YOU SHOULD BE DANCIN'

My baby moves at midnight

Goes right on till the dawn

My woman takes me higher

My woman keeps me warm

You should be dancin' yeah

-- Bee Gees

Old school Kate, Naomi, and Christy dancing via Fashionista

EVERY HOME HAS A STORY

I once wrote a post on how each piece in your home can tell a story. At the time, I was sharing a lovely apartment with a girlfriend, and our home was reflective of our friendship and memories with our group of girls. Six months ago, after our lease ended, I moved into my own apartment for the first time. Living alone can be a little scary, but overall, it feels refreshing and empowering to become responsible for my own place. I've enjoyed creating a space that's reflective of my individual story and goals for the next chapter of life. Besides, in a way, I'm sort of never really alone in my apartment. Many of my pieces have been passed down from my great-grandmothers, exchanged between my grandmother and her sister, and shared by my mother and her sisters. Together with photos of friends and mementos from my past, my first place of my own creates a warm story of love: a story of my evolving life.


Normally, I really don't like talking about myself or my stuff (all this writing in the first person makes me nervous-- do I sound self-indulgent?). But I have come to notice that some of my favorite things to read online have to do with people's personal stories or experiences, and I especially love peeking into real people's homes. I hope you enjoy this post in that way.


One of the favorite spots in my home is the entry way, which is the first things guests are welcomed by when they enter.


Left Side

1. "Graceful Dancer" by Lesley Fotherby

This was a greeting card from my mom a few years ago, an ode to my dancer past.

2. 1964 edition of my favorite book, Gone With the Wind 

My grandmother got this edition of Gone With the Wind while working in the public library when my mom and aunts were in school. The inside page has a penciled-in name, "Mary Lou Huston, 1969". I always wonder whose hands the book has passed through, and whose hearts the story has touched.

3. Golden pineapple lamp

When I was in junior high, my mom let me help re-decorate the front entry of our home. We saw this funny little lamp at the now-defunct Bombay Company, and I absolutely loved it. I'm glad I get to have it in my entry way now.

4. Fashion illustration

This is an atelier sketch from a fashion house I interned for while still in school. The dress in the sketch was worn by the Best Actress winner at the Golden Globes that year, a project I was very proud to have helped make happen. I treasured my internship experience, and it helped set me on the path toward my career in fashion PR. 

5. Letter from Marilyn Monroe

This typed letter is addressed to the German Consulate General on Wilshire Boulevard. It reads, "Thank you for your champagne. It arrived, I drank it, and I was gayer. Thanks again." Not only did I think this quaint note was very funny, but I also live on Wilshire, so I had to have it displayed.

6. Nostalgia in Vogue

This is my treasured copy of Nostalgia in Vogue. I have written how deeply I adore this column and book, so it had to have a prominent position.

7. Venetian mirrored console

This piece used to be in my parents' entry way. At Christmas, we would put dozens of candles on the top, the glittery silver trees and twinkling tea lights all reflecting their warmth a thousand times over in the mirrored surface.

Right Side

1. Gold scrolled mirror

This was in one of my parents' first homes together. When I was little, I thought it was a princess mirror.

2. Vogue Covers

This is the British edition of Vogue Covers, given to me last Christmas by one of my most lovely friends from work.

3. Masquerade photo

This vintage frame belonged to my great-grandmother Viola. The photo was taken at my birthday party year before last, during which we all donned masks and drank champagne.

4. US Army frame with party picture

This vintage frame, with a dignified eagle perched atop, was a frame issued by the US Army to hold an official portrait of my great-grandfather during World War II. The picture in the frame now was torn out of a magazine, and reads, "The Party: At home or on the other side of the globe, no matter where you party, make sure to do it in style... and always in the company of good friends!"

5. Brass candle sticks

These have belonged to my mother for as long as I can remember. They look slightly vintage, and when I was little, I always thought they were very elegant.

What are your favorite pieces? What stories does your home tell?

13 VINTAGE FASHION ADVERTISEMENTS

Inspired by Refinery29's "Daily Diversion" featuring this vintage Banana Republic ad, 

here are 13 more archived advertisements from some of today's most recognized brands!

