Posts Tagged ‘Fashion’

This is designer Anna Sui’s apartment in Manhattan! Look at that dressing room! Pick up the September ’09 Elle Decor for all the photos of this glamorous home:

Anna Sui—the woman as well as the fashion label she launched in 1981—broadcasts an anarchic edge, flaunting clothing with fantastic patterns, colorful layers, and retro references from Age of Aquarius rock stars to Belle Époque courtesans. Often all in the same outfit, mind you. Sui’s new Manhattan abode, a top-floor space in the same 19th-century Greenwich Village building as the one-bedroom apartment she’s lived in since 2000, is just as funky. It’s an inspired mingling of extravagant furniture, chinoiserie wallpaper, and vintage doodads whose sum-total flamboyance recalls the do-it-yourself glamour of the 1970s, when Sui first came to Manhattan from her native Detroit.

The designer acquired the annex a little more than a year ago, realizing it would be a perfect spot for spreading out to work on book projects. (A salute to her career will be published next year by Chronicle Books, written with Andrew Bolton, a close friend and a curator of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.) As Sui says, “With two apartments, I can have dinner downstairs and drinks and dessert upstairs.”

Care of The Sartorialist.

Love the dress, the petals of the skirt are wonderful. But why do the fashion houses feel that they need to mitigate their aesthetics for the runway? An undeniably 1920s-inspired gown, so why the punky hair and drag queen makeup? Why not fingerwaves or a Louise Brooks bob? Rosy cheeks and a red rosebud mouth? The dress is going to appeal to women with a vintage aesthetic in mind, why not create a whole catwalk look that would appeal to them also. Do you think if a celebrity starlet wears this gown on the red carpet, she’ll match the hair and makeup? Hell no, she’ll have soft curls and red lipstick, I guarantee it.

A lovely shot of a bystander at the Summer Jamboree Festival in Senigallia, Italy. It’s one of the biggest rock and roll and retro-themed festivals in Europe, and it’s based in a gorgeous Italian seaside town, on the Adriatic coast. I was there a few years ago as a swing dance instructor for the dance camp that is part of the festival, and I’d love to go again just for fun.

The tiny town was packed with retro enthusiasts from across Europe and the globe, many of whom drove their retro cars, motorcycles and scooters into town. There was an enormous vintage market that just about destroyed my bank balance, and everyone was dressed vintage style head to toe (mostly 1950s), every moment of the day. Dita Von Teese was there that year, and I had the pleasure of meeting her backstage (she’s really tiny) and seeing her live show, as well as watching the myriad of rock and roll music legends that the festival brings in (Jerry Lee Lewis was there that year).

Recommended if you’re a fan of 1940s/50′s and rock ‘n roll. The dance camp teaches Lindy Hop, but it’s not really a swing event overall – more rock ‘n roll, rockabilly and boogie woogie. Anyway, everywhere you turned was a glamorous sight like the lady above. Drop me a line if you know who she is…

Long slender lines, bias cutting, clinging silk and velvet, huge blouson sleeves, oh god I love the 1930s silhouette!

This collection was an interesting re-imagining of the fashion house’s origins, and a glamorous mish-mash of styles from the 1920s to the 1950s.  The 1946 Dior’s New Look peplum was exaggerated into balloons of fabric beneath belt-cinched waists. Circle skirts, blouson sleeves, oversized coats, wasp waists and tea dresses were all in the mix. Cloche style hats and pencil-thin arched brows gave a nod to the 1920s. Corsets were occasionally sighted beneath sheer gowns, and a 1950s hourglass silhouette was fairly ubiquitous, save for a few slimmer 1930s styles. Patent leather, sheer fabrics and dark lipstick gave the whole show a more modern – and risque – feeling.

For anyone like me who has studied the Harlem Renaissance at school or university, from whatever angle (art, literature, music), then you have probably read Nancy Cunard’s “Negro: An Anthology”. It might even have been your textbook. But what you might not know is that Nancy Cunard herself was sheer glamour. She was the British heiress to the Cunard shipping line fortune, and abandoned her societal responsibilities to skip off to Paris in the 1920s to live the jazz life.

Super cute. This guy would turn my head in the street.

Care of The Sartorialist.