Presented without comment

From a review on Georgia O’Keeffe’s show at the Whitney:

One theory has it that she adopted Southwestern images — cow skulls and so on — as a final step in public-image adjustment, using them to effect a complete break with New York art associations. Another suggests that the change was part of a canny effort to align herself with a taste for regionalism that had developed with the Depression.

From Ralph Lauren’s Spring 2010 line:

Say what you will about Michael Kors, he was right on with this one

I finally got around to watching the premiere of Project Runway, and what strikes me about the first episode of the new season (on a new network, no less) is how good this show has always been, not just at entertaining, but at saying something real about fashion-as-language.

It was a pretty easy challenge, actually. Designers had to make a red-carpet look for whichever awards show they wanted. Red carpet usually means gowns, which are often easier in the fitting than suits or jeans or separates. And there were no gimmicks, no making dresses out of plants or liquorice or whatever. I mean, if designing clothes is your thing, this is about the most welcoming challenge you could get, I think, especially in the first week, to just make something that looks good and is interesting in the very broad category of “evening wear.”

Unfortunately for her, Ari Fish’s response to this very straighforward silver platter of a challenge is an outfit she says will be a “bulbous, hexagonal, tessellation thing that catches the light.” All words that supposedly mean something, and if the final outfit had anything at all to do with any of those words and was still wearable on a red carpet, the judges might have thought it was crazy but at least conceptual or smart in some real way, but of course that wasn’t what happened. The look she created is that halter thing with the shorts that she said would go to the VMAs in 2080, and also possibly the Nobel Peace Prize. She got sent home, as she should have.

It’s not even the weirdness of the outfit that was bad. Weirdness is more acceptable in couture and the arts in general than most places, as long as it’s intelligent, and this is, after all, reality tv. The issue here, I think, is Ari’s unapologetic deference to whatever she decided she wanted to do, regardless of the need at hand. I mean, even Elise, one of the bywords of weird for this show back when she was spit-marking stuff, usually made clothes that were logical to the occasion. And Santino was flamboyant and kind of crazy, but he did get context. Like, that swan dress Bjork wore a decade ago made more sense than Ari’s. Also, silvery metallics? Have only been “futuristic” for the past 50 years or so.

That’s the thing about making “weird” or “incomprehensible” or “pseudo-intellectual” your whole schtick. It’s the functional equivalent of talking in gibberish to someone who genuinely wants to know who you are. It’s great that you are smart enough to make up your own language, go for it, sure, awesome, but unless you share some of those signifiers with the rest of us, it’s not a conversation.

I actually felt bad for Michael Kors, watching this episode. He’s sort of the ditz of the show, and he’s not couture at all, which I think makes him perfect for PR. He’s commercially successful, he makes reliably good stuff that people like and wear and want to buy, and will therefore be ignored or insulted by the designated bitches that are art critics, and I’m sure he knows that and I hope he doesn’t care. Because it kind of broke my heart a little when he said, “She’s one of those designers that you have to say to yourself, do I not get it? Maybe I’m not smart enough to get this!” Because I think he is smart enough, giggles and all; he’s certainly got no reason to have to prove himself to anyone, and it kind of sucks that this girl who is perhaps legitimately talented (from where I was sitting, those little silver shapes look reasonably well-sewn) but maybe also overly committed to the idea that she is a ”unique snowflake” and desparately misunderstood would even raise that doubt.

Being cool in high school

From Jezebel’s Jenna Saunders. Full post is well worth the read:

“The countess and I walked over, looked at the men, looked at each other, then looked again, more awkwardly, at these laughing golden boys — and immediately I knew that all the liquid eyeliner and velvet ropes and jet planes in the world will not stop and have not stopped me from remaining the person I was in high school. There’s a certain kind of popularity that, if you should be so lucky as to experience it at 15 or 16 or 17, deposits in its wake a sense of pure social mastery that never really leaves you. And there’s a certain kind of awkwardness, bodily shame, and tongue-tied single-sex-high-school befuddledness in what I still think of as “mixed” social situations that precludes any kind of innate suavity and leaves one always at the mercy of frizzy-haired shoulder-tappers.”

Launching, every day, the same way

I’ve been told by four different people in three different mediums that they like this new photo I’m sporting at the top of the page. Which, by the power of multiplication done by someone who doesn’t understand math, means 12 of you want to know about it!

Let me tell you about this picture. I like it. I like how the light is so loud and silver and catching the water, and while the brightest point of light is often– I’m told– the focus of a good shot, here it’s the background, it’s the flow, since even my shirt is silver. And that makes my hair, the movement and toss of it, the center, and because the light is the way it is, it makes the hair look like a unique shade of auburn that it normally isn’t : there’s some transmogrification in the lens of the camera or the way the sunlight reflects or the glow of the monitor that takes my dark blond hair and makes it the color of burnt sugar.

