Not that I mind. I'm unhealthily obsessed with Richard Avedon's work and when he died I honestly was crushed that it meant I'd never know what I "truly looked like" because he would never photograph me.
But in the world of internet decor porn, the new(ish) AVEDON FASHION coffee-table book definitely seems like the new Maltipoo / green juice / Eames chair on shag rug.
Nick Olsen's room at the Lee Jofa showroom in NYC's Decoration & Design Building has it.
It was originally a Harper's Bazaar cover (April 1965, lucky bastards).
But I may like this original alternate version the best... I suppose the initials don't hurt.
I was about to say snarkily "Let's see how long it takes for the image to become the very hippest of wallpapers," and then I realized I already use it as my (desktop) wallpaper. No one is immune.
(Could you tolerate this, tiled, as your desktop background? I CAN.)
New year, new look for the eternal vessel of cool that is Grimes.
In this shoot for designer Iris van Herpen (whose other collections are... insane. Not using that word hyperbolically.), Grimes' formerly pinky-bleached Gwen-Stefani-as-a-street-kid locks have turned dark and stormy. I've been hunting this dark teal ombre hair look for months and want it even more now. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Marry me Claire Boucher pleeeeease... and bring that chevron-front dress as your dowry.
(also, hi, it has been forever and three days since there was any new content on this little site. partially due to 27-hours-a-day clients and resulting mental overload/paralysis and partially because there are newww developments coming. whoop whoop.)
I hope it's not a sign of my staggeringly old age that all I'm hearing right now is people tsking about How Absurd It Is That Stores Are Already Decorating For CHRISTMAS!. Because I Mean If Things Keep Going This Way Christmas Will Be In August Soon, Amirite?(!!??[?!]!?!)* *Apparently some people are even driven to Yahoo Answers with this issue.
I hope this is a universal current status that you recognize and perhaps have even participated in, because if it's not, not only will it mean I live in an old folks' home, but also that you won't care about this post, which reveals the marketing and advertising industry's super-secret reason for whipping out the sparkly plastic fir trees as soon as the sound of trick-or-treaters' footsteps fades. I'm writing about it because if I hear one more person bring this up as a small-talk substitute for the weather or something, I'm going to blow a gasket or a basket or Hank Baskitt. I live in Los Angeles and as a former East Coast person let me tell you there is NEVER any justification for talking about the weather here, but that's still not a legitimate reason to talk about how the early appearance of reindeer decorations is a signal that our society is doomed.
It's really easy to explain. The explanation is: money.
Basically, there's no financial incentive for decoratey-type stores to decorate for Thanksgiving. The only real moneymakers at Thanksgiving are food-related items and plane tickets (and probably Xanax), and those aren't really things you advertise 2 months ahead of time via color-coded banners. Halloween is another story: it's never too soon to start thinking about buying more, and more, and more costume parts and party props and candy to practice eating before the big night. So as soon as school starts and all the notebooks and multi-colored backpacks have been bought, out come stores' Halloween decorations, to hurry up the buying process. Hopefully, if you start thinking about it on September 1st, by the time Oct. 31 rolls around you've changed your mind 3 times about your costume, your party plans have expanded wildly, and you've bought $19,000 worth of stuff. Starting November 1, the decor real estate market is open again, and CVS just does not stock anything that paper turkeys will help to sell. Those three weeks are much better used reminding people that Christmas (and Hanukkah, and New Year's, but come on we all know what this is about) is coming and they will need to buy... EVERYTHING.
That's really it. The ROI on Thanksgiving decorations is low.
[I remember when my old boss's boss learned about ROI and casually threw the term into every client meeting after that. So endearing.] There's a more science-filled article about how stores start preparing for Christmas in August here if you're into that.
I tried to google image Thanksgiving decorations to illustrate this post but they don't exist (except, apparently, in my childhood home. I definitely had cartoony paper pilgrims taped on my bedroom window.). I mean, you don't want to put a giant inflatable ear of corn outside a car dealership. Let's be honest, you really don't even want to look at a charming photo of a cornucopia. You know what ARE awesome, though? Sparkly, snowy, wintry, ridiculous Christmas ads. My friends' agency (No Subject) did a good roundup of their faves, and Cartier provided me with my current #1 ad -- a hallucinatory, snow-covered mixture of jewels and baby animals.
