Leandra Medine's Blog, page 723

Behind the Kendallabra

Some interesting, oft-overlooked facts about Kendall Jenner: She appeared on the revival TV show Hawaii Five-0 in 2012 as someone named A.J. She interned at Seventeen magazine at some point but according to knowledge accrued from a spurious news channel called E!, was shy. Her father has longer hair than her mother does and finally, potentially the most important of these facts: she was 12 only six years ago. This makes her 18 now but also presents the question of: where were you then?

I was in high school. I had braces and I sang The Chant of Spears (see: I’m not a girl, not yet a woman) while wearing bobby-pins on three quarters of Japanese-straightened hair, a floor length black skirt purchased somewhere in the depths of Jewish Brooklyn and those Minnetonka moccasins with the beads on the toe. I interrupted myself while speaking often to inject superfluous, hyperbolic absolutes in an accent reminscent of one from an outer borough and did not have a learner’s permit to drive.

So you know where I was not? A) Driving and B) Informally accepting the title of muse to Riccardo Tisci. But I bet you could guess who is doing both of those things! In circles! The K-Meister. And it’s during these times of glorious evolution that a photographic retrospective, like a visit to Paris, is never a bad idea. So, join me in remembering the Ken that was pre-dall. The Jen that came post -ner and, of course, that leopard print halter top with the embroidered neckline because I think it made noise when she walked.

Talk about an entrance.

There does remain one other question, which depends on whether this evolution has been manufactured entirely by third party participants in the Kendallabra’s life, see: brother-in-law, sister-de-facto, or if this recent rise to high fashion fame is the elective decision of the human Menorah.

The near-irrefutable fact is that she fits the model bill. She also seems to be the best case scenario as progeny in the setting of extreme celebrity but that may present another issue: can you shake the implications of her previous life as a reality star from her current occupation as, ostensibly speaking, The Next Big Thing? Let us photo surf.

You’re Going to An Outdoor Concert After Work…

Dressing for work in the summer is like trying to seductively eat an ice-cream cone: nearly impossible and always a sticky mess. Dressing for work and then for an outdoor concert in Prospect Park is like trying to seductively eat an ice-cream cone hands free, contradictory in essence and again, nearly impossible in feat. Also prone to violent tongue lashing.

Considering that you have exactly 45 minutes in between work and what’s left of a social life, you’ve got to ride that F train like Lance Armstrong on one Trek TTX and guess what! You’ve got no time to change. You really don’t want to be the girl in the black slacks again, straining to see the band because you can’t afford to ruin your best (and possibly) only pair of pants by sitting indian style on the ground. There’s always the Anthropologie floral dress you’ve worn at least once a summer for the past seven summers, but the thought of getting mistook for a Park Slope mom isn’t striking yo fancy.

Not tonight, at least.

Have you considered the culottes? This seasons hottest trend is a walking, talking identity crisis, but its inability to discern itself as pants or shorts works in your favor. An easy breezy pair like these, or these from Rachel Comey scream, “I can squash a deadline but I’m also capable of curating a lazy picnic in Prospect Park, drinking Malbec out of a plastic cup and listening to alternative music.”

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You know what also says “I can deposition-digest faster than a hamster on crack can run laps on a wheel, but I’ll also share my patchwork quilt with others”? A sleeveless and crisp white blouse like this bad boy from ASOS. If you’re like me and buttons make you nervous, may I suggest a not so cropped top like this one from Zara. Top it all off with a pair of open toe booties, low heeled sandals, or an easy breezy clog, and people will be asking whether you’re a roadie or an accountant.

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Throw a jean jacket over your shoulders, whip your hair back n’ forth and thank your lucky stars that you don’t work in finance.

Oh, you do?

-Esther Levy

Man Repeller Crystal Ball: Barrettes

The greatest contribution barrettes have made to my personal narrative is two fold. On the one hand, they have single-clippedly created the illusion that I look ten years my junior. Not that I technically need it at my tender 25, but then again, one time last summer a barista at Le Pain Quotidien asked me if I was treating my daughter, who was actually my mother, to coffee. I know I’ve told you this at least twice already but it never gets old.

Incidentally, I, however, do.

In lieu of this, just last week, I got carded. The week before that, my mother looked at me forlornly, presumably remembering the days I could not yet string together a sentence that I might use against her in the unofficial family court of personal affairs. And do you know why? Because I was wearing a barrette.

