iO-Robe, a Toile La La fiction re-post

This post originally appeared here 6.17.13... and perhaps you recently noticed on a popular TV talent show a garment very similar to the one described here.
Read the original post here.

A Bookstack for the Future from Our Past.

Astonishing as it might have been for my university 80s-self to witness my present-self cinematically appearing in the college dormitory, were it possible - I would present the following bookstack to that self:

• Dress and Popular Culture
• Fashion at the Edge:  Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness
• StreetStyle:  From Sidewalk to Catwalk

Interwoven with late night studies of English literature, French language, and Art - I was studying fashion, unofficially, and have been ever since.  It is a bookstack which offers answers and evidence in response to some whys of fashion:

• Why do styles shift in and out of popularity.
• Why are styles adopted by groups of people.
• Why do trends occur and sometimes reoccur.
• Why does being fashionable hold such importance for some people.
• Why is fashion often symbolic and not only functional.

If you've a burgeoning penchant or interest for... fashion+psychology+unspoken language+meaning - it's your bookstack too.  Here's a story for you.

Prologue: 

Knowing now what I knew and loved then, I contemplate how to impress my 80s self.  Past midnight, in the hallway of the dormitory - when everyone else is asleep  - is when I will find myself sitting there in a silly oversized t-shirt reading too many assignments for one night - face coated in minty-sulphuric, green, beauty-clay.

The matte, black, stretchy pleather leggings of a few twenty-first century years ago will be just the thing to catch my eye.  Those, I think - along with some over-the-knee, black leather riding boots.  The rest won't matter.  Long hair and double-pierced ears will be edgy enough to impress that person sitting there in her clay beauty treatment, growing out a mullet.

That self might recognize this self - perhaps critically... never mind that.

Scenario:

Me: Appearing in the doorway slowly and casually sauntering by, "It seems the studying will never end... I remember."

In response, a glance of surprise and scrutiny... also approval for the "look".  It worked.  I think I'm someone's visiting mother.

Me:  "These books are perfect for you and hold answers to many of your questions.  Read them between your assignments."

In wordless response, I retreat to the dorm-room, leaving the books on my desk and ascend the loft bed ladder... thinking I've missed too much sleep - as I drift off, unaware - until tomorrow - of the messages to myself tucked among the bookstack pages.

If that very short fiction left you in the mood for still more imaginary/fashion/time travel quick-fiction, your wish is granted here.  Or, if you'd like more than just the bookstack - there are more books and movies here.  More about 80s beauty and hairstyles here.  An 80s fashion post with more about leggings here.

The Perfect Bookstack for the Fashionably Curious:
Dress and Popular Culture, Patricia Cunningham and Susan Voso Lab.  Bowling Green State University Popular Press - 1991.

Fashion at the Edge:  Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness, Caroline Evans.  Yale University Press - 2003.

StreetStyle:  From Sidewalk to Catwalk, Ted Polhemus.  Thames and Hudson - 1994.

Rembrandt's Collars.

• Undulating like ribbon candy - crisp and white - the collar of Nicolaes Ruts, 1631.
• Portrait of a Scholar's collar:  The scholar's head rests upon a frou frou frilly wedding-cake-icing collar, piped from a pastry bag.
• Martin Looten's 1632 broad, flat and white as a Pilgrim's collar.
• Dr. Tulp - wearing a prim, Judge Judy collar - dissects the arm of a man (wearing only a loin drape) - while Tulp's scholars and peers peculiarly observe, wearing - predominantly - automotive air filter collars, although one man flaunts a frothy toothpaste collar.
• Joris de Caullery (collar-y) wears a very punk or gothic-like studded metal - and perhaps black leather - collar, rock on.
•  Maerten van Bilderbeecq is wearing the largest automotive air filter collar.
• 1633, Rembrandt paints himself wearing a punk-y, chunky, goth vampire collar of draped black velvet edged in fierce gold chain.
• Portrait of Saskia van Uylenburgh's grey collar as engraved and embossed as an ancient silver doubloon.

And then emerges a period of elaborate lace collars, which must have taken years of arduous embroidery / crochet / weaving and assembly - and nearly as long to reproduce in paint (unless, do you think RVR might have painted actual lace and created a print image of it by pressing the painted lace against the canvas?)

