there were crafts. There could have been several hundred small ateliers crafting hand-made flowers and feather confections and now there is Legeron, a house created in 1880. Legeron continues in the same painfully tedious, exquisitely fine manner as at its beginnings. The slow process of pinning fabric gently to a wooden frame before its bath into gum, starch or flours, the fabric is then placed on a cushion before being punched and formed on implements that may be over 100 years old, the petals then cut by hand and bathed in aniline dyes and alcohol at 90 degrees; when the alcohol has evaporated, shades of dye are placed on the edges. The petals are left to dry on a rack overnight, a process that is slow and produces the colors of fantasy and nature in a world of time equals money.

The "tiny hands" then soften the petals on a damp blotter, ancient tools to crimp and create twirls and ruffles are used along with heat and sometimes wax to hold the delicate fine shapes. Each petal is glued to a brass base one by one, the emergent flower is then again allowed to dry for several more hours and only then is the brass stem covered in silk and the flower is complete. Heirloom flowers carefully produced one by one that cost the earth but last forever. The amazing craft remains for now.

Legeron Paris link here.

Searching For Photographs Is Better When You're Quite Organized ..

2011-10-29T10:38:00.000-07:00

Artifacts ... the hubris of jpegs in iPhoto not categorized, lost amongst doubles and triples. The Antonio Lopez illustrations were stolen, the Missoni pillows Rosita sent one long ago Christmas washed too many times. The odd lamp was from Janet Charlton's Sunset Boulevard shop, a retailer before she became the Hollywood gossip source. Raymond Enkeboll hand-carved Mexican furniture and books, walls of books.

A lot more austere now. But clustered in my computer are 40,000 photos, my antique pie safe from Wolf's in New York stuffed with boxes of photos and albums half begun. If I could do over a whole lot of years of photos, there could have been a better way. For now, there's just the odd exhilaration of a sudden memory poking through. Still haven't come across many of my Sunset Plaza shop but happy for these.

Manolo Blahnik shoes, Eric Javets hats, Erickson Beamon jewels and the very orange jacket in the last photo is a Rifat Ozbek bolero.

The Art Of Hogan McLaughlin

2011-10-29T09:23:00.000-07:00

Hogan McLaughlin ... Large scale and sometimes not, finely detailed ink drawings. Very large scale, very fine. Extraordinary work.

1. Dead Queen (8 feet by 6 feet)

2. Insomniac Olympics (5 feet by 3 feet)

3. A Song Of Ice And Fire

4. Future Dream Part II (8.5" x 11")

5. Future Dream Part I (8.5" x 11")

6. Blood Drawing (3.5" x 5")

7. For Taryn (3.5" x 5")

Hogan McLaughlin Tumblr link

Hogan McLaughlin Website link

“Within the first 15 minutes, I knew he had a gift. He is a voice that has to be heard. His drawings and illustrations are extraordinary in their execution and detail and through those drawings, they needed to be brought to life. He has the innate artistic gift that is like finding a rare flower blossoming in the wasteland. I believe in him and what he is doing.”

-Daphne Guinness

Born in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, Hogan McLaughlin began drawing and dancing at age two. He continued training as a dancer throughout his childhood before joining the contemporary ballet company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, at age 16. There he had the opportunity to tour internationally and work with some of the world’s top artists and choreographers. Upon leaving the company in 2009, Mr. McLaughlin moved to New York to pursue a career in visual art working in large-scale ink pieces, some reaching nine feet tall. In 2011, he met artist Daphne Guinness on Twitter who was taken by his Goreyesque illustrated book, The Homicidal Heiress. Shortly after, he was given the opportunity to produce fashion pieces based on his illustrations. Aided by stylist GK Reid, two of his drawings were brought to life for a film and photo shoot with Markus Klinko and Indrani, featuring Ms. Guinness. The pieces were later featured in the windows of Barneys New York as a part of Ms. Guinness’ personal installation, and from there, were installed in The Museum at F.I.T.’s Daphne Guinness exhibition. In September of 2011, he released his first 11-piece fashion collection and had the pleasure of dressing Ms. Guinness for F.I.T.’s opening event. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is working to establish and expand his label, Hogan McLaughlin.

Where Have All Their Names Gone? And Could They PLEASE Have Them Back?

2011-10-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

Seriously, I don't remember, maybe I never knew, what happened at Romeo Gigli. One season my former husband and I were happily buying a collection that was just so good, the Milan showroom bustling and happy and the clothes will sell out in the store. It's all magic, he's just so good and then ... rumors and cancellations, tension and tut-tut's. The label is no longer his and that business, that really incredibly wonderful business, is over.

Jil Sander is elegant, blond and the dark romanticism of her aesthetic was always minimal. The extraneous looked like frou-frou and the pure sensuality of fine fabrics mattered. Certain stores like Linda Dresner on Madison Avenue, Maxfield, Savannah in Santa Monica, Bagutta in Sohu ... had waiting lists because it was so good. Something happened, a chance encounter with Miuccia's rotund husband and first she was in, then she was out, then she was ever so briefly in and then it was very much over.

Roland Mouret had The Dress, the skinny tight magically constructed dress that sold for more on eBay than even in shops. It was essential, a mood that suited Victoria Beckham who understands it better than anyone. The name was gone, some European shoes or maybe dresses for the European Gap's and somehow, I do believe, he was able to find backers to buy back his name. His very name ...

Whatever happened to the intensely masterful Herve Leger should be a fashion school lesson, a movie and new laws to protect creators from predatory entanglements. Just shaking my head, literally, imagining the fate of YSL if Pierre Berge had not been by his side, protecting his brand. Years and years, a couple of decades have gone by and the genius, the expensive and seductive dresses of the real Herve (yes, my former husband sold those very expensive confections like very fine wine; on the essential movie star, it was goddess dressing) was lost to Max Azria, who owns the name and produces, umm, dresses with Herve's labels. Tight dresses but wholly capricious and no longer suitable except for lesser starlets who appreciate a nice frock and have no idea what was lost. Mr. Azria has done well, indeed. The real Herve Leger? The most classically fine, sensual dresses both for his Haute Couture and ready to wear .. under a different name, which is something that the Courts of the world would not permit for any other artist class. Herve Leroux and they are for goddesses. Imagine ..

John Galliano offended Mr. Arnault by not immediately taking two advil and calling to profusely apologize. Or so it is said. In this day and age where many of us have watched helplessly and with great anger a loved one lose their battle with addiction and descend into degradation and defeat, Mr. Arnault could have stood by his friend, his great designer. He did not. Oh. Mr. Arnault owns a substantial 70% or so of the John Galliano name. Carrying on without John, when he has alleged that John had offended him. I cannot begin to understand it.

The list is far longer and I am sure that at some point in many creator's lives they would sign anything and say thank you for an investment to keep on going. The practice of devouring a designer's name beyond a reasonable amount of time, seven years might be a number to consider as it is frequently used in non-compete clauses, is reprehensible. In London, when a good piece of art goes to auction, there may be a portion sent to the estate of the artist. It seems it is only in fashion that this level of abuse exists.

My own skirmish during a War of The Roses divorce over my name has made me very militant about this. Conceding Giorgio St Angelo to end the legal battle was silly. I wish I hadn't. I loved Giorgio and his clothes. It's hard to do legal battle when all you really want to do is buy and sell pretty dresses.

The battles over copyright protection continue, the battles over counterfeit designer goods continue and there is no battle that I know of to deprive shark investors of the use of a designer's name after some amount of time.

Alas.

Dear Levi Strauss, Time To Come Home To America

2011-10-23T09:46:00.000-07:00

Alas. On May 9, 2002, Levi Strauss moved all production to China which sort of ends its American dream. Vintage Levis labelled Made In America come with premium prices, available at very expensive boutiques such as Fred Segal in Los Angeles. That particular American dream, that proud American history subverted and gone, the implosion of American jobs and a nice label gone bad.

Levi's is all Chinese made. Ralph Lauren, Gap, Guess, some J. Crew, so many bits and pieces of "American" clothing is not made here. Not an American issue alone, no. Prada revealed during its IPO process that about 20% of its production is Made In China. Armani has some production in China, which is confusing the luxury customer in China who of course wants the rich Made In Italy label.

At my Uncle Leo's funeral, somehow his widow Doris revealed that she shops at Walmart for everything from cosmetics to clothes. A cousin pointed out gently that there are Made In America skin care formulations that cost less and Doris rejected that out of hand. Which surprised, confused and upset me. Dov Charnin has gotten press for his good ideas, livable wages for products made in Los Angeles, and bad press for things that have nothing to do with a great concept. Near China Town in Los Angeles, at a large sort of mall with stalls not stores, you can find white T's five for 10.00 (along with cheap, I mean low down quality and price, everything else. Dov's American Apparel T's are not the cheapest but they are terribly cute and not at all unaffordable. (Yes, I do think that the new management at American Apparel is working hard and smart to fix image issues and the clothes throughout are college cute and easy to wear. Yay for Los Angeles, really that's what I think.)

I wonder how much is perception - cheap crap is better than searching for American made (Italian for shoes because American shoes were killed and oh yes, they were as good - YSL shoes made by Schwartz & Benjamin in the '70's were maybe better than Italian fine shoe construction) that is good, maybe better.

It's sort of like buying apples and salad things at a Farmer's Market; fresher, cheaper, probably organic, win-win. A good habit but oh so much easier to park at a commercial market and troll for more expensive, not quite as farm fresh and probably not all organic.

Booth Moore, the fashion critic at the Los Angeles Times, recently questioned this. We do have Frye, Pendleton, Stetson ... and more. We have more than that and oh yes it can be Made in America. A friend of mine, Daniel Storto, refused to let an entire town die that once upon America thrived as a glove manufacturing center. He bought Gloverston and that is where his gloves are made that every designer in Europe and New York begs for. As it should be.

Dear Levis, think it over, it is never too late to come home and do it better. And those American 501's were better than gold in Paris and still are.

Wondering About The Impossibly Elegant Long Legs

2011-10-19T17:42:00.000-07:00

a Salvador Dali image

Man Ray, Ingres' Violin

There was a moment that I flirted with having a tattoo, maybe a flower anklet that would peek past the bottom of black leggings. I couldn't decide on a color or which flower and eventually the urge went away.

Jackson wanted a tattoo when he was fifteen and that was ok. I understood the impulse and we agreed that he could have it in two years. The same tattoo he wanted, not another one. He had more growing to do and perhaps his aesthetic would change. Two years seemed reasonable and when he was seventeen he made the appointment with Jun Cha. Not an impulse and not wandering in to any shop and hoping. He had to wait another four months for Jun; sometimes the waiting is longer. People fly in from the rest of the world for Jun.

It took nine hours for the first appointment. Jackson winced a few times, took a few breaks to stretch and late that night it was done. Exquisite and fine, something very personal that had meaning for him. Six months later Jun completed it in six hours. A lot of hours to peacefully accept the staccato needling. But to no avail when it came time for a flu shot. The usual horrified, "no, no shot, go away, I won't get the flu." Ah, shots are different.

The Man Ray image came first. I tore it out of something and tucked it under my checkbook cover where I could unfold it and imagine it was me. I never did it. The photograph is breathtaking but in truth I've never even held a violin. It has no magic for me. I wanted the photograph, not the tattoo. The image grew fainter over time and I seldom looked at it. Last month I threw it out.

Yesterday I found the Dali elephant; the impossibly elegant long horses legs attached and now it's printed, folded carefully and I think about it. And wonder what it would be like.

It Was A Very Good Year, It Really Was

2011-10-11T09:16:00.000-07:00

These amazing images are from Franca Sozzana's first Italian Vogue in 1988. I loved the clothes that year. It was sublime and madly beautiful, intrinsically valued. Dolce & Gabbana's Sicilian Merry Widow, the classic but slightly off white shirts and black pants ... so gorgeous and simply not possible to stick in a box marked Back Then.

It was a very good year.

So strange to look at magazines from Back Then and know precisely how dated it is. Something gives it away: the hair, the makeup, the clothes. Not so much with these.

Happy Anniversary, Franca. Brava.

You can link here for access to Italian Vogue's 1965 issue, its first, and Franca's first issue in 1988.

Charley Gallay At Bleicher Project Space

2011-10-09T09:54:00.000-07:00

Bleicher Project Space presents for the month of October:

Foto! Ray-Gun! Mambo!

Photographic works by Charley Gallay

October 2nd – 31st

Opening Reception: October 15th, 2011 5pm

Bleicher Project Space
Bleicher Gallery 355 North La Brea Ave Los Angeles CA 90036

Curated by Shannon Rowland

Foto! Ray-Gun! Mambo! features a selection of Los Angeles photographer Charley Gallay’s recent lurid, cinematic portraiture. Occupying the unsettled border between then and now, the photographs in Foto! Ray-Gun! Mambo! evoke both a technicolor exuberance and the transistor twang of lonesome America.

Charley Gallay shoots for an unnamed photo agency and, as such, his images have appeared in numerous publications, including the NYTimes, Elle and Vanity Fair. Moreover, at one time Hallmark™ produced a greeting card based on a photograph of Willie Nelson that he took on-stage while Willie was playing “Whiskey River” at dusk, in the desert, in front of fifty-thousand people. True story. It was beautiful.

Charley Gallay. Yes.

The Incredibe Happiness Of VaVaVoom and Todd Oldham

2011-10-09T08:44:00.000-07:00

A Todd Oldham moment? Well, maybe much more than that. Yes, the first thing you do is smile, break out into a tapping foot and then you stop. Va-va-voom but when did these happy, sexy, vibrant pieces become classics? Hmmmm.

