Sailing to Byzantium

Chanel recently showed pre-fall Métiers d’Arts collection, with the theme "Paris-Byzance". Did you ever see such a fantasy of messy bouffants, flat jeweled sandals, and easy shapes? The models look like child empresses who escaped from either harems or ivory towers. Love the slouchy trousers and long dresses with sandals; that louche sensibility epitomizes today's luxury. I went to Istanbul a few years ago with a boyfriend, and in my rose-tinted memories, this was how I looked at dinner every night; in reality, it was 115 degrees outside and I dripped make up while picking fishbones out of my teeth beside the Bosphorus. This collection does what I so desperately want fashion to do: make me dream!

This thing of ours

I have never really written directly about the fashion industry before, as an "insider" so to speak, even though I have worked in the thick of it for almost 3 years. I prefer to write rhapsodically and in a circumspect manner; I seem to prefer the outside vantage point even though I fought to get in and work in the trenches. Its a bizarre business, where sex appeal, good taste and "style" are quantifiable. I work in women's contemporary designer wholesale (and salespeople like myself are truly on the outer edges of this industry), mostly with specialty stores. This is not a time in the world I would choose to own a store, as they will never really compete fairly with the behemoth department stores. This particular level of fashion, fairly expensive but not wildly artistic in the manner of the Lanvins and Rodartes, is often a rich girl's idle hobby. And yet, it is interesting to see how commerce and art mix, to varying degrees of success and happiness, to build companies, brands, and legacies. I think in particular of one designer who has such a distinctive perspective and is absolutely sure of her style and vision, and has managed to brand herself extraordinarily well, through artful celebrity placement and the sleekest website and branding. She aggressively looks ahead, works obsessively, and sucks everyone into her little creative vortex; she is so damned intriguing that you have to drink the Kool-Aid.

Opening Up

A girlfriend and I went to the Halloween parade last night. We actually had a very adult Halloween, starting with pasta and Valpolicella at Le Zie, before we hurtled ourselves into the masses of beasts out for Halloween. In the mad crush at the corner of 14th and 5th Avenue, in the sort of crowd that is packed like sardines and surges suddenly, I was pickpocketed. My Blackberry Tour and my Ipod were stolen. Ignoring the fact that combined these were worth $800, there was an enormous amount of sentimental value attached to both. The Ipod case had a picture of the Virgin Mary on it. More devastating, my Blackberry had an enormous amount of pictures saved. The most important of these were dozens of pictures that my former boyfriend and I had taken of ourselves to send to each other when he was an ocean away. They weren't dirty or salacious, but silly and sweet. Sometimes sleepy, sometimes sunburned, sometimes displaying new shoes...they were the sort of pictures you take when the other person is so totally involved with you that they really care what you ate for lunch. They were sweet, each picture a tiny love letter that showed in that moment we could barely stand to be away from each other. Like the relationship, the pictures are now gone. After an emotional weekend, where my future doesn't seem to be outrunning my past, I was so overwhelmed that I came home last night, sat down and wept. I cried, really sobbed and heaved for about 10 minutes. When will I dig myself out of this hole and move on?

Back in the Saddle Again

For the first time since the big break up, I dipped my toes into the dating pool again. I find myself having neurotic conversations while poring over tiny little emails...in an instant, I become the girl I can't bear! I lose perspective in an instant, and beg for a Xanax to numb me. I keep saying, "I hate dating! I don't want to date! I want to wake up married again!" The wound, the hole left in my heart by the last relationship has scabbed over, but the scar tissue hasn't closed in yet. I want a man to jump right in and fix everything, to fix me before I even figure out what my problem is.
How long will it take to get Philippe out of my system?

Scorched Earth

Naomi Campbell always gets the juicy gigs. Photos from the Interview spread remind me of why I loved editorial fashion in the first place: fantastical, perverted, dark fantasies from dark corners of the brain, 2 dimensional theatre and most importantly...Naomi. The "Eastern Promises" reference is titillating.
Photos by Marcus Piggott and Mert Alas for Interview Magazine.

Aigo Buido

It has been said that the greatest food has come out of poverty's kitchen, and I believe I continued the tradition tonight. Last weekend I read the most glorious, inspiring book: "My Life in France" by Julia Child. Mdm. Cheeld is very en vogue right now, but her actual autobiography was so charming, it wiped away even memories of Meryl Streep. She described violent winds coming off the waters of Marseille, and making a particular garlic soup to warm their battered bodies. Reading her description of this garlic soup prompted me to go online and purchase the great volumes of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking".
As we are in the middle of a brutal fashion week, I didn't leave the office until 8pm tonight...and came home to look at a truly depressed refrigerator. Cottage cheese? Crackers? Jalapenos? YES, those could make a decent dinner, its true! But a few cloves of garlic hiding in a forgotten corner called my name, hollered "Corrie, we are about to sprout! Throw us in a pot, and voila! BOOOOON APPETIT!" So I whipped out my beautiful brand new cookbook and put together a rather low-brow version of Mdm. Cheeld's aigo buido. It was quite good, but I suspect if I had some really grown up accoutrement such as a soup tureen or proper strainer...or food products that weren't on the very cusp of undesirable....I could really whip up a gorgeous soup. Either way, I washed the soup down with a glass of Villa Antinori, in honor of my big girl effort in the kitchen.

I Don't Understand Why No One Likes Hedge Funders

A couple years ago, I briefly dated a hedge funder. This seemed like a coup for me at the time, as I was an unhappy waitress and he was a prerecession Master of the Universe. As with so many Masters and Conquerors and Napoleon Shih Tzus, he was lacking in many aspects. He wasn't particularly warm or kind, he was appropriately intelligent but obnoxiously wont to name-drop, and was just...off. I felt as though I met him when he was flying a bit too high, and I was cruising too low. I finally stopped returning his calls when I fell desperately in love with a man who adored me, and didn't feel the need to constantly brag about meetings on private jets with beseeching CEOs. Almost 2 years after our initial relationship, I reconnected with Hedge Fund for drinks, perhaps to see if I could handle him more adeptly at this new stage in life. Within 10 minutes of meeting ("God, you look great. So basically I got laid off but you wouldn't believe the size of my severance package.") I was immediately reminded that my first impression of him as a creep was correct. The recession hadn't been kind to him, and I privately reveled in his miseries. The night ended with him drunk and begging me to take him to my apartment; instead I kicked him out of the cab at a Path train station to go back to his Trump Tower abode in...Jersey City.
So another nine months after this meeting, imagine my surprise last night, as the hour neared midnight, when I received a text message from him:

"I hate fashion week."
I took the bait, out of champagne-infused curiosity.
"Why, Jimmy, why?"
"These bitches...there (sic) not even close to being as hot as you. What are the odds of me taking you out on Friday or Saturday night?"

I mean, honestly.
This morning I woke to a flurry of messages apologizing and explaining. Obviously I never returned his messages, because I was right from the beginning, but I love being right. A jerk is a jerk is a jerk. Even when his suits are tailored in Hong Kong and his sweaters are cashmere and his hair is handsomely peppered. That just don't make him right.