On the other hand of those initial folds, the hair piece has taught me to distinguish berets — the “French painter hats,” as my dad would say, that we wear on our heads from barrettes — the clips we use to gather hair to the side or the front or the middle of our faces. How, you might ask, have they taught this discernment? Well, until yesterday at 4:03PM, I had no idea how to spell the latter. Google proves its worth again.

You learn something new everyday, you know? Today, let your morsel of new knowledge hinge on a trend-on-the-fringe care of a) Miu Miu, b) Carven, c) Rodarte, d) Cacharel, e) Peter Som f) Alexa Chung and g) barrettes. Of course!

Lately, I have taken to making an exaggerated side part in my hair and clipping about two fingers worth on the parted side into a barrette that rests just a few inches above my ear. I like how it looks against a blunt bob (Margot Tenenbaum, anyone?) and the corresponding androgynous clothes that I wear, like denim cut offs and a mens blouse, provide the arrival at a nice intersection, where boy meets girl, lamb meets lion or Kris Jenner gets an ass whooping from Oprah.

When I consider additional champions of the style: Charlotte Wiggins, Emma Watson, Dakota Fanning, I am inexplicably reassured about my recent choices and the Man Repeller crystal ball shines green. Not for cargo shorts, no, but to be able to say “hirsute in her suit? Trendy!”

Will you try it? Do you do it? Would someone please, for the love of all that is fine, make some bobby pins in gold? Here are some others until then.

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Yves Saint Laurent’s Biopic Comes Out Tomorrow

The problem with overused words is that the more frequently they’re injected into our respective dialogues, the further they get from their original, poignant meanings. What is cool anymore? Who is truly funny? And elegance. Does anyone really consider how far elegance has come from its original meaning? The synonyms we’ve heretofore conjured include charm and gentility and grandeur and magnificence, which are close, but neglect what is sinister about elegance: the demons that reveal themselves in the wake of something so exquisite and graceful and gluttonous. No other words do, actually.

But if you’re still looking for it, you can find it. In objects and thoughts, occasionally in fashion, too. And if you need it right now, it’s at a nearby movie theater, temporarily under the watchful ownership of Yves Saint Laurent.

The anterior’s namesake famously said that elegance is forgetting what someone is wearing. This seems antithetical when considering his contribution to fashion but may fortuitously mirror the events of his eponymous and subtitled biopic, which premieres in New York and L.A. tomorrow. And if it’s true what he said, then I suppose in the matter of this film, good cinematography is forgetting that as an English-speaker, you don’t understand what you’re hearing. Or perhaps, that you’re reading subtitles.

The surface level expectations from an interactive, third-party memoir about one of the true artists-as-designers before, during and after our time were met with Yves Saint Laurent, which trailed the prolific designer from 1958, while at the helm of Christian Dior, through his friendships and dalliances and the relationship assembled with his partner and partner Pierre Bergé.

There was Paris, where Saint Laurent remained delicately within the boundaries of couture, there was Morocco, where he rejected it (“I refuse to lock myself in an ivory tower of haute couture”) to forge a fashion renaissance with his panted women and masculine tuxedo jackets and amid both countries, there were copious drugs. That and sex. And love. Specifically, the anguish that comes with the coupling of relentless love and an illness called excess.

But arguably more impressive than the eye candy, history lesson and tantalizing discourse of Yves Saint Laurent was a sense of overindulgence that settled when the film ended. There was this lingering inability to separate the emotional baggage of the narrative from the self. I assumed the turmoil of the flip side of the cataloged, earnestly monumental moments of fashion history.

Saint Laurent’s amendment on the infamous black Dior gown, shot by Richard Avedon was met with a series of mood swings, linked to manic depression. The emergence of Le Smoking in 1966 was incited by a tango with drug abuse, public sex and free love. A Fall collection, replete with bright colored and exotically printed lamé and head scarves and fur caps marked a continued struggle, met literally by a quivering Saint Laurent, cigarette glued to fingers, from 1976.

But maybe that visceral connection is the sign of a good story and perhaps more pertinently, a good movie. It was elegant, really, the whole thing.

Girls on Film: The Movie Hair that Shaped Us

I can vividly remember the first time I watched 10 Things I Hate About You. I saw it three times in a row when it first came out. I only sort of knew what a “Prada” was and I was mesmerized by all of the belly buttons. More than that, however, I was completely and utterly besotted with Julia Stiles’ hair. It was curly in all the right places and straight in all the others. It hung by her waist as a sort of fortress. Yes, she was smart, fiery, feminist-y. And yes, she got Heath Ledger in the end (by being herself!). But it was her hair — her long, twirling mane spiraling down her back that inspired me for years to come.

