wisewords.
dame vivienne westwood
I am not actually being disingenuous when I do really say stop buying clothes to people… The slogan is ‘buy less, choose well, make it last’
- dame westwood on shopping to WWD.
Supplied.
image courtesy of the coveteur
over the last few years, i’ve noticed a trend. at first, this trend was exciting, inspiring, fascinating. it was engaging. it began when a fantastic photographer named todd selby captured the homes and studios of some of the world’s most creative and interesting people. like bill cunningham before him, selby wasn’t interested in capturing big names {you’ll never see a kardashian home}, but people who live uniquely, regardless of fame or status. in fact, at first, selby’s subjects were his friends. today, the photographer has become something of a phenomenon, but he still retains his dedication to capturing under-the-radar stuff: the 40th anniversary of chez panisse, for example, or annie novak on her organic rooftop farm.
as with anything new and “cool”, selby-imitators started cropping up. sites like the coveteur go into the houses of fashion editors and stylists, the {exquisite} german site freunde von freunden focuses on creatives and cultural luminaries, closetvisit raids the closets of indie darlings like vintage shop owners, and into the gloss delves into the contents of tastemakers’ make-up cabinets.
image courtesy of into the gloss
now, it seems like everyone’s “stuff” in on display for the world to see. personal style bloggers have jumped on the trend, pouring out the contents of their purses and make-up bags with “what’s in my bag” posts {super-blogger bryanboy even had a blog devoted to the exercise}. it began to feel totally strange – what is the purpose of broadcasting “stuff” to the world? my gut instinct thought it seemed to prey upon materialist hunger – look what i have - but i started to wonder if there isn’t something more at work here. is there an innate human desire to show the world one’s possessions in an attempt to find, refine, and communicate personal identity?
i’ve just finished an absolutely fantastic book called brand thinking by debbie millman. it is a series of conversations with some of the world’s most influential brand and design thinkers – and beyond exploring business, brand, and marketing – is at its core a meditation on human nature. the last conversation in the book it between millman and malcolm gladwell, and they discuss the very topic of sharing of one’s possessions with the world.
image courtesy of svpply
gladwell discusses the popular start-up site svpply, which is “populated with the products that you like…you can also follow people, so if i find someone whose tastes i like, i can follow them and observe their other marketplace choices. and the site can also find people for you.” so, finding connection to people via the objects that they don’t necessarily own, but covet. as gladwell puts it, “[svpply] is very explicitly making a point about how our personalities are in part a function of the collection of objects, ideas, and things that we surround ourselves with.” in fact, the work of psychologist samuel gosling found that rating another person’s personality based on a room filled with their possessions is as good as, if not better, than rating that person after meeting them.
so perhaps the desire to showcase one’s possessions is really short-hand for saying hey, this is who i am. are you like me, too? or more likely, this is who i want the world to perceive me to be. do we aspire to the same things? this phenomenon, of course, isn’t new. before the advent of the internet, people dressed {and still do} to achieve the same end. virginia postrel, the fabulous author and cultural critic who studies the concept of glamour, argues that people have always dressed to convey who they aspire or dream to be rather than who they are, but that with the internet it “promotes the idea that your ordinary, every day life could somehow be interesting to other people.”
image courtesy of dead fleurette
beyond the desire to communicate our identity to the world, it could simply be a need for validation. i am important, unique, and interesting. but is it real? writer zadie smith finds this all a little depressing; how “constant broadcasting of your likes, your friends, your thoughts, and your things to the world has robbed people of an interior life.” that is, by putting every minute and superficial part of your life online, there remains nothing that is “just yours” anymore.
i am fascinated by this because it has personal implications. i recently “quit” facebook (ask me sometime about how the site pulls at the heart-strings when you attempt to leave), and deleted my tweets and tumblr postings that had more to do with my personal life than i felt comfortable with. when i first joined social media sites, i too documented every meal, night out, and thought i was having – it was new and exciting to do so! what power! what reach! but the more updates i saw on facebook, or sappy personal ramblings i read on tumblr, or another what i ate for breakfast tweet i saw, i began to feel weird. perhaps this is the backlash – is privacy the next trend? is the “new cool” to be off-the-grid and not allow the public to have full view of your belongings and inner-most thoughts? like the current artisanal trend in food, clothing, and design – perhaps reverting to older ways of connecting, like phoning or meeting in person – will be the next phase in our hyper-connected, over-sharing society. as always, an exciting time to be thinking.
military.
