La Vie En Rose

Shades of Fall 2009

Much is being made in the recent media that of Pantone's edict that the color iron is the "new black" this fall season. But what of the rest of the spectrum we'll be covering our walls and our selves in during the second half of the year?

The Boyz from Oz(cars)

Robert Barr in Thom Browne

So much fuss over what the broads were wearing to the Academy Awards Sunday night, right?
What of the men? I thrilled at the sight of a couple of friends who hit the Kodak Theater looking much more charming than the march of Hugo Boss and Giorgio Armani penguins (famous and foxy as many of them might be) dominating the scene.
Neither one of them know one another. But being that they both prefer an unorthodox approach to their wardrobes, they were likely the only pair Sunday to appear in ankle-length trousers. It takes a fair share of aplomb and flair to pull of such a look, and these two manage to look dashing--and not like they raided Pee-Wee Herman’s closet.

Robert Barr sent me a few shots he surreptitiously had taken with his phone (photography is forbidden at the main event unless you have a credential or are world famous). My former assistant at WWD, Robert went on to slave away with Giambattista Valli in Paris and Yeohlee in New York before returning recently to L.A. to finally finish up his novel. He took a two-week break to do research for the show producers, and as part of the gig got a laminated pass to attend. Maybe I'm just used to seeing him in Dior Homme. But he manages to give some heat to the Thom Browne suit.
Ray Azoulay popped into the store on his way to the Oscars Sunday afternoon to show me the goods. He is the towering, silver-haired neighbor who lives above A+R in Venice and owns the arcana-art filled emporium Obsolete. He is also among the most stylish men we know, so I always love seeing what he puts together. Of course, I had to pull out my camera and make him pose.

Ray was attending his first Academy Awards with the costume designer Michael O' Connor’s entourage. O’Connor took the top prize for his 17th century fashion parade for “The Duchess,” so the night ended late. And Ray hasn’t been heard from since! He chose an Ann Demeulemeester suit and dressed it with a muffler of shredded cashmere.

Ray Azoulay in Ann Demeulemeester

Cruz Control

Penelope Cruz in Balmain from Rita Watnick's LILY et Cie.

As any one with a newspaper, TV or radio knows by now, Penélope Cruz not only took the prize for best supporting actress at Sunday 81st Academy Awards—she was the first Spanish-born actress to score an Oscar win.

Bravo to my home girl!

The fellow Madrileña, born to a hairdresser and an auto mechanic, is key to the Pedro Almodovar posse and she extended props to the director along with Woody Allen in her emotional acceptance speech last night. (With her first word in Spanish, I turned to mush.)
The 34-year-old beauty got her first Oscar nom for Pedro’s “Volver,” among my favorite of his films and her roles. It’s brilliant. And the 2006 film made Cruz the first Spanish woman to be nominated for a best actress Academy Award for a non-English speaking role. But it was Bigas Luna’s wild dramedy "Jamón, jamón" that was her first break, and her first film opposite Javier Bardem, the ex she terrorizes and loves in Woody’s "Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” That film straddles the best and worst in a film, and most everything but Penelope, Javier and Bacelona end up in the latter category
¡Viva España!

But I digress. What really matters today is not the gold tchotchke (which she dutifully dedicated to fellow thespians in Spain) but the fashion. Penelope also tops best-dressed lists. And why not?
Her choices always lead the lists, including the kicky, chocolate Azzedine Alaia she chose for Saturday's Independent Spirit Awards or the black velvet Alaia for the recent BAFTAs. She also brought home the awards at both those events.
Penelope's 60-year-old Balmain couture gown was the stuff superstars are made of—or we expect them to be dressed in. Rita Watnick, a master authority of vintage couture and the owner of the unparalleled vintage salon LILY et Cie in Beverly Hills, steered Penelope and her stylist Christina Ehrlich to the frothy silk confection.
Chopard jewels and a Leiber clutch, and the simplist of updo's and makeup rounded out this iconic picture of elegance.

Penelope in Azzedine Alaia

[Top Photo: Steve Granitz/WireImage]

Going Green with Indie Spirit

Mary-Kate Olsen in high spirits at the Elle Lounge

The Independent Spirit Awards vowed to be a zero-waste event, from the biodiesel generators powering the ocean-side tented site to the locally-sourced banquet for the 1,500 glorified guests. But the greenest trapping VIPs at Saturday’s party on Santa Monica beach invariably had in mind was the leafy-colored Elle lounge outside the main event’s big top.
Kerry Washington, Rose Byrne, Claire Danes, Taraji Henson and the mag’s latest cover girl Jessica Alba were among the glam pack that came through. Giovanni Ribisi got my points for snazziest dressed in that three-piece suit.

