If you're in need of an easy jolt to your summer wardrobe, look no further than Sienna Miller's latest spread. The British actress and style muse is Porter's latest cover star, modeling a range of unexpected pieces that will instantly take your warm-weather dressing up a notch. Whether you're headed to the beach or somewhere a little fancier, look no further for inspiration!
Scroll on for a look at Miller's styles, and check out the latest issue of Porter to read her interview in full.
Yes, there's a chic way to style the so-called "Canadian tuxedo"—just let Miranda Kerr show you how. Spotted out in NYC, the model wore a 7 for All Mankind shirt (which is sadly sold out) with her Mother Looker Ankle Fray Jeans ($225). The key to pulling off the look is to choose pieces in contrasting shades of blue. Kerr's shirt is a much brighter hue, making it pop against her faded jeans. Adding in a navy trench coat, her trio of different blue tones is a cool twist on the monochrome look.
Scroll down to see how Kerr expertly styled a denim-on-denim look!
When she's not working with big names like Lupita Nyong'o, Jennifer Hudson, and Hilary Swank, celebrity stylist Micaela Erlanger also divulges her fashion expertise in our Ask a Stylist column. From the best places to source vintage to the secret to finding your most flattering jeans, come back each week for a professional's perspective.
In my experience, there are two things to keep in mind on your hunt for a flattering addition to your wardrobe: shape and material. With these factors in mind, you can make any purchase the new most versatile new piece in your closet. But this rule rings especially true with one summer-perfect piece: a dress. Not sure where to start? Not to worry. Plenty of street style stars follow these dress commandments, so see below for examples.
Here are my two must-know tips for picking the most flattering dress for your wardrobe—plus several to shop, naturally.
Adriane Sarah Glazier and the author Scott Turow are to be married May 29 at a private home in Salem, Wis., and will do so under a provision of Wisconsin law allowing couples to marry themselves. During the ceremony, Dave Barry, the humorist and a friend of the couple, is to lead the couple in the smashing of a glass and other Jewish traditions, and the Rev. John C. Cusick, a Roman Catholic priest, is to lead several blessings.
The bride, 51, is a senior vice president, advising charities and philanthropists, as an executive in two of Bank of America's wealth management divisions. She works in Chicago. She graduated from Smith and receive d a law degree from Northwestern.
She is a daughter of Babette C. Glazier of Chicago and the late Robert E. Glazier.
Mr. Turow, 67, is the author of "Presumed Innocent," "The Burden of Proof" and other books, and is a partner in the Chicago office of the law firm Dentons, handling white-collar criminal litigation. He graduated from Amherst College and received a master's degree in creative writing from Stanford and a law degree from Harvard.
Mr. Turow is the son of the late Rita Pastron Turow and the late Dr. David D. Turow, who lived in Winnetka, Ill.
The bride's previous marriage ended in divorce, as did the groom's.
Ms. Glazier and Mr. Turow met in 1987 when he interviewed her for a summer clerkship with his law firm. They met again in 2012, when Ms. Glazier sought him out for career advice.
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One of the most rewarding aspects of the internet is how easy it's made finding new talent and telegraphing talents of your own across the globe. The technology that's debuted alongside it—hey there, cell phones, tablets, and laptops—has only contributed to that easy access, launching endless new opportunities for industries like fashion.
A perfect example of this lies in the story of EDTN, an up-and-coming creative content service shot exclusively on an iPhone 6. Founded by freelance stylist and consultant Danielle Nachmani, who's worked with brands as diverse as Christian Siriano and The Row, the company is quickly garnering attention for its candid imagery that features a slew of the coolest models styled in the most covetable laid-back fashion. Unlike many ad campaigns, which often feel too fantastical to replicate in real life, EDTN showcases brands in a manner that's equal parts accessible and aspirational. Sure, the models look super cool, but it's the kind of cool you can try out for yourself—and we're all about that.
Apparently, some of our favorite brands were too—EDTN has shot campaigns for the likes of Jennifer Fisher, AYR, and Solid & Striped, and that list is likely to grow big-time in the next few months. We spoke to Nachmani, below, to find out exactly how she does it all with just an iPhone, and what the perks are of that less-is-more routine.
Scroll down to find out what she had to say…
The book landed Ms. Kelley on "Good Morning America," as well as a flurry of media attention, while Ms. Broadwell was on a camping trip with her family in the mountains. She had spotty cellphone service but drove back down to call her lawyers.
A few days later, she was still nervously checking the Google alerts on her phone.
"You know, Petraeus, when we were working together, he would never read anything about himself," she said, seated in the lobby of a Charlotte hotel. "Sometimes I wonder, am I doing myself mental harm by reading all of it."
These days, her coping mechanism is to stay busy. She is on the board of multiple local leadership organizations, and she's a member of an opera club. She volunteers for a group that provides safe houses for human trafficking victims, another that helps veterans rehabilitate. She drops off her sons at the bus stop each day, then goes for a morning run. She continues to push for women in combat, and is active in a group called West Point Women, which planned the event at her alma mater.
She is emotional when she speaks about the Charlotte community that embraced her family. But she's torn: Should she try to reclaim her past — her dream of becoming a national security adviser — or should she pursue something entirely different? Should she fight to restore her military status, or simply move on?
"The truth is, the military is not a place where you can rehabilitate," she said. "There's a 'Zero Defects' policy — that's military code. So the whole redemption thing? It's not common.
"My husband says I just need to walk away," she continued. "Sue Fulton says I needs to fight back. My lawyers — I literally ask them, 'What would you tell me to do if I were your daughter?' Some days I think, if I could just move on and it was never again in the news, I probably would. But I can't. My fabric is to fight back."
With a friend, Kyleanne Hunter — a former Marine attack helicopter pilot — she has founded a nonprofit, Think Broader, focused on combating gender bias in the news media. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the sliver of bias that bothers her the most is "mistress."
She recently presented on the topic to a roomful of editors at The Huffington Post, as well as to a team at Yahoo and the United Nations. She is working with a professor at Harvard to try to come up with a system for tracking biased language, she said — from unnecessary words ("female fighter pilot") to journalists primarily relying on male sources to the subtle ways language can affect the way an article is framed.
She has also, quietly, reached out to female journalists she thought would be sympathetic, asking them to stop using the word "mistress": Christiane Amanpour at CNN; Norah O'Donnell at CBS; Susan Glasser at Politico, who advised her staff to refrain from using the word.
"You know that character on 'Game of Thrones,' Tyrion?" she asked. "He says at one point, something to the effect of, 'You've got to own your weakness, and then nobody can use it against you.' Well, I'm trying to figure out how to do that."
Ms. Broadwell was pleased to discover last month, after conversations with The Associated Press, that it had addressed "mistress" in an updated style guide, advising "friend," "companion" or "lover" in its place, or language that "reflects that it takes two to tango," said The A.P.'s standards editor, Thomas Kent.
After an article in The New York Times, about Mr. Petraeus's plea deal, used the word to refer to her last year, Ms. Broadwell was in touch with the public editor at the time, who wrote a column about it, advising that The Times "hasten the departure" of the word. (It has appeared just several times in 2016.)