It’s pretty amazing that I still have hair given what I’ve done to it in the name of mimicking the on-screen women I’ve loved (straightening, waving, applying potentially illegal chemicals that required I wear a FACE MASK during the procedure). But these cinematic hair-muses shaped my childhood, teenage years, and if I’m being completely honest, even now. So rather than fight my hair with an iron, I’d like to celebrate these women and raise my round brush to the following:

Cady Heron, Mean Girls At the apex of her career, Lindsay Lohan made me want to be a redhead. Her character in Mean Girls, Cady Heron, was the ideal high school movie heroine: she became popular, claimed the iron throne, learned her lesson, and then realized that life was about a lot more than pretending to be bad at math. In fact, she was fantastic at math. She was also funny, wordly and smart, which meant her hair — that auburn, loose-waved hair – was too.

Cher & Dionne, Clueless

Cher Horowitz had a heart of gold. She also had The Most Perfect Blowout of all time: silky, full of body, with the ends flipped under like a shampoo commercial. I spent hours in the bathroom trying to copy it – a goal I almost achieved once. But that’s the thing about (almost) getting your hair to do exactly what you want…it only happens sporadically.

Cher’s better half, Dionne, matched her in both plaid outfits and tress ferocity. Her hair was an amazement of flawless braids that she’d toss over her shoulder with a manicured backhand and major attitude. Sometimes, for Val parties, she added ribbons. She also clearly wore the baggy pants in her relationship with Murray and mastered his vernacular: “Most of the feminine pronouns do have mocking, but not necessarily misogynistic undertones” is something I vastly underrated at the time. But not her hair. I immediately appreciated her hair.

Wednesday Addams: The Addams Family

I lived for Wednesday Addams’ widow’s peak, and long, braided, jet-black hair. She was scary in a boss way, and her side-eye could cut a bitch. You did not mess with Wednesday Addams. I spent a solid four months braiding my hair in different ways to emulate her…mostly when I played softball in the outfield because nothing ever came my way. Looking back, it was time well spent.

Love Story

Ali MacGraw’s character Jenny Cavalleri was mesmerizing. She was fierce, funny, independent, sexy without being sexualized and most importantly, confident. Because of her I wore oversizes collegiate sweatshirts, parted my hair severely down the middle and very seriously considered ironing it with an actual iron.

I still have a picture of these women in my mind, and I have an actual picture of Julia Stiles taped to my childhood bathroom mirror should I feel inspired to bust out the old crimper/product-cocktail. But in reflecting on these women at the age I am now, I’ve realized that the fascination was not only about the hair. It was about the heads each strand was attached to – strong, funny, intelligent heads — which means that personality adds just as much to a hair style (if not more) as the actual hair.

Now it’s your turn. What movie ‘do inspired you?

—Meredith Fineman

Meredith Fineman is the founder of FinePoint. You can read more of her writing here.

Get in the Zone — Bikini Zone

You know what sucks about bikini season? Other than the invariable wax that comes with it?

The fact that, if you, like me, hate spending money on water-resistant loin cloths, we’re shit out of luck when poolside. Last weekend, I kept shorts and a t-shirt on all day Saturday and you know what I look like now?

A butt farmer.

Do you know what a butt farmer is?

Me neither, really, but it sounds funny. My point is this: bathing suits can be expensive and it’s frustrating to spend money on them when technically speaking, they’re covered for the most part when you wear them. And if we’re considering how frequently they’re worn, consider this: if you live in a city, they’re only really applicable on weekends – unless you’re jobless, in which case, they’re even more expensive — for two months a year — unless you travel a lot in which case, I’m grunting at you.

So I propose we figure out how to repurpose our bathing suits to make a little more sense (though not too much sense — that is never the end goal) outside the confines of a beach or a pool.

Above you’ll find three propositions. The first includes a white mens shirt which you can get from just about anywhere (though I really like the female versions from Everlane), tied at the waist and left open at the chest, an old Stella McCartney skirt and a vaguely marigold bathing suit top that could be a bra if you’re on acid. It also must be asked:

Would you dance, if I asked you to dance?

All hail Enrique, AM I RIGHT?

I digress.

By tying the blouse and leaving it unbuttoned, I’m concealing the bathing suit top enough for it not to look like I’m wearing a bathing suit under workwear but still offer a sliver of surprise if you catch me from a diagonal angle. Also great for happy hour when you want to let down your hair and take off your shirt.

