The Birkenstock Dilemma

Birkenstocks, ladies. Yea or Nay?

Here's the heart of the matter as far as I am concerned. Birkenstoks are now plotting world dominance. They have become a trend, you see. A trendy trend, that all kinds of celebs have started following, all kinds of major design houses started producing, and therefore all kind of peons started replicating.

Here are the designer iterations:

And some more, with FUR, from Celine:

None of this, by the by, is news. Celine's Birkenstocks are a year old. A year ago glossies and various fashion blogs started running stories with the excited titles like "BIRKENSTOCKS ARE BACK!?!. Then winter came and we forgot. But as soon as the thermometer started climbing the Birklenstock headlines (and, yes, the actual shoes) started coming out of the woodwork again. To wit:

Runways:

Celebs:

Of course the 90s were the last time Birkenstocks were cool. That's when the shot below was taken and the time I acquired my one and only pair (yes, I have one. I haven't worn them in years).

Iconic, sure, but not so much because of the footwear.

Why is this comfort-shoe an issue, ye may ask?

Precisely because the Bircklenstock IS a comfort shoe - and looks it. You can totally see it paired with hairy toes, hairy armpits, and a wafting scent of pachouli. Or  topping off a look of an all natural fiber tent dress, undyed hair, and too many advanced degrees, Cambridge styles. It is a shoe for people who believe that looking put together is some kind of a moral sin.  The Birkenstocks' home habitat is among the crunchy layers of society - hippie, not hip.

Any attempt to hippifie them needs to be attempted with extreme care. Only the Kate Mosses of this world can take a shoe so naturally ugly (that sole with its color and texture imitating dirt? Why?), so obviously and dreadfully COMFORTABLE (the horror!) over the divide and into something semi-stylish. All others are more likely to be brought down HARD by it, not the other way around.

Yesterday's  NYMag ran a mini-poll of 13 'taste makers' on the subject of the divisive Birkenstock. Most bleated like so many braindead sheep about the wonders of the trend. One, Leandra Medine, stood out.  Medine, who blogs at her influential Man Repeller site, offered thoughtful commentary, as she is want to do.

Here, ladies, check out her awesome answers:

Is there a summer trend you’d like to go away? I feel like Birkenstocks have become unusually quotidian. I’m trying not to use the word basic. How so? The problem when a piece like Birkenstocks becomes so trendy after being so “basic” (and they actually are basic, like, the fundamentals of someone’s wardrobe) [is that] they’re so easily co-opted, so when they start to be worn the wrong way, they start to be ruined for everyone. 

Is there a right way to wear them? Yeah, I think you need to wear them like you own a surfboard, with low-slung board shorts and a crop top, and some, like, reflective-lens sunglasses and messy hair, and look around and pretend like you don’t give a shit, or you actually you don’t give a shit.

I subscribe to every word. Stay away, ladies. If I catch one of you wearing these outside the allotted space of no-care (home/beach) I swear I will come after you.

Shut Up

Actors tend to think that their celebrity status allows, or even behooves, their speaking out of turn on issues they are ignorant about. Imagine having a multi million platform, a monster loudspeaker, given to someone utterly unqualified. Thus Jenny McCarthy felt the need to announce the grave danger of immunizations, her opinion based on terrible research and even worse understanding. Or Gwyneth Paltrow who thinks that water can be made 'bad' by being disparaged.

No, I'm not kidding. Here, read for yourselves:

No, Gwyneth Paltrow, That’s Not How Physical Reality Works

By Jesse Singal

Gwyneth Paltrow has an online newsletter, and in its latest edition she lays out some of her thoughts about the power of human consciousness. They are ... interesting.

To wit:

I am fascinated by the growing science behind the energy of consciousness and its effects on matter. I have long had Dr. Emoto's coffee table book on how negativity changes the structure of water, how the molecules behave differently depending on the words or music being expressed around it.

