Couture Is In The Details

Claire Shaeffer shows-and-tells a Dior Couture gown's secrets.

Claire Shaeffer isn't fooling around. Her love of couture is serious; it's obsessive even. She ran away from home at 17 to literally join the circus. Literally. When acrobatics failed her and she wound up a doctor's wife, her performer shoulders kept her out of a lot of the fashion she loved, so she taught herself how to sew. In the manner of anyone who would run away to join the circus, she didn't just start with easy Simplicity pattern shift dresses, nope, she started a life-long practice of astutely dissecting garments to gain knowledge of their construction. Combing the aisles of vintage stores, she picked up pieces by big name designers and analyzed their every stitch to see the hows and whys and ins and outs of their form. She never stopped. Today Claire is one of the premier authorities on fashion's most fine, skillful sewing techniques. She has penned over 15 books on sewing and leads workshops for those hungry for the knowledge of just what goes into those high-priced couture garments (it's actually worth the money!). To learn more about Claire and her secrets, check out a post I did on her recent visit to the FIT campus for Pins and Needles, FIT's Fashion and Textiles MA program's blog.

Hard Work, Paid in Squeals.

I recently began an internship with the Special Collections division of the Library at FIT. This means I pinch myself repeatedly sitting among the stacks of old, rare, unique and oversized works on paper as I do "work" like organizing stacks of storyboards from Esquire in the 1960s, or taking stock of the collection of Vogue magazines--making sure to flip through every page to note any damage. I literally pinch myself, smile, and squeal with glee for 6 hours at a time on this "job". The Vogue assignment has been particularly delightful. So far I've paged through every twice monthly issue of the magazine from January 1, 1936 to May 15, 1938. The only hazard of the job is that my brain is swimming with 1930s dress desire. The clothing, the faces, the makeup and hair! It was all so gorgeous and remains remarkably covetous. How gorgeous? Take a look for yourself. Below is an absolute relic of fashion film. A 1938 fashion show shot at the studio of London-based designer Norman Hartnell in rich Dufaycolor. The film shows you great examples of just what I feel so lucky to swoon over.




I know, I know. Swoon, right? You too can flip through the pages of Vogue (or anythings else fashion-related you might enjoy). If you are a student in need of research, a scholar of any kind, or just a respectful fashion fan with careful hands, you can contact the library to make an appointment to spend some time with the incredible treasures of FIT's collection.

First Day of School.

Today is my first day as a student at FIT. If you follow this blog at all, you can probably guess how I'm feeling: I'm thrilled. I'm also filled with all of the nervous energy that being thrilled entails. A lot of the nerves are coming up around what to wear, naturally. I'm searching through my closet as I type to find the perfect outfit for a fashion student's first day. Granted I'm not a design student, and that lends itself to a certain brand of relief around not having to prove my aesthetic in my outfit choice. No overwrought frills for me, I'm going to keep things simple, classic, comfortable and weather suitable (which today means safe for soggy). Thank god I'm also not a high school student.

First day of school outfits from Flickr users.

These girls are headed to their first days of high school, which is way more loaded than heading to your first day of Grad School. Remember how much your first day outfit meant? Remember the back to school shopping and the laying out of clothes the night before? Remember the next day when all of those clothes that you laid out the night before didn't look right at all, and you needed something else in the ten minutes before your bus or your ride honked for you? Oh, dear, I do. Well, teens today have a new tools for sartorial stress of this kind...Youtube and Flickr. The new "So, what should I wear tomorrow??" conversation is a now a photo or a vlog entry with a fashion show of options for your viewers to vote on. If only I had thought ahead, I'd be taking advantage of all of your style eyes! For now, I'll watch and learn from the teens below who were barely out of diapers on my first day of high school.

Adopt Me, Please.

Isabel and Ruben Toledo are my dream fashion parents. I want them to adopt me and re-parent me so that I can be indoctrinated into their stylin' hippie-ish universe. I have this idea of their home being a crazy playground of sorts, where nothing is normal sized, where every surface is drawing paper-covered, and food is edible artwork. I also think that when you wake up in their house as their adopted 27 year-old child you get your clothes for the day designed and sewn onto your body fresh daily. If that's not how it is, I don't want to know.

Isabel hard at work (l), Ruben's hard work (r). Click images for source information.

Isabel is a superbly talented maker of things. She's not just a designer. She imparts her style and spirit into everything she produces, which makes it all wonderful. Ruben is an artist with a flair for the surreal and a style as distinctive as his wife's clothes are wonderful. Together they are kind of magical. Watch them talk about their art and each other. Watch him keep a part of her skirt on his leg and her wrap her arm around the back of his chair in this interview. Watch them take the term Soulmates and apply it to real life.