The early '90's had become a sea of black, museum-like shops with all the black pieces spaced precisely 1'2" apart from the next and the austerity didn't match the heart-thumping prices. Chic, good taste, and maybe you wondered if you could die from more of the same, eyes-rolling and then WHOA. A perfect black jacket with outré buttons more like jewels than utilitarian quiet little things, leopard silk lining with a fuzzy leopard collar? A hand beaded beyond words skirt except that it just happened to be the Mona Lisa?

None of the polite glances at a notebook at the show, none of the obligatory polite hand clapping but a full on enthusiasm not seen since black became the new black.

A sort of grungey kid, Todd Oldham was sold at the mighty upscale Onward Kashiyama showroom (yes, where long ago Scott Schuman toiled and was reincarnated as the first millionaire of the blogerratti). Fancy boutiques and expensive department stores were lured in because the clothes stood up with exuberant quality, details (oh those buttons) and for the first time in a decade of minimal and black, the buyers could actually see and smile at clothes that were luxurious and wearable. A year where my good pal Carol Childs actually lost a black skirt into the murk of the puddled blackness at Blakes Hotel in London.

And, oh joy, they sold like hotcakes. A nice LA Times story linked here from back Then. A collection I loved and did I say sold like hotcakes? They really did and after watching the handful of videos from Then, I think they'd sell today.

Charles James, Halston, Diana Vreeland: A Little Known History Of Then

2011-10-08T09:31:00.000-07:00

This was NOT what I expected. After watching the trailer for the Halston movie, I wanted to find photos of what I remember from my first buying trip: Charles James half-hidden by a newspaper, trails of cigarette smoke, and perhaps Elsa Perretti and a sterling belt buckle. Specifically, the Vreeland comment (offhand, a wave of that hand perhaps, dismissive and something else I can't know):

"Hmmmm. As for stealing, if you're not copied you're nobody."

And what would that be to borrow an Haute Couture original to order a Seventh Avenue manufacturer (yes, there was once a monstrously large fashion industry in New York) to copy it, in gratitude or something else yet again, humbly pony up for advertising? Whilst Sidney Gittler at Ohrbach's paid "cautions" to attend the Haute Couture shows and stand (sit?) in the back with promises to purchase several Haute Couture bodies to take back to New York to ... be copied. Hmmmm, indeed.

Is it a venal sin to be cross with a designer who indignantly speaks out against a Vreeland policy? He was ignored, something that has happened many times at WWD with designers and even now one scratches their head that Carine Roitfeld was not invited to a certain show in Paris recently.

Really, this was not a great forensic look back to blink about the business behind.

Did Halston ask for Charles James help, he the ultimate master of construction, in the manufacture of his earliest collections? Yes. Was there copying? Hmmmm. There was a certain tight sleeve, knits that hugged the body at the moment that Sonia Rykiel and her extraordinary factories produced that look. His American translation was breezier, his atelier and his understanding of women (helping to fit and sell on the floor, not a designer removed and protected). Was he influenced by the very birth of prey a porter? Of course. Fashion from the street, which was then the streets of Left Bank Paris, spilled into consciousness.

A wry look back at the earlier days of the business of fashion. History, beautifully documented history.

Thinking About Dresses, In A Shop

2011-10-03T16:46:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my inbox ... multiply this by the square root of a lot more and that's archived, tucked away, some with labels like Fashion or Taxes. An unlikely pairing but this is 2011 and anything goes.

The shows are very much on and I think Vogue UK hands down won my affection by letting its readers choose which shows to be notified about. Slideshows and delivered so quickly, the best part of technology.

Buyers are likely to have upset tummies and genteel albeit well-heeled fear bordering on headline-induced panic. Headlines screaming dangerous conditions for the European banks and GDP declines, unemployment ramping and the symbolic Wall Streets of major cities invaded with squatters that are angry and supporters that want to make sure they can continue the vigil well-fed, with doctors standing by, ex-Marines volunteering to protect them from rough handling, entertainment is provided and speakers encourage and support the movement. However, fashion needs orders from shops to survive and the absolutely unrelenting grimness of this moment is making this a season not as usual.

2008 was rough and then it got better. We hoped. We bought dresses, discovered that we could order almost everything online, return it without a fuss and were hooked. A generational change accompanied by shops own fashion videos, all the Vogue's having street style and fashion style blogs and media that we could read on an iPhone or iPad. Sometime in 2010 shops were doing well, some of the weaker ones weeded out and mad markdowns were a nice memory. Back to end of the season reductions and nice balance sheets, a stock market that actually did a round trip and you were whole again.

I tucked away the handful of snips for Tom Ford's decision to hold back on the video and photographs actually relieved. Something not at saturation levels. Usually when things are economically rocky or depressing, there's a rush of creativity at an outsider level. It's true again. Hogan McLaughlin, Trash-Couture, Sylvia Heisel and Eilis Boyle certainly would make your toes curl in delight, make you want to pony up to full retail and impulsively text all your friends to come look at what they're doing.

Having had a shop and missing it so much now, my heart goes out to the indie shops that are struggling with minimums, poor deliveries, editorial credits that go to the larger stores while rent and the cost of being in business is staggering. Buying in Europe, even with mileage offsetting some or all of the flights, is a small fortune, even with the weakness in the Euro.

Dear retailers, become enthusiastic and turn over every single thing in the showroom to find only the perfect clothes. Buy the sizes you can sell and don't try to stock every single size, color and fabric. Think of picking pieces for a T-stand, only the loveliest, like a curated exhibition. Tell the menacing, greedy showroom staff that this is what you want, you don't want another shop in your city to have it and you do need editorial credits. You can't have a one-way relationship where you simply give in to silly minimums and multiple locations. If the shipment is past due, and you really can't accept it, call them. Let them know and perhaps they will offer a little discount, you will ask for a large one and it can work out. Be nice, be very nice. If a rocker chick or a socialite buys their dress, let them know. It makes them unreasonably happy. If you've been buying the collection for some time and it's gotten a new designer, often in Italy, and it's nothing like what you have been selling well, gently tell them that you will need to test a few pieces. You can always find a simple something, keep the doors open because if you're not loving it, the rest of their customers likely won't and the awkward designer will soon be out. Especially in Italy, it's about the factory and knowing what they can do.

You have to love what you do and you have to get a little tougher. It's just the worst feeling to have a each of expensive slinky designer evening dresses and your competition is the designer coaxing actresses, your customers, into the dress for a red carpet and there is no sale.

So many dresses paraded each season and they are not all going to sell. The slideshows are done, the magazines have chosen some for editorials and there's backstage photos even unto the lunch plate.

It's a business, it's having a rocky moment and you have to be more open to finding the next indie who could become the next big thing as the once Sicilian-widow house of Dolce & Gabbana was. All of the editorials about the collections are about collections, not the specific gorgeous finds there are. Big difference and brushed aside too easily. The work is in the showroom. A great show is fun and will likely have little bearing on the buying. Great windows and a great website, a chatty blog, photos of the pieces as they come in your shop to be posted to Facebook and tumblr and twitter .. a fresh pot of coffee, bottled water, cookies and an impeccable shop make it fun all over again. Lost in the democracy of fashion is the experience of your favorite sales person calling you to come in right now because the most beautiful piece, so right for you, could sell out.

Retail is cool again. The antidote to the isolation of the computer screen and with cookies.

No Photography Please At Tom Ford

2011-09-19T15:29:00.000-07:00

"I don't get the need for this immediacy. In fact, I think it's bad," Ford said. "The way the system works now, you see the clothes, within an hour or so they're online, the world sees them. They don't get to a store for six months. The next week, young celebrity girls are wearing them on red carpets. They're in every magazine. The customer is bored with those clothes by the time they get to the store. They're overexposed, you're tired of them, they've lost their freshness."

I'd love a sit down and dish with Tom. While Tiffany, Hermes, Burberry and even Gucci-sans-Ford are frolicking with social websites, the polite note at his London Fashion Show today was a quiet reminder that this is different, special and no photographs please. A few tweets of breathless happiness from the audience, a chic bohemian luxurious collection, "sexy, chic, don't mess with me." Rock star clothes that cost the moon and it's nice that way.

As though it were a children's hide and seek game, several websites are gloating over having a fuzzy mood board that allegedly is from his collection shown Saturday along with a collection of tweets about the show ranging from the breathless to descriptive.

It seems incredibly rude - as in no photography please - to have creeped and snuck into an invited venue to do mischief. Insatiable curiosity is worth behaving disrespectfully? Yuck. And to the pretty little thing who stole the mood board, you're pond scum.

Hogan McLaughlin, Artist/Designer

2011-09-14T05:51:00.000-07:00

Hogan McLaughlin, artist/designer.

In the extreme banality of this moment in fashion, while storefronts remain empty and fashion is priced by the pound, an underground of molten creativity has become unhidden. Raw talent that might have waited in a line around the block at the beginning of Pret a Porter to see the legendary Geraldine Stutz at Bendel's but now sits in a room sketching in Chicago. An artist.

He's twenty-two and always drawn fashion collections, made art that had elements of design in them, even when that was not his intention.His friend took his sketches and made patterns and then they began with the fabric and then the sewing.

He and his sister are hunting for a live/work loft in New York and he will sew dresses one by one. He doesn't have a finance director, a p/r. nothing but raw talent and a beautiful mind.

Not that long ago, a very young reckless Rick Owens made clothes this way. Some clothes emerge on their own and that changes something, that personal fashion that is relevant and fine.

If not for the glamorous Kellina de Boer and her interview with Mr. Hogan McLaughlin, link here, I might not have discovered Hogan McLaughlin. He is very special and this is surely the beginning of a long career of an artist.

He makes his clothes by hand, one by one; not commercially made. The price range is from 1,000. - 30,000. (the hand beaded coat requiring over one hundred hours of labor.) His techniques are his own, not the same as Alexander McQueen, in mastering billowing yards and yards of silk chiffon. Creating and drifting from the flood of images and memories and settling in to a particular glamourous elegance.

In order

Heavy-bonded satin dinner coat lined in white silk

Neoprene and heavy-bonded satin dress

Silk-gauze gown built on a coutil corset.

Silk-chiffon shift gown embellished with matte-silver palettes.

Military coat with tiered train, embellished with metallic-silver palettes, lined in silk-lame.

Silk gauze gown built on a coutil corset.

Hogan McLaughlin website, link here.

Fashion, The Front Row, Bloggeratti And Delicious Shops

2011-09-10T15:09:00.000-07:00

Why a seditious Banksy? Seductive, pretty, familiar and dangerous? Perhaps a good old-fashioned twisted iconic image that is quasi-reflective of fashion sitting in the very front row.

Lights, cameras, iPhones, iPads and where once the front row was editors at Vogue flanked by media to the left and right with photographers kneeling (yeah right) in front and the occasional buyer sprawled, spit out by the cables and limping away. Row Two was the money row: Presidents of large stores and their buyers spilled over into Row Three with its star boutiques and friends of the house. The rest? Who cared. Standing by the back wall was every bit as cool as the very front row; it meant the house security and fire marshals accepted you, knew that you needed to be first to exit (never never never before the show's end, no matter what) to race somewhere very important: lunch or the next show.

Wee children were barely tolerated, special cases only; none were wearing lipstick or tiaras or had their own press agent. Directors were very, very welcome however.

American and Brit designers were dispatched from St Martin's to important fashion houses to work alongside the uncredited very well known designers doing a Missoni, Biagiotti or Krizia collection. Well-born daughters were sent to intern under Lagerfeld and the children of fashion houses sent to Brown's in London. Someday with a few years rare and delicious experience on their CV's, the designers would leave, some to form their own house or work with an Italian factory who would fund their first few collections or even to work for more money at other houses.

Photographers at the shows turned over their film - real film, yes - to their agencies and sold some under the table in the back of the building at midnight under a dull streetlight to manufacturers who would assemble a team to gather together to ambush the designer collection into a shop by a good six weeks. European designers waited anxiously for textile deliveries that were always late, for their factory workers to return from weeks off in the summer and kicked shipping boxes out the door as quickly as possibly to play beat the cancellation date. Blustering stores fought with schedules and complained that Vogue et al were doing editorials of the fashion before it was in their shop.

Buyers were stuck with the loyalty (and damn minimum orders negotiated) even in the face of of one of those "omg, you've done it again" collections where everything was wrong and what to do. Can you really buy enough plain white blouses and black pants to pass the minimum and make something of the mess in shop?

Shops called in to Mastercard, Visa and American Express for approval, a plodding painful where-do-you-look process; there was always the possibility of no and maybe I wasn't the only one holding my breath and hoping "let me pay for this, let me take it, hurry up, oh please."

Pierre Berge, yes of L'Amour Fou fame as well as for being the rock strong business partner of YSL forever, taught the rest of the designers (truth) to care about the brand, not to just sell a shop for the money but to do a no-punches-pulled tour of America to make sure all the fancy claims about movie star customers and a fashion mix straight from designer heaven was true and that clothes should not end up in a discount mall shop next to tattered label clothes, i.e. Loehmans or Century21. It worked and the tug of war, apt words, became about square footage at major department stores such as Bloomingdales, Bergdorf's, Saks. Ok, they did it, they grew money and licenses and movie-stardom in unheard of leaps, their every move investigated by their country's tax people because nobody could get mega-you-wouldn't-believe-it rich from dresses and jackets. There were forever rumors and exposes about money laundering and the Mafia at Versace and other Italian houses. Who knew what was up. These houses sold more clothes raking in more profits than seemed feasible. Where were all these shoppers ponying up thousands for dresses coming from? There were bread lines in Moscow and there was only New York, Los Angeles and Chicago really.

