Ulyana Sergeenko: Another face in the crowd

The Russians are coming. The Russians are coming. Actually, they're here, there and everywhere. That includes couture salons  the couture runway. Ulyana Sergeenko is the newest addition to the lineup with her first presentation in Paris a short time ago. I've been seeing her more and more in the press as an avid client of several couture houses and had heard she dabbled a bit with scissors and thread. Not until yesterday did I realize she'd gone and put on a show (thanks to my eagle-eyed friends Spirou and Anya, who are all seeing, all hearing and all knowing!!!). Not wanting to remain in the dark too long, I dashed to YouTube and took a peek. My bestest, BFF Jolain of Style Illustrated has a rule of thumb when perusing collections: if it doesn't grab you by the short hairs in the first 5-10 exits, well then, that's your cue to exit. I broke that rule with this collection. It didn't grab me in the first 20 exits, but I hung on out of a perverse curiosity to see just what was coming down that runway next. After 32 exits it finally ran out of gas. That's being kind. It ran out of gas after the first 5 or so, but after that I stopped counting.

It's always interesting when you see designers, I use that term loosely, tackle this complex job when their roots are more solidly planted in the retail world. What I mean by that, are designers who are really world class shoppers, not creators. Think Vera Wang, for instance. Ulyana Sergeenko strikes me the same way. Unlike Wang who copies much of what fills her closets, Ulyana seems to draw a blank when it comes to design. Her vast couture wardrobe fails to register when she's hard at work in the studio. Instead her inspiration comes from that fertile ground where she roamed as a child. There's an overarching Dacha vibe complete with peasants, the military, rebellious teens on a barren plain and the maids who did the sewing and cleaning. How else can one explain her eccentric take on fashion design?

 She opened with quilted skirts like the comforter I used to sleep under by night (as a kid) and wrapped around my waist as a gown during the day. I'd go up and down the stairs holding it like a deb at his first cotillion and then sitting on the sofa spreading it out around me like the Queen sitting for her official portrait, but I digress.... Add to that a blouse with mutton chop sleeves. There were printed long dirndls in sobering oxblood with gold dots and a criss-crossing ribbon harness. Another had a faux apron in applique lace panels off the sides. The barren wintry plain was referenced in snow bunny knit sweaters, pouty little bloomers, down mittens and a fur hat shaped like a crash helmet. There was a homespun feel to some of the looks in fuzzy angora sweaters and long full skirts that said neither this or that. The sable trimmed Military coat that fell to the floor was sobering in it's dark grey color with a red skull cap atop the model's head. She liberally sprinkled military issue medals on blouses, and coats alike. The towering Drum Majorette hat crowning a sheer chiffon tee shirt and velvet booty bloomers was pretty much the last word. Not to be a total Debbie Downer, there were a few looks that were amusing and creative. A long fitted coat had sable pelts falling from the waist to the floor which had a little something. A black lace gown was particularly pretty at the bodice and the looks that were pure sportswear looked smart and relaxed in a serious sort of way.

So, with that said, I'll say no more about it. Take a look and see what you think. If you can't make it and have buckets of rubles, then just buy it....

That's what I'm talkin' about...

