Friday, January 29, 2010

Feature in an Etsy Treasury

I was featured in an Etsy Treasury by CricketsCreations.

These earrings were selected because they were vintage and fit a blue and yellow color scheme.

Pretty lady warriors.

After the first 7 looks, I thought Jean Paul Gaultier’s latest collection was ugly. After 9 I thought it was genius.

Only a portion of it was wearable; what qualified ranged from the effortlessly elegant to the eagerly eccentric. I hang out in some pretty artsy circles so I might have an easier time wearing an arm of full metal armor than most folks. And I imagine some of the woven silk strip dresses would be more at ease on a red carpet than amongst my peers.

There were “pantless” outfits for those of us who roll ballsy like Lady Gaga, and then there were some genuinely pretty separates waiting to be pried loose from the collage of madness and slipped comfortably into the wardrobe of a normal woman.

The color scheme was simultaneously earthy and exciting. The elements at play were not ethereal like the gossamer and air we see in some collections these days. No this was a primal wedding of earth and fire. Warrior ladies ran rampant down that cat walk and it was quite glorious, if I might say so myself.

Photos from Style.com's complete coverage of the collection.

White Anglo Saxon Protestants... from the future!

Though Karl Lagerfield might’ve been trying something new with Chanel’s Spring Couture collection, I have to admit I was a bit bored. The best parts were the feet (the heels!) the legs (those sparkly tights!) and of course the hair (that volume!) but personally none of those things should be the memory from a collection. Maybe it’s that the two large influences of the collection fall flat for me; neither sixties W.A.S.P.s nor futuristic stewardesses pull at my heart strings and the combination of the two falls flat for me. Karl is still one of my favorite madmen running around the fashion scene today, simply for his own unique and unflappable style. And the collection did start to pick up around the second third. But I guess I was looking for more in a couture collection than pastel church clothes with tin foil trim.

The good news is there was some chiffon, some lace, and some fierce organic alien appliqués. Yes there was maybe a teeny bit too much duchess satin (a few of the draped pieces looked like Halloween costumes). Though I have to admit I could be wrong about the fabric type specifically, there was definitely a slipperiness to the collection which added to the science fiction fantasy and therefore detracted from my enjoyment.

Maybe I’m thinking about this collection all wrong. Perhaps it was an homage to a special kind of deep pop nerd craving. Perhaps it is a hybrid of desires inspired by TV’s golden age of Leave It To Beaver domestic bliss and Captain Kirk’s inter-galactic conquests. Imagining each piece as a unique kind of cultural fetish does make it more palatable, and I wouldn’t put it past ol’ Karl Lagerfield. He did arrange for a threesome on his runway.

This was my favorite piece from the collection and it didn't really fit with the rest of it.
Photo from Style.com's complete coverage of the collection.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Leather and lace...

Well, thank the fashion gods that I didn’t have to wait until the Fall 2010 collections came out to get my John Galliano fix.
The gothic fantasy of his Haute Couture was quite elegant and his point of view was fairly focused in this collection. It definitely tickled my fancy since I’ve been immersed in a similar aesthetic for a wedding I am planning (more about that on my other blog).

The combining of Victorian, Edwardian, forties, and fifties elements was admirably well done (but I’d expect nothing less from John Galliano) and I couldn’t be more enamored of his use of leather and lace.

Even though I can’t walk a yard in them, I do have a fetish for tall shoes, and the gothic Victorian riding boots were delicious. The matching full length black leather gloves were pretty scrumptious as well. Though the riding outfit pieces weren’t generally my favorites (I preferred the seemingly endless gowns) I was drooling over one particular gray riding coat with a full bustle in the back.

As for the hair and makeup, I was particularly fond of the Victorian up-do’s; the long braids dripping from the explosive and yet ethereal hats were particularly Art Nouveau (looking into the girls faces made me think of a Mucha print).

In the end I maintain my undying devotion to John Galliano’s seasonal reveries of madness and beauty. And in heaven, I’ll wear nothing but Dior.


Photo from Style.com.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

One piece to rule them all...

I am sure this happens to every good fashion lover. It was probably inevitable that some piece, some artful rearrangement of raw materials into some object, perhaps a coat...  It was probably predestined that some coat would finally drive a nail between my love for fashion and my love for thriftiness. Of course, my thin wallet shall always ensure victory for my thrift store hunting ways, but today designer lust at least makes a stand.

I dream of a coat by Balmain, it lingers in my thoughts as I lay on the brink of nightly unconscious, it peers at me from within complicated collages in glossy spreads, it boldly announces itself from one advertisement in my favorite fashion magazine. It is something I’ll never own, probably never wear even for an instant. But it’s like a Mona Lisa, with a wry smile, charming me, haunting me.  One wry, nine thousand dollar smile.