Head To J. Crew For A Piece Of The Fashion World’s Darling – Joseph Altuzarra

It turns out that the leaked collaboration between Manolo Blahnik and J Crew which I posted about a month and a half ago is indeed too good to be true.  And Blahnik’s denials of any knowledge of any collaboration may not have been a reflection of his lack of awareness of what’s going on with his brand, but of the fact that there was indeed no finalized agreement on a collaboration.  Blahnik did design shoes to go with the J Crew Fall 2012 collection, but reports now say that they were simply one offs for the runway show.

The Joseph Altuzarra collaboration, however, did deliver, and just as Altuzarra seems to be hitting his stride as a designer.  Sadly, as with the theoretical Manolo Blahnik collection, and unlike the fast fashion retailers, J Crew is not out to offer a bargain.  It never really was anyway, it’s not fast fashion, so there’s no reason to start now.  Still, I was somehow taken aback and disappointed when I saw the prices of the Joseph Altuzarra for J Crew pieces.  My initial response to the collection was one of disappointment.  While the collection does fit seamlessly within J Crew’s aesthetic, most of the items do not particularly stand out from the store’s general offerings.  They are, for the most part, fairly simple and basic pieces for sale at rather high prices.  Yes, the prices are less than “designer” prices and on par with the pricing of other well made name brand apparel, but they’re high enough to make me think twice about buying anything.  The collection is growing on me.  It was inspired by the kind of sexy French aesthetic embodied by Bridgitte Bardot, which is an apt description and adds a little je ne sai quoi, but meh …

1 Sabrina Dress $228    2. Odette Blouse $175 (a cute enough top, but side view suggests you have to be a twig to get away with it)

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No Need To Run For The Hills … The Sneakers Are All City

It’s fun to discover, once in a while, that you’ve been ahead of the trends, spotting the next-big-thing before it was the next-big-thing. I’m sure I am not actually ahead of the trends, just a part of the first or second wave, but I allow myself to imagine that I got hooked on whatever it is before it was a thing. So my big thing, starting last summer, has been sneakers.

Generally I’m a high heel kind of a girl. It comes in part of having short, stocky legs desperately in need of elongating, and in part of having friends who are several inches taller than I am. But it had been years since I had left the house without the added boost of a 2″-4″ heel. That is, up until last spring. For a number of reasons, the primary one being the popularity of jeans cuffed up to capri length, I decided to give flats a go. In addition to flat sandals and flip flops, in a store one day I picked up a pair of Bensimon sneakers on a whim. Admittedly, I had seen them in magazines enough times to think that if you wanted to look well dressed while wearing sneakers, they were a good bet. They are incredibly cute, garment dyed in a wide array of interesting colors. But more than that, they are the most comfortable shoes I have ever had the privilege of putting on my feet. Like bare feet. They’re amazing.  It was instant love.

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The Story Of A $1310 Graffiti Covered Bag

Last month, as part of Paris Fashion Week, the Louvre’s Musee Des Arts Decoratifs hosted a photocall in honor of the opening of its Louis Vuitton-Marc Jacobs  exhibition running from March 9 through September 16.  The exhibition relates the 143 year history of the fashion house through the lens of two men, Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs.

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A Spring Collaboration You May Actually Be Able To Buy

Bargain shoppers, get your wallets ready … the next designer collaboration will be on you before you know it.  The lookbook for the Alberta Ferretti for Impulse collection at Macy’s has been released.  The collection is by and large subtle and understated, but extremely pretty.  I imagine wearing one of the dresses would make anyone feel a bit like she was a sophisticated woman on an island in the carribean.  And presuming the quality is there to back up the design, the prices are fantastic.  These are my four must have pieces from the collection (I am sure if it were at H&M, the first dress would blow out in the first five minutes.  I’ll be interested to see how it goes as Macy’s, but if past experiences is any indicator, you can probably get on your computer at a sane hour and still nab one.):

Alberta Ferretti for Macy's Impulse dress $99

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You Know You’re Okay When You Look Just Like Everyone Else

Seriously?  A third fashion post in a row?  I know, I’m a little annoyed with myself for it, but I finally feel ready to address the whole Fashion Star  thing.  And the fact of the matter is, it’s really not a fashion post, but a retail/pop-culture/popular-mentality post.  Because Fashion Star  is only tangentially a show about fashion.  Critics can’t resist the temptation to compare it to Project Runway, and I am certainly guilty of that inclination myself, but the fact is, they are apples and oranges.  Project Runway  is about the art of fashion — the process, creativity in the face of constraints, talent, blah blah blah.   Fashion Star  is about retail.  It’s about understanding what sells, about marketing, getting clothing to market quickly and selling through even more quickly.

