Seven Secrets

The lovely Sarah at Cloud of Secrets gave me a Stylish Blogger Award. Thanks, Sarah!

The rules of acceptance:

-Thank and link back to the person who awarded you
-Share 7 things about yourself
-Award 10 recently discovered great bloggers
-Contact these writers and tell them about the award

Here are seven things about me:

1. I’m horribly addicted to the Rachel Zoe Project. I don’t have cable so I bought used DVDs of Seasons 1 & 2, and am waiting for Season 3 to arrive any moment now! At the end of some days, when I’m wiped out or slightly depressed, I love watching this non-drama to see the beautiful clothes and vintage jewelry Rachel has access to. An instant lift!

Rachel at the 2010 Met Gala.

2. I have two kids, an 8-year-old boy and 4-year old girl. They are funny and smart and sweet and they love trains and the movie Cars. I sometimes feel as though I had twins four years apart. I have learned that 3rd grade math is harder than it used to be (algebra, already?) and that I’m not well-equipped to deal with it. That’s definitely a Rachel Zoe night.

3. I’ve run two marathons. I did the Memphis Marathon in 2004 (4 hours, 10 minutes) and the New York City Marathon in 2005 (4 hours, 34 minutes). I’ve been a runner my whole life and ran cross-country in high school but it was going through natural childbirth that gave me the confidence to train for and finish a marathon. The NYC Marathon is easily the hardest physical thing I’ve ever done, harder than childbirth! In fact in my loopy state after I completed the race I told someone I’d rather have another baby than run that course again. It is that tough, and you run it with 35,000 other people through all five boroughs. That being said, it is one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever experienced. It is New York City at its finest.


4. I would love to have a bottle of champagne and a fashion chat with Hamish Bowles, European Editor at Large for Vogue. I have seen his fine curatorial work in the exhibitions BALENCIAGA: Spanish Master and Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years. I think he has an amazing knowledge of fashion history, couture techniques, and the personalities of designers both living and dead and I would love to talk to him about it all!

Wouldn't you love to drink champagne and talk fashion with this man? I would! Hamish, call me! I'll buy the bubbly!

5. I adore going to high-end stores to chat up the sales associates and learn about certain items I covet. Louis Vuitton, Tiffany, Chanel, Prada, and Hermès have all seen me multiple times and will see me again. This activity is always a lot more fun to do with someone else so if you’re ever in New York and want to look at some wonderful thing, pick a store, call me up, and let’s go! You can learn so much about how things are made and what makes them special by seeing them in person, handling them, and asking questions from a sales person who knows them inside and out. My husband is not a fan of this habit of mine but I tell him, Lookin’ ain’t buyin’ (although, every once in awhile, it is).


6. My favorite writer is F. Scott Fitzgerald. I love Tender is the Night but I could probably teach The Great Gatsby, I’ve read it that many times, including an early draft of the book when it was known as Trimalchio (thank God for an editor like Maxwell Perkins). Gatsby is the ultimate novel of New York and in the wake of the Bernie Madoff scandal feels as relevant as ever.


7. I can never get over what people will reveal to you if you show up some place and tell them you’re a writer. I could be a crazy person with a pen and notebook for all they know but people have been so generous and wonderful when I ask to interview them or to tell me something only they know and I love making that kind of connection with another person.

I now pass this award on to a few of my favorite blogs. I would love to know seven secret things from:

Everyone Loves Lipstick
Grit & Glamour
Mis Papelicos
Paris in Pink
The Taxonomy of My Wardrobe
What She Found

Handbag Wednesday: Timmy Woods Eiffel Tower Bag

It’s been a rough month for blogging but I want to get back into the swing of Handbag Wednesday and this week I’m featuring the sparkling Eiffel Tower bag by Timmy Woods, featured in the 2010 Handbags calendar. The bag became famous, of course, after it was shown swinging from the hand of Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City: The Movie. I don’t know if I’d actually carry this bag around, I’d probably just put it up on my dresser for display. The Eiffel Tower is somewhat of a Pavlovian provocateur to me—I see it and feel happy, thinking of things like fashion and champagne, but also of the great time my husband and I had when we went there for our honeymoon in 1999. Because the scale of the buildings in Paris has been kept small (as opposed to New York, where so much of the architecture is brash, powerful, and in your face), Paris itself feels more intimate and elegant, and the Eiffel Tower to me is the symbol of all the beauty Paris has to offer, in so many different forms.