The fact that Cartier believes that those are panthers makes it even better.
Winter lookbooks are to our heat-waved L.A. what tropical Hawaiian panoramas are to the snowbound: glorious, magical sights of the seemingly impossible. Depressingly out-of-reach, but still hard to resist gazing at with wistful, hungry eyes.
After a heat wave that thrilled fans of formal shorts and almost killed my lemon tree, Los Angeles has finally, finally, had its first days of fall. Seems like a year ago I was jumping around excited for the frenetic laze of summer; now, the grey morning clouds and chance to wrap oneself in sweaters are a welcome change. There's kind of a moroseness to the fall; thank god for the sparkling endless summer whose oversaturation makes its ending a weird kind of relief.
A few songs really fit into this moment's happy little sadness corner (i.e. if I'm not listening to either one at any given time, I wish I were). Sweet-sad, light-dark, grimy-innocent, beginning-of-an-ending songs.
Solange Knowles made "Losing You" retro fun and sun-baked and sweet, but wistful, and it'll tear a little hole in your heart if you feel like it.
I loved Sky Ferreira's "Everything Is Embarassing" when I first heard it but only started playing it over.and.over. the other day. Turns out both of these songs are produced by Dev Hynes (Blood Orange) sooo it all makes sense. Little Sky is so baby-grunge and plaintive-voiced and serious, and all that plus the song's hyper-retro drum track and synths make you nostalgic for something you maybe never even had.
Modern Family's Ariel Winter "makes the scene in a printed Katharine Kidd gown with an asymmetrical hemline," according to THR. Shoe credit: unidentified stable.
I hate platform heels. I really do. They just... bug me. And finally, scrolling through Emmys red carpet photos this morning, I realized what is so eye-twitchingly annoying about this type of big, snub-toed, platform shoe: their clompiness, especially on skinny-ankled actress/model/socialites, makes them look exactly like horse hooves. HORSIE FEET: so hot right now!
I thought that the platform heel had retreated in defeat once the mainstream's love for those wood-bottomed things of '06 finally faded, but this new generation of suede- or leather-covered blocky pumps has been showing up everywhere for a distressingly long time now. Why? I get it now. Previously, there's been no way for former Girls Who Were Into Horses to keep their Black Beauty/Saddle Club fantasies alive. The revamped My Little Pony's been claimed by bronies, so the only recourse for a generation of women subconsciously aiming to combine their childhood aspirations of becoming a pony crossbred with Barbie is to buy these vaulted, clacking, bedazzled hooves by the multipack.
Ariel Winter is totally ~Dark-Kirara on deviantART
Maybe not the worst way to live out your fantasies... though I'm not sure what I can put on my feet to bring to fruition my childhood dream of being a puma. Maybe THAT explains my 1997 obsession with velvet overalls?
**UPDATE: I think Ariel's shoes are by Brian Atwood. Whatever.
The second I saw these delicate little star & anchor bracelets on the Colette instagram, I knew exactly what they were. Is it sad that I'm more familiar with the tiny star & anchor tattoos Kate Moss has on her right hand than I am with, uh, a lot of other things?
It helps that this is the southeast corner of my bathroom:
my "concept of cool" corner*
*it's not really named that. i just made it up. but that is what it is.
Note: I have larger-than-life tee-shirted Kate staring at me every morning as I detangle my bangs because, as Cat Marnell explained in this post that like totally resonated with my craggy little hi-low-fashion-world-imprinted soul, "this Supreme ad, my dears, is a CULTURAL MOMENT, and I have been mesmerized by it."
Anywayyy I DON'T want these shiny new Kate products (actually most of the stuff she's come out with -- the Topshop line, the perfume -- is kind of yuck, I think). But they are super interesting! Because, I mean, they are diamondy versions of her tattoos, which is kind of insane when you think about how tattoos (especially hers) are a humble, permanent way of branding yourself in a personally meaningful way; meanwhile, bracelets are flashy, take-offable ways of branding yourself with someone else's inspiration. These bangles are calling to mind Mossy's prison-looking art, while serving a totally opposite purpose. BASICALLY we can all agree that jewelry is the opposite of tats, right?