Money was at the heart of it, the entree and reason and everything. To buy, to sell, to profit: merchants for dollars and the need to make sense of it. Here in Los Angeles, size four to eight could sell out while tens and twelves (were there fourteens?) languished even unto the sale racks. Sixe 7, 7 1/2 and 8 were the shoe sizes that would sell out but reluctantly you'd add fives, sixes, nines and tens. If the minimum was too high as it was at many vain designer houses, you could take a chance that the most extravagant sumptuous evening clothes wouldn't be shipped, too difficult for the textile house to produce small quantities and you're breathe easily, minimums made and yet avoided.

Was. Was ok, was very good. A period called Then. Things that had no part of Then:

Faxes, cells, computers
Look books and videos/cd's/dvd's, youtube
Bloggeratti
Designer websites
Flash sales sites
Online shopping ala netaporter.com (ok, there was no online)
Democracy in fashion and, umm, social media
Thank you ... yes, I know: a few buyers waited (ad nauseum) for thanks for your order pal
Special emissaries (huh?) for Chanel etc
Hotel suites for swag, just plain giving things away would have made anyone in fashion faint
Red carpet free haute couture and payments, omg, for wearing "our" dress
Hundreds of billions of dollars to buy out your boutique to take it big time
Live fashion reporting (there was Elsa Klensch once a week and that was it)
Friendly returns (ok, we all took returns but you'd never know it from our clenched teeth)I

Is. Is is very good and causes pain, social conscience and the doors have been thrown open. Things that weren't, are. In exchange, fashion is no longer produced in America where once it was a major industry. French fine clothes (hello Chloe) could bear a made in Romania label and clearly are not sent in a taxi to a particular seamstress. Fast fashion has a cadre of designers waiting like wallflowers to collaborate that practice saying silly things like "masstige" and "why not." Red carpets are unrolled (rolled out?) for press parties for reality stars and media to celebrate the production of low clothes that are so throwaway to be called fast fashion. Is Snooki really paid to NOT wear certain things? Hmmm.

Fashion shows are live streamed, sometimes with designer q&a's simultaneously, in a cloud to whatever you sign into, designer and lesser websites let you order from them (yes, I hate this wildly and am most peeved with the people at Burberry who assure - huh - that this is better for their stores because the buyers will know what customers really want, omg save me from this kindness, not bearable), a plethora of associations with magazines (huh again) to flash sale sites with Amazon and Groupon spawning daily deals until you cancel the emails because you do not want to pay 80% off for surgery and a shoe in the same day.

The front row will continue to have Anna Wintour, Grace Coddington, Carla Sozzana, and the lot of Vogue editors but squeezing closer to the middle will be Bryanboy who sweats glitter, Tavi Gevinson who is age fifteen and presumably has homework but also rolled out a brilliant online magazine aptly called Rookie, and other bloggers who can lay claim to readership that matters and has enthusiasm and immediacy as credentials as well as the ability to take their own photos and videos, write their own material, deal with the press and readers and mature into a credible source for personal fashion and its stories.

Fashion exists on a heavy dose of interns, usually glamorous brilliant young highly educated and knowledgable, energy in a bleary economy with heightened global political anger, and they are barely paid if that. Bryanboy wrote about this phenomenon and its true meaning in his post "Coffee Runners Are The Future Of Fashion Reporting," filled with insights and compassion to an industry that he loves, imperfect as it is.

Bloggers, the bloggeratti, threw open the doors of the sequestered, established world of fashion with its criteria of audience, enthusiasm and personality, keeping some form of equilibrium as shops and major stores shut their doors silently. The internet exploded, certainly one of the reasons that a recent IHT Luxury Conference revealed has become ingrained: the bother of shopping in a real store and dealing with the frustration of limited inventories whilst at the computer the entire world's stock is available with two clicks, along with the act of dealing with real people, not as easy as the forgiving websites have become.

Within the bloggeratti are rich rewards for the few: Marc Jacobs naming a handbag after Bryanboy to the photographic campaigns of Garance Dore to the reputed seven-figures Scott Schuman made for his book The Sartorialist which he just happened to launch at Bergdorf Goodman. Several are on the go-to list for opinions on collections, campaigns, magazine covers, models, the industry and are maturing as rapidly as they shot from behind a computer screen to stories in Vogue and the NYTimes. The industry was forced to figure out what to do with the bloggeratti along with understanding which scintillate and how to deal with them.

Some were journalists that have come to blogging (Wendy Brandes and Sasha Wilkins of Liberty London Girl) and the masthead of W Magazine, InStyle and the assorted Vogues are overweight blogs by their own and guests.

Groupon and Living Social and the spawn that showed up daily, even more, in my inbox has been unsubscribed, sent to spam and over. The flash websites, especially the ones associated with Bazaar and Elle make me angry. There are shops, real world and online, buying and stocking these pieces and being sabotaged. Sabotage in a fragile recovery ready to swoop to recession and a new round of layoffs is simply unacceptable. The slap in the face of reading great reviews of Prabal Gurung's show today and receiving an email from Moda Operandi inviting me to preorder the collection feels like enough, more than enough. Mr. Gurung is accepting appointments from shop buyers who will leave orders and eventually receive his gorgeous pieces to sell. But oh fowl play, dirty business. It is not ok for a designer, not even a fashion designer with hefty prices and a unique clientele, to harm the very shop owners who support him.

I don't think I'm missing something, I don't think that this is wonderful. It's nasty and I can't imagine why any shop owner could accept this threat to their business. Mr. Gurung is not the only one, not at all, and did I say his collection is beautiful? It is. Does the business of fashion believe that they should trump the stores that pay their bills? Bergdorf's is certainly helping to do away with this egregious form of business by inviting its customers into the store to preorder from a number of designers. Easier for them to do it now and they will have fewer markdowns and the designer has the chance to fatten the orders, from a combination of special and stock orders. Rooting for stores and shops and hoping this nasty moment goes away quickly.

Let fashion be immediate in a way that benefits the people who are playing in it for money, not benefit cute ideas that harm shops. Seditious in the worst way, not in the fashion collectible way-early Vivienne Westwood kind of way.

Dear designers, do not harm the shops that feed you. Love, Madeleine

And do read the brilliant Vanessa Friedman's post "Facebook, fashion and fantasy."

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I Love You New York

2011-08-27T09:03:00.000-07:00

Free live streaming by Ustream
I wish this were just another lame blockbuster of impeding doom. Go away, Irene, get lost.

If you cannot take your pets with you - and they are very welcome at all shelters - leave a note on your door that they are inside.

Dues paid with an earthquake and hurricane in the same week, never before never again.

The 411 On AA+ And Global Ping Pong

2011-08-07T11:39:00.000-07:00

Double A's are better suited to bra sizes, maybe shoe widths, than to America's S&P rating. Denmark has a triple A rating and universal health care; the USA has lost its AAA and doesn't have universal health care. Triple A is a whole lot better than the measly AA+ S&P assigned America. China has already suggested that its yuan become the world currency standard.

Those tidy 401K's had recovered and maybe a little better than simply recovered from the '08 tumble, in no small part brought on by S&P rating Lehman's triple A and last week's 7% downfall in the stock market is really deja vu in the worst possible way.

The acrimony in the world over economic issues is fulminating and headlines are filled with attention-grabbing scary words. The truth is that if you had sold your stock portfolio off at the bottom, and many did, you'd have lost half your money. If you held, you got it all back and maybe more - Apple fell to a low of about 86.00 and recently was over 405.00. True that it's been thrown back to 362.00 in the global panic selloff last week, but considering it has actually more cash in the bank than the US Treasury, chances are that it will recover, perhaps more quickly than the US Dollar. And if you have spare cash, it would probably be good to begin piecing into Apple and a few boring stocks with nice dividends. Click here for the full list and of course find out everything about the company.

How to get through this crisis? Vote because the disharmonious antics in Washington are yelling that they cannot resolve issues without partisanship. It's a mess. But know that it really is different this time. Companies, about 70% of the stock market, have gorgeous balance sheets with tons of cash and profits, and Hermes and Apple continue to sell everything they make. Not so much for Walmart, Sears or Gap but that's simply because of disappointing everything, not the economy.

Living well why the headlines roll away is a good idea. Dire sensationalism sells and keeps life edgy. Chances are the world markets will be churning and working out the static. Bernie Madoff is not around anymore and the SEC is picking off the lesser Ponzi-schemers like whack-a-mole. Sweating nervously while global economies do ping pong with your 401K will not last forever. It'll get better. There will never be a sale on Birkins, sigh.

Amy Winehouse: Rehab and What You Must Know

2011-07-23T11:25:00.000-07:00

Amy Winehouse is trending on Twitter because she is dead. Gutted, horrified, angry, sad, tragic .. the language of loss. A dozen songs or so that will live forever, while all hope for her is gone forever.

Addiction kills. It's ugly and the process of watching someone be at risk is painful. Sometimes, sometimes something stops it.

Sometimes it's just wasted words to say Get Help Now.

If you love someone, don't get into denial about the risks. Learn them, know them, deal with it. Sometimes it's as simple as taking the car keys or saying no to everything. Sometimes you can't stop them no matter what you do.

Get support. Not from your friends but from people who have walked in your shoes. Just do it so that someone you love will never trend on twitter because they're dead.

Al-Anon for you so you can do something good and maybe save some lives .... link.

It Gets Better

2011-07-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

I was just thinking that the hot days of summer, the rancor in Washington that doesn't end, the debates about health care and the days of guns and gold that have become ceaseless. Languid summery days that are missed with all the rhetoric and anger, extremism and fear.

As the hot days yearn for cooler nights, there will be resolution du jour and we'll move on. Wishing that middle school, that playground that shows a glimpse of the adult world ahead, included a couple of mandatory courses in civility and that ethic would prevail long after those happy days.

The relentless pounding of please and thank you of our childhood given way to Mean People and Harshness. Imagine living in a country that would flog you for wearing sunglasses or wearing a headdress to school and other unimaginable infringements.

Wearing white and offering white roses is sweet but what really matters?

Allow another driver to slip in front of your car .. they'll gratefully wave thank you and probably do it again.

Look for something attractive about everyone, because we are all just human.

Refuse to participate in those mean, bullying Who Wore It Better or How Could She forums .. it's mean mean mean. Oh and get that piece of spinach out of your teeth.

Don't do a Sarah Palin and think there are real Americans and then the rest, laugh at anyone who attempts divisivness as a blue eyed-brown eyed experiment in real time; admire her capitalism and then switch to ignore.

Give a bottle of water and a sandwich to the homeless person that scares you. Some of them will say thank you.

Smile at someone for no reason.

Say bad words when you stub your toe because medical research, the empirical kind, has determined it will make you feel better.

Presume your friends and family love you ... accept them. Unless they're toxic and hurting you; if so, shun them and heal.

Understand something about addiction and the horrible things it does because it may happen to someone you love; they need help and you need to man up. Support their recovery and their health.

Health care is a right, not an option. That's all.

Boys and men are often physically stronger than you. Know how to defend yourself or get help, and when to scream your head off. I did when that man chased me with a knife.

Demand that your children say please and thank you; know all their passwords, that's a fact of life.

Demand that Facebook take down threatening pages, hate pages and mean pages. Just. Do. It.

Don't live with blank walls and pages. Look at beautiful things and live longer (well, I think so.)

Don't buy counterfeit designer goods if you can help it. It's made by the children of the world and hungry people. That's the truth.

Say hello to everyone you run into. See what happens.

Buy the best quality basics you can (hello sales, I love you). You probably need a black pencil skirt, two fabulous white shirts (one tailored, one fantasy), a black and navy cardigan, pearls, good black pumps, Spanx and a good set of underwear.

Don't give to the people in front of markets that ask you for money to save the homeless or battered women. Do it online because chances are they are all big fat liars.

Accept that someone believes differently, thank them for their thoughts and roll your eyes only when you have walked away.

Make sure all children tell all the bad things bad people do. It is not ok to have children keep secrets.

Vote. Give money to the candidate that you really believe in. Don't give up.

Get angry at mean people. Really angry.

It is not a sin to dress badly and get over mocking anyone. Stop your kids on the spot if they do.

Read. Read everything you can to understand more and more.

Learn about investments so that your 401K doesn't ever become a 101K again. Read.

There's not a lot I can do to change the world except little by little making things a little bit better. I don't know the answers at all but I think that kindness and happiness is contagious. I hope so.

The white roses are early John Galliano.

A Different Way: Armani Prive Fall/Winter 2011/12

2011-07-06T17:49:00.000-07:00

Ok, I have to admit that I hate reading about snipes, quotes, from Mr. Armani against other Italian designers. It's entirely declasse and unnecessary. Diego Della Valle snapped back with another take and an invitation to join him in raising money for a restoration of the Colosseum. Mr. Armani declined. It's just not seemly.

While I was almost rhapsodic about Karl's silhouette and mood at Chanel Haute Couture Fall 2011/12 because it made me lust for tight little jackets and a sort of bohemian but brave attitude, the Armani Prive collection confused me. The clothes are certainly beautiful but something is missing and these seem harsh, a rendition at the highest price levels that simply works hard.

Mr. Armani knows what he's doing and what his customer wants. I don't understand that customer, the woman who allows clothes to walk in the room slightly ahead of her. Beauty of another kind but absolutely beautiful. These dresses likely begin at 20,000.00.

