LA Vintage Fashion Show

What a fabulous Sunday afternoon I had. I not only got to see some of the most amazing clothes from the 1850's to the 1980's but it was all for free since I am a student. I honestly didn't even know that the expo was happening, my husband found it on http://losangeles.going.com/ and then surprised me with the afternoon trip. He knows I am absolutely bananas for vintage clothes. I have almost everything my mother and Aunt Faye wore through the 60's and 70's plus I always find great dresses at Wasteland in Santa Monica (the one on Melrose usually has slim-pickings because well…its on Melrose). I also go to a lot garage sales and thrift stores on the weekends. I love to look through the old dresses and imagine the parties, the scandals, the love, the life that they've seen (if this dress could talk ;-). At times I have found some real winners, in fact I am having a late 60's Hawaiian mini-dress I found reproduced in different fabric with altered sleeves. Digging in the crates of fashion is not for everybody. It is a time consuming process that yields maybe one or two special pieces that fit for every thousand seen. For some people it can be exciting but for those of you who haven't the time to search for that perfect dress and want to find great things all at once The Expo is for you.

About three times a year fashion aficionados in Los Angeles march down to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium for the Vintage Fashion Expo http://vintageexpo.com/. One can find everything from feather boas and mink stoles to cowboy boots and Manolo Blahniks. The booths fill up every available nook and cranny of the auditorium. We stumbled upon a lady in a dark corner with a little table filled with Vintage ties, which is her specialty. She told us that many people looking for vintage ties expect them to be bright colorful and shiny. But in reality most ties worn throughout the 20th century were pretty subdued and ordinary. I asked why this was and she said that the men who wore the flashy ties were entertainers and gangsters, the men who had their pictures taken the most. She said in the future people looking for vintage clothes from the 1990's and 2000's are going to want big gold chains and the styles they see on our current entertainers. It must be funny to be a little old person and see some kid walk by looking like Al Capone.
Wandering past the tables, my husband stopped at a table and picked up an extremely rare and expensive pair of Rene Caovila pumps. He knew the name because, aside from being stylish himself, Coavilla shoes are manufactured in Fiesso d'Artico, Italy close to where he is from.
Look at the website http://www.renecaovilla.com/ and feast your eyes on some of the most beautiful shoes on earth. I especially love the first pair you see on their home page made out of black lace. They would look so good on my feet, they belong on my feet! Alas they start at $1,000 and that, unfortunately is temporarily out of the Suprema budget. As you can see the pair we found at the expo are gorgeous. Gold, black, bejewled and strappy I couldn't try them on because I wear a size 40 shoe (US size 10) and they were a 36. Come to think of it I've never actually found a pair of vintage shoes in my size *sigh* . It is said that, on average, human beings are larger nowadays, which is quite evident when you dig through vintage clothes. My mother was the tallest woman in her graduating class in 1966 at 5'7 and I wasn't even close to being the tallest in school standing 5'11" in my bare feet. Yada yada yada, pardon the digression, the dealer was willing to let them go for $150 but since I have these skis I couldn't grab what could've been my first pair of Caovillas.
One of the best things about these events are the characters who frequent them. Immediately after entering the building a teeny tiny older woman slinked by my husband with a treacherous swivel to her hips, rocking a proper beehive and seamed stockings, he looked at me with an amused look - we both knew that this lady, in her prime, was definitely a man-killer. Turning the corner I almost tripped over a little kid because what I saw was so funny. A man about 40 years old wearing an animal print silk smoking jacket, 2 sizes too small for his belly, over a white t-shirt and jeans, he looked like a plumber dressed as Hugh Hefner for Halloween. The next person I thought was interesting was an Asian lady looking beautiful in a swing era, perfectly tailored, forest green dress along with a green pillbox hat and veil. She carried a matching handbag and finished her look off with velvet pumps - all in green of course. Truthfully it was almost green overkill but green, specifically forest green is my second favourite colour so go on with your bad self Asian lady.