Burberry, 1924

L'Oreal, 1920's

Louis Vuitton, 1920's

DeBeer's, 1940's

DeBeer's 1950's

 Chanel, starring Suzy Parker with Cary Grant and Fred Astaire, 1952

Christian Dior, 1960's

Chanel, starring Faye Dunaway, 1972

Judith Leiber, 1989

Neiman Marcus, 1990

Chanel, starring Claudia Schiffer, 1990

Gucci, 1991

 Gucci, 2003

Images via PZR Services, We Heart Vintage, Ad Classix

MUST READ IN 2012: NOSTALGIA IN VOGUE

My favorite section of Vogue has always been the "Nostalgia" column. As described in one of my very first posts, the column features poignant memoirs from writers sharing coming-of-age stories revolving around any host of intriguing characters, including elegant mentors, mysterious fathers, and devastating lovers. Ultimately, the main character becomes the author herself, as she grapples with her own dreams, insecurities, and spiritual growth. It is the vulnerable side of a magazine otherwise featuring impeccable ladies who have already achieved an intimidating volume of professional success, cultural intelligence, and ethereal beauty. (And of course, a killer  eff-ing wardrobe). 

Now, Vogue Features Director Eve MacSweeney has edited a beautiful new coffee table book featuring sixty-three "Nostalgia" essays from the past decade, accompanied by the original archival photographs that inspired the stories (including breathtaking images by Horst P. Horst, Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, and more). I received the book, Nostalgia in Vogue, for Christmas and couldn't be more thrilled. Tamara Warren writes for Forbes.com, "this book is a gentle reminder of why we save our stacks of magazines". Here are a few of my favorite photographs from the collection:

Woman underwater by Toni Firssell from the essay SWEPT AWAY

"Young and in love, Patricia Morrisroe moved into her boyfriend's Sutton Place apartment 

only to have her visions of a romantic summer subsumed by a family drama."

Adele Astaire by Rosamond Pinchot from the essay THE AIR IN ASTAIRE

"A grassed over swimming pool in Ireland inspired artist T.J. Wilcox to explore 

the forgotten life of 1920s It Girl Adele Astaire."

Jerry Hall by Stan Malinowski from the essay PAINT IT RED 

"Jerry Hall's cool attitude and sexy pout turned young Australian Poppy King 

into an international lipstick whiz."

And here are three more pieces of "Nostalgia":

1. FACES OF THE EIGHTIES by Padma Lakshmi

2. NOW, VOYAGER by John Gallianon

3. SOOTHES MY SOUL by... me

SKIRT SIREN

In the late nineties, long skirts still reigned supreme for formalwear. Trains trailed down every red carpet in taffeta and silk, with matching wraps dripping off starlets' arms. For the Winter Ball my freshman year of high school (a very serious fashion affair indeed), we would have never dreamed of going cocktail, as is done now for even the most black tie of events. Instead, we were all obsessed with Gwyneth Paltrow's youthfully irreverent and devastatingly chic Golden Globes look- the formal skirt topped with a casual knit. I had just turned thirteen years old, and the Winter Ball was my first grown-up formal event. I picked out a deep wine color taffeta skirt with a cashmere camisole in the same color, and dreamed of emulating Gwyneth's elegant cool. 

Gwyneth Paltrow at the 1999 Golden Globe Awards

As someone who prefers to be overly celebratory and always overdressed, I am thrilled that the long skirt is making a comeback. I get stir-crazy in "done" looks that I can't style myself or make changes to throughout the night (variety in your photos, darling), so I particularly love that the nineties trend of mixing a formal skirt with a casual top is also resurfacing.  

Models in US Vogue for Fashion Night Out 2010

Paired with my penchant for the cashmere in my men's closets, I have pretty much gone to town with the maxi-and-sweater idea. I plan to carry this into the winter season, wearing as many paradoxically casual cool gown looks as possible. Yes, this will fight with my other obsession, thigh high stockings, but as the girl in the office whom no one recognizes if wearing a pant, there can really never be too many skirt options.

