Friday Night Twirling on Valencia

Tonight on the Fabric Channel: Ultrasuede, the Revolution That Fashion Cotton Forgot

The ads were ubiquitous that season -- from Bridget Loves Bernie to The Waltons to Police Woman you would hear that familiar line: "Imagine...storm clouds are looming, and you step out on the street in your suede blazer without caution, without concern."

At a press conference during Fashion Week, Halston and Bill Blass named it "The fabric that will be a bridge between the 20th and 21st centuries...and likely to the 22nd and 23rd."

A 70-foot billboard in Times Square of a beaming Lena Horn featured her in an ankle length suede trench coat in a downpour as she gallantly threw her broken umbrella into the dustbin. Looming above her blazed the fabric's iconic motto: "Suede without Fear!"

ULTRASUEDE. The fabric with as much providence and provenance as an opera window on a Mark IV Givenchy designer edition. When Halston launched his JCPenney line, Jean Luc Godard was working on a film about him called Suede Ultimante and his Studio Fifty-4 meals at JCP, the snack bars at the proletariat department store featured tiny mirror balls in the children's Pleasure Island meals until they were warranted as being a choking hazard.

The evolution of Ultrasuede in the late 20th century is perhaps the least documented and most fascinating chapter in its still emerging history. After being dismissed by the early 1990s as a relic of the flashy, hedonistic synthetic era, a Uruguayan agronomist discovered a way to produce it organically through hybrid silk worm-alpaca fauns which produced a fleece that had all of the properties of Ultrasuede. Though not quite as rain repellent as its synthetic forefather, it was even more wrinkle resistant and did not melt or explode when ironed.

Sadly, Halston did not live to see this innovation. Regardless, it is proof that fabric does not die but evolves.

Shaving Away with Time: Manorexia Attacks

Junk Thief is somewhat pleased to say that he is within an inch (we won't say which one) of the 1967 ideal male figure. Then look at the 2010 "manorexic" ideal. I'm sure some women will take some delight in seeing this as poetic justice.

Dimensions of Rootstein’s Male Mannequins:
THE CLASSIC: 1967, 42” chest, 33” waist
THE MUSCLEMAN: 1983, 41” chest, 31” waist
THE SWIMMER: 1994, 38” chest, 28” waist
THE ANDROGYNE (a.k.a. “Homme Nouveau”): 2010, 35” chest, 27” waist

The full article can be found here.

Olympic Harlequin

We all love Philip Johnson, but he dumped some of his worst architecture in Texas in the 1970s and 1980s. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but what happens in Texas stays there and festers until it becomes a president or the Tea Party Movement.
Phew, San Francisco is immune to such things. Oh, wait, we're not! Not only do we have a Neiman-Marcus in Union Square, we have one with a harlequin design by Philip Johnson. However, he claimed he was Phillip Johnston when he designed it. (Look closely, he just added two consonants.)Just how bad is Johnson's Texas architecture? Check out the website for the Crescent in Dallas which he designed. Crescent as in croissant, as in French as in faux Versailles. They have some really great propaganda:

• As culturally vibrant as the neighborhood in which it sits, Rosewood Crescent Hotel is ideally located in the heart of Uptown Dallas. Within walking distance of the downtown Dallas' Arts District, where the new Winspear Opera House and Wyly Theatre complete the largest urban arts district in America, the luxury hotel consistently wins hearts and accolades. Offering chic, contemporary styling, a serene spa and dining options ranging from Nobu to Starbucks, Rosewood Crescent Hotel offers discreet, professional service with Texas charm.

The biggest arts district in America? Or the Americas? I've been to Buenos Aires, and I think theirs is much bigger. And San Francisco's arts district, the Engleside, is bigger than Midland AND Odessa combined. Come on, Texas, you're big with oil and Texas Instruments not "the arts". However, nothing says "the arts" more than "Rosewood".
What goes around, comes around., Have you been watching the Winter Olympics? Of course not. No one watches the Winter Olympics since there are no Cuban or Brazilian men's swim teams, but they do have harlequin patterned curling pants from "the San Francisco Bay Area". (Actually Santa Rosa, but isn't that also in Texas?)

