Gourmet Magazine

I love Gourmet magazine. It is my favorite fashion magazine. Great art direction, photography and styling. This month there is a dress in the cocktail party spread that I covet. I also like how they keep it simple with the cover.

Benetton

It used to be that the only place you could find a plain sweater (i.e. black v neck) was Benetton. It was a store with shelves full of plain sweaters in a variety of colours. That’s pretty much all they sold. I don’t think I am remembering this incorrectly, as I have a friend who worked there as a teenager and his only duty on his Saturday shift at the Market Mall Benetton was to fold sweaters.

But then they started shutting all the stores down. And everyone started to panic. As supplies ran short, my roommate and I had to share one black Benetton crew neck sweater (which eventually got huge holes in the armpits and elbows, but if you wore a black long sleeve t-shirt under it, nobody could tell). This went on for years.

Then Benetton started to open the stores again. And I thought that I would be set up with affordable, decent quality, nice fitting black sweaters. But no, apparently Benetton doesn’t really do sweaters anymore. No, now they do this:

I am not sure how a company gets so far off track. I don’t know too many people with a shortage of cropped funnel neck jackets and gloves that look like socks, but I do know a lot of people looking for black sweaters. You’d think there’d be a market for that kind of thing.

Agustin Victor Casasola

So, last April I saw an exhibition of Agustin Victor Casasola’s photographs. Best show I have seen all year. If I could figure out a way to dress like the woman below, I would. It also completely redeemed sombreros for me. If it comes to town, I would highly recommend this show to just about anyone, but especially to designers and stylists. It is a treasure trove of ideas. There is a book available, which would be a great gift, but the photos should be seen in person, as they are not that well reproduced in the book.

Stretchy Pants

So, I’m not a big fan of denim with the spandex.

Back in the day if you had pants with spandex you called them “stretchy pants”. Fat people wore them. Now everyone wears them. A couple of years ago, I bought a pair of Yanuk jeans that I thought were the bomb. It ends up, they have like 4% spandex. They look like leggings that are supposed to look like jeans. Like the ones that have the funny fake “pockets” and a “zipper fly” printed on them. The pant equivalent to the tuxedo t-shirt. They managed to stretch out so much when I would wear them, that they would slide off when I bent down to pick something up, yet curiously, remained skin tight on my thighs. I swore I would never again wear jeans that had anything more than 1% stretch (and even that, I am wary of. I like my jeans to fit like a girdle.) So I’m in a bit of a pickle with these 18th amendment jeans. I am dying a small denim death inside because:

A. They are almost $400.

2. They are 2% spandex.

Besides that, they’re perfect.

Holiday Dresses

I like the idea of wearing some kind of caftan-y dress for entertaining at home. I always feel a little odd sitting on my couch wearing heels and a dress waiting for my party guests to arrive, and when they show up, it’s like they’ve just caught me on my way out. A caftan and fancy slippers is a nice eccentric and comfortable option. It’s non-restricting, so you can eat as much as you want, plus it makes you easier to identify as the host.

“Is there more ice?”

“I don’t know, why don’t you ask the host.”

“I would, but I don’t know who she is.”

“She’s the one in the caftan.”

Problem solved. I found these party dresses on the ebay and refreshvintage.com for under $50.

and for those not interested in looking like Maude, or for people who are actually leaving the house: