Winter White Begins: The Little White Dress

Sophia Loren: one of Larry David's "sources" (ahem) and a source of inspiration to this blog

In LA we're facing a familiar conundrum: as the rest of the civilized world prepares for autumn with luxurious, practically orgasmic shopping sprees full of knits and suits and coats and boots, temperatures are blaring up to the 100's and the last thing we can do is even look at winter's goodies without feeling faint.  Driven by extreme heat and the neuroses of millions, tempers are flaring across our fair city.  Last night I almost witnessed a fist fight between my gentle acting coach and a raging imbecile at a gas station in the valley.  The moral of this story: be careful out there, the heat-baked natives of LA are getting restive.  At very this moment I am cocooned in a chrysalis of bliss, blinds and curtains and two air conditioners, feeling very much the summer hermit.

There is an answer to all this: white.  White is crisp.  Cooling.  Elegant.  It's like that magical, silvery tinkling sound that ice makes when you're pouring a drink.  And although the runways this fall were ablaze in the most lavish peacock jewel-tones, there was also a significant amount of white.  This season, Givenchy's entire couture collection was white:

Givenchy Couture Fall 2011

Just look at these gorgeous dresses, long, lean elegant, with the most seductive whispery textures.  They're so light and delicate, dream-like, rhapsodic, a winter ballet. 
Let's examine what should be, in my opinion, the look du jour, the Little White Dress:

Moschino Fall 2011

Winter white should be smart and structured -- not the loose white cottons and billowing caftans of summer, not the pastry-project-gone-wrong foof of bridal gowns, not the skin-tight garish white dresses worn by tipsy girls stumbling around in heels in Hollywood clubs looking like bewildered giraffes on skates.  No, no, no.  Winter White should be sophisticated, tailored, elegant, smart, in touch-me textures. 

Vintage Balenciaga a mere $4600 at thefrock.com

Here is the little white dress in structured satin: pearl-lustrous, chic, demure, witty.

Alexander Mcqueen Fall 2011

Look like a delicate lunar-white-moth in this short frothy white dress, keeping them guessing with a restrained-kinky Elizabethan neckline caressing your throat.  Sometimes it's much more powerful and sexy to keep things covered up.  Yes, Assorted-Starlets-Exiting-Cars, that includes your vagina, honey.  I'm sorry no one has told you that before.

Raquel Welch: the elegant feline pet-me quality of white texture in The Little White Dress

A modern version: Minkpink Great Escape Dress $99 revolveclothing.com

The Little White Dress is the most perfect thing for LA this time of year.  We can wear The Little White Dress in these final ragged days of summer, wear it hiding out daytime in the air-conditioning like little burrowing moles, or going out to lunches sweating on pretentious patios, and we can wear it out, butterfly-like, in the nights with air as warm as a bath and the smell of jasmine vines heavy in the stagnant city air.

As the weather turns chilly, add a faux fur coat or sleek white trench to the summer Little White Dress and voila! it magically becomes jet-set chic, the beginning of sexy winter white.

Guy Fashion

John Varvatos Fall 2011 -- I love the skinny tie, the slender tailoring, and the loose rock-and-roll workman's boots

So there would be people arguing if Guy Fashion even exists in LA.  There are ubiquitous guys wandering around on the streets, right now, unsupervised, wearing shorts +flip flops.  The shorts change, some years there are cargo shorts with lots of superfluous baggy pockets, some years there are surfer shorts, some years there are madras shorts, but basically, they are baggy shorts just past the knee, paired with sun-bleached flip flops.   I’m sorry, a guy in shorts just does not look sophisticated and alluring to me.  He looks like at any moment, without warning, he might start mowing a lawn or skimming a pool for dead leaves or auditioning for the drunk-buddy role in a Seth Rogen movie.  When you move to LA you think there are going to be these gorgeous guys everywhere, but it isn’t true.  There are gorgeous girls, everywhere, all the time, and then there are short guys with Actor Hair (a lot of product that makes it stick up in the front) everywhere who think they look like Tom Cruise.   

