Off, Kilter!

I can’t say I didn’t see it coming.

Remember last winter/early spring, when L.A.M.B. showed a boy’s crested shrunken blazer? Now the NYT has confirmed that prep school chic is the rage for fall among the teen/twenty-something set and places the blame on Gossip Girl.

I’ve never watched GG, but I confess, that during my stressful grad school years, while not parsing the hypertheoretical sentences of Donna Haraway or Homi Bhabha, I watched Beverly Hills, 90201. And I loved it, with the possible exception of when Brenda was accepted into drama school in London, which truly tested my suspension of disbelief. (I wonder whether she’ll return to the new 90210 as an accomplished thespian of the English stage? Dame Brenda Walsh.)

I don’t recall BH 90210 setting any bars for fashion (except perhaps when Kelly turned up with short hair in a season opener), but apparently GG is a virtual department store; or, rather, an exclusive boutique.

According to the NYT, designers are even looking to the show for inspiration, and an accompanying photo shows a model on the catwalk wearing a teeny kilt with a slouchy sweater. (Hit me baby, one more time?)

I am not , I believe and hope, the target audience of this fashion trend. For those of us in our 30s and 40s would probably do best to stay away from short plaid kilts. Especially those of us who attended prep/boarding schools and have already had our GG look. At my boarding school we wore navy pleated jumpers, red blazers, white shirts and our school necktie. I don’t want to revisit that two decades later.

I can, however, see my peers looking chic in a plaid pencil skirt, a la McQueen or Westwood with a smart cashmere T and some wildly eccentric shoes to funk up the look. I won’t be rushing out to buy a kilt and jacket.

And so, inspired by the immortal final lines of Anthony Lane’s review of Braveheart, what else is there to say but “Faster, Pussycat! No kilt! No kilt!”


Lane , my favorite film reviewer, wrote in the New Yorker: “Faster, Pussycat! Kilt! Kilt!”

One of These Models Is Not Like The Others

Did you grow up watching Sesame Street? Remember the singing game “One of these things is not like the other,” which invited you to pick out the thing “that just doesn’t belong”?

Let’s play this game with Estée Lauder’s advertising campaign for Sensuous, the company’s new perfume.



My pick for the model “that just doesn’t belong” is Gwyneth. While Estée Lauder has typically picked women with expressive faces (though I prefer Liz Hurley in her earliest shots for Beautiful, before she lost twenty pounds and plucked her eyebrows), the company is unfortunately off the mark with Ms. Paltrow.

Gwyneth’s beauty is in movement, not stills, as I think is evident from every single photo campaign she’s done for Lauder’s Pleasures. In both of the Pleasures photos below she looks strained, waxy, and, for a Lauder face, exceptionally Photoshopped. In fact, I’d say that these images are all about her hair.

While the Sensuous photos are more flattering, they still reveal a certain discomfort. Gwyneth is not like the others for a reason: she’s an actress first, model as afterthought. Interestingly, she’s the only model who’s NOT speaking in Bloomingdale’s “Sensuous video lounge” on the NYT web site, though there is a video of her on the Lauder site.

And speaking of models that just don’t belong, we might also consider the quadruple punch of the four Sensuous spokesmodels securing prime real estate (40 editorial pages!) in July’s Harper’s Bazaar. Indeed, fashion and commerce have a necessary relationship; fashion for fashion’s sake doesn’t sell ad pages, but if I had my druthers, I’d do my best to keep separate advertising and editorial, if only to maintain the illusion that magazines have integrity.

In my perfect world, then, I’d have models representing perfume, and magazines that didn’t so blatantly cow to their major advertiser. And let’s leave that singing game for Ernie and Bert.

Sensuous images by Craig McDean, via The Fashion Spot.

Whether the Leather?

It’s prime bathing suit weather, but last night I was on a search for leather. I haven’t had a proper leather jacket for some years now and I think the time is right to add one to my closet.

My search came to an abrupt halt when I discovered this coat by Alberta Ferretti at Bergdorf Goodman.

I love its vaguely medieval studded fringe on the bottom, its collar, its color. Its cost, not so much.

