Local and Not So Local Color

Turquoise will forever be linked for Grassroots Futures with a Sunbeam hairdryer purchased for me when I was allowed a $100 shopping spree as a graduation from grade school and no, you aficionados of kitsch, I don’t still have it. Even Pantone now pushing turquoise as the color of 2010 associates the hue with cheesy package tours to the Caribbean and souvenir jewelry from New Mexico. A Google search reminds me that Pantone was touting turquoise as a hot color for spring of 2005. Yes, I spotted turquoise as a comer mostly in oversize “designer” bags in my usual haunts, but the jewelry has not had an up tick here. (Richard Timperio, owner of the Sideshow Gallery, right down the block from the nydesignroom, flashes turquoise as a bow to hippy nostalgia, having lived in New Mexico back in the day, and wears it well, but otherwise the semi-precious stone is in scant evidence.) I saw some wonderful red satin party dresses in the show windows along the high-rent strip of Atlantic Avenue. Nonetheless, my advice, readers, is to be pragmatic. Leave the red dress bit to the American Heart Association and Wear Red Day (it’s February 5 in case you didn’t know?), or you could maybe wear it again on Valentines. During this cost-conscious holiday season, direct your dreams of being the belle of the Christmas ball in heart-stopping red satin to something a bit more practical like the shades-of-gray sheaths and shifts GGrippo is whipping up. Save the one-off glamour for make up and accessories. So far his palette is winning the popularity contest against my tan and brown prediction for the winter. My consolation prize is the brown, beige, and leopard custom-made leggings GGrippo gave me to keep the winter chill away. http://www.goredforwomen.org/national_wear_red_day.aspx http://www.sideshowgallery.com/ http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/pantone.aspx?pg=20260&ca=10 http://www.pantone.com/pages/MYP_mypantone/mypInfo.aspx?ca=75&pg=20706

Come visit us at Gifted

DECEMBER 16 TO 20 AT LAFAYETTE AND EAST 4TH ST IN MANHATTAN!!!!
NYDESIGNROOM
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CLAUDIA PEARSON
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A Very Long Run(way)—10 Trends From the NY Marathon

Because Werner was running, Grippo, Lu, a bunch of friends and their kids, and I, were among the other spectators along Bedford Ave, a leg in the New York Marathon route as it makes its way through Brooklyn. As we stood in front of the nydesignroom showroom, Grippo and I could not help evaluating the fashion aspects of the race. The New York Marathon as a fashion show.

Although some competitors went for a purely utilitarian non-“look” and some defaulted to grunge, other runners definitely wanted to make a fashion statement as well as finish in good time. Here is a short list of the trends we spotted:

1. Color coordination. Evoking the teen fashion advice counseling of the Fifties, some matched headbands to jersey to racing stripes on running shorts and shoes, This compulsion was manifested primarily in turquoise and purple. Note to those seeking inspiration from this trend: Resist the urge to match your shoes to your oversize turquoise purse. Instead buy two pairs of sneakers in the same style but in different colors and mix rather than match. It’s the latest.

2, Neck warmers. With swine flu in the offing or perhaps as the next new thing, many runners wore “cowl-scarves.” In winter, scarves around the neck are truly functional. And those in the nydesignroom look great too. Let us hope by next summer, people will have tired of wrapping their throats up.

3. Arm warmers. Black arm warmers on women, especially those wearing racing back running tops gave off a dissonant evening wear vibe. You know, long black above the elbow gloves and bare shoulders. Where’s the diamond chocker and chandelier earrings? Runners please choose something more athletic like bright orange.

4. Red. Far and away the top choice for T-shirts.

5. Branding. This trend continues, from Sharpie hand-lettered T shirts bearing the runner’s name to the white noise of corporate signage to the usual athletic nationalism—does everybody have to be an Olympic contender? Those choosing not to be a running advertisement for anything get my vote for a classy understated look. For them the New York Marathon badge is enough. Does anyone besides me think that personal style loses an essential spontaneity not to mention mystery, when it becomes a “brand”? My advice:
Keep them guessing unless they provide you with proper identification.

