Dispatches from a second story bedroom

tl;dr: parts 1& 2 AKA L.A. Nadir

Alright, briefly, in pictures here's how it breaks down.

I have to wonder who is buying a 1500GBP jacket on the internet assuming that sizing is consistent season to season. I know, free returns, (thanks Zappos! for your incredible business model.) but Jesú Hache Cristo, get out of my fucking face YSL cotton jacket. I am not waiting up to 2 billing cycles to get reimbursed 3Gs iffin' and whenin' you don't work out. But that's me, I'm sure there are thousands of women who don't care about the cost. Rich people aren't more tasteful as the city of Los Angeles will attest. People there pay for class. Salespeople in high end stores seem to take the responsibility of offering class to the classless very seriously.

How can you feel annoyed with people wanting to ogle the goods that you yourself cannot afford? Not without your employee discount you can't. It's sad to see so many sales gals in H&M jumpsuits giving you the up and down for no reason other than they feel they're tied to a moneyed class in a way that you as a window shopper are not. We are the same, you and I. We both love clothing, so put those tired classist notions to bed, we're in America and it's a fucking sunny 72 god damned degrees and breezy. What are you being so fucking sour for?

On a related note, I bummed around Opening Ceremony in LA for over an hour touching and pulling at all the garments last week. I've got to say, there is absolute shit finishing to many new exciting CFDA noms' garments. Just sayin'. Unfortunately it seemed to be a problem with the Americans and less so with the Europeans. Some shoes from some collaborative brands were so chintzy that I wondered who would ever buy them because they weren't luxurious looking. They looked like little plastic toys made in China.  My brain can't wrap itself around spending 1200 dollars on unfinished organza hems. It makes my heart race in the bad way, like my dreams where people are breaking into my house.

I had this fantasy that the most charismatic and coolest salespeople somehow filtered through the bedrock in some sort of filtered pure form of salespeoplry at the best stores but this is not the case. I had a shit ton of Pretty Woman moments at a bunch of LA places. I can't take snobbery from an idiot in a thrifted denim jacket and Z. Cavarriccis seriously. How do you reconcile yourself with this stuff? Because it frequently brings me down and keeps me from staying interested in the game. It makes everyone here in Portland seem that much cooler and makes me less interested in leaving for LA. I've also noticed that LA always wants to call another store for you but they want to look bored and annoyed while doing it. Mixed message! Don't offer if I have to look at your shitty face!  The bakery staff at Ca'd'Oro were the most helpful of all the places I went and they only sell wholesale bread. Seriously everywhere else in LA, take a page out of their book. Carbs and service!

filet of sole, baby

Marni F/W 2011

The whole collection was magnificent but these were what stuck out in my mind as important watershed 2011 concepts:

• FUR-llaboration
• Print on print violence
• Coral + dark emerald green = lust
• More oxblood
• Suzie Bird is the meat in your sandwich

Alright kiddies. I'm not sure what prompted a 3:40 wake up call from my brain but suffice it to say I've now got time, if not inclination, to bring the Marni collection to you--albeit 2 months after the fact.Why is no one talking about this? Is my love for Marni going to feel like my love for Radiohead circa 1995 circa 2011? Is this going to be an embarrassing middle-age phase I was going through? Is she really going out with him? Apparently yes.

I'll cover the bullet points and then open the field up to questions.

In my idealized world, there is a fabric store that sells great printed fabrics in multiple colors so I can do things like my beloved Consuelo. I love the smooth/matte difference of the same print on cotton and satin in an outfit but it is nigh impossible to do IRL for yourself because let's say the same print exists on two different kinds of cloth, that cloth is guaranteed to be polyester and in the hot pink to electric purple range. Super depresso.

Beyond that, it's really hard to find these deeply qualified, nuanced color schemes in any fabric store, print or no print. If you want to go at all tertiary and put some ochres and sky blues with a periwinkle undertone together a 'la Spring Prada '96 you are on your own and only possibly able to find them in with the quilting cottons. I digress... first world old lady problems, amiright?

