Article·of·Style |Yeohlee, American Beauty, and an Ending|

Sometimes life is what’s leftover.

I decided this recently.  It’s not what’s wanted, or what’s expected, it’s just what’s there. It’s what’s available, what’s been left behind, and what hasn’t already been claimed by someone else.  (My inner, third child is showing, I know.)

I find this to be increasingly true as I continue to use San Francisco’s libraries.  The books I’m interested in seem less and less available, and most times I visit I end up browsing in the sections where the books I wanted normally live.  Every now and then I find something I didn’t know I needed.  That was the case the day I checked out the book American Beauty by Patricia Mears.

I always find it difficult to read oversize books with lots of pictures, mainly cause all I want to do is look at all the pretty things, but the words in this book turned out to be super important.  They’ve helped me refine my viewpoints on the fashion industry, and the world of ready-to-wear in general.  It’s funny how a few rightly placed words can completely alter a viewpoint.

In her introduction, Mears attempts to differentiate American fashion from other sartorial options throughout history:

If there is a single word that typifies American fashion, it could well be “functional.”  This is to say that American fashion is highly adaptable clothing that cam be readily purchased, slipped on with little fuss, worn day to evening and in most environmental conditions and, at the same time, is smart and well-fitting.

American fashion is also defined by its relationship with the machine.  Beyond the development of mass production and the great industrialization of the fashion, the American fashion “machine” can be viewed as a multi-dimensional phenomenon.

Prior to the 1960s and the rise of European ready-made clothing, a woman had three choices when acquiring clothing: either she could buy haute couture, the most artistic, expensive, and desirable garments in the world (needless to say, haute couture was far beyond the reach of the vast majority of…women);or she could commission custom-made clothing from a local seamstress (a less expensive alternative); or finally, she could make her clothes herself.

Americans design[ed] the best ready-to-wear fashions for many years…

I’m really grateful that I didn’t find what I was originally looking for, and to have found American Beauty, which introduced me to so many wonderful and relatively obscure designers.  Yeohlee is one of the many featured in this publication (click on the link to go to her website and view her collections).

From her website:

Yeohlee Teng moved to New York from Malaysia to study fashion at the Parsons School of Design. She has worked primarily in New York City and established her own house, YEOHLEE inc in 1981. Yeohlee believes that “clothes have magic.” She dresses the “urban nomad”, a term she coined for her Fall 1997 collection, defining a lifestyle that requires clothing that works on a variety of practical and psychological levels. She is a master of design management and believes in the efficiency of year-round, seasonless clothes. Yeohlee’s designs have earned a permanent place in the Costume Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the late Richard Martin, then Chief Curator, called her “one of the most ingenious makers of clothing today.”

Two things stand out to me about this description.  First, she believes in the efficiency of clothing.  Second, her designs are at the Met.

I often worried that a foray into the world of fashion would leave me bitter and burned out.  The more I’ve learned about designers I like and respect, the more I’ve realized that there is no one path to success in fashion.  The best thing you can do to avoid failure is to know where you stand, and to know what you want.

I’m taking some time to reflect because this will, most likely, be my last Article of Style post.  My hands have be busy doing other things (with fabric and needles) and I’m finding I have less and less time to keep up the blog.  I am undecided as to how much I will document my process of creating garments.  Some things, especially in the fashion world, are best kept secret.

I will end this series by saying that it has been amazing to learn about and feature all of these designers.  I hope that my interest and passion for design and clothing continues.  I’ll always be looking for more sources of inspiration.

Love and Enjoy.

Article·of·Style |Claire McCardell|

Personally, I identify with Claire McCardell’s ethics and sensibilities more than any other designer I’ve featured so far.  Maybe it’s because she’s an American, or maybe because she was irreverently anti-Paris, or maybe it’s because she fought to put pockets in all of her garments despite the cost (so women would have a place to put their hands “so as to not feel ill at ease or vulnerable”).  It is commonly thoughts that she was to mass-produced clothing what Coco Chanel was to couture.

In my opinion Claire McCardell should still be a household name, but her clothing is often overlooked because it was designed with a purpose in mind: to be comfortable on the body, to be easily worn and maintained, and most of all, to meet the needs of working, American women.