Musing About Haute Couture, Karl Lagerfeld And Fashion

2011-07-06T17:07:00.000-07:00

Karl, like Cher, has been around for a while. A collection tells a story about its moment in time, and like a good novel, there is irony and history, passion and disinterest, love and rebellion. Karl's stories are sometimes abrupt, always intensely honest and frequently hidden by the cacophony of glamor and celebrity. I know that Anna Della Russo jumped in the air, that Milla Jovavich's five year old daughter was front row and that despite or maybe because of the grand scale of it all and the press, the usual irreverence of Karl was missed. That there weren't camellias or pearls and chains, that the somber almost discreet mood was very like the darkness of the late '30's with war and inflation, cabaret and champagne, unemployment and worry. Sturdier than the frail silk, hand beaded frocks in pretty colors. Tight little jackets with a pinched waist and maybe a peplum, to exaggerate a silhouette.

There is a place for fashion and its changes. Runway shows are theatrical experiences and a Chanel show is overwhelming. You can almost smell the money behind this kind of production and nothing really is happenstance.

I want Karl's little jackets and white shirts, skinny little skirts. I've lived in versions of Rick Owens cardigans, All Saints skinny jeans (that require baby powder to slide them on) and T's or camis. Really love Karl's black dress that's is The Little Black Dress but hardly a dainty thing. Love arm gloves poking out of a 3/4 length sleeve. Haute Couture is not something I lust for and there were so many times that street fashion showed up in a luxurious way at the H.C. Karl did not create this from the street and in a strange way, this is my favorite of his Chanel collections. It's a very romantic vision hidden under the runway styling.

It's this kind of feeling that I miss from my buying days. There's a runway show which has to be immediately forgotten or ignored. Even if you were buying for a one designer shop, cannot imagine doing that, you simply don't say thanks send the collection, see you next season. It was all about the showroom, clothes on hangers just like they would be in my shop or in my closet. It could take an entire day, as it did at Dolce & Gabbana with every piece available in almost any fabric. I flew from Paris to Milan just to do Dolce and back late night. I miss touching each fabric, slipping into every jacket (at least) to understand how it felt. It was so private and pure, before worrying about good deliveries, a weak dollar, other stores. It was something that customers wouldn't experience nor should they because they would try on and buy one dress at a time. I was filling my shop with a fantasy from their fantasy. Designers tried to visit the shops that bought their things and wondered how each store could be so different.

It's harder now, I think. Fashion shows are streamed live on facebook or even in 3D to your iPhone. Millions of people see an entire collection on the designer's website and, grrrrr, can even place orders. It's not the mystique that's gone, it's still in the magic and feel of the clothes. It just is hard for a boutique to compete with a designer. I miss it madly but I think I said that.

I loved a Chloe collection that Karl designed because some store buyers (department stores, ha!!) and press (not going to say who but "who" sometimes had fights with designers and wouldn't cover them) were absolutely dismayed that he showed it with Frye boots. The next one? White Keds. I love clothes and fashion and style but I am happiest when something is off ... style. Slightly askew, classic and twisted (JP Gaultier totally). Like Karl with his bespoke suit and elegant hair that should be captured on a stamp, his jewels and his sudden grin and his wristlets. I actually have more wristlets and armlets (is that a word) than anything. It just changes things and Karl does. Not in the same pretty way he could. This is for sure not an easy runway collection but the mood and the silhouette are. Purely romantic taken apart and I would be so happy buying this for a pretend shop. The real one at 8.00 sq ft and 400,000. to design is not feasible in a world of designers doing business directly with customers.

Something Exquisite At The Pushkin Museum

2011-07-04T14:57:00.000-07:00

So beautiful .. the work of Ukranian artist Kseniya Simonova and directed by John Cameron Mitchell.

Questioning Beauty, Considering The Greatness Of Johnny Weir

2011-06-30T16:35:00.000-07:00

There's no questioning the greatness of certain athletes. From somewhere in the mix of sweat and torn muscles, the meditation of constant practice, their extraordinary discipline, they are formed. Short careers and extreme adulation, they are cast as role models and sports agents show them the money. I love the possibilities of a human to reach beyond good, to endure pain, to focus. I love that Michael Jordan was not accepted on his high school basketball team and that every day he practiced. Practiced to achieve the perfection of an athlete.

Johnny Weir is a great athlete who loves wearing flamboyance, whilst appreciating the work of Chanel, Balenciaga, Lanvin, and designs his own costumes. His personal collection of Balenciaga bags in every color reduces me to awe, as does his ability to endure the personal and professional scorn heaped on him by some of his peers, some of the public and some of the gay fashion community.

I'm more than tired of the Fashion Police, the Who Wore It Better, the Rules of Fashion, the tight little box that no one who has attended middle school can escape without wounds or wild poetry in their blood. It hurts. It's small and often banal, which is far worse than extravagant excess or a bad outfit or, as the beyond great screenwriter Susan Estelle Jansen wrote for Hilary Duff in the Lizzie McGuire Movie, the outfit repeater.

For some horrible reason, my 7th grade PE teacher made us dance once a week in the gym. I don't remember the tune but I have never forgotten the boy who said loudly to me, "you don't know how to dance." He walked off and I don't remember what happened. I do know that I didn't dance again for years. I believed him even though I had taken ballet classes three times a week since I was three.

Years later in a pink dressing room in my Sunset Plaza shop, a very famous and extravagantly beautiful actress said to me, as she scoured her black Dolce & Gabbana dress image in the mirror for faults, that she couldn't wear black because in middle school she'd been teased for having very pale skin. The same translucent angelic appearance that made her a constantly working actress.

Life is short. Wear a bad dress. Wear a purple tux. Wear sequinned shorts and a Thom Browne jacket when you support a foundation that works to prevent teen suicide.

Question beauty and strive to be around it while inflicting no pain on another because of your failure to accept and understand others.

I am choosing to ignore all the Mean Girls because ... oh, because they're stupid. And if you have a Mean Girl in your life, don't accept it and speak very, very loudly to end it. No one should be torn down for amusement. Shout it and make it end. Do it. Make your kids do it.

Congratulations to Mr. Weir for being a great athlete and that Balenciaga collection and the goodness of your life.

Sebastian Errazuriz: The Dichotomies Of Mortality And Art

2011-06-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

Sebastian Errazuriz is young and his portfolio of product design, art, sculpture and product design is ferociously good and challenging. Religion, life, death and the strange wonderings free from the constraints of the usual. Sothebys had auctioned his work, he's Chilean Designer Of The Year, something akin to John Galliano and Alexander McQueen being British Designers Of The Year. Mr. Errazuriz is fabulous looking, always a satisfying thing. MOMA has commissioned pieces for its shop.

His website is here.

Zevs, Visual Violations

2011-06-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

Artnet has a few Zev Visual Violation pieces and his work is represented by Lazarides in London.

Not everyone loves visual violations or visual kidnapping. Giorgio Armani was not happy that his Hong Kong boutique became a Zav art installation and took him to court.

Of course there are as many street artists shown in museums and galleries as there are people disturbed by it.

Banksy pieces begin in the low six figures. "If graffiti changed anything it would be illegal" is a Banksy vandalism on a wall.

Sylvia Heisel: Some Random Thoughts

2011-06-20T18:07:00.000-07:00

so here go some random thoughts…..

i can't believe i still do this…..i'm not sure i still love or understand "fashion" but i still love designing and making clothes…..

my business has gone through a lot of different stages and identities in all these years….

20 years ago i was a young hip downtown NY designer…..no money, lots of press, very creative small company designer fashion…..then downtown got claustrophobic and being poor stopped being okay and i moved uptown and my clothes lost a lot of their creative edge and became more commercial and i made money…..then i ran the business sort-of on autopilot and renovated an apartment in manhattan and a really rural home in the Catskills….then i fell in love and married an artist…..then the economy crashed and i stopped making money……….now my business is a lot smaller and i've moved back downtown with my artist husband and i'm trying to be as creative as possible and make beautiful clothes and places and events and whatever else inspires me….

the bridal came about because someone (Robert Taylor) in the bridal business approached me about doing it….i don't understand the bridal business at all but the dresses are a lot of fun to design….sort-of like decorating giant cupcakes….

the apartment was incredibly much fun to do and has inspired us to pursue a lot of great new projects….it came about because we were renting an apartment in a very fancy new construction apartment building and everything was falling apart and the management fixed nothing….at a certain point almost everything had been put in storage because of leaks and nails that came through walls and other stuff and we knew were leaving at the end of our lease (4 months later ) and it just seemed like a fun thing to do…it took about a month to complete, cost very little (lots of tape, some fabric and a little paint) and we removed everything when we left….NY Magazine seeing it was random lucky break….

from that my husband and i have started doing other temporary design projects….Scott is a sculptor who was a bartender at Studio 54, an owner of nightclubs in NY and LA, and an assistant to event florist Robert Isabel at other times in his life…..we both have a love of crazy over-the-top stuff and like making things….

we're especially interested in making things and places that are temporary and made from recycled or recyclable materials….also what i've become very interested in with clothes….

fashion is really strange right now and i have a really hard time wrapping my brain around it…..to me, a lot of what the world thinks of as fashion is luxury product and very conservative and even more of it is just stuff that celebrities wear…..and a lot of what we all wear (myself included) is very function and comfort driven and not particularly creative….

these days i'm much more interested in making clothes that are either a part of other larger creative projects or are more conceptual and less functional as ready-to-wear clothing…..

the thing about couture and me is I love creating one-offs and special pieces but I hate working directly with the customer…..the moment it becomes about dressing mrs. cinderella for the ball and can i make the dress match the diamond earrings the emperor just bought her and haggling about the $'s i'm miserable…..i like creating creative couture stuff more than dressing the rich and famous in luxury goods…..

Sylvia Heisel website here.

Why Don't You? A White Victorian or Edwardian Skirt

2011-06-20T15:02:00.000-07:00

Romantic white skirts from long ago are not fragile and have become a goodly part of my summer wardrobe. Covering up a bathing suit at the beach or all prettied up with a little top, a crushable straw hat with flowers and big sunglasses that separate this from too sweet. Flea markets, vintage shops, eBay and Etsy. When they need to be freshened up, I boil them with Rit White-Wash for twenty minutes on the stove, stirring with a heavy wood paddle. Rinse in cool water and lay on a towel to dry, preferably in the sun.

I love this one from The RedHeadedPrincess at Etsy.com and it's perfect, no boiling required. My wonderfully generous friend Judith sent me an amazing Kenzo black leather obi sash, perfect for this.

Jeffrey Felner Talks About Fashion, Then And Now

2011-06-20T13:27:00.000-07:00

Growing up fashion

My growing up took place somewhere around age 26 when I realized that I had to be involved in the garment center, as it was called then, and not the “fashion business.” Starting as a textile designer with staff of 20, I then went to work as a buyer for one of the most prestigious specialty stores in the USA with branches in Scottsdale, Palm Beach and Birmingham, Michigan. We bought everything from Valentino, Montana, Mugler, Armani, Ungaro to Nancy Heller and so many more….from there to buyer for Elizabeth Arden, when they had 12 retail outlets, to being VP of design at Miriam Haskell to designing clocks. My soul always remained in the”business.”

The biggest difference from then to now is that then, fashion was not so democratic, meaning that the “step down from couture” was reserved for those who catered to maybe 2% of the female population and did so unapologetically.

There were fabulous specialty stores like Martha in NYC, Grace Jones in Saledo Texas, which boasted its own air strip, Lou Lattimore in Dallas, Lina Lee, Charles Gallay,Giorgio’s, those 3 just in LA. Imagine there was no Neiman’s yet in LA, no Barneys, but there was I.Magnin in LA. The small specialty stores were for the most part owned and operated by the eponymous owner who “owned” his or her clientele. Albert Lidji of Lou Lattimore could charm the chrome off a bumper, Grace Jones was as gracious and low key as any heiress you might have met and Martha was the grandest dame of all who would have made you believe she was a Rothschild when in fact she used to sell coats on the lower east side of yesteryear.

There wasn’t a “wealth pocket” in any state that didn’t boast at least one of these specialty stores who carried the finest and most expensive that money could buy. I got to know so many of them and was able to live as they lived on the sales floors or in Europe where we were treated as Gods. I can safely say it was a sort of elitist private club that had its own set of unwritten rules.

Imagine that one felt honored to be “accepted” into the club and that there was no blogging, there were really fashion critics who had opinions and that WWD even had an opinion and wasn’t afraid to put it in writing. There were no Tavis or Bryan Boy’s, whom I find absurd, there were only people who earned their stripes in the trenches and not by simply saying “oh that’s pretty,” or posting a photo on their blog real fashion folk who actually knew their customers and businesses and bought specifically for them.

I feel badly for those of the 21^st century “Fashion Business” who will never again know what life was like without printouts and computers and cell phones and instant communication. We had to be invited to a show and it wasn’t because we were fans, it was because we were customers and when you attended you were dressed for the occasion. Imagine that there were place card lunches when you went to your writing appointments at the Crillion and Hotel Particulieres which were rented for the “season” when writing. It was a glamorous business that allowed me to meet the greats of who built the business to the institution that it is today. I would never trade a second of who I met, legends of fashion, whether designers or shop owners or buyers who the newbies will never meet and probably will never hear of ….I am happy to be blessed with memories that few can speak of and not even if I could be 20 years younger would I want to change that part of my life.

My suggestion for those of you who might be contemplating a future in the “business” is to have a look at the list I have complied( http://jeffybruce.blogspot.com/2011/06/designers-who-have-all-but-been.html ) and study the names and study what these people did that made them famous …without the past there is no future.

