Hermès for Target?

When my mother and I were in Target the other day we came across these bracelets, blatant ripoffs of the very famous bracelets sold at Hermès, so I couldn't resist putting them on while my mother took pictures with her iPhone. I've tried on the real thing at the Hermès Wall Street store, and of course they're much heavier and more gorgeous than these flimsy knockoffs.

Target's version of the Hermès Collier de Chien bracelet, $16.99. The real one retails for around $1,000.
A close-up of the real Collier de Chien made by Hermès. This one is made of navy crocodile and is available at Fashionphile.com for $2,095. Photo by Fashionphile.com.

Target's version of the Kelly Double Tour bracelet.

Plastic wrap still on the "Kelly" lock.
The Kelly Double Tour bracelet by Hermès. This one, in black Chamonix leather, is available at Fashionphile for $745, which is bizarre, since you can buy one directly from Hermès.com for $430. Photo by Fashionphile.com.

I would think the Hermès intellectual property lawyers would be all over this case. Those are pretty distinctive design features that I wouldn't be surprised to learn have been copyrighted, patented, or both.

5 Avenue Marceau 75116 Paris

If you want to spend some time inside an haute couture atelier, watching amazing dresses come to life, I highly recommend renting Yves Saint Laurent, the two-part feature film, and going straight to part two, 5 Avenue Marceau 75116 Paris, the documentary showing Saint Laurent putting together his final collection before his retirement in 2002. Joined by his longtime muse, Loulou de la Falaise, trusted advisor, Anne-Marie Muñoz, and his seamstresses—look for Georgette, my favorite, with glasses and short red hair—you watch Yves and his team transforming his sketches into glorious haute couture. This was the film that made me want to start sewing again.

I read complaints on Netflix that this movie was boring, but I disagree. It is meditative and there are no voice-overs (although there are English translations), but I liked this fly-on-the-wall approach. It made me feel like I was actually in the room and showed me the inner workings of an atelier and the unbelievable skill of the women and men who worked for Yves. His affection for them is touching and some of the best parts of the film are when Yves is watching a beautiful model walk into his gilded salon, him seeing for the first time one of his sketches come to life. He would say, “Oh, ravissante!” (Ravishing!) with utter pleasure and then praise the seamstress who accompanies the dress when she presents it to him. It’s fascinating to see the collaborative process between Yves Saint Laurent, one of the world’s most famous and iconic fashion designers, and the talented tailors and seamstresses who turn his vision into wearable, exquisite reality.

Sartorialist Inspiration

Self portrait taken in my mother's living room and yes I'm standing on her couch.

A recent photo on The Sartorialist called “On the Street…All White, Florence” showed a woman in wearing a white blouse and pants, adding color with her woven belt and a pink and red Hermès Twilly scarf wrapped around her wrist, above her watch. I decided to try a similar look with my Twilly in the Tohu Bohu pattern, in the red colorway, paired with a J. Crew navy blue sailor striped shirt.

Photo by Handsome Brother #2 (I have three handsome brothers).



As for the Twilly scarf, the 24 Fbg on the scarf refers to 24 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the address in Paris where the Hermès mothership is located. I hope I get to visit it one day.

McQueen Redux

The line I waited in to get into the Met last Sunday.


I returned to the Met for the Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibit with a friend on Sunday morning to see it one more time before it closes on August 7.

Well.

The line at 9:30AM when the Met opened was actually two lines, which snaked down the steps and along Fifth Avenue in both directions. I’ve lived in NY since 1996. I’ve gone to the Met more times than I can remember. I have never seen a line for anything in Manhattan like the line not only to enter the Met, but to get into the McQueen exhibit!

The Met has announced they’ve had 500,000 visitors to the exhibit since it opened on May 4. Wow! They have also announced that they will extend the viewing hours until 9PM for the last four days of the exhibit, August 4-7. In addition, starting today, July 22, the Museum will open one hour early to Museum members, offering exclusive entrance to the McQueen exhibit from 8:30-9:30AM, every day except Mondays, when the Museum offers McQueen Mondays, with a timed ticketed entry to the exhibit and with the rest of the Museum closed to the public.

If you get to the Met and find yourself, as I did, standing in line in the Near East Art galleries, you are about 2 hours from getting to see the McQueen show. In which case, I highly recommend buying a membership to the Met (prices start at $100), because members don’t wait in the line, they can go straight in, and bring guests with them as well.

Ensemble, The Girl Who Lived in the Tree, autumn/winter 2008-9
Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph © Sølve Sundsbø/Art + Commerce

The handsome Lloyd, whom my friend and I met in line when we offered to hold his spot so he and his friend could check out the other exhibits in the Met, decided he’d had enough of waiting. He bought a membership at the table strategically placed just outside the McQueen exhibit, and then brought his friend, my friend, and me in as his guests. Thank you Lloyd!

That’s the kind of random and wonderful generosity that makes me love New Yorkers.

Under the Influence

Chanel ought to give my friend Catherine at Aesthetic Alterations a commission, because when I saw her wearing their new nail polish, Peridot, I knew I was going to buy a bottle of it myself, asap. Peridot is a green-gold that changes with the wearer's movement, looking different at every angle. The Chanel rep at the beauty counter only wore one coat and it looked more gold on her, but I put on two coats to get the full effect. It's a very unusual shade, a color not already in my nail polish collection, and Peridot is my birthstone, so I couldn't let this one get away. It's already sold out in Manhattan.