What McCardell’s designs lacked in flair, drama, and decoration was made up for in functionality, quality, and longevity.  When I look at some of her pieces I am astounded by how attractive and relevant  they still are.  I would probably kill a man for an authentic McCardell.

Brown-and-ivory striped rayon wrap waisted dress

1939

I like to think about McCardell as the first designer who successfully mass-produced multifunctional and transformable clothing.  She believed that garments should be made so that the wearer could adjust and conform them to their own bodies, which I’m all about.  Born in 1905, Claire came into her own during the WWII, when fabrics and notions (such as leather, and zippers) were heavily restricted.  She had to work within the scarcity, which we all know leads to innovation.

She designed with women in mind, mainly because she designed with herself in mind.  She wore items from her own collection and her first successful piece, known as the monastic dress, was a garment that she had made for herself and had been wearing for years.

Take her opinion on closures for example:

“…a woman may live alone and like it, but you may soon come to regret it if you wrench your arm trying to zip a back zipper into place.”  For this reason she often avoided back closures, and when she did use them they were easy to access as well as decorative.

Front button daytime dress.

Cotton halter dress.

Claire was also a pioneer for women’s sportswear and leisurewear, and designed “playsuits,” inspired by children’s wear, and bathing suits that showed off the body’s natural contours.  Free of thick padding and ornate details, only the most confident women dared to wear some of McCardell’s innovating bathing suit designs.  She insisted that the minimalism she was drawn to served a purpose – to make sure women could actually swim.  Again, functionality seems to have been of great importance to her.

Navy cotton calico with white pinstripe swimsuit.

1950

Cotton “diaper” swimsuit.  See some transforming action below.

1937

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I think McCardell had an understanding of fashion and mass-production that really elevated the craft to a new place.  The women of the time responded to this.  Her first big hits were insanely popular, and retailed for the low price of $6.95 in some instances (one online calculator told me the $7 in Claire’s time is equivalent to about $65 today).  Similar to Chanel, she often used fabrics that were thought of as cheap and not suitable for clothing, like cotton calico (although we all know that American slaves had used similar fabrics to make their own clothing centuries before), that had mass appeal.  Her pieces were found in the closets of many women:  from young working girls, to happy homemakers, to ladies who lunched.  Her view of fashion seemed to be an egalitarian one:

“I belong to a mass-production country when any of us, all of us, deserve the right to good fashion and where fashion must be made available to all.”

Love and Enjoy.

***Update***

The New School University Library allows anyone access to their collection of McCardell’s sketches and fashion renderings.  Check it out here.

Article·of·Style |Yohji Yamamoto|

“And Yojhi among them was a director, shooting a never-ending film. If you sit down to watch his film, you find yourself instead in front of that very private screen, which any mirror that reflects your image can become.  To be able to look at your own reflection in such a way that you can recognize and more readily accept your body, your appearance, your history – in short, yourself.  That it seems to me is the continuing screenplay of the friendly film by Yohji Yamamoto.”

-Wim Wenders, A Notebook on Clothes and Cities

Yohji Yamamoto is the designer for men’s and women’s lines bearing his namesake, as well as a number of other brands including the athletic Y lines and Coming Soon, which have been internationally successful.  I tried on a YY article at a shop in Palo Alto a number of years ago.  It was a simple, black and white, beautifully draped, $400 tank top.  It remains an object I crave intensely.

Yohji, who was rumored to have dated Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons for a period of time, is another designer that I am proud to feature in my Article of Style posts.  I’ve been attracted to his work for a very long time, but haven’t been able to my finger on why till recently.  His clothes remind me of the early garments I made at home with my mother.  This is to say, his garments feel at the same time comfortingly familiar and radically brand new.

He admits to Wim Wenders, in the 1989 documentary A Notebook on Clothes and Cities (which you can find below), that if he weren’t a designer he would be a househusband who spends his time reading books and waiting for his wife to come home from work.  Wenders also refers to a YY garment that he owns as a suit of armor, and Yohji

I want to focus for a moment on his label, Coming Soon.  Coming Soon is:

A brand created for a generation of women and men who wear what they like without stating who designed it.  Wearing Coming Soon is an act to express who you are through the essence of clothing, fabric and cut for everyday comfort and style.