Back to the bag, this version is covered in Swarovski crystals and sells on Timmy Woods’ site for $3,000, although I did find a seller on eBay offering it for $2,399.99. There is also a version without crystals, which can be had on eBay as well. I saw one for $249.

Timmy Woods launched her handbag company, Timmy Woods Beverly Hills, in 1992. She was inspired by handmade wooden boxes and her pieces are carved from fallen Acacia trees. Each one takes about thirty days to complete. The ideas for designs come from forms of nature, pop trends, sports, hobbies, holidays and special events.

Speaking of special events, my daughter turns 4 today. When she gets a little older I’m going to give her this Eiffel Tower marcasite pendant, the smallest Eiffel Tower I own. I hope we can go to Paris together one day and that she’ll love it as much as I do.


In the meantime, we are going to play in the snow and eat cake.

www.timmywoods.com

Valentino in Singapore: Color Me Green

Because I love the work of Valentino so much I’m surprised I haven’t written an in-depth piece on him before now but consider this an emergency post as opposed to a more thoughtful, academic one. When I was on Purse Forum the other day, reading a thread on Hermès scarves—and side note, may I say I love those gals, you could not find a more meticulous, dedicated bunch—one of the members had posted a couple of pictures of a Valentino exhibit happening right now in Singapore!

My immediate thought was, Excuse me, did I read that correctly? I headed right over to Google and am now green with envy over the exhibition of Valentino red in a land far, far away!

Valentino Retrospective: Past/Present/Future is at the Resorts World Sentosa, in Sentosa, Singapore. It opened December 22, 2010 and will run until February 13, 2011. Over 100 couture pieces are on display, including early Valentino designs as well as dresses worn by Julia Roberts, Cate Blanchett, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Elizabeth Taylor. Also part of the exhibit are more recent pieces by current Creative Directors Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli, appointed to their posts in October 2008 when Valentino retired.


The writer Dorothy Parker once said of English novelist E.M. Forster, "I'd go on my hands and knees to get to Forster." I feel the same way about this pink dress with accompanying petal cape.

Why oh why can’t this exhibition come to New York? Or anywhere in the United States for that matter? If you know anyone who is traveling to Singapore over the next three weeks, please tell them to visit this retrospective and send me clear and detailed pictures!

You see, Dear Reader, when I see the dress above, the perfect-shade-of-pink dress with its accompanying petal cape, I swoon. Think of how that cape was made, starting with the design of it, then the search for the perfect fabric, the cutting of those petals, the layering of those petals, finding a way to give them lift and volume without weight, to keep the design light and airy. Think of what the seamstresses went through, the endless stitching to hold the petals into place! I practically want to weep at its beauty. I know the world can be a harsh and terrible place but seeing a dress and cape like this makes me happy to be alive. It just brightens my whole day to know I live in a world that can contain something of such beauty, made by human hands!





As a consolation prize for not being able to see this exhibit in person, I will (finally!) buy the glorious book Valentino: Themes and Variations by Pamela Golbin and Valentino. I borrowed it from the library once (and kept renewing it), but I think it’s time to add a copy to my fashion library. I also think it’s time to re-watch the documentary Valentino: The Last Emperor.


All dress and installation images from the Resorts World Sentosa site.

BALENCIAGA: Spanish Master

Now on view at Queen Sofía Spanish Institute in New York City is the drama of the bullfight, the passion of flamenco dancers and the pageantry of royal court and religious attire rendered in the form of exquisitely crafted dresses and gowns, hats and boleros, in the exhibit BALENCIAGA: Spanish Master. The exhibit was conceived by Oscar de la Renta and curated by Hamish Bowles, European Editor at Large for Vogue, who also wrote the accompanying catalogue.

Balenciaga portrait by Boris Lipnitzki, 1927.

Six themes of Balenciaga’s work are explored: Royal Court, Religious Life, Spanish Art, Regional Dress, Dance, and The Bullfight. More than seventy pieces are on display featuring the best of Spain’s most famous couturier, many on loan from the Balenciaga Archives, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Texas Fashion Collection and, surprisingly, even from Mr. Bowles himself, a longtime aficionado and collector of Balenciaga’s work. The majority of pieces are from the 1950’s and 60’s.