If like me, you are not Gwyneth Paltrow, you may be wondering who this Dr. Emoto guy is. His full name is Masaru Emoto, and he's garnered a fair amount of notoriety for books I won't be linking to with titles like The True Power of Water: Healing and Discovering Ourselves. In them, he recounts experiments "proving" that positive and negative emotions can affect nonliving physical substances.

As Carrie Poppy wrote a couple of months ago in Skeptical Inquirer:

During his studies, Emoto separated water into one hundred petri dishes and assigned each dish a fate: good or bad. The good water was blessed or praised for being so wonderful (“Oh look at you wonderful little water droplets! One day you shall be a water slide!” I imagine him saying). The bad water was scolded (“May you become that gross grey sludge that builds up under a Zamboni,” he maybe said).

Then he froze the water, and, lo and behold, the "good" water froze in a beautiful way, while the "bad" water adopted jagged, asymmetric features when viewed via microscope. He's conducted similar experiments yelling at rice (he really likes yelling at inanimate objects) and found that "bad" rice ended up becoming stankier.

Poppy tried to re-create a version of the rice experiment, and if you want the full debunking of this stuff, check out her article. The shorter version is: nope. None of this is real. But that hasn't stopped a horde of credulous admirers from hoisting Emoto's work aloft as proof of the power of positive thinking and human consciousness and [fill in the blank].

It's easy to see why people want Emoto's results to be real. Most folks, myself included, don't really know much about the physical details of how ice freezes or rice ferments. These are just mysterious things that happen when we're not looking. Our emotions, on the other hand, are all too familiar — we're swamped with them just about every moment of every day, and one of the earliest experiences we have is the frustration of wanting something and not getting it. So a belief system in which we can affect physical reality through mere emotionally charged thought has a natural appeal to it. Throw in science-y sounding words — note how Paltrow's short blurb is packed with "structure" this and "molecules" that — and it's no wonder that people who don't really get how these physical processes work in real life will all too easily embrace claptrap.

In many cases, this is harmless, and actually touches on some real-life science suggesting that our levels of optimism can have significant effects on our well-being. The trouble comes when hucksters like The Secret author Rhonda Byrne pop up and start telling people that they can basically have whatever they want simply by thinking positively or visualizing it. There's a lot of this pseudoscience-infused self-help nonsense, especially in the U.S.; people end up wasting huge amounts of money on it (and, in extreme cases, doing things like rejecting clinically effective medical treatment in favor of thinking away their serious illness). So Paltrow, by encouraging belief in stuff that has no scientific basis, is making it easier for the next Byrne to take people for a ride. 

Council of Fashion Designers Award Ceremony - Or: What does the fashion crowd wear?

This is supposedly an event by fashion designers for fashion designers - unlike all other award events where celebs parade designer wear unrelated to a fashion-y cause. It would stand to reason, therefore, that this kind of event would be the perfect stage for the ultimately innovative and cutting edge fashion, the most interesting of the stuff out there.

You know what's weird? It was not.

Starved for some dress porn after the spate of recent disappointments on sartorial eye-candy I came to the coverage eager and hopeful. NO SUCH LUCK. I am grumpy and grouchy, and it is decidedly not my fault.

Look for yourselves, ladies - here's the rundown!

Lets begin with the image every news outlet blasted: Rhianna in a custom 'dress' by someone I never heard of:

 It is not a dress. No skill was involved in making it. I'm not even talking about the nudity factor, which is beside the point.