6. Knee highs and legwarmers. Joining running tights and their ever-dowdy older sister, sweatpants, on the course, were knee-highs and legwarmers on both men and women. All those overdeveloped calf muscles probably helped keep the knee highs up—a perennial problem with them, but if it’s cold enough for knee highs, why the bare thighs?

7. Men in skirts. A much more culturally intriguing trend. Most noteworthy were the runner in a kilt (does this qualify?) and another in a grass skirt.

8. Women in tennis skirts. Tennis skirts are an anachronism on the courts. Let’s not bring this extraneous item into the marathon.

9. Caps and hats. Yep, for attention getting rather than for warmth or keeping hair out one’s face, caps and hats were in evidence. Adding this a week later, I can’t remember one.

10. Running shorts. Because they let the body move freely, running shorts remain the favorite for as long as the colder weather allows. Short shorts have definitely moved off athletic fields and into the street, maybe even into offices. Today, on Driggs, as I emerged from the Bedford Station of the L train, the grassroots futures laser eye spied a woman wearing tailored wool, pin-striped cuffed shorts—short shorts—worn with hose and high-heeled boots. I guess a day running from cubicle to cubicle is a kind of marathon, too.

Oh, Werner’s time was 3:56:01

A race to the recession’s bottom

Is it true all the name designers are tripping all over each other as they race down the escalator to the bargain basement? Or maybe they are wearing stratospheric Jimmy Choo instead of sensible flats. Jimmy Choo is collaborating with H&M. And it is hardly surprising that the union phobic Norma Kamali would link up with Wal-Mart. Even Rodarte will be creating a line for Target—out in December. These days grassroots futures mostly runs downstairs not at specialty stores but on subway steps to see local fashionistas at the Bedford stop on the L train offer their own often DIY living “look book.”

I’ve been looking for signs of a rich chocolate brown for but the closest I have come are several taupe outfits and a couple of great milk chocolate cropped jackets. (A Pantone color for this fall was Nomad, a light past-date chocolate.) Brown leather boots in varied styles have definitively become an adventurous alternative to black. Grey is definitely extending its moment, in tights, shoes, and skirts. Cinch belts have traction, and in the case of my waistline too much traction. Nice with the big shirt look of the mid-1980s.

Because of the omnipresent gray scale version of fall fashion, if not the warmer earth- tone neutrals of ripening compost and organic topsoil, there are lots and lots of bright accents, the least imaginative being the turquoise bag. Fortunately, turquoise is mostly sported by those too young to have endured the 1950s turquoise glut and the various later iterations of corporate teal.

When Tracy Reese showed brown pinstriped loose trousers in her fall 2009 collection and some brown and raspberry prints, her models wore nude lipstick and sometimes eyeglasses. I am advocating for bright raspberry lipstick. And because some lipsticks can trip up wearers with regard to toxic ingredients, check out the raspberry shade from Zosimos Botanicals, a line of handcrafted earth-friendly mineral cosmetics. This lipstick is organic, cruelty-free, and ranks in the safest range of Skin Deep database run by the Environmental Working Group. Check out your current lipstick on this database.

And for a safer footing while descending the subway or specialty store steps, check out Matiko’s affordable Alex flats in grey. As we go downscale, at least let us be fashionable.


http://www.flyingzg.com/bags/2009/08/jimmy-choo-for-h-u0026amp-m-arrives-in-november/ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/fashion/07KAMALI.html http://www.wwd.com/retail-news/rodarte-a-go-with-target-2229917// http://www.tracyreese.com/tr_fall09.html
www.cosmeticsdatabase.com
http://www.matikoshoes.com/collection/flats/

August Fashion Blues

It’s the month when everyone else is on vacation, including one’s psychotherapist. And the rules are changing, adding to the free-floating anxiety. Absolutely nobody is wearing black patent shoes. That’s for winter now, when the thought of pulling on boots precipitates a plunge into torpor and depression. Wait a minute, boots are for summer now, short Frye boots, cowboy boots, hybrids with elf boots—all worn with short floral cotton skirts, short shorts, and in the classic seventies fusion of a carefully turned up wide cuff. Then why do I see so many flip-flops with bubblegum pink painted toes?

