N. needed to create looks for the many appearances she has coming up - some TV, talks, meetings. The guidlines were simple:
- clean, strong lines
- a bit edgy, to mirror her personal style
- feminine but not frilly
- every outfit needed to have a punctuation by way of an orange element.
SaksFifth was geographically desirable.
All in all, I think it was a successful hunt. Here's what we've come up with:
Look 1:
3.1 Philip Lim - a complete look that can be separated into a top and a skirt, basic black but with a point of visual interest thanks to the perforation and the strong shoulder line:
Earrings:
I would suggest pairing with orange shoes to amp things up.
Look 2:
Top 3.1 Philiip Lim:
Skirt: DVF:
Shoes, Sophia Webster - notice the orange line!:
Necklace:
Look 3:
Top, Rebecca Taylor:
Rag & Bone Jumpsuit:
Same shoes as above. Total hotness. Pair with a black blazer and you have smooth professionalism with a creative twist. And that is what all these looks are about.
Orange Necklaces - a perfectly punchy punctuation mark of pungent color, not too much but just enough to remind you that it is spring, and that somewhere, if not in Boston, orange trees are blossoming. Because orange is:
I love Alexis Bittar's stuff, and this is no exception:
----- DO NOT READ if you don’t want to know what happens ------
Finished watching season 2
yesterday. The finale was the best episode of the season after the stunningly surprising
season opener, but lest this sentence fools you, let me assure you that
neither I nor the husband liked season 2.
How come, you may ask, given the
awesome actors and the established greatness of season 1? They lost me, at
least, at hello. When Frank (FU as he is
known by his cufflinks) shoves Zoe under the train, barely disguised in clothes
that seem borrowed from the set of the original “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,”
his character, I would suggest to you, meine Damen, jumps the shark. It
simply makes no sense within the carefully crafted realism of the first season
to have a wanna-be president commit murder by his own hand. That’s what he has lackeys
for. From that point on most of the
season spun into caricature, with all the characters, central as well as peripheral,
acting beyond reason and beyond pre-established conventions.
"House of Cards" was a show where suspension of disbelief
needed to be calibrated carefully, so as not to lose tethering to reality. It
was not, manifestly, “Scandal,” with its deliberately campy, daytime drama take
on the White House. No, “House of Cards”, from its muted palette opening shots,
advertised itself as a better framed reality. That mandate, if you ask me, was
shattered in the very first episode of season 2, not to be regained.
If Frank showed little sympathetic
humanity in Season One, all traces of it were leached out of him in this
season. But the biggest change was in the depiction of Claire. Season One
positioned her as complex and ambivalent, a woman whose armor-like stunning
outfits sometimes gave a glimpse of the vulnerability beneath. Season Two
Claire was never vulnerable, not even when she confessed to rape and abortion –
a confession that was all cold political calculation. Even her wardrobe
suffered, and most of her clothes this season were dull and forgettable. In her
stead it was Jackie Sharp’s character that played her old role, a
personification of the uneasy relationship women often have with naked ambition. Jackie
even wore the same dresses as Claire did in Season One, underscoring the changing
of the guard.
Claire, on the other hand, became a
caricaturistic Lady Macbeth. When, in the last episode, she cried over the
breakdown of her bill, the woman she enlisted to help with it, and the loss of
her earlier self the tears looked forced, fake, fleeting. There was one nice touch, though – as she
hauled her suitcase up the stairs we saw the red soles of her Louboutins – a reminder
of the blood she stepped in, like the imaginary blood on Lady Macbeth’s hands. Closing
that arc, during the swearing in, Claire covered her blood stained hands with
gloves (in a look reminiscent of Michelle Obama's latest inauguration outfit, where she wore oxblood gloves).
The most unnecessary story in this
season was that of Rachel, the former hooker, and Doug Stamper, Frank’s chief
of staff. Why did we need so much viewing time spent on a trite and tired pulpy
motif? We should have gotten more of Jackie and Remy whose relationship
encapsulated the dangers of ambition and power much more potently (and by
hotter actors).
