Fabulous Fashionistas

This is what I want to look like when I grow up. Check out the documentary, Fabulous Fashionistas. http://youtu.be/4znrNtLKDE4

 

There she is...Miss Alabama

 It is that time of the year, dear readers when you will find yourself faced with a good deal of football news.  To ease you into this, our first "football" post will actually be a fashion post as we have a very early bye week this Saturday.

Billy Reid recently conveyed the startling fact that Alabama has the third most members of the Council for Fashion Designers of America after New York and Los Angele.  Who knew.  Not to mention we have a slew of pageants.   The big one being Miss Alabama.

This year, Miss Alabama is Chandler Champion.   ( A brief aside in the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction vein.  If you were in a beginning writing class and you named your beauty queen Chandler Champion, your instructor would have you change it.)

Champion is headed to the Miss America Pageant where there will be an event called "Show Us Your Shoes."  This is kind of a throwback to the old days where each contestant wore a dress representing their state so you had corn stalk dresses and Mount Rushmore hats.  Clearly, the producers of Project Runway were big Miss America fans.

Since Champion has been at the University of Alabama during its reign as National Football Champions, it only seems right that she commemorate this feat with a big old Roll Tide dress.  Designed by Ann Northington, it is a jumpsuit with a fitted bodice and pants.   There is a full houndstooth oversized float with the Alabama Football National Championship emblem in the center. The float is designed to "hang from the back of the car in the parade."  The front panels of the float feature the ever present, "Roll Tide."

The very snarky Washington Post wrote of the dress, "Anna Wintour weeps."    Really, well ask yourself this -- Did the North London Collegiate School ever with the National Football Championship, Anna? But I digress...

As for the shoes in the Show Us Your Shoes event.  You didn't really think they would be simple, black ballet slippers.   Great use of that Belk's accessory wall.

The tiny hat pin, brooch is a homage to coach Nick Saban's favorite hat.  There is not really a good place on the jumpsuit to pin it, so she is taking it for good luck, I guess.

I am thinking this dress just might start a trend toward houndstooth as the new favorite prom dress material.  And what girl hasn't dreamt of wearing a dress that would hang from the back of the car. 

Geography Is Fun...

...damental.
The perfect gift for that North Carolina Panthers fan who resides in...South Carolina!



UPDATE:  Clearly this blogging on the iPad is not working as it should!

Requiescat in Pace -- Polo Sweatshirt

 

Everyone has one.  That article of clothing that you just love beyond all reason.  Even after it gets torn and stained, and faded with bleach.  After the fraying and holes and rips, it is still the first thing in the laundry and first thing you put on while it is still warm from the laundry.

Mine was a Polo sweatshirt, thick, grey, and yes, a bit of a mess.   During Christmas, I pulled it on still warm and the cuff tore until it was quite literally, hanging by a thread or two.  At one point, I asked a guest to shove up my sleeve (what was left of my sleeve) as the cuff was getting in my way.  Ann asked why I didn't just trow it away.  (Blasphemy!) 

It became clear, however, after that last December washing, that the Polo sweatshirt would not survive.   While my little blue pony was still galloping along, the fabric around him was disintegrating into oblivion.  I folded up my favorite sweatshirt and longingly watched it as it lay on the table, lifeless.  Ann called and abruptly asked it I had thrown it away.  No!

Then, this week, I received a large box with a Happy New Year note.  Inside were two, yes two, brand new grey Polo sweatshirts.  I am wearing one now.  It is soft, but not that soft.  The cuffs are intact and gripping my wrists.  The tag is scratching my neck.  I am sure that after a few hundred washings, it will shape up. 

Until then,  goodbye old friend.

Inspiration Dior

Everything that has been part of my life...

has expressed itself in my dresses.
Christian Dior

On February 12th, 1947 Christian Dior presented his first collection and the New Look was born.

At the Pushkin Museum in Moscow the inspiration for many of Dior's iconic designs is being explored.

"Inspiration Dior" looks at the internal visual dialogue between designer and artists, such as Picasso, Renoir, Modigiliani and Hokusa and how that vision is externalized into couturier.

