Auntie Fashion

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!

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?

Elvis

It’s been a long time since men wore slick pompadours.  In fact, I remember a brief hair-slicking trend about twenty years ago, when Gordon Gekko became a role model for most young men, and his pompadour was a little on the flat side (unlike many other 80s hairdos).  Other than that, the style has been replaced by faux hawks, cockahawks, and various other masculine updos.

I was talking to the young man who inspired me to make taupe my signature color, and he was talking about getting a haircut.  I told him to get an Elvis-style pompadour.  He laughed and thought I was crazy — he always thinks I’m crazy.  Still, I think it’s time for this style to come back.

All you pretty boys with your buckets of hair products should listen to me.  I can’t even begin to explain how tired spikes are.  And feathering only reminds me of potheads who dropped out of high school to smoke pot and play Atari Pong all day long.

At least this Elvis cut is fresh.  It’s likely that neither you nor your father has had this haircut.  That’s all the reason in the world to get it.  It’s antifashion in its purest form.  People will look at you and think you’re on the cutting edge.  Or maybe they’ll think you’re crazy.  In my opinion, that’s a win-win situation.

Thakoon

I blogged about the shoe/boot/sandal trend the other day.  I’m really not a fan of the look because I believe that the manner in which most women are wearing the shoes makes their legs look short and their ankles look fat.  What’s more, the shoes in the photo almost resemble orthopedic ankle braces.  Almost.

What rescues the look is the hosiery.  Those are some funky knee-highs and they really pull this outfit together by lengthening the leg and making the skirt look less like a figure skater’s costume.  I remember a Cacharel show that I absolutely adored where a similar knee-high shown ice cream colors became the single thread that held the entire collection together.  That was five or six years ago.  They didn’t catch on.  I guess the design team at Cacharel was ahead of its time.

I hope that this look is something that modern women will embrace.  I can hear a lot of purists saying “Knee-highs?”  Still, leggings managed to make a comeback, so anything is possible.  These aren’t your mother’s knee-highs, anyway.  Hers were cinnamon-colored and came in a plastic egg, and she only wore them on special occasions, like the swinger’s party where you may or may not have been conceived.

Crocodile

This may surprise a few of my readers, but I need to let you all know that Auntie Fashion prefers to see crocodile skin on crocodiles.

I can barely convince myself to wear leather shoes made from the surplus of cowhide that the food industry produces.  The fact that I still do own leather shoes makes me feel hypocritical and horrible (almost as horrible as I feel when I look at Marc Jacobs).  I’ve been a vegetarian for so long that I can’t even conceptualize what it would be like to have the flesh of a dead animal in my mouth.  And I would never carry a crocodile handbag!  I would always be thinking about that smiley critter in the photo I posted.

I don’t care what the rest of you do.  Wear whatever you want.  Just remember that the most fashionable woman in the history of the world — I’m talking about ME — wouldn’t be caught dead in a catsuit made from real kittens or a baby seal fur coat.  If that’s your bag, fine.  Do what you want.  Just don’t count on my somewhat unconditional love being extended toward you.  I hold that special place in my heart for herbivores like Natalie Portman and the majestic moose.

Marigold

Just like clothing, flowers can become fashion victims.  Earlier today I mentioned to someone that marigolds seemed to be making a comeback.  Like geraniums and petunias, these easy-to-grow annual flowers can be a little too common for people who think that they know better than everyone else.  For that reason, they’ve been out-of-style for the past decade or two.

I’ve always loved marigolds.  Before I got home today, I bought half a tray of them to fill in a few spots in my flower beds — I needed a sharp contrast for all of the purple flowers I’ve planted this year.  Then I just happened to be browsing online and I came across an article in Canadian Gardening magazine singing the praises of these tough little beauties.  It seems that the flowers are fashionable this season: They’re so far out that they’re in again.

It just goes to show you how stupid fashion can be.  Plant what you want to plant.  Wear what you want to wear.  As Ralph Waldo Emerson said “… beauty is its own excuse for being.”