The 2010 red carpet way: Olivia Wilde at the BAFTA Britannia Awards

FLASHBACK: THE BRIDE WORE RICCI

When Vogue covered Lauren Davis' wedding to Andres Santo Domingo in March of 2008, 

I was breathless. It remains my inspiration for my own traditional Catholic wedding someday.

Summer is coming...!

Edith with Nonie and Aunt Peggy 

But for now we are young

Let us lay in the sun

And count every beautiful thing that we see!

i BELIEVE iN THE MAGiC OF FASHiON

[Laura Aldridge]  

What is referred to as "fashion" for me is magic. That sounds grossly grandiose, but it's true. Right now I'm not talking about fashion as an industry, manipulated by PR people (ahem) to look a certain way under the gloss of the magazines. I'm not talking about fashion as a business, driven by cash cow pieces required of the financiers who own the companies. And I'm not talking about fashion as an elitist institution or frivolous party scene populated by haughty editors and puppeteered starlets. Right now, I'm talking about fashion from before I knew to call it "fashion".

In college, I learned in neuropsychology that even before they learn to speak, little girls are overwhelmingly drawn to dress-up dolls over toy cars. I was of course one of those little girls, and that mysterious neuropsychological compulsion grew as I grew. I played with my clothes and doodled ball gowns over my schoolwork. I kept shoeboxes full of Vogue clippings and used Elmer's glue to collage 8 1/2" by 11" fantasy worlds. The names of the designers and photographers were familiar from voracious reading, but as a child, connotations of materialism or elitism were lost on me. My young brain, drawn to these images, processed these names to mean just one thing: magic. To me, Coco Chanel was an anachronistic businesswoman whose bold emancipation from the corset had paved the way for girls like me to be strong and independent. In my childish naiveté, I had no idea that those interlocking C's were a status symbol widely coveted and knocked off. I just wanted to drape myself in ropes of pearls and make my own way like the indomitably elegant Mademoiselle. 

Fortunately for me, I had an outlet for my innate attraction to dress-up. Being a model throughout childhood not only rescued me from Matilda-like boredom at school, it also developed my creativity. Shoots for zed cards were particularly fantastic because there were no regulations or commercial goals. The potential for adventure was limitless, especially with the photographer Laura Aldridge. Her San Francisco studio was an absolute wonderland for a little girl. Tulle skirts and aviator goggles were stashed in bins, cowboy boots and antique books lined the shelves, silk slips and paper parasols hung from the ceiling. In the middle of the concrete floor was the big white backdrop flanked by silver umbrellas of lighting equipment, but the most fun we ever had was shooting in my semi-rural hometown. My grandparents live on a ranch where I loved to play, and shooting there, guerilla-style in the bubbling creek or looming barn, was like inhabiting a dreamworld. None of it made sense in real life-- let's put you in a vintage U.S. Army jacket and sit you in the water!-- but in that creative world, suspended from time and normal conventions, it was magic. 

I didn't know then that that magic was "fashion". I didn't know that I was subconsciously learning to become a fashion stylist or to speak intelligently about fashion photography. But any talent my aesthetic eye may have as an adult I wholly credit to those dreamworld days of my childhood. And I know that every power player who created and shaped what is now the "fashion industry" had that feeling in their own childhood. We forget that "fashion" is just a child's neuropsychological attraction to the dress-up doll. "Fashion" is an innate love of beauty and creativity. Fashion is magic.

[Acrylic Nails Photography]

That is why I was so moved by Acrylic Nails Photography. The blog is run by children-- a group of 13- and 14-year-olds in Los Angeles who style and shoot their own "editorials" in a very similar guerilla style: "Without the jaded eyes of overworked editors and the mucky-muck of advertisers, the results are expressions of pure, unfiltered fashion--for fashion’s sake." writes Emili Vesiland for Style Section LA. Re-visit fashion through the eyes of babes and experience the unadulterated magic.

TWO DAYS UNTIL THE OSCARS!

A photo of the elevator lobby at the Beverly Hilton, where the annual nominee luncheon is held.

