War is declared on Britain

My attention has been drawn to to this piece in the Times today comparing British and American women's appearance:

I’m recently back from a two-month sojourn in Los Angeles and New York. Maybe I have come back with fresh eyes. Maybe I have grown accustomed to the effort American women put into their upkeep. Either way, you don’t exactly need callipers to figure out in which country the women look after themselves more.

An informal poll of my US female friends revealed that they spend roughly $700 (£350) a month on what they consider standard obligatory beauty maintenance. That covers haircut, highlights, manicure, pedicure, waxing, tanning, make-up, facials, teeth whitening etc. They will spend a further $1,000 (£500) a month on physical conditioning such as military fitness, spinning sessions, vikram yoga, Pilates, deep-tissue sports massage, personal training etc. On top of that, add the occasional spa day, a week-long “bikini boot camp” in Mexico at the start of every summer and seasonal splurges on personal shoppers and clothing. I’m not sure any of my British female friends spends £700 during an entire year on her appearance. American women see these costs as a simple and sensible investment in their future.

Hard to argue with our bad nails and eyebrows, but we lack here those Vietnamese walk-in nail salons who will strip down every follicle and push back your cuticles in ten minutes flat for $30. I don't quite spend £350 a month on grooming, but it's a lot more than £700 a year.

Tim Gunn, on the street

There are several reasons to watch this interview with Tim Gunn: one is to see the daughter of some friends of mine ask a pertinent question about skirt lengths, another is to hear his explanation of why New York is the most fashion forward city in America. It's about the street and the subways. They're runways on which people dress to be seen. And Italy, of course, with its highly ritualised passagiata, has the best dressed women in the world.

North

I am going to Liverpool, my hometown and 2008's European Capital of Culture for a few days. Blogging will be light and late today.

Thought for the day

remember us?

The same costume will be
Indecent . . . 10 years before its time
Shameless. . . 5 years before its time
Outre (darling) . . . 1 year before its time
Smart
Dowdy . . . 1 year after its time
Hideous . . .10 years after its time
Ridiculous . . . 20 years after its time
Amusing . . . 30 years after its time
Quaint . . . .50 years after its time
Charming . . .70 years after its time
Romantic . . . 100 years after its time
Beautiful . . . 150 years after its time

James Laver

An American reader asks

Who can help out Ms S from Washington DC? All suggestions received with thanks.

Ms. Grant:

I'm attending an office holiday party the weekend with a gentleman friend (his office's party.)

[Imagine big, American-style bash for high-end law firm where he's a partner.]

The invitation says "black tie optional."

He, in true big, American law partner style, has announced "I'm not renting a tux.

Since I for one will look fabulous (natch) I'm looking for ways to gently suggest a smart way of dressing so he doesn't appear to be wearing yet another suit + tie outfit from his closet which he'd be wearing to the office on any other day ending with the letter "y."

I seem to recall some white-tie-on-white-shirt options with dark suit that looked quite sharp at last year's academy awards.

I've scoured the internet and can't seem to readily find photos. I thought "there should be an explicit article on this- and Linda should write it."

Since publishing an article would likely take more than a couple days, please can you shoot me a mini-version of what you'd advise on this front. Photo attachments heartily appreciated.

Many thanks and best, fashionable regards,

S.

Apropos of nothing

courtesy of Dave Hill

The ever-changing bunny

My personal disillusion with much contemporary video and installation art is how boring, obvious and didactic it is. Advertising has always borrowed its clothes from the art world. In Britain, because of our woefully under-funded film industry, many directors have begun their careers in television and cinema advertising. I find the following clip charming, amusing and inventive, but it does lack the precise and salty bite of art.



(via Norm)

Thoughtful Dresser poll - shopping within one's budget?

Shoppers fall over themselves to buy £3 jeans at Primark

A simple enough question, but one which drives many women mad. Is it really necessary to max out one's credit card when there are so many good clothes at all prices? I'm not really talking about the shopaholic syndrome, buying for the sake of it, but rather, going into debt for a £600 dress instead of making do with a £200 one.

Forty per cent off

At My Wardrobe until midnight tonight. Enter code Confidential40 in the Promotional Code box after you submit your card details at checkout.

For example

Beatrix Ong - £468 (£280) Black satin peeptoe shoes with swarovski crystal encrusted balls.

I just bought this cheerful John Smedley scarf to enliven a black winter coat, or even a leather jacket

Italian women: best dressed in the world

I inadvertantly mis-set the closing date for the Thoughtful Dresser poll, it should have ended this morning and I'm closing it now. So sue me.

But there's no mistake about the result with Italian women 12 points ahead of their French rivals in the best-dressed women of the world contest. I added some other nationalities in order to stave off objections by proud patriots, but the real contest was never in question. Young British women are good at experiment, and are quick to adopt the latest fashions, America has given us street style, but that's mainly in menswear.