• Oh, Maurits Huygens, I like your collar very much!  The perfect combination of Pilgrim / crochet and Hippie tassels going on - and may I say, you look pleased as punch to be wearing it.
•   1633, Portrait of a Young Woman with a Fan, and a collar like a Queen Anne's Lace / Bishop's Lace / daucus carota flower.  And cuffs too!
• Portrait of a Young Woman - is it the same collar and the same young woman?  It seems one would have to visit first the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston for closer examination, but there are similarities - including a superb ribbon cockade belt.
• Oh, Maerten Soolmans - you magnificent 1634 fancy pants - you are the fanciest of us all and to behold you is soothing salve for the eyes!  The Queen Anne's Lace collar, ribbon cockade, lacy jabots at the knee (!), clocked hosiery, and Queen Anne's Lace shoe ruffs.  Later, Gainsborough's The Blue Boy's top-notch finery might compare, but Rembrandt's Soolmans (with collar and stuff) is a sartorial must-see.
• Ah, Maria Trip - you are Maerten Soolman's sartorial equivalent - with your organdy collar, edged in delicate lace at shoulder and wrist... with jewelry and a sword - and you are possibly the same Young Woman - with Fan and without, and belted in ribbon cockade.

Rembrandt's great collar climax seems to occur around 1639, with another automotive air filter and the organdy of Maria Trip.

How the Heck the Hennin Happened.

The hennin, a fifteenth century headdress seems to mirror the highly revered steeples, towers, spires and heavenward architecture of that period.  

• Was popular reception of the hennin a phenomenon resulting from travel in distant lands during the Crusades? 
• Did the hennin stem from a Byzantine influence? 
• Was wearing the hennin a step toward looking more worldly and well-traveled... an effort to stand out and gain attention?  
• Did hennin-wearers adopt the trend subconsciously or was there a conscious and well-defined reason for choosing to wear it?
• Was the pointed hat a "trickle-down" trend - originating with holy men and women, then borrowed by society?

Though not on my head, the hennin has been on my mind. 

One thought:  During the Renaissance, arts and literature - even higher learning - were more accessible to members of the church and religious sects.  Simultaneously, much emphasis was placed on construction of very large and grand churches.  Perhaps the hennin was not only a subconscious reflection of steeples and spires - but also of the search for higher knowledge.  The hennin - a heavenward hat housing the divinity of the mind.

Another thought:  Why do we later see a similar hat shape worn by people associated with magical powers?

Albrecht Durer.

Collegiale Saint Quentin.

Domenico Quaglio die Kathedral Reims.

Albrecht Durer Innsbruck.

Albrecht Durer Aix La Chapelle.

Jean Fouquet Aix La Chapelle.

Rogier van der Weyden - for a Carthusian monastery near Brussels, 1445.

Leonardo da Vinci Ginevra Benci, 1474.

Maurice Quentin de la Tour - City of Saint-Quentin.

Jan van Eyck.

Fouquet - Charles IV and Marie Luxembourg.

Hans Holbein, 1500.

Hans Memling, 1480.

Hugo van der Goes - Maria Porinari, 1476.

Kaiser Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy.

Petrus Christus, 1450-60.

Margaret of York, Duchess Consort of Burgundy - 1468.

Rogier van der Weyden Seven Sacraments - detail.

Petrus Christus, 1470.

Vittore Carpaccio - St. Stephen.

Rogier van der Weyden.

Michael Pacher - Mary of Burgundy, 1490.

Rogier van der Weyden - Young Woman in a Pinned Hat, 1435.

Pisanello - Princess of the House of Este, 1449.

iO-robe: A Short Fashion Forward Fiction.

Intelligent Optic Robing, iO-robe, or just iO - solved so many sartorial conundrums regarding travel, parties, fitting in... . A bit of programming, then - the magic transformation. A digital fairy godmother. It came to mean the birth of ideas, the generation of life itself... iO... a small cursive letter i encircled / enrobed by a fat, round O.

You know, in the 60s - there was Mars and the paper dresses. Mars - the company, not the planet... and the paper dress was just another way to express freedom and being "with it" - fashionably and sexually. 

The digital dress was of the same ilk - another way to be "with it"... hip, chic, cutting edge - you name it - always the same thing, but a different name.

The Techie-Chics and the Techie-Geeks dreamed the entire scene. T-Chics wanted the style, T-Geeks wanted the notoriety... the challenge.

To the middlemen it was a surprise... no need for malls, no sweat shops, no child labor, no fighting for parking spaces - everything changed. Was it better? It was different.

Of course, there was the buffout... of 2020. Like a blackout or brownout - all to do with power / electricity, but so many people were left standing around with so few little wires and buttons dangling - it wasn't that big an embarrassment.

That outage though - created in the modest among us - a momentary return to the paper dress - which made for a better canvas, a smoother silhouette... like the vast screens at the retro drive-in cinemas.  

