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“The Hunger Games” costumer Judianna Makovsky combines past, current looks for film

23 Mar

Today opens the much-anticipated (and hyped) film  “The Hunger Games,” a dystopian fantasy where poor young people are pitted against one another in a battle to the death.  But have you noticed what they’re wearing?  I certainly have noticed, and not necessarily the garb on the star-crossed young folk, played by Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson (who, in the story, are given their own stylists), but also the clothing and coiffures on actors Stanley Tucci, Wes Bentley, and Elizabeth Banks….

Poor horrible, horrible Effie. I'd rather fight for my life than have to wear this get-up. yeesh!

I’ve been fascinated by the horrific-looking Effie Trinket,  that Ga Ga-esque fuscha nightmare, replete with leg-o-mutton sleeves like I haven’t seen since the 1980′s.  What about Tucci’s blue samurai haircut, Bentley’s weird facial hair, and that the residents of District 12 look like they stepped out of a King Vidor film of the 1930′s.  Well, there’s no coincidence here.  Costume designer Judianna Makovsky (also the costume designer for the Harry Potter films), spoke about her work and influences to the Los Angeles Times and InStyle.com , with the latter of the two a little more (perhaps inappropriately) enthusiastic about translating the film’s looks to our world.

Makovsky, however, was most interested in keeping the looks consistent with descriptions in the book.  For Katniss Everdean’s “girl on fire dress” Makovsky says:  “I wanted the dress to be red, but not so covered in stones that it would look like something out of Dancing With the Stars…”  And, of course, the dress doesn’t actually burst into real flames–CGI helped in that department.

Many of the designers who influenced Makovsky’s “Capitol Couture” fashions include Alexander McQueen, Jean Paul Gaultier, Rodarte, and Elsa Schiaparelli, queen of surrealist fashion design in the 1930;s and 40′s.  So it’s no wonder that I’m seeing the 1980′s, since Gaultier and McQueen’s work was highly influential back then–and certain motifs and themes keep getting recycled into 21st century fashion.  The Capitol dwellers have been described as “opulent” and other word to connote their high-fashion status.  But with the colored-hair wigs (green, pink, etc) I can’t help but think of the sad-looking women with bizarrely colored wigs in Stanley Kubrick’s classic A Clockwork Orange–another dystopian society movie with kids as the main focus.

A purple-haired pub waitress in Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange."

Wardrobe for Katniss and other District 12 dwellers is most definitely influenced by workwear of the past.  Makovsky looked at photos from that time period, to get a better sense of everyday fashion. Since there are always more regular folk than fashionistas, the numbers of costumes for the extras (as well as the principals) came from a combination of vintage finds and costumes hand-made and fitted for the film.  With roughly 600 charater extras, there wound up being a total of 1800 costumes just for this group alone!

Makovsky says she hopes that many of the costumes will go on display somewhere after the movie.

Yet there’s another rather silly and superfluous side to all this great costuming.  Lion’s Gate, the Hunger Games film company, decided to go all out with their social media promotions for the film, including a tumblr titled Capitol Couture.  This has to be one of the worst sites I’ve ever seen: everything from the dull colors to the District Style Challenges screams promotion desperation.

Seriously, this is a dystopian film.  Lots of people get killed.  You want to dress like the idiots of the Capitol and the “citizens” who are marked for death?  Really?  That kind of promotion seems tacky and jaundiced, and almost seems to highlight an ironic mocking of fans and moviegoers.  Same can be said for a feature at InStyle.com, which talks about Katniss’ spring style.  Really???  That’s like the Lisabeth Salanader look for H&M.    All I can do is chalk this stuff up to the annals of “When Film Promotions Go Horribly Wrong.”    If film companies and p.r. departments are looking to capture some sort of fashion zeitgeist of these films, they really can’t.  The looks speak for themselves, and audiences will adopt those looks if they find them cool.  Companies cannot manufacture that kind of fashion passion.  It just happens.  Trying to manufacture it only makes them look like the people we’re supposed to be rooting against in films like The Hunger Games.  How Ironic.

 

Luxury Flash Sale sites fall victim to consumer boredom

2 Feb

Really now. . . how many L.A.M.B. purses, seasonless Hugo Boss dresses, and gourmet cheeses can anyone afford these days?  Apparently, not too many….

no, this is not today's gourmet cheese offering from Gilt Group, but oh, if it was! ;)

BetaBeat reports that several luxury flash sale sites have sustained substantial layoffs in the past few months, including Gilt  Group, the American imitator of Ventee-Privee.  The article gives a heads-up on what’s what at many of the top, and not so top, flash sale sites.  Are they retail flashes in the proverbial pan, or will they have staying power over the long haul of our recessionary times??