I know these'll be drooled over by everygirl and her mother, and I'm weird to think it's weird, but really the cool that the bracelet-wearers get is as to Kate Moss's cool what the bracelets themselves are to the inked originals: a flashy allusion to someone else's Thing for people without a Thing of their own.*
*see: every celebrity endorsement ever. why am i even talking about this.
I am a total baby clothes creeper. I lovingly pick up toddler shoes (have you SEEN the rainbow lineup of tiny Vans at Undefeated? I mean really.) and shriek over teensy cardigans. HOWEVER, I do not have a baby, and my cat doesn't like clothes.
BUT! I have an iPad.
The first thing I did after installing Exquisite Corpse (look it up) was start shopping for new outfits. My faves are the holy grail of people-chic: leather and wool.
Okay, so back to the warehouse full of naked girls. We're back, this time with all the bridesmaids and several kinds of cookies to keep us fortified. Erin’s wedding will be a picnic-y, late summer affair, and she wants her bridesmaids in assorted retro floral day dresses. She’s fine with different colors and patterns, as long as they stay within her general teal/blue/purple/peach-ish color scheme, and she’s incredibly generous and doesn’t want her friends to have to spend millions on dresses; obviously, vintage is the way to go. Inspired by this post, we coordinated a bridesmaid-dress-finding party at Shareen Vintage the weekend after Erin’s bridal consultation.
Joanie, the main head of operations there, was a total peach to work with: from making sure they had a selection of what we were looking for in all the right sizes to patiently answering my 19 obsessive emails. 4 out of 5 ‘maids were able to come, and we started off by pulling anything and everything we liked.
If you want to go frothy mcfrotherson, you are COVERED.
We were kinda going for the opposite… STILL COVERED. That there is our rack of maybes. At this point, we enlisted the S.V. team to assist and advise. They were attending to a slew of parties at once, but did their best to keep us high-priority and went running to the racks many times to find a certain dress they knew would look perfect on one of us. They whisked us in and out of our finery (have you ever been caught in a tight-fitting 50s brocade dress? I have.), and dude, they bring out snacks! Clif bars and mini Snickers are basically designed to fuel bridesmaids trying on dresses.
The Shareen ladies are also quick to whip up insta-belts if they see that a dress needs one, or to suggest in-house tailoring (sleeves off, skirts shorter, etc.) to suit a certain body. And they’re never wrong.
Despite the fantastic selection and dozens of dresses we loved, it was a challenge to find a group that all were in the same color family, flattered each wearer, and didn’t violently clash style-wise. We ditched a whole bunch of adorable minidresses and floaty sundresses before landing on one perfect piece (my purple/blue floral shirtdress) and building off that. The rest came together pretty quickly; the assortment is a tad more formal than we’d originally envisioned, but so is Erin’s dress, so it’ll work. And despite how we all know that once you slap the “wedding” label on anything it gets twice as expensive… our dresses were all around the $50 mark or under, and we’ll definitely be able wear them in the real world afterwards. Too good to be true?
Nah… we still need to find SHOES.
[first photo: "supermodel pillow fight," shot by stephen meisel for vogue, 1993. we die.]
Okay, so with THREE of my closest friends getting married this year, I've seen a lottttttttttt of wedding dresses. I'm definitely not getting on the marriage train anytime soon, but there's zero way to stop myself from developing strong, pseudo-expert opinions about my favorite wedding looks and what is awesome and what is played out and what is just TURRIBLE. Therefore, when my wonderful friend Erin asked me to help her find a vintage dress, I was STOKED. That's exactly what I would choose, so of course I was down to put on my scout uniform and start the hunt for The Real Deal. I mean, “vintage-inspired” is all well and good, but why not go straight to the source, right? If you live in Los Angeles or New York, “the source” is definitely Shareen Vintage, famous for its MASSIVE stash of incredible vintage finds, unconventional location and charismatic owner/queen bee. Thinking of going vintage but overwhelmed with how to find what you need? Shareen might be your perfect one-stop shop. I first met Shareen herself at a wedding, actually, where she’d re-made a stunning vintage ivory column dress for the bride. It was the opposite of cheesy-retro, and was proof right off the bat that Shareen’s eye is less about loving the ‘60s or whatever and more about finding the perfect dress for a woman’s body. Since then, I’ve been to her eastside L.A. vintage treasure trove-slash-warehouse many times -- most recently on this mission to scope out wedding dresses for Erin, and bridesmaids' dresses for myself and the rest of Erin’s lady posse.