I feel kind of guilty not having said more about the couture and maybe I'll get back to it. I'm sitting up in bed with the AC blasting wondering why I didn't get out of town and head for the beach. The weather here is stultifying and the news is even more so. One thing I look forward to on a Sunday is the New York Times. That little diversion has been a let down for months. Is it just me or do you all find it filled with bad news and the Style section devoid of any news at all? For the life of me I can't follow the little that I read. When Eric Wilson writes or Guy Trebay for that matter, there are things to consider and things to learn. Ruth Laferla has amusing stories that skip along the surface of many odd subjects like a stone whizzing across a sill pond. But when Cathy Horyn gets into it I am almost always backtracking to find the subject, the verb and the predicate of the story. I swear I just can't make out what's being said. The word oblique comes to mind. In the end I just feel hopelessly thick and out of the loop. So I have to rely on my own sketchy powers of deduction to get to the heart of so many non stories.
An interesting turn of events this week is the purchase of Valentino by the Qatar royal family. I would imagine it is the Qatar Luxury Group headed by Sheikha Moza that orchestrated the sale. This fascinates me on two levels. First, who knew the house was on the selling block? Sheltered, uninformed me certainly didn't. Also, what is going on with the design house that QLG has been busy birthing for the past year and a half with Stephane Roland at the helm? Where is that breakthrough collection and why haven't we seen or heard a word, with the exception of the few of us who've been fortunate to spend a few moments in that desert paradise. I guess its easier to buy than to build, even if you have billions to use as seed money. I made 4 collections a year for almost 30 years without a dime to spare.... Whatever.
Thanks to my extremely well informed readers I got news that John Galliano may be the choice of Diego della Valle to design the revivified house of Shiaparelli. Like most of you, I saw the images of Galliano and Madame Wintour supping at L'Espadon but didn't do the math. I just figured 1+0=1. Who knew that equation could equal a total eclipse of the runway? I have to say that the possibility of such a match will make the boredom we've been suffering just a little less boring. Shiap used to give Chanel a run for her money back in the days of War. Dior turned the tide on both those warring women. With a fast forward to today, I daresay Galliano could give them all a run for their billions. I'm a sucker for blood sport. This is not to overlook Galliano's sullied past/present, but the fashion world has no memory worth speaking of, so why not let the games begin, again. Stripping him of his Dior employee ID, taking away his own label, doing soft time in a white-collar rehab facility and designing Kate Moss' wedding dress is perhaps punishment enough. If nothing else it will put the new, new Dior in a bit more realistic context.
The couture as a whole was pretty dull. Giambatista Valli starts to look a little over cooked. Bouchra Jarrar should stick to the Pret a Porter schedule, Valentino should reconsider a lot of what they're about, Lagerfeld might try showing and not so much telling, Gaultier might just take a breather from his nostalgia trip, Elie Saab would be wise to simply restage last spring's Pret again, and again, Givenchy should try to talk Hubert into consulting for the house and Alaia should join the line up and stop being so obstinate. Hedi Slimane and YSL are a tantalizing question...
Time for another shower and a fresh bowl of ice cold milk. Thank god I don't have hair!

Chanel Resort 2013: Let them eat Suzie Q's.

Rare is the season when I don't find myself prostrated at the spectator shod feet of the house of Chanel, moaning, "I'm not worthy...I'm not worthy". I admit I can be starstruck and have been by the machinations of Graf Karl von und zu Lagerfeld for many many years. He is undeniably one of the most prolific and creative design minds in this universe and the parallel one inhabited by a jaundiced few (too many). Like everything in life, the good stuff comes and goes. His Byzantium collection inspired by the Empress Theodora was pretty special. So was the last couture collection that took us to Atlantis. Even the gigantic garden party that conjured images of Last Year at Marienbad left me  stupefied, flattened and crawling on the floor.

 
Resort didn't have the same effect. I want to pop this in before pouncing on his Fall 2012 couture collection simply because this looked like such an obvious aberration. I keep going back to his diatribes regarding modernism, the future, "yes", the past be damned. Sentimentality is an emotion and word that has no place or meaning in his world. Still, we get subtle glimpses of that chink in his armor with clothes that made up the resort collection. Granted they were to a degree site specific. Versailles is not the setting for booty shorts and tube tops. Neither is it the best spot for get ups that looked like the work of an army of Chanel interns...perhaps it was Choupette's maiden voyage. This Chanel girl is a high top wearing, multi-colored bobbed wig tossing, quilted leather-clad water can swinging, saddle bag adorned bathing suit posing, shear, lattice and floral embroidery covered house dress donning, ruffled pantelette baring, been there done that tweed suit parading, bicep curling, sleeveless denim d'Hameau gold braid trimmed pedal pusher strutting, hyperbole spouting kid. The moments are too few leaving us with a pastiche of what Chanel can mean. It has meant many things but very rarely does it mean banality.

So you win some, you lose some. Ines de la Fressange put it diplomatically when congratulating Lagerfeld at the end..." Oh Karl, you have so many ideas"(air kiss, air kiss, air kiss). Could that be a nice way of saying "Meh"?

Dior Fall couture 2012: The Situation...

Well the day came and the day went. Raf Simons gave Christian Dior his own personal imprint and it was a light touch at that. If not for the floor to ceiling walls of blooms, those 5 salons would have been as deathly quiet as a street in Juarrez after a drive-by shooting. Just looking at the faces in the front row, all five of the front rows, with Marc and Anna and Grace and Glenda and Azzedine and Alber and, well, just about everyone that matters in fashion, there wasn't an expression of delight or even interest after the first 10 exits came and exited. It was clear from the beginning with the exception of a sexy little peplumed bustier in black over matching ciggies that in his haste to leave Jil Sander, Simons forgot to grab his imagination. There was more life in one pair of the shoes he did for his last Sander collection than in the whole of this dreary march to nowhere. The same 4 themes repeated themselves over and over. There was the ubiquitous Bar jacket with exaggerated round hips, the bustier with frothy, "COUTURE-SHAPED" abbreviated skirt over slim black ciggies, a coat dress with a bustier or peaked-lapels, with or without sleeves, and a full skirted bustier dress in cloth or fur. Mix into that heady group some archival embroideries on the backs of dresses with another current iteration in another color running down the front and you have a couture collection that someone said, "....changed the landscape of Haute Couture forever". Mmm...I'm not so sure about that, but then again...amazing is the new meh.

