READing Your Style: How to be Devastating

Donatella Versace

Have you ever been in a store, searching for a look for an event, meeting or date, but you have no idea what you want to look like? I hate that feeling. That’s why I was thoroughly pleased to find Donatella Versace’s 5 Style Lessons on how to be devastating in InStyle’s March 2013 issue. Donatella Versace is the Vice President of the Versace Group, and head designer of the highly popular and sexy couture label, Versace. Just like Donatella, the Versace girl is fearless, dynamic, unmistakable, and unforgettable. In my fashion, these qualities would be qualities any women would want to have in this world, no matter what their personality type or penchant for tight fitting, skin revealing clothing. Next time you are in the store, and you just can’t seem to find a piece that jumps out at you and screams, “WEAR ME,” these lessons should help one to narrow down what items to buy to exude that confident effervescence we attempt to attain in all of our looks, no matter how haute we choose to look. Below you will see photos from the Fall 2013 Couture Show shown earlier this month, photos courtesy of New York Magazine.

1. Show a little skin: When the economy crashed in 2008, everyone tried to make safe clothes with familiar silhouettes in classic colors, but that approach doesn't really pay off. Women deserve distinction and originality, and there are fresher ways to look womanly than exposing a lot of cleavage. I find clothes that feature transparency alluring, like my silk satin dress with a gold-net hemline that hints at the body underneath. 

2. Rely on what feels special: Looking safe is never chic. It's ordinary. Instead, you owe it to yourself to discover what allows you to be yourself, whether it's indulging in a leather bag that speaks to you, or playing up - rather than hiding - what others deem a flaw. Done skillfully and with a positive attitude, highlighting the very thing that sets you apart from others is what will make you striking and unique. 

3. Find silhouettes that celebrate your body: I have never met a woman, no matter how beautiful, who isn't insecure about her body, so my designs are body conscious in ways that complement female curves. What matters first is to use fabrics and proportions that make a woman feel secure and noticed. I love lightweight wool crepe, shiny jersey, and satin, all of which let you cut clothes close to the body without clinging. Jersey is so forgiving - and it's the easiest material to wear. 

4. Accentuate your waist. Seriously! I like to show it off because it's the key to defining your shape. Make the shoulders wider and your waist appears narrower. Raise the mid-line a little and your hips look longer. Revealing instead of hiding your waist will always work to your advantage. 

5. Embrace your age: I am not an ageist. And at least from the back, most women look alike. But from the front, you must accept reality. Sophistication is maturity's most appealing accessory. You can stick to miniskirts if you adore them, but add tights or stockings. On the one hand, it's fun to throw it all together and be adventurous when you're young, but in the other hand, youth would look a lot better with a touch more glamour and less flash. 

Style Watch: Vogue Voices - Alexander Wang

My theme this month, “Unique is Chic” is inspired by the fact that, in my fashion, fashion is all about understanding what it is that makes us stand out from others, and how we can present that uniqueness to others. Recently, I was able to watch Diana Vreeland’s documentary, “The Eye has to Travel”, and what she emphasized in fashion is how to make an asset of one’s faults. If one has a space in one’s teeth, make it the most beautiful thing about them; If one is tall, become taller by wearing high heeled shoes; If one has a long neck, be proud of it and don’t hunch over; if one has got a long nose, hold it up and make it your trademark. Fashion designers have an amazing ability and talent to create clothes that help us to push our faults in the most glorious ways, because after all, our faults are what make us unique, and why should we be ashamed of what makes us whole. Vogue has a new video series on Vogue.com entitled, “Vogue Voices”, which delves into the minds of some of the biggest designers of the moment and what makes them qualified to run a design house. Couture is all about the unique and one of a kind, and being that this month on #IMGblog is all about “The Secret World of Couture”, I decided to bring the interviews of the couture designers from this series to my Style Watch series. In W Magazine’s May 2013 feature, “The Man Who Loves Women”, Alber Elbaz, Creative Director of Lanvin, made an interesting assertion he learned from co-founder of the couture house, Yves St. Laurent, Pierre Bergé: “The best business people are the ones who think like artists. And the best artists are the true business people.” Making women beautiful is a difficult business and the designers of couture houses take their business very seriously, and are very wise about life and how to create products that work for women’s lives. This month I wanted to see what specifically we could learn about fashion from these designers for I always find it interesting how much wisdom can be gained from the eccentric minds of fashion designers.

Alexander Wang believes that fashion is a melting pot, and that it is changing all the time. To him, the people in fashion are just crazy enough to go along with the ride because they love it so much. In my fashion, I agree because the one commonality that I feel between anyone who is interested in fashion, is that we are all fascinated with elevating the everyday. What I enjoy most about Wang’s designs is that we see this elevation of the everyday so clearly, yet the basic premise and purpose for the piece is not lost behind the design. The fact that Wang bases his pieces on the basic concept of sports ware and creating pieces that a have a sense of ease that people can relate to in their busy lives, is what is so appealing about his self titled brand. With his wearable, abstract, and highly modern pieces, the exhilarating growth that his brand has made since 2005 is why he was approached by Balenciaga three months ago to become the house’s new Creative Director after, Nicolas Ghesquière. 

