Inconspicuous consumption

The economic downturn and the growing awareness of the consequences of diamond mining have already heralded the death of bling.

As the economy worsens, flashing the cash is seen as more and more inappropriate. Formerly logo-smothered fashion and accessories are out; discreet luxury is in.

Leading online luxury fashion retailer Net-a-porter is, not surprisingly, embracing the trend. Its standard delivery “signature” packaging is a fiesta of tissue paper, glossy branded boxes, boutique bags and ribbon. In these more “austere” times you can, instead, choose to have your £7,873 Oscar de la Renta beaded georgette gown delivered to you the way you once would have had your porn: in a discreet brown paper wrapper – recycled, of course.

Net-a-porter.com founder Natalie Massenet is also about to launch theOutnet, a discount offering that the UK Telegraph reported will sell clothes and shoes ordered by department stores but cancelled as the downturn kicked in. The site is currently collecting email addresses and carries the cheery slogan: “It’s chic-onomics!™”

Well, hello, fellow Grits to Glitz listeners!

 

There's been a spike in my reader numbers lately and it's all Amy and Bay's fault. Hello, Amy! Hello, Bay! Thanks for the shout out!

To all my fellow G2Gers, welcome to my sandbox on the web. It's a pretty random affair, and I do encourage you to try out the Lucky Dip button to the left because the more randomly you are willing to face it, the better. Just like life.

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about – and believe me, your number is legion, at least in my daily life – I'll back up and explain. There will be a test at the end, so please pay attention.

Way back in the heady days of winter 2006 (remember, I live in the upside-down hemisphere), I was in the grip of The Devil Wears Prada fever. I was scooching around the net and there was a reference to a review on a tiny, unpopulated site. Just a single entry: "Episode ONE: July 12, 2006".

Abandoning what little caution I possessed, I clicked a link. Something strange was happening with my iTunes. What? This is an audio file? (Yes, I confess was a total podcast newbie.) I hit play and within minutes, an international love affair began.

Amy and Bay are sisters. They both lived in East Tennessee until Amy moved to Las Vegas. Life in Las Vegas is not like life in East Tennessee, and the differences between the two places, an eternal compare-and-contrast conversation, was worth broadcasting.

Since then, they've covered a lot of ground in their weekly podcasts. There have been dogs and Disneyland, cocktails and Vegas shows, holidays and birds and recipes and grammar lessons and pigeon-squirting machines, three seasons of Project Runway and weeks of obsession with Tim Tams – a very funny international saga that culminated in this moment – and a big-ass Christmas wreath. Contests and scrapbooking and April Fools pranks and lots and lots of dish. And I now know what grits are and what the boonies are, too.

They might be on opposite sides of their country, and I'm so far away that it takes a whole day to fly here, but their podcast always makes me feel like the three of us are just sitting around the kitchen table, drinking coffee, having a chat. I don't get to say much, but I laugh the whole time.

It's hard to believe that a tiny bunch of pixels could lift my spirits, but when that little blue dot turns up in iTunes next to Grits to Glitz, that's exactly what happens. Like standing in front of a birthday cake, I know there's some fun to be had.

For the uninitiated, start your journey into Amy and Bay's world at the Grits to Glitz site, here. Have a look around. Download an episode or two. Subscribe in iTunes. You'll be a better person for it – trust me.

Grind up some greasy, greasy coffee beans . . .

Kaiser Karl is a bear

Not that kind of bear. After all, it is hard to imagine the creative head of the house of Chanel submitting to the "No Artificial Scents" rule at the door of his local bear bar.

The inventors of the teddy bear, Steiff, have created a Karl Lagerfeld bear, designed by the man himself.

Speaking of KL, was he really ever fat? Go ahead – do a Google image search. Not a one. Has he had all evidence of those days purged from the internet?

This monkey pants

Finally, something on eBay I actually need.

"It's offered to your attention the 'space pants' for macaque small monkey to wear it during the experimental space flight. This pants has been used for animals (monkeys) experiments in 1950s & 1960s in the USSR Institute of Biomedical Problems (IMBP, Moscow). This monkey's 'space pants' are designed with many clasps to fit bigger or smaller monkey."

I must write to the USSR Institute of Biomedical Problems to see if they have any more. This pants is hot.

Module behaviour

Which Sydney model has the stage-mother from hell? The chatter at brunch today was electric with tales of the pushy mom who’s riding roughshod over everyone in her daughter’s path towards – well, what?

Already chewing her way through agents, the model daughter had literary ambitions and engaged a writer who cooked up a concept, wrote two chapters and came up with a perfect title. Mommie Dearest was thrilled – until she found a better deal and took the whole package (complete with international rights) elsewhere. The writer’s “contract” amounted to a pittance for signing away all her rights and the threat, direct from Mommie’s lips, that if she went for anything more “we will destroy you”. Charming.