JTTV Season 4, Episode 5 - Sundial Explained

Word among the smart set is that 2010 and the teens will be the era of Amish chic. While Lady Gaga seems to represent the last desperate act of the excess and consumption driven 1990s and aughts, Amish fashion shows that restraint and the less is more aesthetic bring great hope for the decade ahead.

The real estate crash and financial market breakdowns have brought great trauma for those of the Humvee/McMansion/120 inch plasma HD TV set, but little has changed for the Amish the past two years. And they are as stylish as ever in their basic black with white trim.

Those who read Parade magazine -- that harbinger of cutting edge style and cultural tipping points -- are already well aware of the sensational Heat Surge heaters with hand glued Amish mantles that perfectly merge old world craftsmanship and made-in-China/assembled-Mexico technology.

Now the de Young Museum is featuring "Amish Abstractions". While the Amish are known for abstaining for mind-altering substances, one look at these psychedelic quilts will leave you asking "What you been smokin', bro'?"

While Junk Thief TV host Alton V. Yowells, VII, is recovering from his own encounter with mind altering substances in our last episode, Bryce Digdug has stepped in to host our latest episode and introduce the hottest trend-setting accessory that will let the world know you are gladly leaving the aughts behind and on the cutting edge of the teens. Order yours today. Only two orders per household.

Fashion, Life, Before Anna Wintour

Click to embiggen both for captions.

Tonight on the Fabric Channel

As part of its award winning series Wild Weaves: Behind the Cloth, The Fabric Channel Worldwide (FCW) presents: Gabardine - A Stitch Apart.

1654 - After their ill-fated peach wine venture the previous summer that mutated a stomach virus that claimed 834 lives, the Brothers of Gabardina start experimenting with local cottons grown on the slopes and sheep (whom they previously did not know provided services other than companionship).

1658 - Following several awkward false starts, the brothers put on a fashion show of their new robes that draws attendees from the five surrounding valleys.

1661 - Two years of great success and demand for the fabric come crashing to a halt when locusts deplete the season's cotton harvest, and the monks begin making box wine. Die Schwestern von Bitternberg, an obscure Austrian alpine order, buy their few remaining fabrics, spinning wheels and looms.
1813 - Having created what is now the third largest industry in the nation, gabardine must now be used in all Austrian flags.

1893 - Dr. Sigmund Freud is photographed by the International Herald Tribune in a gabardine suit.

1903 - Considered an odd cross between the salsa, Turkey Trot and the Can-Can, La Gabarina floods from the obscure dance halls of Havana to the cabarets of New York, Shanghai and Berlin.

1921 - Though an initial hit with its guests, the felted gabardine sheets at Sonoma County's Bohemian Club cause President Harding to break out in hives and experience shortness of breath. When he dies suddenly months later, speculation about the role of gabardine is whispered throughout the chambers of Washington, D.C.

1928 - In between acting in and directing films at UFA, Leni Riefenstahl secretly begins working on Gabardiniad: Shroud of the Fatherland.

1936 - Hidden cameras at the World Fair are installed by MIT, capturing the weave of men's trousers and jackets. More than 85% are gabardine.
1939 - A test screening of a short excerpt from Gabardiniad in Hamburg sends the crowd into an anti-Semitic fury. Goebels writes a check for seven million marks for the completion of the film now rumored to be seven hours long.

1943 - As the war rages on, desperate families trade milk and chicken ration stamps 10 to 1 for the precious gabardine stamps that also start showing up on the black market.

1945 - Having word of the Allied forces advancing towards Berlin, Riefenstahl burns all prints of Gabardiniad. When captured in her pied-à-terre she is found listening to Kate Smith and working on a script about the adventures of two Alpine fauns. She claims she had been so engrossed in her work for the past six years she had no idea that there had been a war going on and thought it was just her noisy Jewish neighbors arguing.

1954 - As a part of the "Let's Just Get Over It" campaign, President Eisenhower is photographed for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post behind the wheel of a Volkswagen drinking a Heineken and wearing a gabardine suit.
1972 - While being photographed on a visit to the White House with his sister Karen, Richard Carpenter is visibly alarmed in some photos when President Nixon grabs the seat of his black cotton-polyester gabardine trousers and purrs, "Oooh, what a nice tight blend."

