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Tag Archives: fashion

Dressed In Holiday Cheer

01 Dec

It’s the most wonderful time of the year.   There is so much festivity that only the Grinchiest of us can not find something to enjoy.  Sidewalks scented with cut evergreens, lobbies festooned in live floral and greenery, twinkling lights and flickering candles; it’s simply mood altering.  It is no wonder that holiday parties abound.  Whether your invitation has arrived on embossed linen stationery or as an email blast, the result is the same: what to wear?!

Special occasion dressing is at its core, creating the very best version of one’s self.  Holiday dressing is no different, but comes with a few (easily avoided) pitfalls.

Sparkle, shine, shimmer are the order of the day.  Fear not, a strategic approach will prevent you from looking like a female impersonator on a farewell tour.  If you are heading out to purchase a new tog, tread slowly and lightly.  There are party clothes being sold which are designed for a very small segment of the population.  It is an unfortunate fact of life, that on most of us a gold lame smoking jacket only conjures Liberace.  Head to toe glitz should be avoided at all cost.  With glam, a little goes a long way.  If you choose to bedazzle your torso, keep shoes, jewelry and bags in matte.  A sparkly top with a black pant or jeans can be paired with a more glitzy shoe.  Be careful with your jewelry however, or that sparkly top may start to resemble a tree topper.  It’s all about balance.  Just as you wouldn’t show excessive leg with decolletage, your sparkly mustn’t upstage your shine.  Be equally judicious with nail lacquer and hair accessories.  It is easy to get caught up in the occasion with results similar to a gingerbread house in the hands of a kid with a frosting bag.  All admonition aside, have fun.  This is a great time to take a small step outside one’s comfort zone.  Is there a jewel tone silk blouse in the back of your closet, yearning to breathe free?  Have you been ogling a pair of tuxedo pants?  Is there a shoe so impractical it should be outlawed?  Have at it!  “Tis the season.

For business parties (keeping in mind that “business” always trumps “party”) a workplace outfit can be easily festooned.  Slip on a sparkly or shiny pair of heels, perhaps a patent leather pump in a kicky color.  Stash your necessities in a pretty impractical clutch.  Choose one glitzy jewel (sparkly earrings OR necklace OR pin.)  Holiday parties are a great time to justify those vintage brooches.  You are ready for the office party where you will drink sparingly and be your most charming self, and do nothing to cause regret or employment uncertainty.

Because one should never assume, the following are ironclad Don’ts: Thou shall never adorn oneself with a theme sweater as it saddens Santa.  Thou shall never don a chapeau similar to that of Santa’s for that is an abomination.  Thou shall not reference reindeer in any manner; including the wearing of antlers.  I can shoot straight, if I don’t have to shoot too far.*   Happy Holidays!

* – Scarlett O’Hara

 
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Posted by on December 1, 2011 in Holiday, Style

 

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Sugar & Spice and Dressing for Vice

18 Nov

Mama Rose, Gypsy, Baby June

I have long ago accepted that clothing retailers consider children a very profitable market.  No longer are unwilling children dragged to a department store, up to the poorly lit, dismal fourth floor and forced into practical school clothes and durable outerwear.  Entire chain stores and boutiques are now available to cultivate pint-sized consumers.  One need only flip through an advert or catalog, or walk past a store, to discover that utility is the furthest thing from the “designers” mind.  Much of the apparel is trendy and costumey, not intended to last to the next season, let alone to the next sibling.

Yesterday, I walked through the GapKids section (remember when the Gap sold Lee and Levis?) due to a remodeling of the adult section (remember when “adult section” meant something else?)   I was somewhat prepared for the barrage of pink.  Only somewhat.  If I was a child today, I would be cross-dressing.  I have never enjoyed pink.  My mother tacked a pink bow on my head once (for a family function) and even the black & white photos from that day, prove I am not a “pink” gal.  Like most women in their early twenties, I made some mistakes.  One was in the form of a Perry Ellis sample sale double breasted silk coat dress, in pink.  In my pathetic defense, it was beautiful fabric, very well made and cost $10.  None of that prevented a co-worker from nicknaming me “Pepto.”  Pink has done me wrong.

But enough about me.  What I was not prepared for in the mass-marketing mecca for children’s hard earned money, was the Vegas/Burlesque line of apparel available for sizes 3-14.  One-third of the girl’s section was reserved for the merchandising of black sequined clothes.  There were little black sequined tops, dresses, skirts, shrugs (shrugs?!) and of course shoes.  I had to do a double-take AND pick up and investigate what appeared to be a pair of black sequined shorts in size 4.  I’m not sure I even understand sequined shorts for grown women.  To top it all off there were lovely fake fur white jackets, (a la Taxi Driver) for the little girl left out in the cold.  I suppose it goes without mention that there were no equivalent tarty clothes for the little boys.  Not a single Huggy Bear outfit in sight.  We all know that little girls are becoming more sexualized and objectified every day.  What I hadn’t entirely grasped, was that they are doing so at the hands of the adults who clothe them

 
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Posted by on November 18, 2011 in Childhood, Style

 

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Hello Gorgeous!

