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February 28, 2019
Happy Leap year....tomorrow!!! And in celebration I'm going to share some insider stuff with you today. I don't normally share this stuff publicly, so this is a perfect place to dish!!!!
First I was consumed by the news that finally someone is trying to address the horrific situation of copyright infringement that has been happening to all artist. You create something (which usually takes lots and lots of hours -- if you're lucky) and then have someone steal it (or worse buy one and then copy it and distribute it for a fraction of what you're offering it for and you feel the sting really very hard.Â
This has happened to me before. I develop a cap that I made - a pattern that I finally perfected for when Walt and I were underwater photographers (in our former lives), and I used it to keep the hair from getting in my way when that exotic fish when swimming buy and I couldn't get it into focus cause my hair was hanging down in my face!!! So I created a pattern for my hair - call a doo-rag by the diving community.Â
I've always made it free on my site cause what's happened is that hospital and cancer groups make them up for the kids with cancer to wear and don't want to have to buy skull-and-crossbones type design for kids trying to beat cancer. This way they can make them with angels or puppies or hears or other feel-good prints and these groups make them for free. I mean seriously how can you charge for something like that.
Then one day I saw them on another site for a price. I was incensed and told folks that this person copied my pattern and you could get the original for free over on my site!Â
This is Canal Street in NYC, home of one of the biggest knock-off markets in the country
But it put me in mind of the thousands of up-and-coming young artists and designers whose designs get ripped off by knock-offs every year. And they aren't the only ones - this happens to movies, documentaries, paintings, clothes, accessories and anything else - including drugs, that you can think of. The Americans are great at innovation and inventing things, but the Asians are great at copying it.Â
And finally the government is addressing it. But the article was on Financial Times. I've taken it before and it's very expensive, and I wasn't going to apy $30 for an article, but the library didn't have it, I couldn't find it anyplace, so went online and they have a trial period - $1/1month - OK I can do that - then I quit.Â
But......
I got more than the article - I got a lot more.
For one thing, while the F/W 2020 (Fall Winter 2020) is going on in Europe, it's fun to catch up on that stuff with a London paper and with one of my fav fashion reporters Christina Binkley (@BinkleyonStyle on Twitter). And up pop a couple of great articles
One is on Tom Ford and the other on Victoria Beckham....
....who used to be Posh Spice - one of the Spice girls then married the heart-throb football player, David Beckham (sort of like the Tom Brady meets Peyton Manning kind of popularity only in England), and she turns out to not only be a decent designer, but have some pretty decent common sense. Her fashions aren't weird, (click here to see the whole show)
because.....wait for it....she's getting ready to go from runway to consumer - selling direct to the consumer which is one of the ways to cut costs, have the designer actually make some $$$, AND provide a more sustainable, durable and longer-lasting, better made product. So she can't get all carried away with herself - she has to have something that will sell.
The other is Tom Ford who sported none other than Jeff Bezos, Ron Howard, Alex Rodriguez and of course the queen of fashion editors, Anna Wintour. That's a pretty powerful front row at your fashion show. But the truth is that Tom Ford is one of those guys that does great designs year in and year out.Â
Obviously this isn't something we'd wear to the grocery store, but it's got some great design to it. Image this top a little shorter and a little less full like a long-ish dress type thing, flouncing around and being all swishy like a summer dress would be really dreamy. That's what is the genius of Tom Ford.Â
So moving onto another subject that fashion designers are moving to LA to show instead of New York, with the feeling that NY has editors and that LA has movie moguls and more importantly the Academy Awards....so that the week of the Oscars is also the fashion week discovering what all the rest of us already know that the redcarpet season is almost as powerful and important as the runway season.Â
Then another article on why Picasso is like Mickey and Minnie Mouse from Jerejy Scott, and this sort of typifies it:
But let's take a closer look at this - the ones on the ends are easy - they are straight complimentary colors (black/white and orange/turquoise), the ones in the middle are a great exercise in true artistic talent. Bold prints and colors which are almost happy and cheerful like spring and summer are here. The blue and yellow is easy to understand, but the purple red, yellow with black background may not be so easy, but it works. This is what happens when you have a
really great artists working.Â
 OK - so you have the stripes of the skirt, carried through in the lapel and on the sides of the jacket with good yellow (complimentary to the purple) in front and the criss-cross pink and black on the hip to compliment the stripes on the other hip. First
this print is so exotic and beautiful that the design of the garment has to be classic and it is - low stance classic tailoring, standard lapel collar and meticulously laid out stripe on that collar - the whole outfit sing happy when you see it. If I were to make this garment, I probably wouldn't change too much and be tempted to get out my acrylic paints and a great black linen fabric and paint away, which is what this looks like. The photo above is really small, but I've
linked it to the original if you want to open it in your browser and look closer and I encourage you to look closer. It's a remarkable work of art and a very important piece. It's already burned on the inside of my eye lids and I'm thinking how to transform this into a gorgeous happy outfit for summer!