Photograph by Kenny Komer

Cristóbal Balenciaga was born January 21, 1895 in Guetaria, Spain, a fishing town in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa. His father was the captain of a small pleasure boat, his mother a seamstress. After his father died when he was only 10, his mother supported the family with her dressmaking skills. Balenciaga was apprenticed to a tailor at 13 and by the age of 24 had opened his first boutique, Eisa, in San Sebastián, opening subsequent couture salons in both Madrid and Barcelona. The Spanish Civil War, however, forced him to flee to Paris and start anew.

He opened his couture house under his own name in Paris in 1937 and found immediate success. Though he flourished in France, Spain was always in his heart. Diana Vreeland said Balenciaga’s “inspiration came from the bullrings, the flamenco dancers, the fisherman in their boots and loose blouses, the glories of the Church and the cool of the cloisters and monasteries. He took their colors, their cuts, then festooned them to his own taste.”

Photograph by Kenny Komer

In each of Balenciaga’s 93 collections there was always one black dress cut and sewn entirely by him. The lovely Christine, a design student at FIT, but working that day as an exhibition guard, pointed out to me that one of the pieces cut and sewn by Balenciaga himself included a black jacket (with accompanying skirt) with only one seam! Sure enough, the fabric was molded at the shoulders before moving down to become sleeves, no seam in sight save for the zigzag one in the center of the jacket. How do you make a jacket without set-in sleeves? It makes you wish to be in the atelier to watch Balenciaga as he was bringing this creation to life.

Christine also passed on a great story Mr. Bowles told the crowd at the exhibition opening. Once when he was in a Spanish flea market with his grandmother, young Hamish spotted a Balenciaga bolero, which he was dying to buy. He begged his grandmother to give him the money for it but she refused. Fast forward a few decades when the now-adult Hamish comes across the same bolero in a vintage shop in Los Angeles. It’s missing its tag but he recognizes it instantly as the same bolero he longed for as a child and he purchases it on the spot. True story or not, the bolero is part of the exhibit and it is a beauty, made of burgundy silk velvet, black jet and passementerie embroidery. Mr. Bowles lent quite a few pieces from his personal collection, including a standout 1967 evening dress of black silk velvet, rhinestone and bead embroidery, which would not be out of place at a modern day gala.

Other pieces not to be missed include the 1957 wedding dress worn by Sonsoles Díez de Rivera, made of ivory silk shantung organza, with metallic silver embroidery, and the 1954 scarlet silk ottoman evening coat, a direct descendant of the red robes a cardinal of the Catholic church wears to this day. I also loved a 1965 cocktail dress made of vibrant pink lace with a satin belt, and the dramatic gowns with a skirt overlay whose flounces could be flipped upwards to the shoulders to become a cape.

Photograph by Kenny Komer

Photograph by Kenny Komer

Also worth seeing is the soundless video loop of a fashion show at Balenciaga’s salon. The people I sat next to whispered to each other how funny the video was and they were right. It shows a half-empty small room with gilt chairs, the female clientele talking to one another as they watch the models, holding numbers, go in and out of the room wearing the most amazing clothes. A few clients puff on their cigarettes and flick ashes in a standing ashtray. Most look bored. Hilarious! So early 60’s and so very different than the spectacle modern fashion shows have become.

Cristóbal Balenciaga had a long and celebrated career, one in which he gave no interviews. Can you imagine a designer today who would not give an interview? Some of the designers who worked for him who went on to become famous themselves include Oscar de la Renta, André Courrèges, Emanuel Ungaro, and Hubert de Givenchy. Balenciaga closed his couture house in 1968 and died in Jávea, Spain on March 23, 1972.

Photograph by Kenny Komer

Photograph by Kenny Komer

Coco Chanel said of Balenciaga, “He is the only couturier. He is the only one who knows how to cut a fabric, and mount it and sew it with his own hands. The others are just draughtsmen.”

These words come to life in this exhibit, when so many of the pieces, so well-designed, so well-made, truly works of art, could easily be worn today. The mark of a master.

The exhibition runs until February 19, 2011. It will then be expanded for presentation as Balenciaga and Spain at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, from March 26 through July 4, 2011.

If you get an opportunity to see the exhibit in either city, I highly recommend it.

Queen Sofía Spanish Institute
684 Park Avenue
New York NY 10065
212-628-0420
www.queensofiasi.org

Channel Your Inner Anna

Photo by Dave M. Benett/Getty Images for Burberry.