Ah for the classic August, linen sheaths in beige, black or brown, black fabric or patent pumps—perhaps a white and black print! But subversive variations are allowed. Trade the white skirt under a navy jacket for a less nautical palette; after all this is New York City, not Nantucket. One pairing I liked was in the window of Suite Orchard. A short-cropped linen jacket in a near navy/not quite French blue by Karen Walker. Displayed over a black sheath, the piece foreshadows fall but keeps things light.

Another way to signal fall is to accessorize off white with an autumnal tan belt. In a global warming world who says you can’t mix ggrippo’s bamboo tunics with the colors of deciduous falling leaves.

With all the dark plaids in light cotton in both girls and boys, the autumnal turn will signal a dark palette in lighter fabrics.

Sources:
Suite Orchard 145A Orchard St, New York. www.suiteorchard.com. Jacket $541.
Bamboo/viscose tops. Visit the nydesignroom, 339 Bedford, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and ggripponews at http://ggrippo.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html

Anatomy on Display

Williamsburg artist Catya Plate offered to meet me at her exhibit at the Center for Book Arts in Manhattan’s garment district. Along with other artists who use “actual thread as a design element to convey both content and form,” Plate was part of “Threads,” curated by Lois Morrison and Alexander Campos, the executive director of the Center. Plate’s science fiction clothespin people, (Clothespins, sweet young things, are what we all will be using when there is no longer natural gas or sufficient electricity to dry out clothes in dryers.) Plate’s creatures have become organ-specific personalities in the fractionalized distant future.

Actually the not so distant future. After parting from Plate, I saw a woman whose outfit suggested a slightly less stylized Michael Jackson, carrying a black canvas bag inscribed with a line drawing of an anatomic heart. The headline read “Organ Fight.” Coincidentally, that afternoon, arrests were reported in the New York Times involving rabbis and alleged international organ trading/money laundering with a headquarters here in Williamsburg. (Is this an instance of the free market’s horror vacui? Legitimate organ transplants still mostly function in the gift economy and recipients wait for a match.)

Organs, or rather line drawings of them, are frequently sighted on the subway “runways” I frequent, mostly on standard issue T-shirts. On the street, in addition to the bag, I have seen hearts, bones, brains, and (I if I remember correctly) lungs. An example of this mass-market trend is this skeleton hoodie on the ThisNEXT Web site, reviewed by RopperShopper and a designed by A Fine Mess. (I couldn’t actually find this item in the HotTopic online store, but a lime green T-shirt with a hemisection of a skeletal torso attracted me and was much less tacky). Comments about the hoodie included concerns about whether garments signified belief in satanism, and the appropriateness of wearing one to church. There are haute couture manifestations of the trend as well. Rodarte (the Mulleavy sisters) and Alexander McQueen, in his “Dis-Tinction Un-Natural Selection” show have incorporated the iconic Halloween skeleton theme into runway shows. Last spring’s Rodarte skeleton dress is an astute (especially in the bone color) variation on the slashes and cut offs we’ve seen on the street. To my mind, it works because it is tactile. McQueen’s silvery piece is a kissing cousin to the A Fine Mess T shirt, with both relying on visual spectacle rather than focusing on dissection.

In any event, expect more of this, now that Paris Hilton will debut as a musical film actor in Repo! The Genetic Opera, about repossession of mass marketed genetically modified organs. Let’s hope Plate’s identifying numbers turn out to be lifespans of her future beings in the far future, as she intended, not lot numbers as I first supposed. Although I veer toward the wear-it-as-if-you-mean-it school of fashion, this is one trend I hope stays an empty fashion statement, not a biopolitical future.


http://www.catyaplate.com

http://www.centerforbookarts.org/

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07262009/news/regionalnews/organ_selling_rabbis__link_to_madoff_181431.htm
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=107010817

http://www.thisnext.com/item/A129D150/A-Fine-Mess-Glow-In-The-Dark

http://www.alexandermcqueen.com/

http://www.rodarte.net/

http://www.repo-opera.com/

The good old gray L train

Contemplation on permanence while riding the L train: The issue is no longer a demure butterfly on a shoulder, revealing a bit of risk-taking character come a sleeveless summertime. Now, body art is so extensive that it must be factored into choosing a wardrobe. The issue is how to go beyond a solid color tunic when there is an encircling tiger tattoo on the right arm and a Lakshmi (I think) on the left. The result: much better than okay, with a paisley top more black background than ornamental figure. The designs echoed the rococo ornamentation of the body art.

