We Will Return Shortly

D is for Dresses

The dress is like a woman's chambermaid- it is the closet confidante a woman can have, aside from herself. A dress knows all the secrets- you cannot hide anything from a dress; it sees all your flaws in technicolour. More importantly, it feels all your flaws. Yet a good dress does not reveal secrets. When selecting a dress, one should keep this in mind. How trustworthy is this dress? Of course, one cannot submit this dress to a lie-detector test- dresses cannot talk, they can only show. So I find in cases like these that it is best to hire an old fashioned private investigator to investigate the dress. You can do this by going to a private investigator's door, knocking on it and hiring him with cash handed in a manilla enevelope. In extreme cases, I'd suggest getting the police involved- but really, if you're getting the police involved the dress probably isn't very trustworth in the first place! The private eye will do some background work on the dress first- even an old Chanel dress may not be totally trustworthy, about one in a thousand tends to go rogue. Like the FBI or CIA or RIAA or something, no? Anyway- the background work, then if it passes that the P.I will start investigating the dress in person. He'll walk into the room, feel the dress, talk to the dress, feel it again- frankly, some of these private eyes are perverts. But they do their job, and it's absoultuly paramount that your dress is trustworthy.

I'm reminded of a case where a woman did not have her dress properly investigated before she went and purchased it. As you can imagine, the consequences were quite disastorous. She wore the dress to a rather "important" social function and her photo ended up in all the social pages the next day. Several magazines, I know, took pictures of her in the dress because it was so unflattering. This was before these internet memes- those internet-pictures that go around everywhere. People had to make their own memes, back then. So this stupid woman became a meme in the world of fashion- people would look at the picture of her in the dress, laugh, and take it as a warning. The woman in question- I won't name her, but you probably know her name; she's very well know. Well, that woman in question's social life was destoryed, and she now mopes about her house by herself.

A Dior dress is very untrustworthy. I don't think anyone should buy a dress made by a man with a finiticky moustache anyway. Dior dresses tend to tell the other dresses about their owner, so when the wearer of the dress is in a room with other people wearing other dresses, she looks very demode indeed. Be very wary of the couture. Whilst it may look like a lady, it does not behave like a lady!
Lanvin dresses are generally good. Alber, you know, the designer of Lanvin- he has a heart of gold. Real gold. Melting gold. Pure, melting gold. It must get very hot in there sometimes. They can be quite haughty, so treat them with respect.
I'm fond of Rodarte dresses. The Rodarte sisters are sweet, in the genuine way that one imagines Sylvia Plath to be when she wasn't being depressed. The dresses themselves are sweet. Sweet in an organic way- very natural.
I suppose I'd better include the Japanese in here. Dresses by Rei Kawakubo- Comme des Garcons, tend to be incredibly mysterious. Other dresses are a bit scared of them. It really depends if you intend on socializing at a party or not. I don't, so if I was a woman I'd wear Comme des Garcons all the time. I used to wear a lot of Yohji Yamamoto in the 90s- it scared away a lot of people. Alas, I cannot wear Yohji these days. It is not in "the now." Dresses by Yohji are wonderful- elegant, but spinsters or never married. Mostly the latter.

Attention: Perez Hilton

Sorry Karl, must interrupt this alphabet business of yours for a moment.

Dear readers, I apologize for uttering the demode name of Per- Perez-

GET ME A WASTEBASKET, I FEEL NAUSEOUS

Hilton. But he has slighted our darling little Tavi.

Mr. Hilton -

One more word and you'll find yourself in Bulgaria blogging about new hallway carpeting trends. If I'm that nice.

I AM ANNA AND I HAVE SPOKEN.

All right, Karl - you may continue. I believe the next letter is H? H is for Hermès. Which reminds me...

ORDER MORE SCARVES.

Ciao lovelies,

Anna

G is for Gadgets

In today’s modern times, gadgets seem to take the role of mother, daughter, father and son. I have colleagues- ex-colleagues, anyway, who are secretly engaged to their Blackberry or iphone. They refer to their fax machine as their “mistress” and their laptop (a Mac, no doubt) as their “lover”. Gadget people are most definitely not monogamous- except for me- I think I must be the only monogamous gadget user in the world. The only gadget I use is the ipod. I have hundreds of them- thousands. I’ve actually designed a special ipod wheelbarrow to wheel them around in. I go out into the garden and I wheel them around, pretending I’m doing some sort of garden-type work. Sometimes I even wear a safari hat, which is the most chic sort of gardening hat in the world. Of course, I don’t actually garden. It’s true that I draw flowers and they come to life, just as some sort of fairy tale. Yet those flowers need to be watered, as do the rest of the plants I have in my garden. They’re not going to survive on their own! But being drawn flowers, they require drawn rain, drawn suns, and so on. It’s all a lot of work if you think about it, which I don’t imagine you have. So I simply have Dries van Noten do the gardening. He’s much better at that sort of thing, you know. That’s why he has so many floral prints. (I think floral prints are for middle aged ladies with weight problems, but that’s another matter.)