Honestly, I signed up for Gilt, Hautelook (owned by Nordstroms), Ideeli, and several others in order to see what was under the hood, so to say.  And here’s my take: they’re boring.  Item offered on a continual basis are handbags, shoes, shoes and handbags.  Maybe some jewelry, maybe some cute underwear (perhaps not in my size.)  There may even be clothing from time to time, but the really good items sell out quickly–or there aren’t any good items to begin with.

The thing is, shopping, for me anyway, is a way to satiate that old hunter-gatherer instinct.  There’s something incredibly satisfying about getting out of the house to go hunting and gathering–so much more funthan pointing and clicking.  Sure, I can send something back if it turns out not to be what I want, but I’d rather make that decision before an item gets into my home.  Once an item crosses the threshold, I don’t want to concern myself with packing it up and sending it back, even if the return shipping fees are paid.

The appeal of luxury flash sale sites must be to the suburban McMansion owner who works long hours, lives off credit cards, and believes that status is conferred on those whose wardrobes are branded with big names.   Because, honestly, in small towns we don’t really care about status brands.  And in big cities, status brands are, literally, just around the next corner.

If you really feel the need…

As our economy shifts, the suburban McMansion owner may no longer have the spare credit rating to own a litter of  L.A.M.B. handbags,  let alone care about the status conferred by private vineyard wines and artisanal cheeses.

So, who knows what the long-range is for these sites–some may last, and some may fold.  But since I really enjoy the tactile sensation and hurly burly of hunter-gatherer shopping, I think I’ll spend more time at the malls and outlets and ditch my “memberships” to these sites.  That certainly will cut down on my daily spam intake for sure.

Swivel virtual dressing room to relieve the pain of long lines and virtual mishaps

13 Jan

You know what it’s like to stand there, and stand there, and stand there waiting for someone to come by and open the dressing room door, or perhaps you just don’t feel like taking something off to try on one lousy blouse…

That’s where Swivel, the virtual dressing room, could save you a whole lot of aggravation.

Swivel was demo’d this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.  FaceCake Marketing Technologies, which developed the snazzy proprietary software is hoping that it will be used by virtual as well as mall-based retailers.  Swivel makes good use of motion-sensoring technology in webcams and Microsoft Kinect to scan your body and then fit you into the items you’d like to try on.

Here’s a screen shot from the Los Angeles Times video of how Swivel works:

Honestly, if I happen to be in a store, I’d rather just buy something and then return it if it doesn’t fit.  However, I can see this as a boon to online retailers.  I will often not buy from online retailers if I am not sure of  their sizes.  Size charts help but sometimes there are multiple manufacturers sold by one online retailer.  Sometimes they have manufacturer/designer specific charts and sometimes they don’t.  Product reviews help (esp. when they note if an item fits too small or too large.)  To have the addition of a visualization before ordering an item could certainly save a whole lot of return troubles!

Note:  I believe I saw Swivel, as well as some other and quite different virtual try-on software at the Fashion 140 conference in New York City last spring.

Lagerfeld Inspires with 2012 pre-Fall Collection, LeWeb Interview

14 Dec

More often than not I’ll view the video or photos of a fashion show and think “meh” or “omg, that’s ugly.”  Believe me, it’s not that I don’t “get it.”  I’ve been “getting” the whole fashion thing since about 1980.  It’s just that most of it leaves me rather underwhelmed with its rehashed style and retro kink.  Then I peruse the Chanel 2012 pre-Fall collection,  and I find myself having a Wow Moment.  Tim Banks writing for Style.com describes it thusly:

The theme “Paris-Bombay” was a reminder that Europe’s fashion industry has increasingly turned to India to produce extravagantly handworked pieces as it has become prohibitively expensive to make them at home. [Karl] Lagerfeld’s fiendish plan was to flip the equation, so that everything that looked intricately Indian was actually made by Chanel’s ateliers in Paris. That was some kind of tour de force….

All that aside, Paris and Bombay blended beautifully in pearl-swagged tweeds, in a raw silk tunic over leggings (they were actually sinuously bootlike, so we should probably call them beggings or loots), in sheer paisleys, or side-draped asymmetry in ivory silk.

Wow,  indeed!