Her hometown newspaper, The Charlotte Observer, said it would work to retire the term, opting instead to call Ms. Broadwell and Mr. Petraeus "lovers." "It takes two to have an affair," said the newspaper's editor, Rick Thames.
The campaign can feel a little like putting out brush fires, Ms. Broadwell said, but for now, it's given her some sense of purpose.
"On the one hand, I don't want to define myself by this," she said. "But on the other hand, I've been defined by this. So if I can change things for the better because of it, then why not?"
Of course, she added, "Maybe some day I just need to take off the Google alerts and live in oblivion."
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The power of social media as a marketing and branding tool is news to no one at this point, but it's a realm that's constantly transforming and revealing fresh opportunities in the process. Nowhere has this been more evident than with the now-famous "Damn, Daniel" Snapchat video, which went viral quickly after being posted to Twitter on February 15th by a high school kid named Joshua Holz.
The video splices together clips of Holz' friend Daniel walking around in cool outfits, always complimented by a pair of white (or, in a few cases, black) Vans. "Damn, Daniel!" Josh repeats in a hilariously exaggerated tone each time, "Back at it again with the white Vans!" It's been retweeted over 300,000 times, inspired hundreds of equally-funny memes, and landed the two boys guest-spots on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and in a Weezer music video. All of this, while great for sending two strangers into the spotlight, has been especially lucrative for Vans.
On an earnings call in late April, Steve Rendle, the president and COO of VF Corp (which owns Vans), joked, "Well done, Daniel, well done," in reference to the brand's great first quarter of 2016. Although Vans was by no means lacking in popularity or monetary success (they've seen double-digit growth in sales per quarter for the last 5 years) the video gave them an exciting boost: a 20% increase in direct-to-consumer sales and a 30% increase in e-commerce sales in the US market.
Given that Vans had nothing to do with the video's creation, it was an unexpected and all-the-more pleasant coup for the brand, and one that confirmed the serious potential of organic marketing in our digital age. While platforms like Instagram and Snapchat offer advertising opportunities for fashion and beauty brands, taken up by everyone from Bloomingdales to Burberry, and feature influencers who often partner with said-brands, it may be the candid, non-sponsored content that has the most power. After all, today's consumers are extremely savvy about how they're being marketed to, preferring ads and brand activations that privilege genuineness over anything too forced.
What could this mean for the fashion industry? Well, it's very likely that brands will now try to capture the essence of the "Damn, Daniel" video—authentic, consumer-driven, silly—for themselves. How they will achieve this without too heavy a hand remains to be seen, but getting their products in front of the right people will be crucial. What that could mean is seeking out potential influencers more than they might seek out "confirmed" influencers who are known for their sponsored content, privileging those digital stars on the rise in lieu of those who have #madeit. Another important goal will be ensuring their products just "show up" at the sweet spot of right place/right time, such as in Snapchat's Live Stories which are not direct marketing opportunities for brands but spotlight relevant events like fashion week.
Of course, it could also lead brands to explicitly manufacture their own viral content, an attempt which can be challenging given the off-the-cuff, randomized nature of such successes. Whether or not they'll find a way to do so without entering disingenuous territory remains to be seen, but you can bet that plenty of brands will try.
Five weeks after they had begun dating again, real drama emerged in their relationship. Ms. Dang received a diagnosis of breast cancer and she subsequently had a double mastectomy.
Mr. Mankiewicz insisted she recuperate in his two-bedroom Beverly Hills condominium (ultimately she would have eight operations) in spite of her protestations that she could stay at her own place and simply lie on her couch, have the pharmacy deliver medicine and order takeout food.
"She comes off as 10 feet tall and bulletproof," Mr. Mankiewicz said. "But she needed my help, and I wanted to help her. This told me things about myself and my relationship to her, namely that I was in love with her in a way I h adn't realized."
The operations forced Ms. Dang to acknowledge her vulnerabilities. "I was crying — this is hard," she said. "I wasn't expecting this to happen to me at 39."
And the recovery experience left her exposed to Mr. Mankiewicz in a way she hadn't planned. "I couldn't be Superwoman-hear-me-roar," she said. "I hadn't showered in days. My hair was a mess and I had tubes coming out of my body."
After she recovered, she moved back to her Santa Monica apartment, but this time he was not letting go, and she felt safe. "I could tell him anything, and he wouldn't judge me," she said. "He can see through me like a pane of glass and read me better than anybody else."
The couple could hardly have come from more different backgrounds. Mr. Mankiewicz's grandfather, the screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, shared an Academy Award for writing "Citizen Kane." His father, Frank Mankiewicz, was press secretary for Senator Robert F. Kennedy, presidential campaign manager for George McGovern and president of National Public Radio.
"I grew up with this front seat to national politics," Mr. Mankiewicz said. "Every conversation with my dad was like opening a history book. I met Robert Kennedy a few times. George Cuk or sat at our dinner table. I watched a lot of TV news, and Vietnam played out in my living room. I was interested in being a news reporter since I was 10 years old."
By contrast, when bombs were falling on Saigon in 1975 and Ms. Dang was 1½ years old, her mother, then eight months pregnant with Ms. Dang's brother, escaped to Guam by boat. The family, later joined by Ms. Dang's father, Khoi Van Dang, who was disabled when Ms. Dang was 13, settled in Orange County, Calif., where they became naturalized citizens.
"My family did not allow me to watch TV during the week unless it was something on PBS and probably about an elephant," Ms. Dang said. She was a shy, motivated student. By sixth grade she was reading at a 12th-grade level. "It was easy for me to go into my room, spend the day there reading and come out at 6 at night," she said.
Mr. Mankiewicz takes their cultural di fferences in stride. "My dad is from a successful Jewish family, and my mom, who had been raised a Mormon, was the first member of her family to attend college," he said. "The lesson my parents gave me was: You don't have to have a lot in common with someone to love them."
From her perspective, Ms. Dang believes the Vietnamese culture can be tough on daughters. "Subconsciously it is ingrained that you need to take care of your guy," she said. "Josh likes it that, for lack of a better word, I am not subservient."
Joey Dang, Ms. Dang's brother, saw another, possibly more lighthearted connection: They both love clothes and fashion. "Tee used to take pictures of her shoes and put them on the outside of the boxes," Mr. Dang said. "As soon as I saw his closet, I thought, This is a man who gets my sister." (Mr. Mankiewicz's closet is color coordinated, with his jackets evenly spaced.)
After one year of steady dating, Mr. Mankiewicz was not making a move t oward the altar. His father, who met Ms. Dang on his 90th birthday in 2014, told his son he should marry her. But his son balked: He wasn't interested in having children. He was afraid if he was a part of someone else, he wouldn't be himself anymore. And, he joked, "Dateline" was not the biggest commercial for matrimony.
The following year, Mr. Mankiewicz changed his mind about staying single, perhaps, as his brother Ben Mankiewicz, a host of Turner Classic Movies, suggested, because four events converged: Ben had a child; their father died; their aging mother had moved to Los Angeles; and his big brother had met the right woman. "It's a testament to his emotional maturity that it was O.K. to change his life at 60," Ben Mankiewicz said. "It took courage. It's hokey to say, but I'm proud of him."