Giovanni Ribisi's natty threesome.

Besides the brassy espresso machine, the most popular draw was the Lacoste bar, where the paparazzi catnip loaded up on bucket hats, nylon carryalls and the chicest slim-rimmed sunglasses. Also hanging out were my old pals Justine Bateman, John C. Riley and China Chow (who did her best prom pose with show host Steve Coogan).

China Chow and Steve Coogan

Yes, I’d resisted much of the Oscar circus hoopla this week, having spent enough of my years eyeball deep employed in the swirl of it all. But Elle reared her pretty head one too many times this last week, and so I obliged. Joe Zee, the mag’s fashion director and my former colleague at Fairchild Pub (WWD/W) spent several hours at A+R last Friday after his shoot on the beach was rained out. And days later another

Elle's Belle: Jessica Alba in Dior.

pal with the mag messengered over the laminated pass to the awards event, complete with a Swarovski-covered Maybelline mascara and the very same Garnier Fructis hair products I’d bought the day before (hopefully Mary-Kate picked up a bottle of the anti-frizz serum at the lounge; poor dear could've certainly used a squirt). No amount of swag would woo me anywhere. But the excuse to sneak out of work for a couple of hours to see a few pals? That’s a use of my precious time I don’t mind splurging.
Seeing a bunch of famous faces? Not so much. Been there, done that. That said, I still can’t help but get a thrill at the sight of John Waters. It wasn't my first time. But that mustachioed mug is a bright spark among all this fleeting glitter and a moment zero-wasted.

Chairman of the Bored: Director provocateur John Waters.

Oscar hopeful Taraji P. Henson

Indie Bees: Illeana Douglas and Justine Bateman

John C. Riley

Sandra Oh prays for awards week to end.

[Photos Courtesy of Elle/WireImage:
Mary-Kate Olsen,Taraji P. Henson, Sandra Oh, Jessica Alba, Giovanni Ribisi by Donato Sardella
China Chow, Steven Coogan, Illeana Douglas, Justine Bateman by Stephanie Keenan
John C. Riley, John Waters by A. Wyman]

Our Warehouse Guy, The Rock Star

"Minds Awake" by Rumspringa

It goes without saying the A+R team is among the best-looking and talented anywhere. Case in point is our warehouse assistant Itaru de la Vega. The towering brunette with two Spanish parents is half of the bluesy indie rock band Rumspringa. Itaru works over the drums, while Joe Stevens commands guitar and vocals.
Andy and I've seen a load of bands in our time, especially those filed under blues (from Screamin Jay Hawkins and Buddy Guy to Stevie Ray Vaughn and the White Stripes). We first checked out Rumspringa on the invitation of mutual friends. We were hooked. (It was only months later that we recruited Itaru).
With each new show from L.A. to the U.K., their legion of fans on the club circuit is blowing up. Among them is Shia Labeouf, a longtime friend who traded in his actor's cap for one of director last month. He lead the duo in a mobile home out on the road, shooting this video of the guys out in the freezing chill of Colorado and inside one of our favorite local live dives, The Echo.
If Rumspringa roll into your town, don't miss them. It would be a shame if you didn't get to witness them in the cozy venue of some dive. Those days are undoubtedly short-lived.

Lady Hawk

Nicki and Lara in Scotland

As life rushes forward, falconry seems all the more sublime, a pursuit rich of mores and requiring mettle. It's not for the faint of body or soul, making it no surprise that it so appeals to Nicki Griffith, Andy's younger sister. She forwarded these images to us today, snapped last Saturday in a field near St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland, and featuring Nicki and her lady hawk, Lara.
The bird is a Harris hawk, a breed found all over North America. Nicki wrote that Lara, who was born last June, will "change her plumage in the Spring and lose all those pretty bars, going darker, just keeping the flashes of red on her wings and the white on her rump. She has little hearts in dark brown on the small white feathers under her tail!! A real girlie bird."
By the way, the hawk is named after Lara Croft. Like the superhero, this is one hawk who is a "tomb raider, number one hunter and good looking bird."
The sight of Nicki and Lara on the wintry tundra is utterly fabulous.

