Auntie Fashion

Moose Jaw

Although I haven’t had a chance to compose a formal invitation to Moose Jaw Fashion Week 2012 yet, I haven’t received any flat-out refusals to attended, either.  Well, that’s not exactly true!  There was that one snub . . .

Anyway, here’s a incomplete list of who may be attending, followed by a list of who will not be attending.

May Be Attending:

Anna Wintour; Carine Roitfeld; Tom Ford; Jean Paul Gaultier; Karl Lagerfeld; Lucinda McRuvy; Cathy Horyn; Jeanne Beker; Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt; Madonna; Sarah Mower; Tim Blanks; Linda Evangelista; Donatella Versace; Tomas Maier; Godfrey Deeny; Joe Zee; Nina Garcia; Tim Gunn; Heidi Klum and Seal; Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony; Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale; Simon Doonan and Jonathan Adler; Tyra Banks; Glenda Bailey; Linda Wells; Hilary Alexander; Danielle Meder; Carolyn Rohaly; Stacey McKenzie; Suzy Menkes; Betsey Johnson; Donna Karan; Ralph Lauren; Christy Turlington; Liya Kedebe; Hilary Rhoda; Tyson Beckford; Bono; Carla Bruni-Sarkozy; John Galliano; Bill and Hilary Clinton; Queen Elizabeth II; Michael Kors; Claudia Schiffer; RuPaul Charles; Isabel Slone; Regis Philbin; Rita Silvan; David Bowie and Iman; Marjie Withajay; Barbara Walters; David and Victoria Beckham.

Will Not Be Attending:

Ceri Marsh

White Patchouli

A couple of posts back, I mentioned that I first realized the greatness of Kate Moss when I saw her at a Dior show.  I wrote “there are girls who can unbutton a coat, and there are girls who can unbutton a coat.”

Just to further illustrate that point, there are girls who can hold a perfume bottle, and there are girls who can hold a perfume bottle.

Check out this ad for Tom Ford’s new fragrance.  Erykah Badu, my fabulous Philip Treacy hat is off to you!

A look from Halston on the WWD Blog

When did WWD.com start a blog?

I just looked at the archives and they only go back to June, so I guess that I’ve already answered my own question.

Anyway, it’s a terrific read.  Women’s Wear Daily has always been about the business of fashion.  Their readers appreciate the art of selling fashion as much as they appreciate the art of fashion itself.  But it is targeted to industry insiders: Those who are already in-the-know.  To the outsider, it can be rather intimidating — like being invited to a fabulous cocktail party where everyone is speaking a language that you don’t even recognize.

Yet learning that foreign tongue isn’t difficult.  After a month or two of immersion, anyone can master the language of WWD.  And once one has become familiar with the cast of characters, it’s almost like a daytime soap opera.  There’s a lot more going on behind the scenes of the fashion business than just business.

The WWD Blog just adds a little twist to WWD’s tried-and-true formula.  Now we get to know the editorial team.  Designer Sportswear Editor, Marc Karimzadeh (who wrote the Halston blog post), is candid and a little catty — just what I want in a fashion blogger!  Rosemary Feitelberg, Market Editor, has an easy, breezy blogging style that invites you into her world.  A few other writers don’t really get the idea of the blog, and their posts read like some of WWD’s bone-dry editorial content.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed the vast majority of the entries.

I hope that they can keep it up.  Too many blogs from so-called “insiders” end up becoming detailed lists of what the blogger’s fashionable friends are wearing.  I don’t give a rat’s ass about that.  Let me know how you feel about the stories that you’re breaking.  Show me why you deserve to play a part in the drama.  Become a character in the soap opera you’ve created.

If I didn’t want drama in my life, I wouldn’t be a fan of fashion, would I?

Anya on The Cut

It’s the news I’ve been waiting to hear!  Adorable Anya from last season of America’s Next Top Model has been signed at Elite.

With the fall shows just weeks away, I guess we’ll find out soon enough if she’s going to be a real model or just a Top Model.