1977 - Famously headstrong Barbra Streisand teams with diminutive Paul Williams to pen the love theme for the critically lambasted yet bizarrely lucrative remake of A Star Is Born. Originally titled "Gabardine," Streisand finally relinquishes to retitle it "Evergreen". Though smiling upon winning Oscars and Grammys, she is heard mumbling, "I liked it a lot better when it was named after that sexy fabric and not that #$#@(*&$ tree!"

1979 - Clocking in at over 18 minutes, the tune "Gabardine" recorded by Belgian chanteuse Pikki tops the dance charts in Ibiza, Fire Island, Tokyo and Paris for six solid weeks. Speaking virtually no English and pitifully little French, Pikki repeats the single word "Gabardine" with such sexual gusto that the tune is banned by the Vatican, the LDS and the emerging Christian Coalition.

2007 - A pristine print of Gabardiniad is discovered in Tierra de Fuego. Criterion Collection announces that it will release a 32-DVD reissue in time for Christmas 2012.

Coming in August on the Fabric Channel - Poplin: The Populist Silk

The Skinny on Manhattan

Manhattan is the center of the thinnest county in the state of New York, according to this article in today's Times. And they say hard-hitting investigative reporting is dead!

The Times has certainly come a long way over the past 40 years, I am usually not one to shriek and point at mild comments that I consider to be homophobic. However, I must say I was given pause when I read this paragraph:

"Beyond that, Manhattan is the national capital of disparate subcultures of the skinny: Aspiring models. Nightclubbing hipsters. Gay men with the time and money to chisel their physiques at the gym. Park Avenue society matrons who remain preternaturally slender into their 70s, the 'social X-rays' satirized by Tom Wolfe."

I can't say that I have an excess of time and money on my hands and, even if I did, that I would necessarily invest it the way this article suggests. And to think Park Avenue society matrons are maligned in the same paragraph.

Then again, I live in San Francisco where I do see my fair share of overweight people but probably not what you'd see in rural Mississippi. How's the waistline in your zip code?

Interactive Wednesday: How Is Your Math?

I was never that fond of Sex in the City, but this week I was watching a Hispanic affairs program on that community's fashion industry. They started comparing the consuming habits of Hispanics and Caucasians and revealed that the latter spend a paltry $800 a year on clothing and former spends a "remarkable" (?...!!!) $1,200 a year on clothing.

Anyone who knows me can attest that I'm usually rather drably and unremarkably dressed on the whole, but is it really true that the majority of Americans -- even in this economy -- spend less than $100 a month on clothing? Am I that damaged by the Carrie Bradshaw legacy that I cannot wrap my mind around that figure? I can't even wrap my mind around it in the year...1979 or something.

Discuss amongst yourselves. I could submit sales receipts of the past four weeks in the meantime.

Timeless Fashion for Our Troubled Times

Get yours at www.ichliebevalkyrie.com.dr

Project Basenji Runway Continued

It was a wonderfully sunny and slightly cool day, so I slipped out at lunch to add one more frock to Bow's wardrobe -- it seems fitting for the season and perfect for clear but cool days when we head out for a stroll or just to lounge about the house when there's a draft coming through the front door.

Basenji Fashion Friday

What all the well dressed basenjis are wearing these days.

I'd Rather Imagine What Your Legs Look Like

Another reminder of why I want to continue living in a cooler climate is this article in today's Times about shorts now being acceptable for business wear. The only thing more annoying than a "no pants policy" in an office environment would be one where they play volleyball or other enforced fun activities. I long for a return to the days of men in gray flannel suits.

The Other Fashion Event of the Year

David Beckham's in town to strut out his new skivvies. Oh, woo hoo. Junk Thief will be unveiling his new painter pants line with Ben Davis this week at Acme Surplus on Mission Street. Which Spice Girl is Junk Thief married to? Old Spice, of course.

Eccentric?

Besides the use of the color red and cherry stained oak in home decor, Junk Thief shares with Diana Vreeland a penchant for freshly ironed paper money. Spray starch can be used, but this must be done in moderation to avoid stains. It goes without saying that these are then placed in the billfold, all face up with smaller denominations of bills in the front, larger in the back. Stacking of cans or other repetitive behavior is often an early sign of autism. In Junk Thief's family, there is a consistent pattern of children from ages nine months to 32 months of naming the cans and preferring to play with them instead of dolls or other toys. Spice cans were a favorite. No stacking was involved because each can was an individual and needed its personal space.

