The Leftovers: Paris Fashion Week SS11

There have been seasons in the past when, upon looking at the clothes, I was left confused about what temperatures the designers thought we would be experiencing in the months to come. Leather skirts for summer. Barely there dresses for winter. However, this season, which was filled with color, lightness and occasional whimsy, never caused that confusion to arise.

That was until Paris where the story being told was a somber one.

At Neil Barrett

At Ann Demeulemeester

At Chanel

At Rick Owens

At Yohji Yamamoto

At The Row

At Stella McCartney

At Balenciaga

At A.F. Vandervorst

At Alexander McQueen

At Martin Grant

At Louis Vuitton

At Haider Ackermann

At Lanvin

At Roland Mouret

At Hermès

The clothes resembled a storm’s approach. Warning you not to play outside. And in this instance, that foreboding seemed more appropriate somehow. A closer representation of the times if not of the season.

That darker thread could even be seen in the trends that held over from the previous cities.


The White

At Gareth Pugh

At Pedro Lourenço

At Paul & Joe

At Chloé

At Rick Owens

At Sharon Wauchob

The Transparency

At Lanvin

At Giambattista Valli

At Valentino

The Prints

At Carven

At Cacharel

At Chanel

At Akris

At Alexander McQueen

At Manish Arora

The Color

At Haider Ackermann

At Lanvin

At Nina Ricci

At Damir Doma

At Paul & Joe

At Haider Ackermann

At Roland Mouret

In the end, I found myself most drawn to London and Milan. There are times when color and prints and whimsy and air are more necessary than anything else.

There are times when they are essential.


Photos via

Costume Changes

A few weeks ago I sat outside in the unseasonably warm air talking to a friend on the phone. As it so often does with us, the conversation meandered from topic to topic until it landed on the topic of a recently purchased pair of pants

Me: I bought a pair of grown up pants.

Friend: You are a grown up, but I get what you're saying.

The pants in question are slim, cropped and woolen. They've been worn on one interview since their purchase. Most days I consider them before remembering that I'll be spending most of the day in the library writing things of the cover letter and non-cover letter variety that most people will never read. At that moment, I grab one of the many, many pairs of jeans I own or, if I'm feeling feisty, a miniskirt to be complimented by tights and boots. When I'm feeling particularly lazy and listless, I pair my chambray shorts with black tights and call it a fucking day.

I've spent the past few years avoiding real pants. Where would I wear them? Jeans would get more use. Skirts and dresses would never remain hidden. Real pants would sit in my closet taking up space with dresses from various high school and college formals and that cardigan with the floral embroidery that I need to get rid of because even looking at it causes nauseating flashbacks to how much of a grandmother I must have looked like in it.

But I told myself I would stop saying maybe later to things because of some perception I have of what my life is now. That better things will come and then I will deserve them.

So I bought them.

But still, sometimes, they remind of all those things I don't have that I wish I did.

The Leftovers: Milan Fashion Week SS11

Whenever I go back through the photos that I’ve bookmarked, I always notice things I didn’t see the first time. A new skirt length. An interesting shoe. Entire collections.

I went more days without a favorite in Milan than I did in any other city this season. I realize now that that fact had very little to do with Milan and a lot to do with general fashion fatigue augmented by life fatigue. Going through the photos again made me realize that Milan might have been my favorite city of the four. A reexamination of Paris, often the winner in my opinion, will have to come before I can be sure of that statement.

Like New York and London before it, Milan had a story. Its story was one of color. There were few pastels and other colors of the sun-faded variety. Instead there were brights. A veritable rainbow walked down many runways and injected a life into the season that had been missing up until that point.

The threads from the other cities continued to be seen.

White and transparency from New York.

At No.21

At Bottega Veneta

At Dolce & Gabbana

At Alberta Ferretti

At Luisa Beccaria

At Emporio Armani

Prints and patterns from London.

At Sportmax

At Albino

At Emilio Pucci

At Aquilano.Rimondi

At Dolce & Gabbana

But color was, for lack of a better word, king.

At Luisa Beccaria

At Gucci

At Etro

At Moschino

At MaxMara

At Salvatore Ferragamo

At Emilio Pucci

At Prada

At Aquilano.Rimondi

At MaxMara

But in the end, no one did it better than Raf Simons at Jil Sander.

Photos via