Favorite of the Day: Chris Benz

A few weeks ago I had to attend a friend's birthday party. I was looking forward to the festivities in general, but a more specific type of excitement kept leaking in.

I get to dress up.

The common response to my child-like anticipation, an emotion I wasn't sure I was capable of producing any longer, was but you always dress up. What I do every day (avoiding sweats, favoring skinny jeans, developing an unnatural affinity for cardigans) is not dressing up. At this point, it is somewhat of a uniform. A uniform that I am happy with but a uniform nonetheless.

However, the idea of certain clothes, of wearing them and living in them, makes me giddy. That was the case last season for Chris Benz.

And that is the case this season.


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Favorite of the Day: Derek Lam

Designers often try to hit on multiple trends at once. The results can be disastrous. Or, like they were at Derek Lam, they can hit that perfect, yet often unachievable, note.

The clothes were filled with the 1970s spirit that can still be seen on so many runways, but they also speak to the minimalism that is so of the moment. Spurred on by both the reality of our current situation and a reaction to the oh so decadent times of the recent past.


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Favorite of the Day: Tess Giberson

One of the reasons I started this series, besides providing some structure for my ingestion of the mounds of information coming out of the various fashion weeks, was to introduce myself to designers I had never heard of. Many of the ones I've learned about in the past few seasons have become personal favorites.  Tess Giberson might be added to that list.

The clothes resemble a slightly off puzzle. One where you've had to smash the pieces in order to make them fit. In the end, you create the picture you want, not the one on the box.


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Favorite of the Day: Jason Wu

Fashion Month is only two full days in, but one trend has already declared itself king. You might want to invest in some flirty underpinnings to compliment all of the sheer shirts, dresses and pants that have already made their way down the runway.

At Jason Wu, the sheer was here and there but, thankfully, not everywhere.

The 1940s, however, emanated from many of the pieces.

It's too bad that I greatly doubt my ability to pull off a turban.



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Favorite of the Day: Vena Cava

I rarely find myself all that interested in what designers list as their inspirations. At times the references are so obscure and the connection to the clothes is so flimsy, that I find whatever planted that kernel in their mind to be unnecessary for my understanding of the collection. In fact, it can often get in the way.

That was far from true in the case of the Vena Cava show. At the end of it, all I wanted was a book on the Memphis Group.

And the liquid-like silk of their dresses.



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Showtime

I measure my time away from New York in various ways. Months. Seasons of Gossip Girl viewed. Number of hot dogs not consumed during numerous wanderings through SoHo. Glasses of Pinot Grigio not poured.

Fashion Weeks missed.

I draw inspiration, for what I write and how I dress, from observation. It shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me that the notes I took throughout school never progressed far beyond a series of bullet points. I gained more from actively listening. Facts and figures stuck in my brain, and mindlessly scribbling them down never helped me retain them. In a similar way, seeing things in the flesh, drinking them in and spending time with them, has been one of the most important ways I’ve learned about clothes. About fashion and dressing and style and all of those words that seem to mean the same thing but are vastly different.

New York City proved its own source of inspiration on a fairly regular basis, but it wasn’t the same as being surrounded so fully as I was then. During those seasons where I got to attend very few or no shows at all, sitting in Bryant Park with an iced coffee was enough. Doing that thing where I stare at people’s shoes. Taking in the quirky and over the top and eccentric alongside the minimalist and reserved and subtle. Standing on a subway platform with my heels in hand and watching a model remove the makeup from her face. It gave me a chance to experiment with my own choices. To find new combinations for things that had been sitting in my closet for ages. I complained and griped and seriously considered throwing my eyeliner on an open flame much as I had contemplated burying my Calculus textbook years earlier, but it was all part of the learning experience. The complete and total breakdown that sometimes occurs before epiphany.

And so I miss it. I can sit in my leggings and eat snacks and watch shows with my computer on my lap, but it doesn’t compare to the energy that flows through a space as the lights dim and then rise again. I don’t smell the just applied coat of paint.

My ears don’t ring from the ferocity of the bass.

Flip Flop

As we find ourselves in day I don’t know how many it’s been, but it’s fucking hot of this heat wave, I’ve continued to think of fall. I spent most of yesterday having daydreams about the type of weather that would allow me to wear my chambray shorts with brightly hued tights (mustard yellow or dusty rose) and ballet flats. Two days earlier, my glove obsession reappeared out of nowhere. Well not nowhere. These helped.


As did these.


Yet last week, near the tail end of the rains, all I wanted were sundresses and shorts and the espadrilles that I’ve gone all of spring and summer without wearing once.

It’s the feeling of the season. That restlessness that comes as everything moves between changing and staying exactly as it was. I, and everyone else who spends an abundance of time talking and thinking about clothes, have a tendency to overuse the phrase transitional piece. Those items, the sweater jackets and booties and medium-weight knits, are really pieces that fit everywhere and nowhere all at once. That deal adeptly with the sometimes schizophrenic tendencies of the wasteland that exists between seasons.

We hate the heat, but we’ll miss it when it’s gone.


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