But what I like best about it is the way it shakes out, the way my hair pulls behind me as if I’m lunging forward. Truth is, we had the camera on continuous shot, and if you can see the photos before and after it, like I can here on my computer, you see that I’m actually twirling, going in circles over and over again, because I saw some model doing that in a tv show or a movie once or something. There were, quite literally, a hundred photos of me in some kind of circular motion in this exact spot before I deleted most of them, and then this one picture where, cropped and devoid of context, I look like I’m launching, like I’m running forward, like the spray of water in front of me is a barrier about to be broken, but I tell you dear reader, that I never actually got wet, even though I like how the picture makes it look as if I will.

Months before, sometime in the cold stretch of winter, Jana and I had worked our way through season 1 of Gossip Girl, and right after the Bad News Blair episode– the one where Serena unwittingly steals the spotlight again, I know, not very specific, and to make it up to each other, they steal Eleanor’s dresses and do their hair up and run around the city taking pictures of themselves in an impromptu photo shoot– Jana turns to me and goes, hey, that would be really fun! Not paying attention, I go, “mm-hmm, yes it would,” like you do when a 5-year-old wants to go to Disneyland in January and you can brush them off with a “but it’s winter sweetheart, let’s talk about this in the summer,” but 5-year-olds don’t forget and neither does Jana. So in the spring I get a Facebook invite, setting the date for three of us to dress up and run around and take photos. It’s an all-day affair, with two cameras, half a dozen locations, costume changes, light diffusers, flashlights, false eyelashes, the works. Even Blair might be jealous. We counted, and between the two cameras, there were more than 3000 shots.

This particular photo came at the end of the day, when I thought we were just doing headshots, and Jana’s looked way more interesting than mine at this point, because she has the most incredible flair for drama that my hippie self lacks, so even though I knew she was snapping away with the camera when I walked over to the fountain, I wasn’t thinking about posing anymore, just really glad to get into the cool air around the water. Because we were almost done and it would be fine if my make-up got bleary. And I started turning in circles.

But of all those photos of me spinning in the water, this is the one I like, the one where it looks as if I’m streaking forward. I suppose that’s a very Western, narrative-focused thing to think, that I like the progress of the shot.  Liking the arrested motion, the way it looks as if I’ve been caught in the act of running somewhere, getting to a particular point.

I suppose that’s why you see so many shots of models jumping or running in the fashion mags. It’s a way to simultaneously project movement and stop it. A very big part of the photographer’s job is to catch the model in an exact moment where the line of his or her body creates momentum but can hold it in the eternally still structure of a statue. Any other shot is dead, lacking in dynamic, and visibly so to the reader. Which is why all of our posed snapshots on Facebook, smiling in front of monuments and canyons, are only interesting to the extent to which we like or hate the people in them, or are impressed by the surroundings.

The difficult thing is that those fashion photos, and the one you see above, are just as posed as any snapshot in front of Niagara Falls. The only difference is that fashion shoots are posed by someone with skill, someone with access to models who have made it their job to make a spin look like a poem, or make a shirt look like a suit of armor. Someone who knows how to create a fantasy, not just set themselves in one. The image is always, to some extent, a lie.

And maybe that’s what I like, the fantasy of the shot: who doesn’t want to believe that they’re continually moving forward? Lately, when I see myself tripping over the same things over and over again, finding in myself only fresh new versions of the old flaws, I wonder how much of our talk of progress is equally fantastical. Which brings me to the title of the post: the feeling that I am bound to my own skin and experience and gifts and vulnerable Achille’s tendon, and will maybe spend my whole life working to become bigger than what I already am, moving forward in some vital, essential way, and still end up with nothing but a lot of pictures of me spinning. Migratory, returning every season to the same place I was in before. I guess my best hope is that when I return to an all-too-familiar place, I’ve earned a little more grace, a little more wisdom the second, or fourth, or hundredth time around. That even if I’m still going in circles, I’ve at least widened the circumference a little bit.

Luminous, Lovely

I have loved the Sartorialist for a while. But this new street fashion blog from Garance Dore is taking it to a whole. new. level. of pretty. Please note that it is in Paris. That is all.

Peregrine shops…and shamelessly rips off other bloggers’ ideas

Eons ago, in the wee early days of 2008, Kate wrote a great post about stuff she couldn’t live without. Ever since, I’ve been eying the objects on my bathroom shelf and wondering if they measure up.

So here’s my short list:

Lush Dream Cream lotion. This stuff is pricier than the drugstore brands, but my skin never feels softer. Plus I love that the scent is neither too girly nor too herbal: the perfect mix of rose, tea tree and lavender.

The Body Shop Tea Tree Face Mask. I definitely have the sitcom-tastic “green face” thing going on with this, but it gives my skin this wonderful tingly feeling.

Benefit You Rebel Lite: I got this as a free sample, and it converted me. It’s my standard everyday foundation: nice and light, but not completely sheer. This and a swipe of powder is usually all I need. I used to use Neutrogena Healthy Skin Enhancer, which I really liked (partly because it’s cheaper) but the retinols made my skin peel in the winter.