Fox jacket, silk velvet pants, and calfshin
sandals from Wang's 1st collection for
Balenciaga. (Photos: Vogue)

In Wang’s debut collection for the house, it is said in the June 2013 issue of Vogue, that “it was an impressive and focused beginning,--an elegant, respectful homage to the house’s legendary founder. There were jackets and coats cut with curving, air-injected shoulder lines and fastened with gleaming silver claps; narrow trousers or long, lean skirts, all in deep forest green or black; and a series of sleeveless hourglass coats and sheath dresses, embroidered to resemble the striations of marble, an effect echoed in the intarsia technique used for sheared-mink jackets atop silk-velvet pants treated to resemble guipure lace.” Wang says, “I felt it was important to go back to the roots of the house to reinforce Cristobal’s codes, but in the context of a modern, functioning wardrobe.”

In my fashion, what we see in Wang’s designs IS that elevation of the everyday, and the innovation he employs in his pieces are so attractive because he is aware of the fact that everyone’s lives are so complex, and the clothes that favor in today's market are clothes that are functional. He is most proud of the fact that there is such a range in the diversity of his customers, because he is most about his brand having a certain sensibility and attitude as opposed to catering to a particular age group and cultural background. The fact that his brand accomplishes this is an aspect that certainly qualifies him for his new position because, in my fashion, that is a principal aspect of couture that distinguishes it from the ready-to-wear. He sees that now a days it is good to see that brands are now beginning to pair customers with an aesthetic instead of pairing them to a price, which is more a way of keeping people from options, which is not the objective of designers.

The embroidery on sheath dresses was
made to look like marble. 

In my fashion, the one thing I favor most about what we can take away from Alexander Wang is that fashion brands are about telling a story, and building a connection with an audience based off that story. This notion is not true of just fashion brands, but it extends to other industries, and most of all, in society in general. Throughout history clothes have been used to single our success in life, and life is all about attracting other's to one's success to be with the people that want to continue a story of life with you in it. On top of Alexander Wang's genius of how to work fabric in interesting ways, his dedication towards understanding how people can communicate a certain story about oneself through their clothes is what, in my fashion, puts him on a level of couture sensibility. 

Style Watch: Vogue Voices - Alber Elbaz

My theme this month, “Unique is Chic” is inspired by the fact that, in my fashion, fashion is all about understanding what it is that makes us stand out from others, and how we can present that uniqueness to others. Recently, I was able to watch Diana Vreeland’s documentary, “The Eye has to Travel”, and what she emphasized in fashion is how to make an asset of one’s faults. If one has a space in one’s teeth, make it the most beautiful thing about them; If one is tall, become taller by wearing high heeled shoes; If one has a long neck, be proud of it and don’t hunch over; if one has got a long nose, hold it up and make it your trademark. Fashion designers have an amazing ability and talent to create clothes that help us to push our faults in the most glorious ways, because after all, our faults are what make us unique, and why should we be ashamed of what makes us whole. Vogue has a new video series on Vogue.com entitled, “Vogue Voices”, which delves into the minds of some of the biggest designers of the moment and what makes them qualified to run a design house. Couture is all about the unique and one of a kind, and being that this month on #IMGblog is all about “The Secret World of Couture”, I decided to bring the interviews of the couture designers from this series to my Style Watch series. In W Magazine’s May 2013 feature, “The Man Who Loves Women”, Alber Elbaz, Creative Director of Lanvin, made an interesting assertion he learned from co-founder of the couture house, Yves St. Laurent, Pierre Bergé: “The best business people are the ones who think like artists. And the best artists are the true business people.” Making women beautiful is a difficult business and the designers of couture houses take their business very seriously, and are very wise about life and how to create products that work for women’s lives. This month I wanted to see what specifically we could learn about fashion from these designers for I always find it interesting how much wisdom can be gained from the eccentric minds of fashion designers.

Creative Director of Lanvin, Alber Elbaz, believes that real haute couture is when you actually work with a person. His favorite part of being a designer is being in the store, in the dressing rooms with a women during a fitting. He says that when he is fitting a customer, he gets so anxious with excitement that while they are dressing he will barge into their dressing area because he loves to work and feel that he can make a change. He compares designing to being a doctor in that he is very careful and attentive to the needs of his clients, and he loves finding the pieces that will “fit” her. For him the couture process is all about knowing the person, and understanding who she is, what she wants to hide, what she loves about herself,  where she coming from, and where she is going.

