POP UP:
It is 1960s. I see some great stripes by Courreges. Or it is 2013 and I see some great stripes by Marc Jacobs.
It is 1960s. I see some great stripes by Courreges. Or it is 2013 and I see some great stripes by Marc Jacobs.
Either way, the striking trend of bold geometry in fashion is back this Spring and Summer. Black and White seem to be the dominant language and I see translations in black and white stripes splash all over fashion week and fashion pages and store windows in NYC and spill over to real people on the streets.
When I brought this up over coffee with my beautiful friend Monica with the “art" eye, she dismissed it as "I don’t like to follow trends. I don’t want to wear stripes this season...it just gets everywhere".
A thought provoking comment with that much delicate tilt of such a fine head, set me thinking.
A challenge to "sameness"? If a new trend is supposed to dispel the "sameness" of the earlier season, can it not also give birth to the "sameness" of this season?
How many striped blazers can you wear...and how many striped dresses? How many white tops and skirts can you permutate and combinate?
But what if we romance the trend to the horizons of a courtship?
Can we follow a trend and woo it to tell our own love story? Well here I am with mine....!
At the time of 2013 New York fashion week, I was at Bryant Park. I felt someone looking at me. And a camera came up. No, it couldn’t be! Yes, it was! Mr. Bill Cunningham.
Awed and honored I walked up to him and rambled a lot.
He said with an old world charm, "You look wonderful today, my dear".
The story I couldn’t tell him in my awe struck state, I told a mother and her little daughter who stopped me later in the day.
Mafia Al Capone and his gang on my vintage Iceberg sweater. Galliano tux wool coat celebrates Al Capone in flamboyance. Derek Lam pants with the jailbird stripe (fashion future for the gang). Vintage Escada belt with metallic numbers...a number for each of these stylish prisoners :) Pony hair polka bag by Brahmin. DVF retro polka glasses. USP: Fun top & fun accessories
I was beside myself with
joy when I met Valerie and Jean of the
Idiosyncratic Fashionistas at the Manhattan vintage fair this April. They are
such an inspiration!
I don't see them as representing
fashion of any age group in particular or simply as a living tribute to
Monochromatic and Optical Art, which they are, needless to say.
I see them as representing fashion the way it should be....as with all other forms of art. Something to stir the pot of human chemistry in our brain and our heart....and emanate fumes of joy that envelop us and away from mundane worries, even if for the brief haze of a lifetime!
If you haven’t read their blog, that is a MUST, I'd say. If there is a drop of Op-Art blurred happily with Pop Art in your soul, you will love the visuals they offer and the wit that underlines it all.
And wasn't it a delightful treat for me then, that Idiosyncratic Fashionistas chose to blog my style (Check the link: http://idiosyncraticfashionistas.blogspot.com/2013/04/we-go-back-for-more-manhattan-vintage.html, and scroll down to lower half of their post for my pictures). And do not miss the subtle hint of this season's stripes that turn up in Valerie’s striped shirt and Jean's bracelets.
As it turns out, my story that day was of Mr. Hand-Painted Gentleman (let us call him HPG) who arrived at my home in a tie box (for my husband), but HPG decided he wanted to wear his colorful best and go play hoopla with me instead, on that black & white striped fashionable day! And then he fell in love with Jean and Valerie...Below are images of how I later had to cheer him through his moonings over unrequited love....Jean...Valerie...are you listening???
I see them as representing fashion the way it should be....as with all other forms of art. Something to stir the pot of human chemistry in our brain and our heart....and emanate fumes of joy that envelop us and away from mundane worries, even if for the brief haze of a lifetime!
If you haven’t read their blog, that is a MUST, I'd say. If there is a drop of Op-Art blurred happily with Pop Art in your soul, you will love the visuals they offer and the wit that underlines it all.
And wasn't it a delightful treat for me then, that Idiosyncratic Fashionistas chose to blog my style (Check the link: http://idiosyncraticfashionistas.blogspot.com/2013/04/we-go-back-for-more-manhattan-vintage.html, and scroll down to lower half of their post for my pictures). And do not miss the subtle hint of this season's stripes that turn up in Valerie’s striped shirt and Jean's bracelets.
As it turns out, my story that day was of Mr. Hand-Painted Gentleman (let us call him HPG) who arrived at my home in a tie box (for my husband), but HPG decided he wanted to wear his colorful best and go play hoopla with me instead, on that black & white striped fashionable day! And then he fell in love with Jean and Valerie...Below are images of how I later had to cheer him through his moonings over unrequited love....Jean...Valerie...are you listening???
Issey Miyake top
Vintage Hand painted tie
Vintage Moschino "metal
hooped" skirt
Corso Como shoes with transparent
Lucite heel
USP: Looking for different unusual
cuts that set the trend apart. Fearlessness while using imagination for
accessorizing.
Sometime back, I was in Istanbul, an
amazing city where modern blends with tradition. So, I chose a top where a
Zebra spreads on hint of yellow giraffe print and gracefully returns to its
zebra striped bottom in the skirt part.
Why do we have compartments in our brain that conform to only what we have seen or known so far? Why do we think of Asians with small eyes, tall Germans or the English with dainty tea cups?... ......Why do we stereotype a world? This is a Zebra who loves his Giraffe skin and the Giraffe loves his Zebra striped bottom. The world is converging racially...diverging sexually...let us celebrate a new world.
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Silk top by Leifsdottir from Anthropologie
Stripe cashmere skirt from Minnie Rose that was a dress but got bored of being a dress and became a skirt with my help.
Zebra print leather sling bag from local market
Necklace: My own design...horn discs strung on leather string
Vintage Belt with Gold & Black Enamelled zebra buckle
USP: Deliberate Print and textural Synchronization as in horn with animal print
Meet this colorful "Fish out of water". She prefers to live in a world of stripes. And has the courage to do it. She also waves a scarf of orange silk to herald a new courage.
