La Dolce (and Gabbana) Vita

Autumn in Italy!  No place I would rather be...but I'm not, at least not this year.   Despite all my plotting and planning instead of the hills of Tuscany or the lakes of Bellagio or port of Portofino I am at my desk.  So when Dolce and Gabbana launched their Spring 2016 Ready-to -Wear Collection I couldn't get enough.

Each of the 90 so pieces on the runway took me to a different and beloved corner of Italy...Amalfi, Capri, Lake Como, Rome, Venice, Sicily, Portofino...

The Collection, Italia is Love, was filled with Italian sunshine and color- lemons, oranges, flowers, Venetian stripes, Italian film sirens...

Sunglasses, Sundresses and Sophia

The show was all about seeing Italy from the Tourist side-perhaps in post-war Italy.  Inspiration from vintage postcards and movie and travel posters.  Accessories and details reflected the handmade souvenirs-embroidery,ceramics,fabrics-that you can find to this day in street shops and stalls in every tourist area of Italy...  bursting with color, straw bags, embroidered fabrics, embellished circle skirts , printed scarves...

At every turn this runway was a celebration and each piece a love letter to Italian joy.

  “You see?” exclaimed Gabbana. “We don’t believe in fashion for trends any more. We want to show emotion. Just enjoy!”

Grazie Dolce and Gabbana for my trip to La Dolce Vita---complete with a few selfies--Perfetto!

Images VIA

The Timeless Couturier-In Appreciation Oscar de la Renta

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"The qualities I most admire in women are confidence and kindness."

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“There is no sound more feminine than a woman in a taffeta dress.”

 

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“I am not interested in shock tactics. I just want to make beautiful clothes.”

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“My job as a designer is to make a woman feel her very best.”

“You have to walk like you have three men walking behind you.”

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"Fashion is a trend, style is within a person."

Weaving Chanel:The Magic is in the Threads-The Making of an Iconic Fabric

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Of the handful of pieces in fashion that we consider "Iconic"-The "Little Black Dress", The Hermes Bag, a Classic White Blouse...perhaps the one that can be reinvented time and again is The Chanel Jacket.  The fabric of Coco Chanel's signature statement is what allows it to be new again...and again, and yet remain the definition of a timeless look.

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For Cate Blanchett's Oscar winning role as Jasmine French in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine, costume designer Suzy Benzinger dressed the character in a wardrobe that any socialite would covet, but as Jasmine slipped from society to breakdown it was her Chanel Jacket that she clung to for security along with her Birkin bag-both worn like the character herself. The jacket,however, stayed on Jasmine throughout the film  like a life raft for her-if she were to lose her jacket then all in fact would be lost for her. 

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What is it about this jacket?  This fabric?  A fabric that the second you see it you simply know -Chanel!  Karl Lagerfeld has insured that what Mademoiselle Chanel put on her own back remains in every collection in some manner...and the magic is in the threads!  

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Woven by hand , the Chanel Tweed is a parade of materials - boucle,  ribbon,  tulle, metallics ,even rope and cassette tape! and each time it is woven it becomes a fabric that only Chanel and the genius of Karl Lagerfeld can own.  

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To see how the magic of this fabric is created do not miss this video:

 Behind the Seams with Chanel's Iconic Tweed

 Only Chanel!

 

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Forever Coco-The Incomparable Classic Chanel

"A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous."

 

Portrait of Mademoiselle Chanel by Douglas Kirkland
Circa 1960

Photo By © Douglas Kirkland / Corbis via British Vogue

 She single handily changed fashion and how every woman dressed, no matter her economic status, forever.  That is not an over statement, that is truly what Coco Chanel's legacy.  

 "Fashion has become a joke. The designers have forgotten that there are women inside the dresses. Most women dress for men and want to be admired. But they must also be able to move, to get into a car without bursting their seams! Clothes must have a natural shape." 

I watched every runway show these past weeks and I was underwhelmed time and again.  I do believe that runway fashion should push style and that you should see art, but you should also see, particularly in RTW, clothes that can be worn and worn beautifully.  I think the shows that disappointed the most were from iconic names-Dior, Saint Laurent, Givenchy-all had elements worth watching, but few lived up to the name they sew into each garment...except Chanel. 

  Karl Lagerfeld has a reverence for not only the name he designs under, but also for the woman who to this day influences not only how women dress and look ,but also how they live.  That is the footprint she left and every time you put on a pair of pants or a strand of pearls or go about living your life comfortably in clothes it is Coco Chanel who brought us there.  

 Largerfeld has worked to ensure that the Chanel label moves forward with artistic elegance and edginess but at the same time Karl continues to  cherish and honor Mademoiselle Chanel's legacy.

  In every impeccable detail there is Coco.

