Ok ladies... check these out.  These designers have created fashion for women who must dress within the confines of their religion/culture, and have done so with grace, style, and daring.  Look before you judge, they will knock you out.
 news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Islamic-Fashion-Festival/ss/events/fashion/052709islamicfashion

 No photos today, because I have not posted in quite a while.  I could run through a few lame excuses, like work, family responsibilities, the time consuming and somewhat stressful demands of plotting for world domination, that sort of thing, but I won't.
It has come to my attention recently that there has been a quantum shift in my beloved fashion magazines.  No doubt the economic situation plays a large role in this change.  The change I am referring to is a stunning absence of frivolity with regard to the covers (and contents) of most, if not all of my favorite fashion mags.  
They abound with tips on beauty on-the-cheap, get your best makeup finds at the drugstore!  Reinvent your existing wardrobe by re-combining what you already have!  Sensible, sane, appropriate advice, but so boring!!
Oh sure, the more venerable of the fashion magazines still have crazy photo shoots with models trussed up in latex stockings wearing $10,000.00 dresses while painting the side of a battleship with a toothbrush, but they also have plenty of articles about touching up your own roots, do-it-yourself pedicures, etc.  
One of the best things about fashion is, and has always been, escapism.  I want runway theater!  Ridiculous photos of starved teenage glamour girls wearing a salad spinner with netting for a hat, teetering down the runway in shoes never meant for 14-year-olds to wear!  Silly clothes that celebrities will wear once on the red carpet, then regret for eternity every time they see a photo of themselves.  I want to drool shamelessly over clothing and accessories that cost more than I make in a month!
Sky-high stilettos!  Dresses too short to be considered dresses by any but the most depraved designer!  Fabrics that cannot be cleaned in any manner known to woman, obscenely priced, that will be worn once, or not at all!
Let me know if any of you ladies have observed this phenomenon, and how you're dealing with the recession-era fashion blues.
I wanna know!

What’s absurd?

Absurd is paying professionals to oversee your exercise and diet regimens so you can have the right body to nab those A-list acting jobs … and then letting your stylist put you in a dress with a built-in bustle. It’s a design that can make some of the most attractive women in the world look like Oompa-Loompas …or Judy Jetson. (Hello, Cate Blanchett, I’m talking to you, here!)

When it comes to design, Calvin Klein has always meant simple, elegant and flattering to the female form. Francisco Costa, creative director of Calvin Klein Collection, is bringing a whole new look to Klein’s catalog, and one is tempted to call it “ultra-hip.”

Q: What can we take from this?

A: Francisco Costa doesn’t like girls.

(What other explanation can there be?)

Klein is known for minimalist design, and this dress is certainly minimalist. It also looks like an ill-conceived “Project Runway” challenge, where the plucky and seriously annoying young designers are given a roll of paper towels, some wire, and one hour to come up with something to impress the judges. Cue Heidi Klum, hands on nonexistent hips, “Costa, you ahr owt.”

Clothing this absurd is always present in fashion. It usually ends up as runway theater, and as such, is really never meant to be worn. But this time, grown women (ok, um, celebrities), who really should know better, are actually sporting these exaggerated caricatures of the female form in public.

And now, let’s rag on Jessica Alba. (C’mon, it’s fun and you know you want to.)

Ms. Alba, who possesses an enviable physique, looks like an attendee of a PTA social who’s clinging to dreams of youth as she loses her fight with middle-age spread. One look and all you can think is, “She’s retaining brownies.”

The waistline of her “dress” is accented by a bizarre hodgepodge of brooches, ribbons and bits of stuff she might have found at the bottom of her purse.

I’m not even going to mention the shoes, because honestly I think she needs them to sex up her outfit, especially in light of those unfortunate cereal-bowl bangs.

Victoria Beckham is just too easy a target, and clearly Debra Messing’s stylist was mad at her, or maybe suffering from PMS.

These dresses are absurd, but maybe their appeal is as a much less obvious and clichéd way to carry tiny dogs unobtrusively in public.

Boobs!

In a discussion with someone a few weeks ago regarding a situation where my 18-year- old daughter would be in a social situation with a 13-year-old boy, I amused myself by imagining the boy’s thoughts upon chatting with her.  I imagined they would go something like this:


Girl:  “gaming, anime, music, movies, etc.”
Boy: “uh huh, yeah, (BOOBS!) … yeah, uh huh … (BOOBS!)

They are a cultural obsession for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is to generate sexual interest in the onlooker, and to fill out a really nice sweater.  They are a symbol of fertility and a readiness to perpetuate the species, and they are an accessory unto themselves.  But there is a time and a place, and they are simply everywhere! 

Yesterday, while attending the National Fiery Foods & BBQ Show at Sandia Casino, I was confronted, nay, assaulted with the sight of “the girls”, hoisted up and displayed for the unwary onlooker at every turn.  One young woman there was hugely pregnant, and her nearly naked rack was in danger of colliding with her chin.

Now, I am not what you would call modestly endowed, so I have a keen interest in avoiding overexposure.  I am also past 40, and though a near-pathological avoidance of the sun and heavy use of sunscreen means that my décolletage looks pretty sprightly, I prefer to leave the plunging necklines to the 20- and 30-year-olds.

That said, I think even the younger ladies might want to assess their ensemble before walking out into the world.  Questions they might want to ask the mirror would be: “Will I drop stuff down my cleavage at a client lunch?”  “Will the creepy guy in the next cubicle be incapable of speech?”  “Can I get extra cinnamon sprinkles on my latte from the cute guy at Starbucks?”  It’s not all negative, I’m just saying, pick your venue!

“Everything old is new again.”

