In The Details: Doll Clothes, Can You Believe It?

Okay, I have never purchased a pattern for a fashion doll but if I had been aware of these when I was growing up I might have been tempted. So stylish and so on-the-money. If they had been made for human women they would have been best sellers, for sure.

  

Vogue 7554 and Vogue 729

Which pattern looks more interesting, stylish, and classy?

Guess what? They are the same pattern. Now I know it's for doll clothes and V729 does show you what the outfits will really look like. However, V7554 is more cool and aspirational by using illustration. My choice would have been easy! What's really impressive is that the finished outfits actually look pretty good for miniature sewing. The black and white jumpsuit just needed a more flowing fabric, right?

  

Did anyone out there have these? Please let me know how they worked, especially that lingerie one. Can you even imagine making something that detailed and that small? I can see some real pulling-out-your-hair- frustration while constructing that itsy-bitsy garter belt!

If you notice, even Vogue has never produced a lingerie pattern for humans that elaborate since I've been checking them out, let alone one for dolls.

Images from Patterns of History

The Met 2013 Punk: Chaos to Couture Gala - Part II

Here are more great examples from the 2013 Metropolitan Museum PUNK gala worn by people you may not already know but who are...in one word, FABULOUS!

I am beginning with my nominee for Queen of the 2013 Punk: Chaos to Couture gala, fashion executive Linda Fargo of Bergdorf Goodman's. She's wearing a custom latex Baroness gown and the silver hair is natural but not the barbed wire that's twisted into it. Pretty hard core, right? Check out the back of the dress below!

You see what I mean? Bow down NOW.





   

With Ken Downing from Neiman Marcus, who could easilly win the title of Goth King*, right?

     

Cara Delevingne in Burberry



Model Lily Cole in Vivienne Westwood



Constance Jablonski in Wes Gordon

Alexa Chung in Erdem



Giovanna Battaglia in Dolce & Gabbana

Yup. Giant gold safety pins. luv it



*Here, he looks like a cross between David Bowie, Peter Murphy, and Martin Fry from ABC. He doesn't normally look like that!

Images: Ibtimes.com, stylesnooperdan.com, dailymail.co.uk, vogue.com, afashionalbeparadise.woodpress.com, runwaytostyle.blogspot.com, Elbows & Knees, DFR: Daily Fashion Report (a truly awesome fashion site!) 

The Met 2013 Punk: Chaos to Couture Gala - Part I

Of course I just wrote about not being able to finish a post and here I am with one started on the same day!

I normally don't cover things like this, but after checking out the coverage on all my bookmarked entertainment/ fashion sites (Tom & Lorenzo, Go Fug Yourself, The Daily Mail UK*) I wanted to blog this. I was bothered that all the sites wrote how most attendees of the Metropolitan Museum's Punk: Chaos to Couture gala "got punk wrong." I have to admit it did seem many got confused and actually thought the theme was Goth to Couture because following that criteria there would have been loads of hands-down winners, but still:

1. The exhibit (May 9 to August 14, 2013) is titled Punk: Chaos to Couture and it's goal is to "examine punk’s impact on high fashion from the movement’s birth in the 1970s through its continuing influence today." Which basically involves borrowing certain visual elements, hardware, and shapes while also juxtaposing the punk DIY aesthetic versus couture's made-to-measure practice; anti-establishment versus elite establishment.
2. Dressing according to the theme of the Met's events is and has always been optional. It's a chance to dress up, period.
3. I believe the essence of Punk was/is unconventionality and irreverence not just safety pins, leather, Doc Martens, and ripped fishnets. Those elements are punk "shorthand". 
4. Having not been a punk (I was into New Wave, thankyouverymuch) I wouldn't dare to make a statement on what exactly "a punk" looks like. For starters, English punk and American punk had cultural differences and big city punk was also different from small city suburban punk.

Some fashion websites participated in either awarding participants for including those shorthand elements while also deriding others for incorporating some of those same elements. My favorites among the one's you may have seen were January Jones, Sarah Jessica Parker, Anne Hathaway, Miley Cyrus, Ginnifer Goodwin, Carey Mulligan, Hailee Steinfeld, Debbie Harry, and believe it or not, Taylor Swift. Personally, what I noticed was  people who either got it near-perfect by showing what punk has become or instead incorporated some irreverence while still following the basic rules for gala wear. Here are some examples you may not have seen that I found through other sites. Definitely check out the image links at the bottom of the post. I hope you enjoy/appreciate these as much as I did.

Designer Donatella Versace in Versace



Alexa Chung in Erdem

Emma Roberts in a subtle Diane Von Furstenberg



Designer Zandra Rhodes in her own design



Carey Mulligan in Balenciaga

Lele Sobieski in Christian Dior



Kerry Washington and Vera Wang in Vera Wang



Aubrey Plaza in Marios Schwab


Totally not on theme, but this next one is just plain gorgeous! What else would you expect from Isabella Rossellini's daughter and Ingrid Bergman's granddaughter?

Elettra Weideman in Prabal Gurung

Images: Style.com, Vogue.com, Stylesnooperdan.com, InStyle.com

Oh Come On, Now...

I'm just as tired of that Bloglovin' post as you are. Since I wrote it I have five draft posts in the works to replace it, but I can't seem to finish any of them. I don't know what it is but I feel I need to put more information into all of them or something. I also have two homemade garments (one for April and one for May) that are done and the reviews are complete but I need decent pictures before I can post those.

So I'm going back into my archives to finish up and post some old drafts. Can you believe I have 68 drafts (1/3 are practically complete)! I think maybe I'm thinking too hard.

So how many of you have a 'multitude-of-unfinished-posts' problem like mine?

What is your most common reason that they don't get finished?

For the ones you don't finish, why don't you delete them and instead let them hang around?

Image: Good Housekeeping, October 1917.

Update on My Bloglovin' Havin' Self

Well, I will still miss Google Reader, just like I missed Bloglines before. However, I must say I’ve become used to bloglovin’ pretty quickly. I don’t feel that anything is missing because I never asked much from Google Reader. I want to see any new feeds and be able to read them one after another easily, that's all.  

Google Reader

    

bloglovin'

Well, I get that with bloglovin’ and more, now I can cycle through my website feeds not as simple text/picture excerpts but as full pages with the authors blog design, headers, and all (see below).You click on the first entry on the main page and it opens up in a separate window. There appears on top, toggle switches that take you to the next blog feed or back to the last one you read. There is also a handy counter next to those that let you know where you are in the unread posts queue.

So I’m happy…well, until someone decides to take my new reader away from me, which unfortunately, is always a possibility. I just hope we get a chance to save it next time.

Here’s a question for those who have been on the Bloglovin’ for some time: On the main page, even before you log in, it seems they have picked blogs that I might be interested in, unless everyone else sees fashion and beauty blogs too? Is there a way to have them focus on other types of sites? I love suggestions and fashion but those blogs aren’t really me, I’m more into reuse and making my own rather than buying in mass. I feel that if they can target us this way then there must be some way to alter the criteria, or as Don and Peggy would say, “If you don’t like what they’re [showing], change the conversation.”