Did we succeed? Did we get mugged in the alley? Is Shareen really as imperious as Yelp reviews imply? Read on!
WHERE ARE WE?
Sure, it’s an industrial part of town – a nebulous no-man’s land between Chinatown and downtown and Echo Park. So what! Look how scenic! And parking is endless!
I told you, it’s no-man’s land.
Step through the sketchball-looking front-door-that-looks-like-a-back-door, and find yourself in a vast landscape of garment racks and half-naked women breathlessly pulling things from their gorgeously colored piles of vintage dresses (and blouses, and shorts, and corsets, and oh my my it never ends). See why the “No Boys Allowed” rule is essential?
PART ONE: WEDDING DRESS CONSULTATION
We had an appointment with Shareen for a bridal consultation, so to start off, Erin browsed the (extensive!) bridal racks to pull what she liked best.
Despite being tempted by a feathery number and this very fetching jumpsuit, Erin was really looking for less of a full-length lace extravaganza, and more of a knee/tea-length corset dress or wrap dress.
Unfortunately, they were pretty short on shorter options, so we started talking custom. Shareen has recently launched her own line of dresses, with some really simple and chic options that are definitely worth a look. The gathered wrap dress below left can be made in several kinds of jersey and silk (this one was just a sample and is meant to be worn with a liner, obviously… though it’s pretty BANGING solo, no? Reminiscent of a certain 90s Chanel, even?). Shareen showed a few shades of ivory that Erin could pick from for her custom version. The dress on the right from her collection is what I perrrsonally was obsessed with but that's irrelevant.
In the end, Erin decided to go with a more classic princessy style from Dolly Couture, but visiting Shareen was definitely worthwhile. E found a whole new range of things that look amazing on her, we learned that custom can be cheap (under $200!), and Shareen herself is SO MUCH FUN. She keeps up a nonstop stream of intense, breathy commentary that ranges from passionate discussions of fabric options to heartfelt compliments that would thrill any self-conscious bride to hushed confessions about her own soap-worthy love life.
So what about me and the bridesladies? Tune in next time for more half nude adventures with Shareen!!!
What to do after a nerve-fraying week? Soak yourself in the beauty of something bigger than your own issues. I'm super visual, and for me, it's so inspiring and cheering to just walk around looking at beautiful things I've never seen before.
So... for maximum sun, palm fronds and glorious mid-century design eye candy, a fave lady friend & I shipped ourselves off on a Palm Springs playdate. Drank it all in through a Jonathan-Adler designed straw.
First stop: Route 66, the world's best source for vintage Bakelite. These golden cherries were SO darling. The very flaming and talkative proprietor insisted they were sour cherries. Not so... RANIER, DUH.
Up the aerial tramway as the sun set...
Cocktails at the peak, darkness and city lights on the way down.
There's no way to be catty about how gorgeous tiny lights look in the dark below a mountain range.
The Parker knew we were coming.
We closed down the sushi place partying with these crazy kids.
They sing Nat King Cole classics at the Mesquite Country Club every Tuesday night.
If I ever disappear from L.A. without a trace, I'll probably be camping out in Palm Springs' Trina Turk store.
While collecting bakelite at Route 66, we encountered the most enchanting creature. She was tiny, tan, wore a vintage fluorescent coral belted shirtdress and a Pucci headscarf, and made Dieu and me stop and stare after her with jaws hanging slightly open. Amy Cox is perfect, her vintage shop is called Mr. Cox, she has a Pierre Cardin bar, and her Joan Mad Men Barbie is cooler than my Betty Mad Men Barbie. She also sold me and Dieu our new favorite tennis dresses.
For actual informative guides to the marvelous nooks & crannies of Palm Springs, read ESB or Fashion Intel. For general wandering and luxuriating, follow the eye candy itinerary above.
Don't forget to try and crash a wedding at the Parker (bonus points for two).
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