Like all great stage-mothers, Mommie is the über-agent for her charge, managing an ever-changing team of specialists in modelling, publishing, merchandising, film and PR. One of the agents, discarded for “not getting her face on TV enough” despite another agent’s instructions to “protect her from TV”, tells tales of hysterical midnight calls and threats of legal action.

One agent, still working for the model but cognizant of her own reputation, takes potential clients aside to warn them about the mother in advance.

The consensus has it that the module herself is undoubtedly pretty, but that there’s not much more than sweetly perfumed air circulating between her ears. She is also socially retarded; incapable of being engaged rather than looked at admiringly, she just stands there blankly while you talk. 

Photographers report working overtime to coax genuine-looking emotions from her and that even her natural smile looks rehearsed. One tells a story about asking her to smile, only to have her look at her mother, who demonstrated and had her expression exactly reproduced on her daughter's face.

Could the rumour be true? Mommie's suffocating presence serves the practical purpose of protecting the family secret: her gorgeous daughter, who's raking in the cash, has Asperger syndrome.

On yer bike

A bicycle by Chanel. A steal at $13,000.

For all your fashion news and views

The very fabulous and fearless Patty Huntington has abandoned the shackles of mainstream media to strike out on her own. The author of, most recently, the Fully Chic blog at news.com.au has gone all indie on our ass with her very own blog, [frockwriter].

There's a great story about Patty being banned from some off-schedule New York Fashion Week shows a couple of years ago by a megalomaniac PR -- she once called herself "the Mother Teresa of the avant-garde" and dresses like this -- who Gawker described as "insane, possibly in the paste-eating way". These posters were plastered around the venue:


That's cred, people. The lady knows her business. Subscribe! Comment! Get over there!

Fashion police - for reals

New regulations came into force today for World Youth Day – a Catholic event in Sydney featuring special guest star, the Pope. (What, have they run out of kids to molest overseas?)

It’s not a “day”, either: it’s five. The new laws are in effect for all of July, even though the event itself is in the middle of the month.

There’s one that says you can’t do anything that "causes annoyance or inconvenience to participants in a World Youth Day event", including handing out condoms or wearing anti-Christian T-shirts. I guess this one’s staying in the wardrobe.

Smock? Belt?

Here's the lovely Cate Blanchett (with a couple of hangers-on) at the screening of the new Indiana Jones film in Cannes yesterday, wearing a grey gown by Armani Prive.

And here is how the reporter from AAP/AFP described it: "Blanchett looked radiant in a purple and black smock, tightly belted at the waist to reveal her trim figure."

The moral: don't let Sunday stringers anywhere near fashion.

Ninja skirt

The level of street crime in Japan is actually declining, but the local media is fanning hysteria about muggings and assaults. It prompted designer Aya Tsukioka to create this piece of clothing for escaping from an attacker. And she's serious. It's yours for ¥80,000, with a kimono-to-vending-machine version available by special order.

The kids today

[I started writing this post on Saturday night when the ABC began reporting on the police helicopter's presence, with only a gut feeling that it would be a good media moment. I had no idea that it would become massive just 24 hours later.]

Corey Worthington’s parents went on holiday to Queensland. They left the 16-year-old at home in the outer Melbourne suburb of Narre Warren, telling him not to have any parties while they were away.

Corey immediately put an open invitation to a party at his house on MySpace: "Oh yea party at Mine Saturday 12th Jan. BYO chicks and grog. No knives, rents will cracK it at me." 500 people turned up.

So did two police cars reinforced by a helicopter, two dog squad units, a critical incident response team, the youth-related crime taskforce Operation Sarazan, transit police and divisional van crews from surrounding suburbs, and, the next morning, every TV station and newspaper in the country.

Here is the ensemble he chose to speak to the media in. Note the virtual singlet, perfectly teamed with the pink, fairy-covered doona. The yellow-framed sunglasses and kooky take on the Yankees cap are sheer styling genius.

When asked how the party started he replied, "I don't remember ... I was just off my head."

Victorian Police Commissioner Christine Nixon held a press conference to say she is considering billing him $20,000 to pay for police costs.

Corey said he had hoped his parents would not find out what had happened.

Good luck with that, Corey.

Update: The parents are back and, of course, straight onto the telly.

"We're absolutely disgusted that he could do this, not only to us but to our neighbourhood," his mother Jo said. "Obviously Corey's gone behind our backs and decided somewhere along the line to throw a party." Yes, Jo, obviously.

"He won't speak to us and you can understand why, because I think he knows what's coming," his stepfather Stephen Delaney said.

And what is coming, I wonder? I have a strange feeling that's it's going to be a TV contract and that he'll be hosting something besides parties very soon.

Another update (yes, I’m officially obsessed): It was 43°C (110°F) in Melbourne yesterday. Corey put on his fur-trimmed hoodie and fronted up for an interview with A Current Affair’s Leila McKinnon.

You can watch the whole brilliant performance here.