An accent note: And no Feria prismatic hair color for this highly decorated lady. The flat black looked great. Amidst the feather earrings, metallics, and oversize bangles, the tendency is to tone down the accents. One way to tone down the bling of a dozen spangle bracelets is to tone down the finish. Apropos of flat (and evoking memories of the matte lipstick phase of the 1980s), Concrete by KnockOut Cosmetics is not only matte, not a glint to it, it’s gray as, well, a concrete wall. This is definitely not to be matched with the newly resurgent gray, a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate dimness struggling hard to contribute to the parent coffers. Better confine this gloom to your fingertips and wear with a blowsy floral, to scare back Nature with a whiff of Modernism. It’s a good thing that at the nydesignroom, Clash (as in clashing patterns) is not just an iconic rock group.

Almost forever
Excuse the digression folks. Style can deteriorate to an empty fashion statement unless you mean it. Tattoos by definition used to mean it, and short of dermatologic expertise, still do. This choice of adornment remains pretty permanent. Attempts at domestication, cooptation, and commodification are already well under way. Think last year’s holiday Heart Tattoo purse from Gucci featuring Rihanna, who not only sports rather furtive tattoos (check out 7confessions), but also has been reported to wield the needle herself. Wear your tattoo on some animal’s skin and carry it around. It’s less of a commitment that way. And the charity they give money to is UNICEF. Weren’t the Halloween nickels lucrative enough? It’s all a hell of a long way from the merchant marines.



http://7confessions.blogspot.com/2008/01/rihanna-loves-her-tattoos-photos.html
http://tinyurl.com/l7cduu
Concrete is available at miomia: https://www.shopmiomia.com/index.asp?

Just Too Damn Hot

As summer finally takes off, albeit with drenching evidence of pole ward-moving storm tracks. vaguely retro dresses are popping up everywhere. Designs may be modest—capped sleeves, necklines round rather than plunging--but the floral prints are big, brash and fully exposed. The fabrics are cool and get their sexual kicks from cling while protesting “I don’t mean to be provocative.” Two vintage floral print dresses on offer at the nydesignroom evoke summer festivals that never quite occurred, but would do well in a cool dark bar over spiked lemonade. Speaking of spiked lemonade, check out the Julia Dress by Tocca now on sale at the Tocca Web site. Yellow and white—so air-conditioned. GGrippo will be putting the flirt into tunics and other tops with figure-draping, ecofriendly breezy bamboo, leaving flowers to the imagination. And yes, I do see a lot of very-high-cut hot pants or short shorts; pick your decade. The update, hose or leggings and knee high boots may resonate with a certain erotic frisson, but it can’t be doing a body’s thermal regulation any good. If you really must bare, I suggest a diminutive floral print update on the regulation high school gym suit spotted on Bedford. The wearer seemed the embodiment of this generation’s version of the popular girl who beat us at badminton. Maybe the gym suit rekindled adolescent jealousies. Please eschew overalls with only narrow straps holding the bib in place worn shirtless with a waist so loose the hardly subtextual invitation is to reach down and grab a handful. Contrary to the floral trend, this was done up in a drab unbleached cotton cream. Fashion trend guru David Wolfe predicted polkadots. And polkadots are indeed present, mostly small to medium, but not as abundant as flowers. Check out the polkadot diaphanous number in the window of Sir up north on Bedford. Down-market but intriguing are the sheer tops with metallic polkadots I saw on Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint. Who says irony is elitist?

p.s. for the guys And speaking of irony, I really like how classic seersucker has been recruited from spiffy summer suits on Southern gentlemen of a certain age into biker-style jackets and cargo shorts on clearly hipster guys.

http://www.tocca.com/store/catalog/collection/juliana-dress-sale
Sir Brooklyn, 129 Bedford, Brooklyn

Maybe the new black is just black

Rushed headline writers and lame copywriters keep hijacking the ploy of riffing off the cliché of basic black. And the tactic has long since escaped, like some genetically modified seed, into croplands far afield.

