NYFW: Snow, Sleet and Socks

New York Fashion Week, I hardly knew you... with all of the snow, the difficulty getting around town and the thought of having to wear socks or not, NYFW has come and gone to London...

and on the last day when Marc Jacobs showed during a blizzard, everyone dressed winter ready:

Street style photos from NYFW 2014.  Style.com

I guess what I used to love about street style photography is that it was seeing the way real people put together a look - because most of us do not dress the way clothes are presented in magazines: in a head to toe runway look.  

We buy something new, something vintage : ) and mix it all up.  Fashion then becomes style.  

But suddenly street style photography became an orgy of color, caricature and over accessorizing - once again not the real way anyone dresses and certainly not style.

So what of the fashion on the runway?  I admit my heart is more in Paris, sometimes in Milan and more and more in London... and I really don't have enough time to look through endless shows on Style.com so I may very well have missed something amazing.  

I always look forward to Marc Jacobs and I thought this show which was going to herald a new focus on the Marc Jacobs line, without the commitment to Louis Vuitton, was a huge disappointment.  Vaguely Courreges, the styling drew more attention then the clothes...  Nothing there I had to have and with the cost of clothes these days you have to really want it.

The show I absolutely loved was Francisco Costa for Calvin Klein.  He showed real clothes but different then anything else we have in our closets - and clothes that made you feel really excited to go out and buy.  And with the weather we are having I would love to have those combat boots he showed with every look right now but alas we have to wait until August... : (

"It felt like the clothes needed to be cooler, urban; there was this idea of a gypsy."

Francisco Costa

Fuzzy, wuzzy was a Costa this collection.  He estimated that 85% of the collection was a cozy knit.

and I love the homespun but really refined feel of the collection.  If you look closely, you will see that many of the jackets and coats closed with oversized safety pins with big plastic baubles on them...

Calvin Klein fall 2014.  Photos from Style.com

and just one last note on socks... I loved the socks at Rodarte!  Hope they are produced!!

Rodarte fall 2014.  Photos from Style.com

The Superbowl Pre Show

So the Superbowl Pre show should be starting soon and I am beyond excited to see what the fellas will be wearing. I expect to see lots of spandex, big should pads... Hmmm... Anything else?  Mermaid gowns ? Probably not. Calvin Klein underwear?



Maybe...

I can't wait for all of the action to start and by that I mean not the 11 minutes of actual game time (yawn) but the drum roll please, the Commercials!

My husband is looking forward to the game or maybe he is interested in the commercials too - like this one from Mercedes.  And what is so interesting about a girl washing a car in slow motion anyway : )

Enjoy the Super Bowl whether you are watching it for the pre show, the commercials, the half time show or maybe even for the actual game itself - or maybe like me you are watching it for the commercials and noshing on the food.  Back with vintage tomorrow!

Weekend Reading 14: Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields

When I was fifteen, I wanted to be shipwrecked on a drop dead beautiful island in the Fiji Islands.  I wanted to have lush long brown hair, wear a necklace of shells and tattered dresses of white lawn that eventually fell away to nothing more then a bikini bottom with my long haired glued (quite literally I might add!) to my breasts.

I also wanted to wear and maybe in fact did, but I am neither confirming or denying it ☺, Calvin Klein jeans that were so tight, nothing could come between me and my Calvin's.

Weekend Reading for you from RARE vintage.  Read on...

Brooke Shield's carrer began at age 11 months as a model.  The photographer was Francesco Scavullo.  Scavullo once said, "Brooke is the only young woman I know who needs no make up at all".

She was also photographed by Richard Avedon for Colgate in 1974.

Avedon went on to shoot Brooke in her very famous Calvin Klein jeans ad when she was fifteen years old.

"You want to know what becomes between me and my Calvins?  Nothing."

This ad is so iconic, it even made its way into the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute exhibit, The Model as Muse in 2009.   (Actually here the Met made a mistake because the Calvin Klein jeans on the mannequin (in the same pose as this ad) were too baggy.  I remember those jeans: I had to lie down flat to zip them up!) 

Louis Malle was casting for his film Pretty Baby based on the infamous turn-of-the-century photographer  Bellocq.  Bellocq photographed young prostitutes in New Orleans. 

Louis Malle auditioned Tatum O'Neal, Jodie Foster, Linda Blair (yikes!) and Melanie Griffith - all turned down the role.  He also auditioned Diane Lane, Michelle Pfeiffer, Meg Tilly, Ally Sheedy and Ellen Barkin for the role of Violet but Malle liked 11 year old Brooke Shields for the role of Violet.  

Louis Malle and Brooke Shields on the set of Pretty Baby

Brooke Shields said she was "just playing a role.  I'm not going to grow up and be a prostitute.  If I were in a Walt Disney movie people would not ask me if the part would affect my life.  That's just dumb."

Scenes from Pretty Baby:

And then in 1980 there was much talk about Brooke Shield's movie "The Blue Lagoon'.  She studied algebra and gave an interview at the L'Hermitage Hotel in 1980 to the Associated Press:   

"The three most important things in my life are my schoolwork, my horse and my work.  Not necessarily in that order.   The director Randal Kleiser asked me, 'Are you sure you want to do this movie?  It's low budget.  I thought to myself: How bad can it be on a South Sea Island? "

Turtle Island she discovered was so obscure that it does not appear on some maps.  The film company lived in tents, a tin house was erected for the camera and wardobe.  The food was basic, including some local pigs - "How could I eat them after I had named them?"

"I was always busy.  If not acting, I would do schoolwork or go scuba diving or collect shells.  I even learned how to crack a coconut without using a knife."

Brooke Shields who will be fifteen on May 31st, has been working since infancy, first in soap ads, then in television commercials.  Her acting debut came at age 9 in Alice Sweet Alice.  Then at 11 she played the whorehouse child in 'Pretty Baby'.  

She downplays the controversy.  "The only questionable thing I did in Pretty Baby was the nude scene.  What did it matter at that age?  At 11 you go to the bathroom with the door open."

Brooke Shields in Blue Lagoon:

And this is what made me think about Brooke Shields for the Weekend Reading:  Brooke Shields in Yves Saint Laurent haute couture in Vogue.  1980.

Images from Vogue

Some text from The Associated Press.