Idiosyncratic Fashionistas

Midweek Snack: US in Chicago Street Style

2012-02-01T17:13:00.001-08:00

Waaaaaaay back in September, when we attended the Independent Fashion Bloggers conference, we were stopped by Amy Creyer, who writes the Chicago Street Style blog.

This past January 1, we were pleased to see that a number of people had clicked on to our blog from Chicago Street Style. But we were puzzled. Why the sudden flurry of visits, we wondered. So we clicked on to Chicago Street Style ourselves, and there were our smiling faces, just as you see them above. (That's Amy's photo, reproduced for your viewing pleasure.) Click here to see the full Chicago Street Style post on nous (moi and moi).

How's that for a nice way to start the new year?!

We keep telling you how behind we are, and how we're trying to catch up. Since today is February 1, this post is only one month behind. That's pretty good, actually, when we think about it. After all, Amy took our picture on September 7. It's such a relief to see that we're not the only ones!

* Oh, by the way, for those fans of numbers (like us), today is 2/1/12 - or as we like to say: 2 1 1 2!

Iconic

2012-01-29T16:25:00.000-08:00

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Valerie's friend Allan, a man of a certain age who lives in San Francisco (well, Berkeley, actually), asked if we knew about Vivian and Marian Brown, twins of a certain age who live in the City by the Bay. When we said we didn't, Allan told us they have become San Franciso icons, and encouraged us to work at becoming equivalent icons in New York. He sent us a You Tube video, which we happily pass along to you, below. In the meantime, we thought if we were going to be New York icons, we had to start by being seen in iconic places. What better place to choose as our first location than the heart of Broadway, at TKTS (above). (Yes, we bought tickets, a story for another time.)

If you’d like to read a little bit more about the twins,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_and_Vivian_Brown
here’s their Wikipedia link. There are quite a few other videos about them, as well, by the way.

As for Allan, he is very shy, but we're happy to attach this recent self-portrait he sent. Foot surgery (you can't see it, but Allan has a brand new titanium implant in his big toe joint) gives all three of us something very important in common -- Allan can't wear high heels either!

What we're wearing:

Jean is wearing an Ignatius hat (from the Philadelphia Museum Craft Show); vintage Norma Kamali leopard jacket (from Another Man's Treasure at the Metropolitan Pavilion Vintage Show show a few years back); harem pants (from Timbuktu); Lux De Ville patent bag (from Enz); Trippen boots (from A-Uno); vintage glasses (from Fabulous Fanny's), vintage bakelite rings (including one from Sheila Strong's Fool's Gold at The Pier Show).

Valerie is wearing an Ignatius hat, a vintage mouton coat (dyed to look exotic) from the Metropolitan Pavilion, a Banana Republic sweater (thrift shop), Comme des Garcons pants (resale shop), Arche booties (thrift shop).

Vintage Clothing Alert! The Metropolitan Pavilion's 15th Vintage Clothing Show is next weekend: Friday, Feb. 3rd (1 - 8 PM) and Saturday, Feb. 4th (11 AM - 6 PM), February 3-4, 2012 @ 125 West 18th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues).

Brief Interlewd

2012-01-26T01:03:00.000-08:00

A little midweek ha ha for our friends.
(Scroll down for the Sunday post.)

Found at a fun little store called Pylones.

YA MAGAZINE - Don't Cry for Me, Santiago!

2012-01-22T07:21:00.000-08:00

We're big in Santiago, Chile! Last month*, we were thrilled to be among four fashion blogs featured in Ya, the magazine published by El Mercurio, a Chilean newspaper. To give you a flavor, we've uploaded all four pages with us and our fellow bloggers. Our headline, appropriately enough, says "Style has No Age!"

As background for the article, we were each asked to respond to a series of 13 questions and submit several photographs. The editors selected a picture of us taken at one of our photo shoots with Ari Seth Cohen of Advanced Style. Since the text is in Spanish, we've included our answers to some of our favorite questions below, which pretty much speak for themselves.

Q: I need to know the story about The Idiosyncratic Fashionistas. How the idea was born?

Jean: Valerie and I would go to so many places: galleries, museums, craft shows, lectures, vintage clothing shows, and run into lots of "women of a certain age" who didn't seem to have a "voice". Apparently, we thought we had enough voice to go around and started the blog to share our opinions, to convince other women that life isn't over at fifty -- or sixty! We really believe that life keeps getting better. We keep encouraging women to get out and enjoy life and fashion and design and find what makes them happy and just do it! I like to think we're the optometrists for our generation -- getting women to see life through a different set of lenses.

Valerie: Jean and I met at a vintage clothing show in 2008. I was about to have an exhibition of antique Japanese babies’ kimonos at a New York art gallery, and was handing out invitations for the opening to people I thought might be interested. I saw Jean and our now mutual friend Judy nearby. Jean was wearing a stunning vintage hat. I thought “THAT’s my audience.” I gave them each an invitation, they came to the opening a few weeks later, and we have been friends ever since.

I soon realized that I never saw Jean dressed casually – but always wonderfully – so each time we met, I wore my favorite clothes. People began to stop us on the street and ask if we were going to an event. They asked if we were artists or fashion designers or stylists. Often they wanted to take our picture. Once we were stopped by Academy Award winner Olympia Dukakis. My friend Barbara suggested we should blog about our outings. We resisted for a long time because neither Jean nor I knew how to do that, but Barbara introduced us to Blogspot. We were initially very intimidated, but Blogspot is extremely user-friendly. It turned out to be very easy, and the service was – and is - free. We started the blog in August of 2009 because we had nothing to lose. It was a fun and adventurous way to spend our free time, and it turned out to be a great way to meet interesting people. As a result of our blog, we have appeared on TV, in newspapers and magazines, and online publications. We have been photographed for three fashion books: Vintage Fashion Accessories by Stacy LoAlbo (2009), StyleLikeU by Elisa Goodkind and Lily Mandelbaum (2011), the forthcoming Advanced Style by Ari Seth Cohen (2012). And as of September, 2011 we have a book of our own, Life Dressing: The Idiosyncratic Fashionistas, written and illustrated by Joana Avillez.

Q: Which are the topics of The Idiosyncratic Fashionistas?

Jean: My mantra is "we are not dead and we are not invisible!" We are trying to change society's view of older women (along with some women's view of themselves). Grey hair is something to be celebrated, not covered up and hidden. Live large! On another level, we are also just sharing our adventures and opinions with others -- of any age, gender and fashion. After all, true style is ageless. [That's the sentence they took for their title, El Estilo No Tiene Edad.]

Valerie: Our topics are whatever interests us... Clothing issues are important to us because all the magazines focus on younger women. Older women need fashion advice and fashionable clothing too. We talk about the tyranny of fashion, show how to fight it and how to have fun with your wardrobe. We cover art exhibitions that inspire us. We attend craft shows to encourage people to buy handmade goods instead of machine made products. We have touched on the environment, animal rights, politics, charitable organizations, and older women role models.

We occasionally poke fun at the world as we see it. We will probably never talk about baseball. One day we want to blog about how women can take charge of their finances without being taken advantage of. Actually, we will have to have a ghost writer for that. We need to get that advice before we can give it!

Q: Why older people?

Jean: Why not? They're our demographic. Face it, it's where the action is! The baby boomers are booming! Every 8 seconds, someone turns 65 in the U.S.

Valerie: Three reasons. A) We write about older people because not enough people write about older people. B) We write about older people because we ARE older people. We have experience at being older! Our friends are older, too! C) We write about older people because older people continue to have lives that are very interesting, vibrant, accomplished, and inspiring. Older people are still seeking new achievements and ways to contribute. Generally, we just do so more quietly.

Q: There´s a profile for people to appear in your blog?

Jean: No, not really. We've covered beekeepers, jewelers, cancer survivors, fashion designers, illustrators, fellow bloggers -- of all ages, sexes and nationalities.

Q: How do you get inspired?

Jean: Sometimes it is topic-driven, like naming the top 10 women who inspire us, or 10 of our favorite "things". Other times, it is event-driven: we make an annual pilgrimage to the Philadelphia Museum Craft Show; we went to Phillip Johnson's Glass House in Connecticut for Valerie's birthday; we toured the Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition after hours at the Metropolitan Museum. We inspire each other, give each other ideas, pick each other's brains. We are both incurable hat addicts, so great looking headwear automatically gets our attention.

Valerie: Anything and everything can be a source of inspiration. We did a blog posting about our fingernails once, and how different they are. When I broke my wrist, I blogged about that. Jean volunteers to do animal rescue, so once when she rescued a group of feral cats, she blogged about that.

Q. Which are your favorite designers?

Jean: Current or vintage anything by: Alexander McQueen, Thierry Mugler, Vivienne Westwood, Donna Karan, Norma Kamali, Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake, Rick Owens, Rei Kawakubo, Yeohlee Tang, Lillith, and Jean Paul Gaultier puts me over the edge.

Valerie: Different designers design for different body types. For my body type, and for my tastes in style, I love vintage Issey Miyake, Krizia, Norma Kamali, Perry Ellis, Ellen Tracy, Ungaro, Donna Karan and Giorgio Armani. Currently, Kedem Sasson can be very interesting. Jean introduced me to Rick Owens, but I don’t own any of his work, although I really admire his edgy originality. I like to look at Ann Demeulemeester, but she designs for a different body type. I love Gaultier. I’m sure I have left out many others.

Q. Which will be your advice for older people to get dressed?

Jean: My advice for people of any age is figure out what YOU want to look like, and then just find the clothing that sends that message. When we're dressed up and out on the town, you'd be surprised how many people approach us and say something like: "I wish I could dress like you." My response is "You can. It's easy." If you're in a rut, change it. What are you waiting for?

Valerie: Dressing style is like painting style. Da Vinci was a master painter and Picasso was a master painter, but their work has nothing in common. In the ‘60s, every woman wanted a pill box hat because Jackie Kennedy wore one. For most women, that was a mistake because they didn’t have her hair style or her face shape or her body shape or her wardrobe. Each person has to find out what is good for his or her individual characteristics. What looks great on Jean will probably not look as good on me, and vice versa. One day we should do a blog in which we wear each other’s clothes, just to demonstrate that.

Q. How does your blog impact the fashion industry?

Jean: We get a lot of local press and since we were on Bravo's Fashion Hunters, get recognized on the street a lot. Other bloggers seek us out -- just as we check out their postings. We have not yet had THE impact on the fashion industry that we really want: Visibility for "women of a certain age." Joe Zee from Elle Magazine spoke at the Independent Fashion Bloggers conference this fall, and in response to Valerie's question why his magazine ignores older women, he said that Elle covers the runways and the designers are not focusing on older women.We want to change that dynamic. As the U.S. population ages, there are growing numbers of older consumers who are interested in being stylish. Designers are missing the boat and ignoring a huge target audience.

Valerie: So far I don’t think we’ve had an impact. Hopefully, we can change that. We would love to be fashion consultants advocating for older consumers. In particular, we would like to help shoe designers make shoes that are comfortable AND beautiful! Jean and I can’t wear high heels anymore, and we need wide-toed shoes. They CAN be beautiful, but usually they are so ugly! Do shoe designers think I wake up in the morning and say “It’s such a lovely day. I think I’ll wear my ugly shoes.”?

I think we could launch our own line of gorgeous comfortable shoes for older women. There’s such an untapped market out there. With financial backing, we could probably sell out our whole line in one day if we put it on a cable television shopping network.

Right now, our primary impact is on other women. Many - both older and younger - have written in to say that we have given them the courage to dress more creatively, which is very gratifying.

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What we're wearing:

Jean is wearing an Ignatius hat; Prada jacket; Issey Miyake pants; Trippen platform boots; Habla skull clutch; vintage bakelite necklace, bracelets and rings; vintage plastic earrings; and vintage frames with prescription sunglass lenses.

Valerie is wearing a vintage black velvet 'volcano' hat labeled H. Leh & Co. Allentown, Hats by Eddi; earrings from Tokyo; red sunglasses from St. Mark's Place street vendor; multicolored bracelet of woodchips from the flea market, red wooden bracelet from Japan, red plastic ring from El Museo del Barrio; dress by Yoshiki Hishinuma, full length slip by Victoria's Secret, shoes by Nicole.

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W'e're SO amazed that we got the blog completed before midnight. As a reward, we get to watch DOWNTON ABBEY uninterrupted tonight at 9pm local time. We highly recommend this fabulous costume drama. Everyone always looks stunning, although Maggie Smith (that’s DAME Maggie Smith to you) takes some very big cake for her more-sumptuous-than-thou, nature-abhors-a-vacuum-even-in-clothing attitude toward dressing. Oh, and the plot is wonderful too, of course!

Can You Use Kim Kardashian and Idiosyncratic Fashionistas in the Same Sentence?

2012-01-17T07:14:00.000-08:00

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Recently there's been so much we want to post that (as we have frequently repeated lately) we've fallen far behind, and wonderful niblets of information are piling up on our computers. So we agreed that we should try doing mid-week postings of things that catch our eye(s), but aren't necessarily boffo enough to be part of the Sunday posting.

We could call them Tidbits, or Snacks, or By the Ways or Midweek Supplements (that has quite a ring to it) or Entr'actes or Interludes or something. We'll have a better idea what to christen these things in weeks to come as we do more of them.

In the meantime, here, hopefully, is the first of many unscheduled Midweek Supplements to come.

But back to the story at hand....

IN THE BET YOU NEVER THOUGHT THIS WOULD HAPPEN DEPARTMENT

OMG! As you can see, we are on Kim Kardashian's blog!

The picture above is a print screen we lifted off her blog. Click here to link to Kim Kardashian’s blog itself, so you can see the real thing.

Ari Seth Cohen of Advanced Style wrote a week ago to tell us ('cause it's his video!), and we're so behind we're just getting around to telling you today.

I hope I'm like this when I'm older, she writes. (We hope she is, too.)

OK - it only looks like she's talking about us - really she's referring to all of the fabulous women of a certain age who appear in the video. But still... We ARE on Kim Kardashian's blog!

Are we famous yet? (Nah... Not till we pay for our first two Porsches - in cash!)

Kids in a Candy Store

2012-01-15T21:26:00.000-08:00

OK, really adults in a costume rental warehouse.

What better way to start the new year than by ogling thousands of vintage clothes from the past 150 years?!

On January 2, on our day off, we traveled just two subway stops out of Manhattan to Helen Uffner Vintage Clothing in Long Island City. We met Helen at the 2010 Easter Parade, and struck up a conversation with her because she was wearing a Bes-Ben hat adorned with horse heads while she chatted with a woman wearing a felted white teapot. See? Haven't we told you hats are perfect conversation starters? Here we are with the proprietress herself.

Click here to read the very interesting story of how Helen got into the costume rental business. The day we were there, she was displaying a dress worn by Beyonce in her role as Etta James in Cadillac Records. (Did you see that movie? It featured all sorts of great stars doing great jobs with a great script.) There was also a very sexy negligee worn to great effect by Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, as well as a dress worn by Kate Winslet in Mildred Pierce. In her thirty years in the business, Helen has amassed a list of movie, television and theater credits as long as your arm, or longer. Click here for a comprehensive list that will boggle your mind and delight your imagination.