Then there was, once again, the move to fabric... aside from the digital gadgetry - that's all anyone needed - just a few solid-color dresses or coveralls of fabric - depending upon the "in" feel... soft, crisp, silky, plush, crackly... upon which the iO (robe or suit) was projected.

Eventually, digitally enhanced optics - DEO - also eliminated even plastic surgery - with all appearances hiding the possibility of illusion or facade.

Anymore, what was real?

If you like this story, let me know - with some comments.  Will this be the path of fashion in the future... who can say, but imagining the scenario produced the fiction you just read.  There's another quick fashion-y time travel fiction here.

People-Watching, SC.

Near a cantilevered bridge, under blue skies - prom photos:

• girl in short, strapless dress with turquoise mermaid-scale sequins, teetering in spike heels - moving as little as necessary.
• girl in short, strapless randomly-sequined coral dress, teetering in spike heels - moving as little as necessary.
• brunette in short, strapless electric blue satin with tulle tutu, descending stairs.

Near a park fountain:

• bridesmaids wearing two styles of gray taffeta dress - strapless or bow on one shoulder... abdomens slightly ruched, but dresses very fitted and above knee.  Everyone, throats adorned with big citron yellow plastic gems dangling - really a very attractive and eye-catching accent.

In front of a hotel fountain:

• bridesmaids wearing pale sea blue/green shot silk long, full-skirted formal gowns with peach corsages.  Men's ties also pale sea blue/green shot silk.

In front of a tree:

• a grouchy/grumpy-looking bride being photographed by a grouchy/grumpy-looking photographer.

High-low hemlines (short in front, long in back - like a mullet):

• one girl in an electric blue dress with high-low overskirt of diaphanous material.
• one girl in a dainty-looking cream lace high-low dress with double-tiered ruffle over the bust.

Two auburn scottish terriers reclining on a cafe table (placed there by their people) - panting, watching me go by.

A boy with glossy dark wavy hair wearing a plastic comb-like stretchy headband, making his hairline appear braided.

A group of five people - all with dark, thick hair - one girl, four gentlemen... looking as if they were a band, even if they aren't - all wearing denim shirts and jeans and black shoes... girl in long denim skirt, men with full hair and some with beards and mustaches, walking slowly - looking full of potential creativity.

Blues piano player wearing heavy-rimmed black glasses, a fannypack, and shorts with embroidered leaves.  His fingernails long... brown fingers with healthy pink tips, walking purposefully up-and-down mostly the black keys.


  

Post Prompted by Punk: Emotion-Driven Fashion and How to Find Fashion.

Pondering aspects of punk culture - mainly the look it produced, leads me to analysis of fashion deviants and fashion oddities.  Punk culture stemmed from a dissatisfaction with the norm - a quotidien refusal - a feeling of rebellion, which sometimes culminated in destructive tendencies, but was quite often channeled into music or fashion which embodied and released that pent-up feeling.

Considering the psychological aspects of fashion reveals a maze-like and infinite variety of perspectives.  In many instances, fashion is a mask or facade hiding the feelings generating the look.  An array of feelings may be expressed - portraying for example, merely a desire to be different, an aesthetic sensibility, refusal, conformity, or even - privileged boredom.

In studying - and enjoying - these fashion observations, I have found it advantageous to use as a viewing reference the various online resources covering the greatest number of runway collections worldwide - rather than relying on fashion or trade magazine coverage of collections - as the magazines rely upon advertising for their livelihood.  Because of this advertising-dependence, the coverage is biased - so an observer of fashion does not receive a clear view of the truly creative and amazing designs being produced globally, but instead a limited and monetarily-motivated perspective. 

I now see fashion in a different light - perhaps not the spotlight, but daylight - after having read books written by designers and journalists within the fashion industry, and as a result - gaining a better understanding of the cogs and gears within that world. For so many years, I mistakenly perceived fashion magazine and press reports as equating a mark of quality or a seal of approval.   If you too share an interest in the creative, artistic, psychological aspects of fashion - do realize you can find fashion everywhere, all around the world - in the street, on the bus, in the thrift shops, or there beneath the needle of your own sewing machine - not just on the runway or in the pages of a magazine.

Just as our language, music, technologies - and lives have evolved and bloomed and hybridized, so has our visual language of fashion - which has changed so much from its earliest origin of being primarily utilitarian, then decorative.  Fashion is very often - now - a feeling.

Big Lil - AKA The Claw.

Today's post, rather than discussing some aspect of art, fashion, creation - is instead, an observation of animal behavior - or more specifically, feline behavior.