Marion Cotillard, again in her contractual Dior, continued her recent reign of horror, in a terrible dress and slightly less terrible but not good mullet shoes:

Michael Kors with Blake Lively in his dress - the most BOOOORING, mall dress ever, and horrible shoes:

This woman is the winner of the accessories award, which might explain why her skirt is the wrong length for her and her outfit generally derivative..:

Rosie Assoulin with Keri Russel wearing her dress, a hot mess of a thing with aspiration of Seargent like grandeur:

What in the name of Gd is this swamp monster of a J Mendel dress?:

Or this one, even worse than its predecessor?:

Prabal Gurung with a model in his dress that offered nothing new other than a view of some less traveled parts of her anatomy:

The mostly gown-y bride-y designer Monique Lhullier and a model in her utterly predictable  design:

Chics in Rag&Bone, somehow found two dresses I DO NOT want by them:

Tory Burch providing an illustration as to why I hate her eponymous label:

Lu[ita Nyongo in a socially aware but no less terrible outfit:

Imagine being invited to this shindig, having the possibility and ability to wear awesome clothes, and showing up like this (don't care who):

Or this escapee from the 90s:

Or this model type:

Good among the bad:
Olivier Theyskens from Theory with Leigh Lezark in his dress, that predictably enough I covet:

Zac Posen continues to do well in a good cut and better color:

Linda Fargo, the style director for Bergdorf Goodman:

Iman, who often wears whatever she feels like, looking stunning:

Danielle Steel's daughter in a nice, if not particularly interesting dress by Aluzarra:

A Vogue-tte, Jessica Joffe, in a cool maxi:

And finally, for pure gossip value:
Vera Wang is scaring me - the shape of anorexia is not attractive:

These two boys are the sons of 90s supermodel Stephanie Seymour (yes, of Axl Rose fame) - proving that sometimes genes travel well:

And another kid-of, Anna Wintour's daughter, proving she is always a very uninteresting dresser:

Flattering Head Shots

I don't know how pervasive this problem is - but when I am photographed my face turns into mush. I do know, however, that I am not alone. JV, who in person looks very much like Juliette Binoche, claims her face transmogrifies into a crocodile when captured on film. This explains, partially, my partiality to having my sunglasses on at all times when a camera is near - sunglasses somehow hide the lack of photographic definition that is my face, making it palatable (at least somewhat).

So what gives?

The following instruction manual (and the clip in it even more so) has been a revelation. All the things that happen in my face are analyzed by a professional photographer and - which is crucial - are given workable solutions. I haven't had a chance to try them yet - but as soon as I find myself confronted with a lens I am planning on thrusting my forehead forward and smizing. If I look constipated, you will know why.

Here goes:

ALWAYS BE SQUINCHING AND OTHER TRICKS FROM A PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER FOR TAKING FLATTERING PICTURES

BY DAN SOLOMON

• 
  

People pose for more pictures than ever these days, at their own and others' hands. And since we basically live our entire lives online, those pictures are more important than ever--now, any old romantic prospect or potential empoyer who knows your name can find a photo of you to go with it.

With that in mind, we asked portrait photographer Peter Hurley, whose recent video on “squinching" (squinching: narrowing your eyes slightly to create a confident look. No, not too much--that's squinting. Watch the video for more), went viral recently, to share with us tricks for how to look your very best when posing in front of the camera--even if you’re also the photographer.

CONSIDER THE WHOLE FACE

I've got a slew of tips, but squinching and emphasizing the jawline are the first two I start with. The jawline is number one (see video below). The squinching is cool, believe me--if people can get people to squinch in front of their cameras, or if they're doing selfies, they're going to look way more confident and cooler--but if their jawline's not out, then it doesn't give them any definition around their face, so it doesn't really help them out anyway. So you have to get the jawline first, then throw in the squinch.

You can only move your mouth, eyes, and eyebrows. Those are the three things you can move on your face. I like to engage eyebrows. That's another thing that I'll work on down the road. But you don't necessarily have to. I've had clients say, "I can move my nostrils." I don't think it's really going to help your picture-taking ability--you're not going to get any more photogenic by flaring your left nostril slightly. Other than that it's really subtleties. It's really the subtle things that make the difference.

SERIOUSLY DO SAY “CHEESE”

Another tip is always adding a slight smile. If you don't have it--if you don't have a slight smile it doesn't warm (the photo) up and you can appear really standoffish and mean. It's not appealing. If you add that simple tiny little smile to it it really helps. I'm actually thinking about doing some sort of selfie video tutorial that incorporates these ideas.

