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

Ellsworth Kelly Then (1952) and Now (2013)

Last night I had the great privilege to attend a 90th birthday celebration for the great American artist Ellsworth Kelly.  He reminisced about the creation of Spectrum V, 1969 and it was such a treat!

He also spoke about a dress he had made in 1952 from pieces of a fabric that he had bought in a marché in the South of France.  He was attracted to a bolt of bright red cotton and created a painting 'Red Yellow Blue White' from the fabric that now hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 

and the leftover fabric he gave to his friend and fellow artist Ann Weber.  He wanted her to make a dress of equal bands of color and he wanted it hemmed just above the knee.

But Ann had other ideas.  Dior.  Christian Dior.  She wanted the dress to be the "new Dior length".  

Kelly was mad and at some point Ann's mother burned the dress.  Where there is dressmaking there is  drama : )

Fast forward 61 years and Ellsworth Kelly got the dress he dreamed of - well, almost : )  Kelly thought Francisco Costa maybe just maybe made the red band a wee bit larger then the others...

A collaboration was initiated by the Manhathan art advisor, Sharon Coplan Hurowitz, Harold Koda, curator-in-charge of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Mueum of Art and Ellsworth Kelly.  Francisco Costa the designer for Calvin Klein was charged with the task of recreating the dress.  The dress is right above the knee and it is striking.  Of course, I always see clothes as a work of art and it was a great honor to see a true work of art by a great artist.  And Kudos to Francisco Costa for doing such a brilliant job of sculpting the dress and Sharon Coplan Hurowitz for bringing back a 1952 work of art.

Ellsworth Kelly, Francsico Costa and the dress.