We were like very privileged kids in a 6,000-foot candy store. Helen's warehouse is normally to the trade only, so for her to invite us to enjoy these treasures in person was a treat beyond words. Helen has the place beautifully organized. The space was filled with row after row of meticulously maintained two-level racks, divided into men's and women's wear arranged chronologically. Naturally, with so much real estate to cover, we spent most of our time in the women's section.

Helen's system of classification is so thorough, and her inventory so broad, that if you asked for a pale blue cotton dress from the 1930s to fit an actress size 34-24-35, Helen could find one for you within five minutes.

Here is a rack of 1940s jackets in every imaginable color, all tagged for easy identification.

We were free to browse the aisles and pull out the pieces that caught our eye. Valerie chose this red and black 1950s number for closer scrutiny. Helen gave us carte blanche to remove the plastic coverings, but we could almost hear our mothers in the background, exhorting us not to court trouble, so we erred on the side of caution.

Jean selected this 1940s black crepe dress with marvelous bakelite buttons.

Sometimes, the little details make all the difference. In this case, the shape, color and angle of the bakelite buttons with their double XX stitching pattern combined with the tailored shape of the dress make it a film noir-type classic.

One Hat - Two Heads!

Sometimes, when we both like the same hat, it looks great on both of us. Other times, it looks better on one than the other. On rare occasions, we both strike out. You be the judge!

We both tried the stunning monkey fur hat that Helen is wearing in the first photo and both found it to be flattering.

We agreed that a sophisticated statement hat such as this requires a little attitude to carry it off.

For lack of a better descriptor, we called this vintage black grosgrain chapeau "the propeller hat". It turned out to be one of those instances in which we both agreed that the hat was great, and wanted it to look better on us than it actually did. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work for either one of us. It's a classic example of what Valerie calls "a ninety-percenter". (Almost everything about it is wonderful, but the missing 10% - not necessarily the item's fault - is a deal breaker.)

Sometimes, it is more flattering to have more going on in the front of a hat than, as in this case, the back. At least in our case. We both really wanted the hat to work its magic on us.

Although the garments in the warehouse are strictly rental only, Helen periodically weeds out the duplicate items and sells them. This little black felt 1940s felt cap with a curved tail was on the sale rack. We both gave it a whirl.

Because the price was right ($16) and because it cried out for a bakelite pin or something to spiff it up, Jean took this little number home with her for some Art Deco TLC. If you look closely, you can see a little lipstick smear on Jean's right cheek - a result of the exuberant holiday hugs and kisses when we arrived.

Helen, knowing we'd be wearing hats, greeted us wearing a black straw item she took off her sale rack. When she heard it was available, Valerie snapped it up. At ten inches in diameter, it's small enough to wear as a breastplate when it's not being worn as a hat.

While traversing the aisles, we hit pay dirt when we found this gown that screamed son-of-Elsa Schiaparelli! This modern day knock-off was created for a Roundabout Theater remake of The Women.

The beadwork on the lobster was amazing. These days, most of this type of handwork is done in India. Since sequins and beads are a staple of drag queen costuming, business there is booming. Just think of all of those Priscillas of the Desert in small towns across America in need of beaded gowns!

We loved the two lobster claws hanging from long straps that tie at the neck of the back of the dress and hang down. Wouldn't the claws look great on a hat?

These shelves held dozens of antique umbrellas, parasols and walking sticks.

It's hard to see, but this umbrella had an elaborately carved dog's head at the end of its handle. Many of the others were equally charming and quirky.

Helen gamely climbed a ladder to show us some of the hats in the boxes atop one of the display cases. She modeled this black felt with an orange butterfly detail.

Here is what we dubbed the great wall of hats. That's Helen's assistant, Dan, in the corner of the shot.

Other Things That Set Our Hearts Afluttering

A wonderful Edwardian period jacket with a Pennsylvania label on it.

In the 1960s, we would have run the other way if anyone had suggested circle skirts to us - SOOOOOO '50s. But aren't they wonderful? The one on the left is printed felt; the one on the right felt like flocked rayon.

The response to the poodle skirt? Felines, of course!

It was amazing how much detail one can find in the sleeves of vintage clothes. In the first photo below, small strips of fabric have been shaped into tubes, and sewn in intervals along a see-through arm. In the second, small bits of white fur have been shaped into leaves sewn onto small velvet cap sleeves. These are highlighted with stems in large stitch embroidery.

Helen showed us this glamorous hand-sewn fur trimmed jacket.

If you click on this photo, you can get a better look at the sleeve detailing. It's almost like a spur on an animal's hind leg. A working person today would complain that this marvelous detailing would get caught on everything. Perhaps this was worn by one of the ladies who lunched.

An assortment of bright cotton prints from the '20s.

Here's Dan again. Helen has a way of picking great assistants. Dan has a degree in musical theater. Albertus Swanepoel, who now makes hats sold at Barney's, among other fabulous places, was one of Helen's interns. (BTW, anyone interested in interning should contact Helen.) Just before we left, Dan modeled a red lumberjack plaid cape and hat that he'd found while thrifting upstate over the holidays.

Helen also sells assorted vintage collectibles on Etsy. Click here to see what she’s offering these days. And while you're at it, have a look at Helen's
BLOG, too!

What we're wearing:

Jean is wearing frames from Fabulous Fanny's; bag by Made Her Think; boots by Trippen; pants by Timbuktu; jacket by Kyodan; vintage black bakelite rings; vintage black & white bakelite orb ring from Sheila Strong -"Fool's Gold"; black skull earrings - gift from Jodi Head & RJ.

Valerie is wearing a Hattie Carnegie modified derby with figure eight cutouts (Stella Pier Show), metal whisk-like earrings from Jean's Block Association's flea market, a boy's cutaway morning coat labeled "Dynasty Collection" by After 6 (thrift shop), Express white cotton/lycra shirt, Comme des Garcons wool patchwork pants (consignment store), Aerosole shoes.

Brooklyn Museum Birthday Bash

2012-01-08T21:23:00.000-08:00

Get thee to the Brooklyn Museum ... post haste!

Two terrific shows are up and running but the first closes at the end of this month and the second in the middle of next month: Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties (closing 1/29/12) and HIDE/SEEK: Difference & Desire in American Portraiture (closing 2/12/12). For her July birthday, Valerie wanted to go to Phillip Johnson's Glass House in Connecticut. (See our 7/11/11 posting for details.) Jean chose to go to the Brooklyn Museum for her November birthday bash, to see these two shows. (Yes, yes, we know. We're just getting around to telling you about it NOW. We've done sooo many things that we're sooo behind in posting about! We moved this up so you'd have time to see the exhibitions before they close.)

The museum's indoor and outdoor spaces are visitor-friendly. Valerie gets up close and personal with the Burghers of Calais.

The lobby features a cafe (a teeny cafetino, really, says Valerie, but right by the huge windows with a sweeping view of the sculpted grounds and Eastern Parkway) serving good lattes and cappuccinos and light snacks. After we refueled, Ms. Jean opened her fabulous birthday presents, courtesy of Ms. Valerie (teeny presentinos, really, says Valerie)! Without revealing too much detail, chocolate skulls among other interesting objets, were involved!

Apropos the "Art of the American Twenties", we encountered this lovely young couple attired head to toe in vintage clothing, getting into the act. They were pushing their baby in an incongruously high tech stroller. Perhaps they are in the market for one of those old-fashioned "baby buggies"? Sure hope their child appreciates them, (especially in a few years when he realizes all his friends' parents are wearing designer sneakers and logo-emblazoned fashions?).

They looked great together and their attention to detail was fantastic, right down to the footwear. Notice the seam in her stockings! Raise your hand if you remember those!

But we digress, as usual. Back to the meat of the matter.

Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties
October 28, 2011–January 29, 2012 Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 5th Floor

Paul Cadmus 1928 by Luigi Lucioni (from Brooklyn Museum Website)

"How did American artists represent the Jazz Age?" asks the exhibition Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties which brings together for the first time work by 68 painters, sculptors, and photographers who explored a new mode of modern realism in the years between the aftermath of the Great War and the onset of the Great Depression. Throughout the 1920s, artists created images of liberated modern bodies and the changing urban-industrial environment with an eye toward ideal form and ordered clarity—qualities seemingly at odds with a riotous decade best remembered for its flappers and Fords.

Artists took as their subjects uninhibited nudes and close-up portraits that celebrated sexual freedom and visual intimacy, as if in defiance of the restrictive routines of automated labor and the stresses of modern urban life. Reserving judgment on the ultimate effects of machine culture on the individual, they distilled cities and factories into pristine geometric compositions that appear silent and uninhabited. American artists of the Jazz Age struggled to express the experience of a dramatically remade modern world, demonstrating their faith in the potentiality of youth and in the sustaining value of beauty. Youth and Beauty presents 140 works by artists including Thomas Hart Benton, Imogen Cunningham, Charles Demuth, Aaron Douglas, Edward Hopper, Gaston Lachaise, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Luigi Lucioni, Gerald Murphy, Georgia O’Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Weston. The painting above of Paul Cadmus is the one that caught our eye one day in the subway, and convinced us we had to see this show. The portrait is stunning, and so is the show.

Two Women 1924 by George Wesley Bellows (from Brooklyn Museum website)

Bellows' ambitious work is an homage to Titian's circa 1514 Italian Renaissance painting Sacred and Profane Love (Galleria Borghese, Rome) in which a nude and a clothed figure are paired to contrast pure love (unclothed) with its worldly counterpart. In the 1920's, when Freudian ideas were as current as the latest fashions, viewers likely read George Bellows’s variation on Titian’s theme as an embodiment of the vying impulses of sexual openness and repression. The assertively lit nude and her clothed counterpart appear in the well-recognized parlor setting of Bellows’ home in rural Woodstock, New York.

Something comes over the two of us when we go to museums. Our jaunts become like outtakes from a Marx Brothers movie.

In the stairwell between exhibits, occasionally egged on by a number of passing people who took our pictures, we emoted.

As you can see, there's more than enough light in the stairwell...

Here, however, is Jean in Horst or Hoyningen-Huene mode. The pose is almost identical, but the angle is different, and shot without a flash. No special photoshop effects.

And here, Jean's hat, distinctive already, is transformed by the play of shadows.

It is a little known fact that Valerie lived not ten minutes' walk from the Brooklyn Museum during her childhood, and visited frequently. (Particularly the Egyptian wing. Keep in mind that right about then minor TV channels were having a field day filling time slots with movies from the '30s and '40s, and a perennial favorite was Boris Karloff's The Mummy). It's also a little known fact that in those days Valerie considered no museum visit complete without a slide down one of the museum bannisters. Guards watched the art, not the stairwells, so it was possible to punctuate the solemn contemplation of boy kings, god kings, cat goddesses and cat mummies with a little fun. Why would anyone ever want to take an elevator to the next floor when they could take the monkey bars?

Here Valerie relives old times. Valerie notes that her center of gravity (like so many other things) has changed considerably in the intervening years, and sliding down the bannister demanded much more concentration than she remembered. At least, to her credit, she remembered!

HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture
November 18, 2011–February 12, 2012 Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 4th Floor

Self Portrait 1975 by Robert Mapplethorpe (from Brooklyn Museum Website)

The first major museum exhibition to focus on themes of gender and sexuality in modern American portraiture, HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture brings together more than 100 works in a wide range of media (paintings, photographs, works on paper, film, and installation art), charts the underdocumented role that sexual identity played in the making of modern art, and highlights contributions of gay and lesbian artists to American art. Beginning in the late 19th century with Thomas Eakins’ Realist paintings, HIDE/SEEK traces the often coded narrative of sexual desire in art produced throughout the early modern period up to the present. The exhibition features pieces by canonical figures in American art—including George Bellows, Marsden Hartley, Alice Neel, and Berenice Abbott — along with works that openly assert gay and lesbian subjects in modern and contemporary art, by artists such as Jess Collins and Tee Corinne. HIDE/SEEK presents artists’ responses to the Stonewall Riots of 1969, the AIDS epidemic, and postmodern themes of identity, highlighted with major pieces by artists such as AA Bronson, Félix González-Torres, and Annie Leibovitz. More than simply documenting a prominent subculture often relegated to the margins of American art, HIDE/SEEK offers a unique survey of more than a century of American portraiture and leads the way towards a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of modern art in America.

Janet Flanner 1927 Berenice Abbott

According to exhibition notes, in 1922, Janet Flanner settled in Paris with her lover, Solita Solano, and spent the next fifty years writing her “Letter from Paris,” column for The New Yorker. Flanner and Solano became fixtures in the salon life of the city, their homosexuality providing a crucial entrée into the most fashionable literary groups, which were then dominated by wealthy expatriate lesbians. Flanner signed her column with the decorously French and sexually ambiguous pseudonym “Genêt” to hide her identity, but like most masks, the name revealed as much as it hid. With her campy prose and focus on known gay and lesbian personalities, Flanner provided a knowing glimpse of the Paris “in” crowd. In this portrait by Berenice Abbott, Flanner wears two masks, which—like her pseudonym—suggest her multiple layers.

One thing we found very interesting were the two Romaine Brooks portraits - one a self-portrait, the other of Una, Lady Troubridge. Those of you who were reading us last year might remember that Romaine Brooks was listed as one of the women we most admired, and the two above-mentioned paintings were posted to the blog. Up until our trip to the Brooklyn Museum, however, we had not seen the paintings in person, just in photographs. Here we got to see them both, one in each show. Because Brooks was an early 20th century American painter and a lesbian, her portraits could have gone in either show. The museum judiciously decided to put the self-portrait in Hide/Seek, and Lady Troubridge in Youth and Beauty. Jean briefly contemplated the fashion potential of a monocle, but immediately hit two major barriers: how does one do a monocle version of sunglasses? When and if that minor challenge is overcome, one wonders if they come with progressive lenses!

Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hillsl 1935 Georgia O'Keeffe (photo from Brooklyn Museum website)

O’Keeffe filled her landscapes of the desert Southwest with an abundance of horns and antlers. According to the Brooklyn Museum, this painting features an enlarged ram’s skull and antlers hovering emblematically over landscape and sky; the organic lines and complex orifices of these nearly abstract forms conjure associations both phallic and feminine.

Maintaining the O'Keeffe theme, after touring the galleries, we headed to a great Mexican restaurant on Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn whose walls featured numerous ram and steer skulls, including this specimen.

We welcomed the opportunity to cool our heels and compare notes about what we'd seen and what we thought. Oh, and the cocktails were delish! Having said that, however, we are still looking - so far fruitlessly - for a frozen mango margarita to compare with the peerless ones we had at the late lamented Tabla. Where DID those genius mixologists go?! Anyone who knows should tell us!

