StyleLikeU

This past April I was featured on StyleLikeU.com, which was founded by the unstoppable Elisa Goodkind and Lily Mandelbaum.

You can check it out here.

It was filmed at my mom's house two nights before i moved to Los Angeles. Interestingly enough, that probably made it easier because it was just everything i had in my suitcase for the first month of couch-surfing. And it's all stuff i really wear, instead of the shredded vintage dress, beaded bolero, etc--the dream items you have in your closet but never find a reasonable moment to wear unless you're procrastinating around your house...

BUT if you want to see something really inspiring, check out my dearest friend Olivia's closet here! And she actually wears ALL OF THOSE AMAZING THINGS, looking like the most glamorous vision somewhere between The Fountainhead, Great Gatsby, and Studio 54.

And since this post is somewhat image-deprived, here are three lovely Olivias in her studio.

Film Strip

Magic Eye

I'm of the belief that there's two camps of high design in fashion.* One's reductionistic--the stripping of all froth and excess down to the elements: wearable, effortless, beautiful, impeccable construction. Just think- Yves Saint Laurent, Raf Simmons, Yohji Yamamoto, Martin Margiela--and of course their offshoots (the perfect tee shirt crew). They strip style down to its most basic, beautiful, and exalted function: living.

Then there's the other approach, what I've read described as "Arch Style."** The mad geniuses like Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Rei Kawakubo, Philip Treacy, Thierry Mugler, the couturiers. Fashion is to be pushed, molded, obliterated, and reconceived. Style is not for living (or necessarily wearing), it's about life.

Of course, designers can weave in and out of both camps, and the usual, if not always fulfilled expectation is that they can do both. The emphasis of late, since the recession, has been on the former camp. But i have to say that despite my personal preference for the simple, Alexander McQueen's collection was the apex of Paris, so beautiful, inventive, and forward thinking was it. The kaleidoscopic reptillian prints, the shoes that looked, in Cathy Horyn's words, like "the hulls of ships," and the narrative of evolution: the interplay between nature and technology.






















These are images from Style.com but do yourself a favor and go to the NYTimes gallery, where you can focus in. Simply mindblowing.

* By all means, if you disagree with how i've divided the above, or have other names to throw in the mix, please please do!

**Articulated by photographer Tom Hines in a Dossier article