TALK OF THE TOWN: The rich believe 'less is more'
In this post-Lehman Brothers era, we can all learn some valuable tipid tips from, who else, but the really rich who have it all and know how to save it all. They are the ones who don’t try hard to impress.
The really rich don’t care about being seen in the same dress for more than one social occasion, simply because they feel so secure. They certainly agree with Edith Head’s fashion commandment: “Don’t be afraid to repeat a dress many, many times.” It’s an old-fashioned idea that you have to have a new dress for every occasion or party. Even if you have money to do so, it isn’t necessary. The modern approach is to change accessories,” declares Edith, who has won eight Academy Awards for costume design. Edith’s style tips, excerpted from The Dress Doctor: Prescriptions for Style, from A to Z (to be published in October), are featured in Vanity Fair’s October 2008 issue.
Fashionistas can also take a tip from Gretchen Cojuangco, the regal lady on the cover of Town & Country’s anniv issue. Venerable writer Nelson Navarro says that, unlike the Gretchen of the ‘60s, today’s Gretchen shuns designer clothes and branded names for the simple reason that “it is not my style and they do not fit me anymore.” Nelson adds that as far as fashion is concerned, she now subscribes to the “less is more” doctrine. She is the type who won’t be caught dead with the latest $20,000 bag, says Nelson. “And how I love the tiangge!” Gretchen declares.
Hmmm. remember those much-talked-about stories of how tycoon Lucio Tan prefers to be a passenger in the economy section of his own PAL planes, carrying an SM Shoemart plastic supot for his handcarried stuff? Or how one Zobel scion sometimes prefers to sit with commoners in the economy section, even as he once lost one shoe upon waking up?
Seems like today’s mantra is this: The more you have, the less you want to flaunt. — Millet M. Mananquil
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Dominick Dunne’s 10 minutes with Imelda Royalty chronicler and crime reporter Dominick Dunne has written about Princess Diana and other royalty, and has covered the circus-trials of celebrities such as OJ Simpson, the Menendez brothers, and Claus von Bülow — and the Philippines’ most infamous celebrity, former First Lady Imelda Marcos.
Dunne relates his bizarre chitchat with Imelda in 1986, after the Marcoses were deposed to Hawaii and were living in what he describes as a “third-rate beach house,” with people protesting on the lawn, holding up signs that read: “Honk if you want the Marcoses to leave.” (Needless to say, it was a noisy neighborhood.)
“No press was the order of the day,” Dunne writes in the 25th anniversary issue of Vanity Fair. He kept calling and calling and getting turned down for an interview, until one day Imelda herself picked up the phone. Dunne dropped the names of Reinaldo and Carolina Herrera — and we all know that Madame is a sucker for socialites and designers, and thus he was granted a face-to-face interview with her while Ferdinand Marcos was at the dentist. When his 10 minutes were up, he complimented her on the huge diamond ring she was wearing. Imelda immediately asked a maid to bring out more jewels and there they were on the floor — Dunne and Madame — discussing the “enormous” jewels when Ferdinand walked in, shocked that his wife was talking to a reporter. The deposed couple began to fight in front of Dunne, who made a quick exit — and outside “the horns were still honking.” — Tanya T. Lara
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‘Sex’ sells in bookstores
We all thought we’d made our final farewell to the sassy gals of Sex and the City as soon as the movie’s closing credits flashed on the screen. But Candace Bushnell would beg to disagree. According to the Associated Press, the best-selling author behind the hit HBO show isn’t quite ready to part with the cosmo-swilling, Blahnik-buying character that made her career.
Bushnell intends to revisit Carrie Bradshaw’s younger days in a two-part teen book series dubbed The Carrie Diaries set to debut in 2010. According to publishing house HarperCollins, the books will “take readers back to Carrie’s formative years in high school, giving an inside look at Carrie’s friendships, romances and how she realized her dream of becoming a writer.”