We HAVE to put in a GREAT word for the Brooklyn Museum Gift Shop. Of COURSE we went there FIRST. (Once, somewhere, we saved a museum gift shop for last, only to discover that it closed before the museum galleries did! Thwarted in our attempt to buy something! Museum trips are a pilgrimage, and museum shops aren't like The Gap (or like The Gap used to be, that is), with one on every corner. Once you've missed your chance, you're not likely to get it again. So now we visit the gift shops first. (It's good to get it out of your system, too. That way you can focus on the art.) Anyway, the Brooklyn Museum Gift Shop has a great buyer or buyers. There's always something very clever and original there, there's a wonderful variety, and their prices are very good. Go, and buy! (Remember it helps support the museum.)

What we're wearing:

The birthday girl is wearing an Ignatius faux leopard hat; 8-eye leopard Doc Marten boots; Kyodan jacket; Illesteva glasses; Angela Capputi resin alligator bracelet and Canal Street oversized watch; vintage black bakelite necklace and rings; Lux de Ville black patent handbag; and white museum ID tag.

Valerie is wearing a Parkhust hat; aluminum pin from the flea market; vintage I.B. Diffusion sweater (also from the flea market; top to bottom there are no repeats in the design, which probably indicated a highly skilled pattern maker, and may also have been a challenge for the knitting machine); yellow cotton gloves (Metropolitan Vintage Show); Betsey Johnson dress (thrift shop); Arche shoes (resale shop).

Another Year Down the Tubes!

2012-01-01T09:37:00.000-08:00

FIRST THINGS FIRST. We'd like to wish you a Happy New Year! We had all sorts of grandiose ideas for our new year's picture, but Johnny Depp was not available. Nor were our second or third choices, but we're persevering on all counts, and will report back on our grandiose plans in due time. Nevertheless, we were not to be deterred, and "borrowed" a local three-wheeled motorcycle, put on our candy apple red flashing 2012 glasses, and got two tourists to photograph us (via our usual exchange - you can photograph us with your camera if you also photograph us with our camera). Unfortunately, still photos don't capture the blinking action - we should have videotaped them. (That they even blinked at all was miraculous - we had to test four pairs to find two pairs that blinked as promised.)

Second, as of today we have exactly three hundred followers! We want to thank all of our followers, and we particularly want to thank the 300th person for choosing January 1st to take that leap of faith.

Third, a couple weeks ago we were quite stunned to discover that there was fun going on downtown without our knowledge or approval, and we set about to remedy that with all due speed. 'Fess up. When was the last time you had to don a crash helmet at a museum? Or had to sign a waiver of liability before interacting with the artworks in an exhibition?

The New Museum currently has an exhibition of the work of Carsten Holler, an artist who was originally a scientist, a fact reflected in his work. For the past twenty years, he has, in the words of the exhibition's visitor card, "created a world that is equal parts laboratory and test site". It would take a while to give him his due, so please click here for the New Museum's introduction to Holler and his work.

The best part of the "Carsten Holler: Experience" is a two-story tube which incorporates a slide, constructed through the concrete floors, to whisk visitors from the fourth floor to the second floor without the bother of stairs or elevator. It's a breathtaking one hundred and forty foot trip that takes five seconds and requires that one be helmeted, supine and - GASP - shoeless. Let us walk you through it (so to speak), and tell you of the other fun we had while there.

In the video below, you can see a visitor being prepared for her trip, and hear her screaming with glee (we think) on the way down.

There were logistical difficulties in filming each other entering and exiting the tube, but we managed to 'overcome' them, more or less, by making more than one trip. Participants are not allowed to take anything into the tube (although we were allowed our pocket cameras, as long as they stayed in our pockets as we descended) and are more than slightly disoriented after spinning downward at insanely high speed. Where's an intern or videographer when you need one?

The third floor is one of the best places to observe the proceedings because the top of the chute is transparent, allowing the briefest glimpse of visitors hurtling between floors. (See photo below) Truth be told, some museum-goers screamed bloody murder the entire trip - present company excluded, of course. (Valerie says: It's true. I couldn't slide and chew gum - I mean scream - at the same time.)

Metaphorically, the old year went down the tubes, so what better way to see it out than to personally escort it down a tube? We are so ready for a brighter, more prosperous new year.

Valerie went first, and had enough time to position herself to film Jean, who came down next. Click on the video below to see Jean make her appearance.

Then Valerie went down a second time so Jean could film her.

Visitors with epilepsy are specifically warned not to visit the second floor because of the constantly (annoyingly?) bright & flashing lights which emanate from the Double Light Corner exhibit. You cannot help but notice them if you watch the videos of our landings as we emerge from the tube. Imagine having to work in that lighting 8 hours a day!

Mr. Holler also had a mirrored carousel of swings installed on the fourth floor. We had seen a photo of riders flying around at an angle, and looked forward to whistling through the air. On the day we were there, however, the employees were insistent on keeping us strictly perpendicular to the ground. Phooey.

On the bright and spacious roof of the Museum we ran into this couple wearing these fabulous goggles.

It turned out these goggles, which are designed to help visitors explore the limits of human sensory perception, have mirrored sections which reverse one's vision, so you see everything upside down. We thought the couple looked so cool in the goggles, it was hard to say what was the greater impetus that made us rush downstairs for our own: the chance to see what life looks like upside down, or the chance to wear the cool goggles.

Once you've tried the goggles, you understand the need for the warnings posted around the museum.

On the second floor is a series of rooms dubbed the Experience Corridor in which you pass through carefully controlled participatory experiences. In this particular instance, we're wearing 3-D goggles which project an eerily silent walk at night through a snow covered forest. It was an intense and yet calming experience. In another room, if you rest your arm on the table (similar to the one seen here), and press a button, your arm experiences a feeling somewhat akin to having a woodpecker peck at it from underneath. The accompanying sound is woodpecker-ish, too.

One of the strangest sections of the exhibition is the Animal Group on the second floor. While visitors are invited to touch many of the other exhibits, they are only allowed to look at - not touch - the brightly colored rubbery animals and reptiles on the museum floor. Among the technicolor creatures are a Schiaparelli pink alligator, green hippo, milky white dolphin, blue ape, Pepto Bismol pink rhino and yellow seal.

There is an aquarium on the second floor which is constructed so that you lie down with your head in a cylinder and view the fish swimming around your head. Someone with a filmic turn of mind might think this is meant to evoke the experience of Luca Brasi (raise your hand if you saw The Godfather), who, you will remember "sleeps with the fishes".

Unfortunately, on the day we visited, the Giant Psycho Tank on the third floor was closed to the public. A big disappointment. How apt it would have been for us!

The giant white structure in the background is a tank loosely based on the meditation (aka "sensory deprivation") tanks of the 1970s and 1980s. In the old days, you floated in total darkness in a small pod-like tank filled with about 10 inches of warm, highly salinated water. Does anyone remember "Altered States" (Ken Russell's 1980 film of Paddy Chayefsky's novel which prominently features a sensory deprivation tank - and William Hurt's film debut)? In Carsten Holler's tank, it is the opposite of sensory deprivation; it is sensory overload: the white resin walls emit light like alabaster, so a floater would be in a big, bright space, conscious of members of the public just outside.

Even the elevators were a trip, their highly reflective surfaces providing the additional experience of watching fellow passengers and yourselves. And so, at the end of the day, here we are, reflecting on our experience.

The New Museum is located at 235 Bowery (at Spring Street) in Soho. The exhibition closes January 15.

Merry Christmas to All, and to All a Good Night

2011-12-25T09:58:00.000-08:00

Ho-ho-ho! Welcome to the Dollhouse - IF Style!

Join us in our annual pilgrimage as we show you some of the holiday windows in midtown Manhattan. In just a few square blocks, radiating from the epicenter, 57th Street and 5th Avenue, we had a cornucopia. A feast for the eyes, and then some. We put aside an evening, since the windows look so much better after dark (and since we mistakenly thought the crowds would be thinner). The trek never fails to imbue us with the spirit of the holiday season. For those of you who cannot make it to the Big Apple, kick back and tag along as we share our favorites with you. In On the Street in today's New York Times, Bill Cunningham says "Fifth Avenue and 57th Street is the epicenter of Christmas spirit in the city, the exuberance of the shoppers complemented by the shop windows." We couldn't agree more. (If you've got a copy of today's paper, look closely at the two women to the right of photo 13 on page 4 to see our friends Christina Viera and Suzanne Golden strutting their stuff for Mr. Cunningham!) To truly appreciate the images in our posting, please click on our photos to enlarge them.

For this assignment, we had to consider our outfits carefully, unsure how we would show up in the dark. Jean chose a very tall, textural hat, and a coat with a wide skirt so her silhouette would show up, even if her face might not. I wore a tall white hat, white coat and white boots to raise the odds that I would not get swallowed up in the dark. Henri Bendel - RADIO CITY DOLL HOUSE In addition to a six-foot neon Radio City sign that draws you in like a beacon, Henri Bendel's window features a doll-house townhouse that is a Peeping Tom's dream!

Each window tells a different story. The tableau in the lower right window involves three chic young babes ringing in the New Year and toasting with champagne. While one sits quietly in contemplation, another (in fishnets) dances on the table top and the third in the strapless dress perches on the shelf. The attention to detail is amazing - note the lobster and cupcakes on the table, the artwork on the walls, the presents on the shelf and the clock striking midnight. The top floor has a mirror on the ceiling so people on the street can get a fish eye's view of goings on. Brings playing with Barbie to a whole new level!

Life Imitates Art: Below, Valerie gets into the spirit in front of Bendel's, duplicating (well, SORT of duplicating) the pose of the stylized Lady Liberty walking her elegant hound who is sporting reindeer antlers.

Barneys - Fun House:

Lady GAGA's Workshop at Barneys.

Fabulously stylized neon depictions of Lady Gaga greet customers at every entrance to the store and at the top of the main stairway. As you step off the elevator on the 5th floor, you encounter this giant replica of a Pepto Bismol pink-clad yellow-nailed reclining Lady Gaga. The men's section has been transformed by Barneys for the holiday season into a fun-house-like atmosphere with products in a wide variety of price ranges (under $10 dollars to over $4000), with 25% of the proceeds donated to the Made this Way anti-bullying charity co-founded by Lady Gaga and her mother.

Among the items for sale are wax bust candles by Douglas Little in colors like blue, white and black. We cannot imagine anyone actually burning one of them into oblivion. Their crystal-like shape is reminiscent of Superman's Fortress of Solitude!

Clever, colorful Gaga-inspired cutouts fill the space. The green Gaga-headed spider is Jean's favorite.

In Case of Emergency, Break Glass. Jean says: We like to fantasy shop at exhibitions and galleries and openings and select our favorite items, as if money were no object. (To paraphrase Bette Davis in Whatever happened to Baby Jane? "... but it (money) is, Blanche, it is!") Anyway, were I as rich as Daphne Guinness, I would have bought these shoes (in black, of course). They are handmade Night Maker shoes by Noritaka Tatehana.

The setting for Lady Gaga's Workshop is spectacular. The custom-painted walls add to the fun-house atmosphere, providing the perfect op art backdrop for our photo op, especially for Valerie's black and white outfit! (Valerie says: where did I get that expression?! At least this proves I am not using botox!)

Nails are a recurring theme in the workshop. The extremely long nails on the large pink Lady Gaga statue are duplicated in the displays suspended from the ceiling.

Jean bought two items made out of candy: a pair of giant outsized lips (top lip red and bottom lip black) on a a lollipop stick and a ring that is a full-sized purple finger with a long black fingernail, reminiscent of Lady Gaga's nails in the window display (see window photos below). The shopping bags themselves are collectors' items.

Barneys Windows: More Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga dominated Barneys windows. We asked (harassed?) a very nice gentleman to take our photo. He said he was bringing his daughter the next afternoon to see the workshop. This was the photo in which he cut off our feet. This is but one of the many risks we run when we hand our cameras over to people who think the face is all. :)

Lady Gaga's Boudoir is constructed entirely out of faux hair: the furniture, the rug, the curtains, the chair. Apparently, one of the hottest items (which sold out weeks ago) at Lady Gaga's Workshop was a headband with a faux-hair bow.

Here is a close-up of the talon-like nails and hair-covered hand.

Even Lady Gaga's stockings are constructed of long back filaments of hair. Our favorite item in the window? The black braided platform shoes! They resemble woven raffia platform espadrilles.

The southwestern window on Madison Avenue is dominated by an anthropomorphic, aerodynamic Lady Gaga Speed Machine -- pop star as motorcycle! Who'd a thunk it? The line of neon lights in the background light up in a rapidly changing sequence that gives the illusion of motion. If you scroll to the bottom, you can see a short video that shows you the entire sequence of the lighting, as well as Jean doing a cameo in front of the window.

Lady Gaga Crystal Cave windows - one of which faces Madison Avenue and the other of which faces 57th Street - give a three-dimensional glimpse of a turquoise underwater world.

The Star at 57th and Fifth: The iconic crystal star dominates the sky at the intersection of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, lighting the way for tourists, shoppers and residents alike.

ANIMAL HOUSE!

Tiffany's: "Carousel of Animals"

You can practically hear organ music in the background. The tops of the carousel with their familiar white light bulbs are hung from the front of Tiffany's, above the windows. Inside the windows are shadow boxes with glimpses of colorful carousel animals like the rabbit, reindeer and zebra. Some of the windows had moving parts. Scroll down to the bottom of today's posting to see brief videos showing those windows.

Bergdorf Goodman's - "Carnival of Animals" Horses:

The windows facing 57th Street contain evening gown-clad mannequins surrounded by or riding horses of varying sizes.

Birds:

This vignette of a trio of bird-headed ladies posing for a photographer faces the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel. Look closely at the painted backdrop to see the fantastical winged reindeer flying past snow covered mountain peaks.

Mice: In a small shadow-box window on Madison Avenue surrounded by jeweled minaudieres under a crystal chandelier are an adorable trio of performing circus mice: a ring master, gymnast and ballerina. The closeup of the gymnast balancing precariously on his ball shows the gorgeous costuming. You can even see the ballerina's reflection in the mirror.

Cats:

This crimson mannequin is surrounded by fabric-covered feline figures. The closeup is of the wild-eyed, wide-mouthed cat which appears in the left of the photo (to the mannequin's right).

Ermine: This black and white window on Fifth Avenue is breathtakingly beautiful. With the exception of the model, everything is made of paper! Jean's sentimental favorites are the two lace doiley-covered ermines lounging at the foot of the mannequin. They're even wearing little golden masks. How fabulous!

MOVING PARTS: Van Cleef & Arpels - "Bals de Legende":

Depicted in Art Deco silhouettes are famous balls. In this particular installation, the gondolier rows his boat forward and backward languidly and endlessly as the figures in the balcony move about. Each in the series is artfully constructed and fascinating to look at. They are most effectively viewed at night.

Saks Fifth Avenue - "Land of the Bubbles":

Further down Fifth Avenue, Saks features a series of windows inhabited by mostly female designer-clad mannequins hard at work operating a series of Rube Goldberg-style contraptions whose primary function is to produce bubbles. Behind each of the figures in the windows runs a long, low wooden basin through which a raven-haired figure rides a big-wheeled bicycle back and forth, to keep the bubble mixture bubbly. Scroll down for videos of these.

