I've been talking about it a lot * the week when Dior ...
Opinionated, random thoughts on fashion, style, and culture, dumped from the right-brain with sharp wit and undeniable Italian flair.
Welcome, after another week from hell, still sprinkled with hope and the opulence of beauty, like this geranium and vetiver solid botanical perfume housed in a shell.
I Love
THE fashion moment we will ALL remember: the first Dior Men by Johnathan Anderson. In the two and a half minutes that he has been installed as artistic creative director at Dior, he has brought back the original Dior logo (away with those capital letters), sent ceramic plates-with-eggs invitations because he found them in the archives, sent out look after look of Bar jackets and tailcoats, New Look and knitted capes, mille-feuille folds in white cotton cady that could have been sculpted out of white Carrara marble, cargo shorts built on what’s reminiscent of the couture “masterpiece of construction and execution” La Cigale moiré dress. All without a pinch of that melancholic boredom his predecessor, expired like a fuoco fatuo, or lucciola del pantano and forgotten like an obliterated train ticket, had become comfortable with. On the contrary, he dug out the codes of la Maison with rigor and futuristic vision, and sprang them forward into the future with the energized enthusiasm of a front row vibrating with cheering colleagues and a hunk fest led by ringmasters of taste Rihanna + A$AP Rocky and offspring, Josh O’Connor, Dan Levy. In other words, the girls were giggly. Oh, the totes are still there, but we’ll see if they stick as Real Housewife material or not.
. Also, Anna Wintour is retiring, a historic week. I am still debating if the latest cover was a trigger. I mean, looking back at hisotry, the crash of Vogue was the Kimye cover, which was of her own making and NOBODY marked themselves safe from it, but I am guessing she knew the spectacle of billionaire tacky was about to explode and she may very well decided to retire and be a full time grandma. The ‘gram agrees that her first cover remains her masterpiece.The other fashion moments:I have received my DHL from Oaxaca, México, with my dreamy furry sandals by Baku, a small brand of shoes Hechos a mano con técnicas ancestrales y materiales originales de la región. I discovered them thanks to the world wide web’s most discerning eye I know, Laura De Valencia of
A lesson from the screens:Copycat, the 1995 movie with Sigourney Weaver. It’s on Netflix.Episode 4 of And Just Like That (my mother has reprimanded me for writing too many acronyms, so y’all get the whole shpiel now) will go down in history for Carrie in a Holly Polly nap dress. I had to pause and watch it again, and then they kept coming out with more, like there was a BOGO or something at the mall. I need to process. Carrie is rich now and an established writer living in the brownstone in Gramercy, so the disconnect from the “how can a columnist afford a life in the Village with all those Manolos” argument has been reconciled. However, the same writers who rectified the narrative should have known better that a woman of elevated taste is ALWAYS ready, even in rural Virginia. Especially in rural Virginia. But, NO, they wasted time spinning the story that Carrie didn’t have her deodorant and that she didn’t know what an ATV is (Mom, it stands for All Terrain Vehicle), which, honestly, I didn’t know, so kill me! Then they redeemed her for a whole 10 seconds as the only New Yorker who knows how to drive and make her venture one mile out of the ranch to the local Loveshackfancy meets cottagecore store. But that she had to end up dressed like an Amish churning butter? To say it with Rachel Tashjian Wise’s words:
I think it’s much smarter (and more elegant) to focus on developing your own style instead of fixating on the wardrobes of fictionalized versions of deceased people. […] That means you should pluck from every and everything and assemble into something entirely you. Shop around, but ensure that the resulting look is you.
The Gilded Age looks promising this season, please let’s no screw it.
The Weekly I Don’t Cares
The environmental catastrophe of that obscene extra-fucking-vaganza wedding in Venice. And the total capitulation of Vogue US with that cover on the day of. And the nerves of drawing inspiration from Sophia Lauren, who of all places, is not from Venice, duh. And how pathetic to organize a wedding in Venice at the end of June? Like bridges and tunnels but make them multi-billionaires. We couldn’t help but wonder “do rich people sweat?” and maybe that’s why she had 27 dresses.
Plastic, fake and faded by over-exposure flowers at restaurants.
Why would you buy a salt lamp?
There have been many men in thong sandals down the runways and, honest to God, please spare us all common mortal human who don’t exactly live in Paris or lavishly vacation in the Mediterranean from the common male down the street who will feel entitled to pick up on the trend sans the mandatory pedicure.
The sustainability debrief
Venice is sinking. Don’t get me started.