 Don't miss Mr. Lagerfeld's sketches of Coco for Paul Morand's book The Allure of Chanel in British Vogue


If you are  a Downton fan then you know one of the best aspects of that luscious series are the clothes-you watch as not only women change as history takes them forward but also the clothes they wear, moving from corsets to free and flowy with shocking hemlines...and it was Coco Chanel who was the spark and the champion of this revoltion-a revolution in fashion history and in the history of women.
 

 

Portrait of Mademoiselle Chanel by Horst
1937

Photo By © Condé Nast / Corbis via British Vogue

 "Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman." 

No other designer in fashion history has had the lasting influence on women's fashion and lives than Coco Chanel.  There were years toward the end of her career that the world moved beyond her and her shows were less successful but that would not last. Classic always comes back to the forefront of the closet, and there is nothing more comfortable than pearls and  jeans.

 

Gabrielle Chanel in her suite at the Ritz hotel in Paris. Published in Harper's Bazaar in 1937, this photo was chosen for the Chanel No.5 advertisement. For the first time, Chanel herself promoted her perfume
1937

Photo By Photo François Kollar © Ministère de la Culture - France via BritishVogue

 "'Where should one use perfume?' a young woman asked. 'Wherever one wants to be kissed,' I said." 

 The journey that Gabrielle Coco Chanel took in her life transformed her and would influence how she saw women and how she envisioned what fashion should be which would then go  on to determine how women wore their clothes, what clothes would say abut a woman and  what women would  be wearing  in every era and on every occasion.  You do not have to own Chanel in your closet to have been influenced in your wardrobe choices bu the woman and the label. Instantly recognizable, iconic and thanks to Mr. Lagerfeld's brilliant design, timeless.

 

 Photo By © CHANEL / Photo D.R.via British Vogue

"Fashion passes, style remains."  

Do NOT Miss the Inside Chanel Video Series

Great Style Has No Age-Carmen Dell'Orefice

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 “I think America may be growing up and accepting the fact that the bulk of life exists beyond 50. Because demographically ... the vast population is over 50,” she said. “This is not to negate the young people coming up. But what kind of an example are we giving young people?” Carmen Dell'Orefice 

Carmen Dell’ Orefice via

It has been said that growing old is not for the sissies-tell that to Carmen Dell'Orefice.  She has been "showing up for the job" since the mid 1940s when at the age of 15  she graced the cover of Vogue for the first time.  Carmen Dell'Orefice I think is more beautiful today than ever, and she is, at the gracious age of 81,  still a working model, seen in numerous advertising campaigns and this fall on the runway at NYFW in two shows for Norisol Ferrari and Marimeko. 

Norisol Ferrari collection via

 With her legendary chiseled cheekbones and shock of room brightening white/silver hair, Carmen owns any space she walks through. She put the Super in Super Model. 

“Carmen is a born image maker and an expert editor of herself... In an industry built on hype, hyperbole and the lure of passing fad Carmen’s astonishing 66 year career is testament not only to her beauty, but to her wit, wisdom, professionalism and unshakable resolve.” David Downton

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Her extraordinary image has been captured by every legendary photographer.  Her first  first shoot for Vogue was with Clifford Coffin, Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon who photographed one of my favorite images ever!

"Like every other model in the world, I longed to work with Avedon...

finally he noticed me"

"For me things picked up again in the early 1980s when I was 49. I hadn't been working very much just modelling flannel nightgowns for Macy's and such, 

and one day Norman Parkinson showed up. He said, "You know, for an old bag, you don't look so bad. How about some pictures in Paris." 

Those pictures were in French Vogue and they were wonderful.'"  

Irving Penn  photographed her as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White, Erwin Blumenfeld declared her a great actress and Horst P Horst said hers was an ‘antique beauty of another age"-perhaps this explains her amazing staying power and why it can easily be argued that her "look" is the THE look of timeless style.

At The Heart Truth Runway 2005 via

Above all else Carmen is an inspiration-and not to aspiring models necessarily, but to anyone who feels that the passage of time has left them on the sidelines. 

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  Aging in our culture is not looked upon with any spec of glamour let alone style-designers do not design for women in their 80s and the fashion press seems to stop their attention at age 49 at best.  Yet there she is and when Carmen walked the runway this Fall in new York the fashion world had to pay attention-how could you not!

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"I projected a strong personality for a grey-haired ageing population -

 I gave them the permission to be themselves."   

When asked recently if she had any "work" done she easily replied “If your ceiling was falling down, wouldn’t you fix it?”

In an industry that celebrates and very often exploits youth Carmen stands apart, as she always has... to watch Carmen still working at 81 means maybe the fashion world finally gets it--women don't stop living at 17-real beauty has no age, and neither does Carmen Dell'Orefice

 “I may be the last link to a golden age and 

I’m going out with my high heels on…” – Carmen Dell’Orefice.

Carmen Dell’Orefice by Giuliano Bekor via