Jeffrey Felner
http://www.oligoville.com/category/fashion/fashion-by-the-rules http://jeffybruce.blogspot.com http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/search?q=JEFFREY+FELNER http://www.examiner.com/user/2062506/2038116/articles
https://www.facebook.com/#!/JEFFYBRUCE?sk=notes

Madame Gres, A Guest Post From The Licentiate

2011-06-20T10:26:00.000-07:00

This wonderful guest post is from Licentiate.                                                               
                                                                     
                                                                     
                                             

“I wanted to be a sculptor. For me, it’s the same thing to work the fabric or the stone” - Madame Grès' 




Museum poster
The Fashion/Art debate rages on.  While a Jean Paul Gaultier retrospective opens in Montreal and the news that Rodarte's first couture collection will soon appear at The LA County Museum of Art, one exhibition continues quietly on in Paris.



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Madame Grès, La Couture à L’Oeuvre’, which is showing at the Musée Bourdelle in Paris will close on the 24th of July.  In this exhibition is a lifetime of work and has possibly the closest examples of fashion as an artform on display.  It's only good and proper that sculptural dresses lie next to more conventional mouldings.  It's a move that legitimises the claim of fashion as a real artform. 



Photo from Carmi's Art - there are some great close-ups here
The eighty examples of Madame Grès' are not outlandish, or controversial.  They do not assume lofty themes or have pretensions of grandeur.  They are sculpture in fabric.  Self-assured, impossibly executed and classically beautiful, the understatement of the simple forms emphasises the now extinct craftsmanship and inherent knowledge of a woman known first as Germaine Krebbs, then Alix, then Madame Grès.



Spring 1944 - source



Spring/Summer 1946 - source



Autumn/Winter 1952/3 - source
It's a shame that the Grès name isn't better known.  On trying to explain who she was to the boyfriend, he thought that she had something to do with fine dining.  Perhaps a partner without an interest in fashion is a bad example, but this is a woman who existed in the golden age of female couturiers - she operated in the same city, within the same timeframe with Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli, Jeanne Lanvin.  She should have been incredibly famous, but she died aged 90, in a home for the elderly, practically penniless after her name had been sold to a swiss licensing company, which now manufactures (not particularly good) perfumes. 
Even though the archives of Chanel and Lanvin may be raided to provide inspiration for Lagerfeld and Lanvin, the craftsmanship of Gres cannot or will not be copied.  Her vast, intricate pleating was time intensive and took up yards of material to create mere centimetres of a waistline.  Her dresses were not tailored, they were draped and built around the body - a skill that is taught at precious few fashion schools, which are more geared towards fast fashion and profit margins than ever before.  Each dress was different and special - true to the spirit of couture.
On reviewing this exhibition, Suzy Menkes said that "fashion can be an art form only with rigorous craftsmanship".  Is that is true, then Madame Grès must be fashion's Michelangelo.

The Licentiate blog is stylish and intelligent; relishing views of fashion and its inhabitants with humor, kindness and honesty. I fell in love with her consideration of Anna Piaggi and Tavi Gevinson as kindred souls; of course she is correct and not bogged down by preconceptions. Thank you so much for our conversations and your work on this. Beautiful .. wicked good actually.

On Father's Day

2011-06-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

"I'm your father and mother," my mother would say when I was quite small. It made me cross because of course, I as a snarky five-year old would think, she was only my mother.

She dropped me off at a birthday party in Silverlake, admiring some very modern houses on the way, houses very different than our bungalow in Hollywood on a street where cars drove too quickly to leave it and there really was a stranger offering candy to children. I leaped out of her car into a happy house with its father sitting in a comfy chair with a cacophony of little girls, an entire first grade class. I handed off the present my mother had wrapped and noted that in the hierarchy of size and beautifully wrapped presents, it was small and the ribbon was tired.

The bow on my dress was generous and my black patent Mary Janes were shining, white lace ankle socks were clean and the memory of the baby powder sprinkled carefully into my shoe my mother remained. The father held up a book and twenty scattered girls flopped at his feet in unison, as we'd learned to do at school. I shut my eyes while he read, wondering again why I didn't have a father and a little angry at my mother.

My mother had told me stories that didn't make sense to a five-year old, that she'd loved my father so much that she'd torn up all his photos. She held my hand at an amusement park as she instructed the sketch artist on the details of my father. When it was done, she looked at it and remarked that my dark hair was very much like his. I liked that much more than the vague sketch of a father.

She sent me to private school, drove me to ballet three times a week and made my costumes, she found an upright piano and a teacher, she kept me home from school for an entire morning to make me learn the multiplication tables. She and I played dress-up and glided through the small house with books on our head. She let me wear her cherry red lipstick pretending not to notice that I'd taken it, again, from her purse. She clapped too loudly at recitals and spelling bees and unlike my classmates, she sat alone.

It was hard and would get harder for her as she struggled with secrets and mental illness. As her world fell apart, she kept my tutus hung carefully and smiled at me when I came home from school.

I miss her. My mother who was both mother and father.

When There Really, Really Are Fashion Police

2011-06-15T15:45:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me to send a pile of Aperture magazines to a photographer living in Iran he'd met online. The postage was shocking but the very sad part was the photos he posted showing that Iranian censors had gone through each page with a fat black marker to obliterate the "offensive."

There are now 70,000 "morality" police officers in Tehran.

Basic Black Classic And Psychedelic

2011-06-12T16:09:00.000-07:00

The short psychedelic film Basic Black made in '67 opens with a veiled Peggy Moffitt, the era when she began modeling and became Rudi Gernreich's muse and then guardian of his legacy.

Basic Black .. timeless. Images tell the story here.

The Cristobal Balenciaga Museum

2011-06-12T14:26:00.000-07:00

A rare Cristobal Balenciaga coat with the label Eisa B.E. from 1935 - 1938 is part of the ninety piece collectiion on exhibit at the Cristobal Balenciaga Museum that opened last week in the northern Basque region of Spain.

Like Bill Cunningham, his sexual preferences were discrete and unknown; his private life remained his. He closed his House in '68 because he didn't like the direction of fashion.

Nicholas Ghesquierre is also a master of black.

Retrospective of Yves Saint Laurent Haute Couture 1962 - 2002

2011-06-12T12:58:00.000-07:00

Pierre Berge maintained a complete archive of over 5,000 pieces which allowed the depth of the exhibition at the opulent Le Petit Palais. Cocaine nights and Haute Couture days, an antidote for the pain of L'amour Fou.

Karl Lagerfeld once said to Chanel's chairman, Alain Werthheimer, "Chanel is an institution, and you have to treat an institution like a whore - and then you get something out of her." While luxury can be vulgar in its extravagance and hauteur, the beauty is compelling and in the fabled story of Yves Saint Laurent, heartbreaking and overwhelming.

This Is What Dreams Are Made Of, Well These Are My Dreams

2011-06-12T10:15:00.000-07:00

This is what dreams are made of ... today, with the encouragement of a friend who loves stories and fashion (but mostly Azzedine, of course) I sent off the impossibly daunting proposal, something that seemed impossible to complete, to sort through the possibilities. "Elegance is refusal," a good Diana Vreeland saying for getting through a project, sorting through a closet, considering excess which is not decadent. Decadent layering of accessories is different, I think. It can happen. Just like reaching for what you want, which is the good thing .. dreaming.

Stan Rogow produced the Lizzie McGuire television show, which made him the King of Tweens. And made me a Hollywood Wife for a long time (and now Hollywood Mom; Jackson is filming his third season on Cartoon Network's Dude What Would Happen). Sadly that fell apart, not really over a white belt but that was part of it. Don't ever hate a white belt!!

We went to Rome to make the Lizzie McGuire movie written by the extraordinarily talented, amazingly comedic, brilliant Susan Estelle Jansen, with Jackson given eight weeks of school work and homework. On breaks and at lunch Jackson tried to keep up with homework when he wasn't hiding in Hilary's trailer. Huge tables at lunch with Hilary and Jackson doing math together, curling up on the floor of our hotel elevator to see who the tinier was. Jackson is the Curly Haired Boy in the credits; he's the young boy at the airport.

Hilary's dress for the video just wasn't right and the movie flailed for a little. It was crazy important and all I could think of was Alexander McQueen's ruffled ballgowns. His office told me they couldn't do one quickly enough. Dave Robinson, the costume designer from Zoolander (ok, yes, the world's greatest movie ever!!) designed the ballgown that can be ripped off so she can dance.

I hit send this morning on the proposal email humming this song because This Is What Dreams Are Made Of. Oh, and plotting out the next one ... The Hollywood Wife, Hollywood Mom one. Dreams.

I'm Confused, Counterfeits Are To Be Celebrated?

2011-06-05T12:02:00.000-07:00

Sidney Gittler was the world's largest buyer of Haute Couture at a time when line for line copies were cool. I know; my mother oohed at some and others that did not meet her standards reduced her to a haughty churlish glare, flaring nostrils and tightened cherries-and-snow lips. Well, that was a long time ago. Yves Saint Laurent sued Ralph Lauren over copying the iconic YSL tuxedo dress he first showed in '66 and again during the fall '91 Haute Couture collection, collecting 395,000.00 for the finding of "counterfeiting and disloyal competition." Azzedine Alaia flew to Los Angeles to sue a local manufacturer for outrageous copies of his things purchased from the Alaia chez Gallay boutique on Rodeo, Alexander McQueen and Balenciaga both sued Steve Madden, and Louis Vuitton even goes after artists incorporating its iconic LV's.

I like Alan Schwartz. He's urbane and handsome and charming. I first met him at Helena's the night I met Eddie The Hat, the best "bad boyfriend" ever. I remember a Thanksgiving at his house crawling with football stars. His things were of fashion and affordable. I bought a few things for my shop, and they sold as well as the spendy, edgy European designers on the racks.

Sidney Gittler paid a caution, a fee to attend the Haute Couture shows with a commitment to buy a guaranteed amount of models, to be able to produce line for line copies. It's arguable whether copies impact designer goods. Certainly there are wealthy customers who are proud to have an Hermes Birkin for 199.00 .. but each year, even in the dark shameful days of the recession, business at Hermes thrived. The Balenciaga motorcycle bag was copied even down to the under 20.00 level sold at Target; soulless, ugly things unlike the original.

Princess Kate seems very cool and unlikely to be riled up by the silliness and commercialization surrounding the Royal Wedding.

I wish Alan had resisted this time.

On Beauty And Papa Bear and Who Wore It Better

2011-06-05T09:35:00.000-07:00

beautynoun1 the beauty of the scenery: attractiveness, prettiness, good looks,comeliness, allure; loveliness, charm, appeal, eye-appeal,heavenliness; winsomeness, grace, elegance, exquisiteness; splendor,magnificence, grandeur, impressiveness, decorativeness; gorgeousness,glamour; literary beauteousness, pulchritude. ANTONYMS ugliness.2 she is a beauty: beautiful woman, belle, vision, Venus, goddess,beauty queen, picture; informal babe, hottie, looker, good looker,beaut, siren, doll, arm candy, lovely, stunner, knockout, bombshell,dish, peach, eyeful, fox. ANTONYMS hag.

Papa Bear is my very glamorous 120 pound Bernese Mountain Dog. While he is not show dog calibre having one brown eye and one blue, cars do screech to a halt to smile at him. The perpetually drunk homeless man who is partial to sitting in the shade on the steps of a walk street near me in Venice smiles and lurches at Papa Bear, hugging Papa Bear and burying his head in his fur. Maybe for a moment he is at peace.

While Papa Bear is probably the most beautiful Bernese ever (I really think so), I've noticed his delight at sniffing the rear of almost any dog he sees. His tail wags and he strains on his leash, my big lumbering gentle giant wants to play. Remarkable he doesn't notice that it's he who grabs all the attention. He's not the breed standard but somehow he exists in a world that wants to love him for his uniqueness and that can see his great beauty.

The labels of beauty/non-beauty are not going to go away in a flood of acceptance as easily as Papa Bear's differences were accepted; this planet has not managed world peace yet either.

Sunday morning musing after learning of a freshman at Bennington that died in the common room last week. A couple of drinks and falling asleep to never wake up again, her friends that cannot make sense of her absence. A cup of coffee at my computer this morning and wondering why People Magazine does that who wore it better section. Voting on whether black shoes look better than gold? Is cleavage good or gross? Who's got cellulite at the beach that you didn't know had issues with it? Interviews with plastic surgeons commenting on the appearance of someone who may have done something? Just for right now, I'm really, really tired of it. The fashion police inviting you to laugh at some silly faux paus? Oh please.

L'Amour Fou ...The Crazy Love: A Story Of Piere Berge And Yves Saint Laurent But Surely Not The Only Story

2011-05-29T20:22:00.000-07:00

I left the matinee of L'Amour Fou sadly, understanding for the first time the language of ennui: the feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction, the demon that crept in to seize joy from the brilliant, dazzling Yves Saint Laurent. Pierre Berge as his lover, partner and finally protector becomes an observer, even of his own life, as he prepares the collections of riches, serious art, objects and rare examples of furniture to be inventoried and packed for perhaps the most important auction ever at Christie's. The bidding went wild, competitive, frenzied; a chair selling for $28,000,000.00. Pierre Berge is shown walking in alone, sitting alone; a duty of some kind is being carried out.