The David-Beckham Hair Thing in the UK = Actor Hair in the US

Anyway, when I say guys in LA are short, I mean reaaallllly short.  I never thought I cared much about height in guys, but paired with the flip flops and the baggy shorts, they kind of resemble those surfer-gnome figurines people put out in front of their mobile homes.  And all that makes me wonder, with a few notable stylish exceptions,  if fashion for guys is dead in LA.

The inevitable fashion groove of guys in LA?  California Seashell Company Resin Gnome $19.99

If fashion for guys in LA is dead, I think it is due for a revival.  It’s true a lot of those very tailored, oh-so-flattering pieces for guys, traditional stuff, London stuff, can’t be worn here because it’s just too hot.  There is a suit for every guy, just like there is a red lipstick for every woman, and a guy in a really good suit is a truly delicious sight to behold.  I don’t mean those neutral baggy 80s Armani-style power suits that took over and make everyone look like a middle-manager from “The Office.”  I mean tailored, sexy, man-of-the-world, James Bond suits.  What if I could make it colder just for one day, long enough for all the guys to come out and look spectacular?

Gucci Fall 2011

So some people might object to the velvet coat thing as an undesirable legacy of the 60s or 70s, but as I was pontificating yesterday, VELVET is on my mind right now, in a good way.  Plus I love the combination of pale blue sweater with this caramel-y, chocolate-y brown coat jacket.  It just looks so huggable and luscious.  He's carrying a big bag, which suggests he's strong and doesn't mind carrying bags, so he would be happy carrying my bags while I'm shopping or walking anywhere when my handbag starts to feel really heavy which happens all time. 

Cavalli Fall 2011

Another velvet suit.  I'm really feeling the ladykiller-louche, 60s/70s velvet suit vibe right now.  It's cuddly and a little aristocratic and indolent at the same time.  This one has a great indeterminate color that looks rich and luxurious without being "ironic" about it being a velvet suit.  Because I hate "irony" in fashion especially in relationship to the 70s -- like do you remember the frantic popularity of trucker hats?

Sorry Ashton: friends don't let friends wear trucker hats.

  Moving on.............. 

John Varvatos Fall 2011

Great suit with great layering details.  I need to get cast in episodic TV or a beer commercial RIGHT NOW so I can buy this suit for my darling man.  And then, waving my magic-weather-wand around, making the temperature a perfect 50 degrees, maybe, I imagine the streets of Los Angeles flooded with guys wearing stuff like this...looking intelligent, capable, rakish, sophisticated, rock-and-roll elegant...

Gaultier Fall 2011

There's a delicious outrageousness to this suit I love.  The skinny-tight pants paired with the oversized jacket splattered with gold -- it's a little 80s, a little decadent, very sexy.  Wouldn't it be great if guys wore things like this to premieres and parties instead of those ghastly-identical tux-suit-thingies?  Who can remember what even very dashing male actors wear to anything?  Bond should wear this in his next film.  Speaking of which....

Gaultier Fall 2011

Gaultier certainly has Bond as one inspiration for his delightful gender-bending fall collection, and look at this.  It makes me laugh, and it almost makes me a little hot-under-the-collar.  It's androgynous and funny and deeply masculine at the same time.  Someone like Boy George should be legally required to wear this, with a nice splash of red lipstick.

Gucci Fall 2011

I'm going to end on a more conservative note.  There is something deeply compelling about a grey suit, an elegant and tailored grey suit.  Not the baggy mall kind.  One of the key requirements of a good grey suit is a delicious sheen, subtle and lustrous, pelt-like.  It's so flattering to the skin.  And in a genius move in this Gucci suit it's been paired with a softly salmon-pink shirt, and I love pink and grey together, and salmon-pink is good next to the face.  

 

Delpaneaux Wills wearing his own Calvin Klein

Here is actor/model Delpaneaux Wills wearing a Calvin Klein suit...I took these photos for a shoot we did a few months ago.  The suit is between grey and black, and the fabric has a richness in the light, which takes the suit from corporate-drone to secret-agent-man-cool.