In Paris in September for a couple of days shopping at Le Bon Marche I had never seen so many incredibly well-dressed women in the same place at the same time, and as much as one looked at them it was difficult to see how they had done it, like great prose which seems simple, plain and effortless, yet cannot be copied. For it wasn't that they wore the latest styles, is was how they wore their clothes, how they pulled a whole look together, often out of very simple elements. But move of the fashionable neighbourhoods, and things don't look quite as good. Every French woman knows to buy a classic jacket, but in French towns of the interior you see women who are perfectly dressed, but dowdy. The young, too, seem to take clothes so seriously that there is no sense of fun, which surely is a component of being young? French women dress well, I think, because as a nation they are taught how to from an early age, are rarely overweight, and their bodies are in proportion. Far harder to dress well with a difficult figure, such as the large-bosomed women of Italy.



Italians have a saying which permeates every aspect of their lives: la bella figura, the beautiful form. They apply it to a palace and to a can opener. Design is everything. Italian women are show-stoppingly well-dressed. Not for them, the muted good taste of the French. They have a stronger sense of fashion and, crucially, they have at their disposal good design available at all budgets, from Armani to Benetton. I have been to small towns in Sicily, mafia-ridden impoverished villages, sleeping under the hot sun of the Mezzogiorno, and come evening, the time of the passagiata, the doors of the houses open and out come the women, carrying Gucci handbags.


So for me, Italians are the winners. Because you will find well-dressed Italian women (and men also) in every part of the country and at every social class and situation. What is the secret, I once asked an Italian? Ironing, he said. Very, very good ironing.

Thought for the day

I don't know who invented the high heel, but all men owe him a lot. Marilyn Monroe

Christmas lights

I detest Christmas shopping and rarely do it, nonetheless, there is something to be said for hurrying along a London street as night falls, the febrile crowds surging towards the tube station. And on impulse raising your hand to hail an empty taxi, and settling down to watch, as if at the theatre, the city pass by, suddenly illuminated, beautiful.

Cartier on Bond Street

Sloane Square

The rather bizarre lights on Regent Street this year which a taxi driver compared to a model of DNA

The Sartorialist interviewed

Jess Cartner-Morley in yesterday's Observer, interviews Scott Schuman, aka The Sartorialist, who has perhaps the single most important fashion blog.

Armed with a Canon G5 camera, Scott Schuman, aka The Sartorialist, has created a photo blog that is required reading for the fashion industry - despite featuring no celebrities and barely any It bags. With his portraits of real people who look great, Schuman "has firmly established himself as a fashion authority", says Natalie Massenet, founder of Net-a-Porter.com and a pivotal figure in the fashion world. "We are huge fans of The Sartorialist at Net-a-Porter. The photography is sharp, the commentary astute, and we love that it celebrates individual style."

The celebration of the individual is at the core of what makes The Sartorialist different. By avoiding pigeonholing the subject into "tribes", Schuman has subverted all the rules dividing street style from high style. What's more, he may just have stumbled on the only people left who have the mystery necessary to capture our imagination as style icons: normal people, not the ones in reality TV shows, but the ones in real life. Clare Coulson, fashion features editor of Harper's Bazaar, finds the site compulsive viewing. "I am way more interested in what people on the street are wearing than I am in celebrities, who I just find quite dull these days. The Sartorialist is such a simple idea, but so clever. It's like those moments on the street where you see someone who looks fabulous and you wish you were them."

Book of the Week

Today starts a new feature on this blog, the Thoughtful Dresser Book of the Week. These are new or recently published books I've been reading with I think are worth drawing to others' attention.

UK edition

The first is Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Lustre by Dana Thomas. There are few fashion books as interesting, informative and rigorous as this one. Thomas is the Paris fashion and culture correspondent for Newsweek, I met her when she was in London in September and found her a mine of information about how high end fashion works and when it is and when it is not worth shelling out for it. I subsequently recommended the book to the PR for a major British retail chain who was as riveted by it as I was. It's shocking to discover that a Marc Jacobs bag is being produced in the same factory, on the same machines and made by the same person as a department store on brand.

I wrote a guest post on the Bag Snobs a few months ago, which I'll reproduce here:

Dana Thomas delves into the mainly European-led luxury market, the heirs to some of the world’s most famous houses: Hermes, Chanel, Dior and Louis Vuitton. Dana Thomas’ thesis, unsurprisingly, is that luxury goods have been democratised, that anyone prepared to max out their credit card can buy deluxe. The trend started in Japan in the 1980s, with disposable income looking for something to spend it on, and has now radiated out to the formerly Communist states - China and the Soviet Union – long starved of things to buy,. Under the direction of two or three companies controlling almost all world-wide luxury brands, once-distinguished houses have now become the window-dressing for the most ruthless forms of capitalism.

But more revealingly, Thomas shows that not only are more people buying luxury goods, but that the goods themselves are not what they once were. An overall decline in quality and the outsourcing of production (often concealed) to China means, for example, that a Prada dress purchased in 1992 is inferior to a Prada pair of pants purchased a decade later. The reason? Cheaper thread.

