barf!!

hah, not the most glamorous title for a blog post! yesterday night I wore my new favorite RO "barf" tee.... very ad hoc for a house party (celebrating D's birthday... happy birthday to him!!)



excuse the insane expression please!

and here's a more serious shot... I love how the wall matches the shirt... it was totally unintentional and I love how it turned out.

just because

I think that we can all be thankful for Jak and Jil's new blog. I personally appreciate the high quality images and no-nonsense posts. They go right to the best part of an outfit... the shoes.

so, for your viewing pleasure, I give you a nice roundup of gorgeous shoes snapped by J&J!

winterizing

I think it is crucial to invest in a good winter coat. After completely wearing out my old winter parka (it lasted me 2.5 good years!) it was time to get a new one. Since this one is a nice, dramatic length I'm thinking I might need to wear heels more as to elongate my silhouette.
I need it to get colder now!! I can't wait to start wearing it.

Does the runway lie?

Hey readers, sorry for the post-hiatus. I have been a bit tied up with studying and have had a bit of writer's block!
I don't like to post blog entries that aren't thought-out so I prefer to not post at all when I'm not feeling inspired.

I recieved no.C magazine (feat. Hussein Chalayan) as a gift awhile ago... It is a biannual belgian magazine and no.C is from 2002! I love flipping through old mags to see how the trends are relevant to today. I found this incredibly thought-provoking article by fashion critic Cathy Horyn. I usually don't agree with her critique, but what she expresses is something that I have been feeling for awhile now. Can the whirlwind of a well-executed fashion show trick you into thinking that the collection is actually good?

Does the Runway Lie?
by Cathy Horyn

I mean, can you really absorb enough information from a 15 minute runway presentation to know if a designer has done the big job or is merely show-boating? And then what becomes of that visual impression when it's bombarded with successive images that are unrelated? Does it pound everything into a kind of mental mush that absolves us of needing to care or feel about anything?

My friend and whirling colleague Amy Spindler, the style editor of The New York Times Magazine, will often say, as she is exiting a plainly bad show, 'The runway never lies!'. To her, and perhaps to most of us who look at clothes for a living, you can tell rather quickly if a designer has something new or worthwhile to say. But I've been wrong. I've been hoodwinked by collections that seemed ingenious (Romeo Gigli's Paris show in the early 90's when he draped his clothes with Murano glass) and dismissive of others that in retrospect were actually speaking to our democratic times (the last show of Miguel Adrover before his dopey backers pulled the plug).

In fact, the modern runway is a lie It has allowed very average designers with a powerful, tabloid sense of communication to be percieved as great talents. It plays tricks on your senses - senses, of course, that have been radically altered by a culture that demands sound bytes and seems to be in constant fear of boredom. I don't blame someone like Tom Ford for knowing how to seduce people with his fashion shows - the always dark room, the music and atmosphere always reminiscent of another, freer time in fashion. He is as agile as he is succinct. But I suppose I blame the audiences for not looking deeper, and for not expecting more.

I don't have a great yen for the past, but I have plenty of curiosity, and I've often wondered what it would have been like to go to a Balenciaga show and sit there through 200 passages as Diana Vreeland and Carmel Snow smoked in the front row. And what did it sound like when Carmel, alone among the editors, clapped at the show that signalled Chanel's return? The salon, the silence, the rapt attention of the audience - this is not a wish for the good-old days. But think about what it must have meant to sit there and absorb clothes at eye leve. Balenciaga wasn't just interested in putting across looks that spanned the day of his clients: he was also determined to reveal the intimacies of a craft. And I am reminded, too, that at one of the lowest points in Yves Saint Laurent's life, in 1976, he produced one of his most exhilirating collections: a ready-to-wear show, based on Carmen, that had 300 looks and ran for three hours.
"You can't believe how exciting that show was,' THadee Klossowski, who is married to Loulou de la Falaise, told me. 'I watched it twice.' At the end of one of Saint Laurent's last couture shows, with some 90-some looks, I remember an American editor saying as she stood to leave, 'God, he should be paying us to sit through that.' Time, and the spontaneity of visual communication, is what has made fashion seem irrelevant.

I have, like many people, a ready suspicion that most of what we see on the television news is only half the truth, or at least half the story. (The one obvious exception is Spet. 11, when the media, and hundreds of amateur photographers, reported the events as they were happening before everyone's eyes, in real time.) We expect the news to come at us immediately - that's what the media brightly promises, after all - but the meaning of those events dissipates as quickly as a summer rain. And then it's on to the next injustice or report of catastrophe. What this creates, it seems to me, is an illusion of involvement, even empathy, without the need to react. It's your surface involvement that sustains you, maybe because you sense that the real story is too complicated, and too horrific, to try to fathom.

