I loved this fashion slide show by Bill Cunningham, on its own pure merit but also as a contrast to the most recent episode of "Tim Gunn's Guide to Style."
Gunn presented us with a young woman whom the edit told us to loathe, and what had she done wrong? She had bought vivid clothes that inspired her and dared to think highly of herself and the creative way she mixed them together. You could see that that this woman had submitted herself to the show because she was a "former bikini model" who'd just had twins, but the show blindsided her with a different narrative. She was presened as deluded and obstinate, until finally she broke down and accepted Gunn's stern schooling.
Look at the older Italian woman featured in the Cunningham slide show and imagine how "Tim Gunn's Guide to Style" would treat her. They would crush her, and only when she finally accepted their "age-appropriate," somber styles would they hug her and praise her for coming to her senses. That is, they would try to crush her, and she'd probably tell them off and stomp out, and it would be unused footage from a show that never airs.
October 19, 2008
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Glad you have some light-hearted stuff, Ann, to take your mind off the shit this country's military is going to be in under Pelosi-Obama. Maybe they can ask Early Onset Alhzheimers Joe for his expert opinion on which country to divide into 3 or more parts after Hezbollah decides to leave.
Other than that, Tim Gunn is very talented, but way "too mean" (remember when that term was used by the Dems against Republicans during Clinton's reign?)
I suppose all white is out.
Very good visibility for bike riders though.
Taste in clothes is a matter of taste, apparently.
I don't find the eclectic look very interesting. It looks un-thought-out.
I did like (very much!) the sapphire outfits. Wow! What a color!
Hot pink - meh. A little too party-like, and a bit unreal for walking down the street.
Apparently, if you weight 90 pounds, you look good in almost everything.
What's going on in the gray pants of the Asian women at 2:28?
I liked the remark that if anyone else dressed like that woman people would think she was crazy... I think being crazy is her whole shtick.
:-)
As for the fashion shows (and not just Gunn whom I can not watch for even a moment) they seem to discount a lot of things that are important to me (and I'm assuming, important to a lot of people.)
The clothes we wear are not a public service!
I had a horrible ugly tan-khaki men's denim shirt with epaulets that I wore in college. It *felt* good. While I knew it didn't look good, I felt good in it.
If Gunn would school Craig Sager, he might do some good for the world.
Dear God NO! Fashion has become fascism.
I watched that episode, the first I have ever seen. The woman, Ali, was a name-dropping label-grubber, and would wear anything whether or not it was flattering to her, if it had a designer label. The difference between Ali and the women in the slide show is that the women in the slide show, for the most part, were making choices that worked for them.
Ali's choices were not working for her, and so she nominated herself to be on the show. This is not What Not to Wear where the friends and families perform what is essentially a fashion intervention. If Ali had been happy with her look, she never would've been on the show.
Did they break her? Yes, but she was delusional. You may dislike Tim Gunn but to dismiss his advice about how best to flatter her figure as "that's an opinion," was ridiculous. She asked to be on the show, and then she treats the advice she's getting like that? I have rarely seen an adult act so spoiled on national television.
In the end, Ali found something she had never had before: a personal style. Before, she had just thrown random pieces together. The women in the slide show, whatever else you may say about them, did not just throw random stuff together to make it work. There was always an idea there, a point of view they were expressing with their clothes. I'm sure Tim Gunn would embrace that older woman with her way-out outfits as a prima stylista. She had a style all her own, and it was beautiful.
It has been my experience in the fashion world (for the short time I have been involved with it) that the worst thing a woman can do is turn over her fashion decisions to a gay man. These designers basically hate women and their idea of fashion is to put them in progressively more bizarre and outré outfits that make them look ridiculous.
I saw that episode of Tim Gunn. I tell you, I can't go three minutes without slipping into exaggerated Tim Gunn imitation. He's waaaaaay too easy.
But the woman that Gunn's edit told us to hate had definitely lost her way. She hadn't a trace of natural style the woman Bill Cunningham presents, and needed someone's help. I think Gunn would cheer the Italian woman. He does admire eccentricity when it's pulled off.
Cunningham said, "... joy de vivre." Ha ha ha ha ha That Cunningham, what a card. Mixes languages mid phrase.
Trooper, conversely, the worst thing a man can do is let his wife dress him. Like Bush. I'm convinced Laura picked out his powder blue, sky blue, baby blue, light blue ties. Now, everybody wears them.