Their mother, Holly Howell, said: "All I could say to myself was, it's about time. He was seeing her a lot and I thought, if he doesn't hurry up, she'd say to hell with it."
In November 2015, at the restaurant where they'd had their first date, Mr. Mankiewicz proposed to Ms. Dang. "She gasped like someone in the movies I grew up watching," he said. "We made a champagne toast and took a picture and then we sat there silently texting."
The wedding was set for what would have been the 92nd birthday of Mr. Mankiewicz's father. Eight weeks before, after the last of her operations, Ms. Dang moved in to Mr. Mankiewicz's condominium. He lamented having to give away 220 of his shirts to make room for her clothes in his closet.
On May 16, they were married before a small gathering of family and friends on the deck of the home of Mr. Thompson, the retired newscaster, who became a Universal Life minister to officiate.
"Sometimes the path to love is slow, sometimes — courtesy of T.S.A. — it is excruciatingly slow," Mr. Mankiewicz said. "But I suppose we should thank them. It gave us time to have that first talk."
His mother delighted in the two families' newfound connection.
"He finally came to his senses," Ms. Howell said. "I mean it. You have to work really hard not to like her. There's not an ounce of snobbishness in her. She doesn't think she's a big shot. She has views of her own."
Ms. Dang's mother, Ahn Thi Le, was sold on her new son-in-law at hello. "I'm a Buddhist. My house is a Bud dhist temple," she said. "The first time he came to visit me, he said, 'Thank you for creating your daughter.' He touched my heart right away. For her, I thought, you don't have to find another person. You found him. Eureka!"
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Heads-up: There's a shoe hue we spot on stylish women almost as often as we do neutrals as of late, and it's particularly eye-catching when paired with a summer wardrobe. So many brands have released shoes in this shade this season that we can hardly choose (which may be why this editor owns six pairs). Any guesses? If you guessed pale pink or blush, you're correct! The soft shade lends a feminine feel to even menswear-inspired shoe styles, and it's a bit more unexpected than, say, nude or camel.
If you're stumped as to how to wear the shoes in the most directional way, we looked to a handful of fashionable women to show how to pull them off, and it's easier than you might think. While some choose to wear them with neutral tones, you may be surprised to hear that just as many choose to wear them with similar shades of pink to create a cool monochromatic look, or with prints that include pink.
To see how easy pale pink shoes are to wear for yourself, check out examples below, and shop a slew of our favorite styles!
Consider the question of the best way to manage millennials. Say you have a worker who plays hooky from your online news site to go build a treehouse, or one who takes an extended leave to go on a snowboarding trip, then never returns to work. What should you do?
One approach is to blame these workers' millennialness: They're young, they've never had to shoulder any responsibility in life, and they really can't even with all your rules, man.
Another might be to consider that maybe the problem stems from something about your company, your management style or just the worker's personality, and that it has nothing to do with the fact that the employee was born in 1983 and really enjoyed "Animaniacs" as a kid.
In other words, break out of the stereotype. According to Laszlo Bock, who runs human resources at Google, pigeonholing workers into categories is nothing new, and it's rarely helpful in running a workplace.
Photo Laszlo Bock, who runs human resources at Google, says pigeonholing workers by supposed generational characteristics is rarely helpful. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times"What we've seen is that every single generation enters the work force and feels like they're a unique generation, and the generation that's one or two ahead of them looks back and says, 'Who are these weird, strange kids coming into the work force with their attitudes of entitlement and not wanting to fit in?'" Mr. Bock said. "It's a cycle that's been repeated every 10 to 15 years for the last 50 years."
Google's human resources department, which the company calls "people operations," is famous for collecting and analyzing data about its work force to empirically back up its management techniques. Google's workers ran ge from recent college grads to people in their 80s. And as far as Mr. Bock has been able to tell, millennials, as a broad category, simply aren't very different from everyone else.
"We measure this sort of thing closely, and if you look at what their underlying needs and aspirations are, there's no difference at all between this new generation of workers and my generation and my father's generation," he said. "Every single human being wants the same thing in the workplace — we want to be treated with respect, we want to have a sense of meaning and agency and impact, and we want our boss to just leave us alone so we can get our work done."
This is not to say that today's young people are identical to old people. Kim Parker, director of social trends research at the Pew Research Center, said demographers have noted large differences in millennials: Compared to older cohorts, they tend to be more socially liberal when it comes to issues like gay marriage and marijuana use, they marry later in life, and they are less enamored of traditional religious and political institutions. Looking at these shifts over time "is a useful construct when you're trying to analyze a whole population," Ms. Parker said.
But these broad trends leave lots of room for individual differences that matter in the real world, and that are often papered over when we talk about millennials as a monolithic collective.
For instance, while it's true that millennials are more likely than older people to describe themselves as "religiously unaffiliated," the increased rate at which they do so isn't huge. In a 2014 Pew study, 29 percent of millennials said they weren't religious, versus 21 percent of people in Generation X, which Pew defined as those born from 1965 to 1980. What this means is that most millennials and most Gen Xers — and, indeed, most Americans — consider themselves religious in some way. Millennials: They're just like us!
Speaking in such broad terms also misses differences within the generation. For example, another Pew survey from 2014 found that while most millennials favored the legalization of gay marriage, millennials who described themselves as Democrats were more likely to favor it than Republican millennials. In fact, Republican millennials were for gay marriage at a lower rate than Democrats of every generation — meaning that a Democrat born in 1928 was more likely to favor marriage equality than a Republican born in 1990.
Considering that millennials are the most diverse generation — spanning many racial, ethnic and income categories — intragenerational differences are bound to play an important role when you're talking about individual people. Though both are "millennials," a young immigrant working three sharing-economy gigs is likely to look at the world very differently from a trust-fund baby who's tending his Tumblr in Brooklyn. Yet only one of these stereotypes tends to make it into media accounts of millennials.
That doesn't have to be the case. What's most bizarre about efforts to describe young people as a broad collective is that technology has rendered such generalizations mostly unnecessary. Thanks to social media, smartphones and reams of searchable data, companies can now track their customers and workers in far more precise ways than simply noting their age cohort. They have your purchase and employment histories, your social media musings, your educational history, your credit report. Companies can break you down analytically, psychographically, financially and in just about every other way short of physically.
Joan Kuhl, one of the aforementioned army of millennial consultants, told me that one of her primary jobs these days was to undo companies' preconceived notions about millennials. (Oh, I should do that, too: It's not true that millennials don 't read the news, as I implied above. Hi, millennials — thanks for reading!)
"It's unbelievable the stories we hear," said Ms. Kuhl, 36, who runs Why Millennials Matter. "They all have stories about managers underestimating them, or recruiters having an impression that they can't live up to the demands of the job, or that they were a flight risk. People are perceiving them as the stereotype of their generation."
As my millennial friends say: Ugh.
Correction: May 26, 2016An earlier version of this column, and an accompanying picture caption, misspelled the first name of Google's head of human resources. He is Laszlo (not Lazslo) Bock.
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Watch out—there's a new era of Beckhams taking over the fashion world. While Victoria and David have secured spots as industry mainstays, their sons Brooklyn and Romeo are quickly proving that style runs in the Beckham blood. The duo just scored their first Vogue spread, posing for the June issue of China's VogueMe, and the pictures are no less fashionable than you'd expect. We have a feeling we'll being seeing a lot more from these stylish siblings soon.