CHI Silk Infusion. I use this serum the four times a year I actually style my hair rather than giving it a quick blow-dry. Shiny shiny.

Cover Girl Volume Exact mascara. Is cheap. Works great.

Juice Beauty Lip Tints. I don’t like a strong color on my lips, or anything sticky. These are perfect for daytime, and I switch between all three colors depending on what mood I’m in, though I probably go for the plum color the most. Plus they have sunscreen, which is great for my burn-prone skin.

Jeans from Gap and Express. I admit it, I’m a mall rat when it comes to jeans. I HATE trying on endless pairs of jeans, and I know exactly which styles fit me in these stores. So when my skinny jeans are approaching the end of their poor abused lives, I run straight to gap.com (for short-people petite sizes) or the nearest suburb for an Express outlet.

Calphalon Contemporary Stainless pans. I’m slowly collecting these, and by slowly I mean that I only have two so far, but they are workhorses. I use one or both pretty much every time I cook, and I could not love them more. They heat evenly and they have the necessary heft for finicky dishes. The details are perfect, down to the angle of the handles, which I much prefer to the All-Clad line. To top it off, they’re pretty! You shouldn’t pay a lot for anything else in your kitchen, unless it’s a KitchenAid stand mixer. But pans are important.

Creative Zen Vision M. I have it in black, and it is indestructible: I have drop-kicked the thing many times to no ill effect. Try doing that with an iPod!

Black is TOTES the new black

NYT Thursday Styles Section alert! Today’s pick is “The Newly Uptight,” a trend piece by La Ferla on fashion’s return to more classical shapes and fits from the late ’50s and early ’60s. Annoying and unrepresentative title aside, I like it. It’s not ground-breaking, but articulates the movement I’ve been watching for a few season now towards detail work, clean lines and clothing that lasts.

And it’s not even just about clothes. AdAge just ran a story about how lipstick sales, which are usually considered “recession-proof”–due to the fact that people will still spend money on small, affordable luxuries during lean times–are dropping, losing out to basics like foundation and powder, which create the illusion of perfect, smooth skin without the shock of color that in earlier economic downturns would act as a royal F-you to the economy. Or so the theory goes.

Back to basics: sheath dresses, smooth skin. Out with the disheveled “I spent $347 and 2 hours to look like I got up this morning, smashed my mirror and put on the clothes from my floor that those ravers gave me. Check out how much I don’t care.” Out with non-existent tights-clad legs under a jersey mini, paired with 3lb chunky platform shoes to ‘balance it out.’ Ruth La Ferla compares that look to Warhol, which is quite descriptive. One could also call it ugly, unwearable and disproportionate. Fashion cycles and all that; it will be back in 30 years, which is annoying. Of course the designers quoted by La Ferla are all quacking that fashion is about risk and how terrible it is that profits and wearability are winning out over genius design and whatevs. See the white and black damask-patterned cutaway dress in Audrey Hepburn’s Sabrina and then we’ll talk. It’s classic AND totally ground-breaking, and I’m SOO over designers just making ugly crap and calling it avant-garde.

The article concludes with a question on whether, especially in a period of economic instability, people will pay the money for these Jackie O. looks. I think they will, but that’s because I’m poor and neurotic when it comes to throwing things out. If you’re me, timeless looks are really the only thing I’m willing to pay top dollar for. I don’t go to H&M for pencil skirts. In fact, I assume that whatever I buy there will be cheap, will fall apart after a season, and will probably go out of style at about the same time. I’m getting sick of disposable fashion. On the other hand, usually my only recourse for the classics are places like Banana Republic, which are almost stifling in their WASPyness. So I’m excited to see ready-to-wear in 2008 that incorporates better tailoring and sharper looks. Just without all the khaki, please.

Ooooh, it’s a JOKE. Right.

Finally, straight-up on the “what the–?” issue. I’ve been wondering lately why the fashion editors of the world dress the way they do. I was thinking maybe they all bought their mirrors from the carnival house or something, but it turns out they just use each other.

From Jo Craven, former editor at Vogue, on adjusting to the real world: “I struggle to put together outfits. My vintage leopard print blouse looks less jokey Cavalli and a bit Barry Manilow. My trusted Ferragamo patents aren’t retro-quirky any more: they make me look like my mum. My jewelry, which used to be witty, now looks tacky. They may not have been perfect clothes in the first place but the protective enclave of the Vogue office had given me confidence to leave home wearing them” (Guardian: After a fashion).

Oscar Wilde said, “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” Glance through the best-dressed list for12-21-07 and tell me he’s not right. (Though I suppose that teal Miu Miu dress is cute.) In related news, the clavicle is the only part of your body it’s fashionable to show anymore. Collarbones are the new ribs!

Image from The Sartorialist