I once had a cat - a beautiful Mae-West-feisty Maine Coon - named Lillian, whose size and boldness earned her the rather Hip-Hop sounding stage name Big Lil.  She was a saucy, sassy, spitfire - with a fluffy lioness feather-boa-looking neck ruff... and her profession was destroying furniture, manually. (That sweet tabby you see atop the blog is not Big Lil - but Good Luck Employee Number One, about whom you can read at the Catwalk Today page near the Art Fashion Creation archives... but let's return to Lillian and the subject at hand... paw... claw.)

On the sly, she attacked upholstered furniture of all types - but it seems pleather, or naugahyde, was Lil's preferred prey.  During Big Lil's very long lifetime, her confirmed furniture conquests/victories included:

• a brown naugahyde rocker belonging to my grandmother (which suffered a later attack to the legs by my Boston Terrrier's jaws - not my grandmother, but the rocker).
• a small, ladylike (but ugly) chartreuse and wooly boucle chair
• another unsightly velvety mauve chair
• an avocado green naugahyde footstool (from the '70s)
• a black vinyl weightlifting bench

Wait a minute... in composing this list, I suddenly realize Big Lil was perhaps acting in my favor - and in the name of Heightened Aestheticism.

Although, the injuries she inflicted upon my cream leather sofa seem unwarranted.

All these memories were produced while observing March 2013 Elle magazine's Paris Review fashion spread.  My first thought was "Big Lil Has Been Here!"

Tracing the Origin of Fashion Trends.

One may wonder if it is possible to accurately forecast fashion trends of the future.  My opinion is that we can make an informed prediction.  Read a more extensive article here at Dresses and Hats.

Toile La La Photo Shoot.

Good Luck Employee Cat getting the girls photo-ready.  Toile La La photo November 2012.

Taking a break before the photo shoot. Toile La La photo November 2012.

Feuille, the new model. Toile La La photo November 2012.

Number One Good Luck Employee, always stunning, expresses her impatience.  Toile La La 2012.

Coco the millinery model, Hattie mini-millinery model, Camellia Pincushion, Fleur - my small-scale toile model, Mimi in her La Mode Illustree apron, wee Bebe Bouton, and Feuille.

Fleur, sitting on my plaster lima bean, sculpted in college.  Toile La La 2012.

After directing the photo shoot, Good Luck Employee promptly steals my chair and indulges in more preening.  Toile La La 2012.

Hime Lolita Marie Antoinette: Chanel at Versailles.

Imagine Marie Antoinette, healthy and unscathed, frolicking into an eighteenth century time portal and landing upright in 2013. Unbiased by any sensibilities but her own, she might immediately gravitate toward Lolita fashion. Of the various Lolita styles, the Hime or Princess Lolita, the Sweet Lolita, or the Country Lolita would align with her tastes.

Without having to search farther, Marie Antoinette could slip right into one of Karl Lagerfeld's Chanel Cruise 2013 ensembles and carry on with life - this time in some pink trainers, to quickly run from danger.

Chanel Cruise/Resort 2013 at Versailles. Image Vogue.com runway collections.

Interested in Lolita styles, read more here. For more Chanel Cruise 2013 see this Vogue link with Sarah Mower collection review.

Marie Antoinette, artist unknown. Museum of Fine Arts Boston collection.

Looking for other Lolita/Chanel Cruise 2013 references, I noticed the blog Hello Tailor had also made the connection and provided a youtube link for the actual fashion show. It's especially grand to see Karl Lagerfeld appear at show's-end - waving, blowing a kiss, assessing his admirers and regally strutting to the beat. Here's the youtube link.

Denver Art Museum's Fashion Studio

Stocked with fabrics, dress forms, mini design mannequins, magazines for inspiration collages, scissors, light-tables, coloring tools, (and for aspiring models: clothing, hats, a runway, and large mirrors), the Denver Art Museum Fashion Studio is a great playground for people interested in the creation of fashion and its presentation.

Even though my Colorado visit just barely missed Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective exhibit, DAM's Fashion Workshop helped bridge the gap. 

After spying the art supplies and magazines (and large, inviting, manila cardstock), I was anxious to return to the fashion space... though my thorough museum visits are notoriously excruciating to family members.  This museum visit was doubly pleasurable in that it offered the opportunity to create - within the stimulating museum environment.

Toile La La fantasy collage created in Denver Art Museum Fashion Studio. 

For some time now, my imagination has been consumed primarily by thoughts of hats - so this was an opportunity to have fun with some outlandish millinery designs.  Tearing through the provided architectural, fashion, home design, and interview magazines - I gathered a nice stack of images.