Anthropologie - "Air - Breathe!": On a side street across from the tree at Rockefeller Plaza is Anthropologie's window featuring a big wooden structure affixed with white rectangular bags that rhythmically inflates and deflates as if powered by an unseen breathing machine. It's the post-modernist/up-cycling Christmas.

Fendi and Cartier Holiday Bows:

Opting to decorate their entire buildings, not just their windows, Fendi and Cartier constructed huge twinkling bows. Fendi's black outlined white bow cascades down the front of the building. Cartier's crimson bow encircles the building like a gift box.

VIDEOS: Thought we'd make life easier at Christmas by just uploading a few videos. Ha! Turns out a video takes about one minute to upload per second of its length. So a lot of time was spent babysitting the computer. Lesson learned. Still, enjoy the sights and sounds.

Tekkie question: We've noticed that our perfectly good videos upload slightly cut off on the right hand side. Anyone know what we're doing wrong? If you're our age, you probably don't. If you have a 12-17 year old child or grandchild, would you please ask them for us? Thanks!!!

Lady Gaga window at Barneys, with cameo by Jean

Behind the Scenes at the Lady Gaga Crystal Cave:

The magic doesn't just come from nowhere. Somebody's gotta be in charge of it. Seeing this is a bit like seeing Toto pull the curtain away to reveal the homely Wizard of Oz.

Coach did separate cartoon videos for each of its four picture windows on the corner of 57th Street and Madison Avenue. Each cartoon contains one or more vignettes. Lots of jolly little surprises. If you look closely, you'll see that certain rectangular shapes have been replaced by the signature Coach tag. They're all New York City-specific, so one wonders what they did for their windows in other cities. (If you know, write and tell us!)

The first Coach window shows the Rockefeller Center tree, with skaters in the skating rink, someone pushing a large present down the street, and someone getting walked by his enthusiastic dog. You'll notice the video was taken on an angle. The lighting was such that if we stood directly in front of the window, the video screen went stark white and all the details disappeared.

In the second Coach window, you can see the Empire State Building (both a distance and a close-up view, with people sightseeing at the top), the Chrysler Building, and a building of massive colored lights.

The third Coach window shows the Brooklyn Bridge, taxis and buses passing by, and what looks like Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. You can see the camera shakes occasionally. That's when Valerie, holding the camera in her right hand, tries to silently direct pedestrians with her left hand to go behind her rather than in front of her. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. New York was a rude place in the '70s, but we're a pretty cordial bunch now. It's lovely to see how many people go out of their way not to be the odd head that shows up in the middle of a picture. A few don't realize (they're probably checking e mail on their iPhones or zoning out with their mp3 players), and a few just really don't care, but most people smile, stop, and wait till you're done.

The fourth Coach window shows New York Harbor. There's the Statue of Liberty (who, due to a cruel trick of fate, mostly winds up behind a window frame that no moving to the left or right can ameliorate), Staten Island ferries, a tugboat and a cruise ship, all navigating the waters.

Tiffany: Wild Animals Stroll on Bridge in Central Park

Tiffany: Merry-Go-Round

First Saks Window:

Second Saks Window:

Third Saks Window:

Fourth Saks Window:

Fifth Saks Window:

Sixth Saks Window:

Seventh Saks Window:

Eighth Saks Window:

Saks Clockwork Wall:

We wanted to keep the videos short, so we only filmed each one long enough to give the general impression. This clockwork was no different. Unfortunately, what we didn't realize until too late was that the real fun didn't begin on the facade until the clock reached zero. But we would have had to wait another 13 minutes to film it, and it was actually difficult to hold onto one's place in the large crowd - about 250 feet directly behind the camera is the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. Valerie went back Christmas eve to re-film, but the countdown was not showing, possibly because St. Patrick's Cathedral, half a block away, was letting in congregants for midnight mass, and the sound of the ticking clock might have been distracting.

Anthropologie: Windbag as Art:

"Life Dressing" at the Pier Show

2011-12-18T23:05:00.001-08:00

Way back when we had our book signing at Primetime Gallery, we invited Jeanne Stella, who runs The Pier Antiques Show, to be one of our guests. When she wasn't able to make it, we were disappointed, but imagine our surprise and delight when Jeanne suggested we have an additional signing as her guests at the Pier Antiques Show! After excitedly conferring with our author / illustrator Joana Avillez, we gave Jeanne with a hearty YES. It was agreed that we would sign from 1 - 3 PM on Saturday, November 19. Just like in Goldilocks and the Three Bears: not too long, not too short, but just right. Enough time to meet and greet everyone who wanted to come by, but also enough time to see all the booths and try on all the great STUFF!

Doing the book signing with Jeanne Stella and the Stella Pier Antiques Show came with all kinds of perks. One was that we were included in the full page ad in the New York Times. It's a great ad - made along the lines (pun intended) of a Mondrian grid painting. In the leftmost column you can see the Life Dressing book cover, and note that - in newspaper parlance - we are ABOVE THE FOLD. OK, not entirely, but the faces are the most important part anyway. And remember we made a two hour appearance. So half way above the fold is really cool. (Jean says: I was in Atlanta on business. Imagine my surprise when I bought a copy of Thursday's Times and saw our picture in the front section of the paper. I shamelessly pointed it out to any and all who would listen.)

BOOK SIGNING:

Having your mug on the cover of a book is really fun, as is seeing your mug in the New York Times. But as you can see above, we also got to have our mugs on a life-sized poster, which is truly a trip. (Click on photos to enlarge.)

We had a prominent space just inside the right side entrance to the show for our table. In addition to the poster with life-sized illustrations of us from the cover of the book were two 4 feet by 8 feet posters (about half of the width of the large poster). Thank goodness there was one for each of NOUS, avoiding any fisticuffs. We decided the largest poster should go to Joana and each of us could take our very own half-sheets home with us. (Jean took hers to work, prompting her boss's joke comparing her to Kim Jong Il, the Korean strongman who plastered his image all over Korea. [Valerie's, which will be hung at home, has yet to see the light of day, as it is awaiting the apartment's Big Clean-Up. The Big Clean-Up is a larger-than-life legend, which is expected to occur only slightly sooner than the Apocalypse. Or may actually BE the Apocalypse...])

Jeanne Stella and her mother Irene are responsible for staging the entire Pier Show event.

Jeanne was one of our best customers! She has a LOT of family members (many of whom work the show) and, lucky for us, she stopped by to purchase copies of the book for several of her relatives. Case in point - her chicly outfitted niece.

A video crew captured the event for posterity. Jean hangs back as Joana is interviewed. Sam, the cameraman, and Raquel, the producer, survey the set.

Joana wore a unique Issey Miyake pleated skirt with a roulette wheel print. It unfurled beautifully when she twirled.

One of Joana's friends stopped by. We loved her Bart Simpson-imprinted jacket. (See details in small photo.)

PIER SHOW SHOPPERS AND FRIENDS:

The Pier Show is one of our favorite haunts - for great people watching, for catching up with friends and for primo vintage hunting!

Speaking of people watching, we were thrilled to run into one of our favorite people -- fashion writer and celebrity in her own right, Lynn Yeager, who wears vintage like no other human on the planet. Her creative dressing is the perfect counterpoint for her instantly recognizable red bob, rouged cheeks and bee stung lips. She's a flapper for the new millenium!

As we mentioned in last week's posting, we have suddenly discovered that we revolve in many of the same circles as Sandy Long and have started running into her. She has an extensive vintage collection and everything we've seen is intriguing. Her friend wore fabulous two-toned vintage shoes.

Valerie with Stacy LoAlbo, from whom she purchased a vintage sequined hat that looked decidedly like a crumpled old Japanese hat from an ancient scroll. Or like the hat of Manet's The Fife Player. Or like the Phrygian cap worn by the Sans Culottes during the French Revolution. (Sequined hat not shown. We'll point it out when we upload it sometime in the future.)

Artist Katherine Crone, wearing her signature Miyake, stopped by the show and our booth. (She'd already bought a copy of the book at our first event at the Primetime Gallery in Brooklyn.)

Daniel and his wife Carole never disappoint. They have mastered the fine art of vintage dressing and incorporate it into their everyday wardrobes. Here is a shot of them on Sunday afternoon. Both said they wear their vintage to work. Dan said he would wear this bright blue suit, but would change into a white shirt. Did you notice how wonderfully his green shirt works with his blue suit? Who'd a thunk it? Proof that it pays to experiment.

Here's another shot of Daniel in what he wore on Saturday afternoon along with Sandy Long and her friend, who is modeling one of his purchases. (Yes, Daniel was there both days, as were we, Iris Apfel, and several other die-hards.)

One of the ladies who stopped by the booth showed off great black spiked bracelets that she had made.

Jean encountered this impeccably dressed gent on the floor of the show who insisted on getting her photo. She invoked our even exchange rule ("If you take my picture with your camera, will you take our picture with mine?") and got this great shot of both of them.

Our friend, vintage clothing maven Helen Uffner, also came to see us at our booth.

When we inquired "What did YOU buy?", this dapper gentleman proudly showed off his purchase: an antique photograph in a sensuously polished and shaped wooden frame.

We always stop by vendor Carol Weiss' booth to see what amazing antique items (toys, housewares, ephemera) she has on display. Carol herself is always a treat.

FABULOUS EYEWEAR AND FOOTWEAR:

As we all know, women of a certain age are always in search of the holy grails of eyewear that allow you to see what you're doing/reading -- and look good doing it --- and footwear that allows you to romp around and still look terribly chic. Here are a few examples culled from the Pier Show:

Julie Allinson, right, president of Eyebobs, the fabulous reading glasses company, is one of her own best advertisers! As you can see, she's the perfect model-spokesperson for one of our favorite products.

Carol Weiss was sporting this chic but hilariously comfortable pair of Comme des GarconS boots which take the deconstructed look to an extreme. As someone who spends a lot of time on her feet at these shows, Carol knows whereof she speaks.

Raquel Livia's John Fluevog boots sported a beautifully curved and mercifully low heel.

After some cajoling, Valerie convinced this lady to let her take her picture. We really liked her Comme des Garcons dress. It has a wonderful hem that the photo doesn't do justice to. We also loved her United Nude shoes!

Designer Kirsten Hawthorne had both eyewear and footwear that caught our eye. She paired her cool vintage glasses with equally interesting vintage black lace up boots, which she paired with a great knit skirt and lots of black textured accessories. She maintains that slim figure by biking everywhere. She just puts her fab handbag in the basket on the front of the bike & takes off.

NECKLACES:

We also featured this gorgeous dame last year when she was wearing a different but equally stunning necklace. She has the hair and the style to carry it off beautfully.

Raquel Livia (also sporting great eyewear) was wearing a necklace and earrings of her own design. She paired them with a great black zip-front Ivan Grundhal jacket with a peplum bottom.

HANDBAG:

This lady made her Flintstone-style purse. Way cool, don't you think?

HATS:

We stopped this woman to admire her fabulous two-toned hat, and were thrilled when she told us she bought it based on our influence. What greater compliment could we have received?! We thought she looked terrific in it -- and loved her great glasses.

The lady on the left wore a modified turban that she'd purchased many years ago from one of Jean's favorite milliners: Amy Downs. A great Amy Downs conversation ensued, and we found out that both Kirsten Hawthorne and Raquel Livia knew Amy Downs when she lived in New York City. Raquel also said that Amy did the hats for the film version of Tama Janowitz's "Slaves of New York", which chronicled the denizens of the city in the mid-1980's.

Isabel purchased a great vintage hat with an attached scarf, to wrap tightly around the ears and neck in colder weather, or toss over the shoulders when indoors. She does it proud!

The piece de resistence: Valerie purchased a white hat with black grapes that looks spectacular. Can't wait until it appears atop her noggin at a future event. (Valerie says: it really doesn't belong on top of a purple outfit, so hold your hand over that while you're looking. The tiny crown is vinyl, the white brim is silk organza, and the black grapes are plastic. Can't imagine what posessed the designer to combine these disparate elements, but somehow they work. This was also from Stacy LoAlbo. She has a sharp eye!)

ADVANCED STYLE SHOOT

Ari Seth Cohen of Advanced Style posed with Joana. He and Lina stopped by to shoot some video of us at the book signing --and of the other great ladies who frequent the Pier Shows -- like Iris Apfel, who didn't let being in a wheelchair slow her down one iota.

He took some great outdoor shots of us.

Needless to say, we had a blast. You can barely see them in this shot, but Lina is wearing wonderfully graphic spiral striped hose.

Here's a better shot of Lina and her green and blue striped pantyhose that looked like the stockings worn by medieval heralds. They were fab!

We're hoping that being videotaped by two separate photographers will up our street cred. And it really was lots of fun!

Although we were exhausted at the end of the day on Saturday, we almost hated to leave. We barely made the last bus.

What we're wearing:

Jean is wearing a leopard cocktail hat by Ignatius (from the Philadelphia Museum Craft Show); vintage Norma Kamali leopard jacket (from Another man's Treasure); turtleneck from Uniqlo; harem pants from Brigitte; platform boots from Trippen; glasses by Illesteva; vintage bakelite necklace and rings. Black and white bakelite ring from Sheila Strong of Fool's Gold.

Valerie is wearing a vintage B. Altman hat with black persian lamb topped by purple velvet, vintage plastic fruit earrings from Germany, a vintage sweater jacket "hand knitted in Chile", unseen black shirt and pants, unlabeled spiky green combat boots from 8th Street.

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And since we've been talking about Christmas for the last couple of weeks, we can't let this week go without some nod to the season. Thought you might be interested to see this oooooooooold video of the Kinks, singing Father Christmas. With the economy being what it is, we thought it might be appropriate. The song dates back to 1977, which raises pretty interesting questions, and perhaps a few eyebrows. Ray Davies always tells it like it is.

Lyrics | Kinks lyrics - Father Christmas lyrics

F.I.T. To Be Tied - Part 2 of 2 - Rose Hartman

2011-12-14T09:26:00.000-08:00

AND: Christmas Shopping at Grand Central Station

As promised, this is the second of two postings this week about the second amazing exhibition on view at the Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.) through January 7th!

We were a bit late for the opening of Incomparable Women of Style, the retrospective of Rose Hartman's photographs. We left the Issey Miyake 10th Anniversary party early (with Katherine Crone in tow) to run uptown to the Fashion Institute of Technology's Gladys Marcus Library to see her collection of '80s and '90s icons photographed in party mode, and were we glad we did!

For Jean, it was the ultimate trip down memory lane. Rose Hartman and the subjects of her photographs were familiar faces to New Yorkers of a certain age (like Jean) who frequented the many clubs like Studio 54. Even if you don't know Rose by name, chances are that, regardless of your age, you probably have seen her famous shot of Bianca Jagger entering her birthday party at Studio 54 riding a white stallion bareback. That image is on the poster for the show and greets visitors on the main floor and as they exit the elevator to the library on the 5th floor. On opening night, a red rose lay on the display case under the poster, a coy reference to the artist. The display case was filled with Hartman's slides. (That's Jean, inspecting them on a second trip we made several weeks later.)