The dresses juxtaposed against the art are sublime and I only saw them in video on TV5!

This tradition of art into fashion has followed the great designers of the house of Dior.

From Dior, himself, through Yves Saint Laurent , Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferre and John Galliano, each designer has manifested Dior's vision that everything in life eventually becomes a dress.

Here are several prime example of of painting transformed into fashion.

This embroidered grey pinstriped jacket from Fall-Winter 2003-2004 is worn over yellow velvet bra. It is shown next to John Singer Sargent's La Carmencita.

Suzurka-San coat from Spring-Summer 2007 is embroidered white linen which has been hand-painted.
It is shown with Katsushika Hokusai's The Great Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa.

Kazimir Malévitch's Woman with a Rake bears a striking resemblance to this 2002 black-and-white silk faille coat worn over a white leotard and black-and-white white linen skirt.

Another view.

I am not off to Moscow anytime soon, but truly these pictures are worth at least a thousand words.

Here is a short introduction.

Wednesday Etiquette -- Wife Dressing

The Victoria and Albert Museum is re-issuing a 1950’s fashion gem, Wife Dressing: The Fine Art of Being A Well Dressed Wife. The book offers “provocative notes for the patient husband who pays the bills.”

The book was written by Anne Fogarty a famous model who turned designer. If you don’t know her name, you will no doubt no her most famous innovation, the Paper Doll Silhouette, which featured a full skirt over masses of petticoats.

At the very beginning, Fogarty sets the tone by telling husbands:

"If you adore her, you must adorn her. There lies the essence of a happy marriage."

She then lays out the rules married girls:

"While the bachelor girl can be a chameleon, forever changing herself over to suit a new whim, a new job, or a new beau, the wife has moved on to better things. She has found her cozy corner and man she wants to share it with. What she must do next is decide how best to dramatize her new role and crystallize her position in terms of her home, her husband, her job if she has one, her friends and business associates."

The true irony of this little book is the fact that while she very “wife” obsessed, her ideas of fashion ring true today. You have to hand it to The Victoria and Albert Museum's publishing arm. They produce some great books and often they do not get the publicity in the U. S. that they get in the U.K. If you have and interest in fashion, decorative arts, or textiles, do bookmark their bookstore. It is one of my first stops when I hit the lottery! Or utill I find that patient husband who wants to pay my bills.

The Dress Doctor

Speaking of my BFF, Beverly...

We were talking about Sarah Paulson and her impersonation of Kathleen Turner on David Letterman. Check it out on the You Tube clip forwarding it to about 4:40 to hear Kathleen and some Holly Hunter, too.
We thought that instead of doing, Cupid, she should just be a regular on the talk show circuit. Many years ago, there were people who were not television or movie "personalities" but they were regulars on talk shows; people like Truman Capote and Edith Head.

Speaking of Edith Head...

There was recently a lovely, illustrated reprint (actually a reedit) of Head's famous book, The Dress Doctor.
The Dress Doctor: Prescriptions for Style, From A to Z is my favorite kind of book, an abecedary.




As you may recall, my last post was about Beverly's breakfast pictures of my blackberry jam. In The Dress Doctor, Head gives the following suggestions for what to wear for breakfast.

It's good psychology to start the day with bright colors, so choose something gay in a washable fabric. Breakfast coat, brunch cot, housedress, smock, skirt and shirt, or slacks and shirt + apron if you're cooking + casual shoes, sandals, or flats.

Beverly did not send me pictures of what she was wearing when she served my blackberry jam to her family. I'm sure it was a bright and colorful housedress. Or perhaps it was her Sunday brunch coat. Where does one purchase a "brunch coat" or a "breakfast coat" for that matter?

This morning I served breakfast in black sweatpants and a black, T-shirt. Fortunately, my cats have never heard of Edith Head.

Still... I am rather fond of the "smock" as an apparel of clothing and purpose that we start a movement to return the smock to everyday apparel. I'm sure Edith Head would approve.