Anyway, gadgets are fine, if one acknowledges that they are a gadget rather than a person. I’ve been at funerals- actually, recently I was at the funeral of a Very Famous and Fabulously Wealthy Person, and people answer phonecalls on their Blackberry or Boysenberry or somesuch during the funeral.

“And we will remember..”

Gadget obsessed man: “Hello? Yeah, I’m in a funeral right now. Yeah, it’s a really good one. They have cupcakes and everything..”

“Was a good man, and was loved..”

G.O.M: “Oh really? Did she really? Yeah, I haven’t had sex with her in- oh god- I don’t know, a week. Jesus. I know.”

“..By all that knew him. He was born on..”

G.O.M: “Oh god, there’s this guy in front of me who just can’t stop talking. God. Jesus. Buddha. So rude!”

And on it goes- people get annoyed with the G.O.M, the G.O.M gets annoyed with them and ends up twittering about how he is annoyed in one hundred and forty characters or less. This is not chic.

New Things

A couple of months ago, a website called "ASOS" wrote to the producers of the t-shirts you see to your right (I feel like a tourist guide), expressing interest in selling said t-shirts on their website, along with t-shirts designed by other collaborators in the Borders and Frontiers "blogger" collaboration (of course, I don't consider myself a blogger per se, just a dressmaker). Anyway, I was feeling generous at the time and decided to spread fashion to the masses, etc etc- a la H&M. One may purchase them here. I recommend buying all 8, because there's sometimes 8 days a week. (As that chic covers band, The Beatles knows. They also do children's parties.)

F is for Figures

Throughout the press lately, I've been adorned with a reputation that makes me sound like I like the models, and indeed women, to look like they come from Belsen or one of those fictional 3rd world countries (we'll get to those in a bit). I do not. I like models to be skinny. Models are not fat. You're living in a dream-world if you think models should be fat, and what a horrible dream-world that must be. Fashion itself is a dream-world, built on decadence and fantasy and depraved people. Models are part of that fantasy. When a child buys sweets, do they expect vomit coloured wrapper-and-sweet? Of course not- this would be ridiculous. We don't get many ugly people in movies because most movies are a fantasty, too. You don't sell a dress by placing it on an unattractive lady, hm? Just as one doesn't sell cigerettes by showing pictures of people dying of lung cancer. Of course a designer is free to do this- it's their perogitive. But most likely they don't understand how important a part fantasty plays in fashion.

And as for these models that one hears about going down the runways; the ones who look like they've just come out of a prision camp- well, they're not going to sell dresses either. Nobody wants to buy a dress off a skeleton. Where's the asperation in that? I realize we're a morbid culture- but not that morbid, I hope. So I don't use the prison camp models (no matter what PETA says). I use attractive girls who can convey whatever I want them to convey- I use girls who can wear my clothes well.

Yet I'm leaving out two very important things here- the figures of the women who are not models, and the figures in a bank account.

You know, women don't care what men think they look like- they're more worried about what the female population thinks they look like. Especially the chic woman. I recall a conversation I had with a dear female friend, who idealized- probably still does- the body of the model. I said to her: "but this is incredibly unattractive to men," and she said "I know, but I don't care what they think- they have no taste anyway. Have you seen those men's magazines?" I asked her what these men's magazines are, and she replied- "oh, Playboy, FHM, Maxim- that sort of thing." I told her I had read a Playboy once or twice; there was a good Bob Dylan interview in it, but I didn't understand what those vulgar women were doing on the pages. "Vulgar. That's the sort of women most men like" she replied, to which I replied that the women weren't very sexy looking, even for someone as perverse as I- why doesn't Playboy use people like Kate(Moss)?

She told me most men don't actually find Kate attractive, which I found very strange. I pointed out a few other models- Lara Stone and so on. "Nope," was her answer. So I tend to agree that woman, if they must care about anybody's opinion, should care about that of other chic females (every so often I find a straight guy with taste, but most of them have girlfriends, so please don't mail me asking for their details.)