at roughly 12:30 a.m. last saturday night, as my boyfriend and i stood with our drinks under a heat lamp outside the standard grill in the meatpacking district, i felt my heart ache. the feeling was caused by a vision of beauty sitting by the sidewalk outside the hotel. it wasn’t a man or woman, but rather, a car. i am not a ‘car person,’ by any means whatsoever, but for some reason, the silver mercedes g-class military suv struck a chord of exquisite style for me.
the car is boxy and rugged, hardly in keeping the prevailing modern aesthetic of sleekness, but something about its totally pure functionality and impeccable design speaks to a certain luxury that no amount of round-edged target collaboration can accomplish.
the next day, bill cunningham’s weekly ‘on the street’ feature covered the ubiquitous trend of women in trench coats. again, a perfect specimen of classic, functional design that has remained largely unchanged since world war i. like the mercedes g-class, the trench coat’s roots are in functionality; created by burberry to literally be worn by soldiers in the trenches. the style has become a civilian mainstay since then, and doesn’t appear to be falling out of fashion in the future.
this spring, military fashions are all the rage, from parkas to blazers to boots to cargo pants. but this trend isn’t truly a trend, as it’s been a classic since time immemorial. in high school, i wore army green cargo pants from abercrombie, in college i donned a coat from an army surplus store in aix-en-provence, france. after school, i wore a military green blazer from a manhattan h&m (we didn’t have an h&m in cleveland at the time) until the pockets fell off. today, it’s a slim pair of olive-colored khakis from uniqlo. always in style, always timeless.
i tend to think about military style in the same vein at barbour jackets, l.l. bean duck boots, and wellington boots: highly functional, timeless items that hold a spirit of aristocracy. as if going hunting in the english countryside were one’s next stop after leaving the office. j. crew’s jenna lyons swears by the military aesthetic because it’s classic. i wonder, then, how something like the army can influence civilian fashion to the extent that it does.
uniform: by and large, military style doesn’t change. a uniform is just that, unchanging and timeless. in my experience, people tend to gravitate towards uniforms, which is how one ends up with personal style. adding a bit of military integrates easily into anyone’s wardrobe because it works with most any other style.
functional: by and large, people tend to like functional clothing. the occasional dhoti pant, 5 inch heel, and bandage dress notwithstanding, clothing that works, works. a trench coat, for example, keeps us warm and dry, while adding shape to our frames.
sexy: whether it’s because the army somehow symbolizes power and strength, there is something inherently sexy about donning a piece of military garb. the army (so to speak) of isabel marant worshippers look darn good in their costly marant military parkas; a girl wearing a flowered dress looks cool when she throws a distressed army shirt over it.
ease: military style is completely incognito. the colors are neutral, the shapes are simple, and the care is uncomplicated. obviously, this stems from the root of its functional origins. there is no guesswork, color-coordinating, nor any unfortunate dry cleaning bills {unless the material used is not-traditional, like silk pants}.
nostalgic luxury: back to my original feeling when i laid eyes on the mercedes g-class. it’s not today’s military that evokes the feeling of aristocracy, but perhaps a rather imagined glamorous past. think: british-occupied india. that particular aesthetic arouses nostalgia that has been used by everyone from louis vuitton to j. crew.
it always feels good to identify a particular style that truly will never be out-moded. open-toe booties, tie-dye, and color-block all appear to come and go in cycles. military glamour, however, will never be anything more or less than an uncompromisingly chic style.
snapshot.
listening: schumann piano concerto in a minor op. 54; gorillaz plastic beach; phoenix wolfgang amadeus phoenix; a large amount of the beatles, for some reason, mostly abbey road, hey jude, and let it be
reading: fitzgerald’s the great gatsby; colette’s claudine’s house; the fashion & style issue of the new yorker
watching: sofia coppola’s marie antoinette; an education; in the midst of a french nouvelle vague revival, which includes a bout de souffle and jules et jim; the whitney biennial which, for the exception of one very affecting 18 minute documentary, was mostly ho-hum
eating: recent weeks have found me dedicated to cooking at home, which is wonderful when ingredients are supplied daily by the union square greenmarket and the chelsea market {treasure-troves}; spicy fried oyster, yellowtail, spicy tuna, salmon avocado sushi at japonica; one of the better grilled chicken salads i’ve eaten at the very authentic upper east side bistro orsay
wearing: ah spring! slim cropped trousers, brightly colored flats, loose-fitting jersey tops, very red nail polish, burberry trench when needed in evenings; running gear cause it’s running outside weather!
