My friends in Europe have been telling me about the recent freezing weather they’re experiencing. I try to be supportive by not telling them that it will hit a balmy 75F by this weekend. We may even see 80s next week. But if it’s of any consolation to any of you who are trudging through snow and rain, an early Spring for us Los Angelenos also means an early allergies season.
So while sneezing and wheezing my way through this morning’s work, I took a break by viewing the Paris fashion shows courtesy of the good folks at Style.com. Chanel seems to have a lot of heavier and fur-centric pieces for the fall 2010 RTW collection so I’m not sure how all that will translate for us warm weather customers over here. But already I spy some brown tweed jackets that would surely look gorgeous with my matte gold and bronze 2.55 flaps! Clearly the buttons from this collection will be incredible as usual. I desperately love this cool leather jacket assuming it isn’t attached to the fur “skirt.”
Then I clicked over to the McQueen collection, which is outstanding like always but so bittersweet this time around. If I could, in my next life I’d like to come back as a 5′11″ Russian Amazonian so I can rock Look 4. Plus I’d be able to speak Russian!
The Prada collection shown last week also turned up some wearable items but I try not to get so attached to these images early on as some pieces never make it to the selling floor. So I’ll wait to see what shows up in my favorite stores. Is there a better job than buyer for a high end store? I must have missed my calling.
Anyway, back to work for me. Just thought I’d pop in and mention how excited I am for the fall looks already, and here we are just barely leaving winter! But that’s part of the fun of fashion, always something new to look forward to. Have you seen anything at the virtual shows that have caught your eye?
BTW, next week I will be writing from the road again, so hopefully I haven’t lost some of you from all this recent fashion talk!
The buzz about JPG (Jean Paul Gaultier) chez Target started last year but the collaboration collection did not arrive at this mass retailer till March 7. I was definitely more excited about this designer than Sonia Rykiel mainly because I have been buying JPG for a very long time. His meshy, soft polyamide fabric is a dream to pack for (tropical) trips. It weighs nothing and can be rolled up into a tiny ball. Once you get to the hotel, hang it up behind the bathroom door. The steam from your shower will get all the wrinkles out in time for Mai Tais on the lanai. And the bold prints (that Gaultier is famous for) on your dress just seem to make more sense when there are waves rolling behind you. Don’t you always have a travel scenario for every item in your closet, too?
But anyway, I was really hoping that quality would not be forsaken for price, and when I finally got to the first store, I was pleasantly surprised by some if not all of the pieces. I’d seen the nautical themed pieces–which EVERYONE and their grandmother are doing right now–in press releases, but up close I thought the fabric was decent and I particularly liked the laser cut details:
This asymmetrical navy striped top was also cute:
I tried on all of the other tops and a few (age inappropriate) dresses, but in the end I loved most the tattoo-print pieces in that mesh nylon that will be great as layering pieces:
The fabric for Target is definitely inferior to the one he uses in his own collection–the close up shots here are of my dress from his main line and then of the shirt from Target and you can’t tell the difference with the naked eye until you touch them both–
but all of his prints here are just as whimsical. Where else can you find this funky print with insects on swimwear? And at this price point (under $20 for the top or bottom), how can I resist?
I can smell that sun lotion already. I’d better go do more core exercises though before I can leave the house in that.
Tags: Jean Paul Gaultier, Target
If you’ve been reading my blog then you must know that art is a very big part of my life. People often ask me, after seeing my accessories collection, which bags I would save in the event of a fire and my answer would vary depending on my mood. But the truth is, once I got everyone out of harm’s way the one thing I’d try to save in a fire would be the paintings hanging on my walls. I may not have a Degas in my house (yet), but original works of art, no matter how small or how grand, are a much greater source of joy to me. They are why vision is my favorite out of all 5 senses. Think about it, which one is your favorite sense? I can live without being able to taste, hear, smell, or touch, but not being able to see? That would be tragic.
Anyway, I can draw something if my life depended on it, but I was definitely not born an artist. So all the visuals constantly swimming about in my head basically stay there; I have no talent or skill to recreate them onto any single medium. But enter the digital camera, and suddenly sometimes I can take a bit of credit in snapping some great photos of a given moment in time whether by chance or by conspiracy. When I’m traveling, it’s easy to photograph beauty, both nature- and man-made. There’s so much out there that it’s as easy as point and click.