Italia Permeated in Purple

Emerging this morning from a two day jet-lag after flying back from Venezia, I'd been thinking about how every store window in Italy was drenched in Purple. I am fortunate to travel to Northern Italy quarterly and able to see how trends spread to the people so fast. In Italy they buy clothes for the season and wear it out. They, meaning even the garbage men, the Pizzaioli and truck drivers too. They look fantastic to the average American tourist but if you spend more than a weeks time in the same company you'll discover that clothes is usually worn over and over again.
Purple is not a popular color for the Italians. Long considered to be a color of mourning along with black, wearing purple is thought to bring bad luck. Strangely wearing black is not considered bad luck but rather fashionable (could this be for its slimming qualities?). Wearing purple for me is bad luck because It makes my skin look sallow and corpselike. Hmmmmmmm color of mourning... I did a lot of shopping on this trip and every time a sales lady recommended that I try something on in purple I cringed before politely saying no grazie. I'd ask for green, burgundy, red anything but purple, to no avail. And the heartbreaker was that there were so many lovely dresses, cashmere sweaters, and blouses that I would've bought in a heatbeat, even with the current exchange rate, had they been in a different color. If you look good in purple now is a great time to go. If you don't mind being behind a season or two go in January for the bi-annual sales.
Surrounded at dinner by 12 men all wearing something purple I felt compelled (perhaps by the Grappa) to tell my father-in-law's golf buddies that they, along with their people, are two years behind Madonna in the wearing of purple but good manners (And my husband pinching me under the table) made me stare zitta (Italian for keeping my big mouth shut). When we got home I opened up a gift from our friends parents and it as a beautiful little purple charm bracelet and I actually really love it. I think I found the right amount of purple to wear. After unpacking I layed out clothes and I ended up with a black dress (€200), a black and grey scarf (€75), a black vest for my husband (€ 280), a white dress shirt for him with a stiff high collar (€ 180)and a gorgeous black leather jacket hand crafted by our uncle Enrico (€250 - €1250 retail). If red had been the color of the season in Italy I would've came back ready for the tango lessons he's been saying he is game for. Instead we look like a fashion spread in Vogue for funerals and we didn't even buy purple.
*This is the author's first trip to Italy where she did not buy shoes. She is waiting rather for January and the delicious countrywide sales that come along with it.

Polanski (Unauthorized)

I went to the premier of Polanski (Unauthorized) this evening with high hopes. I first saw Helter Skelter at the ridiculously young age of 12 and although I had many nightmares after seeing it, this turned my summer into a strange mission to learn about the Manson Family it was then that I learned about Roman Polanski. Anyways this was a movie I was really looking forward to seeing and man am I disappointed. Its like 3 movies rolled into one but with bad editing choices. There is some interesting camera work, music and lighting at times but what really bothered me was the cuts in between the 3 time periods (1934-44, 1966-69, 75-78). If one scene ended, on what was intended to be a poignant note, the next scene would yank you right out of it so you couldn't digest it. I mean if you are going to jump around like that at least let there be some semblance of cohesiveness between the time periods. Just so that its not so jarring to the senses. It was unfortunate because many parts are beautiful or interesting enough to stand on their own as works of art. They should've just let it ride out chronicologically and given us little flashbacks toward the ugly rape trial stuff at the end to strengthen the audiences understanding of Polanski's pathology. The acting was really terrible too. And this wasn't poor acting that could be blamed on bad writing (although that left much to be desired as well). Most of the actors seemed to be anticipating what line was coming next rather than experiencing it for the first time. It was as though they were just waiting for the other actor to stop speaking so that they could deliver their line. I knew we were in trouble in the beginning of the movie where Polanski meets Sharon Tate for the first time. The dialogue between Polanski and the man who becomes the financier of his next film was artificial, it just played out too perfectly and ended up seeming corny. The actress playing Sharon Tate also seemed to just be spitting out her lines (in an annoying voice) but she got better towards the latter half of the film. The Anton LaVey character was just silly to me, in fact the part where Polanski is hiring him to be his "Technical Advisor" almost made me laugh out loud because he finishes Polanski's line saying "Technical advisor" in such an contrived way. The gentleman who plays Polanski's producer was the best actor out of the bunch although I cannot say that I felt a real connection between any of them. Before I forget, I also thought that they could have just used subtitles instead of mixing in the pertinent English dialogue into French and Hebrew. This was a fiasco, the actress playing a loose woman from Spain even says 'El Spain" hahahaha, that just sounds ridiculous. In fact all the bimbos in the film just seemed like typical Hollywood girls you'd see out tonight. Could it be that I saw one of the circa 1977 dresses in a Forever 21 window??? It is late and I am not remembering everything, perhaps tomorrow I will remember more of the good parts. The second half is better and the director who also plays Polanski has a some great moments. All in all I can sense that there was a big vision for this film. Maybe someone with a lot of loot will sense that too and help this guy have another go at it.

Ciao