Fausta's Blog

The WSJ Style section – which, mercifully, unlike the NYT has not yet featured female genital mutilation – hails the return of Very Bright Lipstick, All the Time

The look, often referred to as “the bold lip,” requires a change for women accustomed to wearing different lipstick colors depending on the occasion. The trend makes lipstick a consistent focal point, even with casual wear. One of the earliest places it appeared was in J. Crew catalogs, which have been showing the look for a while. It dominated this month’s catalog where fresh-faced models in slim pencil skirts and faded skinny jeans wore hard-to-miss orangy-red lipstick. “There’s something incredibly modern about clean skin, pulled back hair and a strong lip,” says James Boehmer, director of global artistry for NARS Cosmetics.

Tom Ford has a $48 red lipstick, and JCrew has an $18 one; my all-time favorite is Paloma Picasso’s Mon Rouge, which is no longer made, but you can get the red look for under $10 with Revlon’s Fire and Ice (buy it through the Amazon link so I can get a small commission), which was The Color when it was first introduced in the 1950s. It also has that original first-season Mad Men retro vibe.

And, sorry, Tom, but for $48 I would rather buy lunch for two.

First the green Mao.

Now this:

What’s with the insignia on her shoulder?

A James Bond villain?

But unlike Rosa Klebb, the killer KGB agent famous played by Lottte Lenya in “From Russia With Love”, Hillary hasn’t equipped her stilettos with razor sharp blades dipped in venom.

At least Lotte’s sleeves were the right length,

No, kids wearing pajamas to school,
Why Not Wear Pajamas All Day?
Teens Perfect the Rumpled Look, But Others See ‘Loungewear’ as Just Plain Sloppy

The outfits they show in the article seem OK enough, but the thing is, this fad happened a few years ago here in Princeton. Bad enough to see young people in PJs all day, but here the high school-age, the college-age, and the well-past-their-prime-age all wore pajama bottoms.

Please, please spare me the sight.

At least get yourself some underwear, and don’t wear anything with writing across your butt.

Hendrik Pohl is as bored as I of seeing presidential candidates wear the same uniform: dark suits, white shirt, red ties, and wants a change,

Pohl is convinced that “The time has come for a leader who can break down old conventions and build a new foundation for stability and progress with innovation and cutting edge critical thinking. The public wants to vote for a leader who associates ruby red ties to old school politics. It’s time to re evaluate our political system, break away from outdated conventions and introduce new policies, and it all starts with how the candidate dresses. People want change and not the same old red tie gray suit look.” People want a leader that is not afraid to step away from the norm and Pohl is convinced when he says, “I believe the public would respond quite positively to a candidate wearing a different outfit. Take the light blue tie for example. It is a bright and vivid color that is not only different from the uniform looking red tie, but blue is also associated with calmness and serenity.” If he were to consult political candidates on how to dress, he would embrace “change” even further by adding pink ties, skinny ties, and even as he puts it “Winston Churchill style bow ties”.

A candidate in a bow tie: Now, that would be one gutsy guy!

Michelle Obama borrowed three very nice bracelets for Monday’s DNC fundraiser in New York (h/t Silvio),

If you’ve been saving your nickels and dimes, the cuffs are available locally at Judith Ann Jewels. The First Lady wore Katie’s Lotus cuff priced at $15,000 with 2.9 carats of diamonds, her Gothic cuff at $15,350 with 2.17 carats in diamonds and the Quatrefoil bracelet at $11,800 with 1.73 carats in diamonds.

The news is making a stir, considering the recent rumblings of class warfare; even NYC’s own mayor Bloomberg was saying there’ll be rioting on the streets. However the First Lady chose bracelets designed by Houston-based Texas A&M graduate Katie Decker, who will probably be able to hire more people, as Texas leads the nation on job creation:

The Lone Star State added 84,900 jobs in the field of professional and business services between the midpoints of 2006 and 2011.

That’s the kind of stimulus I favor.

DIfferent stimulus in fashion news comes from Paris, where Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández was strongly supporting the hotel and shoe industries:

Cristina Fernández and her daughter stayed at the luxurious “George V Hotel” ($1,500-$12,500 a night) in Paris during an official visit to France ahead of flying to New York for the United Nations General Assembly today.

Those of us who follow these stories may recall that terrorist Yasser Arafat’s widow lived at the 5-star Georges V for many years.

But I digress.

Before her meetings with French president Nicolas Sarkozy and other French officials, Cristina had the “George V Hotel’s Personal Shoppers” bring her several purses and pairs of shoes which she tried on in the comfort of her suite.

In addition to Louis Vuitton bags, Hermès Birkin and Kelly bag purses, the Argentine president purchased 20 pairs of Christian Louboutin shoes, at approximately $5,500 a pair.

You must be in Paris to get those. Here in the USA us plebes have to settle for the cheap Louboutins at Saks’s shoe department, all with the sought-after red sole,

The pair above retails for US$895, and certainly would be most appropriate for UN conclaves, even when you ought to miss the Durban III part where Ahmadinejad and Mugabe beat up on Israel.