This is never more true than when you’re talking fashion trends. Fashion, much like pop culture, is eating itself.

Every season, designers trot out new collections that are almost invariably re-imagined trends from past decades, and the nostalgic regurgitation seems to be occurring ever more quickly. Remember the beginning of the turn of the millennium? Wax nostalgic now for … um … has enough time passed? The decade is not even over yet.

One example is the band jacket. Worn onstage and apparently elsewhere by the King of Pop in the ’80s, now re-animated by designers like Phillip Lim, and even from the venerable house of Chanel.

Wear this, and someone might ask you to park their car. Or play the tuba. Military-inspired fashion can be chic and irreverent when mixed with more low-key separates so that it does not veer into costume territory. But a band jacket is a costume.

Some jacket types are iconic, and represent a uniform, of a sort. The biker jacket is one, but has been utterly co-opted into mainstream fashion. It even appears, paired with business attire as a jacket substitute, in all but the most conservative of workplaces.

No, if you show up in the band jacket, be prepared for smirks, snickers, and heck, perhaps even an unabashed guffaw. There might be one or two people out there, maybe Kate Moss or that guy married to Ashlee Simpson, who could rock this look, but the rest of us should leave the band jacket on the football field.

Now, about that hat …

Feline art shoe, by Esther Calvo, 2004 Workman Publishing Shoe-A-Day Calendar 2009.


I’m posting this photo to illustrate how truly wonderful an ordinary object can become in the hands of an artist. Of course, this is not a shoe in the practical sense. It cannot be worn, but was created merely as an art object to be admired.

It’s absurd, but that’s its charm.


Taking absurdism in a different direction, some designers have become obsessed with vertiginous, clunky, chunky, fetishistic shoes. They create shoes, like the example I have here from Ferragamo, that once were the proprietary footgear of ladies who earned their living with a pole and a G-string.

I am four feet eleven inches tall, and I do love a heel. But six-inch heels with a two- or three-inch platform under the toe? Models teeter down the runway in them, grim expressions on their faces, no doubt thinking, ‘What if I fall off these things? I could break a hip! This altitude is making me dizzy!’

Shoes like these have gotten steadily more absurd with each season. They’re the type of footwear that require an assistant for strapping on … and later a spotter for the dismount.

Shoes can literally make or break your look, not to mention your ankle. That said, I cannot imagine a work scenario where this type of shoe would be anything but a monumental distraction. Women would whisper behind their hands to one another, jealous and fearful that a dominatrix had entered their midst. Men would react with either abject terror or an unseemly and distinctly unprofessional drooling lust. It would all end with the offending shoe-wearer getting marched to HR for a lecture on appropriate business attire.

So, wear them if you’re brave, or just feeling particularly saucy on a Wednesday morning, but pick your venue carefully. Because these shoes mean anything but business.

OK, so I was being nice before.

I didn't point out the inherent swindle in paying more than twice the price for a pair of shoes just so you can function as free advertising for the designer.

But now I want to be less nice, more honest.

I want to talk honestly about the trend toward skinny jeans. The kind of jeans that look great on less than one percent of the population ... that percentage that is comprised mainly of 6-foot, 110-pound fashion models, and/or the new brand of twiggy fourteen-year-old boy.

American women have once again leapt, --- well, with those tight-fitting legs, maybe not leapt, maybe sort of hopped and scooched --- onto this unflattering jean-trend bandwagon.

Think about it. On all but the very thinnest of legs, the drastic taper from hip to ankle serves to emphasize every bump and bulge, and equips the wearer with a virtual flashing arrow that says, "Childbearing hips! Just look at 'em!" It also tends to limit the range of motion in the wearer's knees, ensuring a sort of lock-step shuffle. And if you're skeptical ... watch someone wearing them try to walk up stairs. (Think "Wizard of Oz." Think Tin Woodman. Can you hear it? ... "Oil-can! Oil-can!")

Then there is that most egregious of combinations: skinny legs and a high waist. Oh goody! This guarantees both the effect described above, and as a bonus, makes even the perkiest of posteriors appear flattened and elongated --- the hallmark of that shuddering horror: mom jeans.

Now I realize there are those svelte and lithe individuals out there --- all six of them --- who will defend them. "They look great tucked into boots," they say. "Fabulous with a tunic or long slouchy sweater," they'll insist.

Really?

Maybe for those few, that might be so. The rest of us will hold on ... steadfast and resolute in our hoarding of the perfect dark-rinsed, boot-cut pair ... knowing that at the end of the day, our legs will look longer, our hips will look more in proportion, and we will be able to climb stairs and even cross our legs without cutting off circulation below the knee.

Current economic conditions being what they are, it has become something more of a challenge to satisfy the craving for style. There is a daunting array of choices out there, but you don’t have to sacrifice quality for a lower price tag.

Take shoes, for example; the right (or wrong) shoes can make or break your look. They can mean the difference between just looking presentable, and looking great.

Two pairs of shoes I found in the spring 2009 Garnet Hill catalog (www.garnethill.com) are similar in style and quality. The top image is a pair by Donald Pliner, and will set you back about $240. The bottom image is a pair from Born, and will cost you about $90.

What’s the real difference here?

Basically, the Pliners are Italian-made; they have elegant slim straps and a comfortable platform sole. The Borns are similar in appearance and quality, and might be more comfortable, yet cost less than half of the Pliner pair.

Why is this?

Well, mainly, it’s the name. You always pay more for a designer with Pliner’s reputation, and you're paying for the cachet that comes from being able to afford them.

For my money, the Borns are the way to go.
You can achieve a similar look for far less money. You could buy two pairs of the Born sandals for the price of one pair of the Donald Pliner’s and still have money left over!