Yohji has done something really interesting here.  Instead of creating a label based on flash, and heavy branding, he markets the fact that he doesn’t market, and that his clothing looks very similar to garments I created when I was in fourth grade (especially those overalls).  I mean that as a compliment.  I think there is something to capturing people’s nostalgia, a sense of the past, a sense of a simpler time.  If you take the time to watch the slide show below, the Coming Soon garments are the last few in the series.

A Coming Soon Advert:

Below is a slide show of a few swipes from his Fall 2010 and Fall 2011 collections, as well as some screenshots from Coming Soon’s website.

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Also, here is a documentary called A Notebook on Cities and Clothes that features the designer.

Love and Enjoy.

Article·of·Style |Jean Paul Gaultier|

The first high-end sweater I ever tried on was by JPG, and boy, did it convince me that there is something oh so special about $800 cardigans.

I typically would use this space to tell you some interesting information about Gaultier, but I think I am going to let the video for his 1988 dance hit, How To Do That, do the telling for me.

Gaultier is best known for his interest in street wear, he incorporates urban style into his collections as often as he can.  I especially like the collection that the swipes below are from because he somehow manages to showcase fashions from every continent, mixing and matching formally tailored outerwear and suiting with wild, flowing prints, bright and shiny leg wear, and headgear that seems to have been pulled from a grab bag.  I’m sure everyone could find at least one piece that they would wear.

Swipes from JPG’s Fall 2010 Collection:

Love and Enjoy.

Article·of·Style |Multifunctional Clothing|

So how exactly am I supposed to wear 6 items of clothing for an entire year and expect to stay sane and appropriately attired for all of the very important social and business functions I’ll be expected to attend?

If the past three months are any indication, I won’t be attending many fancy events.  And if my life is any indication, making and wearing six items of clothing will be easier than trying to maintain (ahem, pay for) a large yet stylistically coherent wardrobe.

I was always that one kid in middle school that supported discussions of bringing uniforms into play.  I’ve come to learn (from being a reformed clothes whore-der) that limiting sartorial choices leads to greater freedoms, including less time/money spent on laundry.

Finding the right multifunctional dress two years ago didn’t hurt things either.

Meet the dress that changed my life, the Signature Wrap Dress from Butter by Nadia, designed by Nadia Tarr.

If your willing to drop a few hundos, this dress will see you from the office, to the bar, to the gala, and then some.  I’ve bought a couple of these dresses over the past several years and have yet to be disappointed.  I always get compliments (especially from women) and I always feel amazing when wrapped in one of these beauties.

The styling guide below comes with every signature wrap dress.  I will say from experience that these suggested stylings represent only a small fraction of the ways to wear this garment.  I do some pretty funky things with mine, and love to layer it with t-shirts and strappy tanks.  As you can see, multifunctional garments (also called convertibles or transformers) are articles of clothing that can be worn in more than one way or that serve multiple purposes.  They can usually be altered by utilizing attached strips of cloth, ties, buttons or other built-in modifiers.

Several designers and small labels have chosen to work under such constraints, maybe because of the green movement, perhaps because of budget cuts.

The possibilities are limitless…speaking of which:

This popular transformable garment is made under the Dutch label Emani.  Their Limitless Dress is incredibly appealing and versatile.  If you’ve got the time, check out the website.   They make an especially cool sweatshirt that can be worn upside down, a feature I plan on swiping.

Emami’s Limitless Dress

More on the Limitless

Here are some swipes of transformers from various places on the interweb:

Maxi/midi length sheath dress.

Racerback/v neck tank.

A+  Part vest, part jacket, part coatdress, all wonderful (by Rachel Roy).

Why they gotta use a brotha as the model?  This creative solution for the homeless was designed by students in Detroit, seems economically appropriate.  The more I continue with this project, the more I think I will need this jacket/home.

I’ve never met a dickey I liked.  That’s just me though.

This is actually pretty good-looking for a multipurpose hat/purse.

These examples are less good-looking.  Those bucket hat straps are wacky!  Doesn’t this model look like the actress from Meet Joe Black and Mallrats?

Fantastic!  Adjustable sleeves included.

Part bra…

…part emergency face mask.  Seriously.  Women will save the world when disaster strikes.  What about us ladies with itty bitties?  I don’t know about you, but I’m using both cups for myself.

Here are some additional videos featuring convertibles, including the very cool “cow dress” ( great multifunctional garment, terrible name.  Why would any designer knowingly associate that animal with a garment meant to be worn by women?).