After I saw The September Issue I wanted to know where Anna Wintour, Editor in Chief of Vogue, got the gorgeous gemstone necklaces she wore throughout the film. Figuring they were the real deal and guessing just how expensive aquamarines (and amethysts and topazes) that size must be, I also wondered if there were any similar necklaces out there in my price range. I got busy on eBay and Google and that, Dear Reader, is how I found the fabulous Nerida at Art for Interiors. She was impressed by those necklaces too and from her I learned that Anna's are original Georgian collet necklaces. Georgian pieces represent a period in jewelry from 1714-1830, running through Kings George I, II, III and IV, and a period of Regency as well. Anna's necklaces quite possibly came from S.J. Phillips Ltd., the London jewelers, and so average around $20,000 each.

Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images North America.

Nerida lives in Hong Kong and has been working on recreating collet necklaces that are similar to Anna's. After trial and error the wonderful results are in and now offered for sale on her site. Each necklace is made with 18mm x 13mm foil-backed Swarovski crystals and, depending on the necklace, you can choose between plain, beaded or tooled mounts. You can also choose any color crystal you like from the Swarovski color chart, although to best compliment the setting Nerida recommends selecting a color that goes well with gold.

My mother bought one recently in topaz, which I visited with over the holidays. It is gorgeous! I wanted to test drive this necklace on a date night with my husband, but unfortunately he and I both came down with the flu and there went date night. I did manage to put on the necklace to model it and take pictures. The necklace my mother bought is 16.5 inches with a 4-inch extender chain and features a beaded mount, which you can see better in the close-up.









You could wear any of these necklaces with a little black dress or mix one with jeans and a T-shirt, or a cardigan and shift dress, just like Anna! I am especially loving the mixed stone amethyst necklace shown above.

Stop by Art for Interiors, click on the red "Shop" button on the upper right hand side and have a look!

Art for Interiors

Handbag Wednesday: Hermès Kelly

For this week's Handbag Wednesday, I'm featuring another Hermès bag I like to dream about, the Kelly, as well as musing on the future of Hermès.

The chairman of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, Bernard Arnault, revealed last month that LVMH has acquired a 20.2% stake in Hermès International, the family-owned luxury house founded by Thierry Hermès in 1837, maker of the Kelly and the Birkin bag, as well as scarves, jewelry, fragrances, and other items. Mr. Arnault said he would not attempt a hostile takeover in the next six months. A French antitrust watchdog group is meeting tomorrow to look over the Hermès family's plan to prevent a takeover by LVMH. There is lots of chatter at the Purse Forum about how an LVMH takeover of Hermès would forever taint the goods and drive up the prices of anything Hermès made before the date of such a takeover.

I like the idea of a leather goods house that's been handed down through the generations and continues to make well-designed, beautifully-crafted goods so I hope the Hermès family can hold onto their company.

I will be watching this story throughout the year to see what happens and will write about it here, so stay tuned!

Back to the bag, I learned in Anna Johnson's book Handbags: The Power of the Purse, that it takes 18 hours to make one Kelly bag and that a single craftsman works on it from start to finish.

The bag was originally known as the Haut à Courroies, was created in 1892, and downsized for daywear in the 1930's. After it was shown on the cover of Life in 1956, with Princess Grace using it to shield her pregnancy, the bag was dedicated to her and renamed the Kelly.

The picture above is from the 2010 Handbags calendar by Workman Publishing. The calendar features a new purse every day and was clearly created for bag addicts like myself.

I hope to add a Kelly to my handbag collection one day, probably vintage! This cream-colored Kelly is from the 1970's. Isn't it divine?

Wishing You a Glamorous 2011

My living room looks like a debris field of toys and Christmas decor, with bits of wrapping paper and tree needles woven throughout and dust sprinkled on top. Good times!

Between the holidays, traveling by car from New York to Virginia with husband and children, two feet of snow and being horribly sick, it's been impossible to blog.

To start the year off on a glamorous note, however, here is a 1955 Richard Avedon picture featuring Dovima in a Christian Dior dress. The dress is actually by Yves Saint Laurent, his first for Christian Dior, and the dress was the first featured in the 2009 exhibit The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This picture is one of my favorite fashion photos.

Here's wishing you a 2011 filled with moments (minutes, hours, days) of glamour and fun!