The Black Strapless Brigade

My vote for greatest invention of of the last I dunno how many years has got to be the DVR. No other way would I be able to wade through the television coverage that now surrounds any of the major awards shows. There is a lot of inanity and foolishness to fast forward through (Call me crazy, but I honestly don't care how Jane Krakowski's fiancé proposed to her. All good things to you, sweetie, but really -- don't care.), just so you can hear the four most important words anyone has to say that night: "My dress is by..."

There was, as usual, a lot of black on red at the Golden Globes last night, and what's more it seems like nearly all of it was strapless. I do understand the urge toward the black dress -- I have several myself and have to remind myself to skip over them when browsing, because really, how many do you need? (The answer is "More than you'd think," if you're me.) But unless the dress is either spectacular or a spectacular bomb, it's just going to fade into the mists of memory. Of course, that may well be what some of these ladies were aiming for...

I don't know who she is. This dress sure doesn't make me care.

Julie Bowen. Lovely girl, nice dress, she really does look pretty, it fits well -- she looks like she can actually sit down, and her breasts aren't on display like a Pussycat Doll. Just... unmemorable.

Sophia Loren in Armani Privé. Still glam after all these years, but I have a few quibbles. Namely -- her hairdresser apparently hasn't left the salon or even looked out the window since the mid 80's. And those glasses! Seriously, I think she stole my Grandma Merridy's glasses (around the same time as her hairdresser went underground) and has been wearing them ever since. Someone get the woman to an optician! Still, bringing the va-va-voom like that at her age? Hats off to you, Madame. You are an inspiration.

Speaking of bringing it -- Glenn Close in what I'm going to guess is also Armani (she wears a lot of Armani). Nice work, although not particularly inspired, perfect fit. I guess the one up side of reaching a certain age in Hollywood is that the stylists stop insisting that your clothing fit you like Swarovski-encrusted shrink-wrapping, and you can actually enjoy your chicken Kiev and a glass of champagne without worrying about any major wardrobe crises.

Susan Downey and her husband (mysecretboyfriend) Robert Downey, Jr. This is so conservative for him, and he looks great. If we can just get him into a tie, all will be perfect. She looks beautiful, too, but... ya know. Another strapless black dress, this one sparkly.





Well, here's black strapless with a twist. Julianne Moore in Balenciaga with Tom Ford in one of his own impeccable tuxedos. (Say what you will about the guy, despite his everpresent Miami Vice homage, the man cuts a sharp as hell suit.) I love the fabric of this, which looks like some sort of hammered silk, and I like the idea of it, but it's just not going anywhere. Perhaps it's her terrible, droopy posture that's throwing me off. She's going to get crucified by the Fashion Talking Heads for this, but Julianne Moore does really appear to like fashion -- she wears a lot of Balenciaga and other forward labels.





I don't know who she is. Giant black strapless dress, with somewhat interesting detail. Somewhat.





Carey Mulligan, adorable yet forgettable in Nina Ricci.




Penelope Cruz in Armani Privé. It will surely be one of the Great Fashion Mysteries of 2010 -- how the HELL do you make Penelope Cruz look dumpy???? Well, here's how. Also, what's with the cheerleader hair and makeup? Seriously, looking back on my freshman year of college in the early 80's, all of the girls rushing sororities looked just like this.

Courteney Cox in Victoria Beckham. Impeccable but boring. What excited me most about this was seeing her husband David Arquette, a man famous for having a closet that was the sartorial equivalent of a three-ring circus, look normal, in a nice, neat, no frills tuxedo. Not a hint of tartan or embroidery or sparkly embellishment to be found anywhere. Go, David!

No idea who this is. But the dress is winning. That thing is swamping her like a mudslide. Seriously, she's going to need a tranquilizer dart for that dress or she's not going to make it home alive.

Vera Farmiga in Dolce & Gabbana. Oh, dear. Hint: do not make a mermaid-silhouette gown designed to fit like a second-skin out of fabric heavy enough to be your spinster great aunt's winter bedspread. It will not end well. Also, did no one notice that there is a big ol' rosette right on her boob? Is that some sort of joke?? I'm so not laughing.

It wasn't all black. It wasn't all bad. But it sure as hell wasn't all good. Stay tuned & I'll share my thoughts on a few more tomorrow.


Photos: Style.com, Huffingtonpost.com, celebuzz.com, yahoo.com, goldenglobes.org

Time To Buy That Bedazzler

Because, seriously? These jeans?

Are ON SALE for over $5000. ($5437.00, to be precise.) And that price? Is 50% off.


Yes, they are super-cool. Yes, they are Balmain and apparently if you are a big-noise fashionista life is not worth living unless you have a closet full of Balmain these days. (I somehow seem to be soldiering along, but I'm strictly bush-league, I reckon.) And the work really is gorgeous. But come on.