What you see above are (clockwise from the seated model with the rose hat): an idea for a "real, live, gigantic rose chapeau", a papier mache sculpture hat... composed of smiling Buddha faces, a rooster wig (that looks like a rooster... not FOR a rooster), a bright geranium red cardboard house bonnet - that ties under the chin, a "garden jumper" that grows real foliage (those are Kesha's feet wearing Y-3 socks and Kenzo shoes - which appeared in Interview magazine), an illuminating lamp hat, a "wacky" skirt, and a mannequin-look dress (with a nod to the Martin Margiela Semi-Couture collection).

There wasn't time to note all the collage sources - such as the graphic artist who created the great image I used for the "wacky skirt", but if you see an image you recognize - please leave a comment to enable me to give attribution to the artists and designers who inspired this collage.

Not only did the museum provide this great fashion workspace, it has also hosted fashion demonstration workshops in fashion illustration, styling, design and construction, upcycling, draping and patternmaking, and fashion design with Adobe Illustrator. There is still an upcoming Adobe illustration tutorial August 19 and later - a fashion illustration demonstration August 25 and 26 and September 1 and 2.

Thank you, Denver Art Museum.

• If you liked the collage, some of my older ones (incorporating watercolor) are at this link.
• There are also some collage-type paper dolls here.

If I Were a Boy...What My Wardrobe Would Be:

Suddenly, I'm interested in the menswear collections. Year 2012 designs are proof of the ingenuity channeled toward that fashion field. Style.com provides easy runway navigation, so I simply explored alphabetically...expecting the humdrum. My suppositions were wrong: Menswear is exhilarating! I was mesmerized all the way to "Z", as if wandering - enthralled - inside the world's most wonderful museum. 


Categorized by designer - in reverse alphabetical order (because I wonder how many Style.com voyagers endure the whole "A to Z" collective tour), here's what I'd want to throw on if I were a boy and just rolled out of bed:

Z. Zegna

Yohji Yamamoto

Vivienne Westwood.

Vivienne Westwood.

Viktor & Rolf.

Valentino.

Valentino.

Umit Benan.

Trussardi.

Tommy Hilfiger.

Simon Spurr.

Shipley & Halmos.

Shipley & Halmos.

Roberto Cavalli.

Roberto Cavalli.

Robert Geller.

Robert Geller.

Raf Simons.

Prada.

Paul & Joe.

Nicole Farhi.

N. Hoolywood.

N. Hoolywood.

Mugler. Andre Leon Talley, this is for you - but with a yellow dotted tie.

Moschino.

Moschino.

Moschino. Good for hiding in a historic district or jumping onstage at Quebec's Les Chemins Invisibles.

Moschino.

Moschino.

Moschino. "Black tie" for a Graffiti artist.

Moncler Grenoble. Blizzard Smart Chic.

Moncler Gamme Bleu. Genius.

Maison Martin Margiela.

Louis Vuitton.

Loden Dager.

Lanvin.

Kris Van Assche.

Kris Van Assche.

Kris Van Assche. My own girl self would wear this.

Kenzo. Layered collars and colors.

Junya Watanabe.

Junya Watanabe.

Junya Watanabe.

Junya Watanabe.

Jonathan Saunders.

John Galliano. (Bill Gaytten)

John Galliano. (Bill Gaytten)

John Bartlett.

John Bartlett.

Jil Sander.

Jeremy Scott. I'd wear this apres-ski and dance around to amuse my friends.

Issey Miyake.

Issey Miyake. (If I were a boy, I'd look like this.)

Issey Miyake. (A fascinating fabric treatment for the blazer.)

Issey Miyake. (An intelligent alternative to sweatpants.)

Issey Miyake. Great Asymmetrical pant closure.

Ermenegildo Zegna.

Dior Homme.

Damir Doma. (Looking amazing, I'd find somewhere to wear this - but with a dove-grey tee under the sweater.)

Custo Barcelona. (I'd wear this to the Pantheon, or standing amidst a Georgia O'Keefe exhibit.)

Costume National.

Costume National.

Christopher Lemaire.

Carven.

Carven. (I'd wear this and feel Eddie Munster / Angus Young cool.)

Antonio Azzuolo. (My girl self would wear this with an Erdem-floral tie.)

Antonio Azzuolo.

Si j'etais un garcon ce qui serait ma garde-robe.


Wenn ich ein Junge war, was meine Garderobe sein wurdei.


Se fossi un ragazzo che cosa il mio guardaroba sarebbe stato.


Als ik een jongen was wat mijn garderobe zou zijn.


Thinking like a boy has been liberating, so next post...What I'd Sew If I Were A Boy - and then, How I'd Look Good As A Thrifty Boy.