But then, THEN, CC brings it back into the realm of the possible by making a tunic/skirt/purse set out of upholstery fabric from a Regal Cinema circa 2006 and I begin to think all is not lost. I could do that. 

The furs are OTW I'm not even sure what is being mixed with that black leather? I want to say shaved beaver but I know somewhere someone is laughing. Stop laughing.

she felt her eyes were too close together

Mink Womb Swathes and David Byrne shoulders? Sign me up. 

MOAR SLIPPARS PLZ

Jenni Kayne FW 2011

One thing I love is when a single shoe is used throughout an entire show. It tells me that a designer is aware of how you might love a certain pair of shoes and attempt to wear them with everything in your wardrobe even at your own peril. The Pre-Fall Dearfoams have been replaced with slide velvet megas that I have not been able to source on the internet as yet. I am still on the hunt. The game is afoot? 

Mi hijacita

Céline Pre-Fall 2011

I feel like the most boring girl in the world for loving Céline. But this feels a bit different. It's not as tasteful as past seasons and seems a bit like grandma dressing in the dark, no? I mean these are color combinations that are giving me vivid childhood flashbacks of my grandmother. I never knew a woman to so fearlessly pair oxblood with everything. Oxblood was her neutral.

She lived out in the country so white wasn't necessarily a wise footwear option for her but she did have plaid sweaters y ribbed turtlenecks in every color. She shopped her colors without knowing that she was a straight up autumn. She was buried in grayish-mauve and oxblood. A fan of the color until her death. Oh man Phoebe, you don't even know how personal this is for me. Even the denim was full on abuela steez but these four in particular are "ouija likes abuelita at night". She calls to me from beyond the grave with through this collection. 

It gets really really bad...

Jenni Kayne Pre-Fall 2011

Hey, remember when I was yammering on about luxury sweats? Well how about luxury slippers? I keep seeing the walking dead ambling in public wearing fleece pajama pants and slippers like the entire world is their bedroom. I wonder if most everyone is using just their brain stem to get from home to the McDonald's, to work, to the Redbox in front of the 7-11 and back home.  No one seems to be owning it, they all seem resigned to sweats as a consolation prize in the game of life. What a total bummer! Own that shit!

They're always in front of you at the dollar store when you're there buying cheap ibuprofen using a maxed out EBT card to buy gallons of window washing fluid for their minivan. My reality is not their reality and we probably cancel each other out in terms of our shared existence on this planet but all I'm saying is, "I see what you're doing over there and I will totally give a shit for ALL of humanity since you can't be bothered." I will wear the fuck out of some slippers with a mini dress and leopard fur scarf to. Cancel You Out. Instead of wearing it like I've given up, I'll wear it like I'm totally louche roué and saying yes to everything that feels good.

Why can't laziness and hedonism work in tandem? Aren't they facets of the same ideal? Looking good and feeling good are not mutually exclusive as the woman in front of me at the Dollar Tree would have you believe. LUX TO THE MAX. I'm not gonna play bunion city, yeow. Slipper steez. To. The. Max. 

Pancakes

Jil Sander Pre-Fall 2011

Jil Sander is doing things that I like once again. I am not sure who has made the return. Either I have come around and gotten back into minimalism or she's currently doing minimalism in a way that I like. Maybe a bit of both? I cannot emphasize enough how modern matching coats and dresses looks right now.

I know it is not new, but it has fallen out of favor for so long as to have been banished from fly-over-state-Stacy-London acolytes. This shift renewed my interested in matching shoes and bags. Most people can't color theory for shit, so why not make it easier for the dum dums Stace? Some mother of two still struggling to lose 50 lbs of baby weight doesn't need the added stress not matching but coordinating her shoes and bag along with the of wearing pumps and boot cut dark denim in her daily life. I'd like for them to check in with these women 18 months later because they are most certainly the fashion equivalent of Katrina victims in still living FEMA trailers once their 10 piece wardrobe falls apart. And also whoops, and also fries. 