Methadras said...
Dear God NO! Fashion has become fascism.
Fashion has always been fascist and much of it misogynistic as well. Only a hand full of couturiers have understood and designed for women.
One has to develop one's own style or run with the sheep and many of us simply don't give a fig about it to begin with and look for comfort and value.
Gunn is entertaining on Project Runway, but those drab kvatsh suits he favors?! Horrid.
Joan said..."I watched that episode, the first I have ever seen. The woman, Ali, was a name-dropping label-grubber, and would wear anything whether or not it was flattering to her, if it had a designer label. The difference between Ali and the women in the slide show is that the women in the slide show, for the most part, were making choices that worked for them."
Joan, I think you are swallowing the story told by the edit instead of trying to see through the edit to the real woman in the story. You're seeing what they wanted you to see. I think the woman really did love those clothes. Yes, she was excited by the famous names, but she didn't love just the names. She picked things that reached out to her, and the glamour of the names was part of it, but is that so terrible? Elsewhere in the show, they enthuse over designers, lesser designers, as if these people are purveyors of taste and workmanship. It's incoherent.
"Ali's choices were not working for her, and so she nominated herself to be on the show. This is not What Not to Wear where the friends and families perform what is essentially a fashion intervention. If Ali had been happy with her look, she never would've been on the show."
I disagree, as I wrote in the post. I think she nominated herself because she had a life transition, from model to mother of twins, with a twins-ravaged body. She thought they'd love her and appreciate the verve she'd displayed in her clothes and help her reconfigure a bit. But they just hated her and edited it to make us hate her too. That was pretty evil.
"Did they break her? Yes, but she was delusional. You may dislike Tim Gunn but to dismiss his advice about how best to flatter her figure as "that's an opinion," was ridiculous. She asked to be on the show, and then she treats the advice she's getting like that? I have rarely seen an adult act so spoiled on national television."
Again, they controlled the edit and they decided the best approach to her would be cruelty. Everyone has delusions, especially about their body. You can deal with it affectionately. You don't have to give them cold, suspicious looks and skewer them behind their backs.
"In the end, Ali found something she had never had before: a personal style. Before, she had just thrown random pieces together."
That was her style. What was personal about what they left her with? And look what they did to her hair! They had no idea what to do with curly hair, hacked it off, and then, when it looked terrible, flat-ironed the hell out of it. It was a nightmare.
"The women in the slide show, whatever else you may say about them, did not just throw random stuff together to make it work. There was always an idea there, a point of view they were expressing with their clothes."
Yes, but they could have helped her do a better job with the eclectic stuff she liked. I would have enjoyed seeing something imaginative. Instead it was so repressive. Such killjoys!
"I'm sure Tim Gunn would embrace that older woman with her way-out outfits as a prima stylista. She had a style all her own, and it was beautiful."
Yes, but why couldn't Ali get in on some fun stuff like that which was obviously what she wanted? Instead, she had to be taught her place. No exuberance for you, accept that you have no judgment, and put on this tailored gray suit.
Trooper York said..."It has been my experience in the fashion world (for the short time I have been involved with it) that the worst thing a woman can do is turn over her fashion decisions to a gay man. These designers basically hate women and their idea of fashion is to put them in progressively more bizarre and outré outfits that make them look ridiculous."
It seems exactly the opposite to me. Those men may like high fashion on skinny fashion models, but the real women who get makeovers on those shows are taught how to get in their fitted, professional box.
I like Tim Gunn, but the Bravo TV presentation of him is as a quiet, passive-aggressive authority. He'll give you love, but only if you bow to his judgment. You can stand up to him, but if you do, expect a close up on his face making some little expression that means you are wrong and a fool not to listen.
Not true professor. What you say is true that they put women in a box, but the problem is they don't put them in clothes that flatter their shape. They rely on rules that are foolish and can always be overcome with a fashion forward approach that is different but not bizarre. What you need is to get people out of their comfort zone but not in a crazed and outré manner.
When we went to Vegas to buy clothes, I told the vendors that if they have anything that Jackie O, Audrey Hepburn or Doris Day wore between 1960 and 1965 I would buy it. I would buy a lot of it. Simple, elegant and stylish with great lines and great fabrics.
Very Mad Man as a matter of fact.
We put a girl in a beautiful hounds tooth dress last week and she came back yesterday and said she got a promotion. She said her boss had noticed how she had stepped her appearance and it had been reflected in her performance and in fact her whole persona.