Cyd Charisse

After posting about recently-pubescent models the other day, I got to thinking about other freaks of nature: People who won the genetic lottery by being born lean, lanky and gorgeous.  Of course, the first person who popped into my head was Cyd Charisse.

Then I started to think about whether or not Mother Nature deserves the credit for creating such a gorgeous creature.  I don’t believe that she does.  Most models can count on genetics to get them to the top.  That’s not to say that modeling doesn’t require a tremendous amount of talent: I’ve praised many supermodels on this blog for being great at what they do.  However, Cyd Charisse didn’t get those legs from making love to the camera.  She got them from years of training as a dancer.

And that training took her legs to places like the set of my favorite movie ever, Singin’ in the Rain.  I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a sexier character in a film than the woman in the scene I posted above.  Despite her feminine wiles, she looks like she could kick Gene Kelly’s ass — and to me, that is sexy.

The world needs a few more women like Cyd Charisse.  Aside from a handful of tennis stars, I can’t think of any female celebrities with kick-ass bodies nowadays.  There are a lot of great legs out there, but I don’t know if I would describe them as strong.  In 2008, strong just isn’t where it’s at.

Perhaps the pendulum will swing back towards a feminine ideal that implies strength, health and vitality.  It’s too bad that with all the 80s retro looks that have defined the decade so far that Jazzercise hasn’t made a comeback.  Tanning, bodysuits and neon all seem so cutting edge lately.  Why not exercise, too?

Hopefully, a new fitness boom is on the horizon.  I need to see a broad with muscles dictating the trends.  I’m getting tired of looking at all these little birds with their scrawny gams.

Bob Mackie design

I stumbled across this website that had a few of Bob Mackie’s creations up for auction.  Where was I when this was happening?  Why didn’t I know about it?  It’s my friend Rusty’s birthday today and he would have loved the outfit in the photo.  Those boots could have pulled double-duty, providing him with some much needed vertical enhancement, while also giving him something sassy to wear during snow-shoveling season.

That got me thinking about functionality in fashion.  Thinking about that got me thinking about where people draw the line between form and function.  Thinking about that got me thinking about the word “costume.”  I guess you can say I’ve been thinking a lot this morning.  I’ve had a whole pot of coffee already.

Usually I post about words that I loathe, but I adore the word “costume.”  The reason for that is that everyone else uses it in such a derogatory manner.  Frankly, everything we wear that doesn’t have a utilitarian purpose is a costume.  Unless an item was designed for functionality alone, it’s a costume.

For example, take the robot-like uniforms that the Borg wore on Star Trek.  They are as close to a purely functional garment as it gets.  Now if you sew a single bead to one of those uniforms, you’ve created a costume.  Unless that bead designates rank or provides a specific purpose, it has removed that uniform from the domain of function into the the realm of fashion.

Most people who criticize ”costumes” have drawn a line between the items that they consider to be “appropriate” and what they deem to be “too much.”  But if you’re the sort of person who is comfortable in clothing that your critics wouldn’t be comfortable wearing, why is the onus on you to dress differently?  Are the people who pan a look for being “costume-like” doing you a favor, or are they asking you to stoop down to the lowest common denominator?

If you’re the kind of person who can wear an outfit like the one in the photo, good for you.  If you’re the kind of person who can create occasions where that sort of outfit is appropriate, even better!  Allowing your critics to write the rules that determine your wardrobe choices is pure folly, especially when their collective mentality has convinced them that your lack of compliance can be equated with a lack of style.

Don’t let anyone convince you that resistance is futile, and don’t let anyone tell you that your “costume” isn’t fashion.  They’re the ones who are incapable of free thought, not you.

Yasmeen Ghauri

I don’t know why I’ve been so nostalgic lately when it comes to the supermodels of the early 90s.  I guess it’s the fact that they aren’t all the same color.  Maybe I’ve been visiting the girls at Jezebel too much.