I lined up recent purchases and old favorites and found that I won't need to buy nail polish for awhile, these colors will easily take me from summer straight into fall.


The colors, left to right:

Essie, Limited Addiction - A glamorous true red
Essie, Velvet Voyeur - A chocolate-laced purple
Essie, Mademoiselle - The best pale pink nail ever
Rescue Beauty Lounge, Catherine - A mysterious deep purple flecked with fuschia, silver, and turquoise
Chanel, Peridot - Green-gold
Chanel, Black Satin - Black as night and very elegant


Do you have a color or brand you love? Please share!

Blame It On Yves

I know for sure that my renewed interest in sewing is entirely due to seeing 5 Avenue Marceau 75116 Paris, the documentary about Yves Saint Laurent’s atelier as he prepares his final haute couture collection before his retirement in 2002. I will do a review of the movie in my next post but I wanted to share my summer sewing project—a simple A-line skirt made out of black eyelet that I found at Mood Fabrics, in the Garment District of NYC. I stopped sewing for a long time because I found it frustrating, have had no space to permanently set up my sewing machine since moving to New York in 1996, and couldn’t get a hold of good, inspiring fabrics back when I was sewing. But after watching Yves and his seamstresses at work—all the draping, all the thread tracing, all the basting while they fit and refit a dress on a model, made me want to have another crack at it.


Mood Fabrics was a treat—three floors of fabric, some designed by Marc Jacobs, Oscar de la Renta, and Carolina Herrera. They have a fabulous helpful staff, and customers ranging from the design kids attending Fashion Institute of Technology, to sewers at all skill levels, to rich ladies like the one who had her Chanel bag, small child, and dressmaker in tow (I’m not kidding), pulling out fabrics and asking the dressmaker, “What would you make with this?” My mother had a theory that the lady has her clothes made by her private seamstress and sinks the money she saves into designer bags. Sounds good to me.


I’ve been thinking about eyelet skirts for over a year—I tried one on last summer at J. Crew but their skirts are too short for me. I found they were featuring eyelet skirts again this year in their catalog and this one is my inspiration.



I loved this black eyelet, so unusual and so very me. I’m not lining the skirt, I’ll wear it with a nude-colored half-slip underneath.

Anyone else sewing this summer?

The Things I Carry

The fabulous Terri at RAGS against the MACHINE did a recent post on a few of her bags and the contents of one of them. Her post inspired me and I thought I’d share what was inside my bag the other day for a quick trip to Macy’s in downtown Brooklyn. I am pretty finicky about what comes with me on a shopping trip, especially so when I have a child in tow, which that day was my 8 year-old son.

Anyone who’s been reading my blog for awhile must know how horribly addicted I am to what I consider the holy trinity of handbags—Hermès, Chanel, and Louis Vuitton, but I also like simple bags made, as this one was, by a talented and lovely friend. She made the wallet too, at the top, next to the bag.


Contents:

-Wallet

-Goldfish for my son. When you are on the subway anything can happen, including the train stopping for no apparent reason for a long time, so I am a big believer in bringing snacks for kids.

-Metrocard holder, featuring a vintage 1958 subway poster promoting taking the BMT (Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit) to Coney Island.

-Phone; Pilot Precise V5 Rolling Ball pen in Extra Fine, the best pen ever made, I swear.

-Chanel Rouge Coco Shine in Bel-Ami. Eureka, I finally found a lipstick I love, it only took 20 years.

-Keys, featuring my reward cards from CVS, Rite-Aid, and C-Town, a grocery store.

-Tissue

Do you take the kitchen sink around with you in your bag or are you super pared down about what you carry, like me?

Windowpane & Box Pleats at Prada

These windows, from the Prada store at Broadway and Prince Street in SoHo, feature looks from the Fall 2011 collection. I really can’t think about fall right now, especially when it’s 90 degrees outside, but the boldness of the colors here are so striking and inspirational. I especially love the dresses with the structured bodices, dropped waists, and box-pleated skirts. I could imagine myself wearing the blue one. I’d love to see how textile design comes in to play for Miuccia when she’s designing a collection.





Two-toned knee socks and neutral bags.

I’d take either bag (I am partial to the two-toned one, lower right), but it’s a pass on the shaggy hat.

Shoes you could actually walk in.

Yes, please, to the blue!

The Other Royal Wedding

A gorgeous Armani dress on the newly-minted Her Serene Highness Princess Charlene of Monaco. AP Photo.

Grace Kelly’s son Prince Albert II married former Olympic swimmer Charlene Wittstock yesterday in Monaco. The bride wore Armani and looked quite nice but I am especially crazy for the dresses and hats on the bridesmaids. Aren’t they adorable—the girls and their outfits?

Wonderful dresses on the little bridesmaids, accessorized to perfection!

Met Price Increase

Alexander McQueen (British, 1969-2010)
Ensemble, The Girl Who Lived in the Tree, autumn/winter 2008-9
Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photograph © Sølve Sundsbø/Art + Commerce

For any of you lovelies with plans to visit The Metropolitan Museum of Art in the future, be advised that yesterday there was an increase in the recommended price of admission to $25 for adults, $17 for seniors, and $12 for students. It had been $20, $15, and $10, respectively. It is the first price increase in 5 years. Children under 12 are admitted for free and there are never additional fees to see any of the special exhibitions the Met is showing, such as Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.

The museum will be open July 4, 2011, from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., as one of the Met Holiday Mondays.

Have a great holiday weekend!

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue (at 82nd Street)
New York NY 10028
212-535-7710
www.metmuseum.org