Ok, now go see my Mama Isabel's mid-career retrospective at The Museum at F.I.T., which is on display through September 26th.

Target Practice

McQ for Target, the line designed by fashion's founding enfant terrible, Alexander McQueen, for the mammoth retail chain had its early New York debut today and I was there to witness the spectacle that was. Housed in a way-West Side warehouse on West St. and West Houston, the collection was put up for sale in a darkened space decorated with graffiti, chain link fences, concrete, and caution tape. Target's signature red bullseye was dressed in black for the occasion, as were the usually pepperminty red-and-white bags, logos, and peripherals. It was supposed to be dark, see? Because McQueen is edgy, see? I'll tell you what's truly dark--the behavior of a bunch of bargain-starved shoppers let loose in a room with limited edition pieces in limited numbers for a limited time.

The pre-opening crowd, about a block and a half deep.

Street-inspired art pieces set the mood.

I swear, I was within the first 100 people let into the pop-up shop and within less than ten minutes of my entrance, clothing was literally flying. It was soaring off the racks and off of the bodies of shoppers too anxious to wait for a dressing room, and just exhibitionist enough to drop top and trou to try on armfuls of hastily gathered garments. Most of the women I spoke to on the line to enter the temp-store had pre-shopped the collection using the leaked look-book photos that popped up on fashion blogs all over the Internet in the weeks prior to the event. They knew what they wanted and had their eyes focused on the prize. My plan had been to talk to people once inside the shop and see what they thought of the clothes, the space, the everything; but I should have known better. There was no talking at first, only shrieking, mumbling, and click-clack-heeled running. Women had that crazed-shopping look in their eyes. There was no stopping them. People ran (literally) from rack to rack scooping up any garment in their size and then finding a space to plop down their items and get to trying them on. Whole displays were picked clean in a matter of minutes. It was like being inside of some strange Nature Channel documentary on vultures, only with hot pink leggings and belted shirtdresses.

A railing became a makeshift fitting area.

Clothing carnage ensued. I think those tank tops jumped.


Changing room lines were barricaded and guarded by security.


Clothing was being stockpiled and picked through later in a popular grab-n-go gathering strategy.


Chain link fences became clothing racks.

Thankfully I did happen to find a couple of sweet FIT students who were smiling instead of frothing at the mouth, so I decided they were safe to talk to. They were reveling in their luck of grabbing one of the asymmetrical gray and black dresses that almost every woman waiting to enter the store told me they wanted. Shari and Erica, 18 and 19, were among the first to arrive outside the store this morning and their strategy was to grab goods and run. When I happened upon them, Erica was trying on the gray dress over her clothing and Shari was rightfully telling her how great it looked on her. They both reported that the dress was one of their favorite pieces on sale, and that some of the other garments were a little too fish-netty for their liking. Apparently the fish-net was supposed to be an ode to mermaids. Sounds like a dangerous combo if you ask me...

Erica and Shari with their finds.

In fact, seeing the collection in person made me want to retract my earlier post full of excitement for the line. While there were cool pieces available and the designs were great in theory, most of them were not worth the inflated prices McQueen's name lent to the standard Target fabrics and construction. Things felt cheap to the touch, and while prices were leagues lower than McQueen's standard charge, they weren't quite cheap enough. My cash is harder earned than ever these days and the stuff on the racks reeked of mass-production methods. Threads were peaking out of seems, leather felt rubbery, and "silky" materials were scratchily synthetic. It made me think twice about this whole high/low concept. More! Cheaper! Now! is what has largely gotten us into the troubled spot we are now in in the fashion industry. There is so much clothing, but so little of it is built to last. These are the type of garments one can expect to wear a few times before fading, button-loss, and shapelessness set in. They aren't getting handed down to the granddaughters. I know that isn't necessarily the point of these lines, but maybe it should be. Maybe if standards of quality were reset to previous levels, people would spend a tad more and waste a lot less. I love the democratizing of design that comes out of these collaborations, but I just wish that I didn't get so routinely excited by the preview photos only to be disappointed by the real deals. I say shrink the profits a bit and give the consumers garments worth their saved pennies rather than encouraging them to save pennies at the expense of quality. I love the looks, but I want to love the actual clothes too. Is that asking too much?

See the stuff for yourself when the line goes national the first week in March.

Make me up before you go go

In honor of The Museum at F.I.T.'s new show Gothic: Dark Glamour which opens September 5th and runs through February 21, 2009, I present a goth makeup tutorial courtesy of Adora BatBrat. She is the Swedish answer to all of your beautiful, dark prayers. This pretty in pink punk princess teaches you a thing or two about how to apply the perfect shade of black around your peepers, and how to properly decorate yourself. I love the crazy German background music (Achtung!) and cheerful shower curtain. FYI this woman has three children.