I've seen the future and it will be...

...glorious.

I am often disappointed in 2k11.  Where are the flying cars, the implanted cell phones, the homes on the moon that we were promised?

At least high fashion has kept it promise offering bold, strange, terrifying, futuristic shapes available for purchase in the present.

I've included this selection of out-there, avant-garde items that I hope to see at Old Navy or the Gap in my near future.

Enjoy-

JFA

Art, meet Fashion...

Finsk 116-97 style sandal
 

Everyday, barraged with images screaming from billboards, ads pleading to be noticed, I like to take a step back and remember why fashion interested me in the first place.

As a voyeur of humanity, nothing signals how a person feels more than what they choose to wear on a given day.

I tire of the scoffing I get, the ribbing, when I defend a hand-beaded dress that took twenty people three months to make has a matching price tag in the tens of thousands of dollars.  When something is changed from a flat piece of material into a 3D spectacle meant to be worn on a body, it is a Pygmalion miracle that transforms the garment and the wearer into art.

 

The same people who would not flinch to spend $20,000.00 on a paint-splattered piece of cotton stretched on a frame roll their eyes in disgust at a garment that costs as much.  No one says to a fine artist, "What did the supplies cost you?" but to a costumer or fashion designer that is very often the first question.

I am learning to value process as much as progress.  I hope to live long enough to see couture receive the same respect as all other mediums.  When you ask why a garment costs so much, look for the germ of the idea and the difficulty of the execution...those are priceless.

-JFA

The Model as Mousse

Nichola Formichetti, the new Creative Director at French design house Thierry Mugler, was quoted in a recent W Magazine article as saying:  "I was only used to dressing models and skinny kids,..and I turned up (to a photo shoot), and it was, like, three fat guys.  I just left. That was the last time I tried to work with fat people...it was so ghetto."

I begin this post with a caveat.  Some people think I'm a crass, insensitive person only concerned with labels and outward appearances.  Those I know well know me as a crass, insensitive person only concerned with labels and outward appearances with a heart.

My family, culled and propagated from genetically large, healthy, robust mid-western stock, are known to often live well into their nineties without concern for New-Agey diets, supplements, or vitamins.  My 450 lb. grandfather assumed a "food pyramid" was how high you could stack food on a plate before it toppled.  My Granny, accustomed to cooking every meal for a large family, would make recipes involving dozens of eggs and tubs of butter preparing a simple breakfast for just me and my sister.

I realize this is a fashion/style blog, and here is my point - I think the inner glow, the source, the core of my overweight friends and family shines in their demeanor.  Do I worry about their health?  Sure, but I have no right to judge.  I have enough microbes and viruses swimming in my slender frame to alert the CDC.  Do I worry about others' judgments?  Sure, but I shouldn't be concerned.  As long as they live in America, they are part of a comfortable majority.

A designer, like a painter, sometimes finds the optimum expression is made on the largest canvas.  If I continue to highlight everyone, no matter what size, in beautiful packaging, more people will be intrigued to find the treasure contained inside.

Beauty comes in an unlimited variety of shapes and sizes, and I will never be quoted in W Magazine saying anything different!

-JFA

Cloven Clogs

As I was perusing fashion blogs and updates I found this pair of "heels" by artist Iris Schieferstein.

Now, anyone that knows me knows that I am not above using every part of any living thing in the name of high style, but I saw these, and had to ask myself three questions.

1. Who would wear these, and where?  I can see them at a church function. (Cloven hoofs have always been a red flag for most conservative Christians.)
2. Are they comfortable?  Those that know me know my anti-Ugg, anti-Croc, anti-any footwear you can purchase off of a peg at your local mega-store stance, but this may well be the other side of the spectrum!
3. Do they come in my size, and may I customize them  (i.e. wear the horse I road in on?)

Yours to decide...fashion is knowing the rules, style is knowing how to break them.

Soon-

JFA