Machismo

My friend Eamonn over at his blog makes the following interesting point:

We went the Korean national day do at the embassy on Friday night. It was my first time at such an event and something that struck me was the huge difference between what was being worn by males like me; black shoes, nondescript dark jacket, shirt and tie, or a dull suit, and what the numerous military attaches present were wearing; yards of gold cord, racks of multicolured medal badges, rows of shining military speciality pins, loads of trousers with brightly coloured stripes down the sides etc etc.

Could it be that they, having proven their invincible heterosexuality by being in the military, can feel relaxed in gear like this, while the rest of us want to prove how hard we are by rejecting foppish display?

Pleasure

Shares in my bank fell by 40 per cent on the markets yesterday, so I could lose everything - my whole overdraft. God only knows what the hell is going on with the economy, someone sent me an easy-to-understand summary of short selling: I gave up after the second sentence. However, something seems to be up with capitalism and where's it all going to end?

Yesterday I was on the way to Rigby and Peller to be fitted for the bra to go with my my Booker dress and walking through Mayfair, down Conduit Street and past Vivienne Westwood, Donna Karan could not help but wonder if this was it, the end of the life we've known, and in a year's time would I walk that same street and see boarded up shops, beggars, soup kitchens?

By disposition I prefer pleasure to self-sacrifice, hope to pessimism and despair. I took comfort in the fact that I have a wardrobe full of beautiful clothes to see me through the Great Slump. I had a bit of time to kill before my bra fitting appointment and I stepped into the Mille Harris shop and tearoom. As every fule no, in a recession lipstick sales increase, as women buy a low cost item to cheer themselves up. I spent a delicious half hour in Miller Harris drinking a fragrant cup of her own handblended tea, eating a lemon shortbread biscuit and browsing through the magazines before inhaling a divine sniff of expensive scent. It cost me a fiver and if I'd had time I would have stayed there for an hour.

And this is how to get through the times that lie ahead. Find small pleasures, anything to cheer ourselves up. We are going to need all the pleasure we can get.

And not long after it was explained to me that alhough I am 57 years old, I do not know how to put on a bra.

Credit crunch movies

In the real world

Last night I did the military trend, a tunicky black coat dress with double-breasted gold buttons, so I'm all ready to go and invade somewhere.

Jess Cartner-Morley explains how actual people wear the trends on the catwalk. Here is Paris:

So far as there is a "look" to be derived from this week's shows, it goes something like this. It focuses on the shape of the torso and the shoulders: often a corsetted waist and ribs, contrasted with pointy, vaguely sci-fi shoulders. Sometimes there are straps tracing the lines of the ribs or looped in faintly fetishistic multiples around the shoulders. At Givenchy, the look was less gothic than last season, and more glam rock - that'll be the leather trousers with flame detailing along the thigh - but the intense, angular, skinny, black aesthetic remains essentially unchanged. At Stella, black bands were wrapped bandage-tight, in the style made famous by Azzedine Alaïa.
. . .

Don't panic. We are not actually going to be wearing this. I know, because all week I've been watching what the French fashion editors wear. When they want to do a bit of a strappy thing, they wear a top with loose, draped straps (Vanessa Bruno does a good line in these) under a black jacket with pointy shoulders and maybe even a hem that points down at the front. They wear this with slim trousers and heels, or a short skirt and long boots. Often the finishing touch is a thin scarf wound around the neck, and there you have it: the same elegant-edgy, strappy-black thing without looking like a science-fiction prostitute. Alternatively, if they want to channel a bit of a Victorian dummy silhouette, they go with a tightly belted jacket over a very short, very full skirt, worn with ankle boots - this gives the same abrupt-looking, jagged silhouette.

These straps and silhouettes, however, don't really make a trend by themselves. In Paris, as in the other fashion cities, this season of shows has failed to produce one headline-making, soundbite-friendly major trend: no Boho, no 60s. There was no consensus. But perhaps we don't need one. To allow Karl Lagerfeld, appropriately enough, the last word: "As long as you agree with yourself, that's enough - non?