Now, I might not want to wear an entire ensemble from the collection.  That would be a tad too costume-y.  I could, though, easily add a piece here and there, and bring a little Parisian-Indian elegance to my wardrobe.  Here are some of the complete looks that I would then take a piece from, here and there, to the continuing fashion  Story of Me

And then, my friend Halley Tucker, who was at the LeWeb tech conference in Paris, blogged LeWeb founder Loic LeMeur’s interview with Karl Lagerfeld!  She captured the most insightful moments from the interview.  The stand-out of the interview was Lagerfeld discussing the way he indulges new technologies while never forgetting the importance of the tactile world (something a whole lot of geek-techy types want us to think is unimportant.)  The best, though, is Lagerfeld’s sentiments about social networking overload: “It’s not about being overly connected, it’s about being WELL connected.”

Indeed!

Flash Sale Overload!

17 Jun

Another Flash Sale site? Oh, no Tish, I just can't handle looking at another pair of Louboutins!

This morning, as I was updating my Facebook status, an ad appeared for another one of those Flash Sale sites..

For those of you who don’t know what that is, a flash sale site is a website that offers special deals on designer clothing, home furnishings, travel packages, etc. for limited time periods.  Many of the flash sale sites are for members only, while all you need is an email addy and password for others.  Sales can last from several days to several hours.  With some sites you can earn points towards purchases for signing up friends.  Examples of flash sale sites that I belong to are ideeli, Gilt Group, and Haute Look.

Not that I’ve ever made a purchase on any of them.   I find that for me, a dedicated frugalista, these sites function as look books, where I make mental notes on designers, cuts, colors and fabrics–which then makes it easier to find that unique, on-trend look when I hit some of my favorite shops.

I guess, too, the other thing I don’t like about flash sale sites is that it’s difficult for me to buy something as, say, a $270 Hugo Boss dress, because I would like to try it on first.  As an Average Woman, my size ranges anywhere from a 12 on a good day, to a 16 on a badly cut designer day (if I can find a 16, that is.)  Not knowing the cut of a particular designer’s clothing or shoes, nor how the dress will look,  causes me to hesitate before making a costly, disappointing, online ordering mistake.

All I can think of is the *great* Michael Kors dress I found in Macy’s, on sale, that looked fantastic on the mannequin, and utterly dreadful on me.  Not to mention that Kors’ extra-large was (happily, though) too large for me.   Could you have imagined how I would have felt if I’d ordered it online?  I would have had to stare at my disappointment for several days (or in my case, several months) before I returned it.  And then the hassle of waiting for the credit to appear back on my account…ugh!

I guess if you know the way a particular designer’s clothes fit,  or if you’re ridiculously model thin, the whole return thing isn’t a big concern….

The bigger question though, is do we need another flash sale site?  Maybe the folks who set it up think so, but the flash sale strategy is usually aimed at young female consumers with an unquenchable thirst for FASHION.

I’m not sure how long, nor how many sites, a strategy like that can support.

As usual, it will be interesting to see what happens to all these flash sale sites in a few years.  For now, I’m suffering from flash sale site overload.

Google Gets Stylish with Boutiques.com

17 Nov

Who knew the guys at Google would come up with something as fun as Boutiques.com!  According to the blurb on the Official Google Blog Boutiques.com is designed to create “a personalized shopping experience that lets you find and discover fashion goods, by creating your own curated boutique or through a collection of boutiques curated by taste-makers…” (taste-makers being celebrities and that sort…)

I’m a little crunched for time today, but spent a bit of it on Boutiques.com playing with Step 1: Stylyzer.  I clicked a series of pictures of what I liked–which it then crunched to give me a style result.  It told me that I like a “Classic” style.  And for the most part this is true (what “classic” translates to nowadays is not what the ladies of  the “Golden Girls” wear.  whew!)  I was also able to add “Edgy” and “Casual Classic”  to my style repertoire.

There are six steps in all, where you can chose your loves/hates for dresses, tops, bottoms and designers.  You pick the styles, the colors, and the patterns…

Google’s put in all sorts of algorithms to crunch data in order to make recommendations based on what I’ve entered compared with what the taste-makers have liked. Then it makes recommendations. I’ll spend time with this later to see what it recommends for me.  I’m rather excite to see what comes up, and if this will be a cool tool for girls of any age, or if it is geared towards that 18-34 demographic–and then drops the rest of us on our stylish heads (as most fashion magazines do.)

Note:  most of the stories linked on Techmeme talk about the site from a tech/marketing perspective.   That’s all well and good, but if it doesn’t appeal to women’s sensibilities as well as be easy to use and navigate (so far a plus for both) then it will crash and burn like Google Wave.  Let’s see what happens when I dig into it and put it through its paces!