Leila McKinnon: Why don't you make a grown up decision and take responsibility and take off your glasses and apologise to the community, the police … take off your glasses and apologise to us!
Corey: I'll say sorry but I'm not gonna take off my glasses.
Leila McKinnon: Why not?
Corey: Coz they're famous.
Leila McKinnon: Because your glasses are famous?
Corey: Yeah.
Leila McKinnon: Why are your glasses famous?
Corey: I don't know. Everyone likes them so I'm not taking them off.
Leila McKinnon: You are pretty happy with the way you look and the attitude you've got are you?
Corey: Yeah, my parents aren't but I am.
Leila McKinnon: OK, Corey, we've gotta wrap this up but what would you say to other kids who are thinking of partying when their parents are out of town?
Corey: Get me to do it for you.
Leila McKinnon: Get you to do it for you? Not ‘don't do it’?
Corey: Nah. Get me to do it for you. Best party ever so far. That's what everyone's been saying.
Leila McKinnon: We've gotta go but I suggest you go away and take a good long hard look at yourself.
Corey: I have. Everyone has. They love it.



Have you even looked in a mirror lately?

Mr Blackwell – or Richard Sylvan Selzer, as I like to call him – has announced his Worst Dressed Women List for 2007. At the top of the list: Victoria Beckham. Oh, really?

Here is Mr Blackwell and his husband.
Here is Victoria Beckham and her husband.
I know who I'd rather look at.

2007: the year in fashion

Not exactly a stellar year for fashion – you have to wonder what 2007 will be mined for in retro fads of the future. Anyway, here's my take on the good, the bad and the just plain ugly.

The handbag It reigned supreme, again, as the must-have accessory. Big, buckled, rivetted and studded. The rule seemed to be the smaller the woman, the bigger the handbag. Next up: the sleek clutch returns.

Peep-toed platform heels When did toe cleavage come back? And why? Cute on very pretty feet and good for added height and ventilation but enough, already. Next: architecturally high stilettos.

Silver ballet slippers The flattest flat imaginable in the cheapest-looking fabric imaginable. Did you see one pair that looked decent after a couple of wears? No more silver anything. Next: the gladiator sandal.

Black tights under everything Or worse: black leggings under everything with a pair of silver ballet flats at the end. Why not just wear trackie daks – they're just as ugly. If you don't want to shave your legs or you're cold, wear jeans.

White sunglasses Although last season's Yoko Ono-esque windshields were still popular – it seemed every second head was a double-sided Dior billboard – the retro appeal of white-framed Wayfarers won the style wars. Next: more of the same in Pop colours.

Red lipstick Dior redeemed itself for the enormous sunglasses with the best red lipstick ever, Rouge Dior in Red Premiere. Perfectly applied with a lick of mascara, a timeless, elegant look.

Short black nails Thank you, Kurt Cobain. Next: indigo nails.

Dead-straight long hair A boom year for GHD straightening irons. Less torture and maintenance is the key to 2008's looks, from Victoria Beckham's "Pob" and pixie cuts, to the return of the layered shag. Brunettes will rule.

Fake tans Every fake tan, regardless of brand or method of application, uses dihydroxyacetone to turn you that delightful shade of orange. Fake tanners weren't fooling anybody. Next: skin-coloured skin.

The jewelled neckline Everyone was turning out this dress-'n'-jewellery combo. It was one degree of separation away from being BeDazzlered. Next: actual jewellery – pendants that sits on the decolletage, to be exact.

For men: the suit and tie The strongest year for the suit and tie in years. Justin Timberlake performed most of his concert in a three-piece suit. Two buttons, skinny tie, and it's still dressy chic with a waistcoat and no jacket. Bye, bye, sportswear.

Lacroix's Histoires de Mode

Christian Lacroix has been packing ’em in at Paris’ Musée des Arts Décoratifs with a show he’s curated demonstrating fashion’s merry-go-round of styles and themes. “An eternal renewal,” he calls it.

He spent every Friday for two years in the Musée’s archives, fulfilling a student dream to be a museum curator.

Whittling down 80,000 costumes to 400 pieces, including some of his own, he mixes the centuries up in sections like “cobwebs,” “flowers,” “graphics,” “patchwork” and “stripes.”

You can see a few examples here. Click on “Diaporama” on the left for a slide show.

Colour of the Year 2008

Pantone has announced its colour of the year for 2008.

Oh — it's blue . . .

Specifically, it’s #18-3943 Blue Iris.

Why? Let’s ask Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute:

"As a reflection of the times, Blue Iris brings together the dependable aspect of blue, underscored by a strong, soul-searching purple cast. Emotionally, it is anchoring and meditative with a touch of magic.”

#18-3943 Blue Iris takes the crown from 2007 colour of the year, #19-1557 Chili Pepper.

What Would Jesus Wear?

What all the cool Christian kids are wearing this season.