Yale Students Love to Wear Black on Their Backs - Dress The Message

Helloooo out there.

I proposed this piece to The New York Times. The newspaper published it (and others) while I was still a college student and a campus stringer. The then new Campus Life section did not have names attached to the articles, so I thought you might be interested in seeing it, since it wouldn't come up on any searches of my name.

Background: Growing up in Illinois, I did not wear black. Seeing many students cloaked in the color presented a new sartorial possibility while concurrently undercutting the stereotype that Ivy League students dressed in plaid pants, crew neck sweaters and penny loafers. We dressed much more diversely, as it turned out, based on the messages that we intended to send.

Enjoy!
Petria May teacher

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Link: Yale students wear black

Petria May teacher style fashion clothing dress Beacon High School codes message

Faith Hochberg, Judge and Jeweler

Faith Hochberg has two business cards: one for her day job as a federal judge and the other for her handmade jewels. As you can imagine, we are connected. See a selection of Faith's jewels at www.berkshireartist.com. A longtime second homeowner in Litchfield County, Faith custom creates her pieces from her imagination, and yours. She fuses  unused family treasures with new beading to make wearable art.

Devohn Walker 60 Seconds Video + Bill Cunningham Photo

Devohn Walker is one step closer to his dream that one day, everyone will know his name. I videotaped him in Brooklyn back in the fall. It seems that Bill Cunningham found him in Manhattan. Check out the Sunday Styles section for February 7, 2010 or look at the photo here. My video was posted to youtube a while back. You could have seen it there first!

60 Seconds of Style Project, J. Crew

Vintage inspires J. Crew. For a couple of years, I have visited the company offices with treasures in tow. Elements of my picks have appeared in J. Crew stores. Example: punch out leather. I took a handbag with this design element, it was purchased, then turned up on a pair of ballet flats.

Cheryl Dunn + Michael Karbelnikoff

Wedding Fantastic in Norfolk, Connecticut

White is passe, plaid is in, black is so back, and remembering loved ones lost makes sense.

This wedding visually veered from traditional nuptials, resulting in its own (and I daresay truer) tradition. Savor these images from the bliss of Cheryl Dunn and Michael Karbelnikoff.

I am left dreaming: Maybe marriage is magical.

Vanity Fair Letter to the Editor published November 2009.

The Art of Couture

AS AN ATTORNEY and writer who set aside her Columbia Law School education to dedicate the past five years of her life to being a purveyor of vintage clothes, I can attest to the everlasting allure of couture [“Toujours Couture,” by Amy Fine Collins, September]. I am an avid consumer of contemporary design—which owes nearly everything to vintage—but the pinnacle of my sartorial adventure came last January. Just before I dashed back into another frigid New England night after a house party, the host asked me what I do for a living. Upon hearing that I am a shopgirl, he descended to his basement and returned with a black garbage bag. From that rather unpromising blob of plastic emerged a cocoa-brown Christian Dior New Look ball gown from 1952. Christened “Esther” on her muslin tag and created for Mrs. John Wanamaker of Philadelphia, the masterpiece featured a finely boned corset, intricate beading, and a ballerina-inspired silhouette that must have been blessed by Monsieur Dior himself. It was the most beautiful dress I’d ever touched, I told its then owner, who offered it to me. Eventually, I sold Esther, my flower of all frocks. Today, she preens before me still, as my computer desktop image. —PETRIA MAY, Great Barrington, Massachusetts

Club Monaco and DKNY visit PB.

I received a Sunday visit today from a few fashion designers.  With laser eyes, they turn the seams, try the latches on handbags, inspect all construction very carefully and, when in a group, mumble. I imagine that they are thinking about mass manufacturing.  

Today, that sartorial set included Jane Ibarra (photo, right) from Club Monaco.



There was also a DKNY designer trying to take pictures with his phone. Why buy when you can take the idea? 