Scroll for a look at shots of Brooklyn and Romeo in Vogue!
A few days later, sweatergate broke out in the United States when a weather forecaster on KTLA-TV in Los Angeles was handed a gray sweater to cover up a tank dress she was wearing on the air. She said it was a joke, courtesy of her co-anchor, but Twitter took offense, perceiving it as an attempt to control what women wear.
All of this follows famous dress code brouhahas like the UBS scandal of 2010 when the Internet discovered that the Swiss bank had issued a 44-page booklet of guidelines for employee dress that included inst ructions on shoulder width and underwear shade.
Then there was the "flat shoe" uproar of 2015, when two women were supposedly banned from the red carpet in Cannes for not wearing heels. (The festival director denied the report on Twitter.)
And earlier this year, Kansas State Senator Mitch Holmes was forced to issue a public apology for having included, in his guidelines for the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee, which he chaired, a rule for those appearing before the state panel that read: "Conferees should be dressed in professional attire. For ladies, low-cut necklines and miniskirts are inappropriate." No such specific guidelines were issued for men. Oops. This did not sit well with many.
"I have decided to retract the conferee guidelines," he said later in a statement, which also noted, "My failure to clearly specify that all conferees, regardless of gender, should strive to present themselves professionally is unacceptable."
Photo Mary Tyler Moore is shown as TV news producer Mary Richards in a scene from the "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" in the 1970's. Credit Associated PressThe slippery slope may have started as a gentle incline way back in the 1970s, and become a bit steeper during the Casual Friday movement of the 1990s and the success of the Facebook I.P.O. in 2012 with its hoodie-wearing billionaires. But today, we are speeding down it at breakneck pace, partly thanks to the hot-button conversation around gender equality, and fluidity.
"There has been a dramatic change very recently," said Susan Scafidi, a law professor at Fordham University and founder of the Fashion Law Institute.
She noted that last December the New York City Commission on Human Rights announced new guidelines for the municipal human rights law that expressly prohibited: "Enforcing dress codes, uniforms, and grooming standards that impose different requirements based on sex or gender."
As a result, no employer may require men to wear ties unless they also require women to wear ties, or ask that heels be worn, unless both sexes have to wear them. And though this applies only to "official" dress codes, the trickle-down effect is inevitable.
"Dress is now open to the interpretation of the individual, rather than an institution," Ms. Scafidi said.
This has created an even greater tension in the more ambiguous areas of office dress, especially as the boundaries between home and work become ever blurrier.
Photo Calista Flockhart and Gil Bellows in the Fox television series, "Ally McBeal". Credit Larry Watson/Fox, via Associated Press"There's a strain of thought that says an employee represents a company, and thus dress is not about personal expression, but company expression," Professor Scafidi said. "But there's a counter argument that believes because we identify so much with our careers, we should be able to be ourselves at work."
And that has led to all sorts of complications. One person's "appropriate" can easily be another's "disgraceful," and words like "professional," when used to describe dress requirements, can seem so vague as to be almost meaningless. Kanye West wearing ripped jeans and a jeweled Balmain jacket at the Met Gala: cool or rude? Julia Roberts at the premiere of "Money Monster" at Cannes this year in bare feet: red carpet pioneer or a step too far?
At The New York Times, Michael Golden, the vice chairman, told me: "We have customer-facing jobs and those that are principally internal. We ask employees to dress appropriately for the interactions planned for their day." But that can have broad interpretations. In the newsroom, people show up in everything from double-breasted suits to shorts; from sneakers and Birkenstocks to platform heels.
All of which leaves us where? Confused, mostly. And fast trying to create our own codes, or parse those of the offices around us. Mark Zuckerberg, for example, is on the record as saying he wears the same gray T-shirt every day so that he can focus his energy on other decisions.
Ms. McClendon acknowledges that she tends to wear "all black, pretty much every day, and sculptural shapes — it's the museum uniform." Professor Scafidi said, "My business uniform is a black jacket with a fitted, knee-length sheath, classic 100-millimeter single-sole pumps, and usually our logo pin — my equivalent of armor, arms and insignia, respectively."
Indeed, according to Ms. McClendon, uniforms evolved for a reason: "They fulfill a need to identify your place in the world," for the wearer and the observer. At least when they are easy to read. And part of the idea behind the F.I.T. show, she said, was to "put visitors in the mind-set to consider uniform dressing more broadly, and how it impacts their own lives."
In other words, to live an examined life when it comes to your wardrobe and your workplace. B ecause these issues are only going to get more complicated.
"We are moving into an era where personal expression is going to trump the desire to create a corporate identity," Professor Scafidi said. "It's a huge power shift." And it has already begun.
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WHO WHAT WEAR: What is the best way for brands to go about getting your attention? What is the worst?
ILARIA URBINATI: I'll take a quick look at anything that's in front of me if it's easy and fast. I have about five seconds per email, so the best way is to send me a quick-to-open file like a PDF or an easy link that takes me directly to the images of the most current collections. No novel-length emails—a little info is okay, but then let the clothes speak for themselves. It's either what I'm looking for or it's not, and I only reply if I'm interested, so there's no need to send the email to me 20 more times to follow up (a check-in every once in a while is okay—I may be interested at different times depending on what I'm currently working on).
Don't send me a lookbook in the mail—that just pisses me off because it wastes paper and I won't know where to go from there since I can't just hit reply. Don't hand me a business card at an event—those get thrown out every time.
If you're a new designer, don't be picky about which of my clients to lend to. Sometimes a totally new designer no one has ever worn will email me, and I'll be like, "Great, I have a fitting with this client this week. Send me these options," and they will reply, "We only want to lend to so-and-so" or "That person is not on our target list." Guess what? I'll never ever inquire about that brand again—for any client. You emailed me; you don't get to be picky—just get your clothes to some good stylists and you can be picky later when you're Balenciaga.
Instead of layers of shadow and liner, what about applying ... almost nothing?
Photo A model at Derek Lam with a subtle sheen of gloss on her lids. Products, from left: for a spectrum from subtle shimmer to full-on gloss, the double-sided Pat McGrath Labs Skin Fetish 003 Nude Shiny Stick Highlighter + Balm Duo, $72, sephora.com; for a translucent, pearly glow, the coconut oil-based RMS Beauty Living Luminizer, $38, rmsbeauty.com; for an almost lacquered finish, MAC Cosmetics Studio Eye Gloss, $22, maccosmetics.com. Credit From top: Schohaja; Marko Metzinger (3)There are few regions on the terrain of my body that haven't given me, over the course of my life, occasion to complain. I've regretted my sun-spurning pallor, I've felt bad about my neck (for reasons other than Nora Ephron's — mine is just really short), I've registered dismay at my stomach's persistent convexity. One part I've never been mad at, however, is my eyelids. Until recently, I hadn't even experienced something as substantial as a thought about those dainty sheathes.
