Rockabilly

I woke up this moring knowing that I wanted to wear these socks and shoes together:

Shoes, John Fluevog "Summertime," style unknown, remixed

Socks, depths of the drawer

I didn't know what I wanted to wear with them, mind you, just that I wanted to experiment with this look. I'm usually not that fond of any sock shorter than knee-length, so these delicate little anklets are a standout in my sock drawer. I never wear them. So I figured that the last nice, sunny day for a while merited an opportunity for them to see the light of day.

I pulled out a flower-embroidered linen skirt, the background fabric the same color as the socks. I layered it over a black lacy skirt to keep it from looking too sweet. I put my favorite black lace-trimmed cardigan over my favorite pink long-sleeved tee. I tried three different belts. None of it worked!

In desperation, I pulled off the first skirt and tried this floral sheath dress instead. A-ha, now we were getting somewhere! I ditched the lacy underskirt (too much bulk under the slim dress), pulled the cardi back on, and realized I was developing a very late-Fifties/early Sixties look: sheath dress, cardigan, chunky heels. The pyramid studs on the shoes kept it from being too sweet, adding a little rock-and-roll flair.

What do you get when you mix midcentury styles with modern rock sensibilities? Rockabilly! Well, an interpretation of it, anyway.

I decided to play up the look, taking it almost-but-not-quite to the verge of costume with a wide headband, studded cinch belt, pearls, and petite frame purse:

Dress, Liberty of London for Target, remixed

Cardigan, Heart Moon Star, remixed

Belt, Betsey Johnson, TJMaxx, remixed

Pearls, gift from Fabulous Husband, remixed

Purse, Ann Taylor Loft
Headband, Sephora

I love that little bag. It's cute, surprisingly capacious, and oddly era-neutral. It works with this very midcentury ensemble, but I've also strung a few antique keys onto one handle (hanging over the bow) and worn it with Victorian-influenced steampunk outfits.

I kept the makeup in tune with the clothes: a relatively neutral palette, a strong winged eye, and pale, frosted lips. I know most rockabilly girls prefer va-va-voom reds, but for daywear, and an outfit more influenced by the late Fifties and early Sixties than the Forties and early Fifties, I thought the pink was a better fit.

Throughout the day, I found myself adapting the movements and gestures I've seen in movies from the era this outfit hearkens to. Some of it was the dress: it's structured, so I can't slouch too much; it's got a narrow hem, so I take shorter steps; the skirt rides up alarmingly if I'm not cautious, so I watch myself getting into and out of cars (there's a technique to getting in and out of a car in a short skirt) and cross my legs at the ankle instead of the knee or not at all. Some of it, though, was more studied: it felt right to hold my purse in front of me, both hands on the straps (almost like a kettleball) while standing, for example. I'm not sure if that was a hint of old acting training, urging me to fall into the 'character' this outfit created, or if those gestures, too, were created by the clothes and their relation to the body, just less obviously.

Oh, and I was pretty happy with the socks-and-sandals effect. I think, just like tights and sandals, it might depend heavily on the specific items being combined to work. I'm going to continue to experiment.

How does your clothing affect your movement, gestures, and body language? If it does, is it strictly functional, or do you find yourself creating characters with your outfits and then matching your body language to them?

The Fabric of Memory

It's really starting to feel like spring around here!

Denim jacket: Calvin Klein Jeans, Century 21

Black button-front dress: Ann Taylor Loft

Lapis necklace: from my grandmother

Blue belt: TJMaxx, remixed

Blue circle-gore ruffled skirt: Marshall's

Diamond Lace OTK socks: Sock Dreams

Boots: John Fluevog "Inge," remixed

 photos: Fabulous Husband

Yes, the belt is a remix, even if it doesn't look like it! I've encountered reversible belts before, and they're usually relatively uninteresting: the swivel mechanism on the buckle flops between black and brown (ho-hum!) and they're sized for men's belt loops. I've always thought that they were the ideal wardrobe item for minimalist male dressers who didn't want to clutter up a closet with (horrors!) more than one belt. This skinny number, though, switches from royal blue to bright yellow. That's a reversible belt I can groove on!

I've worn denim jackets for as long as I can remember: baggy, acid-washed ones as a kid in the 80s; my boyfriend's, covered in martial arts and metal band patches, when I was in college; and this fitted little one that I bought while working on Lower Broadway, a job I lost not that long before September 11, 2001. 

Many articles of clothing can be artifacts of memory and nostalgia, but it seems that jackets, leather and denim ones most of all, remind us of the past. Maybe it's because they're durable pieces, more resistant to wear and thus more likely to stay in our closets longer? Or maybe it's because they're the outermost layer, the thing most likely to be seen and remembered by any passing stranger, literally the mask/costume/armor we present to the world. 