Virginia Smith and Victor Glemaud Visit Petria Boutiq

Virginia Smith, Editor at Vogue (New York), visited PB with designer Victor Glemaud.  Victor was dressed in country chic, but see him wearing his game suit.  

Alison Hyde in The New York Times

Petria Boutiq client and Ralph Lauren designer Alison Hyde (number 12), has been photographed by Bill Cunningham. Congrats.  

Boutiq News: NYT, Cheryl Dunn and Pat Fox, plus Issey Miyake

Two of Petria's style ladies have made a mark by appearing in The New York Times recently.  

Patricia Fox appeared in the style section's weekly photo essay--the feature was the opening of the new Highline (July 12, 2009).  I recognized her from the back, since she is wearing a vintage Kamali skirt from Petria.  

Cheryl Dunn directed a two-minute documentary about her friend Anna Sheffield, a jewelry designer.  The doc is featured online today for The Moment blog at www.nytimes.com (August 9, 2009).  Cheryl's web address is www.cherydunn.net.  I found a picture on her online wearing a PB dress.  

September 4 note:  Cheryl came in today and told me that Horacio Silva (The New York Times) "flipped" over the dress pictured.  Whose it it?! he wanted to know.  She then said two of my favorite words: "It's vintage!" You can't find it anywhere at any cost.

Isaiah Sheffer of Selected Shorts Visits the Berkshires

Some people like to meet movie stars. I don't enjoy that awkward, one-way familiarity that one finds in those interactions.

However, I have always found great joy when meeting women and men of words.  Isaiah Sheffer, shown with me here, fits the 'scription.  He attended a brunch in Stockbridge before a taping go Selected Shorts at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, Mass.  

my shoes

My Alternate Facebook Reality (And Yours, Too)

Making friends on Facebook is risky business.

Those of us who use the Internet as an extension of our fingertips are well aware that Facebook is a brilliant networking site. Still, folks born solidly between the television revolution and The Computer Age continue to view Internet networking (and dating, too) with more than a little suspicion. ... FULL PIECE UPON REQUEST. 

Patrick McBride's Invisible Tattoo

Here is Patrick McBride. I wrote a style profile of him for the January/February issue of Berkshire Living magazine. I promised to tell readers about Patrick's invisible tattoo.

I have an invisible tattoo, too. Actually, I ave no tattoo at all. Is that the same thing?

To take a photograph of Patrick's tattoo is not to know it at all (indeed, you would hardly see it under normal lighting).  It's complicated, unless you happen to be a lighting genius.  The circles-and-dots ttoo is visible only under black light.  "I felt I could have it on my body for the rest of my life," he says.  

I understand.  I, too, could wear an invisible tattoo for the rest of my life!  Now you don't see it and... now you don't!  

So, the ttoo is composed of a special ink from Japan "and they don't sell it in America," according to Patrick.  He found the inside scoop this way:  he saw a guy on the street with the tattoo [Patrick is clearly more attuned to all things lighting-related] and asked him where he got it.  "He told me about the tattoo artist.  And that's the whole truth."  

Given that it glows only under special lighting, Patrick's ttoo is the ultimate stamp of authenticity, for a man who knows the light.  

Baggy, Baba Cool Pants

This picture hails from May 30, 2007.  Original text and photo on view at www.365daysofstyle.blogspot.com

Petria

Happy New Year from The Berkshires and Petria.  I snapped this photo for the Berkshire Record Holiday Gift Guide.

In Defense of THOSE Pants

It has become an established pattern that, like more than a few precocious women who live and breathe clothes, I find myself wearing a new or revised trend that hits the mainstream one to two years later. We have felt copied for a lifetime. Sometimes it is flattering. Sometimes not. It forces us to struggle, repeatedly, to seek out uncharted sartorial territory. In reality, everyone seems to be emulating someone. For an entire year, I wrote a blog to document my on-the-cusp style (www.365daysofstyle.blogspot.com). On it, in mid-2006, I am wearing a pair of vintage 1980s Issey Miyake thick, silk, drop seat pants, along with a brocade Prada tank and a pair of Pierre Hardy calfskin boots (photo reprinted here).

