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