Fade to Color.

Loie Fuller imagined the Serpentine Dance as a kind of painting created with light, fabric, and her body. The billowing garment (which Fuller patented) swings about under her control, catching colored light as it fades in and out in the performance space again and again, hypnotizing viewers. I suggest you watch it on loop.



The film is a hand-colored black and white from 1891, and is currently on view at the MoMA as a part of their show On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century.

Color Me Happy.

Holi is the Holiday I'd most like to petition people to celebrate closer to home. It's a festival celebrated in parts of India and Sri Lanka marking the beginning of spring by knocking the grayscale of winter out with splashes and tosses of vibrant colors. People arm themselves with pigmented powders and dyed water and basically start a huge, neighborhood-wide, color-me-happy-war. I want that here.

Wait just a second! There will be a Holi celebration in Queens on March 7th. Go forth!

Pretty Palette.

Looking at the full view of the Marios Schwab collection is an exercise in aesthetic pleasure. His palette for this season's show was a perfect mix of rich and pretty. Dusty jewel tones were cut with stone-colored neutrals to build a refreshing new mix. See?

The fabrics are as pretty as tapestries up close too.

Dye Job.

In India, the most mundane tasks are beautifully colored. This video on the process of dabu dyeing fabric is a gorgeous example.



The women singing as they work is really something to see.

Colored Water And Cut Paper.

Stina Persson is a Swedish fashion illustrator who makes images of clothing, makeup, and accessories with sloshy blotches of watercolor, skinny strips of cut paper, and tissue thin sheets of transparent gift wrap.

Her work is available to buy here, and can be seen in the Fashion Illustration Now volumes.

Common Goods: Sock It To Me.

A sock drawer very much like the one I witnessed in middle school.

When I was in middle school I went to my friend's house for the first time and within my first half hour there she proudly and secretly showed me her dad's sock drawer. Apparently it was legendary amongst the kids who had been lucky enough to glimpse it on a visit to her house. Oh, boy it was something. The wide drawer was filled with a rainbow of socks neatly paired, folded, and arranged in a gradated scale from light to dark. Being the burgeoning clothes-o-phile that I was, I was in total awe. There were pink socks and polk-a-dot socks and silver socks and striped socks. It was amazing. The father in question later came out of the sock drawer (or rather the closet) and embraced his love of cozy, colorful things and men. I've never forgotten that sock drawer. And, every time the season changes and socks again become necessities I think of that amazing drawer and just how telling it turned out to be. Just to be clear, I'm not saying that a rainbow sock drawer automatically means a rainbow lifestyle; not at all, it's just fascinating to peek into a stranger's sock drawer and see what they've got in there. Lo and behold, they have a Flickr pool for that:

A mess of stripes.



Ordered chaos.



Type A sock storage.



The drawer and the things above it. I bet you could write this person's biography just from this view alone.



Cartoon cats and toe socks.



Real cats love to snuggle up in the sock drawer.


I'd snuggle up here if I were a cat.

Find the original photos here. Got a great sock drawer? Send me a snap. I'll read it like your palm...

Fade In.

Trend alert. At the Porenza Schouler show a few of the models were given slight hints of haircolor. Their manes were tinted with washed out, faded colors. There were pale, ashy purples and rinses of green. It was a subtle punk, kind of like a sunwashed rebel; like punks bleached by the beach. And now, I'm spotting the subtle colors on the streets. More than a few cool girls are rocking the quiet shades. The look is a strange cross of grayish hair which looks old, and poppy colors which look young and edgy. Would you do this do? Would you?

Photos from Style.com.

Black Is The New Spring.

The Spring season is usually chock full of cheery colors, be it pleasant pastels, saturated citrus hues, or bright primaries, but black is usually on the back burner. I mean it's a non-season specific wardrobe staple, especially here in New York City, but Spring shows rarely feature it with any regularity. The truth is though, that black is one of the strongest selling colors for most designers. It's the basic that doesn't go out of style, and now that we are on a recession budget, it makes sense that the Spring 2010 runways look a little darker than usual. Thakoon's show in particular made a great use of black.

His combo of flowery, feminine prints and bright solids are set in high contrast with the basic black elements of his collection. From small, smoldering touches to blackout dresses, the hue plays a major role in his collection. But this is no simple issue of black and white, Thakoon's warrior look presents black as a fresh option for Spring, not that same old solid. Yes, it's dependable, but put that piece of black with a draped smack of Thakoon color and you have a knockout look. Wahhhhttchhhaaa!