Inner clothing is much more intimate. There are fewer than a hundred people in this world who have seen me in my underwear (and I worked as a figure model, so that number is higher, I suspect, than most), but I cannot begin to contemplate how many people have seen me in this jacket.

Jackets stay in memory. When I was working downtown in Manhattan, I routinely saw one of the traders from the nearby exchanges. The traders were easy to pick out, because they all wore a uniform of lightweight, mesh-sided blazers, usually in navy blue polyester, over their street clothes. This guy was particularly memorable, though, because instead of the standard-issue navy poly, his jacket was bright turquoise with an allover print of rainbow trout. I know nothing else about the man: I never had the courage to ask him about his jacket, have no idea whether he was caught up in the attacks on the World Trade Center, don't even remember the face that went with the jacket. But his jacket is an indelible part of my memory.

It amuses me that every so often designers "rediscover" denim. Denim jackets are quintessential Americana. There are a few other Canonic American Wardrobe Items - the black leather motorcycle jacket, white and black T-shirts, Converse sneakers (the Chuck Taylor All-Star high-tops), medium-wash, button-fly jeans - that, while they're not always "in style," never really go out of style either. I wore Chuck T's in high school, in the era of Air Jordans and Reebok Pumps, and was very much Not Cool because of it. Now all the high-school kids in my area look like they'll part with their Chucks when someone pries them off their cold, dead feet, and David Tennant as Doctor Who has given them an aura of geeky cool. Plus ça change...

I don't know that I'll be sporting the head-to-toe denim look being touted in the glossy mags. I'm not that into any fabric head-to-toe, and really not that fond of denim to wear it thus even if I was. I am, however, glad that it's warm enough to wear this little jacket, with all its memories and history.

What articles of clothing make you remember the past? Do you have any vivid memories of certain pieces - yours or someone else's? And what are your thoughts on designers' 'rediscovery' of denim?

Synesthesia

A while back, I promised I'd explain my fondness for the purple/green color combination. It goes beyond the fact that in general, any two colors of a color triad look wonderful together: it has to do with a neurological condition called synesthesia.

Synesthesia is, simply, a blending of the senses. Some people associate specific shapes or colors with numbers, or have auditory reactions to visual phenomena such as movement.

I have a very mild case: I smell in color.

I get all my perfumes from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, an independent company in California. I was introduced to them when my fabulous cousin, whose sense of style exceeds my own, gave me a vial of a perfume called The Apothecary. It's an herbal blend with notes of fig, and smells - you guessed it - green and purple. I had never thought to pair those two together!

I get a lot of inspiration for color combos from my perfumes. Of course, there's a downside to it too: I can't stand to go out of the house in an outfit that clashes with my scent. If I pick the outfit first, I have to be really sure I like it before I put the perfume on.

Today's outfit is inspired by a limited-edition perfume made to commemorate a full lunar eclipse called Penumbra: its description reads, "Rich purple musk, moonflower, red sandalwood, black amber, oakmoss, copal, lavender, neroli, tobacco, and pomegranate."

It smells burgundy, purple, and black:

Dress: Ann Taylor Loft

Cardigan and scarf used as belt: depth of the closet

Sweater tights: Marshall's

Shoes: John Fluevog, Summertime family (forget the style name)

Dichroic glass tree pendant: Jenn Feldman Glass

Pink, purple and pearl drop earrings: gift from parents, bought somewhere in Europe
 

It's also due in part to the academichic Fashion 101: Cardigans unit that I'm auditing. I've layered this cardigan over a dress before (it feels like walking around in my bathrobe all day!), but I'd forgotten how nice a pairing it was until I saw E. do something similar. I think the soft, drapey lines of the dress and scarf are balanced nicely by the edgy platform and studs of the shoes. And yes, there's still plenty of snow on the ground and I'm wearing sandals. I love my boots, but I feel like I've been wearing the same four pairs of shoes forever. 

I can't wear sandals in the snow without thinking of iki. Iki is one of those complex, difficult-to-translate Japanese words: it indicates an ephemeral, transcendent aesthetic ideal, straightforward yet elegant, spontaneous and unselfconscious. Like many Japanese aesthetic concepts, it's easier, coming from a European-based culture, to understand it through poetry and visual images. One of the canonical images of iki is an elegant woman wearing geta (platform thong sandals) in the snow.  I'm not hard-core enough to wear sandals without thick, warm tights, even though today was warm and sunny... for early March.

 What non-sartorial inspirations fuel your outfits? How do you blend cultural influences in your dress? What do you think about sandals or open-toed shoes in winter, tights or no?

Label envy?

 

Above, a Cynthia Rowley dress printed on "a heavy cotton knit" (image courtesy nytimes.com): below, a Hanes Beefy-T (image courtesy hanesbullseye.com). 

