“Hang on to your hoodie!”

The hilarious Hadley Freeman from the Observer.co.uk never fails to make me crack up. This is gold:

As “hoodie” is now a generic term for a young thug, am I now not allowed to wear a hooded top? I find they keep me warm in my pension years!

Mrs Mildred Dawes, Twickenham, London

And so do I, Mrs Mildred, so do I! (Sorry readers, but Mrs Dawes and I are in agreement on this matter: such is the gravity of the subject that an exclamation mark is necessary.) To wit, a hooded top keeps one warm, keeps one cosy and, most importantly, keeps one’s blow-dry protected from the elements without recourse to an easily misplaced hat or umbrella. Perhaps only the Eames chair can rival the hooded top for its simple but ingenious design.

Yet this precious little garment has been kidnapped (hoodnapped) by thuggish youths and become sartorial shorthand for this objectionable demographic, with their music-playing mobiles and their grunting ways.

Hoodie lovers, unite! We cannot let these ill-behaved children steal our style, for that would mean that they have won and, dammit, I refuse to be beaten by some ill-behaved fool who has no sense of respect for his elders (me) and was born in 1993.

Laddie, I was living it up and, um, watching a lot of Neighbours and Home and Away when you were still in nappies. Bow down before me!

The only way to fight them is to cling on to our hoodies, cling on to them with all our might, and wear them as often and as defiantly as possible. Will they feel so cool when they see you and me, Mildred, walking down the street in our hoodies? I don’t think so.

Posh on the cover of Allure

(Victoria Beckham on the latest issue of Allure)

This is possibly the best I’ve seen Posh on any magazines. The playful loose hair and soft makeup give her a much more gentle look than her usual sharp image. Way to go, Victoria!

“To create Victoria’s natural look, makeup artist Scott Andrew brushed metallic beige shadow on her eyelids, lined her eyes with black pencil, applied a creamy rosy blush on the apples of her cheeks, and blended a beige lipstick with a pink lip stain to make her lip color. “I just make the best out of what I have. I’m not out-of-the-ordinary-looking at all. I’m incredibly ordinary,” says Beckham.”

(Source: allure.com)

So funky!

Check out the photos of James Brown auction on NY Times. His clothes, hair dryer, furniture and accessories that were up for auction. I want his piano, his entire sunglasses collection and that awesome yellow chair!

View the whole slide show here.

Excellent advice for guys on how to compliment a lady on her outfit

I love The Guardian’s Hadley Freeman‘s column, which I read religiously. She gives the funniest and practical advice on fashion. This week, I think both us girls and our guys can learn something from her. Ladies, if you aren’t getting the proper compliment from you guy, show this to him. And guys, if you are getting not-so-desired reaction from ladies that you compliment about their outfits/style, maybe you need to revise your wording.

“What is the safest way for me to compliment a lady on her outfit?
Gareth, London

When it comes to bags, however, don’t even go there. Some things are too important to be discussed by the thick-tongued likes of you, I’m afraid.”

Love it!

Think before you ink

I’m not a fan of tattoos. I’d prefer to express individuality through other means. But I wouldn’t tell other people not to get tattoos. It’s just such a personal choice and would definitely incite some heated debate if you tried to stop somebody who really really believed in tattoos. However, for anybody who’s contemplating getting a tattoo, I’d suggest them read Telegraph’s reporter Becky Pugh’s article Think before you ink…, especially if it’s an impulse thing. That’s Becky’s own lizard tattoo that she hates and plans on having it removed soon.

“Tattoos are an all-pain-no-gain, self-inflicted suffering. They take a couple of hours to get, a lifetime to regret, and a heck of lot of money to erase. Studies show that about 10 million people in the US will have them removed this year, mostly through laser surgery. “

“The conservative response to youngsters, especially females, thinking of getting tattooed has always been: “Imagine what it will look like when you are old.” But I don’t buy that. When you’re old, you wear woolly tights and long-sleeved cardies. No one sees your flesh when you are pensionable, and your outdated, embarrassing tattoo will be hidden.

No, much better to think about what your beautiful, clean, firm and healthy body looks like right now, kid.”