In 1977, when Rose made the critical decision to switch careers from teacher to photographer, she found her niche in photographing the new club scene. It flourished both downtown and uptown, although the clientele downtown tended to prefer the edgier punk looks like Betsey Johnson, British imports and clothing from local boutiques, while the uptown crowd favored Mary McFadden, Halston, Calvin Klein, Stephen Burrows and Perry Ellis. Although there were dozens of clubs, Studio 54 became the international symbol of New York Night Life. Here is a shot of Rose in 1977.

Here is a picture of Rose today. She had recently donated her entire photographic collection to the library at FIT, which staged the opening to celebrate the gift and to showcase some of Rose's work. Rose chose to wear a a black silk top designed by Gemma Kahng. She is chatting with Austrian artist Nin Brudermann who was only 7 years old when Studio 54 opened but whose silver jumpsuit perfectly channeled the 1980's club vibe. Completing the trio is British bon vivant Anthony Haden-Guest who was a very recognizable fixture of the uptown New York nightlife scene in the 1980's. A reporter, writer and cartoonist, Haden-Guest continues to live a very colorful life, recently dubbed a "consummate party-goer" by The Observer.

It was particularly apt that Rose chose to wear one of Gemma Kahng's designs for her opening. After graduating from the Art Institute of Chicago, Gemma came to New York City and worked for fellow Korean designer Cathy Hardwick. Gemma hit it big in 1989 when one of her jackets appeared in Vogue. Her career flourished in the 1990s, the decade of power dressing in which women wore lots of suits. Gemma's tailoring is impeccable. In the new millennium's shift to casual dressing, her business faltered. This past April she was featured on Joe Zee's reality TV show "All on the Line" where her collection was picked up by the owners of Kirna Zabete who feature Gemma's designs in their Greene street store in SOHO. Gemma is pictured here with her technical director.

Jean says: I loved the fact that Anthony wore white-soled shoes to the opening and recalled the advice of legendary Studio 54 doorman Marc Benecke on how to decide if someone he didn't recognize should be allowed behind the velvet rope: "You can always tell a gentleman by his shoes." In 1997, 20 years after the club opened, Anthony Haden-Guest authored "The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco and the Culture of the Night". Many publications such as the New York Post have said that Anthony was the basis for Tom Wolfe's Peter Fallow character in "The Bonfire of the Vanities".

The icing on the cake was the appearance of photographer Patrick McMullen, who has covered the New York scene since the late 1970's. His company bio says he majored in business at NYU and minored in Studio 54! Who better to cover Rose's opening? Jean met him back in the 1970's and their paths crossed frequently in the 1980s and 1990s at venues such as The Ritz, The Palladium, Area, The Mudd Club and Webster Hall. Although less frequently than in the old days, their paths continue to cross at events such as this. He stopped Jean on the stairs and was sweet enough to post our photo with Rose Hartman and several stars of the night life on his website. Social Diary posted this photo and several others by Patrick on its site. Gemma Kahng, Collete and Sandy Long appear with us and with Rose. We had actually met Rose at an opening at the Museum of the City of New York last year.

For oodles of Patrick's images of the event, and to read his blog entry about it, go to www.patrickmcmullen.com/site/event_detail.aspx?eid=39219 or just google Patrick McMullen, go to his website, click on the event schedule on the left side and enter November 3, 2011 and scroll down to the first posting about Rose Hartman. Here is Jean's picture of Patrick himself and Jean Shafiroff, with Valerie and Katherine Crone visible in the background.

As the photos reveal, a black or black and white color scheme was the attire of choice that evening for the majority of the guests. Alina Slonim and Michele Gerber Klein are prime examples. Alina is an independent arts and crafts professional. Michele is a philanthropist and society figure who, as one of the original trustees of The New Museum, is deeply involved in the arts.

We keep running into Sandy Long at events, most recently at the Cecil Beaton opening at the Museum of the City of New York and at vintage shows. Sandy is one of "the ladies who dress" and often favors a black and white palette. We (Jean and Valerie) decided to accent our black outfits with shades of red.

Artist Katherine Crone and Valerie frame Ivy Brown, whose eponymous gallery is located in the heart of the Meat Packing District at 675 Hudson Street. If you are coming to New York City, check out the shows at Ivy Brown Gallery.

Jean loved this gentleman's long suede coat adorned with the outline of a map of the ancient world.

ON THE STAIRCASE:

The FIT library staged the show on multi-levels, so the staircase afforded the best people-watching! Jean ran into Colette on the stairs and took this shot. Scroll down to the next entry to see one Rose Hartman's photos of Colette in 1984.

This shot captures the downtown mid-1980's look, coiffed hair, lots of makeup and glitzy, shimmery dressing. Colette appears in the center of this shot, between Hedy Klineman and Larissa at The Underground in 1984.

Here's Nin Brudermann on that staircase.

Jean says: This black and white pastiche of downtown club posters listing the clubs' performers and events really brought back memories! (Valerie remembers: Although I was born in New York, my old fashioned parents expected me to live at home until I married. Finding that a less than appealing life choice after I graduated, it was easier for me to move to Japan! So I missed the whole club scene, although both the music and the musicians of the club scene were lionized by the Japanese.)

THE TWO MRS. JAGGER:

Bianca Jagger was a frequent visitor to Studio 54, as was Rose Hartman, so she was the frequent subject of her and other photographers' photographs, which ran in publications ranging from The SOHO Weekly News and The New York Times to Rolling Stone and Time.

This wonderful picture captures Mick giving Bianca a smooch on her birthday and hangs on the wall on the main floor of the library.

The second Mrs. Jagger, Jerry Hall, also was a habitue' of Studio 54, often on the arm of voyeur and auteur Andy Warhol.

This black and white portrait of Jerry Hall and Vogue editor Diana Vreeland is Jean's favorite.

Although the vast majority of the images in the show are black and white prints, a section of the exhibit featured oversized color Kodachrome slides labeled by the photographer which give an idea of the valuable resource that Rose Hartman has gifted to FIT. The photographs are true snapshots in time of some of the most recognizable celebrities of the 1980's and 1990's. This shot shows Madonna arriving at the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute Gala in 1997. Just barely visible at the left is Ingrid Casares.

Here is one of Rose Hartman's color shots of the ever-fabulous Grace Jones.

Downtown party-giver and nightlife queen Suzanne Bartsch is famous for her amazing collection of colorful costumes and wigs and her eclectic way of putting herself together. Check out the hip beautifully carved out by her cutaway cheong sam, and the echo of the same cut at the neck on the opposite side. Whew! It is fitting that she is immortalized in color.

(With the exception of the Social Diary photo, all photographs were taken by Jean and Valerie and include shots of Rose Hartman's photographs on exhibit at FIT.)

What we're wearing:

On opening night, Jean is wearing an Issey Miyake dress with a Rick Owens shirt underneath, a Tahari assymmetric top, Amy Downs hat, Hello Kitty handbag, vintage eyeglasses. On our second trip, Jean is wearing a mustard Urban Outfitters turban, Issey Miyake black and yellow purse, Kyodan jacket, Kadem Sasson skirt from Rosebud, leopard Doc martens boots, vintage bakelite rings and bracelets.

On opening night, Valerie is wearing an Issey Miyake vest with tubular stuffing, Bettina Riedel dress, Pleats Please shirt, Easy Spirit shoes.

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Christmas at Grand Central Station

Last week we showed you just a few of the things available at the Union Square Christmas Market. We also stopped in at historic Grand Central Station, which has its own Christmas Market.

The nice thing about Grand Central's market is that it's indoors, so the time of day and weather don't matter. All the booths are in a single area, where there used to be rows and rows of imposing carved wooden benches to accomodate people waiting for trains.

We really enjoyed stopping into Christina's World, which specializes in Christmas tree ornaments. Christina designs her own, and has them hand blown in Poland. Not your typical fare, Christina's ornaments are often made in the shapes of animals. You can see several of them here. For space reasons, we're not including the wonderful stegosaurus or chameleon, but you get the idea. The designs are charming, the colors are great, and there was a lot of variety the day we visited.

At Loralin Design, we loved the little onesies made in Connecticut, and we really loved the nutty stuffed animal toys made in Brooklyn. They're a bit hard to see unless you click on the photo to enlarge it. Look for the low counter made of eight cubes on the floor. They're hanging all across the top of the cubes. The brightly colored corduroy animals are wonderful, too.

More great things coming out of Brooklyn. We stopped in at Umsteigen Handmade in Brooklyn, where they were selling whimsical, humorous tee shirts with great original hand screen printed designs. Here you can see a print of shoes and cars, a print of scissors, the shoes and cars again, this time in red, and sky writing planes. Wish we could show you more. There were also original designs for children's tees.

Hands down the most amazing booth we visited was Emma Handmade, run by a mother and daughter team. The mother knits and crochets cloche hats, even while standing in the booth, and her daughter takes care of the business end.

This was the most amazing thing we saw there: a hat knitted in the shape of the Coliseum! All across the wall were hung five or six astonishing knitted pieces, including a knitted Statue of Liberty. The mother's English is very limited, so we didn't want to take up their time with questions, but it's hard to imagine any patterns exist for these works. The mother must devise these in her head. We did get her to tell us it took her three months to make the Coliseum. It and the others hanging alongside it were all stunning feats. These alone are worth the trip to Grand Central.

Once you've done all your shopping, you can eat at any number of small restaurants in the basement, or buy something to take home with you at the gourmet food shop on the main floor. Here, Jean stops to buy a fresh loaf of bread.

Near the bread stand there was a spice shop under construction. We took this colorful, if cockeyed, photo on the run.

A photo on the balcony of Grand Central to commemorate our trip, and then off home...

F.I.T. to be Tied -- Part 1 of 2 - Daphne Guinness

2011-12-11T15:49:00.000-08:00

Well, we are still catching up! Last week we exhorted you to see the Japan Society exhibition before it closed; this week we exhort you to see two exhibitions at the Fashion Institute of Technology before they close in January. One is the Daphne Guinness show in the Museum at FIT; the other is the Rose Hartman show in the Gladys Marcus Library on the fifth floor of the same building. Because of the breadth of our coverage of the two shows (both of which we saw TWICE), we are splitting our coverage into two postings. The first, on Daphne Guinness, will post on the regular Sunday night spot. The second, on photographer Rose Hartman, will post mid-week on Wednesday night, so be sure to come back for the double header!

DAPHNE GUINNESS

There must have been a mix-up in the mail, because we never got our invitations to the opening of the Daphne Guinness exhibition at the Museum at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology). Instead, we went the first time on a Saturday afternoon in November with a small group of friends: Christina Viera, MaryLou Campanella and Suzanne Golden.

Before we went into the exhibition itself, we were spotted in the lobby (we were rather hard to miss!) by Ellen Daniels and Isabel Cruz, who delighted in our outfits and asked to photograph us. We always say yes when asked, on condition that the askers use our cameras after they've used their own. We have these close-ups of our heads and shoes (below) because Ellen and Isabel, our stylists, insisted. As you can see from the pictures, these ladies know how to dress. Their designer of choice? Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons.

Who is Daphne Guinness? She has quite the pedigree! The Honorable Daphne Suzanne Diana Joan Guinness was born in 1967, the daughter of brewery heir Jonathan Guinness, Lord Moyne, and French beauty Suzanne Lisney. Her paternal grandmother was Diana Mitford, one of the legendary Mitford sisters. In 1987, at the age of nineteen, Daphne married Spyros Niarchos. After her divorce in 1999, Daphne resumed her maiden name, and over the past decade has emerged on the world’s stage an extraordinary fashion creature.

You may remember reading that on Fashion's Night Out in September, Daphne Guinness dressed for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's annual gala in the window of Barney's. (photo by fashionnews.zalando.co.uk)

So if we view that as the preview, you can imagine that the Daphne Guinness exhibition has to be the equivalent of a three-ring circus to rise to expectations. It is, and it does. Notice the daring reinforced heel-less shoes she's wearing in the photo below, proving they CAN be walked in. (Feathered dress with delicious fitted waist by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen; photo from graziadaily.co.uk)

FIT's exhibition was designed to reveal how Guinness, who is not only a serious collector of couture but also a creative force in her own right, uses fashion to transform herself. According to designer Tom Ford, "She is one of the -- if not the -- most stylish women living." This photograph is the cover of the catalogue accompanying the exhibition. If you take a close look at Daphne's rings (oh, and everything else, too - can you see the fabulous waist cinching belt with contrastive stitching?), you know you're in for something special. (Click on photos to enlarge.)

What's really wonderful about Guinness, however, is the individuality and character shown in her choices. Like many wealthy women, Guinness can afford to buy whatever she wants. She could wear this year's style this year and next year's style next year. She could wear logos that would explicitly define her status, or swear by a single designer. And so look perfectly boring. Instead, Guinness builds her own look, patronizes less well known designers, occasionally designs her own clothes, and so looks like no one else.

There is an antechamber to whet the viewer's appetite. In this room are several intimate-sized videos, and vitrines showcasing some of Daphne's more outlandish shoes. The shoes below, by Alexander McQueen, are just one of several showcased pairs, each more dizzying than the next. (Cameras were strictly forbidden, so most of the photos you see here are from FIT, or from a few independent agencies, as noted.)

This dress, also by McQueen, was a technical wonder - a laser-printed silk confection.

In the main room, the exhibition was divided into Dandyism, Chic, Exoticism, Sparkle, Evening Chic, and Armor, for the types of clothes Guinness favors. On the walls, and suspended from the ceiling, were mysterious and dreamlike videos, one of which, Mnemosyne, promotes Guinness's new perfume (very discreetly). The video this still is taken from was shot in a once grand, apparently derelict building, that evoked scenes out of Bladerunner. One can't help but think that the Alexander McQueen show at the Metropolitan set a new standard for what a fashion exhibition should be, and that the designers of this exhibition had that standard in mind.

Guinness is blessed with a lithe figure, and the dandy/androgynous look is great for her. Not shown here are a pair of leggings in bold black and white vertical stripes. While most of the text labels show designer names, the leggings are from a London punk shop.

Two chic dresses by Gareth Pugh.

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In the Exoticism section was this dragon-printed dress by Alexander McQueen for Givenchy. The towering chopines were Jean's favorite of all of the show's amazing footwear. (Enthusiastic seconding from Valerie.)

Guinness notes that she has a predilection for anything shiny, which includes feathers and sequins. In one of the notes in the show, Valentino is quoted as saying he always knows where Daphne has been "because of the trails of feathers and beads".

Here, a McQueen jacket (note the eagle talons at the collar, simultaneously threatening and cradling the face) is worn over a Christian LaCroix dress.

In the game of "if you could take one piece away with you, which one would you take?", this slashed Gareth Pugh suit in the Armor section was one of several winners. We'd want the dress to cover a bit more leg at our age, and we'd be deathly afraid of snagging the hundreds of slashed bits on an errant piece of furniture, or door handle, but it is a dazzling tour de force of construction. (photo from Daily Truffle)

Some of Daphne Guiness' high-water shoes at FIT

And since great minds think alike, above we've added Joana Avillez's Friday posting from her own blog, My Name is Joana. That's Joana Avillez as in the artist and author of Life Dressing: The Idiosyncratic Fashionistas [the book about - ahem - nous!]. Click here to see some more of Joana’s recent work. All tongue-in-cheek, some of it fashion-related (and one hat-related, too).