I asked her if her boss was in his fifties. She said yes. I told her that the way she was dressing must have reminded her boss of how his mom used to dress and that is what made her seem so improved and stylish. She was very happy.
I told the vendors that if they have anything that Jackie O, Audrey Hepburn or Doris Day wore between 1960 and 1965 I would buy it.
Yep, Chanel, Balenciaga and Valentino immediately come to mind...they knew how to dress a woman.
So true bjm. It was a time when the designer was concerned with fashion and not with just being "fashionable." I have been trying to learn more about it since I knew nothing before we started. So I come to it without preconceived ideas or a vested interest in anything. It just amazes me how screwed up so many of these designers are in their fashions. It's just a joke.
Oh..and of course Dior's voluptuous designs. Miss Dior is my signature perfume.
Exactly, I tend to dismiss Dior since Lagerfeld turned the house into costume design.
Piaggi designs a spread in each issue of Italian Vogue. This book reprints them, that, and the other thing.
Here's a website that is, I think, by a French fashion illustrator. Mostly photos she takes on the street of people she sees. As far as I can tell, all French women are beautiful.
And all the women's fashions on the show "Mad Men" are killer...Don't see many ladies wearing white gloves any more....
"Twins-ravaged body"? As a mother of twins, I might say that about myself, but for someone else, who hasn't had twins, to throw that terminology around? Not cool. Sorry, but my husband doesn't even say that kind of thing. Of course, he has to live with me, and was responsible in part for the twins, but still.
And I couldn't stand the woman either. That horrible, furry jacket she was gravitating to, that had a designer label? Blech. No taste at all!
I did love the final, black and white designer dress with the big jeweled parts- it was perfect on her and she clearly loved it. Very fitting for her occasion as a NY plastic surgeon's wife. Unlike the silvery, sock-boots, purple ruffle skirt and gray wrap blouse she had on at the beginning of the show.
And yeah, I covet Joan's dresses on Mad Men. So classic and feminine.
We have designers coming in all the time who want to put stuff in our store. One Vietnamese girl in particular has a new line that is very reminiscent of the early sixties that I would love to put in the store in a big way. But it is very very hard for new designers to get stuff made in enough quantity to be cost effective in the ready to wear market. And the big companies are too hide-bound and conservative. Especially in this economy, they are shitting their bloomers.
Ann, I've watched enough make-over shows to know how they work, and the last thing I want to see is another woman shoved into clothes that don't work for her. You've said before that they want to force women into some box, some uniform of what's "appropriate." But that has not been what I've seen. These shows, the ones I've seen, anyway, try to help these women find and sharpen their own style, something most of them have never had an opportunity to do before.
Ali was peeved that they chucked the contents of her closet because they were her property and those clothes cost a lot of money. The fact that they were wrong for her body type, making her look short and stumpy, hiding her beautiful curves, and drawing the eye away from her assets, was irrelevant to her. She had no deep emotional attachment to any of them. She couldn't muster any argument against chucking them other than, "But these are my clothes."
It is instructive to remember Ali's transformation at the designer's studio. When she tried on those dresses, she was like another person. She saw how good she could look in clothes that were right for her. But even there, Tim did not choose the dress for her -- the dresses she tried on were all very different, but she got to choose which one she would keep.
Tim Gunn is not a designer. He has been a teacher of designers for a long time, and now I suppose at Liz Claiborne he'll be overseeing their designers, too. Of all the gay men in fashion on tv, he seems to be the most knowledgeable about dressing women in ways that actually flatter him. Lord knows Tim doesn't need me to defend him, but mourning Ali's transformation as if she somehow had lost herself seems bizarre to me.
As for the hair: you have no idea what it's like to have a head of hair like that. The new cut was much more flattering to her than her old style, whether it was ironed straight or she left it curly. Like me, Ali just has too much hair and needs to get it thinned massively every 6 weeks or so. I'm not keen on flat-ironing, myself, but that again was a choice they left up to her -- a choice she didn't have before.
"Ali was peeved that they chucked the contents of her closet because they were her property and those clothes cost a lot of money."
They remove the clothes from the closet, but they don't steal them. It was clear that she would get them back.
"The new cut was much more flattering to her than her old style, whether it was ironed straight or she left it curly. Like me, Ali just has too much hair and needs to get it thinned massively every 6 weeks or so. I'm not keen on flat-ironing, myself, but that again was a choice they left up to her -- a choice she didn't have before."