We heard a lot in the 90's, as designers bandied about words like 'marketing' and 'branding', that fashion was about surface. It was supposed to be fun and quick and - deeply? - of the moment. At the same time, designers took on more - more collections, more roles, and this elaborate plate spinning was supposed to impress the public. You also got the idea, a rather cynical one, that nothing was meant to last in the new fashion era, and therefore you weren't expected to judge anything to harshly.

What we've found out, of course, is that most designers don't have the mental agility (or the discipline) of someone like Karl Lagerfeld to do more than one thing well. And what was wrong, anyway, with doing one thing exceptionally well? It's been said, almost as a defense for the lack of imagination and integrity, that younger designers sample the 70's and 80's because they belong to the postmodern age. And how often have journalists airily employed the word 'referencing' to describe what, in another era, would be called copying? But the trouble with referencing or postmodernism (as it's lightly understood these days) is that it discourages people from doing the real mental work that every creative process entails.

Strange as it must seem, the people I admire in fashion are those who have in a way dropped out, or who insist on doing things with a kind of quiet rigor - Azzedine Alaia, Martin Margiela, Yohji Yamamoto, and Jean Paul Gaultier, who, though hardly quiet, has managed to extract more from his aesthetic since going into haute couture. Experience now rules - and what is experience but the slow evolution of time and understanding?

Earlier this year, I came out of the tunnel of working with Bill Blass on his memoir, Bare Blass, and I wondered if I had spent too much time absorbed in one man's past to recognize what was happening today. The New York fall collections had just commenced, and as I went around to the shows, looking at some of the new designers whom people were cooing about, I thought 'Am I just not seeing what all the fuss is about?'. To me, this new talent seemed so marginal against the life of Blass, whose career began in the late 40's in the back rooms of Seventh Avenue and took years, years, to really develop.

But I realized my reaction to the runways was based on something more, something personal. Because in the process of shifting from newspaper deadline writing to book writing, I had learned what it means to truly understand a subject. I had to slow down, go more deeply through the layers, and give everything a perspective longer than six months. It is someone you need in this business more than ever.

it's VOGUE time...

...and I don't mean american, british, french or italian!!

just good old-fashioned vogueing.

(slightly NSFW)





This is how I get to class every morning, by the way.


How are you transportin' your fine self today? do you vogue to work as well?

SEXAY

Fashioncollaborative.com has kindly asked me to join their community. It is like a community blog there with lots of fun posts, take a look!

cross-posting my first entry on FC over here:

Balmain has been the collection on everyone's lips recently. After receiving much hype from the Vogue Paris team, the brand led by Cristophe Decarnin had become fashion's "darling".
The look is decidedly sexy, crystals, studs, miniskirts and a strong shoulder define the Balmain woman.
I personally think the return to sexy is welcome, but I *refuse* to accept or justify the prices of Balmain RTW.

mytheresa.com

$1500 for a T-shirt with sequins? $1140 for skinny jeans with zippers? I'm sorry, but no. The (lack of) workmanship on these garments does not justify these prices. To me it is more of a clever marketing ploy. The extreme prices drive up "exclusivity", and the fact that not everyone can get it just makes it all the more covetable.

I have good news for us common folk!!
you can have a piece of authentic Decarnin-designed garments for CHEAP.

It seems no one knows (cares?) that Christophe Decarnin was designing for Paco Rabanne from 1997 to 2005. If you have a good eye, you can find Decarnin-designed Rabanne pieces on Ebay France. How do you know they're Decarnin?

Sometimes the seller will add a pic of the tag where you can see the season. Or sometimes, it's just so relevant to today's Balmain that it CAN'T be by anyone else. Just put "Paco Rabanne" in the search box and go through the results. When you find something skimpy and shimmery, you know you've come across a gem!

a few on Ebay.fr now:

12 euros

20.50 euros

75 euros

Now there are no excuses!! go work the sexy!!

THE DINOSAUR

Yet another DIY!
Much fun is to be had with old, frumpy, oversized sweaters hidden in your closet. I thought a bit what I could to to the sweater, as my skills are limited to cutting and some basic sewing. I decided to cut it up in the back and then make small knots down the spine... the end result looks somewhat like dinosaur's back.



WERK!

I love the fit on the front of the sweater, it's kind of a drapy, anti-fit. I like it so much because I wasn't even thinking about what the front would come out like, so it was a nice surprise.




another shot of the back:



ROAR!

Throwing down the gauntlet

I have abstained from doing the usual "round-up" of the various ss09 collections after the fashion weeks, after having been bombarded with them at virtually all the fashion blogs and fashion-related websites (as I'm sure you have been too!)

continuing on with regular blogging, I have been recently come upon these Burberry gauntlet gloves.



Pretty amazing. I would wear these in a second, what a perfect way to add texture and badass-ness to a winter outfit. Knowing Burberry Prorsum prices, I would not expect the price to be under $500.
Being the resourceful gal that I am, I am constantly surfing the interwebs to find that amazing piece that relatively costs next to nothing, and I am not talking high street, h&m-inspired pieces. I give you very similar, gauntlet gloves from.....Renaissance/Medieval costume websites! Thumbs up to the fabulous Brian for giving me the tip.