But I think this would be perfect for wearing over a dress and heels in the fall.

The leather jacket quest, however, will continue.

Butterflies Are Bea

My week in Canada has given me a taste again for all things royal.

At the theatre my girls and I sat in the row where Queen Elizabeth once sat (red carpet, more leg room) and we ate ice cream outside Province House where I once took Polaroids of a new Princess Diana on tour with her husband. (Yes, I still have them; perhaps they'll be a fall post.)

So I devoured the news that Princess Anne’s son Peter married a Canadian, Autumn Kelly, with relatives from Ontario and New Brunswick.

I particularly liked the fact that Princess Beatrice took a chance and wore McQueen to the wedding. Above is a shot from Zink magazine; below is Beatrice from PopSugarUK.

And I looove her hat. Although it may match the dress, it’s got enough personality that it’s not matchy-matchy.

The Science of Glamour

Idealist that I am, I always thought that the allure of eccentric glamour was that it couldn’t—or shouldn’t—be codified.

After all, it’s eccentric style; it isn’t supposed to follow a chart or be reproduced.

But in today’s New York Times, Simon Doonan (whose creativity for Barneys I adore) held forth on house gifts for a cadre of eccentric glamour girls—the socialite, the gypsy, the existentialist—all of whom appear in his new book Eccentric Glamour: Creating an Insanely Fabulous New You.

I’m going to dash out this weekend to leaf through a copy, because I hope that the book is a treasure trove of visual delights—much like Doonan’s Barneys vitrines.

But here’s my concern: eccentric glamour is individual, and while I’m thrilled to see a visual representation of glamourous eccentrics (not exactly the same thing, I know), I resist the scientific approach. And this excerpt offers more classification than I want from my definition of eccentric glamour. In fact, I wouldn’t even dare to define it, because it would then lose its allure for me.

So I’m doubly steamed: first Steampunk hits the NYT Styles, now a guide to eccentric glamour. What’s next to enter the mainstream?

A Postmodern Daisy

It really, truly, is too hot to wear a coat these days, but this white confection from Aquascutum somehow seems just right.

I love the side buckles, the embroidery, and the face-framing collar. Think a postmodern Daisy Buchanan floating about New York City.

Simply Red; or, In Character

I’ve returned to the States from a glorious week on Prince Edward Island, my birthplace, and am full of blue, green, and red, the colors, respectively, of our salt water, our fields, and our uncommonly pretty soil.

I loved rediscovering all the different reds—the deep coppery reds in farmland furrows, the dusty pink reds that wouldn’t be out of place on a powder puff.

When I wasn’t admiring the landscape or presenting at my conference, I was looking at another red: the stage curtain at the Charlottetown Festival, home to the musical production of Anne of Green Gables since 1965. I took my two daughters to see it and loved to hear them laugh at Anne’s irrepressible philosophizing and mishaps (green hair, anyone?).

We also divided up the family (the three-year-old lad is too young for evening theatre) and saw a musical revue called “The British Invasion: America Strikes Back,” in which dancers and singers got to strut their stuff, belting out numbers by Dusty Springfield and Heart, hoofing to Cher’s “Believe.” Terry Hatty, the sixty-something year-old former singer from the Guess Who was a lead, and he gave all the youngsters a clinic in performance—from Garfunkel to Bowie to Keef Richards.

But what I especially loved at the theatre were the shoes—character shoes in particular. Although I didn’t grow up in dance, I literally grew up at this Festival, which I attended every year from age four onward, where I worked front-of-house one summer, and where I took dance and voice lessons from the cast.

At the end of the season, the cast always puts on a benefit show and I sang and danced in it, wearing some sort of spangly flapper dress. I also wore character shoes from the company’s wardrobe and was thrilled to find Lenore Zann’s name inside them (Canadians: anyone remember/know her?).

The Festival brought back my dreams of being a triple threat and though I may run the risk of channeling Zelda Fitzgerald, who rather clunkily took up ballet in her thirties in hope of being a dancer, I may see whether I can’t find a local musical theatre gig when I return to my current home state.

After all, those character shoes are just magic.