I have often wondered why a Hermes Birkin should cost so much, and whether the waiting list is merely part of the hype. Thomas shows that Hermes, along with Chanel, is one of the few companies left which retains its old standards of manufacture. A Hermes bag bought today is made in exactly the same way, taking the same time, as the first bag presented to Jane Birkin 40 years ago. If there is a waiting list, it only demonstrates that there are more people out there who want the few remaining real things.

The book leaves you to ponder an awkward question. When we buy luxury goods are we being ripped-off with items not much better in quality than we could buy for a fraction of the cost? I would argue, not really. A recently-purchased Armani Collezioni jacket is simply a vastly superior piece of clothing to its equivalent at Zara. It fits better, looks better and will last longer. Design is all. But if it’s design you’re looking for, why not just buy a fake, an exact copy?

Because the manufacturing, and by extension the purchasing of fakes, is a truly disgusting, immoral act. Not only is it intellectual property theft, but the conditions in which fake bags are made are terrifyingly evil – child slaves sewing until they are blinded by overwork, or in the case of a factory in Thailand, children whose legs were broken by their ‘owner’ when they begged to go out and play. And the profits from fakes are feeding back into the drugs trade, as well as financing terrorism. There seems to be links between the traffic in fakes and the 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre, as well as possible connections with Hizbollah, the Lebanese organisation which fought last summer’s war with Israel.

At then end of this book, Thomas argues that the desire for beautiful, well-made things, should not be an end in itself - the greed for more - but rather that one buys something because that thing is, in itself, simply right. To save up for the one or two truly beautiful things of quality, the very best you can afford, this is the true mark of style.

You can buy this here, on on the Amazon panel on the right, from the UK or US stores

Thought for the day

Like every good man, I strive for perfection, and, like every ordinary man, I have found that perfection is out of reach - but not the perfect suit. Edward Tivnan

Oooh, missus

Sensationally hilarious interview by Justine Picardie in the Telegraph with Rupert Everett who plays the headmistress in St Trinians, out on 21 December:

Perhaps it is exhaustion, therefore, as much as solidarity with the spirit of St Trinian's, that explains why, on the way to the set, Rupert eats three Cadbury's Creme Eggs in between puffing a small roll-up.

'I wouldn't normally do this,' he says, inhaling chocolate and tobacco with equal alacrity, 'but I have to get into my schoolgirl frame of mind.' Then he flicks through the pages of Hello!, giving an acerbic commentary on the celebrities featured within. 'Look at that, another ghastly evening at the Met. Forget St Trinian's, I should really be the headmistress of a star academy. All these so-called style divas have such terrible dress sense.'

His voice becomes increasingly disapproving, his dark eyebrows raised ever higher, as he regards an assembly of female stars at a New York ball. 'I could give them a proper going over, and then put them back on the road. Ooh, look, Kate Moss's hands have become almost as grabby as Madonna's. Actually, they're all at it, clutching their handbags with knobbly claws, like it's stuffed full of cash. That will have to be one of the first week's lessons at school. How to hold your handbag without looking grasping.'

This is followed by a meandering discussion about snogging Colin Firth.

Walking in slingbacks

Manolo the Shoeblogger reports on the other Manolo's first collection for men.

To say that the Shoeblogger is disappointed in this collection is the understatement. There is nothing here the he would wear, and he suspects the same is true of the maestro Manolo, himself. Indeed, the collection seems like the elaborate joke.

And now, we shall never speak of this again.

Ths search for the perfect party dress

Whenever I talk to men, they tell me that they hate shopping. That they just walk with a determined long stride into the shop, see what they want and buy it. Often without even trying it on.

And then there is us. Here is an account of a woman's search for a dress for the party season:

Once in a while – usually around Christmas – a girl’s thoughts turn to party dresses, then, almost immediately, descend into despair. I’m not talking about the ultimate price-on-request dress. I’m talking about a dress that is a few rungs above the high street, but not in the big-price league; one that is sexy and glamorous, rather than a box-ticking fashion statement or a festive confection.

Nobody could deny they are out there – rails of gorgeous little frocks by Alice + Olivia and Willow and Sass & Bide and Antik Batik and D&G and you name it. But they might as well be lederhosen for all the use they are to me. Because, besides looking good enough to eat, they all finish above the knee or quite a bit higher.

I could fill lever-arch files with the things I can’t tolerate in a dress – starting with short – and most of these I think I share with other women. I want a dress that isn’t the length of your boyfriend’s shirt, that doesn’t itch (a wool party dress? Please), that couldn’t easily disguise a pregnancy, that has some sort of shoulder coverage, as opposed to cheese-cutter straps – and it would be really nice if it wasn’t black and sort of apologetic-looking. Did I mention that it has to cost somewhere south of £400-£500, if it is the absolute dress of my dreams?

the picture is a Christmas window at Selfridges.

Lia Does Chanukah

Top baby Lia, currently residing in Istanbul, has now received from me her first designer label, this cherry dress from agnes b.

It is never too early for a girl to begin to learn to dress well. Also A line is so flattering for the pear-shaped nappy wearer.

Thought for the day

Shoes are the first machines we are given to master. Nicholson Baker