Address yourself to the fall runways and you'll be forced, like me, to consider the eyelid. You may even grow convinced that these centimeters represent an area of missed opportunity. Models at Peter Pilotto and Iris van Herpen wore a youthful slick of what looked like Vaseline on their lids; at Alexander Wang and Lanvin the area was similarly emphasized but with an added hint of rose gold or taupe. A few common factors connected the looks. One, the glossy lids were often paired with a full brow — and by "full" I mean the kind of bushy unplucked arc that looks glorious on teenage models and might be described as brave on anyone else. Two, the lids appeared on faces that were otherwise free of perceptible decoration. And three, the lids were either colorless or nearly so.
This final element becomes critical when you try the look on your own. A sheen on eyelids reflects light; keeping that sheen neutral makes them appear otherworldly rather than tacky. It says "look into my eyes," not "look into my unexpectedly iridescent eyelids." I recently experimented with the effect when meeting a close friend for breakfast. "You look different today," she said, her gaze appraising. Differen t how? I goaded. "More innocent," she said. "And, um, your eyes are a different shape."
In fact, my eyes were the same shape they have always been — a roundish almond, maybe more of a pistachio. But I'd been auto-applying eye shadow and eyeliner and mascara for so long that I couldn't blame her for diagnosing a discrepancy. Not wearing eye makeup, it turns out, is the easiest way to change the emotional architecture of your face. An unpainted eye looks guileless, almost babylike. A layer of shine elevates it from I-literally-woke-up-like-this to an actual Look. Better yet, it's a look that can be replicated with a single product and is basically impossible to mess up.
A little gloss on the lid is the makeup equivalent of parting your hair one inch to the left: Nobody will be able to pinpoin t the difference in your appearance, but it will register on some mild subtextual level. Your eyes, after all, are the windows to your soul. Why not give their frames a quick polish?
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If you want to search for the pinnacle of this phenomenon, look no further than North West, famed progeny of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. North is a child who has been camera-ready since birth, and she has a closet that would be the envy of any adult. She has pink fur, black fur, and cheetah-print fur. There are moto jackets, gold chains, and custom Balmain. She is a darling little thing, and the irrational part of me surface-level-delights at the sight of her. But I have to wonder how dressing children like this at such a young age, before they can even comprehend the value of what they're wearing, will impact them later on. More important, will it hinder their ability to relate to less fashionably dressed children? The lesson of the haves and the have-nots is one that comes s oon enough. Introducing the concept before a toddler can even string three sentences together seems pretty extreme.
Though money and means obviously play a part in this story, they're far from everything. There are plenty of understated options for the well-heeled and their flock. The importance, whether it's Kmart or Kenzo, is that the kids still look like kids. In my research for this piece, I fell in love with the children of menswear designer Robert Geller and showroom owner Ana Beatriz Lerario. Though far from social media megastars, this couple clearly understands fashion and design. Geller, for his part, worked with Marc Jacobs before helping Alexandre Plokhov launch the cult-favorite (and since shuttered) Cloak. Before opening her showroom, Lerario was a designer in her own right, and pretty much the Brazilian equivalent of Jackie O. Chic as both are—and they are very chic—their kids do not come across as egregious, striving extensions of their tastemaking selves. No one is wearing baby Céline or leather leggings. Tiger shirts and ice cream cones take center stage. You know, youth.
Fashion in the museum, traditionally a subject of some tension (is fashion art? and so on), has become something of a trend in recent years: Consider the astounding success of the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute blockbusters — and the attention paid to the opening gala — and assorted ballyhooed smaller shows, like the Isaac Mizrahi exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York or the Iris van Herpen show at the High Museum in At lanta. So it probably shouldn't be a big surprise that MoMA has finally gotten in on the act.
Except that it took 72 years.
Last week, the museum began an extended buildup (and I mean extended) for "Is Fashion Modern?" This megalith, which will try to define the clothes that have defined us, is set to open in December — of 2017.
It will be the first major show MoMA has devoted to dress since 1944, when the architect and designer Bernard Rudofsky curated "Are Clothes Modern?" That was a critical look at the trends of the time that the museum characterized as "in no sense a fashion show," but rather an attempt to "encourage creative thought about the problems of modern apparel."
"Well, we are a museum," said Paola Antonelli, senior curator at the museum's Department of Architecture and Design and the woman behind the upcoming show. "We always take things slow."
In the museum's blog post announcing the exhibition, Ms. Antonelli elaborated a bit. "To say that MoMA has an idiosyncratic history of collecting and exhibiting fashion is a polite exaggeration," she wrote. "Hi storically, the museum has deliberately chosen not to engage with fashion in its galleries or its repositories, wary of those most antimodern terms with which it is often derided: ephemeral, seasonal, faddish."
Ms. Antonelli said the idea for the show had originated with the museum's director, Glenn D. Lowry, who had noticed her selecting clothing items for the permanent collection such as a white T-shirt, and observed that it was impossible to tell the full story of modern design without taking into account some "very important moments that had to do with fashion."
Traditionally in museum interpretations, those moments have focused on the kind of items the fashion world likes to consider its version of art: one-off haute couture dresses that take hundreds of hours to make and often achieve the seemingly impossible in cloth. But MoMA's focus will be on what Ms. Antonelli called "items of fashion that serve as a window onto social, economic and political changes in the world over the l ast 100 years."
In other words, think the white T-shirt, Levi 501s, Casio's digital watch and the little black dress, as well as the kipa and the kaffiyeh. You can argue about whether they qualify as fashion — which is actually part of the point.
The remit of the show "recognized our expertise and lack thereof," Ms. Antonelli said. "We know a lot about design, but we don't have a scholarly knowledge of fashion."
In part, that is why the museum decided to begin talking about the exhibition over a year before its opening. Ms. Antonelli has recruited an advisory board made up of 14 fashion insiders, including Penny Martin of The Gentlewoman magazine and the Hood by Air founder Shayne Oliver. And last week she held a lengthy seminar to begin discussing what kind of objects may qualify for inclusion.
At the moment, she has 350 under consideration; 99 will make it into the exhibition. And though the winnowing and debate can now begin, it all serves to answer one question pretty decisively: Does fashion have a place in the museum?
It's time everyone stopped being so neurotic about this issue. A critical mass of major institutions seems to agree. The answer is yes.
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Some people, including a few of my clients, are born with the ability to walk around for hours in tall heels. I am not one of those people, and I'm the first to admit it. That said, I think every woman can walk in high heels; she just needs to be armed with a little information in three key areas: construction, materials, and brands. Keep reading for my best tips on what to look for when you're shopping for heels to ensure you're buying the most comfortable pair for you.
As fashion editors, online shopping is part of the job, and we're always hunting for a great bargain. So, when we find something that saves major money, you can bet we do a little investigating. Our latest trick to try is Honey, an easy-to-install Chrome plugin that filters all the best promo codes for any given site when you're shopping—genius right?
We put Honey to the test to see how much we would actually save at a few of our favorite sites, and we were excited to see that it actually worked. Honey scanned the sites and tested possible codes that ended up leading to some surprising discounts. So, before you fill up your digital cart again, consider giving this plugin a try. After all, a little saving here and there can go a long way!
Read on for a look at a few pieces we shopped using Honey; then try it out yourself!
"Your happy envelope is on its way!" This was the title of an email that appeared not long after I'd sent two dead laptops and two dead cellphones to Gazelle, an online gadget reseller. More thrilling was the $397 check that followed. It was a happy ending that sent me burrowing into my closets, hoping to find more expired booty to sell.