"

Don't talk about politics!

One of the most fascinating little gadgets I've seen in ages is this gizmo which allows you to compare the US electoral map over every election going back to 1789 (what happened that year?*)

Particularly interesting is the difference between 1928 and 1932, as Norm points out.

* irony

More Bill Cunningham

Fashion in the rain

what a fantastic thing - to take such pleasure in your work, after 50 years.

More about him, here

A forgotten maestro of British fashion

Bill Gibb remembered - my piece in today's Telegraph:

In the summer of 1970 a friend and I laboriously made ourselves long coats out of multicoloured patchwork velvet squares. The sleeves were gathered at the armholes because we didn't know how to fit them, and they fell like the tunic of a medieval page-boy, wide at the wrists. We were dedicated followers of fashion who had grown out of Chelsea Girl, the 1960s equivalent of Topshop, but it would be a year or two before we discovered the vintage stalls at Kensington Market. With our hennaed hair, kohl-rimmed eyes and Biba purple lipstick, we wafted about in Afghan dresses, skirts made of Indian bedspreads and loose velvet tops from India with tiny mirrors inset in the embroidery. Nothing matched. The clash of colour and texture was the point. The only rule was that you must not look anything like your mother, who had outrageously started to wear her skirts an inch or two above the knee.

Twiggy’s outfit for the Los Angeles premiere of The Boy Friend, 1971

Because we were only teenagers, what we knew about clothes came not from the fashion press (Vogue was scarily grown-up), but from copying everyone we knew. So I was completely unaware, until I opened the pages of a new book about his life and work, that for a period of about three years in my late teens and early twenties, I had been a walking advertisement for Bill Gibb. Gibb's early death at the age of 44 in 1988, and his too-brief period in the 1970s as one of the defining designers of his age, has meant that he has been partly forgotten - except by those who wore his clothes. He dressed Bianca Jagger, Elizabeth Taylor, Anjelica Huston, Marie Helvin and Twiggy, who described Gibb as 'my knight in shining armour', after he rescued her car from a snowdrift on a cold London day in 1967.

Bill Cunningham: Who Knew?

I've been reading the US press online this week because of the VP debate and the bailout and discovered the wonderful photo and audio essays on fashion on the street by Bill Cunningham in the New York Times.

I had never heard of this guy, but he is wonderful, here he is talking about the new trend for lace. And he's been doing this for fifty years!

My weekend re-reading

The masters of the universe - where are they now?

The Clothes On Their Backs US publication update

The US edition of The Clothes On Their Backs is being rushed out by Scribner for publication early November. I have seen the first draft of the cover which I adore. As soon as it appears on Amazon, I'll post a link. Or you can order directly from the Simon and Schuster site. There will be a simultaneous hardback and $14 trade paperback.

British style explained

It's true that there is a lot of vacuous fashion writing out there, but there is some brilliant fashion journalism too, usually by people who've been around the block, like Lisa Armstrong at the Times whom I first met 20 years ago when she was working on Elle. And here she is, explaining the origins of British style (also taking in class, necessarily, this being Britain):

No discussion of Britain’s sartorial tics proceeds very far before it collides with a cloud front, a rainstorm and the occasional heatwave. The weather doesn’t merely affect the way we dress, it defines it. It may be no exaggeration to say that most of the enduring wardrobe components this country has given to the world – the trench coat, the argyle sweater, the cashmere twinset, the wellington, the sprigged tea dress – arose from a need to combat the elements. As for our other great contribution, thank 1,000 years of military doggedness. Savile Row tailoring wouldn’t exist without Army uniforms. Without tailoring there would be no mods, no Vivienne Westwood, no easily definable system for telegraphing one’s class. Punks wouldn’t have looked nearly so sharp.

Pragmatism may be the fundamental principle on which British style is built. A country which for centuries had no equivalent of la passeggiata, that evening parade in Mediterranean and Latin countries in which beautifully turned-out people stroll along the balmy streets, found more idiosyncratic ways to communicate its sense of chic. Layers, that stand-by of the draughty British home, are something at which we excel, and a habit the rest of the world now emulates, thanks to avatars such as Kate Moss and brands such as Burberry, which took the haphazard approach of chucking on any old ropey jumper over a summer dress, over a pair of woolly tights, and made it look chic and luxurious. Lo, modern eclecticism was born.