From splashes to solids in Thakoon's blackened collection.

Photos from Style.com.

Color Me. Cover Me. Cover me in color.

Q-tips as a second skin plus drip droppers filled with inky colors equals a camouflage so pretty.

Body art by Lucy McRae and Mandy Smith via We Love You So.

Crew Colors.

I find J.Crew's catalog color spreads to be one of the more soothing things in the retail universe. I swear, they make me dreamy. I love the names as well, but for now I just want to visually feast on the colors...

PS: did you know that there are entire fan-made blogs about J.Crew? J.CrewAholics and J.Crew Aficionada are both dedicated to the "classics with a twist" catalog-based co. I can't figure out if they are marketing ploys created by the company or really fan odes, but either way they are proof that to some boys and girls The Crew is crack. Pretty, pastel, all-lined-up-in-a-row crack. I almost kind of get it. Almost. Kind of.

It's Like Riding A (Dream) Bike.

Couture season always gets me into a built-to-order kind of mood. I start craving customization. I want options and I want to say what goes where and what looks like what. It's just the diva in me. Thanks to Urban Outfitters Bike Shop, I can exorcise a little of that diva demon and wind up with something that will get her some exercise too. Check it out...

You can build your own bike! All the parts have different color options! You can change the color of the front tire, the back tire, both tire rims, your seat, your chain, your handlebars, and your pedal crank. I mean, come on? That's cool, right? Click the pic to make your own colorful creation. It's $399. No sneeze, but an absolute steal compared to this awesome yet $3,200 Benedict Radcliffe Fluoro bike commissioned by Andy Spade for his Partners & Spade concept store.

I saw this crayon-colored two wheeler on the Style.com site as a "Vogue's Most Wanted" pick and I was all like, "Damn! That's cool!" then I saw the price and I was all like, "Damn! That's rich gear!" then I remembered the UO Bike Shop and I was all like, "In your face, Vogue!". Ok, not really but I did get rather excited that even high concept, designery, customizable, cool stuff is becoming more and more attainable for the average Joanne. I know $399 isn't pocket change, but it's doable if you save your allowance. Go babysit. Eventually you'll be able to ride your (dream) bike to go babysit.

One/One-Thousand: Elaine Constantine

Elaine Constantine's photographs were a shiny, happy lifeboat for fashion photography back in the latter part of the '90s. In a dark sea of grunge and heroine chic, Constantine's color-saturated, smiley, energetic images were a healthy shock to a system that needed to wake up from last night's party. I was so taken with her editorials for mags like The Face and Vogue when I was younger that I plastered them around my room and would spend hours daydreaming about joining the party they seemed to peek in on. Look how much fun they are having:















They are like an energy drink and candy meal. They make me remember the sugar high of preteen sleepovers. Looking at them, I kind of want to put someone's bra in the freezer just for the hell of it and dance around to old school Janet Jackson. That's just me. What do they make you want to do?

Elaine Constantine is represented by Santucci & Co. and you can see all of these images, plus more from her portfolio, on their site.

Eye Candy: Colored Thread

Natalie Galitzine's photo of a dress in progress via Flickr.

Aquascutum Gets The Blues

Designer Micheal Herz put together a show for Aquascutum that seemed to mimic a paint loaded watercolor brush dragging across a sheet of paper in reverse. The pieces went from light, to dark, to glow-in-the-dark shades of blue. The soft shades were hints of color while the intense tints popped against the models' skin. This collection could plunge my closet into a Picassoesque Blue Period.

Picasso's Femme Aux Bras Croises

Although, I do think it would be a happy blue period. I would be smiling.

Righty Tighty

Please Lord, let this season signal the end of the legging. I can't stand another fall of stretch pants, although I do admit that a girl needs a good alternative. Let me suggest tights for fall leg coverage. They may be a bit less wind resistant, but what they lack in warmth they more than make up for in pure pretty. Here are my favorites from the Fall '08 runways:



Tsumori Chisato's dip-dyed gradations.





Rodarte's wide weave, flossy webs.

If I see you in plain, black stretch pants when these are on the market, I may wag my finger at you. Consider yourself warned.