Friday, January 27, 2012

Etta James & Haute Couture

Darlings, I am Devastated after hearing about Etta James, one of the world’s most wonderful Jazz and R & B singers passing away; her song “At Last” is just so iconic, so perfectly rendered that no one else can come close to duplicating it.

I am so glad that I encouraged my great-niece to buy a CD of her songs which included that one; she e-mailed me this morning and said she is going to hunt for every CD that has ever been produced of her singing. I told her to not forget Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Holiday, Dina Washington and Julie London; we could all learn from them their singing style, just so wonderful on cold, rainy nights.

I am going to have to go over my collection and see what I need to do to update it.

But still one more voice now gone, first Elizabeth and now Etta, well the best thing I can do is simply “pound out” more posts.

And I have been a busy “Little Bee”.

I had a chance to see what the Haute-Couture Fashion is coming out of Paris and all I can say is that I was bored, bored, bored, with the exception of some promising numbers from Dior and a couple from the house of Channel there was nothing that was exciting.

Even the clothing styles created for the T.V. program “Mad Men” were far more exciting than what walked down the runways. One of my friends who is an editor for a Fashion magazine had asked if I care to come with her for Fashion week, and although I would have loved seeing Paris again (I have not been there for nearly 6 years), I decided to pass on it and sent my regrets, but she promised to keep me up to date on what looked promising.

Even she had a hard time getting excited about what trotted out.

Lagerfeld did have some inspiration perhaps from the possibility of the Television program Pan-Am but frankly there were a lot of styles from the 1960’s that were not the best. And shades of blue, Darlings are we all going to be stewardesses?

My friend said she would have loved to see some of the garments in other colors, to get a true feel of what they would be.

Versache went with off-white silver and acid green, but Halston could have done better if he was alive and still designing.

What I have to laugh about is how the fashion reporters give such glowing reports on stuff that are such tripe. I could do better by going into my closet and digging out garments from 20 years ago that I still fit into. Even the vintage items from the Art Deco shows are far better than what walked down the run ways this spring season.

Sorry Darlings, I just could not get excited, and the clothing styles out of Berlin…Unbelievable, I think there was only one thing that I saw among them that was of interest.

But the year is still young, we’ll just have to wait and see what crops up. Or is it going to be Talbots and Jessica London with their basic sensible designs?

However something very interesting has developed, Constance's second oldest daughter, Bella has discovered the clothes that I gave to her mother, she became very interested in dress design and such and look classes in sewing, she sewed her own prom dresses as well as several for her friends and got paid for it.

Well when she came over this last weekend with her mother and the baby, such a sweet little thing, she asked me about vintage designs, so I showed her my closets and we talked, and talked she didn't want to leave, so Juanita, Constance and the Baby went to do their errands and Bella and I looked at the clothes, talked about fashion, and we went over the patterns offered by Vogue, Butterick and McCalls.

She has a sewing machine a good sturdy Singer, so I am going to "bankroll" her, she wants to get into tailoring and designing, her Mother is concerned about her making her way in the world, and I have to admit the world of fashion design is highly competitive, and I encouraged her to look at taking business classes so she would understand what a cut-throat business she'd be getting into, she also saw my Besame cosmetics, and so I showed her a web site "Lulu's at the Belle Kay".

Oh the sweet dear became ecstatic!

I told her about the Art Deco Societies and the concept of all the retro programs such as Pan Am, Mad Men and some of the movies. So I have told her she needs to develop a plan and get an idea of what she wants to do.

So calling Constance on her cell phone I told her that we were going to a fabric store that I knew and buy Patterns, and that Constance better be prepared to have a at home business in her house and said to come back to my house and we'd all go out to dinner, baby in tow.

So that evening we did and explained what I was going to do for Bella, but Bella had to promise that she would go to college and study business and marketing as well as fashion design, it's exciting to be able to help launch a career, and to encourage her dreams.

And now I have other postings to prepare.

Until anon Darlings, Kisses

Until Anon, Kisses Darlings

No comments: