Come Fly With Me

Jean Paul Gaultier seems like a happy guy. Whenever I see photos of him, he's smiling, and in interviews he seems about as far from the stereotypical moody, Sartrean Frenchman as you can get. My theory is that he's really enjoying his life, and why wouldn't he? He has his namesake label, where he's allowed to pursue his wildest fantasies as a fashion designer, pulling in influences from around the world and staging runway shows that can look like the world's friendliest and best-designed acid trip. And he also gets to design Hermès. Designing Hermès means access to some of the most luxurious materials and exquisite craftsmanship in the world. It also means you're responsible for the look of one of the oldest and most storied fashion houses in history, a beloved institution in France; and that, frankly, you don't have to worry all that much about how much your stuff costs.

See? Happy.

I'd be happy, too, if I were responsible for this

Hermès is famous, of course, for its leathers. The company began in the early 19th century as a maker of harnesses and saddles, and is still best-known for its leather goods (like the mythic Kelly & Birkin bags). (They also do a nice little sideline in silk scarves.) Gaultier has been designing the clothes since 2003 and it's been a successful collaboration. The clothes are always good, French to the eyeteeth, sexier than their classic lines give them a right to be, and ageless without being stodgy. JPG has got it down cold with this line. Wearing Hermès, people might not know that you were wearing Hermès, but they would know you looked gorgeous.

This season, JPG was inspired by Amelia Earhart and other aviatrixes. Do I know why? I do not. There seemed to be a goodly dose of 1940's-inflected fashion on the runways this season, and my feeling is that this reflects a sort of life-in-wartime mindset that we're having due to our economic troubles. Rationing, make-do-and-mend, toughing it out, making sacrifices -- all those stiff-upper-lip qualities we look back and admire in our wartime forebears.

Not that an alligator bomber jacket with a mink collar is exactly scrimping by. I do not recall hearing about rationing coupons for alligator...


The aviator influences were mostly found in the styling for the show (no one at Hermès expects you to wear one of those hats this winter, I promise) and the classic military cuts of the jackets

I like Ike!

and so this collection is actually extremely wearable. Yet another example of a designer giving big bang for the (big) buck this season -- there's really nothing that went down this runway that's not going to be wearable for years to come.

Like this. There's not a one of us who wouldn't be better off having this in our closets.

Those pyramid-shaped studs are an Hermès signature. The sort of subtle detail on an all-leather skirt suit that whispers, "Why yes, I did pay $30,000 for my outfit," but doesn't scream it.

Speaking of good leather, get a load of these shoes

Holy cow. Come to mama.

I can't quite tell if this is a removable gaiter-thingie and the boot underneath is just this

in a knee-high version. Doesn't really matter, though. I just love the way it looks.

It wasn't all leather -- there was also, as one would expect, some truly gorgeous silk

Amelia Earhart wears a cheongsam. And looks killer in it.

See? That's just ridiculously good. Classic, easy, beautiful...


But back to the leather, she said, wiping a tiny drop of drool from her chin.

I don't currently have any leather pants, but I need some. I'll take these.

::thud::

Here's a dress I'd feel good about wearing.

Ooooooh, mygoodness. You thought it was silk, didn't you, until you saw the close-up. There was a silk version or two of it in the show, but the leather? Much more interesting. My god, that's fantastic. Not for nothin', but I would totally rock that dress.

Not that I'm going to. Sad truth is, these clothes are entirely out of my reach. Usually when I look at Prada, or McQueen, or any of the other designers I love, one part of my brain is stashing away ideas because some of it will appear in Neiman Marcus, go on sale, eventually filter down to the outlet stores, and just generally be attainable to me if I save my pennies and am judicious. Not so much with the Hermès. First off, it's next to impossible to find the stuff -- the only place you're going to see Hermès clothes is an Hermès boutique, which are not exactly thick on the ground. I've been in the Dallas boutique -- they have a few garments, but not all that much. It's mostly bags, scarves, and other smaller items -- they must save the fashion for the really big stores in New York & Paris (and godhelpus Las Vegas). Although even in the flagship store on the rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré, I don't recall seeing any clothes. Where are they keeping this stuff, anyway??? Doesn't matter. Even if I could find it, I couldn't afford it. The prices are astronomical, and they do not go on sale. Remember, this is a company with years-long waiting lists for handbags that cost $7000. I don't even want to know what that full-skirted leather trench would set you back. (Makes those $350 silk scarves seem like a stone-cold bargain, huh?)

So Hermès is for dreaming. Head in the clouds. Flights of fancy. Vrrrrrroooooom...





Photos: Style.com

Wishful Thinking

Sometimes, when you're me, you have to be the bearer of bad news. The pooper on the party, as it were. Which last week resulted in me saying something that greatly disappointed someone I like a whole bunch. I felt bad about it, but I had to tell her, "Oh, honey, no. Those are fake."