Do you have similar eccentricities to share?

Super Charged in the Mission

We have it all in this little arrodissement, San Francisco's Mission District, where everything is super-charged, be it...
...Cadillacs or...
...underwear. Vigaro! Mi gusto, mi gusto. Vroom, vroom!

...and I Don't See No Horns on You, Boy

Interesting article in the current issue of New York magazine about Taavo Somer and his whole empire of Freemans restaurant and adjacent clothing store, the Rusty Knot bar and other enterprises. It seems that antlers and taxidermy are not just a Paxton Gate/west coast thing. I have to admit I've always had a greater weakness for boho/bobo/shabby chic over sleek chic, but all the same, I think I agree with those who dismiss this dude as being a total douche bag. Regardless, the whole look seems like the 826 Valencia/Paxton vibe ramped up a bit in that whole super groovy lower Manhattan sort of way. But it just doesn't seem as fun as it might have been 30 or 40 years ago. Or, to quote the only memorable line from the tediously self-important Short Bus, "It's just like the '60s...without the hope." But, at the same time, the clothing store does seem sort of cool, though I'd prefer to head out and create my own aesthetic instead of paying him for it. And $88 for hand scrawled t-shirts at Barneys? No thanks. Though the descriptions of Somer's aesthetic -- ironic and earnest, neurotic and carefree, cool and cheeseball -- certainly resonate with me, but his personal style evidenced below certainly doesn't inspire any straight-bait lust in my heart. I'll stick with Futball Club Barcelona instead.

I Saw a Similar Sign Last Week at Wilkes Bashford

SRO: Paris, Barcelona..The Mission

At one point I seemed to be quite persistent in writing up reviews and observations about shows, films, books and music I consume. I've been a bit distracted about doing that of late. So here is a short glimpse of Friday and Saturday nights' outings.

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In theory I despise stage musicals or, more accurately, the people who are all gaga about them. So I surprised myself by accepting an offer to go with R_____ to see 42nd Street Moon's sparse but effective restaging of Coco with Andrea Marcovicci, who is sort of a non-diva diva. She was oddly an icon for my sister in her high school years when appearing as Dr. Betsy Chernak Taylor on the daytime soap Love Is a Many Splendored Thing set in an unusually bland early 1970s San Francisco.

Marcovicci generally got the role spot on with her subdued approach and shedding what seemed to be unrehearsed tears when singing "Always Mademoiselle". The first staging of the show in nearly 40 years, it reminded me that the Andre Previn score is a guilty pleasure up there with "I'll Plant My Own Tree".

I actually saw the show twice during its initial run. First with my grandmother in the winter of 1970, after which I drove my family crazy singing a la Hepburn "Who the devil kay-yours/What a woman way-yours?" The following summer I saw it with my sister, who was pursuing a sadly aborted fashion design career, when it starred the more appropriate Danielle Darrieux.

This clip of the original doesn't quite capture the flash of the mirrored stairs from the good seats we had. It all reminded me of old flagship store of Hall's in downtown Kansas City. My grandmother wore a get up not unlike Hepburn's. Change the skirt to slacks and lose the jewelry, and it could pass for Junk Thief 40 years later.

There was no mirrored staircase in the 42nd Moon production, but it brought back memories of the original. Apparently enough people want to share that memory, since it was announced that less than five percent of seat are still available during its run.

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Also sold out for its run is Barcelona: Un Mapa, the first film I've ever seen in Catalan and bringing back wonderful memories of my November trip to Catalonia. Although it included an old man fond of dressing up as a woman, a fair amount of male full frontal nudity and surreal dialog, it had little in common with Almodóvar, Buñuel or other Spanish film makers. It was defiantly Catalonian and felt like a Pinter play directed by Bergman.

It was also nice to be introduced Pablo Derqui (on the left) who spent his scene wearing nothing but black brief. Nice to meet you Pablo.

While I can still only speak a handful of Catalan words, I am proud that I could immediately distinguish when the characters shifted from Catalan to Spanish

Times to Stefani: Get Outta Town

Best quote from the Gray Lady we've heard in years and proof that she still has her teeth: "...astonishingly bad, straight out of a mall in Ditzville."