Cases in point: Jack Shafer’s 2007 critique in Slate of “green” journalism “Green is the New Yellow,” an argument that ecologic reportage veers toward the cataclysmic and inaccurate (a Google search reveals other posts under the same head on a variety of subjects including a urine-diversion toilet); and Tamsin Blanchard’s just released guide to shopping green is entitled Green Is The New Black.

Little did I know how long ago this linguistic twist started. With the help of Wikipedia, which does have an entry for “the new black,” I found an early instance of what is called a snowclone attributed to an ur-fashion doyen, in which pink was called "the navy blue of India." I am putting my money on Diana Vreeland (it has also been attributed to Gloria Vanderbilt). And it is amazing how rare the sightings of navy blue, that archetypal color of basic banking, are these days. However, thanks to the intrepid ladies of Code Pink, pink in their own politically hot version, is at every protest I’ve been to.

And speaking of the politically correct color, I must acknowledge the Web site of journalist Will Potter, “Green Is the New Red.” His argument is that the harsh prosecution of “eco-terrorists” is the new “red scare.”

As for red, it’s everywhere in two distinct and very now versions: what I call Williamsburg Bridge faded red and Coliseum blood, the color of Christie’s auction house shopping bags. (Here I am stealing from a writer whose name I have forgotten who described the color of nail polish as “the nails of a Roman matron ecstatically dipping her hands into the blood of a fallen gladiator.”)

Yes, I do prefer the color of weathered metalwork—not pink and not rose-- looking great in a leather jean-styled jacket. The other red bloodies toenails in, yes, gladiator sandals and provides more than a streak of red in the still popular oversize bags. (Watch out though for the return at long last to the strapless clutch bag.) And I do love red patent flats in an uncoagulated red.

Meanwhile, black is still basic and remained the default color of leggings and tights on these coolish June days. Even when a pastel might have been more interesting. On the B61 bus, a spectacular baby doll dress in pink pleated all around, nearly ruined with black tights when white fishnets would have looked truly fantastic.




http://www.slate.com/id/2169863/
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003981.html
http://www.amazon.com/Green-New-Black-Change-World/dp/0061719307
http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/

A blueprint for what to wear

Blue is hardly new on the scene. Pantone designated a sort of French blue as its top color for 2008. And the color has become iconic for sustainable water stewardship and perhaps partially displaced green as a signifier for environmental responsibility. Dense blues do seem to have come into their own, as interiors and I like deep blues in that setting. Visit The Blue Apartment , a partner in the nydesignroom opening of Post-Retro Modern on May 16.

The intense blues have been slow to catch on in fashion, especially as navy blue has become so stodgily corporatized. A Grassroots Futures take on the New Conventions of the Edgier Business World will be coming soon. What I see during my grassroots travels is a long neglected synthesis of the green/blue nexus. Appropriately on my way to the recent Left Forum at Pace University, I spotted a glorious bottle-green taffeta flounce skirt with a black lace border paired with a robin’s egg blue top. And need I mention that among the first green shoots among the blues the much-maligned turquoise appears more and more frequently.

post-retro-modern and functional frills

Space Available?

Fashion shows have never attracted the diversity of gallery art openings, not to mention rock concerts. Mostly I have steered clear, preferring the “found” fashion show that is the Bedford Avenue station on the L subway line here in Williamsburg. What is the fashion equivalent of a white box, a space where the designer’s aesthetic can be displayed without distraction? Who can help being intrigued by the space designed for Prada in Seoul by Rem Koolhaas/AMO? This is especially true for a commentator enjoying the hospitality of the nydesignroom Web site. At the nydesignroom space, a vigorous conversation can often be detected between architecture (materials, structure) with the aesthetics of the human figure and the requirements of social dress. The products and selections echo these voices.

GGrippo shares my ambivalence about fashion shows. While I would quibble about their elitism and issues of access, he might focus more on critiquing stodginess and convention. His own 2005 fashion show in the MALBA in Buenos Aires was more an art installation than a marketing platform. (People still wanted to wear and did buy the clothes). The other day, Grippo exclaimed, “I want to do a runway show.”