It started with an e-mail from my friend, the lovely Elke, who has it bad for a pair of boots. These boots:

And who could blame her? These are Louboutins. The style is called "Babel," which I don't think is a well-chosen name because if you ask me those are pretty damned easy to understand. In three words? Gorgeous. Freaking. Boots. Maybe it's supposed to be "Babble," as in: the stream of nonsense syllables I'd be likely to spew uncontrollably if presented with a pair of them.

Elke and her husband were on a visit to Chicago and Elke met the boots in Saks. She was smitten; and apparently her husband was also smitten, to the tune of commenting that even he'd like to try on those boots. (See, that's a discerning male eye. If it's beautiful, it's beautiful, and there's no sense in going all Fear of Pink on us just to preserve your man-cred. Go with it -- enjoy the beauty.)

What will de-smitten a gal pretty quick about these boots is the price tag: almost 1400 smackers.

Yeah. Ow.

So Elke went a-huntin' on the interwebs for the boots and she found this link, which sent to me, asking me if I knew anything about this site.

What do I know? I know everything on it is fake, that's what I know. First off, those boots on this fake site are $274.00. As I told Elke, I don't think you could even get those boots wholesale for that price. If you click on the picture of the boots above it will take you to the Net-A-Porter link for them. If you do that you will notice they've been reduced from $1475 to $997.50, which is a pretty good reduction, about 30%. You might also notice, if you look carefully, that they are sold out. So the things are going for a cool grand on sale and they are still sold out. Do we really think these people have sooooo many of these stuffed into a warehouse somewhere that they can afford to let them go for 3 Cs a pair? Unlikely.

Here's the other way I know for sure this site is full of counterfeits.

This, they claim, is a red ostrich leather Hermès Birkin bag, available for $399.00.

BWAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH!!!!!!

First off, Birkins start at around $7000. That's for cowhide -- exotics like ostrich can cost three, four, five times that (or more) easily. Secondly, the only -- I mean ONLY -- place to get a brand-new Birkin (or a Kelly, for that matter) is an actual, brick & mortar Hermès boutique. You must walk in and put your cash on the barrelhead, so to speak, and even then you're not guaranteed to walk out with one because there is often a wait list for these bags, depending on what color & skin you want. Hermès does not sell these bags anywhere else; not their online store, not any luxury department stores, certainly not in outlets. I double-checked this information with a very nice SA at the Dallas Hermès boutique, so I know this is true. It is possible to find genuine Hermès bags through reputable re-sale dealers, but they usually get snapped up pretty quick and they're not sellin' for 400 bucks.

So that bag above? Is a counterfeit. I have ranted here before about counterfeits and so I'll spare you the bulk of it. Suffice to say that I feel quite strongly that no matter how badly you want something, no matter how much it tugs at your soul, there is never an excuse to buy a counterfeit version of it. You are simply buying into a system that exploits people all over the world. And? You've got a fake. It's fake. That thing you loved & wanted? Is not what you have -- you have a fake. You have an unreal, cheap, artificial version of the thing you loved & wanted -- like a Madame Tussaud's wax statue of your husband or wife instead of the flesh and blood human. It will never be as good as the real thing, and you will always know it.

So back to the boots. Those are some lovely Loubies and I would never dissuade anyone who had room for them in her budget and closet from purchasing them. I would not encourage it if it's going to be a financial hardship, because no boots are worth sitting up at night worrying that you can't pay your mortgage. But if a person did want to splash out that kind of scratch (say she has a Luxury Tithe, or a nice fat tax refund coming), these boots would be a worthwhile investment. I don't think they are going to go out of style ever -- that is some classic, classic footwear. That is important criteria to take into consideration when trying to build a quality wardrobe, especially if you, like most people, are thinking a little more about your budget than you might have been a year ago.

There's a good argument to be made that when you have less disposable income, you should buy fewer disposable clothes. When times are flush & you toss away 50 bucks on a pair of shoes you're only going to wear for a few months, it's not such a big deal. When every penny counts, so does every purchase. And if you happen to have 140,000 spare pennies, this is not a bad way to spend them.

Let Them Eat Crème Brulée!

My fabulous friend Plumcake has many wonderful qualities, and among the best of them is the fact that she somehow contrived to get herself born on Bastille Day, thereby ensuring a lifetime of perfectly good reasons to be taken to a French restaurant at least once a year. How clever was that of her? And how clever am I, to have made friends with her and therefore to have the opportunity to take her to said French restaurant?

