Go for the Pulitzer

Naples, Florida: the epicenter of all things Lilly.
All those breezy prints and sporty, shift dresses may have been designed for socialite, seasonal bluebloods in Palm Beach, but it's the practical wives of nuts-and-bolts Midwestern industrialists and Captains of Yeast, Sausage and Baking Soda empires and Generals of Mills who truly rally beneath the bright-colored banner--after all, those saturated, citrus hues and quirky textile designs wear like iron and endure season after season, doncha know.

I suspect the owners of my found Lillys had to die before she parted with her collection, her sons prying that hardly-worn-yet wrap skirt out of her cold, dead fingers. She almost certainly came back to haunt them because they buried her in the lavender suit. She specifically told them she wanted to sleep for eternity in the super comfy, new blue print silk.

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The Lost Designer of the 80's

Claude Barthelemy seems to have been one of those if-you-needed-to-ask-you-didn't-need-to-know designers. In the '80's, he was listed as a young, hot couturier alongside go-the-distance blue chips like Karl Lagerfeld and Lanvin with his oversized sweaters, minis, leggings and fur-trimmed stoles. Exclusive stores carried his soft-edged jackets to shoppers in the know. And then what happened? His pleated skirts, intarsia sweaters, and naughty, zippered wool catsuits still fetch high prices in vintage world and any dealer with his elegantly simple, Gallic tag on her racks raises a flutter in second-hand seekers. He designed for Barbie, for heaven's sake! But the designer himself, who seems to have cut a meteoric swath across the runways and then...? So what's the story with this wasp-waisted pleated skirt? I wondered what else this woman could have dropped off on her Goodwill drive-by--a Chanel original? A couture Pucci? Surely someone this linked in wouldn't just ...

I Heart Shop-a-Holics

"No one needs $800 shoes." This is an admonishment from those brainy friends every time I say how I picked up a pair of Guiseppe Zanotti shoes or Manolo Blahnik boots at the Goodwill and cackle about how I will sell them on eBay. This is wisdom, I suppose, in an era that touts egalitarian economics as a virtue and from academics, artists and philosophical ascetics who really do believe it's what's inside that counts. (As long as what's inside is what they deem acceptable...but more on that later.) Apostolic WalkFit Fine. Technically, no one needs even $50.00--or $25.00--shoes--those Israelites certainly got around (though it took the power of the Almighty to keep their sandals from wearing out). I suppose history showed that the guys at Valley Forge came out okay with rags wrapped around their feet. So no one needs $800 shoes, just as no one needs a custom Bentley with a Vinotemp wine cabinet in the trunk or a $7,000 Hermes saddle...

Show Up, Shut Up, Wear Beige

Instructions to mothers of the groom. The reason why groomsmen all wear the same suit to a wedding--so if the groom doesn't show up, everyone can just take a step to the left. The people on that side of the church are just props, baby. Your role, as mother of the groom, is to provide a groom. And maybe a brother for a spare. The extent of your input is limited to saying how lovely everything is. The bride's strapless ballgown in the church? Why, it's lovely, of course. The mother of the bride's equally revealing gown to show off her boob job? Lovely. The new wife of the bride's father who describes herself as a "cougar" (in the latter part of her nine lives) (meow!)? Nope! Nope! She's so lovely. The "blending" ceremony in which all the members of the bridal party dance around and fill a vase with pink and blue vials of sand to symbolize the "blending" of two souls into one purple-ish vase of sand...or something? Lovely, lovely, love...

Second Hand, Second Thoughts

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