wanting: a few spring pieces like this skirt & and this thin button down shirt; every so often, i want a small terrier that i would name ‘nutella’
repetto, s’il vous plait
i’m a ballet flat kind of girl. don’t get me wrong, i love wearing heels when the occasion calls, and high heels are among the wearable items that make a woman feel utterly sexy {along with excellent perfume and lingerie} – but only if she can walk in them convincingly. but as a walk-all-day new yorker, and as part of a daily uniform, i’m ballet flat-crazy. as soon as wintry weather appears to have gone into hiding, i shake of my boots and don ballet flats day after day.
i have all kinds; i truly can’t get enough. snakeskin, pointy toed, metallic, bright red, and even the ubiquitous tory burch reva flat. cole haan makes a wonderful cute flat, complete with nike air technology, so they feel like sneakers. sam edelman styles have enough edge to combat the fact that the shoe is flat. some of my longest-lived flats come from banana republic, those champions of timeless neutrals.
while i recently reveled in freeing my feet from the confines of daily cowboy boots, i assessed my collection of ballet flats. i had pretty much every type of color, style, shape, and level of fanciness covered, but what i was missing was a very simple black pair. my first thought, of course, was to get a classic black pair of repetto flats.
make no mistake, these simple designs do not come inexpensively, one must pay for quality. so i opted for the next best thing – a simple pair of french sole black pearl flats. i think that this style of shoe lives in the immortal ranks along with the trench coat, the white button down shirt, and the slim black pant. while heels are hot, black ballets are the epitome of timeless chic {see also: sofia coppola}. but how has repetto – a company that was founded as a dance shoe manufacturer – been able to produce such an uncomplicated product that commands a high price tag for generations?
quality: anything good, and anything that lasts for a long time, is made with care. repetto actually has a very unique design. the company uses “stitch and return technique”, a way of creating the shoes by stitching under the sole and then turning them inside out. so in the end, there is an almost invisible join between the sole and the upper {think about where your shoes wear out first}
celebrity endorsement: before it was trendy like it is today, french siren brigitte bardot – once a ballerina – asked repetto founder rose repetto to create a shoe like the ones they already made for dancers, but appropriate for every day wear. thus, the ever fashionable french-chick-in-ballets was born. bardot was already hailed as a style icon, so whatever she wore certainly would be adopted by legions of women
heritage: like most luxury brands, heritage – real or created – is of the utmost importance to longevity {see also: louis vuitton, burberry, hermes}. the repetto brand was already a well-established company among the most glittering of ballet stars. their reputation was stellar, so the company had permission to extend the brand into an intuitive category, whilst maintaining their reason for being
ballet dancers: ballet dancers have been the subject of intense fashionable fascination – from degas to kate moss. it’s not surprising, given that ballet dancers are the embodiment of grace and elegance. no matter how often the chunky heel or platform shoe goes in and out of the collective style unconscious, every woman wants to emulate the long, clean lines of a ballet dancer
the french connection: “last september, in a survey done by condé nast, repetto was voted by 36 per cent of french women as their favourite luxury shoe brand.”
partnerships: repetto’s ceo is a smart man, and he knows that maintaining modernity takes help. to keep the brand fresh, he did what any other luxury brand does: partnered with modern, edgy fashion houses. repetto has partnered with comme des garçons, yohji yamamoto, rodarte and liberty. smart choices, as these partners have modernity, yet retain the elegance that is at the core of the repetto brand
i’ll wear my french sole ballets day in and day out and love them to death, but i have a wandering eye. the repetto brand story and strategy has certainly hit a style nerve for me. luckily, the brand is set for immortality, so my checking account has some time to catch up.
glamour.
“i don’t find clothes sexy at all,” i heard marc jacobs say monday night in a discussion with the director of the museum at f.i.t., patricia mears, at the french institute alliance française. “i find people sexy, and i find personalities fascinating and sexy and appealing and charming. so a sexy girl wrapped in a sheet is a sexy girl, and an un-sexy girl in a low-cut dress is still an un-sexy girl.”
it was the best thing i heard from the designer that night and it resonated with me. i got to thinking about glamour and sexiness and what those qualities truly mean. i had also recently read a great piece in the style section of the new york times about the unlikely fashion appeal of patti smith. to me, smith has the minimalist cool of the ‘daily uniform’ down to a science, which as a new yorker, i can appreciate. however, on the surface, smith appears the antithesis of glamour, forever clad in combat boots, skinny jeans, and boatneck sweater, hair a bird’s nest and face without a smidge of make-up. however, that roomy coat on her back is designed by anne demeulemeester, “the high priestess of parisian vanguard chic,” her jeans ralph lauren, and her boots a gift from johnny depp {not just any boots, either, the pair he wore as the mad hatter in alice in wonderland} now, that is glamour.