It's kind of like mental gymnastics. You've got to layer them all in. You've got to get the eyes going, the little smile, the forehead out. There's a lot to think about. When I'm coaching people I stay on top of them and it's funny. You really have to be aware that you're going for this, or in a split second it's gone. We don't want to look blank. People are way more engaging when they look like something's going on. When you squinch it makes (you) look more appealing and interested.

YOU ACTUALLY DO HAVE A “GOOD SIDE,” SO FIND IT

People always talk about their side: Which side is their good side, so I was going to do a video explaining how to find your good side and how important it is to be on your good side and that sort of thing.

We're all human. When we're born things don't necessarily come out symmetrical. It's amazing--I feel that the human face is the most incredible thing to look at, let alone photograph. Each one's so unique. I have identical twins and they look completely different to me. To other people, they can't tell them apart. To me, it's like they're totally different. When I walk the streets of New York and I have all these different faces going by me, it's just amazing, because that's what I do every day. I'm photographing people's faces and the intricacies of the human face are pretty amazing.

To find your good side, you either get in front of a photographer who knows what they're doing to suss it out with you, or you have to wait till my video comes out where I go through all that. [laughs] It's subjective, really. I've had people in here who I like one side of their face, and they're like, "No, it's definitely this side." And I'm like, I think they're wrong. Sometimes it's minor, but it can be major. When it's major, it's just so intriguing to see. I don't think being symmetrical makes you more attractive. I think one side of the face being more attractive than the other because it's not symmetrical is a little different. Most of these tests that are out there are all looking at people straight-on, and I don't agree with that because I shoot people on every angle. You need to shoot the person on both sides of their face to see it, not just straight-on. Straight-on is only giving you one perspective.

SQUINCHING = CONFIDENCE

I've been coaching photographers on squinching for almost three years now. I was with one who is my associate who I work with all the time. And we were talking about this and he said, "You just let the cat out of the bag" and I said, "I know." It's my thing, and I've been working on it for 10 years, so for me it's a teaching process, but I’m also feeling people out. I'm very intuitive in the way that I work and knowing how far to push people, or who to push and who not to push. I'm working with a prominent psychologist in the industry and we've teamed up to do something that we're calling “Headshot.” It's a leadership therapy-type move where I work with leaders in companies and kind of semi-profile them for their self-image for personal branding and that kind of thing, and it's all based on this intuitive process that I have going on when people are in front of camera. It's pretty interesting stuff.

Peter Hurley

My job has always been to up people's game. When I started, most of my work--and I still continue to shoot a lot of actors for their headshots--I became known as the kind of go-to guy in the industry. The reason being, I made people squinch. So casting directors want a confident actor in front of them. Most actors, if they're good at their craft, are confident, but some are trying to get their foot in the door of this industry. Maybe they're just not ready, but they walk in my door and they look in the camera and they look scared out of their mind. It just doesn't fly for me. You can't put that out there. Not only can you not to put it out there, if I photograph you, my name's on it, so I'm not letting that go.

I've created a false sense of confidence for these people through the squinch, through coaching them and building them up so the confidence is there. Whether they carry that on into the audition is another thing, but that's not my job. My job is just to get them that audition, so I do this with my clients and then let them go. But I know what I'm creating. I just did it this morning. The guy walked in. I have people in here every day, everybody's got a different self-image, and when you are in front of the camera it's probably the most vulnerable place you can be. And then all of a sudden it's a career. I do it with CEOs. If someone is a CEO of a company, I'm going to think that they know what they're doing. They've got their act together, they're confident in their job. It doesn't equate to when they get in front of a camera. All of a sudden you're in front of a camera. It's a totally different element and they'll lose that sense of themselves, or they just might be self-conscious or self-aware, something like that, and their confidence goes away. So it just doesn't match their personality or what they convey on a day-to-day basis, so I have to bring it back in and teach them how to do that. Since confidence always come from the eyes it's always going to start with the squinch.

