"The most beautiful makeup for a woman is passion, but cosmetics are easier to buy."
—Yves Saint Laurent
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Contents
Favored
Art Tattler
the glamourai
The Non-Blonde
Perfume Shrine
Lisa Eldridge
Garance Doré
Smitten Kitchen
Into The Gloss
Grain de Musc
Lacquerized
Res Pulchrae
Drivel About Frivol The Selfish Seamstress
Killer Colours
Bois de Jasmin Glossed In Translation
Jak and Jil
Toto Kaelo
Worship at the House of Blues
I Smell Therefore I Am
Food Wishes
The Natural Haven
Messy Wands
1000 Fragrances
Moving Image Source
Wondegondigo
The Emperor's Old Clothes
M. Guerlain
Colin's Beauty Pages
Barney's jewelry department
Parfümrien
loodie loodie loodie
The Straight Dope
Sea of Shoes
London Makeup Girl
Sakecat's Scent Project
Asian Models
Ratzilla Cosme
Smart Skincare
Illustrated Obscurity
A.V. Club
Tom & Lorenzo: Mad Style
Eiderdown Press
Beauty and the Bullshit
La Garçonne Flame Warriors Everyday Beauty
Fashion Gone Rogue
Now Smell This
Dempeaux
Fashionista
The Cut
A Fevered Dictation
Nathan Branch
101 Cookbooks
BEST JACKET
I am a great fan of bomber jackets, and I particularly loved Givenchy's version. No real surprise. I don't think Riccardo Tisci always knocks it out of the park, but I am generally a fan of his jackets, as he regularly cuts dramatic necklines that frame the face and high, narrow sleeves, design elements I look for as I find them personally flattering.
BEST MENSWEAR LOOK
Finally, a menswear look that doesn't fall back on old, tired notions of sexiness/cuteness/girlish whimsy. This is menswear, period, cut down to fit women without regard to femininity or dressing for men (thank you, Balenciaga). Of course, without concessions to the figure, 90% of women couldn't wear this look, but I didn't choose it for its wearability. I've chosen it more for the idea of taking on laddish cardigans and detailing and the overall aesthetic of extremely boyish clothing, both in look and cut. Turns out you don't need shrunken vests and glen plaid short shorts to look sexy in menswear.
BEST GREY GARDENS ITERATION
For at least the past five years, probably ten, the film Grey Gardens has been a perennial, at times primary, force within fashion. There are a variety of factors that contribute to this, including the Olsen twins' "Dumpster chic" aesthetic and general advanced skill in layering and tweaking proportions; the neo-boho/SoCal aesthetic in the early 2000s; Marc Jacobs's hugely influential 2005 and 2006 Fall/Winter collections, in which he masterfully culminated a twenty-year obsession with layering, deconstruction, and grunge and basically established The New Order for silhouettes and layering to come; and the general hipsterism/new formlessness/grunge-cum-lately aesthetic currently driving fashion. I don't know if Grey Gardens directly influenced this look, but I do think Balenciaga captured eccentricity here in a way that is appealing and ladylike. The dress is gorgeous and feminine, and while the coat is almost barbaric, it manages not to compete with the dress. Overall, the look is restrained and chic and sidesteps the more overt, sweater-as-a-headwrap influences you'll see.
BEST THIRTIES ITERATION
The thirties are a yearly revisitation in fashion, seen every winter I can remember, though more of an influence some years than others. Unlike Grey Gardens, I'm not really sure why this is so much of an influence. Eighties resurgence aside, grown women don't want to dress in a nostalgic reverie. My best guesses for the constant recycling of the idea is that it is primarily American designers that cling to it (think Ralph Lauren, Donna Karen, Proenza Schouler), and Americans are more guilty of theme dressing than Europeans (and everyone else in the world).