So far (and admittedly it has only been one episode) Fashion Star  is getting mixed reviews as entertainment.  As reality television it is not likely to garner anything resembling the cult following of Project Runway.  But it seems to be succeeding where it counts — maybe not for the network, but for the designers and above all the stores.  Consensus is, the format plays like one long infomercial and leaves plenty to be desired.  But bottom line, the show aired, the winning designs became available online and in stores, and the clothes sold like hotcakes.  No, not in the blow out in 2 hours fashion that Versace for H&M sold.  But still, the show aired Tuesday and by mid-day Wednesday H&M online had sold out of the winning dress.  If you ask me, that’s pretty impressive.  Karl Lagerfeld for Macy’s didn’t sell that quickly.  The inevitable question is “Why?”.

Fashion Star Ep 1 Blue Dress Designed by Sarah (really, just look at the description, you can't get much more generic than that)

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How To Look Like A Lady (Wink)

Prints don’t have to be bold — this spring we also have prints for the faint of heart and for children.  (For the style-obsessed — and others — today is above all the day to discuss last night’s premier of Fashion Star.  I dutifully watched it, but I can’t begin to imagine what to say … speechless (dumbfounded more like) … so I’ll just leave it at that.)

As discussed yesterday, I think the strongest trend for spring is prints, but another – as epitomized by Louis Vuitton – is saccharine sweet, candy-colored pastels.  Pastels are hard to pull off without seeming like too much, so lace dresses of pastel pink have taken on boxy shapes, unexpected sheerness, or accents of black accessories to balance things out.  Not surprisingly, when everything gets thrown into the mix, a number of designers have produced pastel hued prints.  If the D&G thing is feeling like a little much, these more subtly hued prints present a reasonable alternative.

Perhaps my favorite of these collections came from Erdem.  Every dress is impossibly refined and lady-like, but something makes them irresistible none the less (since refined and lady-like are definitely not clear-cut positive terms in my book).  Perhaps it is the black in the patterns which in the midst of blue and white flowers on silken fabric is somehow completely unexpected.

Erdem Spring 2012 collection via Style.com

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This Spring Put Your Best Foot Forward

This is going to sound like bitching.  And it’s not meant to be – honestly – because it doesn’t really matter in the end.  As addicted as I may be to shopping, I desperately need outside controls, so when something gets in the way of my throwing away money, it’s just as well.  As seriously as I might take fashion, I know that the world doesn’t rise and fall over one pair of shoes.  What aggravates the hell out of me is when large scale businesses can’t figure out how to operate in an organized manner.  Certain issues just shouldn’t be that hard.

I have been looking forward to the new Aldo Rise shoe collections arriving at ASOS.com for some time now (see my January 24 post on Affordable Designer Capsule Collections).  It has been available through Selfridges, but they don’t ship to the US.  The Aldo Rise website states quite clearly that the shoes will be available on ASOS (which does ship to the United States) on February 15.  They weren’t.  The shoes appeared slowly but surely on the site throughout the course of the day on February 16.  In the morning (US time, so later than that in London) four styles were showing up on the site.  By afternoon there were more, but if you did a normal search for them, you were likely to find most of them.  I found that if I googled “Aldo Rise ASOS Libertine” I could get to the page with the shoes I was looking for but could in no discernible way access from within the ASOS site.  Finally, by Thursday night they were all there.  As I say, no big deal, but why not just say that some of the shoes will start to be available on ASOS around February 15 — or something — or else actually have all of the shoes up on February 15?  This plan has been in the works for some time.  It’s not like the two companies couldn’t see it coming.  Is it really that hard to get the information right?  It cracked me up that as of last night, as February 15 drew to a close, every site affiliated with Aldo Rise still stated that the shoes would be available on ASOS.com February 15.  There’s no one in the office there that checks on and corrects these things?