Here’s a photo of the lovely Yasmeen Ghauri.  According to Wikipedia, Yasmeen is half Pakistani on her father’s side, and half German on her mother’s side.  As the story goes, she was discovered while working at a McDonald’s, which makes me love her even more.

Yasmeen was one of the biggest models of her era, appearing in major campaigns, in all the major runway shows, and in cheesecake venues such as Victoria’s Secret catalogues and Sports Illustrated.

Her one runway appearance that I will never forget was in a nude, bejeweled catsuit at a Jean Paul Gaultier show.  The outfit made an encore during Gaultier’s twenty-fifth anniversary retrospective, but it just wasn’t the same seeing it on another model.  If there was ever a perfect match between garment and model, that was it.  The image is etched upon my mind.  I tried to find a photo from the show, but I wasn’t able to find one.

Anyway, when I look at Yasmeen I see what’s wrong with modeling today.  There are only three models who I see regularly on the major runways that aren’t white: Chanel Iman, Hye Park and Du Juan.  Sure, there are plenty more that book major shows, but the industry is so dominated by white girls right now, that the other girls can seem like an afterthought.

The early 90s were much different.  Models of indeterminate ethnicity were in vogue, like Yasmeen.  It was fashionable to look like someone no one had seen before.  And these girls weren’t put into shows to fill a quota; they were there because they were great models with interesting faces that we weren’t accustomed to seeing every day.

I don’t know what’s happened to diversity in fashion.  I used to praise the business for being inclusive, but I can’t bring myself to do the same today.  It’s as if the whole industry has taken a giant step backwards.  I’d like to write a profile of Yasmeen Ghauri where I call her a “trailblazer” in modeling, but I really don’t know if she had to do much to rise to the top, other than being gorgeous.  Nevertheless, I wonder if someone who looked like her could be supermodel today.  I doubt it.

Stacey McKenzie

I caught a bit of an Irina Lazareanu interview on the Fashion Television channel yesterday.  I was laying in a bubble bath, listening to the show, when something the model said captured my attention.  She mentioned that fashion designers were no longer interested in hiring models who could outshine the garments.  It made me recall a day in fashion when that wouldn’t have happened.

I remember seeing Stacey McKenzie on the Todd Oldham runway.  There was a time when both the designer and the model worked in a capacity that allowed both of them to thrive artistically.  Someone like Stacey could walk onto the catwalk to oohs and ahhs.  They would do the same thing for Kristin McNemany, or Karen Elson, or Alek Wek, or Devon Aoki.

Fashion was in a different place back then.  The models were far more interesting.  Don’t get me wrong: I love Irina because she does interest me.  It was funny to hear such strange words coming out of the mouth of the current industry’s most atypical model.

It’s something you wouldn’t have heard fifteen years ago.  There was something about supermodels back then that made us want to watch them on the catwalk.  The creative directors of the day weren’t worried about a model usurping their power.  They were confident in their own abilities.  Putting generic girls on the runway wouldn’t have occurred to the designers.  Why would you collaborate with someone who couldn’t do anything for you?

It’s a different day, I guess.  Perhaps we’ve allowed the designers’ egos to get the best of them.  We’ve allowed Giorgio Armani to ban Cathy Horyn from his fashion shows because she won’t kiss his ass, but we don’t boycott Giorgio Armani for being fashion’s answer to Kanye West when he gets a bad review.

I miss the days of Stacey McKenzie.  The girl was out-of-this-world fabulous!  She still is, in fact.  Those eyes, those legs, those freckles — looking at her makes me feel nostalgic.  I loathed the early 90s because of the utter stupidity of grunge, but at the same time it was the most-inclusive era in modeling history.

I know that Stacey McKenzie is training models these days.  Maybe her recruits will rise up one day soon and defeat the ego-driven evil empire that fashion has become.  I sure hope so.  A girl can dream, can’t she?