TAKING A SELFIE IS A SPECIAL OPPORTUNITY

I think there's a ton of things you can do to take better, more interesting pictures, but they all boil down to one thing: What are you doing with your face? And what's your thought process? Most of the time, we can't see our face--but if you're doing a selfie with the camera turned toward you, you can look right at it and adjust, which makes it really like looking in a mirror and adjusting. That's pretty easy and most people can do that, so definitely take advantage of that. But if you're taking a picture, and somebody's taking a picture of you, you have no idea what your face looks like. Nine times out of 10 what you think it looks like is not what it looks like at all. You're just guessing. Think about your face right now. I'm thinking about my face. I have no mirror. I have no idea what my face looks like. I hope I'm okay. Your brain has it under control for you. You don't walk around thinking about your face all day long, until that moment the camera goes up, and then you have to think about it. Then you have to take control of something you never control, and when you're not in control of it, it looks fine and then you control it and it gets weird. That's why a lot of people--and I'm sure you've had this if you've taken a picture of somebody--they look at it and they go, "That doesn't look like me." They say that all the time. There's a couple reasons for that. The answer to that when people say it to me, is, "Well, there wasn't anybody else in there." The camera doesn't lie. I'm sorry. You were the one the photo was taken of. But most of that is people have a mirror relationship with themselves. We look in mirrors a lot more than we look into cameras.

A More Flattering Portrait

The Ultimate - The White Dress

The White Dress - the most platonically perfect sartorial embodiment of summer.
Summer in a garment, if you will.
Nothing signals the arrival of warm nights as much as a white dress - a day dress, not a cocktail one.

Granted, I've been advocating sticking to the white for winter as well, but then we would be talking weightier fabrics, more structured cuts, and generally a whole different animal.

I like mine not too strappy, a little severe to offset the purity of the white. A little swingy. Crisp.

While in London JV and I spotted the Zara iteration in a window, and it is fantastic for the price point, but almost any store has a great version of a summer dress. So much so that I am not even sure I am necessarily lusting after the higher end...



DREAM:

Maison Rabih:

Rick Owens:

Maiyet:

WISH:

JCrew:

Trademark:

Club Monaco:

WANT:

Mango:

Zara:

ASOS:

Surfing the Cruise Collections: Louis Vuitton

The collection was presented in Monaco concurrently with the Cannes Film Festival. The inspiration, however, was not so much movie stars as star fish. Nicolas Ghesquière, in his second collection for the label since Marc Jacobs' departure, focused on marine life as the main source for his imagery.
Like so:

What do I think about it, ye ask?

Well, by now some of you may know that I prefer abstraction to figuration where patterns are concerned (my views on painting are diametrically opposed most of the time). In fact, I would amend that statement to say the following: patterns are most successful when either hyper-naturalistic (recent spate of silk-screened photographs, such as Mary Katrantzou's, come to mind) or far, far removed from their natural starting point. Everything in the middle ends up looking a bit clumsy and try-hardy in my view. Like this Vuitton. The cuts of the clothes are not interesting, structure is trite, color combinations garish. While I understand the desire to make a splash at the runway presentation much of Vuitton's line struck me as plain awkward or deliberately ugly.

Like so:

Even when perfectly acceptable, like this scuba dress below, the effect lacked in any newness, since scuba dresses have been up and down runways for the past two years. Hell, even high-street stores have had scuba stuff by now.

Or, when trying to mix and mis-match patterns a similar clumsiness struck:

Mind you, I seem to be in a minority - critic reviews were on the raving side. Where the critics saw exuberant fun, however, I see an inability to edit.

If you want to see the show live, here is a link: http://www.style.com/stylefile/2014/05/louis-vuittons-cruise-15-show-live-monaco/

A Tiny Post Script to Layering

A street style shot to compliment my post from a couple of weeks ago about layering contrasting patterns:

Damn, that's a great look.