And on her own tattoo:
“The tattoo hurt like hell, cost a fortune and, worst of all, looks truly hideous. I had envisaged an oriental dragon nestling discreetly on my hip bone. But skinhead bruiser man spent three torturous hours inking a big, fat, blotchy lizard, above, on the edge of my belly. I am thankful that my clothes cover it up, but I live in fear of the way it will deform if I get pregnant.

Worst of all, it wasn’t even a successful act of rebellion. My mother didn’t give a damn when she saw it and my father still believes it’s temporary. When I ask my husband what he thinks, he says: “I love it because it’s part of you.” What he means is: “I hate it, but what can I do?”

I never loved it, not even for a second. It’s about as unfeminine as a hairy beard and as cool as a cappuccino. The moment I can afford to have it lasered off, it’s a gonner.”

OUCH!

Oh no, Steve & Barry’s is down and possibly out

According to Women’s Wear Daily, the company, which is famous for seriously inexpensive fashion, filed for Chapter 11 protection. Though the company did not reveal whether it plans to close stores while it reorganizes, “the firm cut 172 corporate and field staff positions Wednesday,” the fashion journal reported on its website.”It is a significant fall for a company that has experienced rapid sales growth, signed licences with stars such as Sarah Jessica Parker, Stephon Marbury and pro surfer Laird Hamilton, and snatched up vacant mall space,” WWD said.

“High costs of materials and fuel prices have increased our cost of goods and cost of operating,” said founders Steve Shore and Barry Prevor.

Even though we don’t have Steve & Barry’s here in Canada, I hope they get back up again.  Their lines are pretty cheap and of decent bad quality.

(Source: thestar.com)

Glamour editors copy each other’s style and have fun!

I thoroughly enjoy reading Glamour blogs everyday, especially its Slaves to Fashion written by its senior style writer Jenny Feldman. You gotta envy the editors ’cause they just have so much in the office. The other day Jenny was asking everybody if they were copy cats. She saw her coworker wearing this adorable pair of Enzo Angiolini White Leather Gladiator Sandals ($93) and she wanted to copy it. I gotta admit as far as gladiator sandals go, these are pretty decent. She picked a good color, the white is most flattering.

So Jenny immediately ordered a pair on Zappos.com and wore them to the office.

THEN she showed her mom the shoes and her mom immediately ordered the same pair on Zappos.com too!!

It isn’t so much fun to watch this chain reaction? And even more so, I totally envy Jenny that she and her coworkers can discuss fashion at work all day. Well duh me….that’s part of her job working at a fashion magazine. I wish my coworkers and I would be like this, but our non-fashion related job is a lot duller. The closest we’ve come is when we went to the mall at lunch time and bought the same bag, but in different colors.

(photo source: http://www.glamour.com/fashionbeauty/blogs/fashion)

Couture is an easy sell among the super rich

(Christian Lacroix Fall 2008 Couture)

So the Paris Couture Week wrapped up last week and there was some truly spectacular couture. Ever wonder who can afford this kind of clothes when a piece can demand $100,000, especially in the current credit crunch? The article in The Guardian A cut above the rest tells you all about it. Basically it’s the super rich who do not feel the credit crunch at all. The big fashion houses aren’t worried about the sales. And they are more than willing to pour money into the couture pieces because they see it as Research and Development, and experiment for the designer, as well as the image and the brand behind the name.

As if paying homage to the all-pervasive mood of impending economic meltdown, the models strutting down the catwalk in their teetering heels, tight skirts and Greta Garbo-style bonnets would have looked at home in a glamorous Hollywood movie of the 1930s. John Galliano, creative supremo at Dior, it appeared, had heard that the International Monetary Fund and George Soros are calling the year-long credit crunch the biggest financial shock to the global economy since the 1930s and come up with a haute couture response: Depression chic.

Quite wrong, of course, and not just because this is not yet a 1930s-style slump or anything like it. Any echoes of a bygone age are less to do with conjuring up memories of dole queues and soup kitchens than creating an impression of sumptuous glamour for a clientele so loaded that they are oblivious to the downturn.

Haute couture, quite simply, is a world apart. When asked for her views about the Armani collection, the young woman in the front row turned out to be a member of the Thai royal family. Her Royal Highness Princess Sirivannavari, 21, said she liked to come to the shows in Paris and Milan with an eye to buying couture shoes and bags, or perhaps an Armani jacket. “But I’m not the sort of person who shops all the time,” she added. That may well be true, but to be frank, she did not appear to be the sort of person losing sleep over the global food crisis either.