Still, Jil Sander is speaking to me. Slightly boxy shapes. Various sizes in the world's most boring/awesome handbags/dopp kits. It all looks so scratchy and great like the best thrifted wool skirts. It makes you have to think about underpinnings because an old acetate lining is not enough. It takes me back to high school in the best possible way. I wore a lot of wool in high school. 

Mme. Bop

Gucci Pre-Fall 2011

Every time I look at this collection I start to hear a certain song in my head. This doesn't lessen my desire to look like some ne plus ultra pétasse bourgeois, because I totally do want to look like that, at all times. Even in spite of this unfortunate childhood memory. 

buckets of blood

Margiela Pre-Fall 2011

I wish more designers used Pre-Fall as a capsule collection of reinterpreted basics for the label. I remember Isaac Mizrahi and/or Lazaro Hernandez saying they always do a plain black pant that goes into department stores but that never really gets shown in any shows. I like the idea that a label has a specific customer that they continue to serve beyond the evolving runway seasons. 

Pre-Fall in my mind, should work as a thesis statement and not spin out of control into 45+ looks which weakens Autumn/Winter and always edits down to around five absolute looks that can tie the 21st century woman over for three months. More is more is more though, and no one ever says, "No thanks, I'm not interested in shopping for clothing every week of my life." Which is a whole other ball of wax that needs to be discussed at a future date.  Stick a pin in that, we'll get back to it. 

Margiela! That red, fuchsia and maroon combination is making me ride the crimson wave of female genital mutilation that is known as menstruation and I love it. As in, this collection brought on my special lady times as some sort act of female solidarity. Is that gross? You bet! Is it also real? You bet! That knife pleated dress is so my mother circa 1985 but with slouchy Nanookian boots and oatmeal colored winter tights that move it from the past and take it somewhere into my not too distant future.

Hot pink and greige is a colorway only a European from a certain latitude could have thought up. You have to live above the 49th parallel before you even begin to contemplate this sort of thing. It's true, think about how devoted the Scandinavians are to primary colors, it keeps them from going crazy. And also booze. Booze and Marimekko.

The black ensembles were more just a projection of what I imagine was going on in those shapes and folds.They may prove to be nothing like I imagined but what I imagined was something like: Victorian cape sleeves. Tiny bar pins on scarves. Nested collars in alternating colors. And also trousers. I think a trouser is always important. Everyone gets all bent over those strange Margiela jacket but I always always love the trousers. They're the real secret luxury.

sneaker pimp

Balenciaga Pre-fall 2011 (all mods c'est moi and MS Paint)

As I looked over this collection I couldn't shake the feeling that everything looked best with sneakers. What is wrong with me? I'm sure is a subconscious rebellion against the tyranny of shoes that hurt women. More sneakers and less slut shoes. Slut shoes are so over. 

On a personal continuum from last season: all pattern all the time, all the same pattern. Keep this coming, I love it. The Philophication continues unabated like the Plague sweeping Europe in the 1300s. I'm not complaining exactly, it's just weird that everyone is so casual about it, like why wouldn't you plagiarize? Duh. I guess pretty much the same thing happened when Marc Jacobs was officially on drugs and soft and white like a grubworm and everyone loved him. Remember that? The Huffington Post, Regina George of online journalism sure does. Boo to you too, you whore.

I am for 90s minimal revival but if I start seeing square toed Pradaesque Iady pumps from the 90s before men's shoes phase out that awful shape and I have to contemplate a world where men will wear clown shoes in perpetuity, I will kill myself. I have to see it every day I manage to will myself out of the house 20 years later.  Yay your foot looks like a desiccated plank of beef jerky. Now I am thinking of your feet and beef jerky in the same thought. Happy? It goes great with Dockers. No it doesn't.