Harry Revisits Highway 61

The other day I was on a mission to find a polka dot shirt.
Having tried Beyond Retro, a cavernous vintage store south of Oxford Street, I continued on to Carnaby Street. There has recently been a bit of a retro /mod revival and a few stores can be found in its environs. Sherry’s in Ganton Street had a large mod roundel outside so that helped me identify it.
‘I’m looking for a polka dot shirt’ I explained to the pleasant young man ‘for someone a lot smaller than me ( ie thinner) who wants to look like Bob Dylan for the evening.’

He was able to produce one straight away. It had a button down collar, and when I enquired whether they did any with tab collars I got the expected answer: No.
I was just musing as to whether said shirt was authentic and stylish enough when the assistant told me something moderately fascinating. The US magazine Entertainment Today had recently been doing a photo shoot with Bob Dylan, and their stylist had contacted the shop to get them to send over some polka dot shirts, just like the one I was holding. 'How cool is that ?' I thought.
A few moments later he was wrapping the item and then proceeded to tell me that Liam and Noel had both been in recently and bought the identical shirt.
Well, of course, we are all so familiar with the Gallagher brothers from Oasis that I guess first names only are de rigeur.

Later, over a cup of coffee, I interrogated the story that went with the transaction. And on reflection decided that it was extremely unlikely that the esteemed Bob would ever put himself in the hands of a stylist from Entertainment Today.
But as sales patter goes, I thought it was inspired.
And sometimes , maybe, it’s quite enjoyable to be gullible.

There are perhaps a couple of questions prompted by this post .
Why is someone I know wanting to look like Bob Dylan?
And why can’t one get hold of a tab-collar shirt?
I’ll answer the first question in my next post.
And I will ruminate on the second very soon.

Election rally

Fashion is no longer fashion. . .

. . . It's conceptual art

Off piste, off trend

I suppose it must be the economy, but equally I think it's fashion's own desperation and exhaustion: I am truly bored with 'trends.'

Here's the Guardian with a list of what we're to expect:

Strong-shouldered jackets
Massive shoulders at shows like Balmain mean the style will last way into 2009.

Skin-tight trousers
This silhouette rules for next season - bodysuits at Jil Sander and Balenciaga, and tight pants at Givenchy.

Painful shoes
If your heels are huge, like the YSL Tribute boots, then a scrum will form around you, looking for the sort of killer shoes that saw models tumble at Prada.

No bag
When Carine Roitfeld began arriving at the shows carrying her phone and nothing else, the big-bag trend was over. If you must have a bag, then make it a clutch, like those that were just seen at Balenciaga.

I am going to be following none of these. I was at L.K Bennett yesterday taking back the shoes which Av had deemed not right for my dress and I was only offered an exchange or credit note. It was a real struggle to find any non-stilettos (I don't wear flats) and in the end found a pair of square-toed purple patent pumps with a stacked heel. When I got home there was an email from a fashion editor friend telling me her day-in-day-out shoes are stacked heel platforms by Stewart Weitzman from Russell and Bromley. So even the fashion editors aren't wearing these sky high shoes. Walking through Hanover Square yesterday I saw three young women who were; they were chatting on the windy street before turning and trooping painfully back into Vogue House, headquarters of Conde Nast. Their bosses know better.

I confess I have been on a buying spree lately and this must be the last gasp before the retail economy contracts and we start to see bankruptcies. I bought a scarf and a necklace yesterday. I could still be wearing them at 80 and might have to.

We know there must be fashion even in a slump. That's what fashion is, that's what fashion does, it rises above. One of my favourite films is Preston Sturges Sullivan's Travels, about the necessity of laughter. But fashion needs to remember that in a depression we're all going to need cheering up, and art school clothes that belong in an art installation, self-referential and ultimately quite boring, are literally museum pieces.