Coco Rocha on FASHION

Just a moment ago, while trying to upload this photo, I was simultaneously watching a story on the morning news about a rogue moose wandering through my neighborhood.  “Only in Canada,” I said to myself.  Then I got back to thinking about Coco Rocha.

No, she doesn’t remind me of a moose.  Yet she does remind me of another Canadian model: Linda Evangelista.  They look nothing alike, but they do share something in common, besides being Canadian.  Like Linda, Coco is hands-down the best working model of her generation.

I watched the video that accompanies the FASHION Magazine story, and I was amazed by this girl’s talent in front of the camera.  There always seems to be one girl in the biz with skills that make all the other girls look like dime-a-dozen clothes hangers.  Sometimes that girl is the also the prettiest face in the business (Linda Evangelista, Carmen Kass), and sometimes she’s the odd girl out (Stacey McKenzie).  I remember watching a young Kate Moss in a Dior show when I still wasn’t sure what the big deal was, and my jaw literally dropped when she unbuttoned a coat.  That was it.  She unbuttoned a coat and all of a sudden she was my favorite model.

Now there are girls who can unbutton a coat, and there are girls who can unbutton a coat.  Coco is one of the latter.  There is such presence to everything she does.  I can’t stop watching her when she’s on the runway.  Everyone around her becomes completely irrelevant, and the show is about her and her alone.

I understand why some designers find that quality threatening; I wouldn’t want to be upstaged, either.  But there comes a point when a great model breaks through to add a degree of celebrity to a product.  I guess that’s when she becomes a genuine supermodel.  Coco is on the verge of that breakthrough, and I’m happy for her.  She’s going to be a household name soon.  It couldn’t have happened to a nicer girl – or a better model, for that matter.

On a related note, I’d better sign her for Moose Jaw Fashion Week 2012 before her rates skyrocket!

Celine Dion

In between cosmetic procedures (her new addiction), Lucinda McRuvy took the time to compose a list of the worst-dressed Canadians in show biz.  She even added a special category, The Worst Dressed Canadian Hall of Fame, just to dishonor Celine Dion.

Now I’ve never been Dion’s biggest fan, but I’m going to take some time and a few paragraphs to defend her.  The reason: Celine Dion is a champion of antifashion.

Whatever passes for fashion nowadays on the red carpet is not what I would call fashion.  I’ve blogged about the stylist-hijacked, designer-sponsored trend that has made the red carpet such a creative wasteland, so I don’t need to do that again.  Just trudge through my archives — if you’re so inclined.

But if you want to know why I worship Celine Dion as an antifashion icon, just read this 2007 story about her from contactmusic.com:

Celine Dion has refused to ever set foot on a red carpet again because she hates answering superficial questions about the clothes she is wearing. The superstar singer was savaged by the fashion police for wearing a backwards white Dior suit to the 1999 Oscars and has never truly recovered from the criticism. And now she tells style magazine W she insists on bypassing red carpets at events - so she doesn’t have to talk about fashion. She says, “I just want to do music and perform for people who want to see me performing.

“I don’t want people to say to me, ‘Are those diamonds yours? Did you borrow them?’ I can pay for my own diamonds, and I don’t need to wear the necklace of the year.

“I don’t need that s**t, so I don’t want to walk on the red carpet. If nobody wants to dress me because they want publicity, well, I’m sorry.”

But Dion has won praise from some fashion designers - because she’s one of the few stars who insists on buying whatever she wears. Gilles Mendel, who has become one of the singer’s favourite designers, admits he can’t remember ever lending her an outfit. He says, “It’s really rare… She is really classy. It creates an independence, so she doesn’t owe anything to anyone.”

Aside from that, the suit really isn’t that horrible.  Only a scrawny bird like Celine (or a model) could get away with wearing a fabric draped across the breasts like that, and it really does fit her well through the torso, too.  Her pants needed to be shortened slightly so that they didn’t break like a man’s trouser at the ground (or else her heel needed to be an inch higher).  Her body type favors a plunging neckline — not the neckline of this jacket — because she has such great shoulders.  She also has a long neck, so she didn’t need to accentuate the vertical line from her shoulders upward by choosing that fedora (although I’ll admit that I’d kill to have the hat).