She may have needed a haircut, but they gave her a shockingly bad haircut. I thought it was pretty long, but more importantly, I hate seeing curly hair handled by people who obviously just don't like curly hair. She should have seen a curly hair specialist.
Basically, my point is that this woman was not respected, not her style and not her hair. If she had been warned at the outset that they saw her the way they dod, she might not have gone into it. But they had a plan to wrest drama out of her, and they intended to entertain us, the theory being that since we would find her unlikable, we'd accept the cruelty. I'm just pointing that out.
Wait, I saw, like, 30 seconds of that.
She had gorgeous curly hair, and they straightened it.
They always straighten it.
Pfeh.
Ann, that's exactly my problem with the fashion makeover shows and quite a few of the home makeovers too...the designers seem to take great delight in humiliating the clients with perverse choices.
Trooper: be on the lookout for vintage Armani too...his early 80's Prive evening wear was sublime and timeless.
I still wear a long black silk velvet Armani evening dress I bought in Milan in 1983. Sleeveless, with a bateau neckline and empire waist it's very Hepburn and will never go out of style.
Maxa Mara's SportMax linen pieces and summer silks from the 80's are terrific too.
The 80's produced a great deal of outlandish fashion that is best left in the memory hole. However a handful of emerging designers were making very collectible clothes.
Another emerging designer that springs to mind is Donna Karan's collection for Ann Klein the season after after Klein's death.
Also Michael Kors designs for Celine...the most wonderful accessories.
The fashion hacks pushing poorly made over-priced crap nowadays should be soiling themselves.
I don't know, Ann. You're making the producers out to seem evil, having a "plan to wrest drama out of her." Well, of course, that's what reality shows do. There's a lot to the editing, also, and anyone going into one of these situations has to understand the potential to be made to look like an idiot. But in the end, Ali was finally happy with her own body and she knew how to dress it to her best advantage.
She really was delusional, you know -- she argued with the images created after the body scan!
I don't think Ali was disrespected one-tenth as much as she disrespected Tim and what's-her-name before the "intervention." I do not think they treated her cruelly. I think they called her on her bad attitude in a straight-forward way.
I'm pretty sure she could have quit at any point, right? When they told her they hated every single thing in her closet, she could've walked away right there, and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
The hair thing we will never agree on. I didn't think it was a hideous cut, although I liked it better curly than flat-ironed. I bet that's the first shorter cut Ali ever had that didn't make her look like she had 'fro.
I agree that she was delusional, especially when she rejected the body scan, but you know she was fishing for a compliment. They were depriving her of the affection she wanted (because they considered her unlovable... which she was... but still...).
"I asked her if her boss was in his fifties. She said yes. I told her that the way she was dressing must have reminded her boss of how his mom used to dress and that is what made her seem so improved and stylish. She was very happy."
I have an extensive collection of perfume, some dating from the last decade of the 19th century. (No, perfume doesn't always go "bad". Keep it out of the light and keep the lid on and it may last for a century.) I've often let people smell certain things and their reaction is "oh that smells like old ladies!" or "that smells like my grandmother!". I always say "well your grandmother had good taste!". The problem with so many current perfume is that it is made as cheaply as possible and made to appeal to women who have grown up not knowing the smell of quality. Younger women wear nasty canned-fruit salad crap for the same reason that younger men wear vile sports fragrances- no one gave them better options because the goal was to dumb down the public taste to the point that people would continue to shell out top dollar for bargain-basement quality. So it is in clothes too, I think.
"Oh..and of course Dior's voluptuous designs. Miss Dior is my signature perfume."
A great but sad choice, sad because the last time I smelled the current product labeled "Miss Dior", it bore almost no resemblance to the sublime old stuff I have in my collection. Dior, like so many other perfume houses, has reformulated many of their perfumes to the point of unrecognize-ability. They're like once-beautiful old women who have had too much bad face work.
I'm getting shades of Perfume offa Palladian.
Just to reassure anyone who might read this thread while pregnant with twins: My sister in law has twins and has, I would say, a nearly perfect body. Kids don't ruin your body. Inactivity does.
A great but sad choice, sad because the last time I smelled the current product labeled "Miss Dior", it bore almost no resemblance to the sublime old stuff I have in my collection.
Bastards.
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