From this, we can ask the question: "what is the perfect figure?" which I actually almost impossible to answer- if a woman is tall and has an hourglass shape, she may very well look like a hooker unless the figures in her bank account are very healthy indeed. A short woman who is exceedingly skinny may be mistaken for a tree. A very thin woman, who is likewise very skinny, may also be mistaken for a tree. In fact, she risks becoming one. There are oddles and oddles of models who were too tall and too skinny, so skinny that one day they put their arms up one day, and the universe mistook them for a tree. So they became a tree. It's most unfortunante, although I believe the modelling agencies these days have insurance policies against this sort of thing.

The perfect figure depends on every facet of you- from your nose to your asophegus. A rich woman can get away with being plumb- a "dumpling" we call them- although she'll have trouble fitting her piggy little legs into couture! A woman who has not-so-much money will want to look less like a dumpling and more like the stick on a kebab (though not a toothpick.) In the end, it comes down to personal taste. There's no need to look like a strand of my lucious hair, and there is no need to look like you're tomorrow's roast.

Figures in bank accounts are somewhat less vague. The bigger the better. The fatter the better. In fashion, everybody wants smaller, smaller. Many "fashionistas" make the mistake of thinking their bank account should reflect their slim figure. It really shouldn't. It should resemble the obese duchess you'll have to shake hands with at a charity auction if you haven't already. Warts and all.

The Rich/Mrs. R G Razia

Carine and I were having a non-lunch the other day, at one of our favourite places to not eat- Quintette du Hot Club de France (they do a divine diet Coke). We were discussing the usual- J.D's death, Nabokov being dead for quite a bit longer and Lester Bangs continuing to write me stalkeresque letters from beyond the grave. Oh, and beheading people. It works quite well- it even works for the peasants! A kind of universal way of doing things, free of class- like Coca Cola. All beheadings are the same. The president of the United States of America can behead somebody, Elizabeth Taylor can behead somebody, a bum can behead somebody.

Anyway, about half an hour into our conversation, a woman named Regina G Razia came up to Carine. She's an old sort of socialite, the kind who looks like they're going to fall leopard skin pillbox hat-first into their grave. Every pore of her is filled with botox.

"OH MY GOD CARINE. ARE YOU WEARING PINK ON A TUESDAY?"

"..Excuse me?"

"I SAID: ARE YOU WEARING PINK ON A TUESDAY? IT'S PINK ON WEDNESDAYS, GOSH." "Well. I'm actually wearing black, but anyway.."

"I'M GOING TO WRITE ABOUT THIS IN MY MAGAZINE! THERE'LL BE A SCANDAL. A SCANDAL, I TELL YOU."

"Mrs. Razia, I don't believe you have a magazine."

"WELL...A BLOG" "A blog, hm?" I said.

"I JUST GOT ONE ON BLOGSPOT. IT'S ALREADY GOT TWENTY HITS. YOU'LL ALL SEE! YOU'LL RUE THE DAY YOU WORE PINK ON A TUESDAY! IT'S JUST SIMPLE ETIQUETTE."

"The rich. They're not like us" I said to Carine, as I blew my nose on my Hermès handkerchief.

The Press

Yesterday I received in the mail, via a series of tubes and butlers, a copy of "Elle Collections" magazine, in which an article by myself is featured (along with an article by the wonderful Robin Givhan, et al). The article in question is my 10 commandments of style. I thought delivering the 10 commandments on a mountain was a bit inefficient- a bit old fashioned, really. Who really gathers around mountains these days, hm? And stone tablets- frankly, it's not very modern. So I thought delivering my commandments via a magazine would be more accessible to the public, more in the now.

A few of you may be thinking- "hang on Karl, wouldn't it be more modern to tweet it?"

To this I argue that tweets are disposable, 140 character objects of frivolity. They're fine for talking about Alpacas and the like, but a set of commandments needs to someone one can hold, can lick, can feel. So the magazine format suited me perfectly for deploying the basis of the religion of fashion. I feel a little late in doing this- fashion's already been around for a thousand years or more- but it's really no different to certain designers starting their shows late, hm?

Anyway, you should all ring the bell for your butler to go an obtain a copy for you of this magazine. Otherwise you could be sinning and you won't even know it!

Felix Hoenikker: What is sin?

Karl: I don't know either, Felix. But human beings seem to require it.