Continue reading the article here.

Whitney has her own show

Well, people just can’t get enough of the Hills’ girls. According to NY Magazine, Whitney Port “is shooting her own spinoff show in which she “becomes bicoastal” while working for PR firm People’s Revolution. She also befriends Olivia Palermo.” Olivia Palermo, if you followed the saga on the now-defunct socialiterank.com last year, was the young aspiring New York socialite that gave the reigning “it” girl Tinsley Mortimer a run for her money, but got “chased” out of the town and moved to L.A. to supposedly pursue an acting career when she couldn’t take the ridicule and the shunning anymore (Of course she denied that). So if Whitney continues to be the level-headed girl that gets along with everybody, we can expect Olivia to stir the pot a bit since she’s prone to drama. I like her, she’s a gorgeous girl.

AA’s boss is a dirty bastard

Did you hear American Apparel’s founder and owner Dov Charney has been sued by his employee for sexual harassment, “an employee called Jeneleen Floyd who alleges that, in the course of a telling-off, he ordered her to pretend to masturbate in front of him. When she didn’t, he turned to her line manager and asked him to do it instead; then, in the very proper words of the lawsuit, filed last week, “as Mr Swenson complied with Defendant Charney’s instruction, Defendant Charney moved next to him and simulated an oral sex act with him”. Apparently it didn’t come as a surprise ’cause the guy has a long track record of lewd behavior at workplace. He even harasses the models during photo sessions. “He has been known to walk through his office in underwear, and conduct meetings in a thong (his defence – he designs underwear, so why not model it?); during the interview process for an article by Claudine Ko, for the now-defunct Jane magazine, he had oral sex with a female employee in front of Ko; he also masturbated several times.” WTF? That is sick.

Read more here

The fashion world is in mourning

Most of you probably have heard by now…”Yves Saint Laurent, who exploded on the fashion scene in 1958 as the boy-wonder successor to Christian Dior and endured as one of the best-known and most influential couturiers of the second half of the 20th century, died on Sunday at his apartment in Paris. He was 71.

His death was confirmed by Dominique Deroche, a spokeswoman for the Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent Foundation.

During a career that ran from 1957 to 2002 he was largely responsible for changing the way modern women dress, putting them into pants both day and night, into peacoats and safari jackets, into “le smoking” (as the French call a man’s tuxedo jacket), and into leopard prints, trench coats and, for a time in the 1970s, peasant-inspired clothing in rich fabrics.”

(continue reading at NYtimes.com)

For those of you who are lucky enough to live in/close to Montreal or will be travelling to Montreal this summer, you must go to The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts for the incredible Yves Saint Laurent Exhibition. “The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco have designed and developed, in partnership with the Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent, the first retrospective spanning the forty years of creation of the Maison de haute couture Yves Saint Laurent. Presented from May 29 to September 28, 2008, the exhibition Yves Saint Laurent focusses on this virtuoso of haute couture, whose unique style blends references to the world of art with allusions to pop culture and social revolution. Structured around four themes, the exhibition develops the revolutionary nature of a body of work that has marked both the past and the present with a new definition of femininity and left a signature that transcends fashion. The display will include 145 accessorized creations belonging to the Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent, as well as drawings and videos. After Montreal, the exhibition (which is the first co-production of these two museums) will be presented at the de Young Museum of San Francisco, from November 1, 2008, to March 1, 2009.” The exhibition cannot have come at a better time. Get to it if you can.

(photo sources: nytimes.com, mmfa.qc.ca)

How excited are we?

Is everybody going to see the Sex and the City movie this weekend?? The perfect excuse to have a girls’ night out with your girlfriends huh? Wheeee so exciting! I can just see how the movie is going to spark up a lot of new fashion trends. Here’s a great piece in Toronto Star today called The ultimate celluloid closet talking about some big fashion hits that we’ll be seeing this summer after this movie’s aired.