In this pose Delpaneaux reminds us of one of the greatest things about a suit -- it's layered.  Men do this slow-sexy striptease after-work thing with a suit.  Sorry guys, NO, you just can't do it in surfer shorts and flip flops.  It's just not the same.

The after-work suit strip thing is like this: first men loosen the tie, revealing a little mouthwatering sexy throat, and shake their head a little, loosening their hair.  Then they unbutton the vest precisely and take it off.  Finally they throw the jacket insouciantly over their shoulders and roll up their sleeves, showing some scrumptious tanned workman's forearms.  It's an achingly slow civilized striptease that's just as beguiling as any post-modern tattooed burlesque taking place right now in a dive bar in Silverlake.

I'm going to work on converting Global Warming into Global Freezing so I can outfit some guys in LA with these gorgeous fall suits...the world really would be a better place.

Platforms 2.0

Platforms 2.0

River Island's sultry red wedges 70 pounds (that's money, not weight, silly)

Fashion lover and fellow actress Angela Nordeng laments about platforms: "I was really happy about the return of wedges, but I don't know how I feel about everyone walking around in stripper shoes again. I'm pretty sure that means that the flipflops with the big foam platform soles will be back next summer and I'm going to cry if that happens. I think we should explore the 80's for a little while longer.”

Platform flip-flops: can this atrocity be prevented in a community near you?

Angela's post brings up an excellent point: platform shoes have their pernicious underbelly of trashydom.  To me, good fashion is about good taste; great fashion is about the electrifying line between good taste and bad taste.  Yes, I really just made that up, and yes, I expect it to be quoted by many fashion minions in generations to come.

As dear Diana Vreeland used to say, “Bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika.”  This is why I find good-taste, always-classic fashion advice so deadly.  It’s soporific.  It’s impersonal.  It’s totally uninspired.  Do you remember all those hideous neutral "good taste" slip dresses and baggy suits from the 90s?  Aside from platform shoes and a couple other fashion items to be salvaged from the 90s, I'm also very partial to the 80s, as some people who attended my Bad Eighties birthday party last month know all too well.  My love for the 80s (a whole blog in itself) has much to do with the lovable nuttiness of the decade.  At times the 80s were supremely decadent and loud and over-the-top and excessive, but there was something exquisite in all that lunacy.

More exquisite lunacy: Alexander McQueen shoes $1,645.00

 These black platforms with gems capturing the best of several trends: gems, platforms, velvet/suede, and organic, sensuous, feminine shapes.  There's also something very witty about them.  Of course if you find these a trifle unaffordable you'll save about $600 with these:

Alexander Mcqueen shoes: only $1,050.00.  Ahhhhh.  That's better.

The black-bow detail lends the silhouette something of an illicit, corset, upmarket-erotica feeling.  I picture these shoes accompanying some very serious, military-style coat, one of those genius moments when an accessory quietly revolutionizes the entire outfit and makes you think, in the most perversely elegant way, "Hmmm, maybe she IS that kind of girl."

Back to deadly side of platforms: to keep away from Spice-Girl-Dom, usually a wise move in the fashion world, be sure your platforms are not made in a matching print to your cropped top + pants or minidress outfit; your platforms should not be carved out of foam or attached to a sneaker; and they should not, in any circumstances, ever, ever, ever, be flip-flops.  

Amanda Style: Platform Madness

Amanda Style: Platform Madness: Many things make me bummed-out about the prospect of a 90's revival - those ghastly bruise tones, minimalism, whiny rock, and brown lipstick...

Platform Madness

Many things make me bummed-out about the prospect of a 90's revival - those ghastly bruise tones, minimalism, whiny rock, and brown lipstick.  Let me say it again: brown lipstick.  How did Bobbi Brown and other makeup artists psychologically possessed by sinister forces manage to convince an entire nation of millions of people that brown lipstick was a good idea?

For those of you who have compartmentalized your memory of the "oh-its-so-natural-dearies" 90s brown-lips-crime, just take a look at the normally effortlessly radiant Jennifer Aniston and behold it working in all its evil...

