Second Hand, Second Thoughts

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-exis...

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 ...