“As a television show Sex and the City was a retailer’s wet dream.
Over six seasons the show embraced and rejected fashion trends the same way Samantha embraced lovers – fast and furious.
Count among them the famous nameplate necklace, the giant floral pin and white pumps. Costume designer Patricia Field was responsible for it all, most notably turning shoe designers Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo into household names.
The show put expressions like “he’s just not that into you” on the tips of everyone’s tongues. The Cosmopolitan was the coolest drink in town. And for a sweet fix we went to Magnolia Bakery.
Now four years later, after a steady diet of endless reruns and boxed DVD sets, fans of the show are getting fresh sex. Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda are back working the trend factory.
But after so long, does SATC still have the golden touch when it comes to igniting juggernaut fashion and cultural trends?
We took five Toronto style seers to a preview of the movie to sort through the endless parade of designer labels and product placements (81 costume changes for Sarah Jessica Parker alone) for their take on the big fashion hits this movie will unleash this summer.

————————————————————————
TOMMY TON, INTERNATIONAL STREET STYLE PHOTOGRAPHER, jakandjil.com

The one coveted piece that will spark a frenzy is the Dior extreme gladiator sandals. It’s readily available online at eluxury.com or you can buy the knockoff version at Browns.
What comes out of the film is being able to treasure an item or a key item in your wardrobe and wear it from day to night. Carrie wore a studded belt – which will be heavily knocked off by chain stores – multiple times through out the film. This idea of loving one particular piece relates to the theme of the film, which is love.
The single-strand pearl necklace is the new nameplate necklace. She always wore her nameplate necklace in the show and in the movie she is seen in the pearl necklace from the moment she wakes up to back in bed at night with Mr. Big.
If there’s one thing I want in the film it would be the long-lasting, loving friendships that the four girls share. As Carrie says in the film, “trends come and go but friendships never go out of style.”

(More after the jump!)
Continue reading »

Ruffles galore

Wearing my new Pleated Romper Dress today. What can I say, I can’t get enough of the ruffles. It was the pleated ruffles that drew me in. Timesonline.co.uk wants to remind us ruffle-lovers — Frill seekers: proceed with caution – Wear ruffles judiciously, or you risk looking like an extra in Carmen. It says to use tough accessories such as gladiator sandals to harden the look. It’s good advice but doesn’t mean I’m going to be less ruffle-obsessed, which extends to bikinis too! Wearing structured tailored pieces like wide-leg trousers, cuffed shorts, vests with ruffles works great too.

Milly Strapless Ruffle Top $242

AKA New York Ruffle Dress $318

Geren Ford Ruffle Neck Top $246

Zoa Ruffle Tunic $179

MaxStudio JERSEY TEXTURED HALTER DRESS $248 $98

SILK CHARMEUSE FRONT TIE TOP $148 $108

Obey The Saint & Sinner Dress, Dresses for Women $60

Ruffle Halter Top $19.99

Kushcush Sweet Valley Bikini in Kelly Green $205

Brette Sandler Victoria Bikini $163

Sheer Delight

I have to share this beeeeautiful spread from May issue of Canada’s FASHION magazine featuring some of this season’s hottest silk chiffon pieces from Miu Miu, Dolce & Gabbana, BCBG Max Azria, Jil Sander, Louis Vuitton, and Zac Posen.

Guys should not wear flip flops at work!

There’s a guy in our building who invariably starts wearing flip flops every year as the weather warms up enough for sandals, and has his DIRTY feet on display for all to see. I had the misfortune of walking behind him today and couldn’t help but staring at his sullied heels. When I read this reader’s mail in The Guardian, it totally cracked me up and I felt like sending it to the guy .

My boyfriend complains that it’s unfair that women can get their toes out at work while men cannot. What’s your view on mens’ sandals in the workplace?
CT, by email

You’re both right – it is unfair, but so it goes. Look, boyfriend-of-CT: your feet are ugly. Don’t feel too bad about it, though, because all men’s feet are ugly. But compared to the hoiking and the cramming and the squashing that women’s feet endure on a daily basis, being ordered to keep covered seems pretty small potatoes to me.

To quote that inexhaustible fount of wisdom, the 1987 film The Princess Bride, life is pain, and anyone who says differently is selling something. And here at the Guardian, even in the fashion section, we are far too right-on and leftwing to try to sell anyone anything other than the truth, goddammit.

Amen! At least the reader’s boyfriend’s feet aren’t dirty. Or I hope!