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Average Woman Looks at Springtime Shoes (and what they say about you)

26 Mar

Spring is here!  The weather’s getting warmer, the trees are budding and the forsythia is in bloom!  Which means it’s time to put away the suede shooties and shearling booties (mostly) and start thinking pedicures and peep-toe pumps.  That is, if it doesn’t snow the first week of April….

On the Spring 2012 Runways we saw a lot of what we’ve been seeing and wearing: sky

gorgeous Meredith platforms available at charlotteolympia.com

high-heels, chunky platforms, and barely-there flat sandals in every color of the rainbow (almost) including color block.  This is definitely one of the most exciting springtimes for shoes I’ve seen in years!

But let’s face a few small facts:  it’s hard to get around town in sky-high heels.  Chunky platforms on over 40 legs aren’t always fun, let alone attractive.    So what’s a woman to do?

Christian Siriano "Michelle" ballet flat at payless.com has a trendy keyhole peep-toe.

My favorite fashion guru, Bill Cunningham, recently noticed that women in New York City (a place where it’s important to be quick on your feet) have put the huge heels in their tote bags, and are traversing the streets in ballet flats.  If you have to move fast, nothing beats a good-fitting ballet flat!   I have several inexpensive pair that I use for kicking around in the spring and summer, esp. when I don’t have heavy-duty walking ahead of me.  That’s the great thing about ballet flats:  you don’t need an expensive pair to look great.

That’s not to say that heels and platforms will go by the wayside.  Not at all!  And if you want to wear them, by all means do!  I’m so looking forward to getting into my 4.5 inch red Guess platform sandals that I bought last year, even if I don’t wear them while traipsing through the streets of New York City or to the local grocery store — although the latter can be lots of fun, esp. if I want to turn a few heads…

Which leads me to another reason why you might want to wear some high heels every now and then.  Not only can they lengthen your legs, but they’re great eye-catchers.  Yes, even if you have a husband or a boyfriend, please just admit that it’s great fun to catch some good-looking guy eyeing up your shoes.  It’s a thrill!  I find it even more fun when the good-looking guys are a whole lot younger than myself (shoes are one of those things that are, well, ageless if you let them be.)   This cute little feature from Glamour.com let’s you in on what goes through the brains of men when they’re looking at your shoes.  Totally darling!

For Fun:   Check out Bill Cunningham’s latest on the beauty of springtime in Manhattan  and my Pinterest “Shoe Fetishist” pinboard of cool, beautiful shoes.

Sunday’s Fashion Lesson with Bill Cunningham….

12 Mar

If you don’t know who Bill Cunningham is, you should….especially if you want to learn anything about how to cultivate a

poster for the documentary "Bill Cunningham New York"

discerning eye for fashion and style.  Not to mention the lovely little lessons on the history of 20th century fashion that Cunningham weaves into his weekly fashion videos that are featured on the front of the Sunday  New York Times website

Cunningham has been a  photojournalist for The New York Times since at least the 1970′s–prior to that he was a fashion journalist for Women’s Wear Daily and a Harvard drop-out.  He has been taking candid street photographs of fashionable people for close to 50 years now.  While some might consider his photos “artless” it’s not art that Cunningham is looking to create.  Rather, he documents the ways in which people of all sorts interpret the fashion of their day, as much as he chronicles the evolutions of fashion styles….

For instance, in yesterday’s short titled “Sun Spot”, Cunningham views Paris Fashion Week, the last week of  shows for the Fall-Winter 2012 fashions.  He notes how much yellow he sees on women attending the shows (working women, many still clad in always-in-fashion black) and in the flowers dotting the Parisian landscape.  Cunningham notes that fashion is all a jumble right now, but that women nowadays want fashion that not only fits their lifestyle, but also fashion that they choose and pay for themselves.  In this “modern age” we are not the “decorative women” of the post-WWII 1950s,  who were festooned to represent the affluence of their husbands and who, in their leisure could be nothing more than decorative objects (much to the consternation of a lot of women.)

“When someone else is paying, then you buy something frivolous,” Cunningham says, ” When you’re paying for it yourself, you think twice.”

And that, to me is what marks the difference between adolescent fashion and grown-up fashion.  For adolescents (and the chronological age is variable) there’s spending a whole lot of money for something that is trendy and may look downright awful.  Grown-ups, however, don’t have that particular level of disposable income that so many young people might have…..

So, the young people become the frivolous fashionistas, which, IMO, is what’s plaguing a lot of fashion right at this moment.  We don’t have enough fashion for grown-ups who work, who raise families, who aren’t lounging around sipping smoothies and exercising all day in order to keep their “girlish figures.”

I love, though, that Cunningham is so delightfully sanguine and believes that fashion will turn around and reflect what women need.   This is another part of why I love to watch his photos and listen to him every week: in a fashion world that seems to be constantly unforgiving of women and women’s lives, Cunningham situates fashion in historical context, and, right now, reminds us of the upheaval that may indeed shake out for the best.

In the meantime, I’m going to continue to watch Bill’s weekly videos and take his fashion and style recommendations…..

BTW, anybody seen my yellow scarf…… :-)

Limelight rises to relaunch as department store

13 Jul

If you were a young person in New York City, or even a Bridge & Tunnel person, you probably partied at The Limelight.  The club responsible for making goth, industrial and techno almost acceptable to the middle class closed rather ignominiously a few years after the whole Michael Alig mess.There were a with a couple of reboots in the 90′s and the 00′s, but the old place never regained its momentum.  Finally, it was shuttered for good in 2007.

Then, in May 2010, it became Limelight Marketplace, one of those upscale indoor markets. “Originally, we wanted Limelight Marketplace to be a family-style entertainment palace,” owner Jack Menasche was quoted in WWD.

Limelight Marketplace--a little cramped, I'd say....

“Family-style entertainment palace” in a former house of decadence.  Really?  Really??  No wonder it flopped.

Fear not!  For the Limelight is about to be resurrected one more time: as a sexy super department store in September, 2011.  Some of the brands slated to be featured are M. Missoni, Charlotte Ronson, Winter Kate (one of  Nicole  Richie’s brands), and Levi’s Made & Crafted.

Well, not sure if I’ll be able to find anything in my size–so far the offerings seem oriented to the young fashionista– but it’ll be worth browsing anyway…

If you want to know what all the noise was about the club, check this this brief history of the Limelight on The Bowery Boys blog.

Limelight Marketplace photo courtesy of  gzaharoff’s posterous.