It's been 21 years since the founding of Craigslist and eBay, both of which transformed so-called "person-to-person trading." In the last decade, companies like Gazelle have refined that process again by removing the messy human factor. With sleekly designed websites, mailers and labels for free shipping, e-resellers handle the sales of your goods themselves, often paying you up front. As the life spans of your things grow ever shorter, and you are increasingly overwhelmed, to paraphrase a Kate Atkinson character, by "the relentless culling and resolution that the material world demands," selling your stuff without having to leave home would seem to be an enchanting innovation and do much to dull the sting of an object's obsolescence.
Clothing resellers like Material Wrld, Crossroads and thredUP propose to make "refreshing" your wardrobe more joyful, with their own t rade-in kits and cash incentives to shop their wares to keep the cycle going. Ethical elimination is a theme (a corollary to ethical consumption). The manifesto of Crossroads, a favorite of college students who worry that their Urban Outfitter discards may end up in a landfill, is that "fashion shouldn't come at a cost." Material Wrld aims to alleviate "fashion guilt" with its own promise: "We'll handle yesterday's fashion so you can focus on tomorrow."
Photo Emilie Cresp, seated, watching as Kate Pawlowski, center, and Ann Lightfoot organize her West Village home. Credit Amy Lombard for The New York TimesAs fashion gets faster, these services are multiplying, flush with venture capital.
"It's the Age of Consignment," a friend proclaimed, still giddy from selling off the contents of her basement.
Tradesy is like a dating site for your old clothes: You can post a photo, tell its story and the site will price your garment (a button invites online shoppers to "love" your listings). Move Loot will do the same for your furniture; if a piece sells, the company will handle the exchange and arrange for pickup. So will Lofty, Chairish and Viyet, which sell high-end furniture, decorative items and artwork; curators from Lofty and Viyet will vet your items in your home. The luxury site the RealReal, a favorite of fashion-conscious New Yorkers, trades in artwork, designer clothing and jewelry.
Material Wrld operates out of Industry City, a groovy former factory building in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, now colonized by tenants like West Elm's Makers Studio and the Storefront for Art and Architecture. Its founders, Rie Yano, 34, and Jie Zheng, 33, met at Harvard Business School and left their jobs in fashion to start the company in 2012.
Photo Ms. Cresp's belongings, which are to be placed on consignment. Credit Amy Lombard for The New York TimesLike many fashion resellers, they make you an offer upfront, and send that which they won't accept to a charity, in their case Housing Works. "What we're encouraging is a lifestyle where if you purchase quality fashion," Ms. Yano said, "we can extend its life when you don't want to wear it anymore." In late March, Material Wrld received $9 million in financing from an e-commerce company based in Japan.
"Resale is trending," said Martin Ambrose, 29, an associate manager at the RealReal, who estimates h e assesses over 2,000 items each month from clients, many of whom are regulars. The company, in business since 2011 and with $123 million in financing, reports that it takes in, on average, 100,000 items each month and has sold about two million items. "People used to be embarrassed," Mr. Ambrose said. "But once you start, it's like an addiction."
Mr. Ambrose, who wrote a college essay about the characters he met while window shopping, is a resale encyclopedia. Some basics: Women's pants don't sell. Nor do men's dress shirts, because people are very particular about these items. Recognizable brands, like Christian Louboutin shoes with their red soles, do. Shoes and handbags hold their value nicely. The RealReal divides the sale price 40/60; once a seller's wares reach $10,000, that person receives 70 percent. In the world of luxury consignment, Mr. Ambrose said, that benchmark is not the unicorn you'd imagine.
Photo Inside the offices of Material Wrld, racks of clothing to be sold. Credit Amy Lombard for The New York TimesI met him one chilly February afternoon at the home of Emilie Cresp, 33, a natural-beauty entrepreneur who had decided to cull her formidable wardrobe, of which over 350 pieces (by Chanel, A.P.C. and Vanessa Bruno, mostly) were being stored at Garde Robe, the high-end closet and valet service, for up to $2,000 a month.
I had realized pretty quickly that my Gazelle sale was a fluke. I owned nothing else of value — at least, nothing that I wasn't using — and if I wanted to participate in the Age of Consignment in a meaningful way, I'd have to do so as an observer. ("Get out of my room, Mom," my daughter had texted from college after I'd sent her photos of her own left-behind clothing. "Do you really want this?" I'd written. "Need stuff to sell.")
Ms. Cresp, who is French, lives in a small one-bedroom apartment in the West Village with two full closets and a stuffed armoire. I had been invited there by Ann Lightfoot, 55, a professional organizer in Manhattan with a wide network of consignors and charities who sends next to nothing to the Dumpster. Who knew there was a booming market for used Lululemon workout gear? Ms. Lightfoot's company, Done & Done Home, which she runs with her daughter, Kate Pawlowski, 29, cleans closets at an extremely high level (chief executives, film and TV directors, an Olympic athlete and a "Real Housewife" have been clients).
Photo Material Wrld's studio, where consignment items are photographed for online presentation. Credit Amy Lombard for The New York TimesShe told me that many of them were inspired by Marie Kondo, the Japanese tidiness guru, but were flummoxed by the process. "They don't know where to begin, and they worry about where those things that don't spark joy will end up," she said.
It took six hours to sort through Ms. Cresp's clothing, a typical marathon, Ms. Pawlowski said. She and her mother leaven their labor with brisk good humor and a refreshing lack of dogma. "We could color-code," Ms. Lightfoot said while folding all 70 of Ms. Cresp's sweaters. "But that can stress out a client." By sunset, Mr. Ambrose had carted away four suitcase-size zippered totes; Ms. Pawlowski left 11 garbage bags at Goodwill, and sent four bags to Linda's Stuff, an online consignor based in Pennsylvania.
A few days later, Ms. Cresp mused on the process in an email. She had decided, she said, to pull some Vanessa Bruno items back from the RealReal to give to friends because the prices weren't as high as she'd hoped and it made more sense, she wrote, to offer those things to people she loved. As Mr. Ambrose had noted, the more well-known brands received the highest prices: A Chanel turtleneck dress, for example, was marked $895. Of the 90 or so items Mr. Ambrose removed, 10 were rejected for sale.
"It's always very sad when things come back," said Judith Thurman, the author and a New Yorker writer whose stirring fashion pieces let you know that she is both a critic and a passionate collector (for those of us reared on the writings of Kennedy Fraser, Ms. Thurman's work has long been a habit). Ms. Thurman consigns the old-fashioned way, among a series of shops in her Yorkville neighborhood that she visits regularly, she said, like a lobsterman checking her pots, "to see what the tide has washed in."
"I have really good stuff, but like everyone, I make mistakes, I get carried away," she said. Nodding to Ms. Kondo, as one must, she added: "When you do interrogate your objects, even if they don't spark joy, they're telli ng you something. Why do I buy endless numbers of white raincoats? I always have to give them away because they make me look like a dental hygienist. But it's a tic I have."