I awaited this show as much as many of you. My curiosity was spurred not so much by Raf Simons as by the fashion world's hunger and conviction that this would be the game changing marriage of the  century. I had my doubts especially considering the fact that Anna Wintour and other confused hacks were so convinced. I will say that these things take time and one couture show doesn't make one god or the devil. I am surprised that there wasn't more life and creativity in the collection. In 55 looks there was ample opportunity to lay out a road map for what the future might hold. Looking back at the Fall 2012 presentation Simons made for Jil Sander, it was rife with ideas, dreamy colo, a nod to the golden age of fashion with a steely eye on its future. There were so many things that one could imagine seeing, wearing and having. That did not happen today at Dior. The looks of boredom and disappointment in the audience made me uncomfortable. What's more, I can promise that everyone will rally around the bonfire and say how amazing it all is. The furs were a big red flag. The first black Broadtail coat was beautiful. Even the dyed navy blue bustier in Broadtail was working, but that was the end of that riff. The white peplum strapless over skinny pants that were on the chubby side of skinny fell flat. The fit of the top of the ensemble was droopy and buckling. The same could be said for several other exits. All of those furs looked like a stilted vision of luxury.

Fit, which is a hallmark of the couture ateliers at Dior, was uneven. A few of the long gored skirts in faille had a rippling surface that did not look intentional. Pairing that with sheer stretch tulle long sleeved tee shirts was off putting. If you look closely at the ensembles you can see what I mean. I wasn't fishing for this, it stared right off the screen at me. There was a grey wool wrapped coat that looked like a mistake. It was poorly conceived and made badly. The attention to the bust on many of the looks with little tucks and inset cups like wall sconces drew attention to itself in a jarring way. The girls looked like little girls in need of some padding. The digital prints of tie dye on a few dresses, a gown and coat were great looking but didn't seem to have a place in the larger scheme of the collection. All in all, it looked like very serious sportswear. It was not what one would expect of the Couture. Maybe that will come in time, we'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, I'm wondering if there was a rush to marry the two entities; a shotgun wedding of sorts. If so, maybe the house should re-think this step and Raf Simons should re-think what he really wants to do. This feels like a no -win situation.

Dsquared Resort2013: "Cease and disist....."

Dean and Dan Caten of Dsquared have been rocking it for some time now. Last fall's collection was rife with great ideas, deliciously luxe elements and color combinations to make most others stop and take notes. The humor and naughtiness they share with an audience so steeped in their own juices is refreshingly unself-conscious. Their work is like a mirror held up to a world that fails to see itself, only a funhouse version of what they imagine themselves to be. Fashion and style is clearly something to be enjoyed and dressing is a means to self expression and not self reference. When I looked at their Resort 2013 collection I took a double take. I thought for a moment I was looking Chanel, but without all the pretentious stuffing and studied self absorption. A knowing Lolita at a payphone had replaced a jaded Ines at the palace steps. Don't get me wrong, I have immense regard and respect for Karl Lagerfeld. I'm just a bit full from all the motor mouth gab about modernism, unsentimentality and never looking back. For a few seasons now, his work is weighted down by a grandeur that is totally sentimental and of the past. Taking Marie Antoinette and dressing her in Denim d'Hameau is not pushing the envelope.



The silly play on the (past) Chanel vocabulary: biker jackets, ballskirts, bustiers, chain trim and chain gang belts, along with quilting on leather garments and accessories left little mystery as to the origin of their inspiration. What was fun and refreshing was the message all of those elements communicated. Youthful, sexy hyper femininity is what came across. It didn't take a hall filled with a a polar ice cap, the grounds of Versailles or a world beneath the sea with Florence and the Machine supplying the soundtrack. A simple, outdated payphone and some dirt on the floor with a foxy Cara Delevigne gets the point across. It was short, very short and sweet. Even the derigeur yellow chemise and tweed jackets over micro shorts had a come hither quality not seen at the Rue Cambon in too long. It's no wonder that a day after the Dsquared presentation, Chanel's lawyers printed a full page cease and desist letter to all those who dare use Chanel-isms like "biker jackets, gold chain and quilting". I, for one, don't see what all the fuss is. Perhaps Lagerfeld should get his head out of his library and get out and mingle.