<taking a deep cleansing breath>

However, there is something from the 90s even I cherish: platform shoes.  Platform shoes, especially peep-toe ones, are so delicious because you can instantly gain height without crushing your toes like spring grapes.  The stress point is transferred instead to your ankles.  At the height of the platform epidemic, lovely young Japanese girls were getting killed in the subway or maiming others in freak auto accidents because of their cripplingly high platforms.  My own testimony is simpler: on a trip to Florence with a delicious Italian man who turned out to be gay (story of my life), I twisted my ankle on cobblestones so many times I was reduced to pluckily scaling streets like this one in bare feet...

 

The great thing about LA: no cobblestones.

So the platform heel trend is welcome in my books, and my my there are some very toothsome specimens this year!

For starters: these guys.  If you read the Harper's Bazaar Fall/Winter 2011 special runway issue, you might have missed these on your way to the nummy back pages where the real goodies are: the spreads from Milan, Paris, NY...more on that later.

These little booties were hidden on the page where they list all kind of names and corporations you are unlikely to be that curious about, for example, "Production and Administration: Group Production Director: Chuck Lodato." I don't know even know what this means.  Sorry, Chuck.  Perhaps to reward those who are reading closely, verly closely they put these gorgeous, adorable, winsome little shoes right by all those titles...num.

Miu Miu booties $890 -- aren't you relieved they aren't $900?  Phew!  Me too.

Ok, onward to Steve Madden...nostalgia trip: I remember adoring Steve Madden in the early years.  I had these little plastic-y wedge shoes, platforms naturally, with pink-plastic bows over the toes...so cute.  The rest of Steve Madden has kind of been a fog for me.  But now look at these:

"Woah" Steve Madden 129.95 and yes there's a peep-toe!

There might be a universe where these don't seem like absolutely mandatory for fall, but it must be a galaxy far far far away....

And then something truly genius.  I think I saw something very like these in person yesterday at the LF store on Robertson but they were more expensive.  If you are an LF person, you deserve know they are having a CRAZY SALE but their platform shoes didn't seem to be included.  Not only were the shoes not included, but they all seemed to be in size 9.  What?  

Jeffrey Campbell $168 psychedelic trip included?

Anyway, Jeffrey Campbell is having this amazing amazing season where he's tapping into my subconscious and producing everything I crave....for example...

Jeffrey Campbell O Wilde in Blue Velvet $148

Yes, I know, but I forgot to include velvet in my list of 90s things...actually it was a leftover scrap from the 80s, when you had all those pseudo-Victorian tea-dresses in velvet, and then in the 90s it was "crushed velvet" which was all about "texture" and people wore those velvet shirts (eh) with velvet shoes (num) and here we have velvet platforms...Ok I'm having a moment...a good kind of moment...

Because: I was just looking at Alberta Ferretti's fall collection.  Now I have mixed feelings about Miss Ferretti: sometimes she nails it, often with vintage references, and I love her.  Other times she does this wispy asymmetrical sad sack-dress thing.  I know because I walk by her store a lot on Melrose on my way to the Bodhi Tree for my free cup of herbal tea when I can't sleep and there is the Albert a Ferretti collection, looking absolutely toothsome or totally bleh.  Several seasons ago she did this lovely collection with a nod to Greece and out of that came this sage-green, Grecian style dress I absolutely adore, became attached to, and waited recklessly at Loehmann's until it came down to a reasonable price (under $100) and took it home with me.  It's a heartwarming tale. 

But back to the Alberta Ferretti collection.  This year she dug into those jewel-tones that are flitting about the collections, leaving behind the aged-bruise-palette for things like jade green, citrus, purple, magenta, num num num....

Ok, the whole ensemble is fetching, but LOOK AT THOSE SHOES!  Who does not need a pair of deep sexy purring magenta boots RIGHT NOW?

And the boots in royal blue!  When I was look at this collection I was thinking: where can I find velvet boots?  Who is going to be doing shoes in velvet?  Velvet velvet velvet!  Wildly impractical but LA's usual lack of rain and mud makes these actually that incrementally more practical.  Any shoes in blue velvet, people..anyone who spies any more blue velvet shoes...please page me ASAP....platform madness + blue velvet = YES!