In approximation #2, I forgo pants all together in the name of a black one-piece strategically worn over a perwinkle-ish high waist underwear, which if you look at quickly then look away, might make me appear as though I have an interesting sun burn in an even more interesting region. Worn over the bathing suit is a utility vest from Club Monaco that conceals my ass for the post-lunch digestion and some green Superga sneakers that are satin and incidentally made by me, for YOU.

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This seems like a really appropriate outfit for a board meeting.

And finally, in look #3, I take my scalloped edge bandeau bikini top, place it over a white t-shirt (this one is T by Alexander Wang), pair it with a pair of grey micro-culottes or maxi shorts and a black blazer to sartorially officiate girls night. Who’s bringing the tweezers?

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(The shoes are by Chloe, sunglasses from Asos).

Photos by Krista Anna Lewis

The Best Exotic Marigold Resort

Orange and yellow are two of the most difficult colors to pull off. At least they seem to be according to the woman trying on a blouse in the hues’ crayon-box variety while she’s bathed in florescent dressing room lighting and complaining about her post-winter pallor. But when done in the right fabric, and when considered in a different context (away from their primary Crayola family) orange and yellow can actually be golden.

Resort 2015 proved this. A variety of richly saturated garments fell under the blanket of a Marigold umbrella — which you can take my word for since I googled the flower and it comes in a few different shades.

Rosie Assoulin’s apricot shirt and shorts are Marigold, as is her ball skirt that appears floral in both color and shape. Marigold is also Rochas’ sunny tented gown and Tome’s mustard jumpsuit (which looks more Dijon in person than in the photo, so once again, if you don’t mind, take my word). So too is 10 Crosby’s burnt orange skirt and Marc Jacobs flaxen, flowered head-to-toe combo. And where Marigold didn’t fully bloom, it budded — yellow on the ribs at Vuitton, a saffron Proenza Schouler bag, an abstract clementine at Burberry.

They say three’s a trend and I’ve just now listed more than four, but it’s still a bit too obscure to take over. What’s cool about Marigold is that color is a little off. It’s kind of Brady Bunch meets a Mark Rothko painting; the palette of an early Antonio Lopez illustration or a 1960-something living room.

It’s not obvious, like red, or universally flattering, like navy. Per the everywoman in that badly lit dressing room I mentioned earlier, it can’t exactly be worn with immediate ease. Slight planning is involved — maybe a tan, the right accessory, a complimentary lip or an island backdrop. This is, after all, a color intended for resort. So come November it may not be everywhere, but maybe that’s what makes it golden.

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Know Your Labels: AltewaiSaome

Annotating deliberately sexy silhouettes in fashion does not typically include the sophistication or impression of insouciant female empowerment that appears in the wake of a shape that deliberately and more importantly, thoughtfully conceals the female form. This almost always leaves room for intended mystery. Pundits of the art include Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen for The Row and very recently, too, the guys behind Tome.

To evoke that sense of made-for-a-woman-who-lives-not-just-wears with a selection of saucily slit pencil skirts, plunging necklines and bodices is pretty impressive. The accepted logic is that a tight skirt or a deep-v exists to appease the male gaze, when really (in the instances that are noteworthy, at least), they’re there to appease the gaze of another kind of woman. One who is similarly proud of herself but projects that awareness differently, like Natalia Altewai or Randa Saome of their namesake line, AltewaiSaome.

Perhaps, as Altewai says, “she is not afraid to play with fashion.” Or maybe it’s as Saome put it, “To be seen in the crowd.”

With their quiet cut outs and accentuated waist lines and irreverently sexy pants, they’ve built a vestiary understanding that to be for yourself does not have to mean to be cloaked in thousands of layers. (Though make no mistake — that is nothing wrong with that.)

After graduating from school in Milan, Altewai and Saome returned to Sweden, where they’re from, and launched the collection. Of having grown up in the former, Altewai says, “there is a sense of minimalism that influences the style. It is very subtle.” Saome interjects, noting that the line may have been more influenced by their time in Milan.

The minimalist thread woven through this collection, which stays away from salient color, shouldn’t be mistaken for trendy, though — at least not the way we know it. “One can create their own trends simply based on an appreciation for fashion,” Altewai suggested, providing intended proof for a temporal bravura in black and white as pants and high neck, long sleeve poplin blouses, which were just shown for resort.