in fact, smith has a most rarefied eye for fashion, and has the confidence to turn that into her own unique look. in fact, her brand of glamour has spawned a countless number of women in skinny scarves, white t-shirts, and lace-up boots, and they look great. so, patti smith is glamorous, but so were grace kelly and audrey hepburn, both polar opposites of the aforementioned rocker. glamour can be created in any context.
today, the word ‘glamour’ is often used to describe red carpet or runway looks. to be sure, when someone, whether man or woman, puts on a stunning dress or perfectly cut tuxedo, they feel glamorous. i tend to think that is only the case because whatever they’re wearing makes them feel confident, which leads to feeling glamorous. no one feels good in an ill-fitting dress, no matter how beautifully it’s made. however, i agree with marc jacobs: glamour and sexiness is an attitude, not a look {why do high school girls go after the disheveled ‘bad boy’ over and over again, for example?}.
incidentally, as i was pondering the idea and components of glamour, virginia postrel, the authority on the subject, happened to write an article about it for the weekly standard. postrel has been studying and writing about glamour for some time, and she explores the concept not just in people and clothing, but in many aspects of society. this includes movies, advertising, and cars to real estate, politics, sports, and travel. in the article, which is a review of two new books, she discusses what it means to be glamorous.
her short answer, two words, is: barack obama. he was “less a person than a persona, an idealized, self-contained figure onto whom audiences projected their own dreams” as a candidate. of course, now he is experiencing the inevitable come-down of glamour, “the disillusionment that sets in when imagination meets reality.” or, as a parallel to technology, “the apple tablet is the barack obama of technology. it’s whatever you want it to be, until you actually get it.”
the core concept of glamour, then, appears to be that it should always contain some semblance of illusion without being completely unattainable. that is, you can still relate to the person, thing, or place, but still be missing information, enabling the thing to remain mysterious. grace, audrey, patti, and the girl in the sheet all have glamour because, while they have confidence and mystique, they are still accessible. as postrel notes, the difference between, say magnificence {think: versailles} and glamour is that “magnificence is a signal of power. magnificence, like spectacle, produces awe; glamour, by contrast, stokes desire.” one cannot truly desire something that they do not think they can have.
in my opinion, these are truisms in human perception. what’s interesting to me, is that these concepts trump material consumption. if glamour is a feeling, an attitude, an embodiment, then those proclamations of feeling glamorous {in 60 seconds!} on the cover of women’s magazines should be categorically ignored. all the baubles, dresses, and heels in the windows of the ann taylors, j crews, and banana republics are for naught. in the end, glamour and sexiness cannot be bought, or even cultivated. although, a little marc jacobs number to wear with a pair of killer heels probably wouldn’t hurt.
threadbared.
i very much enjoy the brilliant blog threadbared, the astute fashion observations of two very intelligent women. i ran across this post about vintage politics that i found so fascinating, i kept it open all day in order to read it several times.
the post cites a passage written by arjun appadurai in a 1993 article, “consumption, duration, and history.” it so eloquently captures the idea of patina, that mellow, timeworn look of a surface, so coveted by so many to incorporate into their clothing {see also: abercrombie & fitch, j. crew, vintage clothes}. i had to share:
“The problem of patina, which McCracken has recently proposed as a general term to deal with that property of goods in which their age becomes a key index of their high status, disguises a deeper dilemma, the dilemma of distinguishing wear from tear. That is, while is many cases, wear is a sign of the right sort of duration in the social life of things, sheer disrepair or decrepitude is not….
Objects with patina are perpetual reminders of the passage of time as a double-edged sword, which credentials the “right” people, just as it threatens the way they lived. Whenever aristocratic lifestyles are threatened, patina acquires a double meaning, indexing both the special status of its owner and the owner’s special relationship to a way of life that is no longer available. The latter is what makes patina a truly scarce resource, for it always indicates the fact that a way of living is now gone forever. Yet, this very fact is a guarantee against the newly arrived, for they can acquire objects with patina, but never the subtly embodied anguish of those who can legitimately bemoan the loss of a way of life. Naturally, good imposters may seek to mimic this nostalgic posture as well. but here both performances and reviews are a more tightly regulated affair. It is harder to pretend to have lost something than it is to actually do so, or to claim to have found it. Here material wear cannot disguise social rupture.”