The exhibition ends on January 7. So one day, while you're supposed to be doing your Christmas shopping - or after all the shopping's over - take some time off for yourself. As an extra added treat, all the exhibitions at FIT are free!

AND REMEMBER TO COME BACK ON WEDNESDAY FOR OUR REVIEW OF THE ROSE HARTMAN EXHIBITION.

What we're wearing:

Jean is wearing in the first photo: a mustard Urban Outfitters turban, Issey Miyake black and yellow purse, Kyodan jacket, Kadem Sasson skirt from Rosebud, leopard Doc martens boots, vintage bakelite rings and bracelets. In the second photo: a black Amy Downs turban, Issey Miyake purse, Costume National jacket, Timbuktu harem pants, black and white Underground brothel creepers.

Valerie is wearing in the first photo: green felt shibori hat by Nafi de Luca; green felt coat by Tiiti Tolonen; can't remember which black pants!; combat shoes with spikes, by unnamed manufacturer. In the second photo: green felt hat by Nafi de Luca; Issey Miyake jacket in nylon honeycomb weave; Betsey Johnson pants; combat shoes with spikes, by unnamed manufacturer.

So COME BACK AND SEE US ON WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14 .

Art & Commerce: Japan Society Exhibition & Union Square Christmas Market

2011-12-04T19:59:00.000-08:00

If you can, RUN, don't walk, to see Fiber Futures: Japan's Textile Pioneers, the wonderful contemporary fiber exhibition at the Japan Society closing on Sunday, December 18.

We told you we'd fallen behind. We had the great good luck to attend opening night (thanks to Katherine Crone), but opening nights are so much more about people than art that we weren't able to give the exhibition the time and concentration it deserved. We wanted to go back, but circumstances militated against us. When we realized the exhibition was closing in only two weeks, we had to put it at the top of our list of priorities, because it's a stunning show, and we wouldn't want you to miss it. If you can get to Japan Society any day at 12:30, there's a great docent-led tour that's free with the price of admission. If you can't make it at that time, go whenever it's good for you. There's a beautiful catalogue that accompanies the exhibition and explains the works on display. (The gallery is closed Mondays, and open Fridays till 9 pm.)

Just inside the entrance are two works by Kiyomi Iwata (above), seen here with one of them. A wonderful work, it needs to be seen close up to be fully appreciated. Called Chrysalis, it is made of paper and kibiso, which Iwata defines in the catalogue as "the first ten meters of silk thread that a silkworm spins in its life". Usually discarded, kibiso was intentionally used in this artwork to give a second life to a waste product. In fact, many of the art works convey a subtle environmental message.

A number of the artists turned out for the opening, including Atsuko Yoshioka. That's her, above right, in front of one of three panels of her art work, with Midori Sato and Valerie. Ms. Yoshioka also made the purse she's carrying, shown in close-up below.

Rei Saito is one of the youngest artists in the show. This work, called Dots, comprised of batik-dyed newspapers, derives from Saito's memory of snow falling after dark.

We had to stop and engage Hanako Narahira in conversation because we loved what she was wearing. Hanako gave each of us two brochures by way of introduction. It turns out she is a graduate of Central Saint Martin's in London (think Alexander McQueen and Stephen Jones, among others), and has a very creative way of working with knits. We'd love to wear some of her work.

This is one of the most spectacular pieces in a show of spectacular pieces. The size alone is awesome, but the concept and the workmanship are amazing. Only the two ends are dyed shades of indigo. Made of fine rayon cord strung on a metal frame, it has little shape except that exerted by gravity and the length of the individual strands. In the photo you can see the dimension added by its shadow.

This kind of thing is the best part of opening night. We love running into like-minded people. We're standing in front of one of two gigantic pieces created by Junichi Arai, now 79. One of them serves as the entrance to the exhibition, giving the visitor some idea of what follows, as well as the rare opportunity to touch the art work (gently, please). Arai is one of the unparalled masters of 20th century textile design. If you scroll down, below we've embedded a six minute video made by Japan Society, in which there's a very interesting description of the complex process by which these two works were made.

Sometimes it seems as though we're doing a weekly homage to Trippen shoes. Everyone loves these modern chopines, worn here by Santa Fe rug designer Robin Gray, who appears on the far left in the photo above.

One of the most amazing works in the show is Gift from the Sea, by Yoshiko Iyanaga. A large and wide work in a corner, on opening night it was always surrounded by people, and impossible to photograph. Now we have reason to regret that, because neither the web nor the catalogue show the piece in its entirety. Here is a photo by the artist available on the web, but this gives you only the tiniest idea what it's really like. In person it's as though the author has recreated a section of a coral reef out of silk. Undulating lines, shaped by invisible wires, evoke giant clam shells and small pods that evoke sea urchins or other sealife. It's hard to imagine the time and planning that went into this work. Anyone who works in shibori will find this a wonder to behold.

Valerie with Yoshiko Ebihara, owner of Gallery 91.

Two fabulously dressed guests.

Valerie trying to blend in with the work of Fuminori Ono, Feel the Wind, made of chemical pulp and chemical dyes.

The work of Hideho Tanaka is very dimensional and tactile. The photo doesn't do justice to the work, which rises and falls across the wall surface. It looks great, but it's even better in person, and up close.

Jean in front of the work of Takaaki Tanaka, which consists of mulberry paper applied to thread stretched over an iron framework.

Here's Jean with Hitomi Nagai, creator of the piece seen behind them. Again, the photo hardly does the work justice. Made of waffle weave cotton, the structures evoke a thicket of rhinoceros horns.

At the top, a huge wheel made only of flat paper squares and paper thread, by Naomi Kobayashi; below an amazingly flexible structure of sewn stainless steel filament by Kyoko Kumai. In the background, the work of Takaaki Tanaka. Photo from Arttextstyle

At the reception in the lobby we met Michelle, who had made this knit wrap which cleverly incorporated half-sleeves into the design.

Stretched over the the waterfall just before the entrance to the exhibition is a very fine knotted paper net dyed a very deep indigo, by Kyoko Ibe. The paper was taken from old Buddhist sutras cut into thin strips, and was completed by the artist following the earthquake and tsunami in March.

Artist Kyoko Ibe, center, with two guests.

See the short Japan Society video introduction of Fiber Futures:

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Union Square Christmas Market

With the holiday season upon us, we wanted to say a word about shopping creatively, carefully and thoughtfully, if possible. If you can, support your local artists, small businesses and non-profits. And remember! Friends don't buy friends gift cards (unless asked to do so). Gift cards should really be called obligation cards, because you're obligated to carry the *#&@% things around, and you're obligated to keep going back to the same place to spend money that - before being converted to plastic - could have been spent ANYWHERE!

In our own effort to shop small/local/personal, we went to the Union Square Market, which imitates the Christmas markets of Europe that open in the gorgeous old town squares during the holiday season. More than a hundred merchants in the signature red and white striped tents sell Christmas trinkets, food, clothing and accessories, with holiday cheer to spare.

The narrow walkways were thronged with people while we were there.

Valerie stopped at Copa Soaps to restock her own bathroom cabinet (and simultaneously perfume her whole apartment) with handmade soaps by Antonia and David. Here she is, shamelessly inhaling. Purchases this time: lavender rose, basil seaweed, patchouli hemp, cider, spice, and a small sample of saffron thrown in. Aroma therapy in a bag!

Jean bought a fox onesie at Gnome Enterprises. These are Joshua's own designs. (That's Joshua in the photo with Jean.) For a new baby to come, gender unknown, a fox onesie is a good bet, and so cute.

But Joshua also has some really out-there designs, which he puts on onesies, adult size tee shirts and magnets. Valerie's favorites included the giant squid attacking Brooklyn Bridge, the octopus wrapping its tentacles around a ship, a giant alligator rising out of the East River to munch on the Roosevelt Island tramway, and the robot boxing the tyrannosaurus rex. What does Joshua eat before bedtime to come up with these hysterical ideas?

Valerie stopped into Windhorse Trading to check out the colorful felt and silk scarves, and got Phurpa Lama to model these two examples with her. The one on the left is felted on each side in opposing colors; the one on the right is nuno, a combination of silk and felted wool. Both really well priced.

Jean fell in love with the optical illusions at Eye Think, Inc., and bought two discs, one with the running black cat and the second with flying bats (of course!). When we asked the gentleman about the inscription on his shirt ("The Kid"), he said it was a gift from his mom!

Some things were free. How to wrap a hug and take it home, though?

We ran into "Tribe NYC" while shopping. We said they looked fab. They said we looked dope. Same thing, just different generations.

The weather on the Saturday after Thanksgiving was so balmy, the bagpiper worked in his shirtsleeves.

A huge elephant balancing on the tip of his trunk dominates the traffic island east side of Union Square.

Seated beneath the great pachyderm, we contemplated our next move. We cajoled Earl, one of the young skateboarders, to memorialize the moment. (If you compare the first and last photos from this day, you'll notice Valerie has rolled down her pant legs. OK, they look better down, but you lose the really cool effect of the matching socks and shirt. Oh wait, you couldn't see the shirt under the coat anyway. Du-uh.)

* * * * Support Animal Rescue Organizations and Shelters!

Charity is a virtue! Please donate as generously as possible to your favorite charities, which are really struggling in this bad economy. When we visited Union Square Market on 11/25, we met this volunteer from Hiss & Spit, Inc., a non-profit 501(c) charity providing adoptions, low cost pay/neuter services and supplemental food in emergencies. She was bottle feeding a tiny 2-week old kitten. We both made donations and cooed over the adorable dark grey and white kitten. Jean worried all week about the fate of the little critter, so we stopped back on 12/4. Their table and cages are on the south side of Union Square close to the entrance of Forever 21.

We went to the spot, found the volunteers, saw their cages filled with gorgeous cats and kittens, and donated money. Not only did we find the little kitten again, we also learned that he was the only male in the litter. He was one week older and looked slightly bigger in size, with a round belly and an even bigger appetite. He was so anxious for his bottle, he was sucking on the volunteer's finger. Mother Jean made sure he got his bottle -- and even pitched in to hold and feed him.

It is the holiday season, so we are hopeful some wonderful people will adopt this playful little fellow -- and his six sisters! To adopt and/or donate, contact Hiss & Spit, Inc., via mail at P.O. Box 54, NY, NY 10108; via phone at 646-571-5721; and via email at hissandspit@ymail.com. Hiss and Spit volunteers visit the homes of prospective adoptive parents.

Social Tees Animal Rescue has relocated from East 4th Street in New York City to 155 East 2nd Street, just east of Avenue A. The new location is beautiful, with more space for the animals. Stay tuned for the latest details. To adopt or donate, call 212-614-9653.

A Decade of Issey and a Miyake to Dai For

2011-11-27T11:23:00.001-08:00

A Double Dose of Japanese Design

Ever since we debuted on Bravo's "Fashion Hunters", we've become very recognizable and, for better or worse, -- in many viewer's eyes -- forever linked with legendary Japanese designer "Issey Miyake". We could hardly ask for better than that, particularly on our first national appearance. What if we were inextricably linked with, say, excess hair removal?

Judging by unsolicited and highly supportive comments we continue to receive from a broad swath of people (who have hailed us on the street, at the Philadelphia Craft Show, at the Pier Antiques Show, at the Brooklyn Museum, at the supermarket, on subway platforms and other places), we have a developed a whole new legion of fans (who, alas, had no idea we did a blog until we gave them our business card). Although anyone who is not thoroughly smitten with us following our TV debut may simply not bother to approach us, most New Yorkers have a reputation for sharing their frank and unexpurgated opinions with the world at large, so it looks as though, to quote our beloved Oscar Wilde: Nothing succeeds like excess. (Thank heavens!) And while we're quoting Oscar, here are thirteen more of his bons mots très apropos: The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

Sooooooo, it was especially fitting that we attended a party on November 3rd, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Issey Miyake store on Hudson Street in its still striking Frank Gehry-designed Tribeca location. We rendezvoused with our friend artist Katherine Crone, and discovered we were all decked out in Miyake finery to commemmorate the evening. It was the perfect trifecta of Partying, People Watching and Shopping. Sublime!

PARTYING:

We'd met the DJ at Fashion's Night Out earlier this fall. His musical selections matched the hip, upbeat mood of the crowd. You could observe people absent-mindedly start to rock to the beat, tap a foot, shake a booty.

Valerie ran into Marybeth (who makes extraordinary Japanese sweet cakes - tasty and the very definition of EYE CANDY) at the party.

At this event, the customers are always as chic and as interesting as the staff and designers. (Sometimes, only the shopping bag provides a much needed visual clue.)

Issey creative director and buyer Zari was one of our very dapper hosts that evening. In addition to wine and bubbly (flecked with a smattering of edible flowers), they served the most delicious tiny cream puffs with metallic glitter-flecked frosting.

Another Issey employee models this marvelously graphic pleated skirt.

PEOPLE WATCHING:

Fan favorite Louise Doktor is frequently photographed by Bill Cunningham because of her unusual style and taste. Needless to say, on this occasion, Louise did not disappoint. Her multi-color coat was the perfect counterpoint to her signature coal-black black hair and dark-rimmed eyes.

Shortly after arrival, we bumped into Brandon Acton-Bond, who was subversively wearing his Miyake trousers under long shorts. Where does he get such restraint? (Obviously, we don't suffer from that condition.)

This is Ryo Miyamoto, who does a street style blog. We first ran into him at the Independent Fashion Bloggers Conference and then again on Fashion's Night Out (FNO) at IF Soho. He has an amazing eye for individuality and detail.

People Watchers had the tables turned on them at this event. Case in point, model/blogger Wataru, a devoted Comme des Garcons fan, obviously also likes Miyake. (Although we couldn't at first remember his real name, Jean immediately blurted out his knickname -- Bob -- the minute she laid eyes on him. When we first met him at FNO, he explained that his nickname "Bob" came from the fact that he used to have a hairdo just like Jean's.) Check out Wataru's blog, An Unknown Quantity. (Great name!)

Even the ubiquitous photographers dress for this party!

This gentleman was sporting a vintage Miyake jacket in shades of grey and black and looked right in style, demonstrating once again the timeless quality of Issey's designs.

This pair of ladies clad in black and grey were shopping and hanging out, obviously enjoying the scene. (See how we date ourselves? People younger than us drop the 'out' and just say 'hanging'. But what do young people know? We hear they think FRIEND is a verb. Imagine!)

Grey and black were among the most popular colors, judging by the attire of the guest/shoppers that evening. Check out this dude's fab white boots.

Both men and women got into the act.

Jean wants to know this Miyake-clad woman's secret for persuading her non-Miyake husband to attend these types of events.

We met this pair when we first entered the party. Both were obvious Miyake devotees, further proving the point that Issey Miyake designs appeal to a wide audience, and come in a myriad of colors in addition to black and grey!