For the budget-minded, I must admit that I own a pair of red-soled shoes,

Sharp-looking, but didn’t cost anywhere near Louboutin’s.

Ironically, they were made in Argentina.

Linked by The Other McCain. Thanks!

Restoration Hardware is shedding – or perhaps shredding – the “restoration” part for deconstructionism, and boldly proclaim in their latest catalog (after yammering some bs about Argentinian nobility – wha? – and mirrors),

Witness what destruction hath wrought.

Well, Lileks and Ed Driscoll both have been taking a look, and destruction hath wrought beige.

I can’t decide if it’s beige, or tobacco stains, though. Years ago I had a tenant who chain-smoked and her natural habitat had turned the color in that photo. Lileks nails it, though,

Apologies if the bright, vivid colors sear your eyes. The dead muted palette has a purpose: the preface specifically ties the new look to “the global economic collapse,” and seems to suggest you should buy these things so you can position yourself as an aesthetic curator of the best of pre- and post-industrial civilization.

Not that this is new. Back in the early 1990s the NY Times home decor supplement featured page after page of plaster walls that had been distressed to look like they had been through a Vesuvius eruption and back.

Ed Driscoll, on the other hand of the Restoration Hardware “grand 5-Foot French Tower Clock, a reproduction of an early 20th-century timepiece from the village of Bray-Sur-Seine in the Ile-de-France region” (and who would doubt it? the clock says so!) “that once graced a stone tower in Northern France” (see above – it will set you back $1,495 plus tax and shipping, that’s US$, not francs – but hey, you can SEE the ROMAN NUMERALS) sees it as a symptom of the New Depression fad,

We know now that a great deal of the punitive tone of the ancien regime’s media for the past couple years first bubbled out of the JournoList, but was there also some meeting a few months ago where catalog copywriters also decided that, “Screw it, Christmas sales will likely suck like a Hoover this year, nobody’s buying anything, the GOP could take back Congress, life stinks, so let’s just write the craziest stuff we can think of and put it out there. Hey, at least we’ll have cool tearsheets in our scrapbooks to show off when looking for new jobs, when the economy finally does pick up.” Or perhaps they simply tried to imagine the mindset of the average Obama-voting Prius-driving resident of Palo Alto and Marin, and wrote accordingly.

I received the Restoration Hardware catalog a couple of days ago and threw it away after seeing they had more of the same “stuff” they have been doing recently”: oversized, pretentious, extremely expensive while impractical stuff.

Some of the furnishings are downright creepy, like the 1850 French dentist chair, which they describe as

Fully functional, the chair swivels 360 degrees and tilts back to multiple positions from upright to reclined via settings in the arm, just like the original.

Who wouldn’t want to sit at that chair, while watching Marathon Man? “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not going into that cavity.”

And how about a full set of cast resin horns and antlers “hand finished for remarkable realism” to bring out your inner Georgia O’Keefe? No, Georgia’s colors are too vivid. Maybe Buffalo Bill instead? He did his share of shooting out West.

Come to think of it, the creepy furnishings and dirt-stained palette go well with the New Depression fad: Dust Bowl colors for a Dust Bowl mindset.

Bring back the old palette, Restoration Hardware guys, and give up the fake antiques.

(Note to self: ditch the sofas’ beige slipcovers and replace them with red ones.)

In today’s Wall Street Journal,
Discovering Hats, a New Generation Brims With Anxiety Over Etiquette
Old Rules Flummox Young Hipsters; ‘I’m Wearing an $80 Fedora!’

Here’s the video report,

GQ has an article on Hat etiquette. The basics are: don’t wear a hat indoors unless you are in hallways and corridors, don’t tip your hat to another man, and always remove your hat when the National Anthem is being played.

Guys look good in hats. This is a good trend.

Don’t try this at home:

Prior post:
What not to wear: The Cardigan

Don’t try this at home:

Prior post:
What not to wear: The Cardigan

White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers to step down

White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers told me Friday she will step down next month, after presiding over 330 events in the White House in 14 months.

That’s an average of 23 events per month. Michelle Obama’s Mirror has lots to say on this,

she’s hosted 330 parties since she arrived, and her work is done (way to go, Desi!). She said she has accomplished her job of making the Big White the “People’s” Big White – if by “People’s” you mean friends and supporters (philosophically, spiritually and monetarily) of the O’s, and little black children who provide adorable photo ops.

As you may recall, Desi was in charge the evening when the couple crashed the White House pre-Thanksgiving day party.

I blame her Mummy outfit for the crasher mess:

After all, what woman could think clearly while swaddled in ace bandages?

Michelle Malkin says Desiree is,

leaving her job as White House social secretary in the wake of the gate-crasher scandal. But don’t be fooled into thinking she’s out of the Obamas’ inner circle. Those Chicago ties are eternal.