Exhibitionist: Hussein Chalayan

The aura of celebrity and sun worship is explored in "Readings."

Like the onslaught of cheap-n-chic retailers chasing after every luxe designer, museums continue the sprint toward showcasing fashion. Who can fault them? The lure of a wide swath of clotheshorses guaranteed to line up and, most certainly, buy the glossy catalog and anything else offered in the museum store is attractive enough. Throw in the inevitable press beyond the art section and the patina of glamour by association (especially on opening night), and the pairing is all too irresistible.
To those of us who also can’t help but submit, however, the high getting there can quickly go the way of those wicked stilettos snatched at an end-of-season sale. So fantastic at first sight. But walk a few steps in them and poor execution in design turns into the pain of possibility lost—including those vanished dollars. Last year’s “Superheroes” show at the Met in New York comes to mind. I was so disillusioned at what might've been that I couldn’t even bother to buy the souvenir book. A break in habit Andy found shocking.
A few weeks later in London, hope was restored and the bar lifted with the Viktor & Rolf retrospective at the Barbican Art Gallery. This wasn’t just a lot of breathtaking clothes on a legion of mannequins. There were multimedia elements and, most importantly, a context provided that underscored that the output by these designers is more than about dressing customers. Whether it was a fake perfume meticulously articulated down to the sumptuous ads, or protest complete with signs and graffiti scrawled across Paris, for the Dutch duo, creating involves every tool and medium at their disposal.

Hussein Chalayan by Andreas Kokkino

This week in London, we hit the Design Museum for the 15-year survey of Hussein Chalayan, which opened just a week and a bit ago and closes May 17. It’s an expanded incarnation of similar shows already staged in Berlin and Groningen, this time underwritten by Puma, where Chalayan was appointed creative director a year ago.
The British/Turkish Cypriot designer is a contemporary of a class at Central Saint Martins that included Katie Grand, Alexander McQueen and Giles Deacon. Yet the 38-year-old Chalayan manages to stand apart from even this revolutionary group with collection after collection of work that is as technically innovative as it is handcrafted, sensual as it is cerebral.
The show features only some three-dozen looks. But even where a mannequin stands alone in a blank room, the scene is rich with content because in Chalayan’s works there is always a story.

From Kinship Journeys, Fall '03 [Photo by Luke Hayes]

This is a man of many ideas and talents, and this retrospective allows the rest of us to peek into that genius. The exhibition differs from other museum showcases on fashion because it’s not so much a costume presentation as a survey of a creator’s explorations into culture, politics, technology, anthropology and the environment. Thankfully, this is not the place to see the more wearable, commercial pieces that can be found upstairs at Dover Street Market or elsewhere. They’re important, too. Fashion is a business. But this is a mad scientist/witty magician who conjures pieces that trigger shifts in perceptions. Like his classmates, the art of fashion is not a lot of lip service.

The presentation is broken down alphabetically, the story behind each vignette economically spelled out in a thick, palm-sized catalog filled with drawings, images and explanations for it all. The free, double-stapled booklet, simply rendered in black ink on white paper, resembles a fanzine. With no glossy hardback on sale in the store, it’s clear this low-tech giveaway, like every other detail in the show, is exactly as Chalayan conceived.
While manhandling the stuff is not an option, it is possible to get within sniffing distance of the fabrics and contemplate each outfit from every angle. This enhances the experience, which swings from a static grouping of mannequins to a runway video of his remote-controlled animatronic couture, to a multi-element installation involving a sculpture inside a sink and a short film featuring Tilda Swinton (that patron saint of provocateurs, including Viktor & Rolf).
What we failed to get to see was one of his over-cited works, a fashion moment if there ever was one, the fall 2000 collection called “Afterwords.” Among the most frequently referenced is the look in which a model steps into the center of a round coffeetable, only to pull up the center ring to her waist and let multiple bands of polished wood fall into place like so many tiers on a skirt. This was furniture morphing into fashion. Sadly, we missed examining it up close.
But there were plenty of other enthralling so-called moments to gape at: The dresses and airplane wing loaded with LED elements and Swarovski crystals; the Tyvek patterns folding into envelopes for posting; the black gossamer slip suspended by black helium balloons; or a dress embedded with 200-some shooting red lasers.
If it all left us craving for anything (besides the sartorial furnishings) it was more time to contemplate those mesmerizing images of Swinton. Or to backtrack for a third closer look at the morality play as pattern covering the walls and the mannequin’s dress. Or to simply dream of a day when our own clothes can convert into something else at the push of a button.