This article from the New York Times amused the hell out of me, and really got me thinking about the significance of designer labels.

Once, a couture label was a guarantee of quality and originality. It assured value for price: yes, the garments were extremely expensive, but they incorporated the highest-quality materials and superior workmanship (such as hand-finished hems and buttonholes) as well as the designer's unique artistic expression. If you've ever seen a vintage couture piece up close and personal, you know that these differences are more than just fancy touches: even fifty (or more!) years later, the fabrics are supple and luxurious, the construction amazingly detailed and intricate by modern standards. The inside of a Dior New Look gown bears a striking resemblance to a suspension bridge and has about the same structural integrity (note that the bridge in question is not Westchester/Rockland Counties' Tappan Zee, the structural integrity of which is rather suspect at this point).

This isn't to say that couture labels didn't always have the same cachet, the same status-symbol, um, status, that they do today. However, there was no need to splash a designer's logo all over something to convey it: the details of design were sufficiently unique, the quality sufficiently evident, that the over-the-top branding that we've become accustomed to wasn't really necessary. Creating a tailored garment takes skill: a t-shirt, no matter how rarefied the fabrics used to make it, is... not exactly the pinnacle of the art of tailoring, shall we say?

So, OK, here we have the estimable Ms. Rowley, screening photo images of her latest collection onto heavyweight cotton jersey - that's something very much like Hanes Beefy-T material, by the by - making it up into, essentially, t-shirt dresses that look (if you squint lots, and maybe have a stiff drink first) like the actual tailored ones from her Fall 2010 collection. You can also buy the photo-screened dresses as yard goods and assemble them (or not) yourself, or, on the wow-this-label-whore-thing-has-gone-too-far level, get a $150 sewing kit, that "includes one of Ms. Rowley’s labels, which you can sew into the garment of your choice to make your own statement on fashion."

Did I mention that you're paying a low, low $320 for your t-shirt dress, or $280 for the privilege of doing your own assemblage? If you assemble the dress as intended (and more on that later), and assume a decent-but-not-great labor rate of $10/hour, that means the dress takes four hours to cut out and sew up. For those of you Fabulous Readers who don't dabble in home sewing, that's practically instantaneous in terns of garment construction time. I don't have exact statistics on production times for traditional couture garments, but I'm going to guess as dozens, perhaps hundreds of hours.

As for the uber-expensive sewing kit with status label, to, supposedly, up the brag factor of your plebeian wardrobe? On some level, it reminds me of label switching on vintage garments. On the other, it's kind of amusing, in a fashion-as-metatext kind of way: you don't actually need the designer's product, just the symbol of it. It's the status part of couture without any of the innovation or artistry. Oh, brave new world!

Is this also the time and place to bring up that, ideally, nobody but the wearer sees the label on an article of clothing? That's always been my take on the women who buy dresses a size too small because they have to fit into that size 8 (or 6, or...): Honey, nobody but you sees the label. Cut it out if you must. When the label's sticking out on an article of my clothing, I'm gratified when someone tucks it in for me (thanks, Mom!), so I don't walk around looking like a slob - and thanks to my good thrift-store karma, I've got some moderately brag-worthy labels. I still don't want them sticking out!

As a social statement, though, it would be very amusing to sew that high-end label into the aforementioned Hanes Beefy-T. Or take the yard goods with the printed-on dress and do something completely different with it: Throw pillows? Big, boxy t-shirts (the dress printed on jersey knit has obvious antecedents in those horrible t-shirts from the 80s with tuxedos printed on them)? Curtains?

The only reason I'm amused at this, and not fuming over a designer ripoff (which part of me feels it is, big-time) is the obvious subtext of do-it-yourself fashion. Ms. Rowley is assuming that she has enough of a market that has sufficient sewing skill to assemble copies of her dresses, even if they are the screen-printed tee version. I'm sure there's some expectation on her part of customers personalizing and tweaking the sew-it-yourself design - in fact, if she's really smart, there will be a Web site or Facebook page dedicated to customers' interpretations of the designs. According to the Times article, this is in part a reaction to the fast-paced information lifecycle afforded by the Internet. As we all know, one of the great (and hugely beneficial, in my mind) changes that technology has allowed is multidirectional information flow - it's not just that the designers tell us about fashion: we tell them. Or at least we can, if they're listening, and I hope they are.

So what are your thoughts? Does the ripoff factor of a $150 sewing kit outweigh the participatory-fashion coolness? How should designers react to the instant-gratification nature of today's market, especially if they want to continue to offer the high-end, time-intensive tailoring that is a requirement of haute couture? If you had a sew-your-own Cynthia Rowley dress kit, what would you do with it?