When I’m grounded, however, I like to use photography to document all the mundane things in life that bear witness to our lives. Good, bad, and boring. Twenty years from the day you take a single photo of your parents nudging each other over an inside joke or of your kid brother crying from falling off a bicycle, such photos become much more than mementos of an ordinary day gone by. They become recorded history, and if you start to take a lot of videos, these moments become living history.
No idea why I am writing all of this (maybe because I have been looking at old photos all morning while cleaning up the folders on my desktop) because originally I meant to write an introduction to the photos in today’s blog entry. What I really meant to talk about today was the back story for the FIMTSO series. About the terrible habit I have of buying an item in multiple colors when I could (maybe should) spend the same amount of money on a variety of items instead. But sometimes, when you have a good gig going, like matching Converse sneakers with Chanel bags, you wonder if Imelda Marcos didn’t have it right after all.
PS: After seeing these pictures, maybe I would save a couple of bags along with the art in a fire!
Tags: Chanel, Converse sneakers
I’m pulling a Tiger Woods and making an unnecessarily public apology today. On the way to shopping rehab I’ve done a complete face plant. Have fallen and cannot get up. My shopping ban has been a total failure; I blame some of it on my weakness and a lot more on the releases of Sonia Rykiel at H&M and Jean Paul Gaultier (JPG) at Target on March 7. So after this week (hey, at least I’m not lying about cheating with JPG), I will head back to rehab. No timeline as to when I will return to the sporting world of shopping.
Since all of my shopping skeletons are rattling their way out of my closet anyway, I might as well confess about the jaunt to Robertson Boulevard this past weekend. You know, the short but deadly block where you can find the second Chanel boutique (I actually love this cozy location a little more than its big sister in Beverly Hills) a few doors down from the paparazzi’d The Ivy restaurant and the enchanting Les Habitudes boutique.
I had stopped by Robertson to check out the new 1969 boutique that the GAP has recently made a permanent fixture after using it as a pop-up store for the Stella McCartney for GapKids release. If you like denim as much as I do, this is a fun place to see all kinds of jeans openly displayed in a way that I wish I could replicate in my own closet. OMG I’m such a liar! I didn’t come here to check anything out…I came here to buy a jacket that had quickly sold out. I know, there’s a GAP in every town to supply the whole country but believe it or not, they do come up with something once in a while that becomes a hard-to-find best seller. The Robertson location had the only XS that I could find in this region. So here’s the $59.50 black knit motorcycle jacket (PS: my lil sis even had a 20% off coupon for me to use! what a score!):
But even standing inside the GAP at 109 S. Robertson, I could feel the gravitational pull from 125 N. Robertson. It’s probably whatever voodoo spell Karl Lagerfeld has put on me that made me march straight from the GAP to the Chanel boutique. I knew it was wrong, didn’t want to do it, but my feet went on autopilot, and there I was inside the breezy foyer of the store in under 60 seconds. Putting this Chanel addict inside the white walled boutique is like locking an alcoholic inside a liquor store. So many beautiful bags and shoes and clothes on display! Who cares that I’ve seen a Chanel jacket reinvented a million times–with each season’s new buttons and trims, it’s as if I’m looking at it for the first time. And I fall in love all over again. So maddening that Lagerfeld refuses to release an ugly collection when I’m on a ban!
Anyway, on the first floor near the window, what do I spy but a black knit motorcycle jacket–the very same one that I had seen from trunk show pictures earlier this year. The very same one that had been added to my Spring buy list:
Let’s just say the tax alone on the Chanel version is about 4 times the total price of my GAP one after tax. And except for the quilting on the hems and logo on the zipper pulls, I honestly can’t say I could justify the sticker shock. Chanel’s leather version of the moto jacket, however, is a different story. Now that’s one cool jacket but it’s also twice as much as its knit version. I clutch my GAP find a little tighter and think I’ll save my pennies for a classic Chanel tweed jacket instead. On some trendier pieces, it’s enough to fill the craving with something non-designer as long as the quality and fit are decent. And of course if the price is right!