Studded cowhide gauntlets - 40 effin dollars.

how amazing are those studs?

cheaper, but they aren't leather. Try not to laugh, these are actually "Star Wars Clone Wars Anakin gloves", but I am not kidding you when I tell you that they remind me SO MUCH of these epic spaceman gauntlets by Raf Simons I saw at 10 Corso Como last winter. You would be surprised by how many designers are inspired by things they see at vintage stores and costume parlors.
$12 at buycostumes.com


While I was at the medieval websites, I found myself coveting a lot of items. This, for example, is nothing short of breathtaking.



Inspired by samurai/shinobi gauntlets.
They may seem ridiculous in the context of the costume/reenactment websites, but try picturing them in a bondage-centric Meisel editorial. I'm seeing dark, dramatic photography, smoke, and black lipstick on Lara Stone wearing nothing but a black patent Alaia corset belt.

I bet they're seeming a bit more relevant now.

What about these Steel Reinforced Ninja/Shinobi Gauntlets with throwing spikes? I would seriously recommend these to any fierce girl living in a dangerous city (*COUGH*MEXICOCITY*COUGH*).



*throwing spikes*

get both ($134 and $259, respectively) here.

If you're a gesticulating girl you'll be sure to get your point across.

MERCI SONIA

I would like to thank Sonia Rykiel for reminding everyone that fashion is supposed to be fun!!

Sadly, the great Franco Moschino is no more, and his whimsical take on fashion seemed to have gone with him. The Moschino label now is a sad, confused house with no apparent vision or consistency with the house trademark. The models walked down the catwalk with the usual grim stare, to music that was completely *horrid*. Where were the technicolor chanel-style suits? where were the fun accessories? where were the tongue-in-cheek phrases scrawled across a poufy top or in the back of a cropped jacket?

NOWHERE. Instead there were completely irrelevant chiffon *gowns* and badly cut trousers. I will spare you the sadness that is Moschino ss09 and give you, instead, the new Moschino:

PARIS, October 1, 2008
By Nicole Phelps
Thank goodness for Sonia Rykiel. The Paris legend resuscitated what was becoming a bleak season (blame the markets) with a 40th-anniversary dinner-and-show party that goes down in this reporter's notebook as the most spontaneously exuberant and genuinely fun fashion event in recent history. After a long trek to Saint Cloud and an even longer wait for the entrée, it felt like the night was going to turn into a chore. But by the time three models vamped their way down the elevated runway in metallic silver-and-black striped sweaters and skirts (specifically, that would be somewhere between the opening run of house-signature candy-colored tops and the pearl-embroidered oversize suits and motorcycle jackets), any lingering resentment about the late 11 p.m. start had evaporated.

During the evening-gown section—long tanks and feathery halters and tiers ruffled to the floor—the guests at Olivier Theyskens' table started tossing roses from the centerpiece at the models. (Other luminaries on hand included Jean Paul Gaultier, Zoe Cassavetes, Emma Watson, and Dita Von Teese.) Soon the runway was covered in flowers the color of Rykiel's dresses. Even that couldn't stop the girls from breaking into a dance party when they came out again in taffeta minidresses. A few even conga-lined it straight into the audience.

If that had been it, the audience would've left content. But after taking her bow alongside her mother, Sonia's daughter Nathalie grabbed the microphone and announced, "A birthday without a surprise isn't a birthday. You've been inspiring the world of fashion for 40 years; here's your present. Bon anniversaire, Maman." Out came 30 more models in Sonia Rykiel looks designed by some of fashion's biggest names. Martin Margiela made a fur chubby the color of Rykiel's flame-red mane. Rodarte's sweater dress read "Obama." Jean Paul Gaultier's came attached to giant knitting needles and trailing a ball of yarn. Happy returns, indeed.

style.com


WHEE!!!! IT'S FASHION!!

weekend

just some outfits I wore over the weekend...





I usually don't wear dresses but I think it's important to get out of my sartorial comfort zone once in a while. This dress is so girly, it moves really amazingly when I walk! I am thankful for the black color that offsets the femininity of the poofy a-line silhouette. I wish I had taken a pic without the jacket to show the top part as well.

Digesting phase

I need to do a post on some of the shows that have been going on, but since these are the collections that matter the most to me I want to "digest" them before judging quickly. Some I loved RIGHT AWAY (Viv Westwood and Givenchy) and others I would like to study before deciding if I love or hate.


Studying consumes me as usual! here is what I wore today:



zara tee
aa skirt
noir belt
ro jacket
marni flats

just thought I'd post a picture of my heroes:



Rick Owens and Michele Lamy <3


WERK!!




(photo courtesy of Jak and Jil)