Joan Juliet Buck, the author, actress and former editor of French Vogue, said: "Everyone's objects are freighted. It's never just stuff." In January, Ms. Buck purged her 42nd Street loft and sold some belongings through Paddle8, the online auctioneer: Art Deco lamps, a Cartier watch, an Hermès desk set, vintage R. Crumb comics and lots of jewelry, including a long strand of steely gray South Sea pearls that she'd bought a few years into the job at French Vogue. "I was miscast as an executive," she said. "The pearls were austere, very expensive, and I thought they telegraphed authority. I sold my mother's jewelry to buy them." And yet, she reported sadly: "The boss lady pearls didn't sell. They're coming back."
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Last month, news broke that Victoria's Secret would be shutting down its swimwear line—and we were just as sad about it as you were, dear readers. But unfortunately, there's even more bad news now. As Fashionista reports, the brand is also nixing three more entire categories: apparel, shoes, and accessories. Once the changes go into effect, the retailer's online offerings will align more closely to its in-store inventory.
But don't fret: VS's most popular categories—like bras, underwear, pajamas, and beauty—aren't going anywhere. Phew! We don't know how we'd cope with that news.
Scroll down to shop one of our favorite Victoria's Secret categories that's still going strong: pajamas!
I don't tell them how I recently sank to my knees and laughed in half-sorrow, half-relief, only because of this: My marriage had long ago turned into the cliché of roommate-ness, and that it could suffer such a change without any emotional upheaval was revealing. In fact, the silence said it all.
The words I don't say to my neighbors, the words that get held on my tongue, are: I wish you had heard a fight. I wish our voices had been loud enough to carry across the valley. He and I may have free speech, but we're not so good at frank speech.
Shakespeare had it right: "My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart, concealing it, will break." I never spoke of the anger in my heart, the mounting resentments and hurts, and neither did he. I never demanded attention or care, and neither did he. And that's why we broke.
What hurts most is not the loss of the marriage. What hurts most is that our relationship had never, evidently, been the kind worth raising one's voice about.
But I'm getting louder. Now, I watch couples all the time — in movies, in novels and in real life — paying attention to the way they have conflict. I lean over in restaurants. I sit on a bench near the river where two people are talking. My favorite overheard conversations include lines like: "Really? That's all you're going to say?"
Or, "That's not enough for me."
Or, "That's just not so, honey."
Dialogue, basically, that pushes.
I want to hug such couples, tell them to keep it up.
The last time I tried to do that conversational push with my husband, I failed. And thus it was also the moment I decided to leave him.
It was an ordinary day, the house was quiet, and I was reading on the couch. He was reading a magazine while standing in the kitchen.
He always did that, happy to stand after a long day of sitting in meetings, and I suddenly realized it had been a decade since he and I had sat on the same couch at the same time. Perhaps we had sat together for a moment while one of us tied shoes or to discuss a calendar, but to actually watch a movie? Talk? Have sex? Fight? Raise our voices?
A roaring anger flew into my body and I wanted to push him with words: Why hadn't he ever learned to sit on the couch with me? Why hadn't I ever asked him to? But most important, why hadn't we had a big damn fight about it?
After therapy, we had made no progress in solving our differences in how we experienced or received love. We had identified them, or at least I had: He disliked touching or snuggling; I did not. He wanted to stay at home on evenings and weekends; I wanted to go out. He disliked the sensation of two bodies being in proximity; I did not.
All these differences expanded over the years as we became our truer selves. Quietly. Sometimes I would open my mouth to say something about our growing distance. Probably he did, too.
But no. My mind would run through the list of reasons to keep quiet: I would come across as unreasonable, nagging or needy. He was tired. The children were in the house. They should not hear us fighting.
< p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="245" data-total-count="4953">On the couch that day, I watched him flip through the pages of his magazine. He glanced up, met my eyes and went back to reading. I let out a quiet sigh. I watched my breath expel the anger from my body, let any fight I had left in me dissipate.I could nearly see my exhaled stew of emotions; it looked like glitter floating around, drifting to the floor. I wasn't high, but I felt like it. The patterns in the sunlight suddenly struck me as the most painfully beautiful things I had ever seen. Silent sparkles swirling around, making a decision.
A few days later I got the words out: I was leaving. While our friendship had sustained us for 20 years, and we were both the better for it, I wanted more. I was sure we could manage the coming split with respect and dignity. I was sure we could guide our children through it with love and devotion.
He sat on the couch with me as I told him. My voice shook with the words I was trying to say — speakin g my mind felt awkward and new — but I got them out. I looked at him and awaited a response.
"Are you sure?" he said.
I nodded. I waited. I was not sure. I was waiting for his big reaction, or mine. I was waiting to see how this discussion would go.
It went as always: quietly, reasonably, without obvious anger or raised voices.
It has been quiet ever since. We are simply not capable of sound and fury, I've decided.
I sometimes wonder if our inability to strike out is heartbreakingly rooted in our love for one another. Because we did and do love each other. And we both had been so injured by our violent and loud childhoods that we found refuge and joy in the quiet.
But that kind of love often doesn't survive life, and in the end, our silence was less about respect or affection or love than it was about cowardice. He and I were equal partners in that, turning inward instead of speaking out.
So we have gently floated on. The children stay put in the same house, and he and I amicably rotate back and forth. The mountains have greened up again. There hasn't been a major fire in years.
My current boyfriend loves banter. He chats all the time about ideas, movies, songs, his day, bad drivers and the fact that he loves the look of horses standing in a field. He grows annoyed when I don't push him back with words or ideas. That's what conversation is for, he argues.
I laugh and engage. We also have big, complicated disagreements. I am no longer interested in silence.
I sometimes laugh to myself when I hear someone say, "I'm a drama-free gal." I know what she means, and I appreciate peaceable ways. But something about that phrase also breaks my heart.
My ex and I still take walks to catc h up on things, to discuss logistical or parental matters. On these walks, I sometimes start a conversation of substance, just to see if we can do it better. We can't. We retreat swiftly to talk of holidays and events and plans: Thanksgiving, our daughter's violin concert, the meeting at the town hall.
On these walks, the neighbors will sometimes stop us to ask cautious questions. Our demeanor is so calm and quiet they must feel a need to have us once again confirm our split. They will congratulate us on a separation so well done.
And I will nod, in silence.
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A great leather jacket instantly infuses any outfit with coolness, which is why so many fashion girls consider the sleek staple an absolute necessity. Now, there's a new line shaking up the outerwear space—meet The Mighty Company.
"My main goal with The Mighty Company is to create a lifestyle, a livable entity," said 24-year-old artist-turned-designer Jessie Willner. "I set out to re-create iconic jackets in a unique and new way while still holding on to all of the details that are loved about the timeless silhouettes they come from."
Willner notes that she drew inspiration for the 10-piece collection from 17th-century France, post-impressionism, and '60s style icons—a sweeping range that seamlessly unifies in the sleek yet eye-catching jackets. Details like fringe and flashes of metallic add a wow factor worthy of any street style star. We're calling it now: You're about to see this cool-girl jacket everywhere.
Read on to shop the jackets that every It girl (yes, including you) should have on her radar!
You won't find the familiar bottles of liquor at Yours Sincerely, a cocktail bar that opened in January next to a faux English pub called Dear Bushwick. Instead, the 30 house cocktails are dispensed from a neat row of custom taps with porcelain doll heads and served in graduated glass beakers, like the kind found in high school chemistry class.