The drive to make actual a full and near ideal expression of design sentiment characterizes the practitioners of every art form—even the applied arts. Hence, a show. However, in my opinion, a fashion show with or without runway needs a space that provides a hint of the actual settings where flesh-and-blood human beings will actually wear the clothes.

Innovative temporary spaces for displaying fashion are very fine. However, for myself, I might be more interested in viewing collections on models making their way down the street amidst all the people who with greater or less success present their own fashion show of one to the world every day. That might be a very democratic test of how successful a collection is in pointing the way to a fashion future and inspiring adoption.

Patent Still Pending

Yesterday, I spotted a woman struggling up the steps of the Driggs Ave. side of the Bedford stop of the L train. She was hobbled by a pair of over 3-inch sculpted heels with gladiator-style straps over the instep and an ankle cuff. Meanwhile, her companion, in sprightly red patent flats, scampered up the steps. Heels, to my mind are meant to appear seductively on a long leg emerging from the back seat of a cab or limo, not as mass transit footwear. No, sneakers with heels to go, are not essential, but let us please exercise some safety sense. As for patent, my strong views on the subject follow. Although this prediction—over a year old—never really came to pass, I did see two pairs of moss green patent leather shoes in a shop window on the Upper East Side, so maybe I’ll take credit for spotting a “trendlet.”

Here’s a post I drafted over a year ago that was never published…

Patently Incompatible

Patent leather got its shine on with a special linseed-oil-based leather finish process developed in 1819 in Newark, NJ. And now, more likely with a plastic coating, or totally plastic, it is shinier than ever. A few decades ago, it escaped from the bounds of circumspect formality. Men wore patent leather shoes with formal wear. Women generally wore black patent pumps for dress occasions or for business in August—after they were thoroughly bored with white kid. For all purposes, like whites and pastels, patent shoes were laid to rest in the closet for resurrection at Easter (remember your Mary Janes with white anklets?).

Patent has long since morphed into year-round business wear, offering dressy shine to women of a certain age who no longer could navigate through business conferences on 3-inch conservative business pumps. Stilettos were out of the question entirely. A pair of black patent flats or pumps with a modest wedge would do nicely, thank you.

The color palette stayed limited however, black, white, and more recently, red. I have particular reverence for a red patent “leather” belt of my mother’s with a covered buckle from the WW II years. I can accept school-bus yellow, having been a fan of yellow kidskin Capezio flats in the 1950s. But I’ll admit to being taken aback when I spotted as I was transferring from the L to the R train at Union Square a pair of patent sandals in moss green.

The wearer was not carrying the Brahmin Delita bag featured in the June issue of Vanity Fair—in faux crocodile patent leather also in moss green. That would have been too much. Moreover, as it was not available on the handbag rental site I consulted, it would have set her back $335, now considered a bargain for a fashionable bag. (The Brahmin Web site now offers only white and an unappealing sand.) Instead, a nondescript fabric in a green abstract print held the sandal-wearer’s possessions.

Reeling from the dissonance, my mind nursed its wounded chromatic preconceptions. I actually like moss green. My last consumer home purchase was a moss green bath mat. To my mind, if patent is green, it should be phthalo green, or maybe forest green emerging from cool dark neutral shadow of its heritage, not the color moss between blocks of concrete or an inside leaf of wilting lettuce. If the moss green color choice was powered by the current eco swell, it’s a beached marine mammal.

Finish matters. I object to mixing moss green with high polish. Why is this a personal taboo? I love Modernism--sleek lines, flat color fields, glass and steel--but to live on the earth we humans may need to indulge in manufactured perfection only in moderation. It takes too much energy to take an object to the final Modernist pinnacle. An object can be just as perfect functionally when it is a tiny bit crude and homemade. Moss green patent may be such a "bridge too far." Let’s reserve high gloss for high decorum, being on stage, not flip flopping up subway stairs.

Postscript: Alas, I saw my mom’s iconic red patent belt, albeit in a wider version in, you guessed it--moss green in the window of Fuego on Grand St. in Williamsburg.

So this running commentary begins in the spirit of humility…

welcome to streetviews

ask the experts!
Frances Chapman will tell us why trends become, and when to look into the future.