The white stuff

white haired old gentleman

Despite being emphatically in the anti-grey hair camp when it comes to my own carefully tended barnet, I draw the line at male dyeing, sorry. And how strange it is that wealthy men like Paul McCartney can't afford a good dye job

George Clooney indeed does have it right, and I'm not even that much of a fan of Gorgeous George:

Friends, mostly women, tell me that George Clooney has perfect hair. A light sprinkling of salt and pepper, looking natural and suited to his age. Well-seasoned, in fact. I've no idea whether Clooney spends a small part of his fortune on his hair or whether it's natural, but it's certainly a model for others to aim for. Instead, even the wealthy come a cropper whenever they unscrew the toner.

I don't mean the Paul McCartney auburn rinse, during the high summer of Heather - having a different hair colour can be fun. I'm talking about the straight black and brown, like boot polish. Some people seem to deploy industrial-strength dye, as though it's a totem of manhood that their locks can stand up to the onslaught.Next time you see an ageing rock star, check out the inevitable goatee. Monochrome. Dark as a 1970s bass line. A case of "Hope I dye before I get old." My friend at the bar had the same problem. He didn't look bad, just weird, as if someone had dropped a wig on him. Bald would have been better.

I know this sounds less than gracious from a man in his fifties blessed with a full head of hair. But I, too, know what the hair police can be like. When things started to turn white, my teenage children used to play a game called "Hunt the Badger" in supermarkets. But I never dreamt of airbrushing out these signs of mortality.

So why do they do it? The most obvious answer is a desire to hang on to their lost youth, to summon some of the virility of the past by returning to the same colour. But that doesn't really work.

To have a lined and aged face under a helmet of black matting is only to draw attention to age, rather than to divert it. It's like putting a granny in a tutu.

What men want

Best to stay away from very sharp knives

From Giles Coren and others:

Also, I want a woman who is prepared to admit that what she wants from a man is a big c*** and a lot of money. I am fed up with women always claiming that what they find most sexy is a sense of humour. Because it isn’t true. I know this because I am hilarious. Way more funny than most of the slack-arsed, car-obsessed, office wonk baldies you’ll meet in a wine bar on a Friday night, and yet I practically never get laid. If it were true that women are turned on by a man who makes them laugh, Woody Allen wouldn’t have had to marry his own daughter.

As for a woman with a sense of humour, that’s fine, as long as it simply means that she will laugh at my jokes. Most women only laugh at their own jokes. Shut up. If you say something funny, I’ll let you know. And don’t give me “career”. Only women have “careers”. Men have jobs, to get money, and if we could stop and have babies while someone else earned the loot, believe me, we would. We don’t need a “career” to feel validated. We don’t want to feel validated. We just want to feel boobs. As many as possible. And then, at the last minute, quickly have babies and then die.

Dark, dark, we all go into the dark

Martin Margiela

I've got nothing to wear corner

The Guardian's women's page editor, Kira Cochrane, has been monitoring the process of her slow weightloss. She has not weighed herself but used her own clothes to work out if she's heading in the right direction. Now she's down to UK size 16, US 12, she has discovered that she can't find anything to buy in the shops:

The reality is that as you get bigger, your clothing options get much, much smaller. Once you reach a size 16 or more, buying brilliant - or even just marginally attractive - clothes on the high street is markedly more difficult. This is ridiculous. Just because you've gained a few pounds, it doesn't mean that you're any less likely to want clothes that are colourful, exciting, flattering - in fact, buying fantastic clothes that boost your confidence becomes even more of a necessity in the face of rampant anti-fat sentiment. What you're too often faced with is a mountain of frump and I'm convinced that someone could make an absolute killing by setting up a boutique selling clothes in size 16 and above by cutting-edge young designers. There are those who argue that fat people should be stigmatised, that by offering them nothing but ugly tents to wear, they're more likely to lose weight. Actually, the opposite is true. Deprived of easy access to threads that make you feel presentable, finding solace in the fridge is the obvious next step.

The heelless boot

As worn, inevitably, by Mrs Beckham