All that is left for the tattooed-and-bearded bartenders to do is add ice and an aromatic spritz — a refreshing break from the mixology bars that insist on making each cocktail by hand from scratch.
THE PLACE
It occupies a former five-and-dime store on an otherwise quiet stretch of W ilson Avenue in residential Bushwick lined with vinyl-sided homes. Inside, the space is long and narrow; the décor is grandmotherly yet cool. Framed paintings of flowers hang on the dark green walls. A chandelier casts a feeble light on the marble bar. A long banquette and a few tables offer patrons a place to gather and set down their beakers.
Photo The interior of Yours Sincerely. Credit Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesTHE CROWD
Fun-loving 20-somethings not too jaded for small talk. On a recent Friday night, a group of young men in capes, floral T-shirts and drop-crotch pants discussed the Netflix sitcom "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" with a nearby table of jewelry designers. (Verdict: brilliant.) At the bar, a young actress from Bay Ridge told the bartender about going to LaGuardia High School (she said it was "stressful") and asked him about his hobbies (rock 'n' roll guitar).
PLAYLIST
During the rush, the music is too faint to notice, but it sounds like Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" on repeat. Off hours, there's a wistfu l indie slant that may include Cat Power and Mac DeMarco.
GETTING IN
Like the rest of the Bushwick bar scene, the crowd doesn't arrive until the clock turns to double digits.
DRINKS
The cocktails-on-tap menu includes an old-fashioned-style Swipe Right made with an organic date-infused bourbon, and a piña colada-like Pineapple Express made with a coconut-infused rum. All cocktails are $8. Burgers and shakes are also available.
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Curious to see how showgoers are dressing down under at Australian Fashion Week? You're in luck! We've teamed with The Styleograph to bring you a daily updated roundup of the most inspiring street style looks. Have a gander below, and don't forget to come back tomorrow for more of the latest outfits!
Mr. Garavani and Mr. Giammetti have been deeply involved in the production, which will be the first cultural project of the foundation that bears their names. The costumes for the chorus and male leads were made by the opera theater's in-house costume department.
A friend of Ms. Coppola — the English production designer Nathan Crowley, also known for his fashion installations for museum exhibitions (and Batman films) — designed the sets, with Jader Bignamini, associate director of the Verdi Orchestra in Milan, as conductor.
"It was a fortuitous coming together of people that sometimes just happens," said Carlo Fuortes, the general manager of the Rome Opera House Foundation, who add ed that he had approached Ms. Coppola a few years ago to direct Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte" for another theater but she wasn't available.
The 15-performance run of "La Traviata" is already nearly sold out. "It is already the biggest box office hit in the history of the theater from 1880," Mr. Fourtes said.
Elegance and beauty are the dominant leitmotifs of this edition of "La Traviata," an opera based on "La Dame aux Camélias" by Alexandre Dumas, fils, that is a constant in theater repertoires everywhere, reinvented in countless enactments, from minimalist to modern to full-on mid-19th-century period pieces.
"We wanted to do a new production, a modern production, but modern as concept without being avant-garde," said Mr. Giammetti, who with Mr. Garavani has been sitting in on most of the rehearsals, discreetly fussing over minutiae, including jewels, fans and hairdos. "It's very traditional what we're doing, but with an edge. That's why we chose Sofia Coppola, who brings a modern vision."
Marina Bianchi, Ms. Coppola's assistant director, noted that it was "very unusual that a costume designer is so present."
Ms. Coppola said, "When Valentino asked me, I thought, 'I can't say no,'" adding that she was reassured by the opera's setting in Paris, where she lives "part of th e time," as well as her experience directing the period drama "Marie Antoinette" in 2006.
Photo At the Valentino atelier Rome, drafts for the dress, designed by Valentino Garavani, to be worn by the "La Traviata" character Violetta. Credit Chris Warde-Jones for The New York TimesFor "La Traviata," however, she said: "I wanted to bring out the personal side of the French-courtesan, the party girl used to the social scene. It's a very feminine world that I love."
Mr. Garavani, who retired in 2008, returned to work ("I am hardly pensioned off, I am always doing something," he said) to create Violetta's gowns, a rare venture on the stage despite his much-avowed passion for theater.
It's not his first foray with the footlights: Some 20 years ago he created the costumes for a short-lived opera on the life of Rudolph Valentino, and in more recent years he designed costumes for dancers of the Vienna State Opera Ballet and New York City Ballet. And it came as a relief that th e female leads of "Traviata" were slim, the opposite of the sopranos of Mr. Garavani's youth who "were often very large," he said.
"I still have creativity inside," he said. "Tomorrow I could do a runway show of 100 dresses with no problem."
Ms. Chiuri and Mr. Piccioli had already crossed paths with the world of opera, collaborating with the set builders of the Teatro Dell'Opera Di Roma for their spring 2014 couture collection commemorating operatic heroines.
"Opera, like couture, is seen as something of the past, a little dusty, a little obsolete, instead it has to be rediscovered," Ms. Chiuri said, and that is something that fashion can help to do.
Then, too, like couture, opera is replete with "artisans of great craftsmanship," Mr. Piccioli and Ms. Chiuri agreed simultaneously. (At times, interviewing the duo is reminiscent of an operatic duet, the two riffing in tandem.)
Photo A work in progress for a "La Traviata" costume at the Valentino atelier in Rome. Credit Chris Warde-Jones for The New York TimesThe challenge in designing the costumes for Ms. Malavasi and the female chorus — a soft palette counterpoint to Violetta, reflecting the increasing moodiness of the drama — was to "preserve the sense of lightness that for us is a prerogative," and make it work under the harsh lights of the stage, Ms. Chiuri said.
"We sought to create a big picture as though it were a painting," Mr. Piccioli said, "because in the end what is impressive about opera is the grandiosity of the stage, so we wanted to dress all these people on the stage as if they part of one whole."
Small touches — substituting a smoking jacket for the hunting jacket Alfredo Germont, Violetta's lover, conventionally wears in the second act — were meant to underline Ms. Coppola's intimate take on the opera.
"From the first meeting, we concurred on the spirit and the approach with respect to the opera," Mr. Piccioli said. "With designers and a film director, we could have transformed the opera into something else. Instead we opted to be more subtle, seeking emotions rather than any big effect. We wanted to make this opera personal."
"Bringing our own experiences, building on the matrix of a classical opera," Ms. Chiuri chimed in.
For the singers, wearing haute couture has been realizing "every woman's dream," said Ms. Malavasi, who joked that as a mezzo-soprano she usually plays scrappily dressed Gypsies. Wearing Maison Valentino was "thrilling, like donning a work of art," she said. Ms. Dotto said she felt a strong responsibility to wear her dresses "with nonchalance, with elegance," and was grateful that Mr. Garavani and Mr. Giammetti had been very hands-on during rehearsals, ensuring that the dresses "made me feel good."
"This is not a runway show," she said. "It's important that the dress be beautiful, but also funct ional to the action." Nevertheless, she remained a "bit terrorized" that something could happen to the gowns, "especially in the scenes where I fall," Ms. Dotto said.
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