Once upon a time, Yves Saint Laurent had come to Christian Dior so very young and eager, smiling at life. Soon his own house and an awareness of the changing world and that street fashion was important to understand. It was with kindness, something that he radiated early in his career, that he launched a Pret a Porter collection, the first designer of the Haute Couture to do so; it would be produced by factories owned by Didier Grumbach's family. In the way that things move as they will, Didier Grumbach has become President of the Chambre Syndicale and Federation Francaise de la Couture.

Riches, mansions, fabulous friends, excesses and a gnawing pain as Saint Laurent withdrew more and more; when he gives up drinking and the drugs, he is alone with his work while Pierre Berge watches over him somberly, seemingly emotionless. There's no stop button, no bell, no help at all.

Saint Laurent in his long white coat at his atelier contemplative, sketching, his bow at the end of the show until the final one, Catherine Deneuve supporting him. His collections are mere flashes, perfunctory, simply illustrating his work sparsely, a stingy rendition, unsatisfying; the Mondrian collection is a counter point to the Mondrian works they acquired, now being sent off to auction. The Russian collection flashes too quickly to allow the impact of that seminal collection, arguably his best.

Like an index to be checked off, a very young Saint Laurent had fun with a q&a, a moment for Betty Catroux's darkness and the hilarity he yearned for in LuLu de la Falaise, her fondness and compassion genuine, the houses, the gardens, the art, the scenes in clubs, always smoking, ever more introverted; it's shown and then the next scene, no small moments, almost impersonal.

I'm sure this is an allegory for the Pret a Porter that grew and grew alongside Saint Laurent's influence as a designer with his own shops. The YSL Rive Gauche was made in the Mendes factories that belonged to Didier Grumbach's family. It was Didier that brought Ossie Clark, Emmanuelle Khan, Jean Charles de Castelbajac and Issey Miyake to the historical Createurs et Industriel fashion show in Paris to be manufactured in his factories. The "little hands" of the Haute Couture gave way another level of fashion: industrialization.

The context of watching a simple albeit plodding documentation of the life and death of Saint Laurent witnessed by Pierre Berge, a man who thrust his hands in his pockets and walked heavily - alone, with the loss of Alexander Lee McQueen to suicide, Christophe Decarnin of Balmain replaced after being hospitalized for months with a serious kind of depression and the devastating implosion of John Galliano caused by his depression and addiction was heavy and hard. It's not easy to understand the kind of pain that destroys lives. And why others escape this blight. I don't understand at all.

Pierre Berge was asked if Saint Laurent would have swept the collection of their lifetimes to auction and he said no. No, Saint Laurent would have missed his treasures, each one.

Didier had once asked Charles and me if we could buy the collection for their South Coast Plaza Rive Gauche. I remember the gleam of the brass elevator marked with the YSL imprint taking us directly to the showroom; wood tables, racks of clothes, fitting models ... the usual. We worked easily, really just for the satisfaction of being buyers of Saint Laurent. Later on that trip we walked into the Valentino showroom that wouldn't sell to us and sat boldly at a table, beginning to write quite a nice order before we were discovered, Marco Rivera's finger wagging at us. We were buyers of Giorgio Armani which was produced in the same factories as Valentino and we thought we might have pulled it off.

Not quite a fashion film. It is disquieting, I think. The sadness Saint Laurent lived with was pervasive, eating away. Terrible.

the pleasure of old photos while facing the displeasure of organization

2011-05-29T08:53:00.000-07:00

My pine work table is ten feet long and littered in books, Alice Drake's The Beautiful Fall amongst the lot, photo albums, two computers, one laptop, rolls of quarters for parking meters, note cards with notes that once meant something and an unused Staples Reward Certificate in the amount of 10.00 along with my white fingerless gym gloves and two cameras, one digital and one film.

Mary Rae McDonald, Karen Lamm, Rina and Adam Shankman cozying up on a loveseat, long-haired babes from the late '80's including me, Helena (she of the Helena Club funded by Jack Nicholson whilst living on the Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty complex) and Carole Childs (a rock n roll legend who just happened to date Bob Dylan for eleven years), Angelo and me (my hair, Angelo, what were we thinking??) in a Susie Becker dress she had made for me with five fittings (that would be Haute Couture, yes??),

Memorial Day and memories, the perfect time to try to organize thousands (over 38,000 actually) online photos scanned into iPhoto.

Daunted.

wearfigs.com ... My Amazing Cousin The Purveyor Of Socially Responsible Neckwear

2011-05-26T18:29:00.000-07:00

Yes, that's my gorgeous cousin Heather surrounded by children. She is doing something extraordinary with her life and her happiness shows. As it should.

When Heather was in college, she made belts. Beautifully handworked and drop dead chic, any belt she delivered to Theodore's on Rodeo Drive sold out. Immediately. Nice, yes? Ambitious girl making fashion products? Yes to all of that. But this is not your ordinary Heather, no. All the money from the sale of the belts was sent to an orphanage in Vietnam.

Not that long ago, Heather started another business. Ties. Bowties. Bespoke and exquisitely made, available on her website FIGS Ties. Heather hasn't changed really. With each tie sold, she purchases a school uniform for a child in Kenya where poverty rages and children cannot afford the required uniform. That's pretty incredible, isn't it.

I sent my gorgeous cousin a few questions because I can't imagine how she gets it all done. Lots done actually. Her answers are below. Yes, I am very proud of what she does.

HI MADS-
I just did a quick Q and A- let me know if you have any other questions or if this is what you wanted? xx00hh

Q & A

Q: How do you begin these projects with the marketing, manufacturing and selling?
A: Making a FIGS tie always begins with selecting and importing the highest quality fabrics and translating our designs into production.  The fabrics come from Italy, Northern Ireland, Britain, Australia - and are then hand sewn by our tailors in New York and Los angeles featuring our signature leather tie keepers and red bar tacks.

Q: How did you find the way to donate a uniform with each tie sold?
A: Donating a school uniform to a child with the sale of each tie – Threads for Threads – is the heart of our company.  As such, it is so important to us that the communities we serve are a part of the process and are behind the mission as much as we are!  By employing tailors from the areas we help; and embracing personal relationships with our school communities, FIGS isn’t just a Los Angeles-based operation – it is global.

Q: The cashmere project - when did this start and what made you think of it?
A:  FIGScashmere arose out of our resolve to fill a void in the scarf world for ridiculously soft cashmere.  Scarves have always been a mainstay of my wardrobe and it seemed like a natural progression for FIGS’ offering of neckwear.  They are a staple of basics and add a third dimension to an outfit. – it’s 100% ridiculous.

Q: Tell us about your recent trip to Oxford.
A: I am so fortunate to have received a scholarship to study at the Oxford University School of Business.  I recently returned from my studies with the Finance Programme for Senior Executives and had an amazing experience.  Tre-cool.

Q: Do you have help with the projects?
A: Team FIGS is behind every tie, each step of the way. We have an energetic group dedicated to seeing each tie serve two interwoven ideals – revitalizing the concept of dressing for success by supporting a child’s education, one tie at a time.
For ever tie sold, FIGS gives a uniform to a child in need.

Facts (of course any other salient facts, like your museum association, etc)
Clinton Global Initiative tie maker
Whitney Museum of American Art collaboration with artist Charles Ledray
Tom Colicchio’s Craft Restaurant collaboration
we do weddings and custom ties for individuals

THE sole purpose of my in-basket this week seems to be to goad me into looking at fashion from the Cannes Film Festival."

2011-05-22T13:50:00.000-07:00

A very good journalist who can take an acerbic stab at fashion that is tired or derivative, can become rhapsodic about spending time in Azzedine's kitchen (been there, en famille and it is a nice respite from the business of fashion) and can make language dance in staccato phrasing is emphatically tired of the emails from fashion designers. Bitingly criticizing some "designer froth" as being aging and noting that it takes a great pair of legs to pull off hot pants while bemoaning the flood of emails and photos from Cannes, perhaps not aware of the irony in the statement that "because of the duration of Cannes, and the number of events — not just the premieres and the AmfAR AIDS gala on Thursday, but also daily photo calls and parties — the festival has outpaced the Oscars in style." Perhaps a reason for a crowded inbox.

The work of sorting invitations to runway shows, scheduling a showroom visit, viewing videos and lookbooks in the fashion capitals of the world is, umm, the job. It's work. It's damn nice work, I think.

Maybe it is all too much every now and then. Take a nap, get a facial, go to a yoga class.

Kindly refrain from bemoaning the process and get interested again. Show don't tell and remember that there's always someone new that would slap their manicured fist down and ask you to scoot over because she wants to see every single photo. Every email. Everything.

Your readers do want to see the photos, read your delicious agnostic critiques and sigh over a slim foot in a hot red stiletto or black hot pants or chuckle at an overdone starlet.

Sleep is restorative and if that doesn't work, well .. someone else will.

Antoine's Story and Ed Hardy, yes I know .. Ed Hardy?

2011-05-22T12:26:00.000-07:00

There's something honky-tonk about boardwalks. Here in Venice there's flophouses mingling with architected houses that weigh in with a several million dollar price tag. Bicyclists with helmets, skaters that might have a marker stuffed into their socks, mommies pushing swings not high enough for toddlers who love the swoosh and freedom of flying up to the sky and drug/drink addled homeless in varying states of decay. Tucked into doorways and under bushes, church steps and sometimes the middle of a sidewalk, they rest, half hidden under a blanket. Luckier ones rile the city up by living in their cars or small trailers. It's colorful in the daytime in a raunchy third world, noisy way but the beach and the ocean are too elementally beautiful and captivating and so throngs fork over 20.00 a sunny weekend to park to pay 12.00 for a hot dog and a diet coke. A place that Kelly Cutrone read palms long ago, before the very cool p/r gig, the TV show and two books.

You get used to the homeless as quickly as the sightings of Bruce Willis. Churros and designer pizza, flipflops and Lanvin ballets. Gentrification is held at bay, barely.

I live on a walk street two blocks from the beach, parking is in the alley behind my house. My neighbor's house is blue and she parks under a mature lemon tree. It could be somewhere in the South of France and is very removed from the fracas and raunch of The Boardwalk.

A man was reading a book and eating a sandwich in the shade of that pretty tree last week, half-hidden by her silver car. Maybe a worker, I thought. A few hours later I backed into my parking spot under a pepper tree and he was still there, half-hidden under a blanket. I walked over tentatively, my fingers ready to tweet for help to Venice311.

His face was gaunt. Incongruously, white Ed Hardy (I know, Ed Hardy???) sneakers poked through the edge of the blanket. They were immaculate, a sort of heartbreaking surprise.

"Ma'am, don't be afraid. I'm an Iraqui vet. I'm hungry .. I need help."

I ran inside and returned with a bottle of water and an organic green salad from Whole Foods. He looked at the healthy greens and then at me. Ah, not a salad eater ...

Venice311 knows everything that goes on here and how to get things done. I sent a tweet ... who should I call for help. Antoine stood up, a slight man clean shaven and neat. He was so skinny. I drove him to get a hamburger. He waited patiently outside, telling me he was ashamed that he wasn't dressed well enough and didn't want to be around people. Venice311 and I came up with an emergency plan. She drove her large SUV to my house to park. A large roomy back area and a sleeping bag for the night.

I let Antoine into my house for a shower, telling him sternly that if Papa Bear, my 120 pound Bernese, sensed that I was anxious at all, he would promptly eat Antoine. He accepted that with another sweet "yes, ma'am."

The next morning Venic311, Antoine and I sat at my kitchen table. He'd been in the Navy for eight years, the last two in Iraq and was being treated at the Veterans Administration in Long Beach for PTSD (post traumatic stress syndrome). Someone had laced a cigarette with crystal meth a few months ago and he'd stopped taking his medication. He'd found his way to Venice and hung with a small group of addicts and drunks who slept on the wide steps of a nearby church, staying together for protection. A quick downfall, and maybe the speed of it saved him.

His grandmother in Louisiana had brought him up; he'd been too ashamed to call her for help. I handed him the phone and he made the call, a hard thing to admit to this much-loved woman that he'd gone awry. Hard calls must be made and the relief was apparent before he began chatting happily. Happily ...

The lovely Venice311 had made several calls and was ready to take him to the Clare Foundation, a place that won't turn away someone who needs a hand and to detox. He was accepted into their 30 day program.

This is a very touching story with an outcome that sadly doesn't happen with most homeless addicts. Maybe it was inbred, that particular care of his Ed Hardy shoes and his appearance, that saved him. He didn't want to be the homeless junkie living under a blanket.

He may very well go back to finish training to be an MRI technician. He called yesterday to thank me .. "thank you, Miss Madeleine." And immediately let me know that he didn't think he could become a vegetarian, very politely. Candy, pringles and gatorade if you please.

Hope by the beach. I do have to talk to him about Ed Hardy, when he's healthier. Ed Hardy???????? Would I have been able to do more than turn him over to someone else if I hadn't appreciated the care he'd given his Ed Hardy's? In which case, fashion made the day!!

Hermes Hermes And More Hermes

2011-05-01T13:11:00.000-07:00

A gathering of flamingos is a flamboyance, there's a flock of birds, a school of fish, a litter of puppies, a pride of lions and then there is the Heritage Luxury Auction.

Hermes Hermes Hermes .. The matte crocodile Birkin at the top has a 76,000.00 beginning bid (actually it's 90,820.00 with the buyers premium). A collector's dream and actually far less than Jane Birkin's Birkin auctioned to raise funds for the survivors of the Japanese Disasters at a sweet 167,000.00.

Drowning in Birkins ... and extreme luxury.

(umm, authentic and actually all are substantially less than those rather questionable ones on eBay ..)