If not now, then when?

Is it just me or is there a deathly silence enveloping the world of style? I'm looking and listening and all I'm getting is white noise. White noise from a bunch of noisy (white) people. When I was a kid we had a cleaning lady who was supposed to come once a week. Though my mother, who was a school principal and always at school and or at meetings set a weekly schedule, Mrs. Gaudet would come when she felt like it. Often she would appear at odd hours with 3 of her many kids and let them amuse themselves any way they pleased. They'd rifle through the drawers in our bedrooms, tug clothes off of hangers and play dress up, but mostly they liked to go through the refrigerator taking out food and eating it or more often than not hide it in unlikely places throughout the house. I remember coming across sticks of butter melted and rancid on the floor behind the stereo cabinet. Other hiding places were equally mystifying but always creative; in shoes, under beds and sometimes under the covers of beds. I thought those kids were just being annoying. It wasn't until much later it occurred to me they might be hungry and were stashing food to come back and unearth later like squirrels. These feral little boys and girls were my first taste of the grasping, desperate world laying in wait for me. Still we joked that we were forever 'waiting for Gaudet'... I feel the same lately wondering when something of real interest is going to happen in our chosen world of fashion. I swear I've watched the paint dry and now it's beginning to chip and peel away.

My thoughts drift to Avenue Montaigne and the goings on behind the pearl grey walls of Christian Dior. So much noise came from so many corners demanding the head of Bill Gaytten who did an admirable and masterful job of keeping the balls in the air. It annoyed me to no end that the press was snapping at his face, forget his tail, that he was bringing down the house, was only a lowly pattern maker and damning Dior to a limbo land of Purgatory; not heaven and not quite hell. It annoyed me so much I felt unable to comment, but instead turned my back and walked away. Then Jil Sander did the unspeakable and tossed Raf Simons from his perch and into the butterfly net of Bernard Arnaud. No doubt the new age of Dior under his direction will be an interesting and compelling story. I hope for his sake that the thirsting hordes give him a moment to find his voice amid the cacophony of yammering experts; the elite media to coin a truly idiotic phrase. Personally, I wonder why he would want to go swimming in shark infested waters after having just been bitten. How perfect it would have been for the House that Simons built than setting up house in a still cordoned off crime scene. But what do I know? The irony in all of this is that the numbers are up at Dior during Bill Gaytten's tenure and a glamorous new video "The Secret Garden" has just aired built around his exquisite pre-fall collection. He gets my congratulations and sympathy. It's a thankless world out there. Don't get me wrong, I'm like many of you all goose bumps over the final collection for Sander that Raf created. It was one of the most elegant and moving collections anywhere in a long time. It carries more currency than the cost of doing business in the stultifying world of LVMH. I've always been wary of answered prayers.

If one looks back on the recent history of Dior there have been some very high moments that pale against the hyperbole of today. Marc Bohan may have been a bit of a snooze after Saint Laurent was dismissed but he took the house into the next phase of its growth and prosperity. Gianfranco Ferre was the revolutionary after the Bohan years of peace and prosperity. That reign was all too short before the scissors were handed to Galliano. After years of collections that not only took us back to a time of extraordinary excess and a recalibration of what the couture can and might become, it all came to a screeching halt. Now we live in a time of heart stopping dullness where no news is the big story. If you care about Linda Evangelista's child support trial, the invitation list of the Costume Institute Ball or Amanda Brooks' plans for her exile in the English countryside, then there's a feast just waiting for you to gorge on. I need something with a little more substance. Someone wake me when the credits roll.

images courtesy of Pinterest...except for my portrait.