Even more avant-garde is this garment by Madrid-based designer Vanessa Soria Lima.

And in case you haven’t seen enough, check out these two articles:

Ecouterre

Daily Candy

My final say on multifunctional garments is that there is a fine line between fashionable a frumpy.  My creations will be unique in that they will be designed together as a group and will not only be transformable by themselves, but will also be specifically designed to interact with each other.  I’m excited just thinking about it.

Love and Enjoy.

Article·of·Style |Junya Wantanabe|

This was the only picture of Junya I could find on the web, I think that says something about him.  Once pattern-maker and then design protegè to Rei Kawakubo of Comme Des Garcons (who I featured in this post), Wantanabe now heads his own line under his own name.  It’s been said that Ms. Kawakubo never once praised Junya during their two decades of working together (I honestly don’t believe this, they’re friends).  Perhaps this is proof that tough love works wonders.  Junya is consistently one of my favorites during fashion week.

I initially learned about Junya, Comme de Garcons, and Rei Kawakubo after working through a fashion project based on DNA (I’ve referenced this before I think).  I decided to drape slinkys, in my mind the perfect physical representation of half a double helix, around a dressform, and then drape sheer knit fabric over that.  My design teacher immediately pegged me as “the conceptual one,” and recommended I consult the collections of Mr. Wantanabe and Ms. Kawakubo for future projects.

Junya’s Fall 2009 collection inspired me to create this creepy, digital image for a composition class.  We were exploring triangular configurations.  Can you count the number of triangles in this picture?

As you can see, religion and fashion are themes I’ve been tooling with for some time.  I also firmly believe that this collection is responsible for the popularization of all those puffy, quilted, black coats women have been wearing for the past few seasons.

Check out this video of the show, it’s as creepy as my picture.

I often read Style.com’s collection reviews to find out more about influences behind  a specific designer or collection.  I hate to say this, but I find fashion journalist Sarah Mower’s reviews incredibly unimaginative and surface level, at best.  Granted, not a whole lot of content analysis can be done in three paragraphs, but she’s really not pushing any boundaries here, even when the designers seem to be trying to say something important.

Take this snippet from Ms. Mower’s review of  Junya’s Spring 2008 collection, for example.

Using simple materials tethered to bands of utilitarian tape, Watanabe created shapes that wound asymmetrically here and there, baring the back or dipping off the shoulder. A man of few words, the only clue he gave afterward about his starting point was, “It all goes back to Africa.” In retrospect, you could see what he meant, but, as with so many collections these days, it’s not so much the conceptual origin that matters—only whether the designer transforms it into something a woman can imagine wearing. On that score, this collection delivered a rare sequence of delightful surprises.

There lies the real problem with most fashion commentary.  In an industry that changes at such a rapid pace, intense, didactic conversations that could interpret the implied significance of a garment or collection, would be both time-consuming, and would require a knowledge of both the background of the designer and the ideas that inspired him or her.  Fashion just doesn’t have time to be that self-reflective.

Instead of investigating, Ms. Mower dismissively admits to not having noticed the concept behind the collection, and reminds the reader that it’s not the ideas that matter, but weather or not the collection stirs woman’s desire to own the items on display.  In a sense, she’s right.  It still feels so wrong though, especially after this collection is met with commercial success and Junya continued to explore the “African” theme the following year, in his Spring 2009 collection.  Maybe he’s doing it cause it’s selling, maybe he has other reasons.  I’m sure the real answer is neither here nor there, but thinking about his choice to design two collections on the theme of Africa, in very different ways, is interesting.

Some swipes:

Spring 2008

A touch of Colonialism, eh?

This one’s pretty African if you ask me.

Spring 2009

I bet these headpieces were a pain to wear.

So sexy.  Jeans under everything.

Also, there is the awesomeness that is  Fall 2008.

The things that stand out about this collection are, the amazing headwraps/thought collectors, the ingeniously draped, knit garments, and the relationship of the garments to the human form beneath them.  I really like the fact that most of the articles in this collection aren’t tight-fitting or overly dependent on adhering to the rules of high tailoring.  Junya’s designs have the ability to transform both the wearer and the viewer.  They give our eyes room to find new ways of looking.  This excites me.