That said, this is a beautiful iteration of the theme from Lanvin. I am a huge fan of black lace dresses, as well as dresses in this cut, and the combination of the two does my heart good. I also love the fur shrug over the dress. Given its cut and color, this is a dress that could easily look dour, and the fur adds a much-needed dose of whimsy and shape. Overall, this is such an elegant look, beautifully executed top to tails.
BEST EVENING DRESS
If this dress looks familiar, Tilda Swinton wore it to an event earlier this year. Tilda - she may have crazy hair, but she wears the best gowns, hands down. I chose this gown from Lanvin as best evening dress because it will never age. It isn't laden with trendiness in cut, color, or detailing. It doesn't rely on a passing notion of prettiness, femininity, or sexiness to sell itself. What sells it is its elegance - the draping, the dramatic shoulder-tie, the overall demure quality of a gown that draws attention to wearer and acts as her frame. I'll leave it at that. This is a dress that explains itself.
Labels: balenciaga, fashion notes, givenchy, lanvin
8/18/2009 [3]
For this round of collection reviews, I've chosen Givenchy's show as best all-around/most likely to wear. For this collection, Riccardo Tisci concentrated on directional basics, featuring coats, pants and dresses that are essential to the wardrobe, but of enough interest to do more than just fill in wardrobe gaps. The clothes are dramatic, austere, and minimal, the three words I would use to define my own style, with enough sobriety mixed in to be comfortably worn out and about. In addition to its wearability, this clothes could almost serve as a capsule wardrobe for any of the more high fashion/avant-garde editors and stylists on the scene due to its emphasis on the requisite stovepipes, avant-garde coats, and elongation regularly seen on the likes of Emmanuelle Alt, Carine Roitfeld, and Barbara Martelo. But overall, and through no conscious thought, my pre-fall collection picks are more based on my fashion ideals and fantasies of working as a Vogue Paris editor than they do wearability or practicality.
I love that this is a very young look. I don't know how it's happened, but recently it's only teenagers who know how to dress, and I love Givenchy for taking their cues. I also appreciate the mix of fashion-forward with basics. The peacoat isn't audaciously cut. It's even in a subdued hue. Add the peeptoe boots and sheer dress, though, and it's instantly updated from some standard urban winter wear to something youthful, feminine, and fun.
For a more directional coat, wear this one. I love the architectural cut of the lapels, which frame the face beautifully without overwhelming either the face or figure. Despite the strength of the lapels, this is still a very wearable coat, primarily because the length of the coat is boxy and nondescript. Were it more feminine or avant-garde, this would become both unwearable and an instant period piece. I also love the cut of pants with the coat. Clearly not a cut for everyone, but it punctuates the point of wearing one well-chosen accent and letting everything else blend in.
Perennial themes for fall include the thirties and fur. No matter what else is going on in fashion, you'll always see these themes, like the nautical, floral, "ethnic," and safari themes of spring. This is one of my favorite iterations of the theme this year. It's not literal and again contrasts one great piece (the fur coat) with items already found in your closet. The overall effect is ladylike, quite the opposite from many fur-themed iterations emphasizing wealth, sex, or, as we'll see in the second part of the Pre-Fall review, the Grey Gardens effect.
What surprises me about this look is the fact how Tisci was able to turn two traditionally bulky items - the parka and the fur coat - and slim them down to the point of layering them. Wearing a fur coat under a leather jacket is an intensely Fashion look (capital "F") regularly seen on the likes of Alt and Roitfeld and rarely seen on anyone else. It takes the imagination and technical knowledge of a stylist to pull off this look, as the layering could easily degenerate into bulkiness and eccentricity. This look avoids both due to the super slimness of the outfit's cut. Though intimidating to pull off, this extreme slimness and verticality can be quite elegant as it eliminates bulkiness and requires a certain gracefulness of movement.