Fairy Tales, The Delicately Beautiful Sarah Burton and Please Live Happily Ever After

2011-05-01T12:23:00.000-07:00

Three billion people may have watched the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, happy at another fairy tale and hoping that they live happily ever after. The memories of the other Royal Wedding, Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, dashed that fairy tale to bits with her visceral unhappiness, the nasty divorce, Prince Charles' middle aged public infidelity and the inexplicable loss of Diana.

The delicately beautiful Sarah Burton attended to Catherine's train before the pomp and ceremony of the wedding, something a mother or a best friend might have done. A million blogs and news stories were rushed with photos and reviews of the dress, Sarah Burton's dress. Extreme fascinators were dissected along with the appropriateness of the guests ensembles and two kisses on the balcony, not just the obligatory one.

And the same three billion people need this fairy tale to have only happy beginnings and a long happy life.

My friend Janet sent me the trailer to Tom Shadyac's documentary I AM. Mr. Shadyac as a very successful Hollywood major movies director (Ace Ventura Pet Detective, Bruce Almighty) could sit back and make blockbusters as he liked but after a serious bicycle accident he sold his 17,000 sq ft house moving into a trailer park in Malibu and hit the road with a four person crew to look for what was wrong with the world and maybe how to fix it. Looking for windmills of a different color as over and over he discovered that we humans have deep connections, deeply caring about one another and wishing happiness for others.

We, roughly three billion of us, care very much about the fairy tale in process of Prince William and Catherine. Happily ever after would do nicely.

Umm, there is some question about the depth of caring about a few of the fascinators. One could say that we three billion strong hope that those tall beige ones are promptly lost, never to be seen again.

Dust Off Those Gossamer Wings

2011-04-24T13:25:00.000-07:00

There's an ancient proverb that we are meant to walk with a note in each pocket. One is to say that for us the world was created and the other, ah the other: we are but a grain of sand in all the universe.

There's something so humble and wonderful in Frank Sinatra's letter about a reluctant pop star. Sometimes it is just that simple, "Man up". My kid saved this on his desktop which of course makes me happy.

Barbara Marx Sinatra and her best friend Bea Korshak were customers, shopping in little white tennis dresses while Beverly Hills teetered between provincial resort neighborhood shopping and a tourist mecca. They shopped very well and very often. Bea's husband knocked on the locked back door. I unlocked it to find George Raft and Sidney Korshak half hidden by their hats pulled forward blocking the doorway. Sidney silently counted out a stack of hundred dollar bills and left. Sometimes a salesgirl would call Bea to let her know about a new shipment. When Sidney answered the phone he simply hung up the phone.

My mother had told me a story about driving through a Beverly Hills canyon late one night with my father and getting lost, she in a silk print dress that she'd let me play dress-up in when I was very little. They'd parked and walked to a doorway. Rudy Vallee came out to give them directions. My mother's eyes sparkled every time she told the story.

Bidding For Good #winning

2011-04-22T09:59:00.000-07:00

What does the Kentucky Derby have to do with Betsey Johnson and Chambord Liquor??

The two Derby fantasy hats will be auctioned to raise money for the National Breast Cancer Coalition. One will be auctioned off at Bidding For Good and the other on the Facebook Like page of Chambord Liquor.

Collaborations are good and fantastical pink Betsey Johnson hats do not come along every day.

But I am very excited to have found the Bidding For Good site, which has auctions for many places from schools to research centers. Just bookmarked it and am looking forward to exploring it. This is a good thing.

Rumours .. The Complexity of Memories and Love Stories

2011-04-17T15:09:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you hear a song and you remember everything and then you smile. Emotions and people and all those memories are there and you hit replay to get it all back.

Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham walked in the Camden Drive shop together, very together. Later that afternoon, Liza Likins, their red haired backup singer, came in to pick up armloads of clothes. Liza would do that again and again after Stevie and Lindsey sort of floated through. Years later, she'd cashier at Maxfields. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham broke up in '82; "tumultuous, like a boa constrictor and a rat."

Christine McVie came in too, a delicate beautiful blonde, sometimes with Mick Fleetwood. I remember every moment of their Rumours years. Falling in love when I shouldn't have and separating, the clothes, Margaret Thatcher became the Prime Minister of England, America invaded Afghanistan, Dennis Wilson and Karen Lamm were separated for the second time, Mr. Chow's ..

Christine McVie had her times with hard drinking after that. Shopping and drinking after a failed marriage to Dennis Wilson, shopping and drinking alone on New Year's Eve. Someone in the shop asked what her plans were that night .. "just get in a limo and drive around." Alone.

Stevie and Lindsey singing together again.

I remember Karen Lamm the most, of course. She'd come in after our Jean Muir show at Mr. Chow's, bringing Loree Rodkin with her. We'd become friends. Dennis had sat in the back and asked what he should buy Karen. I tried a Chloe dress on that I thought she'd like - a safe bet, she bought everything Chloe and just about every other thing in the store - and wrapped it up. She wore it to dinner at Mr. Chow's that night, jumping up to say "hello, fattie" and kiss her favorite waiter. Karen and Dennis just belonged together, married twice, in between the drugs. But it couldn't have lasted, not that craziness. There was only sadness when Dennis died and then again when Karen died in '01.

My friend Judith Dan just sent me photos of Dennis and Karen together for a feature she'd styled for Playgirl Magazine in '76. The storyline read:

The party's over.

You don't want to go home.

Where do you go?

Follow eight brilliant stars as they hold back the nite..

Karen Lamm and Dennis Wilson

Goodbye Bijan Pakzad

2011-04-17T11:00:00.000-07:00

Bijan Pakzad opened on Rodeo Drive in 1976 with a simple mission to become the world's most expensive store for presidents, royalty and rock stars. By appointment and with a receptionist at a discreet desk instead of the traditional cashier, his own perfume (and billboards), periodically guards protecting his storefront. Beverly Hills was a sleepy rich people's town, neighborhood shops and plenty of white t's and tennis rackets, drinks at the Polo Lounge and dinner at The Bistro, expensive houses and an alert police department stopping people and cars that didn't look like white enough from entering Beverly Hills. Stopped while black was as true as the black waitresses at Hamburger Hamlet on Beverly Drive back Then.

A confluence of political circumstances, a deposed and very ill Shaw, had sent very cultured, very educated and very wealthy Persians fleeing to a similar climate of sunshine and money: Beverly Hills in the '70's. Gucci had stopped closing for lunch, Fred Heyman's butler greeted every woman with a "you're the most beautiful woman in the world" and Herb Fink of Theodore's sold the skinny T's and jeans of the South of France while offering to sell his store for a white Corniche. Jurgensen's was the pink grocery store on Beverly Drive, next to a hardware store, that delivered to the service entrance of the gate hillside homes. Maids in uniforms also purchased on Beverly Drive at a fairly large shop next to Beverly Stationers and Phil's Poultry, signed as they shopped for the houses without the required service entrance.

Bijan's aspirational dreams swept into Beverly Hills bringing a wave of rich Texan blond wives opening shops for designers based on sketchy interpretations of Judith Krantz's Scruples, a story of fashion and sex in of Beverly Hills loosely based on Charles Gallay and Giorgio's (both totally believed the book was just about them: it was). Judith Krantz did purchase her book tour wardrobe at Charles Gallay, by the way.

Jerry Magnin's former wife Erin opened a YSL Boutique on Camden Drive; it failed. Marilyn Lewis, who owned the Hamburger Hamlet chain, took that for her Cardinali Boutique; a brief stay. Jerry Magnin's men shop on Rodeo Drive carried Ralph Lauren's Polo ties, the beginning of Jerry's transition to the Ralph Lauren boutique he owned. Donald Pliner owned Right Bank on Camden (his wife Lois left him to marry Jerry) with Maud Frizon, Basile suite that Diana Ross and Carly Simon bought by the pound.

Ruby Bretzfield, a buyer at I. Magnin's, lost her husband Sam to Nancy Jean, an ice skater. Sam backed Donald Pliner's RBCC shops while banned from designer fashion shows in Europe. International Set, Sam's company, made fast copies of designer clothes. He offered thousands for fashion show tickets to try to slip in unrecognized. Somehow Sam was appointed Representative to The People of Bangladesh, a post Nancy stepped into after Sam's death.

Camden Drive with Mr. Chow's Restaurant and Charles Gallay (ahem). Betty Dorso and her husband Dick, a former talent agent, had opened a small boutique selling eccentricities and monogrammed velvet slippers after being a Diane Arbus model near Alan Austen. Norma Kamali took that space before her divorce and move to New York to open OMO (on my own). Roots took it next while doing the mens shoes in American Gigolo in which Richard Gere did the first full frontal nudity scene.

Indie shops were shoved out in the gentrification and globalization and there are few who dream of opening the world's most expensive store. Just another street of designer boutiques similar to any other city's tourist and designer shop district. Business, just business.

Bijan's yellow Rolls screamed money and dreams. He died Thursday night at Cedars Sinai. He did dress the presidents, royals and rockers he'd wanted to. Champagne dreams and a yellow Rolls on a small street in Beverly Hills.

Happy Spring Day Of Red, Fire Breathing Dragons And A Year Of Good Luck

2011-04-10T07:53:00.000-07:00

Spring Festival is today. A Chinese custom to repay the gods and celebrate good harvests begun in the ancient days of the 21st Century B.C. A year of love and romance for young people who serve a whole chicken with all its parts, little red pouches of coins for children and fireworks at night.

Cooking and new clothes come earlier, the lovely preparations for a holiday. When I was small, my mother took me shopping for Easter. A pink dress, a little straw hat with flowers or cherries and white gloves. White nylon socks with lace and spiffy black patent Mary Janes while her nipped waist dress, a small ode to Scarlett O'Hara's cinched in days, swished as it brushed her nylons and with her freshly Prelled hair and Maybelline cake mascara, a little face powder on her lips as she layered Revlon's cherry red lipstick and off we went to church to watch a procession, with heraldry and blessings. The nuns were quite fond of my divorced mother who rather cheerfully had offered to drive them to the market or a doctor, even though they uttered a little prayer as they entered her car.

It's good to celebrate even if the pretty pink is tucked in memories and your closet is lush with black and white. A pink cardigan will do.

If you eat a little fish today, you will have abundant luck all year. Lovely to know that.

The new clothes part is particularly interesting to me, along with the luck of course.

Abundance and new clothes. Happy Spring Day.

The Romance of A Little Black Tulle and Roses, A Sinewy Arm and Gold's Gym

2011-04-09T16:55:00.000-07:00

Gold's Gym in Venice is mythic and I've been back for two weeks. Long ago, it was a scruffy, stinky, steroid-taking mess and hardcore bodybuilders posed and bulged. It's air conditioned and there are several hand-purifier dispensers scattered around thoughtfully, towels are usually brought to wipe sweat off a seat and sometimes you can spot Bruce Willis (insanely cool) or Hulk Hogan posing for pictures. Ellen Barkin trained here before her Ron Perlman fiasco. It's a kinder place with nice cars in the parking lots but there's still a spot for mean motorcycles gussied up.

My copy of Robert Maplethorpe's Lady, Lisa Lyon is tattered somewhere. I don't bring bags of cereal to the gym anymore or carry a list of what machines to do that day. Being strong would be nice, I think.

Beauty comes in all shapes but a beekeeper hat with a flower becomes dangerously romantic. Mary McDonald made them for me with yards of tulle and flowers. Daniel Storto's glamorous hand made gloves would be necessary too. A little fantasy and three sets of twelve. My little white leather weightlifter gloves are not my mother's little lady gloves.

More photos of Robert Maplethorpe's exquisite work.

The Way I Remember ... Julie Anne Rhodes And A few Other Moments

2011-04-03T18:53:00.000-07:00

Julie Anne Rhodes (her award winning blog is Jewels From The Roving Stove) was sleeping in my bed. I'd flown home from Paris arriving at LAX and plucking suitcases from the trolley, hoping that US Customs would ignore me and let me walk outside to hunt for a taxi. It was about midnight when I unlocked my front door, leaving my luggage in the kitchen, petting my elderly sleeping dog and very ready to brush my teeth and slip between the cool white sheets in my bedroom. Just as I did, I startled. Why was someone in my bed?? Julie Ann smiled and sat up. Angelo, who was no doubt sleeping soundly in the back house, has tucked her in. She'd flown out alone and I'd forgotten to let Angelo know when I'd be home. Angelo had been on the road with Duran Duran and gotten very close to Julie Anne.

I asked Julie Ann if she could sleep somewhere else and she immediately got up, kissing me good night. Angelo's house had a guest room and she'd be cozy back there.

Julie Ann said that's not the way it happened. I think she's wrong. We do agree that every time she flew out here, we'd immediately pile into my car to pick up Popeye's Chicken on Hollywood Boulevard. And eat it on the way back.

I drove from Venice Beach to Beverly Hills, a black silk ruffled dress (very Black Swan) over All Saints jeans, to meet her for lunch and to visit a designer showing pieces from Summer Fall '11 in the penthouse at the Hotel Lux. Stefanel is an old Italian house known for working with knits, passed from the father to the son who had grown the venerable company to over 500 stores in Europe. The company had worked with Calvin Klein and Romeo Gigli in the '90's and now is looking at America as a new market. Mario Testino is doing the campaigns and there is a ton of money involved in the revamp of Stefanel from a classic Italian house with good quality but rather staid designs to a younger, hipper fashion customer. The kind of girl who gets her picture taken, I think.