Of course, because I am a dedicated fashionista, I determined that Plumcake's birthday dinner at Chez Nous on Bastille Day was a very special occasion that required a wardrobe to match. An all-French wardrobe, to be precise. (Liberté! Égalité! Gaultier!) Okay, some of it is because I'm a fashionista, but mostly it's because I'm a silly, silly woman who happens to be a mad francophile. Also, lately, I've been very intrigued by the idea of wearing my Hermès scarves as halter tops, and I thought this was the time to do it. Seriously -- if I don't get to go to a bal des pompiers and hang out with the gorgeous Parisian firemen, the least I can do is eat crème brulée while swathed in Hermès, right?

Now, this is risky. Not because the halter idea is very daring -- when you're as small-busted as I am, overexposure is pretty much a non-issue. The risk comes because French food? Can be messy. All those yummy sauces? They drip. The butter. The cream. The crumbly bread. Fraught with messiness, and I am a notoriously careless eater, and the wine doesn't help with that. Also, I'm a gesticulator. It's difficult for me to make a point -- hell, it's difficult for me to form a sentence -- without an accompanying hand motion. So get me all worked up over one of my pet peeves (Crocs, say. Or Juicy Couture sweatpants.) while I've got a forkful of truite amandine and there's no telling what might happen. (Although it would be unconscionably cruel to bring up those subjects with me while I was enjoying French food. Whaddya wanna do, gimme the agita?) So I'll need to go slow and be careful. This is not a bad thing, it will help me to savor my meal.

I have two Hermès scarves, both acquired on my last trip to Paris. This is my Jardins d'Hiver



I'm sorry, this is a terrible photo, but trust me when I say it's a work of art. And this is my Jeu d'Omnibus:


But how best to do this?

First, I did some experimenting on my own.



This is very simple -- I tied two corners around my neck, and two corners around my waist, and voila! A top! It required some futzing, I rolled the tied ends at the neck a few times to create more of a cord effect and take up some of the extra fabric. I like this -- it's quite full on the front, but that makes it seem luxurious, with all that billowy fabric, and it does a good job of showing off the design of the scarf. Also, this method gives it the most length, which I prefer with the skirt I'm going to wear with it -- I want the scarf to come down over the waistband of the skirt a bit.

Next I tried the method recommended by Hermès:




This is also extremely simple, three knots instead of two. First, you tie a knot in the very center of the scarf on the reverse side to take up the slack in the fabric. And then you do what I did the first time -- two ends around the neck, two ends around the waist. This gives a much more fitted effect, which is nice, and shows off the bright blue border of the scarf, which is a color that does wonders for me. The downside is that it's shorter, you can't see the design as well, and you've got a big ol' knot pressed up against your sternum. (It's a knot of Hermès silk, of course, so it's not exactly torture.)

So these two methods are both great with the Jardins d'Hiver, but when I tried them with my Jeu d'Omnibus, I couldn't manage them. The blue scarf is a classic 90 x 90 cm size, but the pink scarf is a vintage style, which means it's smaller -- only 70 x 70 cm. That makes it too small to fit around my ribcage and knot in the back. Hmmmmmmm, what to do? So I did some surfing on the Series of Tubes and found (oh, I wish I could remember where) this:


Brilliant!!! Put on a fairly substantial necklace. Fold the scarf in half diagonally to make a triangle. Bring the points of the triangle up and tie them in a knot around the necklace, and the bottom points around your waist. This is genius, and I love the way it looks with this scarf, whose circular design really works well here. It fits very closely and feels very secure. I also tried this with the blue one:


Looks great, but it feels a little less secure because there's more fabric and so it's looser on the sides. Still -- pretty fab, non?

So I'm all set. I have also found a diagram for wearing the scarf as a one-shoulder sarong-kinda thing, but the geometry is more complicated and I've yet to master it. Saving that for a day when I've got a little more time and patience. And maybe someone to help, because a gal could pull a muscle trying to reach around herself to tie those knots.

And since we're speaking of birthdays, mine is coming up next month and I've decided that I want my birthday treat to myself to be this:

This pattern is called Jungle Love. Isn't that the most amazing thing? This isn't the colorway I'm after -- there's a red version that you can see here. Oh, it's just ravishing, I love it like a boyfriend. So I've set myself a goal. I'm socking away my pennies in my Luxury Tithe, and if I can go a month without buying any shoes, clothes or other fashion items, I'll treat myself to a new scarf for my birthday. It really shouldn't be that hard for me to stay on a No Buy for a month -- I've shopped my brains out over the last few months. In my defense, a lot of my wardrobe was no longer wearable due to my weight loss. Seriously -- even some of my shoes are now too big. But I've filled in the gaps pretty admirably and now I need to just work what I have and give the charge cards a breather. I know my friend Deja Pseu over at Une Femme d'un Certain Age is also on a No Buy -- so now you've got a No Buy Buddy, Deja! Anyone else who wants to join in, feel free to hop on the bandwagon!

Oh, and Joyeux Fête Nationale to all!!





Photos: Style Spy, Luxury-Scarves.com