Style.com's Pre-Oscar Circuit Coverage 

See the Oscars Throughout History

Check out Tory Burch's 10 Most Stylish Movies 

FAMILY MEN

My great-grandpa Homer, Edith Saylor's husband       

Papa

Daddy 

NOSTALGiA: NOW, VOYAGER BY JOHN GALLiANO FOR VOGUE

From London’s club scene to Paris’s couture houses, John Galliano’s odyssey was hard-won. The designer recalls his defining moments. 

My journey began in Gibraltar, the peninsula in the strait that divides Spain from Morocco. I lived there until I was six. Even my walk to school would inspire me– past the souks, smells, herbs, and Mediterranean colors. It was so vivid, so vibrant. My curiosity stayed with me, blossomed, as I became a traveler through life.

We moved to London in 1966. I will never forget the change in colors, clothes, and culture: This seemed so much more important to me than the grayness and the climate– the idea that there was a whole new world out there that smelled like wet chalk. My taste for travel and adventure, my quest for beauty, had begun. The idea of cultures colliding is something that continues to inform the way I work, research, and create.I hadn’t been thinking about fashion in high school– at seventeen, I was studying languages. But somehow I ended up in textile classes, and on my teachers’ advice I got a portfolio together and went to Saint Martins, where they really encouraged you to express ourself, to throw buckets of blue paint all over the wall! I applied for the fashion course.

First collection, 'Les Incroyables', 1984

And then there was the nightlife. (I used to call it “research”– I still do!) Thursday nights would be the legendary club Taboo; you would start getting ready on Tuesday. Every week it had to be a different look. London was really rocking the spotlight. During this time I met people I still work with today– Jeremy Healy, the deejay, and the great milliner Stephen Jones.

In 1984, I had my graduation show, Les Incroyables– my first collection. I’d set out to conquer the world, and now everything clicked. Every piece had to have character, a sense that it had been lived in. So I used little magic techniques I’d learned in theatre, where I had worked as a dresser.

Kate Moss storming the runway

I had already been offered a contract in Manhattan as an illustrator for a fashion forecaster, and I was quite happy to go off and do that. But then all chaos broke out. Joan Burstein of Browns, London’s most important fashion boutique, took the whole collection. My first client was Diana Ross.

Amanda Harlech, a junior fashion editor at Harpers & Queen, had heard of the show, and I was invited to tea. The first shoot I ever did was with her and Mario Testino. She became an essential part of the posse. A lot of buyers were interested in my work, but I was totally unprepared. I was doing so much myself, it was crazy. I was pressing the shirts for the orders. And I didn’t really understand that the businesss– the importance of deliveries, for instance. I was heartbroken when an entire shipment was sent back from Bergdorf because it was late. But you learn. And I didn’t sink, I swam.

The I met Steven Robinson. He was just a teenager, but he was my first real assistant, and he became a soul brother. From counting buttons to measuring fabric, he loved the whole thing, and we set out on this great adventure. 

17 perfect girls walking at Sao Schlumberger's Hotel Particulier

Things started to go a little bit sour in London. It was like banging my head against a wall. If you didn’t have the cash, you couldn’t produce. So in 1992 I decided to go to Paris. We had nothing, no money. But I had a friend there who really believed in me– Faycal Amor, of the fashion company Plein Sud. He let me have a part of his building and allowed me to work with his team, which was really generous.

This was the Paris I had dreamed of, the Paris of the thirties. The buildings, the romance, the snow. We were hopeless romantics. We didn’t have money to eat. We were begging for cigarettes on the street. But sleeping on people’s floors was not a big issue; Sylvie Grumbach, a fashion publicist, would always have a pot au feu on the stove. I was hanging out with these great creative people, like the haridresser Julien D’Ys, and the makeup artist Stephane Marais. The collection that came out of this was Olivia the Philibustier. Shanghai Lils, voodoo witch doctors, rocker saris– the girls were marauders, like magpies, stealing from different cultures. The clothes were regal and street at the same time.