Elbaz specializes in creating clothes for beautiful, talented, gorgeous, women and he tries to help them look beautiful on the red carpet. For him, its more about how they feel than how they look. He tries to think of how to make the dress disappear, where one can look at the women, understand who they are, and in the end, we don’t see the dress on the woman, but we see the woman inside the dress. He doesn’t want the onlooker to be caught up in the styling because then one misses the point of dressing, which is to be seen for what you are. The dress is meant to enhance a women’s beauty, not be the focal point. He respects women for the work they have done, and the hard work they go through in their lives. He appreciates that fagility and vulnerability women posess.

Elbaz's illustration for the promotion of 
Lancôme Mascara.

Recently, Elbaz has been working with Lancome to design the packaging for their mascara line. In his W Magazine feature, he admits that he “adores women, and the one thing [he] wants to do more than anything is to see a transformation of personality when someone puts on one of [his] dresses.” His original agenda as a designer has always been to communicate with women through clothes, and he feels an obligation to the Lanvin brand and the Lanvin woman even though he has worked at other design houses such as YSL, Krizia, and was sought after for Givenchy and Dior. Elber is committed to the idea that his clothes be timeless and in a way, helpful: He wants to make it easier for women to dress for their complicated lives. He says, “I am not interested in perfection, and neither are the women who wear my clothes.” He also says, “I don’t ever use the word ‘sexy. My clothes may be sexy, but I am more interested in what is beautiful—and that has nothing to do with age or size. Or…sexy. I don’t even know what that word means.”

The philosophy of his work is to do things in a different way, and to bring joy to his life. “When you enjoy something and bring a good energy to it, it shows in the product.” He says, “Basically we create what we are: when we are sad, we create sadness; when we are happy, we create happy, when we are miserable, we create misery, and it shows through the product, and is felt on the body.”

EDITOR'S LETTER: July 2013



 In my fashion, Haute Couture is the ultimate
appreciation of clothes.

I have been absolutely intrigued by how fascinating fashion can be when one really delves into its history. In my fashion, having knowledge of fashion history empowers personal style. If you have been following #IMFblog for the past two months learning about Diana Vreeland’s accomplishments at the Costume Institute, hopefully you have gained a plethora of insight into how costume history has influenced our modern views of what we find beautiful. Through DV’s point of view, and her flare for presentation, she introduced new ways of thinking about the importance of fashion in a societal context through time. Her work mostly helped to bring inspiration and aspiration to the high fashion designers of the industry, and their work would go on to become revolutionary in their respective points in time. In these past months I have really began to ponder the reason why the Couture houses maintain their high standards, and how they run their business as the leaders of fashion ingenuity. I recently came across a BBC documentary which followed its reporter, Margy Kinmonth, as she met various members of “The Secret World of Couture” from the point of view of an outsider being allowed access to a heavily guarded insider club of sorts.

"Unique is Chic!"

While anyone can become a part of the couture festivities, one must have made their way up the social latter quite high before couture regulars will acknowledge your presence. I wondered why it is that people like Karl Lagerfeld, and Alber Elbaz, Riccardo Tisci, and most recently Alexander Wang are inspired to provide garments to the world of which a body may never feel the inside of. Clothes that are so special, they only need one outing to be burned into the mental images of those that see the woman in that dress (and these days with the internet, everyone is able to see the woman as soon as she steps out into the daylight). In my fashion, the couture shows are so magical just to see on live-streams. I can only imagine being present during these events (can you imagine the goose bumps). Watching the BBC documentary one gains an understanding of the level of the fashion industry that is responsible for bring fashion to the rest of the world through wildly imaginative and expensive pieces in the couture, down to the ready-to-wear collections and mainstream fashion.



"Life is an endless costume party!"

 This month I am inspired by the magic of “The Secret World of Couture”. Diana Vreeland adored Paris, and was alive during a time when designers of the great couture houses of today were making their beginnings for the fashion industry. She socialized and was friends with the designers Cristobol Balenciaga, Coco Chanel, Hubert Givenchy, and Christian Dior. So this month I am going to be looking into the point of views of the current couture design house heads, and how they help individuals assert the power of the imagination through clothes. One fashion expert whose book I have been reading of late speaks on the influence of these design houses, and much more on fashion history, in his book “Tim Gunn’s Fashion Bible”. Tim Gunn maintains that fashion is all about context—societal, cultural, historic, economic, and political. To him, dismissing fashion as silly or unimportant seems like a denial of history and frequently a show of sexism. I support this notion, and that is why I work to understand fashion in its entire context within our world. As feminist, Elizabeth Wilson postulated, “immense psychological and material work goes into the production of the social self, and clothes are an indispensable part of that production.” As Vogue says in its July 2013 issue, “Life is an endless costume party,” and when one thinks about it, the fashion industry is actually quite young, but inventive costume and adorning oneself has always been an innate aspect of the human experience. In July, we will delve into why, “Unique is Chic.”