It's starting to piss me off a bit, it really is. Honestly, I find the idea that there are $10K jeans out there, no matter how sparkly and fabulous, a wee bit insulting. (And I think we all know that expensive clothing as a general concept does not trouble me overmuch.) There's really no point in me being cheesed about it, I reckon, because it's not my money being spent and if someone wants to drop that much cash on pants who am I to judge? But it just seems like there's this whole tier of people in the fashion world who have absolutely no idea about what's going on in the rest of the world. Remember when a $500 shoe was absolutely out of this world expensive? I am routinely seeing shoes for twice that nowadays. Who is buying this stuff? All the news reports in the business are about how the stores are having to lower their inventories and put things on sale earlier, and yet what's coming into the stores continues to get more & more expensive. I don't get it.

Someone explain this to me. Please.

Leave Your Umbrellas At Home

Now here's some weather I can get excited about -- Tropical Storm Cristobal! When I heard this announced on the radio, a very large smile appeared on my face, as I imagined what it would be like if my most beloved designer of all time created a storm. In my dreams, just such a thing as this happens -- chicness and glamor rain down from the heavens! Couture clouds pelt us with perfectly constructed garments! Can you imagine? Around our feet swirl a flood of creations as magnifique as these...

A "sac" dress. Marvelous. This is from 1956, but you could still wear this and look cutting-edge.



Oh, his sleeves... His sleeves alone are worthy of museum retrospectives. Look...





Could you just die?




Gorgeous cape with perfectly tailored sleeveless sheath beneath it.



This is the sort of thing that made Diana Vreeland say, "If a woman came in in a Balenciaga dress, no other woman in the room existed."

That jacket is a piece of sculpture.




I would kill for this dress. Is that not the chic-est thing you've ever seen??? I want one in every color. I want one in charmeuse, one in silk velvet, one in lightweight wool crepe...




The legendary Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, one of the most beautiful humans to ever walk the earth.

Remind you of anything?

Yeah, Miuccia does her homework.

As do the ladies at Marchesa...

And Christopher Bailey over at Burberry...

Aaaaaand John Galliano...

Here's the man himself:

Handsome devil, wasn't he?

I've had a little good Balenciaga fortune rain down on me in the last couple of months, in the form of fabulous bargains. Here's a wonderful dress that's wool jersey and so I won't be able to wear it for a few months yet, but I didn't care, I had to have it.

This is modern Balenciaga, and I love it because it's Ghesquiere doing a wonderful job of translating vintage to new. Hark back up to that brown sac dress from 1956 and look at the similarities. I do run hot & cold on Ghesquiere -- sometimes I adore him and sometimes I just can't quite bring myself to love it, but as time goes on and I see more and more of his clothes, I am beginning to recognize how he subverts the vintage designs into his own aesthetic, and to appreciate it more. He's a very young designer, I'm sure things will only get better and more interesting. This dress, though, needed no thought or translation at all -- it was love at first sight.

The stripes are a couple of different shades of purple, black, and a deep, deep forest green, which you can't really tell from this photo. The gathers down the front are a whole separate panel connected at neck and waist. I am going to have to hem the sleeves, obviously. (Not sure I want to meet the woman whose arms are long enough for those sleeves...)

I also love the bubble shape of the skirt -- and how perfect are my Miu Mius with this? Oh, I just love it. Tapping my toes impatiently waiting for fall to come.

Another unexpected Balenciaga windfall from a little while back:

These are the most marvelous, all-purpose black sandals -- only about a 2 1/2 inch heel, great for walking, go with everything. I love them. I was frankly shocked to discover they were Balenciaga, since Ghesquiere's shoes tend to be extremely... extreme. But hey -- no argument from me! I snapped 'em up! I plan on wearing these to ribbons.

So. While someday I hope to acquire real, true vintage Balenciaga from the hands of Cristobal himself, I'll have to make do with this for now. Shouldn't be too terribly difficult.


Photos: HeavenofGowns.com, OperaGloves.com, KerryTaylorAuctions.com, Meadows Museum, Style.com, Texas Fashion Collection, AP, Style Spy

The Golden Age

At the Victoria and Albert Museum in London there is currently a wonderful exhibit called The Golden Age of Couture. If you are going to be anywhere NEAR London before January 8, don't miss it. It's fantastic. Did you ever play that game where you pick which historical era you would like to have lived in? Well, for me, it would be post-World War II, the late 1940's through the 1950's. Oh, sure, I know it wasn't the most enlightened time socially speaking, and that our "Happy Days" perception of it in this country is rose-tinted and inaccurate. And perhaps there are more compelling periods to live in, intellectually or sociologically. But the truth of the matter is that I'm really not interested in living without either soap or mascara (not to mention a cocktail here & there), so I'm sorry, Versailles during Louis XIV is right out. But in 1947, there was soap, martinis, lipstick & eyeliner, good jazz, automobiles, and women got to look like this:

This is the Bar Suit from Christian Dior's 1947 New Look Collection. It's my ideal; my favorite silhouette of all time -- romantic and feminine and pretty darned swoony. Of course, I realize that the above is advertising photography and looking at it and saying that "women in 1947 looked like this" is roughly akin to saying "women of 2007 look like this" while perusing photos of Catherine Zeta-Jones at a red carpet event, but let's leave my fantasy alone, shall we? Had I been alive in 1947, I would ALWAYS have looked like this. End of discussion.