The other really big miss — and this is the one that’s getting in the way of my buying the shoes — is the pricing.  The Aldo Rise website lists pricing for all of the shoes in both pounds and dollars — they are priced at either $175/£135 or $155/£125.  When I initially saw the dollar pricing a month ago I was surprised, since it is below what has been the exchange rate.  As of the 16th, £135 would be roughly $213 and £125 would be $197.  But, ha, fooled ya, on ASOS.com the dollar pricing to order these shoes from the United States is $241.72 and $223.81 respectively.  So my questions are a) why put the wrong price on the Aldo Rise website (is this going to be the price when the shoes arrive in Aldo stores on March?  was it the price given the exchange rate at the time that someone typed up the web page?  if either of the aforementioned, could they really not have been clearer about it?)? and b) why is the dollar price on ASOS.com notably higher than that dictated by the exchange rate?  Is it to compensate for shipping costs since ASOS provides free shipping to the US?  I understand why they would handle it that way, but it seems pretty slimy to me.  The inconsistencies are of very little consequence, but why be sloppy?

I was so excited for the shoes in large part as consolation for the fact that I was sure I wasn’t going to succeed in getting the Mary Katrantzou pieces I wanted.  And shoes are kind of a nice source of solace anyway when you find yourself in the midst of oh-my-god-it’s-february-and-I’m-still-overeating-from-the-holidays-will-I-ever-fit-into-anything-cute-again.  The good news is that the trend for this spring seems to be in really fun and brightly colored shoes, so cute shoes are pretty easy to find.  If you can’t afford to go designer, here are some fun alternatives.  This is one instance in which I would say, get three really fun pairs of shoes rather than the designer ones — it will cost you less money anyway.

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Mary Mary How Does Your Garden Grow … It Came, It Went, It Was Very Pretty

So, Mary Katrantzou for Topshop has quiety come and gone.  There are a few pieces left, but it doesn’t amount to much at this point.  Apparently the Bodycon dress — which is in fact the item that sold out within seconds of going on line rather than the hyped up limited edition dress which everyone predicted would be the first to go — will be coming back in stock in some quantity next week.  No word yet on when.  Otherwise, it’s over.  No crashing website or crazy mobs.  Topshop handled the whole fanfare without a whole lot of … well … fanfare.

The Bodycon dress is the one item coming back in stock. Oddly, the actual dress does not match the one in the promotion. To bad because I suspect the one shown above would be more flattering.

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Tee Time … Everyone’s Invited

In anticipation of the Mary Katrantzou for Topshop launch on Friday, I am trying to brace myself for intense disappointment.  Fortunately, Topshop has an answer for that — at least I hope it’s an answer and not yet another set up with too many customers and too little stock.  Friday also marks the launch of  Topshop’s NEWGEN designer t-shirt collection.  I like the whole designer t-shirt thing.  It may seem like a lot of money for a t-shirt, but looked at the other way around, it is the perfect way to grab something affordable and absolutely fabulous!  Unlike the dresses I buy that then sit in the closet waiting for the right occasion, t-shirts are a great everyday wardrobe staple.  A nice designer t-shirt can even be appropriate for work.  Maybe not where you work, but I wouldn’t bet on that.  I’m pretty sure I could figure out how to wear a t-shirt in almost every kind of a situation … ever since Sharon Stone rocked a t-shirt with a taffeta skirt (if you ask me, the all time best outfit around).  Nice crisp t-shirt, a tailored charcoal suit from All Saints — you may not be able to get away with it in the most traditional business-like environment, but I would sure as hell try.

There is a Mary Katrantzou shirt among the offerings, but oddly it’s not my favorite.  Shirts are £30 each.  There is pretty much something for everyone, but I think the JW Anders, Meadham Kirchhoff, Peter Jensen, Emma Cook and Marios Schwab shirts are fantastic.  Do you think getting five is overkill.

JW Anderson

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The Most Incredible Collection This Spring – I <3 Mary Katrantzou

Pictures of Mary Katrantzou’s collection for Topshop have finally been released!  Yay!  This is definitely a very different kind of collaboration than those from Target and H&M.  Reports had stated that this would be a 14 piece collection.  Now, apparently it has become a ten piece collection.  I have only been able to find images of nine pieces, so I’m not sure where the last one went, but when the collection hit stores presumably  there should be ten pieces.  But any way you slice it, it is an extremely small and tight collection (although it is the largest of the three collections that Katrantzou has designed for Topshop to date).  Perhaps most significantly, it is THE collection that seems to be driving all of spring’s major trends.  Citizens of Humanity jeans, Zara, Topshop, H&M, Forever 21 — everywhere you turn, trend driven stores are all about the abundant floral prints.  That is a hell of a lot of influence for a young designer.  Way to go Mary!  Party on!

Mary Katrantzou for Topshop, Blue Carnation T-shirt £50 and Jersey Leggings £40

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