Classic Designer

Timeless, flattering, and subtly daring, the fashions of Jean Muir would be as welcome and beloved today as they were in her heyday. The elegant Scot is considered among the finest dress makers to ever live even if her name is perhaps less known than fellow greats Chanel and Vionnet. I’d live in her dresses if I could right now and feel that the drapey, often printed dresses with impeccable details have influenced today’s designers of easy high fashion. She was also a big proponent of the turban, which you know makes me love her more.

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Posted on August 22, 2010

Elegant Dressmaker

While the name Valentina Nicholaevna Sanina Shlee (she was commonly referred to as simply Valentina) is not the most widely remembered of her time, from the late 20s to the 50s the Russian born beauty was a highly skilled, dramatic dressmaker who was as stylish and remarkable herself as her simple and gorgeous creations. She was designer for the stage and dressed the rich and the famous of the era. One of her clients was Greta Garbo, who once had an affair with Valentina’s husband. The fued between them resulted in an elaborate leaving and entering schedule so they’d avoid each other in the halls of  the ritzy apartment complex they both lived in. The Museum of the City of New York had a retrospective of her career last year that I am sad to say I missed.

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Posted on July 25, 2010

Girl Sleuth

While I am sure lovers of the classic Nancy Drew series were justifiably horrified with the late 80’s redux The Nancy Drew Files. I personally devoured the first  incarnation for a time and was plenty taken with the painted covers that always featured the kind of outfits I saw high school girls wearing and some sort of generic stud boy that looked about 30 years old.

Drew, the trailblazing amateur girl sleuth who was created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate through several authors using the enduring pseudonym, Carolyn Keene, continues as a young adult all American character now being played by Emma Roberts and fighting Vampires in Japan (?).

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Posted on June 27, 2010

Golden Girl

First Bea, now Rue McClanahan. The Golden era of girls is truly coming to an end. And while the hit show they shared fame on is considered a kitschy guilty pleasure, it’s a surprisingly funny and watchable one thanks in no small part to the cast. Rue as the man crazy Blanche Devereaux, who worked more than one man to his death in her Florida retirement home bedroom, was hilarious.

Other appearances included outside my old apartment on Bedford Avenue as the mistress of ceremonies for the Dog Parade, and the Film Crew narrated lost classic B movie Hollywood After Dark.

And if we didn’t already love her enough, the world just learned that her apartment features this:

“The door to her office is another conversation piece. It is sculptured to look as though a naked woman was walking through it. The woman’s head and one breast extend into the hallway; her hand is the doorknob. From inside the office, you see her backside.”

as well as a secret passageway.

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Posted on June 13, 2010

Style Iconoclast

The irreverent style of Iris Barrell Apfel was introduced to me by my sister and we’ve both kept the ingeniously fashionable eccentric as a semi guarded secret. But the feeling of sharing has won over and I give you Miss Apfel, a lover of huge wild jewelry, exaggerated silhouettes, and inventive color combinations, a truly remarkable inspiration. A chance to wander through her closet would probably make me weep and pass out.

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Posted on May 31, 2010