Then there's a little piece that Raf Simmons is going to be the creative head of Prada - and they need it. A little history here. When Jill Sander retired from her own label, Raf Simmons took over and after a few years, it was a match made in heaven and he really took the label to new heights and did a great job furthering what Jill Sander had started - sort of a pared-down, minimalist, classic line. But then Jill Sander wanted to come back (for one reason or another)
and they dismissed him from the firm. The whole fashion world was perplexed and though Simmons what treated abominably, and he was. He then went to Dior after the Galliano blow-up and then to Calvin Klein and now Prada. As far as Prada is concerned, I lost my respect for this house a long time ago. In the middle of the Grunge rage, Prada, like Armani was one of the classic houses that made beautifully classic clothes and then suddenly decided to start making the trash
fashion of Grunge --it made them famous, I guess, but I felt they sold out and I wasn't the only one who thought that. So in my book they sort of sold out to what the Emperor's New Clothes were to make a buck. The appearance of Raf Simmons could bring back some of that classic, pared-down wonderful look that Raf Simmons does so well - I sure hope so.Â
And finally an article on Jean Paul Gaultier's retirement (?) from couture, but a report that couture is alive and well and doing just fine even though Gaultier is leaving it. Gaultier, I suspect, is feeling the need to do direct marketing to consumer as is Victoria Beckham and other designers and I suspect that's where his next attention will be.Â
Here's the thing couture offers the consumer something that can not be had any place else. The garment above is beautifully and meticulously made and my bet is that with a little help any quilter could do the same thing. Look closely and the bodice is the face of a lion (although I would prefer an opaque skin-toned background on this [I'm bored with nudity at fashion shows]), but this could be accomplished with couching on a machine and with a little practice could be
an elegant top for a pair of pants or skirt for summer fun. To make it more fun, the front could be the face of the lion and the back could be the back of the lion with an invisible zip in back. But to purchase this as Forever 21?...Dillards?... Macy's...Neiman's...even Bergdorf's - well you can't do it. It's not that it's too expensive, it's that the buyers won't even touch anything like this cause it would be too expensive, so it's not even
made available to the consumer. The only place to get this is couture......unless you sew. And couture is not that far from what so many sewists create.
 
And part of what couture gives you is a beautiful, beautiful gown that is beautifully constructed. OK those earrings are a little long for me, but the whole bolero outfit (and don't discount boleros - they can be very sumptuous done with correct proportions). Both of these outfits above are beautifully designed and well constructed, something which isn't offered - at all - to the consumer. And that's the main reason couture is doing so well.Â
One of my free go-to sources for all things fashion is Vogue.com and scroll all the way to the top and click <Runway> then select <Latest Shows> <Season> or <Designer> (I'm usually looking for a specific designer), and you can catch all the shows with some good editorial comments.Â
OK then - that's my fashion report for this Spring - look like it's going to be a fun season with some really neat stuff to try out! The bad news is that the $1 subscription on Financial Times will run out in a month - good thing this is fashion month so hopefully I can catch some more from Christina Binkley - in the meantime maybe I can find a free FT source at a library or online library or something!!!! But I can always catch couture on Vogue.com and I follow
Christina on Twitter.Â
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This new year will bring a new look and lots of new things added to the sewingartistry.com to the site. In the meantime, things will be placed a little different, and if you can't find something that you liked or would like to find, just let me know. It's easy as pie - you can simply respond to this email and I'll get it. I get all these emails and I read all of them. so let me know if something seems awry for you or out of place.Â
We're working on simplifying it and changing it to a more functional and easier place to get around.Â
If there's something you liked from before and don't see, LMK.Â
If there's something you've never seen, but would like, LMK.Â
And of course if there's something that seems haywire or good, LMK!
You all will be the first to know when it's more settled, but for right now we're still moving the furniture around!
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On the Blog
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January 24, 2020
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