Black white silk top by Clements
Rebeiro
Cashmere Vest with silver chain by Koi Suwannagate
Stripe Skirt with asymmetric cut from Anthropologie
Sterling silver fish with silk scarf: part of my own designed jewelry
Boots: Leifsdottir (from Anthropologie)
USP: Juxtaposition of similar geometric prints (stripes here) at different angles. Pop of color to show up the angular dissimilarities.
DRESS UP:
While we are at Black and White, here’s me dressed up for an Opera.
Cashmere Vest with silver chain by Koi Suwannagate
Stripe Skirt with asymmetric cut from Anthropologie
Sterling silver fish with silk scarf: part of my own designed jewelry
Boots: Leifsdottir (from Anthropologie)
USP: Juxtaposition of similar geometric prints (stripes here) at different angles. Pop of color to show up the angular dissimilarities.
DRESS UP:
While we are at Black and White, here’s me dressed up for an Opera.
White vintage Chanel two-piece dress bought at the Manhattan Vintage fair last year, with vintage 1930's crystal earrings that almost fell apart till I meticulously glued them together, with good will from the previous owners, I am sure.
Everything vintage that set the mood for the classical Opera. Like I was attending the opera through all the people who once owned these beautiful parts of my outfit. The delicate finger of what may have been a cool breeze lightly touched the nape of my neck........and was that a pat on my shoulder???
USP: That I beg to differ when one says a simple dress needs a gorgeous neckpiece to dress it up. Sometimes, simplicity itself is a statement.
ESPY UP:
Everything vintage that set the mood for the classical Opera. Like I was attending the opera through all the people who once owned these beautiful parts of my outfit. The delicate finger of what may have been a cool breeze lightly touched the nape of my neck........and was that a pat on my shoulder???
USP: That I beg to differ when one says a simple dress needs a gorgeous neckpiece to dress it up. Sometimes, simplicity itself is a statement.
ESPY UP:
I came across this delightful book that gives history and insight on the use of stripes in fashion. Ever since childhood, when we think stripes, we think pirates and jailbirds and juicy, errant negative characters. The book traces stripes as a transgressor in the midieval world (the heretic, the clown, the leper, the hangman, the prostitute)....why it came to signify such transgressions, starting from the medieval period when biblical scriptures condemned garments of two colors, and slowly working its way through colorful scandals and codes of dressing in an iconographic society where dress was a meduim of status. It takes us through the Renaissance period that helped diversify use of stripes, expanding use of good stripes, without eliminating bad ones, arriving at the Contemporary period where the lines of good and bad in the symbolism of the stripes blur, and as the author, Michel Pastoureau says, "In the stripe, there is something that resists enclosure within systems".
Andre Couurreges 1960s
Marc Jacobs 2013
Mod Squad: Marc Jacobs' Spring/Summer 2013
Collection at New York Fashion Week. Photo by Scott Schuman
Coming closer back to my simplistic mind, Black and white
stripes is like bread...every other solid color or print can be the cream or
cheese or jam or what-have-you.
Even for the yellow sofa at our
apartment that has been strategically placed to catch yellow sunshine, with
bright red floral silk cushions to entice sunshine (by playing spring even in
winter), my solid black & white striped woven Guatemalan cushions just sets
that right amount of break to any possible "color overwhelm".
And our "Happy plant", also simplistically known as Dracaena massangeana, sunning itself lazily, seems to agree that this season, striped tanning could be a cool trend too.....so I wonder if there is any cream or lotion to that effect yet...:)
Once again Jean and Valerie inspires stripes....
Photo Courtesy: Advanced Style by Ari Seth Cohen
On a subway ride,I met Interior designer Giorgia Mirabella (below left) visiting from Italy whose relaxed use of stripes, I loved! I guess the red and black shopping bag in her bacground was doing its own stripe story :).......and Lindsay (below right) sports recaltritant stripes with the season's short motorcycle jacket.
These stripes speak better than any words can. (photo courtesy: Advanced Style)
And finally, the magnificent black and white striped carpet that New York Public Library rolls out for one and all, sure beats a red carpet this season. Be your own star!
SHOP UP:
Talking of stripes, I came across some amazing striped unique Lucite jewelry by an independent designer at the Antique Pier show in March. His name is Darien Tejeda, and though he doesn’t have a website yet, he can be contacted by at: 22 Deer Trail, Stockbridge, GA 30281; Tel: 954-907-1946.
Here are some pictures:
My gorgeous fashionista friend, Priyanka, wearing two of his pieces...and see who fell in love with her....didn't I say fashion transcends time-age-barriers!
(Directed by Tim Burton: The dark madcap-loving director
would surely dress his leading lady in this spooky, stripey creation from
SENSO. The ACACIA PONY is black and white done right. Johhny Depp so wants you
right now. Are you read for some Edward ScissorHands-sized drama?)
Or if these are not your stripe story statement, then Marc Jacobs has some really cute summer options.
(Marc by Marc Jacobs Mouse Striped Espadrille Flats at CUSP by Neiman Marcus; Marc Jacobs Black/Cream Striped Espadrille Wedges; Black & White Striped Calf-Hair Domino Tote)
And my personal favorite from Prada (this season) I spotted at Bloomingdales:
Bloomingdales dresses its floors in stripes......
And I didn't realize when I was
talking of striped tanning lotions...but this season you can do striped
lips...literally....no, this is not "kiss and tell" from kissing a
zebra and does not come from falling flat on your lips on a zebra crossing. But
are you brave enough to kiss this trend ? :)http://www.violentlips.com/products/black-white-stripes