What seems most compelling, though, is that in spite of this idea that a woman in AltewaiSaome is not afraid to be seen, she’s also not starved for the attention. Sure, her entrance is dramatic and her exit can be monumental but that’s only unilaterally speaking. Fundamentally, she’s dressing herself, for herself. Nothing proves this better than Altewai’s perception of fashion at large. That it “is an expression of one’s identity. This can never truly be expressed if you dress for others.”

A$AP Rocky, Style Icon

Here’s the thing about my relationship with A$AP Rocky: he doesn’t completely know we’re in one. I don’t want to call us dating dating either — he’s seeing other people, I’m seeing pictures of him with other people so it’s fine, but where we have something truly special is in his ability to dress like the fashionably-adventurous-without-looking-cartoonish person I wish I could be.

Leandra often talks about how good designers elicit in their admirers the sense of, I could be that girl. So is it impossible to think that I could look at A$AP Rocky and say to myself, I could be that guy? But you know, as a girl. 

Absolutely not.

We’re consistently celebrating and approximating men’s style. But at this point, labeling fashion with gender is practically as irrelevant as trying to assign it a time period; everything is cyclical, everything is fluid. Everyone is borrowing from everyone else. It’s nice, it means we really did all learn to share. What’s interesting is no longer that we want to steal sweaters from our great grandfathers or jeans from our boyfriends but rather, that we have the ability to develop a fascination with a style that’s quite different from our own.

Part of A$AP Rocky’s style comes from his unadulterated confidence. He even refers to himself as “that pretty mother fucker.” But swagger and a cocky smile can only get you so far in fashion if your shoes are wack and your outfit’s basic. Instagram commenters will tell you so. In this industry, you have to be able talk, walk, and wear it. Rocky’s clearly done his homework.

“She got a lotta Prada, that Dolce & Gabbana / I can’t forget Escada, and that Balenciaga” he sings in “Fashion Killa.” This isn’t the impressive part. Artists have been rhyming with Prada since the design house has been around (oh, you’ve never heard that one hit from the early 19th century?) and 50 Cent paired “Prada” with “Gabbana” long before A$AP Rocky.

Where he picks up speed is his nod to Helmut Lang – a classic, Alexander Wang – the wunderkid, followed by his name-drops of Jil Sanders, Ann Demeulemeester, Thom Browne, Rick Owens, Raf Simons. A$AP Rocky is, if nothing else, a major peruser of Style.com.

We know he endorses Hood by Air and he’s been around at fashion week the past few seasons. But immersing yourself in clothes doesn’t automatically make you stylish — it’s personality first, and then something aesthetically inherent second. Consider his affinity for high-buttoned collars, for jeans that run a bit tighter than his music genre’s historical norm. Think about the way he embraces color, sports shorts like a surfer, wears black like Emmanuelle Alt, treats a suit as an outfit (as opposed to an occasion-appropriate requirement) and wears big, bold prints with pride.

He very well may have a stylist. Almost all of the photos shown are from photoshoots and in the massive well that is an “A$AP Rocky” search on Pinterest, we’ve edited. But I can’t help but believe that his say in what he wears is louder than other artists’ — that Steve Zissou hat and blue leopard jacket above had to have been his call. Which is why, even though I wouldn’t personally wear head-to-toe Birds of Paradise a la Givenchy men’s 2012, I wish I could. He makes me want to be that guy. Or girl.

But this:

This I could more than handle.

Bags for The Girl Who Hates Bags

I would be hard-pressed to disagree with Amelia on an assertion she expounded upon last week in her story, Summertime and the Living’s Hands Free.

It’s true that going hands-free rules. It is an activity reserved strictly for those committed to fun and sticking their hands in their pockets. Then again, though, it would be foolish to assume that we could manipulate every bag-doting broad across America and beyond into thinking that they should, or could, forgo their leather (or not!) containers all together.

Chiefly, I might add, because as much as I enjoy the art of free-balling (picture what free-balling looks like) and the way it feels to walk around New York City without anything in hand like I’m on a perennial lunch break, or in the comfort of my personal domestic space, I also really like the way the right kind of bag can underscore the irreverently dynamic nuances of an outfit.

You’re wearing jeans and a t-shirt, right? So how do you “elevate” that? Other than by grabbing your breasts and yelling “these are real!”? With some version of a minaudiere, which if you’re lucky can hold your keys and cell phone and maybe a credit card but that’s probably it.

They’re like a hi-lighter to a term paper, only no one gets graded.

So here you have it: a selection of handbags for the girl who hates handbags but understands that sometimes, it’s about the accessory, not the utility.

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