...

Diary of Comme des Garcons Sale at H&M.

Comme des Madness

Retail may be doing poorly--I don't doubt the grim statistics.  But let's just say that I witnessed an exception.  

On Thursday November 13, Comme, 

designed and privately owned by sartorial original Junya Watanabe, made its mark with the masses.  

The morning started at about 5:30 because I could not sleep any longer, likely due to an anticipation of the adrenalin rush to come. 

Once through the doors of the Lexington Avenue store, I went for the drop seat pants that I already have in silk (from Issey Miyake).  I grabbed about three pairs because there simply was no time to look at sizes. I ran to the men's shoes because they were the ones in the deep indigo blue with black rubber--I can get polka dots anywhere and the women's shoes were polka-dotted.  A lot of people were distracted by eye-catching polka dots on Thursday.  I bought the shoes 1 size too big, since the smaller sizes were gone--I'd photographed the Japanese girls at Sturbridge wearing their Chuck Taylors like clown shoes.  Why not?  I want to wear my Comme version with a Greek sailor's striped cotton shirt (one of my international staples).  

I needed to pare it down:  what would seem silly later?  What wouldn't wear well?  What would not truly fit into my life?  What looked more like H&M and less like Comme?  What could I get from the main line for a good price somewhere out there?  When all was said and done, I bought the clown shoes and a pair of the droopy pants, which I'm wearing as I write.  Well, that was almost all.  

We ran off to the Fifth Avenue store after finding out that it was the only one in New York City with the full collection.  Merde, alors!  We were so far behind the curve at the point that it was virtually hopeless.  

Aside from the collection, which was very well executed and equally sweet and serious, the customers were uber-stylish (see the rope scarf, furry vest and awesome deconstructed bomber jacket) and seemingly serious and intelligent.  Nevertheless, all we really wanted to do seriously was to shop.

Obama Won.

My friend Nayia voted for the first time in the United States after becoming a citizen just a few months ago.  She snapped this license plate on the FDR Drive on Wednesday, November 5.

The Chevrolet emblem adds a nice touch. Now if this person could trade in the behemoth for a smaller, greener car, we'll be all set.  

Laura Stephen Appears in Dress Code

Introducing Laura Stephen, the subject of my most recent Dress Code column in Berkshire Living magazine.
According to Laura, business changed at the end of the summer due to pressing economic concerns.  She discussed the two extremes dancing in shoppers' heads: necessity and desire.  "People want something that speaks to them emotionally," she explained.  

"Really speaks to them in a powerful way," if the luxury market is going to survive in light of our current economic reality.  

As for Armani, where Laura is vice president of women's ready-to-wear, "We are watching our business," she revealed.  "Business is steady for us." Nevertheless, when it comes to trying new and untested merchandise, the company has to be cautious to avoid adversely affecting its profits.  As for the fashion industry overall, Laura does not mince words:  "Business is terrible right now."  

Indeed, about two months after I spoke to Laura about how the downturn is affecting the luxury end of the fashion industry, the stock rating of high-end retailer Barneys New York was downgraded to below junk bond status.  Ouch!

As shown in the bottom, behind-the-scenes photo, we needed to tape Laura's fabulous silk Fendi dress to her back because the straps kept falling.  

What helps to keep Laura's life in balance?  She runs about 25 miles every week and travels around the country to run in relays for various causes.  Whenever she's not traveling, she runs across the Brooklyn Bridge daily, usually beginning at about 5:30 am.  

Martina Arfwidson, Face Stockholm Maven

Martina looked sooooo cute in this vintage 1980s Mila Schon trench dress from Petria Boutiq.

She visited the boutique with her mother, Gunn Nowak, Face Stockholm's maitresse and Rosalyn Gershell, one of the funniest, wittiest people I have the pleasure of knowing.