17 Oct

Rumor has it that October 19th is Love Your Body Day.  (Note: I would do some fact checking before assuming opposite side of the street parking has been suspended.)  While I’m not sure that schools and banks should close, I do applaud the occasion.  From what I read, see and hear (mostly by way of eavesdropping) this day is called for.  From tweens to seniors, there is a great deal of self war being waged.  We all have an off day, but there is something tragic about hating yourself every day.

I am a woman from a western culture, I am not impervious to the internalized merciless critic.  However, a couple of adult decades under my belt has pretty much muted that little voice.  Has my body gotten better with age?  I doubt it (if so, I could probably sell myself to science!)  To be utterly reductive, I think I’ve (finally) stopped comparing myself to avatars.

As soon as I was allowed, I became a devotee of ‘Teen magazine.  I poured over that magazine, not for fashion pointers, but for role models.  Like a Talmudic scholar, I wore those pages out trying to decipher the secrets.  Coming to adolescence with the zealot belief that life would be like an MGM musical, I desperately wanted to look the part.  ‘Teen magazine promised to be the most instructive.  I was self aware enough to know that Charlie’s Angels, and even Julie, the cruise director, were out of my reach.  But perhaps the fashion models, only a few years older than I, would hold the key.  The fifteen year old me, with a thin layer of baby fat, studied those photo-spreads like nobody’s business. I also, unfortunately, compared myself mercilessly to their perceived perfection.

I still find fashion magazines potentially instructive.  I now, however, understand the wonders of lighting, styling, airbrushing and photo-shopping.  (Hopefully, today’s young teens are much more media savvy than they used to be!)  All this is to say, that the first step to honoring “Love Your Body Day” is to stop comparing it to fiction.  The second step, is to stop comparing it to others.

“Others” being a version of your younger self, or the gal sitting next to you.  As far as the ravages of gravity and/or aging go, let me be the first to point out that you are never going to be as young as you are right now.  Don’t waste another moment bemoaning the fall of your bum.  Buy better pants if necessary.  (Truly, the virtue of good undergarments can not be stressed enough.)  And about that “perfect” gal sitting across from you?  She feels fat.

No one sees our perceived imperfections, they are far too interested in their own.  Whatever our shortcomings, we’re here aren’t we?  Isn’t that everything?  Life is too short to not treat everyday like a potential MGM musical.  Now as far as those off-days?  Change your inner critic’s voice to that of Irving Berlin’s: “Never saw you look quite so pretty before.*”

* Easter Parade

 
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Posted by on October 17, 2011 in Style, Well-Being

 

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Wait! But If You Act Now

07 Oct

There’s been some buzz recently about the “advent” of embedding advertising in entertainment.  Evidently, research indicates that people don’t like to watch commercials.  Crack research team, eh?  So embedding product placement seems to be the new radical solution to DVR/Tivo fast forwarding.  How in the world is this a new idea?

I still remembered my fevered distraction in watching the film Million Dollar Baby (2004.)  And no, not because of the hammering over the head obviousness of the failed attempt of melding two short stories, but by that damn soda machine.  I think it had its own stylist, or at least trailer.

While I can understand how placating it is to the client, product placement is just so counterproductive.  Not only am I not interested in purchasing the car being given its own role in a primetime television show, I can no longer take the product, the show, the characters or even the poor exploited actors, seriously. Really?  An equity member actress having to extol the virtues of the parallel parking features “in character.”  That just seems punitive to me.  Perhaps a newer generation will be lulled into the embedded advertising, but I was raised on overt label covering in television and film.  How many “cola” cans, “Heerios” boxes, “McBurger” cartons have we all seen?  Before that trend of course, there was the overt sponsored program.  “We are the men from Texaco…”  But alas, that was a simpler time.