Hard as it is to believe, the New Look was rather shocking and revolutionary for its time. Remember, during WWII there was fabric rationing and all kinds of shortages -- this skirt, with its yards and yards and yards of fabric, was positively decadent. And many people now look on it as a step backwards for women -- during the War women had been brought into positions that were abandoned by men off fighting, working in factories and offices and making real strides forward in independence and power. After all the soldiers came home, the New Look signified women's return to a submissive role -- the soft shoulders, the wasp waist, the enormous, movement-inhibiting skirt. Still, it's pretty hard to argue with this

as a fabulous way to look.

The V&A exhibit focuses specifically on the world of post-War couture, so what they have on display is work from some of the most important designers of the 40's and 50's and it's truly wonderful to look at. The exhibit itself is... well, it's not the best-designed museum exhibit I've ever atttended, although it is chock-full of jaw-droppingly beautiful things. It's a crowded and not extremely well-organized -- don't take a large backpack or a child in a stroller, because there isn't a lot of space. There isn't a strictly organized traffic flow for any of it; so while I appreciate not being herded around like livestock, what I wound up feeling like was a rat in a maze, except not all the rats were going in the same direction so periodically there would be big clumps of rats that would reach a sort of impasse, or there would be one rat who wanted to spend longer in front of one dress or go back and compare it to another dress and that rat was prevented from doing so by the pack or just inconvenienced all the other rats by swimming upstream... okay, you get the picture. Enough with the rodent metaphor, and please don't think it in any way indicates that I don't think the exhibit is worthwhile, because it is not possible to feel rat-like while gazing on something like this:


This is the back of a gown by my beloved Cristobal Balenciaga, mid-50's. Breathtaking.

Balmain, 1957

Antonio Castillo for Lanvin-Castillo, 1957. The embroidery on this bodice is done by the firm of Lesage, still in existence today.

This tartan gown is by Jaques Fath from 1949. It was made for a member of British royalty, as I recall, for a state occasion. (Must remember to take notes!!)


Beaded and embroided pink satin shoes by Roger Vivier for Dior, late 50's. Swoon.



Gorgeous couture tailoring by Michael Donéllan in 1954. There is a large assortment of suiting by Donéllan, Balenciaga, Creed, Chanel, and others in the exhibit. A good suit is just as difficult (maybe more so) to make than a stunning evening gown, and the Fashionista in me was so frustrated that I couldn't climb up on the dais, take these things off the mannequins, and turn them inside-out to examine the cutting and seaming.

Balmain organza extravaganza, about 1950. Wheeeeee!!!

Silk brocade from Givenchy, mid-50's. This dress makes obvious why so many of Balenciaga's clients turned to Givenchy after Balenciaga closed his atelier.



Dior, 1957. I don't care who you are -- you put on this dress and you are instantly the most gorgeous thing in the room.

Worth, late 50's

Spectacularly beaded & embroidered velvet from Dior, 1956. This dress is cocktail length. You know, so it's more practical...

More Dior, black silk velvet and faille, 1949-50.

This is my favorite. Red silk chiffon from Jean Dessés, 1953. I'm pretty sure this dress dances all by itself. This is the dress of my dreams -- in this dress I would be perfectly perfect. I would drink nothing but champagne. I would have no split ends. My feet would never hurt. I would be as witty as a Phillip Barry play. I would dance divinely, my dear. Men in tuxedos would pursue me, planning to buy me jewels. Other women might hate me. I would not care.

Sigh.

The exhibit also has a really wonderful section of photography, with work by people like Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, among others, including this one:

Dovima with the Elephants, Richard Avedon, 1955 (The gown is Dior.)

The models in the photos from this period are so elegant, so beautiful, so witty, desirable, glamorous, so soignée... so everything we idealize in feminine beauty. They are positively inspirational. (And made me want even more to never, ever again see some grubby, hollow-eyed teenaged girl in need of a bath and about a dozen good meals modeling clothes.) I saw this exhibit with my wonderful friend Caroline, who is probably the best amateur photographer I know (and could give a lot of professionals a good run for their money) and she took this photo of me as an homage to them:


I've got nothing on Dovima or Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, but I do what I can.

(You can see more of Caro's beautiful photos here. Check 'em out, you won't be sorry.)

I was not allowed to take photographs at the exhibit, but the nice people in the gift shop foolishly sold me a book of postcards, not guessing that I had a scanner and nefarious motives. But do take a gander at the truly great website that the V & A has put together for this exhibit. It has tons of information, a really interesting interactive timeline, and great photos. Look it over and plan your wardrobe for when we finally achieve time travel...

Photos: Victoria and Albert Museum, Caroline Charles