I chatted with their Italian p/r girl who'd come from Dolce & Gabbana. The Santa Cecelia leopard and gilt showroom was now Domenico and Stefano's offices: everything changes. She couldn't confirm the rumor that D&G will be shut down. She was traveling with the Stefanel collection to meet with stylists, people from William Morris and CAA; no plans to meet buyers or press which vaguely confounded me, but it might have been the sun. The precise business plan did elude me.

I walked to the edge of the balcony for a panoramic view of Rodeo Drive. A warm day with tourists in shorts and sandals, snapping photos against the glimmering yellow Rolls Royce parked below. My memories of it were long ago; I remembered a street of resort boutiques, a Gucci that closed for lunch, Fred Heyman kissing the ladies walking into his store while his butler offered each customer a glass of wine and a "you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen." Herb and Norma Fink's Theodore had moved to Camden Drive near Mr. Chow's and now the bright white shop at the corner was a Missoni boutique. I wouldn't miss this version ... but the other was wonderful. Stories, so many stories.

A Review of L'Oreal UltraSleek Shampoo Because It's Amazing

2011-03-27T13:47:00.000-07:00

I don't know if sulfates in shampoos strip color and dry out your hair. But just in I've sampled several and all have lacked that delicious slip that means clean. Each companion conditioner was simply dreadful. Struggles to gently swipe a paddle brush through longer hair was a complete failure. The amount of MoroccanOil product needed to drag the brush through resulted in limp, oily hair.

Skeptically buying yet another contender, L'Oreal's UltraSleek Shampoo and Conditioner, I expected more of the same. Much to my delight, this amazingly wonderful product has slip, a distinct lack of silicone but extreme shine and the brush glided through my wet tangle as if it were silk. Air drying or blow drying, my frizzy struggles ended and you need to try this immediately. All the rest of your shampoo and conditioner combinations will be insanely jealous and you will be so happy. Completely unlike the others in the L'oreal sulfate free line. Heaven ... and how about that under 8.00 price!!

The wonderful blogger BritishBeautyBlogger wrote about the issues of so many products with Argan Oil ... totally a must read.

Simply Lovely Leopard Ballerinas by London Sole

2011-03-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

I love fashion shoes made entirely of straps and imagination, wedges, platforms, stilettos (no kitten heels, don't worry) with twisty windy bits with price tags that could make the sales person churlishly advise you as she walks away that if you have to ask the price, sniff, they're not for you.

Fashion shoes have become too special, sigh. Bad attempts to mimic the Chanel flipflop with the obligatory camellia have launched a plethora of (bad, really bad) plastic shoes with prices in the hundreds.

All I really wanted was something cozy and cute to slip into that works as well with summer's white skirts as jeans, maybe even something that makes me happy when I look down at it.

Oh and please ... not $$$$$$$$$$.

Voila. From a selection that spans two shop walls and two gorgeous tables littered with indie ballerina flats, I do believe leopard spots are the new black.

LondonSoles.com

‎"Every breath you take today should be with someone else in mind. I love you." Dame Elizabeth Taylor

2011-03-27T11:05:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Taylor ... late to her own funeral. Goodbye beautiful lady.

AIDS became a diagnosis in '81. Maybe. Gay men were dying quickly, horrible deaths. Fashion houses just decimated of their handsome young men. Adriano Gianelli had left Armani for Biagiotti but it didn't help. He was only sick for six months before wasting away to his death. It was ugly and people were terrified because there was no clear understanding of how it was contracted. Mosquitoes, a kiss, drinking from the same glass, a vacation in Haiti, a bathhouse ...

By the time of Rock Hudson's death from AIDS, there was no treatment and no research funding. Jerry Falwell screeched that AIDS was God's punishment while Ronald Reagan ignored pleas for funding. Dame Elizabeth sidestepped the deep rampant fear and disgust for the "Gay Plague" stepping into the void, knowing that the media would follow. Her commitment and willingness to drag others with her to the '85 Aids Project LA Commitment to Life and raising money to form amFAR with Dr. Mathilde Krim's AIDS Medical Foundation along with David Geffen and Dr. Arnie Klein changed AIDS from the hopeless death sentence over years of well-funded research to a chronic disease that many could manage and live with.

Tina Chow sat across me from at The Ivy on Robertson shortly after her return from Japan. She'd been hospitalized there with pneumonia and still looked frail, her beautiful eyes too large for her face. I'd had pneumonia that summer after spraying my roses with something toxic and breathing it in. Her eyes were wet and wild. "I've got AIDS." Without thinking, my own hand covered my wineglass, wondering for a second if the alcohol would kill the virus. She understood and sat back. I stopped and reached for her hand because she was my friend. She died at home in '92.

It's hard to put together what happened to Angelo, my roommate. Janice Dickenson had sent him to rehab and then he came to live with me. He'd been sober for years, visited his friends with AIDS in the hospital and tested every few months to just make sure. Having avoided dentists for years, he relented only as horrid toothache forced him into treatment. He kept a few sober friends around who watched as his dentist visited him at home, giving him shots for an infection. The dentist visited nightly that week, sticking Angelo each time.

Angelo's Jaguar was still in the garage we shared, remnants of the perfume he'd sprayed lingering in his car. I found him sprawled on the floor with a needle nearby, unconscious. An ambulance came quickly taking him to a hospital. An overdose, maybe some nerve damage from lying so awkwardly. He came out of it and asked me to bring a sweater to him from his closet, his voice sloppy and thick. Rummaging around his closet, a prescription slip crisp and white, abandoned in a drawer. It was for AZT, the first and only drug then for AIDS. Angelo had AIDS. He'd said he wouldn't live with AIDS, that he wouldn't stay sober but would go on the binge of his life. He'd shaken his head and laughed. It was unthinkable that he'd do that but he did. Alone at the end.

"Every breath you take today should be with someone else in mind. I love you." Dame Elizabeth Taylor's last tweet.

The Very Scary Privacy Limitations On Twitter, Gmail and Blogger

2011-03-25T15:09:00.000-07:00

"Well well well ... look who it is! I have been waiting a long time to cross your path again! A LONG TIME"

I stared at the tweet for a minute trying to unscramble the words which felt ominous in a bad way. I'm lucky ... I sorted this out in twenty minutes and put this away, and of course immediately blocked the sender.

I discovered that you can block someone absolutely on Facebook and that if you decide to peek, you can't block them again immediately. Facebook blocking is absolute, there are no remnants.

Twitter has a block function which will remove the tweet and prevent the blocked person from tweeting you again: that's about it. You can continue looking at their Twitter home page and see their tweets flashing by if you share contacts. Untwining the complex trails of contacts is not easy.

Gmail and Blogger will not allow you to block someone but suggest a separate folder for the emails and removing a bad follower. That's it.

I don't use Quoro or MySpace and long to figure out how to get away from LinkedIn and can't speak about their privacy policies.

Blogger allows you to moderate comments ... one more level of security. I don't love the security letters "to show us you're human" because I usually fumble the first time and sometimes more. I do cross my fingers when I leave a comment that I can just leave it.

And just thinking with the limitations of blocking someone completely how very dangerous social media can be. In my opinion, Google and Twitter have completely failed to offer serious privacy protection.

Shannon Tackett: If You Don't Have Beautiful Gray Hair

2011-03-20T12:08:00.000-07:00

Beautiful silky sexy gray hair. I wish!! My grey roots creep down into something not familiar and course. Course and yet incredibly fragile. Mistakenly thinking anyone can do roots, wandering into a busy local suburban shop and leaving with a bit of Dennis The Menace stand up broken hair on top and bangs that Angry Bird in the guise of a mild-mannered hairdcutter attacked. Edward Scissors Hands would have been welcome. I retreated into ounces of MoroccanOil to keep the broken sad bits down and shortly thereafter, weeks actually, more grey roots appeared. Dark hair doesn't ease into silky sexy grey hair alas.

Frightened and not really a good candidate for the sleek shorn hair of Jean Seberg or Mia Farrow, I let them grow a bit. A family member leaned in closer and with nary a trace of irony asked why I'd let myself go. Great ...

I think I wasn't the only one saddened by Frederick Fekkai's research that showed formaldehyde in Brazilian Blowouts: silky frizz-free hair was a nice solution for course covered up gray hair flowing through formerly silky straight hair. Between my proliferating gray roots and patches of frizz topped by flyaway broken hair I was lost.

One step at a time, I thought, walking slowly to Shannon Tackett, a gorgeous blond with thick healthy hair. Perhaps she could fix my broken bangs. As her other clients include Belinda Carlisle, Illeana Douglas and Perry Farrell, I did have hope.

Her hands were gentle and her sharp scissors barely rustled. I trusted her immediately and asked for help.

"The best gray coverage comes from taking one extra step with a product designed by I-Straight called power control helps open the cuticle prior to ensuring color saturation. Another procedure that addresses dull course or frizzy hair is the I-Straigh reconstructive process which lasts six to eight weeks, giving instant smooth shiny results."

The non-toxic Hair Straightening is a mild chemical enriched with keratin allowing negative ions to break water molecule clusters into micro particles thus allowing the formula to penetrate the hair shaft without breaking its internal structure. Gentle, gentle ...

Shannon gently applied color on my roots and placed me under a helmet of moist warm air, gently gently helping color penetrate. A bit of balliage (painting bits of hair with a brush using cotton strips to keep the color from dripping throughout: children naturally have that) and the touches of oxidized brassiness all gone.

Shannon is at The Harlot at 1621 Abbott Kinney, Venice 90291 ... 310-399-6525 adjacent to Lemonade. Her cell is 310-745-9773.

Falling In Love With Polly Mellen

2011-03-19T14:32:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia defines Ms. Mellen's career this way: Polly Allen Mellen has been a stylist and fashion editor for more than 60 years at Harper's Bazaar and Vogue.

Nicholas Ghesquiere recently had a conversation with Polly Mellen for Interview Magazine, and I remembered a night long ago.

My eyes had been scratchy on the flight to Milan and by the following morning at Armani I had begun squinting while tears rolled down my face. I tried to take notes on colors and swatches while every bit of light made me weep. Taupe, stone, moss, greige ... I couldn't squint long enough to know the difference. Reluctantly I agreed to go to Giorgio's mother's eye doctor. I opened the door into a waiting room as dark as a movie theater with a few elderly people wearing large black sunglasses. The doctor gave me drops that burned and cautioned me against bright lights.

It was a season of Milanese designers having elaborate dinners for buyers and the press, and Versace's that night was grand. Long tables with candelabras and only a few dim lightbulbs. The eye drops helped but that night even candlelight was too bright. We sat with Barbara Schwartz, a glamorous American girl with who did their p/r and appointments.

As coffee was served, Polly Mellen and a few others stood against a back wall. Polly began to talk about the brilliance of Gianni's collection and as she spoke a few emotional tears rolled down her porcelain cheeks. The room of buyers and press fell in love with her. Not just another front row editor taking notes and nodding politely, she laughs about the inevitable question after shows ... "Did it make you cry, Polly?" And many times it did.

Which was one thing ... but like every great lady she said something that Kelly Cutrone also believes in ... "Your heart may be broken, but don't show it when you leave your front door. Do your crying at home."

Marina Rust's recent interview of Polly for Vogue is here.

Madame Chic De France: bits of vintage lace, destroyed flowers ...

2011-03-13T12:14:00.000-07:00

I spent yesterday searching for beautiful shoes, frail Victorian skirts and accessories of ravaged beauty. In plain view on Etsy, whilst searching for Edwardian white skirts, I came across the exquisite work of Madame Chic De France in her own shop. Along with the dark elegance of a vintage Demeulemeester and a fragile Yohji ecru crocheted shawl, her own work took my breath away.

In her own words:

"My name is Jenny Eve.

I am a Frenchwoman , fashion designer and I have recently moved to Sweden to unite with my sweetheart.

Many years ago, when I was a young teenager, I developed a passion for contemporary fashion designers Japanese , Belgian and for the "old fashion" and its history.
I travelled from the South of France to Paris in order to study, for 3 wonderful years, the techniques and savoir-faire so specific to French Haute Couture.

For years, I then created, in my name or for others, collections of garments, bags, jewels, hats and shoes.

It is as a teenager too that I began to collect vintage "treasures" (essentially bags , jewels , fabrics , lace , garments ) belonging to my favourite periods: the 1920s, 30/40s .
The research I carried out regarding those periods (fashion, lifestyle, photography, art), all the finds gleaned as the years went by, have influenced my aesthetic tastes, my designs and my creations , mixed with a contemporary and avant-garde vision of the fashion .

To create new garments and accessories with old materials, is to give them a second , a new and different life, to bring them out of oblivion.

In Madame Chic De France , i propose a mixture between my own creations , vintage creations of Japanese and Belgian Fashion Designers , a treasury selection from 1920/30/40s .
The atmosphere , the character , all these "mixture" that you see in Madame Chic De France , it is as I am.....
Coco Chanel said "Fashion fades, only style remains the same" , i try for many years to create timeless garments for a timeless style."

Bits of vintage lace, destroyed flowers, her own baubles and eccentricities ... her description of the last photo, which I imagine over a tweed jacket, a tshirt, at the waist of a frail Edwardian white skirt:

Arsenic 11 : Capelet / Shawl made in white veil cotton , ruffled and dyed with tea , to have a subtle skin colour tone .

Soft tulle ruffled like a collar and big bow in tulle "destroyed" with embroidery vintage mother pearl buttons .

Tulle dyed tea. This garment has unfinished hems . The raw edges will fray with repeated wear and cleaning. Available $77.00.

Madame Chic De France shop link here ...

Do remember to breathe.