Ultimately, the question that needs
to be asked is this: What was the second season of “House of Cards” all about and how
did it reflect present day American reality? The husband suggested that
insomuch as television, at its best or worst, is a wish fulfillment, a mirror
held up to the present, then “House of Cards” tells us that we have lost all
faith in government. A man who was never elected to be either Vice President OR
President moves from becoming, over a short period of time, one and then the
other. His climb to the highest position in 'the free world' is littered with dead bodies, literal, not figurative. Is
this how we see the presidency? Was this show, the husband asked, written by a
Republican? J
So, okay, every now and then even Miley Cyrus (wash hands and eyes ladies!) can wear something great. There was this:
The dress was a vintage Gaultier, which was amazing enuff, but there was also that awesome Chanel choker, proving that Kaiser Karl still got it:
As a kid who grew up - sartorially - in the late 80s and early 90s, I've never been able to get over big costume jewelry and especially collar necklaces. In an old cigar box (itself a relic from a time long gone) I still have among my other youthful treasures a brass ring collar with a cross. Oyi wey! NK, what would your ma in law say to that??
So here is a 'version' of the banging (given Miley's presence in this post, this work seemed appropriate) Chanel, and at $34 it is perfectly affordable! Me want.
And for your Nostalgic Friday enjoyment - George Michael at his heyday and the original supermodel squad:
Speaking physically, as I am prone to, Jennifer Connelly hit
the genetic jackpot: face, eyes, nose, legs, hips, height –name them she got ‘em
good. It is all the more dumbfounding therefore to find a specimen of her
caliber manage to look so wrong.
Connelly is doing the pressers and premieres for Noah, Darren Aronofsky’s ecologically millennial take
on the Biblical story. Given my abhorrence of millennial narratives as such (ecological
even more so) and the fact that I think Aronofsky is a self-important creep
with pathetically clichéd theories about art and life, I have no desire to see
his latest creation. Dark Swan, that comedy of a tragedy, was more than
enough. But I enjoy seeing major actors get dressed up and being forced to
smile for publicity. It evens out the playfield of life, if only a bit. But oh,
perhaps the directors obsession with S&M has rubbed off on one of his stars
– otherwise I have no good explanation for this:
.
A McQueen gown so over-thought that it should have been tarred and feathered
Or this Chanel:
A shower curatain designed by M.C. Escher?
Or this Vuitton:
The top is like a bad after burp, a profoundly wrong take on
Katherine Hepburn’s dress from Philadelphia Story:
Or this Givenchy:
That looks like something the girl child put together when she was attempting to bedazzle her doll, once when she was much younger than today..
Even the looks where Connelly did not look like a hot mess
were hardly well put together. Take this for example:
A standard dress, but kinda too heavy for the season, wrong
shoe, boring accessories.
Or this:
An interesting dress, the color works on her – but oh, what
is that shoe doing there??? And the hair…
Or, finally this:
The top and skirt are
actually kind of fantastic on her, although again wrong for the spring season. BUT THE BOOTIES??? For the love of god,
people why are there red booties here? Why? Even on a prefect specimen like
Connelly booties with a skirt is a tricky look at best, wrong wrong wrong at
worst. And this – say it with me in Aretha Franklin’s voice – is W.R.O.N.G.
A question ladies- who is to blame for such travesties? The
star herself who wrongly thinks she is capable of a stylist’s work or her
stylist?
Quick research on the internet lists Lesie Fremar, arguably
Hollywood’s most powerful stylist as the one working with Connelly.
It’s a weakness. Almost an addiction - I’m helpless to resist an item of clothing
made using that simple combination. There is a store in New York (La Garconne) that I am afraid to enter – most of what it
carries is black & white (more about the curatorial principle of that store
another time). I suppose I am lucky almost nothing there is within my reach.
Writing the ‘Wear to Work’ posts I came across a few of
these, most in a price point that can be labeled only as fantastical. This
post, then, is a form of wish fulfillment.
The first two are by Zero+Maria Cornejo. I’ve already mentioned Cornejo. LP – you will be happy to know she’s Chilean
by birth. And her work is amazing. Her style is structural yet with a bit of
slouch, minimalist yet punched up with blasts of vibrant color, edgy yet
somehow kind to women’s bodies. It is as if she thinks of lumps and
insecurities in her design process. The designer I would contrast to her - unfavorably - is Giogrio Armani – who by and large would like to pretend that women are
shaped like tall lanky boys, with no hips or boobs. But then her label her much smaller. Here check it out:
Japanese designers, so often minimalist with color, work with this combo as well. This is from Yohji Yamamoto’s Y’S line:
Narciso Rodriguez, the king of sleek and stunningly simple:
And finally the more high street brand 3.1. Philip Lim:
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