SHOPPING:

This gentleman modeled a graphic long, grey vest.

Valerie couldn't resist getting into the act, trying on this great orange and gray vest. (We both lusted over it when we first saw it on an Issey employee on Fashion's Night Out. See our FNO posting for another photo of this fabulous origami piece.) A great design that simultaneously hides and celebrates hips.

Here are glimpses of four of the store installations.

The Miyake logo greets you as you cross the threshold to enter or leave the store. Much as we hated to leave when the party was in full swing, we had to shoot uptown to FIT for the opening of Rose Hartman's photography exhibition. POOR us!

TO DAI FOR
Dai Fujiwara at Japan Society

Valerie says: Late in October Katherine Crone emailed me one day (who phones anymore?) to ask if I wanted to go with her to the Dai Fujiwara slide show lecture, interview and reception scheduled for mid-November at Japan Society. For those of you who don’t know who Dai Fujiwara is, here is a portion of the brief biography on Japan Society’s website:

[Dai Fujiwara] joined the Miyake Design Studio in 1995 as a member of the Issey Miyake Paris collection team. In 1998 he started the A-POC (A Piece of Cloth) project with Miyake, winning the Good Design Award in 2000. The project was exhibited at Vitra Design Museum in Berlin as well as MoMA. Fujiwara became the creative director of ISSEY MIYAKE in 2006. In 2008, he left to start DAIFUJIWARA AND COMPANY.

So as a dyed-in-the-wool fan, of course I wanted to go, and for multiple reasons.

On the appointed evening, I thought the best way to honor the master would be to wear an item he is known for. I struggled into the top half of the suit that made its television debut several weeks ago. And into my bag I carefully slipped my copy of A-Poc Making: Issey Miyake and Dai Fujiwara, in hopes that I could get it autographed.

Katherine and I sat in the second row, and had a great view. (Jean, alas, was away on business.)

Following the lecture, there was a Q&A session, so I thrust my arm into the air, puffy cuffed A-POC sleeve and all, and took the opportunity to ask Mr. Fujiwara about his jacket, which was two interwoven shades of blue. After graciously answering my question, he said “And you are also wearing something interesting. Is it one of our designs?” I replied “Yes, I wore it for you.” Mr. Fujiwara then said, among other things, that it was one of his favorite designs. “It is also one of Issey’s favorites”, he added.

Well! Way to make my day!

At the reception, I thrust my digital camera into Katherine’s hands, whipped out my book, and patiently waited on line for Mr. Fujiwara’s attention. When it was my turn, I asked him if he would mind signing the book and he kindly obliged, while Katherine hurriedly took a few pictures under less than perfect circumstances.

Oh, to be Horst P. Horst, or Helmut Newton – with hours in which to plan a shot, set up the lighting, adjust the wrinkles on the model’s blouse, turn the head ever so slightly and raise one eyebrow just so…

But there were many people waiting behind us, so we hit the shutter a few times, and hoped for the best.

For a brief moment, everything came together. Dai Fujiwara, the fabulous design he made with Issey Miyake (well, the blouse half of it), the book that features the design, Katherine and me. And Mr. Fujiwara couldn’t have been nicer, or happier to see his work in the –um – flesh. I returned home with a smile on my face that I don't need to explain to anyone.

I'd Rather Be in Philadelphia*

2011-11-20T16:40:00.000-08:00

... attending the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show

On Friday, November 11th, we made our annual trek to the Philadelphia Museum Craft Show at the Convention Center. This year, we sported press passes since we'd be covering the show for the third time and are members of the Independent Fashion Bloggers Association. We took the 8 AM bus, arrived just at the 10 AM show opening and started our coverage. At 11:11 AM on 11/11/11, we paused to toast the occasion! We brought with us two strawberry basil margaritas that one of our favorite restaurants kindly whipped up the night before, and poured into plastic bottles for us. We don't want you to think we drank the whole thing at the toast. We still had a good bit left when we took a break in the late afternoon. We just wanted a memorable way to observe the moment.

Here we are with our favorite milliners Ignatius Creegan and Rod Givens -- They're the ones responsible for Valerie's Guggenheim Museum hat. Jean's purchases (in the boxes) promise to make appearances in the blog in the weeks to come -- stay tuned!

Philadelphia jeweler Sharon Rosenthal is seated amid some of her wonderful designs. Sharon has a great talent for putting disparate media together and coming up with great one of a kind conversation pieces.

Paul W. Sumner of Greensboro, North Carolina has also shown at the Smithsonian Craft Show. His schools of metal fish are both colorful and humorous.

The common element in Paul's current work is a hand carved wooden form to which he pieces, raises and nails or screws a closely fitted sheet metal skin, using tin, copper, rusted steel, galvanized steel, and antique painted tins for the surface. Here are some of his metal insects.

Myong Urso of Rochester, NY presided over a very well edited collection of her jewelry, some of which you can glimpse in the photo. Myong drapes fabric over wire to make three dimensional pieces. Some have random patchwork-style stitch work in them, deftly combining hard and soft media, and adding completely unexpected touches.

We had just seen Danielle Gori-Montanelli and her wonderful felt jewelry last month at the LOOT show at the Museum of Art and Design in New York. Danielle has been commuting between the U.S. and (SIGH) Florence. So much to envy; so little time...

Kari Lonning of Ridgefield, Connecticut weaves beautiful baskets. We also loved her silver locks and put together look.

Here's an example of one of Kari's baskets, woven of artist-dyed rattan reed using commercial, waterfast dyes, using multi-element twining and the artist's own "hairy" technique, where thousands of short pieces of reed are woven into the walls of the baskets. Double-wall constructions are woven as two separate baskets then joined together at the outer rim.

Jaclyn Davidson of Middlebury, Vermont makes jewelry for powerful, confident women. Her material of choice is steel, to which she adds other precious metals or stones. She is pictured wearing one of her designs.

Here is another of Jaclyn Davidson's designs which is a much more delicate lace like lattice work of metal with gold ginko leaves. Although her work appears heavy, it "sits" on the neck and collar bone quite comfortably.

It's not unusual for artists to begin working in art after coming from completely un-artistic backgrounds. When we mentioned to Francesca Vitali that we have day jobs, she replied that she too has a day job - as a chemist. Much of Francesca's work consists of metal and paper, but that's sort of like saying much of Leonardo da Vinci's work consists of paint. Francesca folds paper into shapes so tiny and un-paper-like that one has to look very closely to grasp the nature and exactitude of her work. On further reflection, it makes sense that a chemist, who works on a molecular level, would create art that requires very close inspection before it reveals its wonders. You can see quite a few examples of Francesca’s work on a great website called Crafthaus. Once you’ve finished looking at Francesca’s work, take a look at the other wonderful Crafthaus selections, too.

A perennial favorite is the team of Ford and Forlano who arrange their work in a large yet intimate walled-off interior, so one has the feeling of being in an art gallery, with enough time and space to stand back and ponder. Until recently, all their jewelry in mind-boggling shapes and colors appeared to be inspired by the kinds of sea creatures most of us never see, except in pictures. Now they're moving into cubism and abstract expressionism, once again with compelling results. Ford and Forlano enjoy using found objects in their work. Note in the abstract piece below (photo from their Facebook page) a letter H from an old lettering set.

JoAnne Russo from Saxons River, Vermont produces basketry of the highest order. We also think she has a great long and lean look.

In addition to traditional basketry techniques, JoAnne stitches and adds sewing notions, using diverse materials to shape interesting forms to create sculptural work.

Valerie says: I have a special place in my heart for Erica Rosenfeld, whose work I first saw around 2003 at Urban Glass, a glass making workshop/studio in downtown Brooklyn (with a stellar list of visiting instructors and supporters). Even while she was still learning her craft her work distinguished itself in its creativity from those around her. When I first saw she was selling at the Museum of Arts and Design (two years ago?), I was as proud of her as if she were one of my relatives, even though I'd never met her. She was busy at her booth (a good sign), so I took this hurried picture of her. She had a blue ribbon up. The Show had awarded her The Cohn Family Trust Prize for Excellence in Glass. Below is a photo taken of her work from the home page of her website. It's so tactile, you want to run your hand over it.

We first met Christy Klug at 11:11 AM, when we were having our celebratory cocktails. We were trying to self-photograph, in a badly lit space with the camera on automatic timer on a nearby table with no tripod. Christy saw us and kindly offered to take a picture of us, resulting -thank goodness - in the photo at the head of today's posting. Our photo of Christy doesn't do justice to her or her outfit (from another of the Craft Show exhibitors). Like so many of the people we met, Christy started out in a completely different field, and simply decided to teach herself metalsmithing. (She has a wonderfully eclectic background. Take a look at her website for more info.) We're always leery of taking pictures of artists' work. At the very least it's presumptuous, at the worst it can be - or appear to be - a prelude to intellectual property theft. So below is a photo of one of Christy's thought-provoking minimalist pieces taken from her website.

We always love stopping by Amy Nguyen's booth. We want almost everything. OK, everything. We used to delight in seeing her work at the late great Takashimaya boutique, which went the way of so many niche markets when the economy did - well, you know what it did. Where Takashimaya once stood there is now a Forever 21, and we can no longer see Amy's always dazzling work as easily as before. Rushing for the bus back to New York, we hurriedly took this picture of Amy and her husband Ky (pronounced Kee). We asked Amy to show off her Trippen shoes, which she obligingly did.

We first saw the piece below at the Philadelphia Craft Show one or two years ago, and still LOVE it. We borrowed the photo from her website, which you can link to here to see more mouthwatering work. The caption for the coat reads: "Linen shibori coat. Stitched, pieced. All colors are hand-dyed."

Every year, the Philadelphia Museum of Art hosts artists from another country. Finland and Israel have been two recent guest countries. This year, the Show featured 25 artists from Scotland. The added treat, in addition to their artwork, furniture and designs, was the fact that many wore their traditional plaids and woolens. Many of the men wore kilts. Elizabeth Gaffney from Ochiltree, Ayrshire showed her felt clothing and accessories.

James Donald of Edinburgh featured wearable textiles. He cut quite a figure himself, in a polka dot vest over his kilt (with humorous fish pin), silver buckles on his shoes and and white leather skull sporran (from Sporran Nation).

According to Wickipedia, the "Sporran ( /ˈspɒrən/; Scottish Gaelic for "purse") is a traditional part of male Scottish Highland dress. It is a pouch that performs the same function as pockets on the pocketless Scottish kilt. Made of leather or fur, the ornamentation of the sporran is determined by the formality of dress worn with it. The sporran is worn on a leather strap or chain, conventionally positioned in front of the groin of the wearer. Since the traditional kilt does not have pockets, the sporran serves as a wallet and container for any other necessary personal items. It is essentially a survival of the common European medieval belt-pouch, superseded elsewhere as clothing came to have pockets, but continuing in the Scottish Highlands because of the lack of these accessories in traditional dress."

Furniture maker Angus Ross favored a more traditional fur sporran.

The Craft Show was not only great for getting one's accessible art fix, it was also great for people watching. We saw any number of women (and a smaller number of men) with wonderful hairstyles, glasses, and outfits that suited them beautifully and individualized them perfectly. Everyone is there for the art, though, so it's very hard to interrupt people while they're focusing on some gorgeous object to ask for a picture. We were both bowled over by Stacy Creamer, who had it all put together from head to toe. We heard another woman ask her who made her skirt, and Stacy replied Kedem Sasson. We don't want to repeat that name too often here, because his clothing is hard enough to come by without encouraging further competition for it.

Stacy Creamer isn't just a supporter of art work. It also turns out she makes her own. Below is a fabulous multicolored geometric necklace of Stacy's, featured on the website of The Bead Society of Greater New York.

We loved this woman's sweater, which seems as though it might have been inspired by the jackets (doublets?) worn by fashionable men of the Italian Renaissance. Those of us with actual hips could really rock this jacket. One of the designers on Project Runway once sneered at a design (it had fabulous outsized pockets), saying "What woman wants to emphasize her HIPS?" We say "What woman wants to wear something made by a designer who doesn't know how to glorify every part of a woman's body?"

(detail of The Court of Mantua, by Andrea Mantegna, circa 1471)

These ladies who said they staged craft shows also said they were having a blast at the Philadelphia Museum show.

We just loved the turquoise streak in this woman's hair, and her sense of humor and spunk.

(*with apologies to William Claude Duckenfield, aka W.C. Fields, who may never actually have said this.)

Knight at the Museum

2011-11-13T18:11:00.000-08:00

BUT FIRST THIS IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM US!

We and cartoonist extraordinaire Joana Avillez will be at the Stella Pier Antiques Show this coming Saturday, November 19, to sign copies of LIFE DRESSING: The Idiosyncratic Fashionistas, from 1pm to 3pm. (Really! See our smiling and behatted faces in the ad below.) This seems appropriate, as we are on our way to becoming antiques ourselves, and are of greater vintage than some (not all!) of the clothes we wear. Buy fabulous antique and vintage furniture, jewelry and clothes at the Pier Show, and while you're at it, just for contrast, buy the fabulous NEW book about NOUS. The Pier Show is way at the tippy end of West 55th Street (Pier 94). Drop by our table and say hi!

Cecil Beaton: The New York Years

We recently had the great pleasure and honor of attending the opening of Cecil Beaton: The New York Years at the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY). The setting of the show was masterful -- with walls painted with Beaton's wonderful illustrations and with incredible wall paper by Beaudessert. We wanted to try to share with you the entire experience -- the show itself and the event, since the opening night's festivities and the personalities were half the fun!

Sir Cecil Beaton (knighted in 1972) was an artistic jack-of-all-trades: illustrator, painter, costume designer and photographer. He was one of those rare creatures who was both voyeur and participant, able to smoothly glide among and record the doings of British aristocracy; stars of the screen (Hollywood) and the stage (Broadway and the opera); jazz babies and rock stars. This Jazz Age mural (above) of his drawings epitomizes the glamor of the Roaring Twenties.

It was especially appropriate to see one of Beaton's most famous quotes appear atop his portrait of a young Mick Jagger.

Remember last week we uploaded a picture of Jean tantalizingly dangling a black accordion-like thing? We only told you she'd bought it at the Metropolitan Vintage Show. Well, this is what it looks like ON. Jean says it looks like something out of "Beetlejuice", but in fact it's a Junko Koshino creation. With Jean is Eddie J. Bartolomei, the MCNY's Preparator who was responsible for the mounting of the show.

We didn't set out to take pictures of people in hats, but there were so many wonderful examples that we've catalogued a few for you, sprinkled here and there in this posting. We spotted this perfectly attired gent near the entrance.

This woman wore a spectacular vintage hat that she said she'd bought on a trip to Ohio. We had to include a photograph of the back. The milliner took the concept of netting that was popular back then, and translated it into a wire network, which was then covered with the same felt as the body of the hat.

Here's New York milliner Gretchen Fenston wearing one of her own superb creations.

Inside the exhibition, several of Beaton's charicatures were recreated on the walls. Using famously slender Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, to decorate a slim dividing wall was an inspired choice.