Creative director for Givenchy, the first French Couture House

The inspiration for my collections may come from a portrait I’ve seen. Or my imagination. It may be the Marchesa Luisa Casati. And then I want to know more about her, and I’m reading love letters to her from D’Annunzio, adn then she’s telling me what she wants to wear. It’s always great to have those muses. Now, more and more, I’m asking myself, How would Kate Moss wear this? Curiosity is the most important thing. 

Andre Leon Talley had come to see the Olivia the Philibustier show, and before I knew it, the collection was being shot by Steven Meisel with Grace Coddington, and Vogue was showing the world what it thought of of John Galliano. I was creating a bit of buzz in Paris.

For spring, I worked on my Princess Lucretia collection. Kate was Lucretia, fleeing Russia for the Outer Hebrides, and Christy Turlington was the Dotty Duchess. But the situation with Faycal was complicated because his fashion house had become a thing with two heads. And suddenly I didn’t have a way of producing a collection.

Dressing Princess Diana for the Met Ball

I was about to miss a season, but two weeks before the deadline, magic happened. Andre set up a lunch with Sao Schlumberger, the legendary socialite, and at the end Andre said, “By the way, you know that fantastic empty house you’ve got– would you allow John to do his show there?” Sao said, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch, is there Andre!” But she said yes. So we were on! Now what?

Action. Focus. Fix it. At the studio we worked through the night to mix Kiki do Montparnasse and the Orient– an interlude between Lieutenant Pinkerton and Madame Butterfly. The erotic sensuality of the kimono with the fluidity of the bias. Everyone rallied, and we produced seventeen or eighteen outfits in two weeks. It was basically all black (with dashes of Kabuki pink and yellow), and we had to tear around Paris to find satin-black crepe– I could use both sides, and it would look like two different fabrics! For the show, Kate, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Christy– all the girls I had started with as a designer– modeled for next to nothing. Stephen Jones did the hats, Jeremy did the music, Julien and Stephane did the hair and the makeup, and together we produced the salon showat Sao Schlumberger’s empty eighteenth century hotel particulier. My mantra then and now is, If you’re going to do anything, do it to perfection and surround yourself with like-minded rebels.

Kirsten Dunst by Annie Leibovitz for Vogue, September 2006 via Fashion Vocabulary

The show caused quite a hoo-ha. I had a huge pile of orders and no way to produce them. But I was introduced to the investors John Bult and Mark Rice, and suddenly I had my first Paris atelier, and these fab couture ladies were ordering from this Dickensian building! Sao, Beatrice de Rothschild, Lee Radizwill, all loving the bias-cut dresses, the little jackets. The look then was very ragged and unfinished, but I was obsessed with couture-like finishing– I wanted the garments to look as beautiful on the inside as out. Like Oscar Wilde, I have the simplest taste: I am always satisfied with the best.  

The president of LVMH’s Givenchy heard about the grand ladies traipsing to a garret atelier in the Bastille. I think he found it quite amusing because I was invited to be the artistic and creative director of Givenchy– Hubert de Givenchy had just left. An Englishman taking over at Audrey Hepburn’s favorite couturier!

A Decade at Dior

One Friday night, after I’d been at Givenchy about a year and a half, I was wearing pajamas and bright-red nail polish and had my hair in dreadlocks when I got a phone call summoning me to meet Mr. Arnault, the CEO of the whole LVMH group. I thought, Oh, shoot, what have I done wrong? A car was sent with a security guard and black windows. It was all very James Bond. I was trembling like a leaf, and all I could think was, What a day to have on this color nail polish!

The elevator doors opened, and there was this incredibly elegant, calm man, dressed in gray, who spoke very softly. He mentioned the House of Dior– and would I like the job?

I just kind of screamed yes! I didn’t even think about it. He was a bit startled. It was a very emotional, groundbreaking moment for a kid form South London for whom Dior was a god. I loved the house immediately. It was more romantic than Givenchy– it was more like roses. It was another Incroyable moment. To have traveled from squat in London to Paris and the most prestigious couture house in the world. You couldn’t write a script like that in Hollywood!

The Madame Butterfly show finale

– As told to Hamish Bowles by John Galliano, American Vogue, March 2009

All other photos from Vogue UK's My Favourite Fashion Memories series