Will SATC 2.0 meet the same fate as the original book? Based on viewer reactions to the Michael Patrick King-helmed film, no one, it seems, can get enough of Carrie and co. Manicured fingers of tweens around the globe are crossed right about now in the hopes that the teen series will make it to TV like its original counterpart. If that happens, perhaps the dismal Beverly Hills 90210 remake will finally have some competition — hopefully with better clothes. Watch out, Gossip Girl. — Bea Ledesma
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Gap, Colette and Hurricane Hannah
Last Sept. 6, during Fashion Week in New York, two major events happened. The first was that Hurricane Hannah made landfall on the East Coast and the second was that the Colette x Gap exhibit opened. Despite Hannah, hundreds of people lined up and waited up to three hours under the pouring rain at the Gap flagship store on 54th and 5th Avenue. The Paris boutique Colette created a one-month installation in Gap’s “pop-up store,” a small space (no more than 30 square meters). Some people, enticed by the attention the exhibit was getting, lined up even without knowing what Colette is. Security was so tight that even foreign media invited by Gap were not allowed to take pictures inside the store (yes, we had to line up, too).
This is the first time Colette has made landfall in the United States — and Americans and tourists (and some French expats) were quick to snap up the $70 T-shirts with artists’ drawings, the $200 key chains and $100 candles. Limited-edition Colette collaboration products include Oakley sunglasses, Starter jackets, Uslu Airlines nail polish, Le Labo fragrance Vanilla 44, Domestic vinyl stickers, Hello Kitty watches and Asics Tiger sneakers. Artists also redesigned iconic Gap products, such as a trench painted by André; French artisan Anne-Marie Herckes made miniature versions of Gap classics; denim jackets customized by Olympia Le Tan; Andrea Crews’s mixed tees; Repetto BB shoes and an Alexis Mabille bow bag in classic heather gray jersey, etc.
New Yorkers shopped till Hannah dropped. — Tanya T. Lara
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Skirting the issue
Omigosh! Their panties are showing! But look again. “What you see below are not see-through skirts. They are actually prints on the skirts to make it look as if the panties are visible and are the current rage in Japan,” according to an e-mail forwarded to us by someone who got it from someone else, and so forth and so on.
These eye-catching pictures are popping up in e-mails around the world. Hot, you say? It’s a hoax, according to Toronto Star, whose reporter Nick McCabe-Lokos gives us the lowdown: “Images flooding e-mails are the creation of a computer program.”
Skirting the issue, McCabe says the prank is as transparent as a see-through skirt, but people apparently bought it — and there are even orders for the skirts. But sorry, these skirts don’t exist, not even as a kink item, says Kjeld Duits, a journalist who runs a street fashion/trend web site called japanesestreets.com. “The pictures are very common in Japan, where a lot of cheap porno magazines (for some reason, the Japanese are known in the West for being kinky) use them. There’s nothing like this in the street,” Duits stresses.
The men out there panting at the sight of pantylines, will be sorely disappointed because they will not really see women walking in the streets of Tokyo with their pants down, much less with their panties showing.
Through the wonders of computer graphics, the image of a woman in a skirt was combined with another wearing just underwear. But the porn magazines, adds Duits, claim to have taken the pictures using a camera lens that allows them to shoot through clothes.
Snooping around for doctored images and sifting through piles of urban legends, snopes.com says, “In all the example photographs provided, the images of the panties line up perfectly with the actual positioning of the skirt wearers’ derrieres and legs, indicating at the very least that these pictures were very carefully posed.”
Can anything top these panty skirts? Vivienne Westwood likes to make more than brief statements with her printed nipples and pubic hair on fleshtone catsuits while Jean Paul Gaultier flexes his creative muscles by coming out with trompe l’oeil T-shirts with rippling abs for men.
But don’t look now because Japanese porn could become the new Western trend. With an enterprising Israeli importer deciding to make the skirts himself, these printed panty skirts could be the next big thing. — Ching M. Alano