From Airborne, Fall '07 [Photo by Luke Hayes]

Top Photo by Chris Moore
Photo No. 4 by RA

Sole Man

A Classic with Panache: Mr. John Rushton

Who ever believes sole searching is a women’s rite, has not met my Andy or his London friend Sam Anthony. Both men spent the better part of tea gabbing about the cuts of their favorite brogues and the varying undersurface treatments of desert and chukka boots (ie. spongy crepe versus hard leather). Why shouldn’t they, right? Still, observing it all gave me pause since, frankly, I don’t think I go on like this.
But there was good reason. Despite the snow the day before which shut down all of London, we’d finally made it to John Rushton. The old school shop is a secret gem among footwear-obsessed men. Sam introduced it to Andy on his last trip to London. And it was all Andy could talk about before and during our trip. He’d had his eye on a bespoke pair of the classics sold here as his birthday present.

John Rushton is an independent shop that has been specializing in better British-made footwear for three decades, 20 of them in its current spot at 93 Wimpole Street in the west end. It’s just off Oxford Street, on a less touristy traveled path towards Marylebone. There’s nothing at all glitzy about the place. The shoes are the main event here.
Well, count, too, the owner. Mr. John Rushton is a gregarious, sturdy figure, the kind of charming storyteller you could spend a late afternoon with, emptying a bottle of scotch and wanting more. He spent much of his life at the editing dock (not unlike Andy), mostly on film sets between England and Italy. And wherever his work took him, he cultivated a knack for the history, craft and customs of men’s wear--and style. That, and the ladies.
Andy ultimately strolled out with two pairs of lace-ups by Alfred Sargent, a company that goes back to 1899 and based, like all of the British lines sold here, in North Hamptonshire. In his bags were the chestnut burnished wing brogue oxfords he pined for since his first visit, and a tan suede set of chukka boots (hard sole) that we couldn’t resist. I tossed in three pairs of cashmere socks—in pink, wine and charcoal—for him. You just can’t score socks like that elsewhere. I’m a woman. I know.

Winter WonderLondon

We woke up in London today to a thick blanket of snow. And like L.A. when it rains, the city shut down. Ok, so maybe it was quite a bit more extreme. Schools were closed. Snowballs scattered. One in five Londoners didn't make it to work today, and the rest left work early afternoon in order not to get stuck somewhere cold and far from home once night fell. It was the heaviest snowfall here in 18 years.
There were no buses, no trains, and, sadly for Andy, no delicious dinner at Hix Oyster & Chop House where we were booked for dinner. But it was a priceless day spent playing in the snow with our pals. Admittedly, I was ill prepared. Left the rose-printed Wellies in Wales yesterday, so I found myself with boots not intended for the snow. Thankfully, our host came ot the rescue with a sturdy set of waterproof hiking boots. Brrrrrrrrrr.

View from the back of our friends' home this morning.

Color Me Lacroix

If the high-octane exuberance of Christian Lacroix didn’t live up to his past efforts with his Spring 2009 couture presentation, there was still plenty of magic. The program notes for the afternoon show titled “The Designs of her Nature” broke down in terms that both rebelled against and recognized the bleak world outside the Centre Pompidou, where the show was held last week.

Lady Lacroix might be “fastened, caught” even “wavering” in this newly sober time. But she remains a bit “untied” and “mischievous” as ever. In Mr. Lacroix’s idiom, this doesn’t simply mean a Crayola super box of unexpected colors and combinations.

(My favorite)

It’s also piles of the widest bangles, with the odd floral or coral wreath spiking out; sparkling, plate-sized flamenco hoops; and braided crowns of pink and blue hair. The essence was unmistakable: The world might be gray, but that’s no reason to look it. Time to get out the costume jewelry and play dress up to the hilt.

It's all on the wrist.

Christian Lacroix

Back in Civilization

After a handful of glorious days in the Welsh countryside--with only 30 minutes of internet when we parked outside the local post office!--now in London and with WiFi...posts to follow, including those I ran out of time in Paris to post! Better late than....