The gentleman on the left inserted an original program from Beaton's My Fair Lady onto his top hat. (Did we mention that New Yorkers dress for the occasion?) The gentleman on the right is from the British firm Beaudessert, which manufacturers Cecil Beaton wallpaper and which was responsible for reproducing the rose wallpaper on the wall at the entrance to the exhibit.

Here is the Beaton rose wall paper. White roses on a dark background were a great counterpoint to the other black illustrations on the white walls.

Linda Zagarian aways wears the most stylish outfits, and tops them with perfect hats. She posed for us with two of her friends. This hat looks from the front as though the brim goes all the way around, but like the other vintage hat above, it ends with a suprise in the back.

Valerie and Sandy Long pose under Beaton's drawing of Greta Garbo. Sandy looked fabulous in all white, complete with a maribou feather pouf of a jacket. For the hat-starved, we've included a close-up of Linda's chapeau.

Although his costumes for My Fair Lady are perhaps the most well known in this country, he designed a number of costumes for the opera, including these two lavish examples from Turandot.

The exhibition, while small, showed a wide variety of work. Below is a costume design he did, complete with fabric swatches.

Not all guests were be-hatted or feathered. The invitation mentioned no dress code. This gent came wearing a jacket that looked like it might have been derived from feed sacks. (Raise your hand if you remember when feed sacks came in very attractive prints that you could actually use to make clothes with once the feed was out of the sack. Those of you scoffing whuuuuuuuuuut???????, just google feed sack dress.)

We met this fab trio toward the end of the evening. The ladies approached us and said they'd recognized us from our recent TV appearance. We gave them invitations to our Life Dressing book signing at Primetime Gallery in Brooklyn 3 nights hence. Lo and behold, the lovely lady on the far right showed up in Brooklyn (looking gorgeous, of course), and brought yet another friend!

Here we are with another dapper member of the crowd.

For those of you who won't make it to New York to see the show, don't despair! A companion book, Cecil Beaton: The New York Years, by exhibition curator Donald Albrecht, has been co-published by the Museum of the City of New York and Skira Rizzoli. Look for it on line. Christmas is coming!

Further Adventures: Later that same night ...

After exiting the museum, what better way to end the evening than with a cocktail, we thought, and hailed a taxi to make our way from 106th Street to MOMA's Modern at 53rd Street. To our wonderment, we were let off right in front of the new UNIQLO store - the one we'd heard there were LINES for on opening day -- to see what all the fuss was about. In full night-out-on-the-town regalia, we gave the joint the complete once-over. It is a mammoth place with seemingly endless escalators, mirrored surfaces, hallways as long as the Golden Gate Bridge, bright lights and moving parts. Think Superman's fortress of solitude turned into a carnival fun house. So we decided to have a little fun ourselves.

Dueling cameras! You can see Jean's reflection higher on the escalator taking Valerie's picture. (Warning: Trained professionals at work! Do not attempt this at home -- or at your local mall. Give mall security a break.)

The place is huge, maze-like, and confusing to women of a certain age accustomed to single room boutiques and thrift shops. When we asked for the leggings, we were told by the all-black-clad sales assistants (all of whom appear to be under 22, and project the poise and confidence it will take to become the next contestants on Project Runway) to look in the Heat-tech Hall (wherever that was supposed to be). After eons of searching, we found it. Jean evokes our success with her triumphant gesture.

We couldn't resist checking out the lighted stairway in more detail. Don't you love how color-coordinated the steps are with Valerie's kimono? Not only do the colors change, but the mannequins also revolve! They started out facing left.

After noticing the fabulous shape of Valerie's hat (doesn't it resemble Carvel frozen custard swirl?), check out the right-facing mannequins.

As the color shifted from orange to mauve, the mannequins faced front.

Et voila! Back where we started. Pity the poor shoppers who try to get their bearings by saying "we'll meet in front of the mannequins"!

Jean with booty. So to speak.

Even later, that same night ...

But enough fun! After the unexpected detour, we were off for serious cocktails at the Modern. In typical fashion (for us), there were photos we forgot to take, but here are a few. First, check out the really cool shaved eyebrows on our hostess.

OK, we shouldn't show you table crumbs, but we were having too much fun noshing and imbibing to think of photographing. What we want you to see here are the round white marble table, the place mats that are cut to fit the round table, like pizza wedges (but in infinitely cool contrasting black), and the obsessively centered (except where we've moved things ever so slightly for convenience) white tablewear.

And here's a close-up of Jean's fabulous hat and blouse.

And so back home, to prepare for the next day's work.

What we're wearing: We admit we have been quite remiss in recent weeks in describing what we're wearing, so we wanted to report what we wore on this exceptional evening:

Jean is wearing a vintage black stretchy polymide nylon and elastin top with thin metal wiring in the sleeves by Japanese designer Junko Koshino; a tri-pronged straw hat by Ignatius (from the Philadelphia Museum Craft Show), yellow and black plastic and cloth bag by Issey Miyake (from a sample sale); Trippen boots; charm necklace with an amalgamation of skulls, talons, dice, wishbone and cross on leather cord; vintage aluminum wire and marble earrings, vintage bakelite bracelets and rings collected over decades.

Valerie is wearing a pink felt hat labeled Chisato Tsumori, dated around 1990; a pink and black abstract kimono dated around 1950, a black dress by Bettina Riedel and black patent flats by Cole Haan/Nike.

Old Loot & New LOOT (Metropolitan Vintage Show & MAD)

2011-11-06T18:19:00.000-08:00

and 11/11/11

We've been busy! Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, we wanted to catch you up on some of our recent adventures: First, at the Metropolitan Vintage Clothing Show and a pre-party; and second, at the Museum of Art and Design's LOOT exhibition and sale!

A week ago Thursday, as a prelude to the Metropolitan Pavilion's Vintage Clothing Show, we went to Marmalade, an amazing Soho vintage clothing store on Mott Street which housed a temporary pop-up shop for LA-based vintage vendor Liz Baca. As you can see from the colorful clothing surrounding us (above), this is a far cry from the usual, practically exclusively black NYC attire! Reconnecting with Hannah, the proprietress of Marmalade, her daughter Vita, and with Liz Baca and Boo Boo (her famous one-eyed rescue dog) was great fun.

Liz and Boo Boo.

Hannah and Vita.

The ladies in black. You can barely tell from the photo, but Liz is wearing a FABULOUS chest-high 'bag' thing. We can't describe it adequately, but if either of us could possibly have pulled it off the way she has, we both would have wanted it. 'Bag' is hardly a flattering word to describe it, but it's a wonderfully flattering creation on Liz, who's paired it with all sorts of great accessories.

As we were leaving the Marmalade party, we encountered this trio of young fashionistas outside on the street. Don't they look terrific? We've run into at least one of them since that evening. The woman on the left is wearing pants made by Lizwear, a Liz Claiborne label. Again, this photo doesn't do it justice. The pattern is far more wonderful than you can make out here.

If Hannah & Liz's party was the appetizer, the Metropolitan Pavilion's Vintage Clothing Show was the main course! Here we are on Saturday, loaded for bear, so to speak.

For Saturday's show, Hannah and Liz dressed for the occasion. They are the best walking advertisements for vintage that we know. They are always fabulously put together and make it appear effortless. Liz accessorized her outfit with a terribly inventive necklace made of the tops of spray paint cans strung along a chain.

One of our stops in every show is the booth for One Man's Treasure, a Jersey-City vintage clothing store, which never fails to have intriguing hats and clothing. Valerie posed with the British half of the adorable couple who run the shop.

Another regular stop on our circuit is Jae Jarrell's booth. She carries both men's and women's vintage clothing and accessories, and invariably there is some very dapper gentleman trying on a gorgeous sport coat and hat when we show up. Jae's booth features a large glass vitrine which always contains some hidden treasure. Several shows ago. The last time, Valerie found a fabulous pair of ecru-colored elbow length gauntlets with drawstrings to create a rusched effect. Very cool. This time, Jae had two really fun vintage handbags. The first was a clutch made of black and white plastic squares sewn together with twine. This is an iconic bag popular in the late forties and early fifties. Jean's mother carried a similar version to this one.

The second purse was a silk pocketbook graced with a dotted palm tree and umbrella design that appears on both sides of the bag. We sincerely hoped that some astute shoppers scooped them up and gave them a good home.

Valerie says: Imagine Jean's chagrin when the Metropolitan Vintage Show came to town, and she had already committed to something else! So we went very briefly on Friday night, (met Shelley, the Forest City Fashionista, out front at closing time for a rendezvous at Apotheke), and went back to the show again on Saturday. Jean had to leave much too quickly, but managed to do some champion shopping in the narrow window allotted to her. I had far more time, but managed to make only two purchases. An unruly body shape rules out many possibilities. A blessing or a curse depending on your point of view. (Fortunately, heads only get fat in the figurative sense, not the literal.)

Jean and I play a game in which we ask what the ONE thing is that we'd buy if we could. Below is my one thing. To my untrained eye, it looks like it was painted by Diego Rivera. I'm ecstatic to report that it was beyond my budget AND it was too small for me. I don't know who made the ensemble or painted the skirt, but if I could have afforded it, I would have loved to buy it, if only to cut the skirt at its seam and put it reverently on my wall.

After Jean had gone, and I was left to my own devices, I stopped to photograph Amy van Doran, who was paying homage - or so I imagine - to Schiaparelli by wearing a lobster hat of her own making. In her other incarnation, Amy is a personal matchmaker (as opposed to one of those computerized matchmakers). Click here to avail yourself of her services.

Readers of Advanced Style might recognize Maryann, who has shown up on Ari Seth Cohen's blog and videos. Maryann said she's mostly retired now, but I love the name of her company: Intelligent Chic.

I ran into Stephanie trying on a fedora, and stupidly did not take a photograph, so I've purloined the one below from her blog, Vivid Voltage. She bought the fabulous pink coat at the show. Stephanie had only arrived here from Texas the day before I ran into her. She floored me when she said she recognized me. We get so few comments on the blog that we're not always sure who we're talking to, out there in the ether. You folks our age, remember Nixon's and Agnew's Silent Majority? (Say OY if you do.) Today the Silent Majority is our readership.

Late in the day I ran into Tziporah Salamon, who was showing off her newly purchased Manhattan Vintage Show find. (Actually, she'd snagged it on the first day, and wore it the next.) FABULOUS hat. Sorry you can't see the whole outfit, but you wouldn't have seen the hat details then, and we must keep our priorities straight.

I also bought a hat, below. I think I must now own four vintage hats in purple, enough for anybody. (This looks a bit blue, so my apologies. All the colors are lush, including the purple. I really must learn the ins and outs of Photoshop. Or else the camera needs to learn to show colors more accurately.) This hat pushes the limits, even for me, but I'll manage. It must have pushed the previous owner's limits as well, as it's in near perfect condition. As luck would have it, Liz Baca (mentioned above) walked by as I was modeling it for myself, trying to decide whether it pushed to or past the limit. She helped by putting it on her own head. The colors of the hat matched so well with the colors of her necklace, and suited her face so perfectly that I reached my tipping point. (Logical people will argue that I should not buy a hat because it suits someone else. They are right. I should say that Liz helped me see the hat more objectively.) The hat will reside in my freezer for the next month, in case it harbors any current or incubating six-legged stowaways, and then will make its debut. The dealer told me she bought the hat with me in mind. How well she knows her clientele! (I bought yet another hat, but have not picked it up yet and can't show it to you.)

As I mentioned earlier, Jean made a couple of purchases. To my mild puzzlement, Jean does not want to show off her fabulous swag. Why not? Why shouldn't women of a certain age have their own version of booty call???? In any case, she allowed me to show this absolutely marvelous hint at her favorite find, knowing fully well that no one would be able to figure out what it is. (Well, Shelley, the Forest City Fashionista, will know.) Jean wore it recently on one of our outings, so it will appear, unmasked (so to speak), in a not-too-distant blog post.

LOOT

On October 13, we traveled for the second year in a row to the Museum of Arts and Design to see Loot 2011: MAD about Jewelry: A Juried Selling Exhibiition of Art and Studio Jewelry. Now in its 11th year, it attracts artists and collectors alike.

Here we are with exhibitor Suzanne Golden and New Zealander / fellow blogger Anne Thompson.

This show is a magnet for our demographic, since it includes the type of unusual jewelry and ornamentation that appeals to women of a certain age. Adding to the fun is the fact that several of the exhibitors are friends. It is what the Scots and Celts would describe as a "convening of the clans" -- if the clans were all women of a certain age with finely honed artistic antennae.

Case in point: Here are just a few of the stylish ladies we ran into in the museum lobby, before we even ascended the stairs to the exhibition: Jean met this sharp lady just outside the museum store, looking casually chic in cropped hair, oxfords and checks.

Christina Viera made an appearance, sporting the shiny grey version of a fabulous black polyvinyl tam that we'd lusted over in the Hats Anthology show at Bard Graduate School (curated by Stephen Jones and Oriole Cullen). Leave it to Christina to knock our socks off with her outfit.

Right after Christina headed up to the exhibition, Mary Lou Campanella arrived in her puffy Comme des Garcons jacket. She's a friend of ours through mutual friends Suzanne Golden and Christina. (More about the five of us and our adventure at FIT's Daphne Guinness show in a future posting. Stay tuned. We're still trying to catch up.)

This vivacious redhead periodically flies to NYC from the Midwest to cat-sit for loyal clients. She was absolutely thrilled that her trip coincided with LOOT. She must be "the cat's pajamas" at her job if people jet her in to care for their beloved felines in their absence.

Jean fell in love with these silver clogs and everything that came with them. Moji was sweet enough to pose for a picture after Jean accosted her exiting the gift shop. Jean says: in my defense, I was very nervous awaiting the arrival of Valerie and of Anne Thompson, a kindred spirit from New Zealand. We featured Anne in last week's "Out of Towners" posting.

We met these two ladies looking swell as we entered the exhibit on the second floor.

The three musketeers (Jean, Valerie and Anne) combined forces, entered the show, and ran right into Suzanne Golden, who was exhibiting her beaded jewelry.

As luck would have it, our friends Sara Basch and Suzanne Golden had spaces side by side.

Sara posed with Anne and Jean. Sara's wonderful neck ruff is made from, among other things, rubber bands. She makes everything look wonderfully elegant.

Halfway through the evening, we ran into our pals Katherine Knauer and Robin Schwalb.

When Jean met Kevin, sparks flew! Not just stylish and dapper, Kevin has the most wonderful demeanor and mellow personality -- 180 degrees from Jean's rapid-fire, blast furnace approach to life. They bonded instantly.

Danielle Gori-Montanelli, wearing one of her creations, is among our favorite exhibitors - at LOOT and at the Philadelphia Craft Show. She trained as a metalsmith, but works exclusively in felt for the shows.

Can't wait till next year!

And for the numerically obsessed, don't forget that this Friday is 11/11/11. Be sure to celebrate somehow. Next year you'll have 12/12/12, but after that you're out of luck, 'cause there is no 13/13/13. There IS 1/3/13 - January 3, or March 1 if you live in Europe, but 11/11/11 is like getting three cherries on the one armed bandit. Savor it!