This look is my every Goth girl fantasy come true and probably why I fell in love with this collection. It is elegant in its stark minimalism, requisitely Goth black, and dramatic in the extreme. Despite the severe styling (and this show is notable for its clever, marketable styling), the pieces themselves aren't overtly Gothic or extreme. The dress is just simple and Empire-waisted, so simple and feminine I'd hate it if it weren't styled like this. The inner jacket is a very cool take on the sweater coat, infinitely wearable in terms of cut and temperature control. And the overcoat, independent of the gloves and feathers, is a light, basic enough cut to almost act as a very fashionable rainjacket. But pulled together? This is where the magic happens. As much as I love McQueen and Galliano, if I am ever in a position to wear a very expensive gown, I will choose Tisci's designs in a heartbeat for their overall eccentricity and stark Goth glamour. I won't fit in, and I'll look good doing so.
Labels: fashion notes, givenchy
8/14/2009 [0]
When I was in junior high, I rode a crowded, overheated city bus to school every morning. I was barely five feet tall, and being crammed into a series of business people's armpits at the beginning of every day gave me a lingering hatred for two things: solid deodorant and complex perfumes.
More specifically, it made me hate Amarige. This was 1993, and Amarige was near the height of its popularity, so some of the women on the bus were probably wearing it, but to me it became a catch-all designation for department-store perfumes, the kind with multiple "notes". I would say that no matter what the notes were supposed to be, they all just smelled "like perfume" to me: a stinging blast of alcohol followed by an obnoxious spicy sweetness that resembled nothing found in nature, and nothing you would want to find in nature.
I've never been an actual perfume-hater; I wore The Body Shop's Vanilla in high school (wow, that stuff was sweet) and Demeter colognes in undergrad, but I had no interest in anything but single-note and/or soapy fragrances until I started reading The Lipstick Page. I love reading about fashion history; the idea of smelling the fragrances women wore eighty or a hundred years ago was incredibly appealing. I ordered a couple of decants from The Perfumed Court: Worth's Dans La Nuit, which I liked wearing, and Guerlain's Après L'Ondée, which I did not. (I can appreciate it in the vial, and I believe it's beautiful on other women, but on me it smells of urinal cake.) Then, knowing that Dain loves Mitsouko, and Luca Turin had described it as "infinitely chic", I bought another tiny decant of the EDP, expecting to encounter another historical curiosity, or something a bit harsh and forbidding. Instead, I fell in love with it. (How boring, yet inevitable -- another Mitsouko lover!) It's been compared to a Tiffany lamp, and that's what it feels like: warm, glowing, multi-coloured, floral, fruity, spicy, but somehow more than the sum of its parts. It is amazing. It does something on me that makes me like it better -- it makes me think of that directive about pearls, to wear them frequently because they shine more brilliantly after exposure to skin oils.
I have turned into one of those people I used to roll my eyes at, people who will describe perfumes in terms of colour, emotions, references to music. (I was half inclined to mock this post until I realized my immediate reaction to it had been not "what a silly idea" but "what? Elizabeth Bennet would not wear Après L'Ondée!" Got me.) I fear I am on my way to perfumista status, which is ridiculous, as almost nobody around me wears or likes perfume and I spend a lot of time in buildings where it is actually forbidden (and having seen a classmate having an actual perfume-triggered asthma attack, I am not inclined to question this). Ah well. It wouldn't be the first time I've been ridiculous.
It's a weird pastime, trying to educate yourself about perfumes; you spend a lot of time skulking in department stores, spraying yourself with this and that, and then taking transit home in a cloud of scent that you rather hope no one else can smell. If your nose isn't well trained, as mine isn't, you may not be able to pick out more than a couple of notes. It's the emotional reactions I look for. I may not be able to explain exactly what Mitsouko smells like (or vintage Bandit, another scent I've fallen hard for), but I can describe the feelings it evokes, and send other people into fits of eye-rolling.
This is the context for anything I write about perfume on this blog. I don't have expertise, just personal experience, preferences and enthusiasms. But I suppose that's what a lot of bloggers would say about ourselves, isn't it.
Labels: givenchy, guerlain, perfume notes
9/07/2008 [0]
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