Skip to main content

Liz Claiborne--Mistress of the Un-Dead

Andy Warhol famous line, that everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes has entered the common lexicon of cliches and I'd like to kill him for it. In the first place, it's because, it seemed at the time, he was being kind of snotty--implying that most people (besides him) were too silly to tell the difference between 15 minutes of fame and a career of being famous. But then, we also have Liz Claiborne, who's been famous for a lot longer than that and doesn't look like she's ever going to go away. Even though she's been dead for god-knows how many years.

 I don't hold anything against her success personally--the first Fortune 500 company founded by a woman and all the other feminist landmark accolades. And it is nice I suppose that there was a designer out there who designed for the feminine figure--small waste, bigger hips and butts, than for the 12-year-old boy, model's size 0 body, although her clothes don't fit me personally, with my non-existent waist, tiny butt and long legs, but never mind that, either.

There just doesn't seem to be an apparel brand out there that hasn't been bought or sold by Liz Claiborne. It's one great, brain-eating mediocre fashion maw. And bringing Isaac Mizrahi onboard is just one more, big, ol' fat case-in-point.

Isaac Mizrahi seems like he's a girl's best gay friend, tasteless groping and all--his clothes have that retro-girly-classic-with-a-twist-vibe that makes you go "oooooh!" But then...you put it on and go "meh." Who are these designed for? He doesn't seem to understand the human form, let alone the female form. The materials are good, the prints and colors are eye-catching, but something's...wrong. The cut is hurried, the drape is weird, the tailoring and finishing is schlocky--like it was done by a pissed off Malaysian woman with a personal grudge against piping. And no matter what your "season" is, you'll always look like nuclear winter in his colors.
And what will happen to Liz Claiborne's clothes for the curvy with Mizrahi at the design helm?

And personally, it's all tripping me up in the second hand stores. I'm going along, going along the aisles, judging color, fabric, finishes...I see that cute piping or seersucker and I stop. Oh! Liz Claiborne, Claiborne Sport, Emma James, Juicy Couture, Axcess, Mex, even Kate Spade???? (How could you, Kate???)I can't re-sell Liz Claiborne--so when I am fooled by YET another cheeky, houndstooth check skirt at the Goodwill, I wonder when she will die, die, die! But apparently, she keeps coming back--wearing seersucker golf skirts and windowpane plaid dresses that just make you look dead.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 ...
2 comments
Read more

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...
3 comments
Read more

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...
1 comment
Read more