I can’t help but feel that embedding is the first quiver of a death throe.  Towards the end of its 72 year run, the (excellent) daytime drama Guiding Light created a convenience store set stocked with Procter & Gamble products.  When the industrial sized Folders can appeared on the restaurant counter, they knew, I knew, Springfield was doomed.  It made me question the solidity of Procter and Gamble as well.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I am susceptible to advertising.  No sooner did we have a television room in our family than I was clamoring for that toothpaste with the stripes and fabric softener sheets (I was a strange child.)  My mother, otherwise impervious to pop culture, or fashion, actually dressed my sister and I in Pepsi-Cola jackets.  These were red, white & blue baseball-style cotton jackets festooned with the soda logo.  As the younger of the sisters, I wore that jacket for 4 years.  And I was thrilled, dear reader, I was thrilled.  I admit, at the tender age of 10, I fell hopelessly in love with the Pillsbury Dough Boy; the impish giggle, the soft pliable belly, the association of impending baked good.  I’ve also witnessed my brother’s longing for Snuggle.  I can still hear his plaintive cry: “But is Snuggle a boy or a girl?!”  Once grown to a consenting consumer age, I devoured teen magazines to discover what I should covet.  What twisted little advertising genius discovered teenage girls’ desire to smell strange?  Love Baby’s Soft, Lemon-Up shampoo, fruit flavored lip gloss.  Damn it, I wanted it all.  But sometime around the social studies advertising curriculum (8th grade?) it was difficult to not feel a bit cynical.  I had never stepped foot in a Wendy’s before, and a quest to find the beef, wasn’t gonna change that.

My suspicion is that advertising is most influential on me (and perhaps you) when it takes on an educational role.  Tell me about this new product, and why I need it.  I may give it a try (hello Swiffer! nice save Procter & Gamble.)  But so much of what’s being advertised is not new.  And being new, no matter how confusing and weird (i.e., the Tiffany key and now, lock) is no guarantee to sway me.  And when the advertising is annoying?  You just lost me as a potential customer.  So if I am the last person you want buying your product (and I may very well be) I encourage more humiliation of actors and actresses and definitely invest in some pop-up ads.  Oh, and while you’re at it, airbrushed a very over-exposed former television star, and I will so not buy your fortified water.

 
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Posted by on October 7, 2011 in Cultural Critique, Media/Marketing

 

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Fashion Mistakes – They Can Be Lessened

27 Sep

One of the hallmarks of maturity is knowing what’s right for you.  My childhood (perhaps like yours) was peppered with “well, if everyone else was jumping off the George Washington bridge…” Which of course is code for “it’s not really you, dear.”  In theory, as we mature, our inner “it’s not really you, dear” voice becomes strong and clear.  Of course, many many mistakes must be made along the way.  Most of us are not born with the gift of clarity.  Some must slog through several academic majors, or colleges, before they find what suits them.  Some, must do this sorting and shifting with romantic partners.  And of course what suits us at one point in our lives is bound to feel ill-fitting at others.

Nowhere is this more visibly apparent than in fashion choices.  What suits us, physically and emotionally, changes over the years.  Ideally.  I won’t pretend that the world isn’t filled with people who are wearing acid washed jeans and shoulder pads; unironically.  I chalk that up to one of two things; 1) complete lack of (inner or outer) resources) 2) associating their decade of choice with a happier time in their lives.  The rest of us, for better or worse, are more susceptible to the siren song of marketing and retail.

Unless we are in possession of a coloratura inner critic’s voice or an indispensable insightful and candid friend, we need a little outside help in navigating the myriad of wildly inappropriate choices out there.  There are some simple (although perhaps, not easy) steps to take:

  • Know oneself – not necessarily in some meditating on a mountaintop, or involving a hand mirror way.   Know what you like about your body.  Have a realistic sense of your life (there’s nothing so sad as a closet full of gowns with price tags still attached.)
  • Own a full-length mirror and use it.  I bought my first one ten years ago after an unfortunate “patriotic clown” work outfit that just slipped by me (until I got to work that is.)
  • Unless you make a career of reinvention in the public eye; know the difference between costume and clothing.  If the item enjoys a prefix, that is your hint (ex. Running/Tennis/Athletic shoes, Yoga pants, Gardening clogs, Bathing suit, Cone bra, etc.)  These clothes will tell you where and when to wear them, you don’t even need to cultivate your inner voice.
  • Cut, Clarity and Color, it’s not just for diamonds.  The cut of the pant, dress, skirt, blouse, jacket, MUST flatter.  (The goal is always to look better in clothing than one does naked!) Please note: Flatter is NOT synonymous with Camouflage.  Nobody, and I mean nobody, is looking at someone in an oversize garment and thinking; “Wow, I bet she is really tiny under there!” Clarity: Is the piece/outfit you?  Does it make you feel fabulous?  Does it clearly express what you’d like to express about yourself?  Color; it’s not an abstraction.  Liking color is not the same thing as color liking you (think back to that elusive guy in high school.)  The color, like the cut and clarity, must do something for you.  Clothes must earn their keep.

Simply put, life is too short to not feel fabulous as often as one can.  If you have never experienced the bounce in your step a well-suited outfit can give you, get moving.  The most effective way to train your inner voice is to use it.  Try on new things.  Often.  No doubt, mistakes will be made along the way.  However, if I had never spent the day as a patriotic clown, I would not realize how important the cut of a pant really is.  Or that red, white and blue, should rarely be combined in the workplace, unless one is in the military, or circus.

 

 
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Posted by on September 27, 2011 in Style

 

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