Luckily the rain was coming and that prodded me to leave the store before I could talk myself into buying something…some thingS. I’ve already failed the ban and couldn’t make it worse by sticking around here. But this one brief peek inside the boutique did trigger a question, and I’ll blog about that in the next entry.
Anyhow, in the words of Tiger Woods, “I want to ask for your help. I ask you to find room in your hearts to one day believe in me again.” Because let’s face it, I don’t believe in me when I say I can stop shopping. Do you?
Tags: Chanel, Gap, H&M, Jean Paul Gaultier, Karl Lagerfeld, Robertson Boulevard, Sonia Rykiel, Target, Tiger Woods
Before I left for law school I was seeing a med student who worked weekends as a parking valet at a country club. He would tell me about the perks of sitting in some of the best sport cars in town (this got my attention since I loved anything shiny, motorized, and fast) and taking home lobsters or steaks from the kitchen (this, not so much since I’d gone vegetarian by then). He was quite an Armani addict on a grad student’s shoestring budget. I got a kick out of looking at his Italian suits but often wondered if he was what high maintenance meant.
One day, we were just sitting around and I put on his gold watch, which was his late father’s. It had a huge face and too many links so it rolled down my arm halfway to my elbow, stopping just where the rolled up sleeve of my white (man’s) shirt ended. I looked at my own reflection in the mirror and thought about designer Carolina Herrera who had always been such a fashion inspiration to me. Her uniform of crisply starched white blouses with skirts, pants, and jeans has resonated with me since I first started reading Vogue.
I relate this memory to you because there are more fashion don’t days than there are fashion do moments in my lifelong fashion chase. So when something looks instantly right, the image gets burned into my brain for later references. A sublime man’s watch paired with your SO’s white shirt is one of those instances. I have not yet scored a similar watch since that summer, but I’ve stumbled on to (and been distracted by) other precious things along the way. In my book, there’s nothing sexier than a strand of Tahitian pearls under a white shirt. Always starched.
So without further ado, let’s showcase the next FIMTSO experiment.
Test Item: Today I’m featuring several white shirts because I know we all have more than one. And with white being a neutral yet finicky color, taking on different persona based on its fabric, it would be easier to show a whole rainbow of whites!
Business: For a business casual look, I’m pairing an eyelet Juicy Couture white tank with a JCrew peach cashmere open cardigan. I can throw this over jeans or slacks or skirts and a pair of slingbacks.
The Chanel coral/turquoise necklace is simple enough for me to also wear a JCrew encrusted wide enamel cuff with it. I like large cuffs with short sleeves:
Casual: for warm weekends, I like this stark white lightweight knit ruffled henley shirt from JCrew (no, I do not work for them) that I’ll accessorize with a Gucci silk scarf and Balenciaga leather bracelet. Jeans and strappy sandals will complete this outfit for me.
On cooler days I like to layer a white handkerchief linen shirt (Max Studio) under a rugged cotton jacket. A white feather-weight linen shirt is the only white shirt I will launder and not iron because the wrinkles make the shirt less sheer! Let’s leave some things to the imagination, shall we?
Fun, long necklaces, like this Chanel dog tag one, complete the look.
I’d wear skinny jeans or a slim miniskirt over leggings with this. On a side note, I need to find a mannequin with legs so I can show the entire look with bottoms!
Play: It’s actually difficult to find the perfect dressy white shirt. My favorite ones are of a stiffer silk but all of these shirts in my closet verge more on ivory and beige than white, so I can’t include them here. I’m still looking for that perfect white-white silk shirt to pair with a floor-length black silk taffeta skirt. But I digress…
This is a Dolce & Gabbana white tuxedo shirt; it’s a man’s shirt but at least some Italian labels run on the slim side, making it easier for us gals to poach menswear. I’m pairing it with a pair of velvet low-rise theory pants and killer stilettos. As I mentioned above, I’ll only need a strand of shiny pearls and a patent python clutch to head out to dinner. And just think, I could also tuck this shirt into capri skinny black jeans and some ballerina flats and instantly go from Lauren Bacall to Audrey Hepburn 
.
Tags: Armani, Carolina Herrera, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, JCrew, Juicy Couture, Max Studio, white shirt