Technically, that’s what’s wrong with the outfit.  Artistically, however, the outfit is a masterpiece.  Just imagine how much more fun the world would be if people went out in public in clothes like this.

Forget what the so-called fashionista say.  Fingers need to be pointed at the millionaires who demand free clothes.  Fingers need to be pointed at the stylists who have made “good taste” a commodity, as if it actually has some sort of value in the grand scheme of things.  Fingers also need to be pointed at people who write worst-dressed lists.

I don’t want to come off as a sanctimonious windbag, so I’ll admit that I used to get paid to write those lists, too.  Yet I don’t know if there’s anything else in my past as a fashion journalist that embarrasses me more.  I was a rotten person back in those days.  Thankfully, I had people like Celine Dion in my life to show me the error of my ways.

Now if I only felt the same way about her music!

Lord and Taylor

New York-based NRDC Equity Partners have purchased HBC and plan to give the retail chain a facelift.  They also intend to convert fifteen existing Bay department stores into Lord and Taylor stores.

For anyone who has traveled to the USA (or anyone who has leafed through a fashion magazine in the past twenty years), this is welcome news.  Lord and Taylor is a great store, carrying many brands that bridge the gap between Holt Renfrew and the Bay.

In cities that don’t have adequate representation of high-end retail brands in speciality boutiques, a great department store is a necessity.  When you live in a rural community, having one truly fabulous store to shop in when you visit the city is a terrific convenience.  Canada lost those stores when Eaton’s (and Woodward’s in the west) vacated the market a long time ago.

I’m excited to hear when and where Lord and Taylor will open first.  I wonder if they’ll go to Alberta before they go to Ontario?  It seems like there’s a lot of money out flowing out of the west lately.  Even Lucinda McRuvy has been seen hanging around Cowtown lately.

Gusset

Gusset: A piece of fabric, usually triangular or square, used to add breadth to a garment or to reinforce a seam.  Socks and mittens normally contain a gusset that is knit into the garment.  Tights and pantyhose also have a gusset that spans the seams of the crotch, often made a breathable material for reasons that I shouldn’t need to explain.

NOW Magazine

There I was, a moment ago, watching Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye and sulking in my living room (I was stung by a yellow-jacket and forced into temporary seclusion because my calf is as big as a Virginia ham), when a friend called to let me know that my identity is being questioned in NOW Magazine.

I was glad I picked up the phone.  My self-imposed exile was messing with my head, and in my mind I had just written the first act of a screenplay about a blind fashion designer who rises to the top of the fashion business despite the odds.  But enough about Marc Jacobs!

Anyway, it seems as if NOW writer Andrew Sardone doesn’t believe that I am Prunella Crudsworth.  I don’t get it!  I’ve been upfront about my identity since my very first blog post.  Why do people want to believe that I’m someone else?

I do want to thank Mr. Sardone for saying such lovely things about me and my random musings (Andrew – I’d kiss you, but I just washed my hair).  However, I do feel sorry for Louisa McCormack and Nathalie Atkinson.  Living in my shadow must be difficult.  Still, I’m thankful that neither woman has attempted to take credit for my creative output, although I wouldn’t blame them if they tried.  I’m Auntie Fashion, after all.  It’s easy for me to understand just how fascinating I am.

Veruschka

For as much as they bug me sometimes with all their annoying ads and stupid pop-ups, style.com does get it right more often than not.  Today, in their Beauty Icon series, they have a profile of Veruschka.

Standing 6′1″ with size thirteen feet, Veruschka was a genuine glamazon.  Although the slide show that accompanies the article doesn’t do justice to the model, it’s interesting to watch in order to get a historical perspective on modeling.  Even in the era of Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton, all it took was one incredible girl to come along and change the way in which the industry perceived beauty.

I like that.  I’m ready for it again.  I need a new face to worship.  Any suggestions?