Revelations at 36,000 feet

Villagio Doha

Dior boutique at Villagio Doha

There's nothing like 2 weeks in the Middle East to put the shine back on the Big Apple. The sun and heat restores all the lost vitamin D that a winter in the northeast annihilates. It was almost like I'd been fast asleep and all of a sudden someone (Allah, in this case) turned on the lights. Luxury shopping malls with yellow matte finished Maserati and Silver Ghost Rolls Royce sitting in unfussy displays for all to touch, sit inside and order (yes order) along with teeming boutiques like Hermes, Dior, Bottega, Armani, Dolce and Gabbana, Valentino, you name it, were all full gleeful shoppers. Luxury shops in Doha are not the elephant graveyards of the west but actually a very viable market. Yes, I know, Qatar has the highest per capita income of any country in the world and shopping there is the national pastime besides pumping gas and counting money, but still... Luxury is alive and well there and it put a smile on my face as one who hitched my wagon to that endangered species so long ago. Despite a sandstorm that blew up in minutes to engulf the car, blotting out all visibility beyond five feet and the grit that settled in my nose , eyes and mouth, I actually feel more clear sighted than I have in a long time.

Dressed in pajamas in my bed on my Qatar Airways flight back to New York, I watched several movies; 4 to be precise. That's easy to do on a 14 hour flight. You can even fit in a 5 hour nap and three full meals.Once I'd exhausted the film choices I started surfing the video library and happened upon the spring 2012 collection of Elie Saab. I've always discounted him as a spangle crazy, red carpet hustler satisfying the needs of the J Lo's of the world...not exactly my cup of Joe. He and others like Zuhair Murad are some of the truly popular couturiers in the Middle East not excluding the usual players that crowd the Paris scene. They succeed in places like Doha, Dubai, and Riyadh because they happily pile on the crystals, paillettes, pearls and kilometers of silver and gold thread satisfying tastes that are in general way, way over the top. They do so without complaint with fees that equal the cost of a perfectly nice house, delivering them by the jumbo-jet load. I'm sure that some of the wooden crates I saw being transported from the bellies of cargo planes on the tarmac were gilded creations enroute to some lucky princesses desert palace compound, which brings me to the subject of weddings.

Elie Saab

Elie Saab

Weddings are the social occasion of any given week. The royal family, the Al-Thani, is vast numbering more than 2500. With numbers so large in that family alone, there are a lot of weddings going on. From what I've been told, the sexes are separate for wedding celebrations. The men congregate under elaborate tents giving toasts and shooting off guns well into the night. Not exactly my idea of a good time, but hey, who am I? The women in contrast have their party for other women only, pulling out all the stops with fashion and jewels. There's nothing in the west that can compete with this level of display including popular get togethers like the red carpet at the Oscars or Golden Globes. Tradition plays an integral part in the proceedings with the groom's gift of jewels to his bride which are delivered by armored truck both for the sake of security and due to the sheer volume of "gifts". The invited guests are in their finest which goes from haute couture to, well, haute couture. The black veils and floor length black abayas that cover them in public are all left at the coat check. I'm talking sexy, revealing, super cha-cha looks with hair and make-up that would make Cleopatra grab for her compact and a paint brush. One cardinal rule of the game is the wedding dress must "out-zhuzh" the "zhuzh" that's filling the room. Elie Saab, Zuhair Murad and players like Dior, Chanel, Valentino, McQueen and YSL and even Vera Wang deliver the "zhuzh". It appears that aesthetic concerns are sacrificed in service to the desired end.

Elie Saab

My point in all of this is that Elie Saab consequently never registered very high on my radar until I watched his show at 36,000 feet. I watched it about 6 times in a row and would have watched a 7th if the captain hadn't interrupted the show with the announcement that we were landing in 5 minutes and it was time to climb out of bed and put some clothes on. Though there were pailletes on many dresses and gowns, the collection was very glamorous, colored beautifully in whole sections of white, saffron, jade, blue/grey, and melon but was surprisingly minimal in overall detail. The shapes were deceptively simple and yet, young, modern and unstudied. It was a marvel to see looks that had all the jazz a "special occasion" calls for minus the vulgar, the obvious or the gratuitous. The only collection on the New York runway that came close would be Carolina Herrera this past season. She's another one I'd lost interest in like Oscar de la Renta with season upon season of oddly unsophisticated clothes heavy on the self conscious and light on real chic. Her brand of elegance has been too often about refusing nothing, but this season it was fantastic. It was everything I miss from Blass, Oscar, Valentino, Ungaro and Balmain. Herve Pierre, her creative director and his second in command hit a home run. Elie Saab did the same and more.


Watching his collection over and over was like the fashion show equivalent of the Mile High Club. It gave me a rush, I felt all yummy inside and wanted to go for seconds, well in this case, 7ths. Check it out and see if you get a little tingle. Even the girls walking the show were sexy, sexy, sexy along with a selection of music that was equally good.




It's great to be back home. Happy Easter! Happy Passover! Happy Weekend!