I’ve been trying to figure out how the garments I’ll create will honor, appreciate, enhance and complement my body, without objectifying it (will talk about this more in a post I’ve titled, Ass·ets).  I think the collection above addresses this challenge, and highlights the complex yet beautiful nature of the answer.  Also, I read somewhere that performers imitating slaves in the 17th century, way before modern blackface, used to wear masks made of black fabric.  This collection reminded me of that.

I quickly want share swipes from two more seasons, Spring 2010 and the most recent collection, Spring 2011.

Spring 2010

The genius of the collection was that, for all of the hip experimentation, it was fully tooled as pragmatic daywear—avant-garde, but completely utilitarian.

Best suit ever.

Slave babies wore oversize men’s shirts. I’m starting to swipe picture of women in men’s dress shirts consistently.  I remember something similar from Ralph Lauren.

Spring 2011

Less thematically relevant, but appealing silhouettes.

I think I’ve found my first favorite designer.

Love and Enjoy.

Article·of·Style |Ralph Lauren|

I actually didn’t know a whole lot about Ralph Lauren before a few weeks ago.  I mean, I knew about Tyson Beckford, the face (ahem, and body) of RL during the 90′s.  What 11 year-old girl in her right mind didn’t?

I think I caught the vapors (said like Scarlett O’hara).

I initially chose to peruse Ralph Lauren’s collections because his brand was the first that came to mind as I was thinking of designers that seemed authentically American.  His logo is practically an American flag.

Here is his story:  Born Ralph Lifshitz to Jewish immigrants living in the Bronx, Lauren had humble beginnings.  Tired of being ridiculed for “shit” being a part of their last name, the Lifshitz became the Laurens.  Ralph attended business schoool, and dropped out of business school, and then went into business for himself, selling neckties that were unusually wide.  He was successful.

I like Ralph Lauren’s story and it reminds me of issues brought up by civil rights author and attorney Kenji Yoshino in his book Covering.

From the back cover:

Although Americans have come to some consensus against penalizing people for the differences based on race, sex, sexual orientation, religion and disability, we still routinely deny equal treatment to people who refuse to cover, who refuse to downplay these differences.  Acclaimed legal scholar Kenji Yoshino argues that the often tacit demand to cover poses a very real threat to our civil rights.  With passion and rigor, he shows that the work of defending American civil rights will not be complete until it attends to the harms of coerced conformity.  Yoshino’s argument draws deeply on his personal experiences as a gay Asian American, yet acknowledges the American exasperation with identity politics.  He expands the debate over this conflict, noting that since we all experience the demand to cover we can all make common cause around a new civl rights standard based on our desire for authenticity – a desire that brings us together rather than driving us apart.

Weather or not Lauren knew it, the decision to change his last name was a form of covering.  Would he have experienced the same amount of success with Polo Ralph Lifshitz as a brand name?

If I remember the text correctly, Yoshino doesn’t think of covering as all bad, in fact, he recognizes that a certain amount of it has to be done in order to protect our true selves from harm.  The ultimate goal, however, is to get to a place where we can be both open and proud about who we are, and that is made more difficult by the conformity demands we place on ourselves and each other.

In a chapter titled The New Civil Rights, Yoshino discusses the work of D. W. Winnicott, an influential object relations theorist (a branch of psychoanalysis).  Winnicott makes the distinction between True Self, the self that makes the individual feel real, is spontaneous, authentic, and creative, and the False Self, the self that, “gives an individual a sense of being unreal, a sense of futility.”  Importantly, the False Self also “mediates the relationship between the True Self and the rest of the world.”  According to the theory, both True and False selves are valuable and present in healthy individuals, as long as they’re used in the correct proportions.

At the negative exteme, the False Self completely obscures the True Self, perhaps even from the individual herself.  In a less extreme case, the False Self permits the True Self “a secret life.” The individual approaches health only when the False Self has “as it’s main concern a search for conditions which will make it possible for the True Self to come into its own.” Finally, in the healthy individual, the False Self is reduced to a “polite and mannered social attitude” a tool available to the fully realized True Self.

In conclusion, READ THIS BOOK.  Seriously.  There will be something that you can take from it, even if you’re a regular ol’ white guy.  Cause guess what?  Society places covering demands on you too!

Almost forgot – the swipes (in no particular order):

Fall 2009

Fall 2010

Spring 2010