R-E-S-P-E-C-T

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Hidden Treasure: Wearing Vintage Medals

Have just had a splended ten minutes cruising around the heavy medal division on eBay. Keywords: militaria, collectables. For a woman who likes to think laterally in terms of her adornment, these gorgeous decorations, previously retired with honors, can once again serve active duty as pendants or pins.

Here's one of the prettiest: a WWI Order of Leopold of Belgium, whose price reflects the detail and distinction of its enamelwork.

But there's no need to push out the boat on price . . . just a few dollars or quid can win you something winsome, like this wonderfully graphic version from an English shooting club . . .

Bear in mind before you buy:

1) If the link is at all dodgy, your beautiful piece may be lost to the trenches. A firm squeeze with a pair of pliers will ensure a secure hold on a chain.

2) Real pearls will be scratched if you pin a medal in between. If you want to create a Chanel-style pearl necklace-with-central-brooch effect, take her example and use fake pearls instead, preferably glass.

3) Most importantly, military medals are symbols of high valor, religious medals are demonstrative of faith, Masonic medals are filled with mysterious secret cult powers that emit lightning bolts if worn by the uninitiated (not really, but they'd like you to think so). The point: don't offend somebody needlessly by taking their medals in vain (unless they're Belgian! I'd risk it for the one above!). As a general rule, the more obscure the medal, the better.

Now That's What I Call Fierce: Part I

A couple of entries back I got testy about the fashion industry's bogus merchandising of "fierce"--meaning riveting--via surly-looking models, aggressively angular poses, in-your-face flaunting of acres of youthful skin, and accessories that would make Torquemada smile in recognition.

I don't like this commoditization of fierce because it's bullshit. True ferocity, of the kind Tyra and panel so enthusiastically espouse, isn't something you can fake. You throw it because you have:

1) Great natural beauty and--critically--belief in it. This faith in the equipment is what allows a supermodel to soar while others mill around on the runway.

2) Finely-tuned physical prowess. Check out sprint- and middle-distance runners as they move up to the blocks. These women can't help but strut, testosterone is coursing through every muscle. Plus, they know that throwing a ripple here and there will initimidate the lessor competitors in the lineup.

3) Intellectual chops. Camille Paglia (whose theories I'm not fond of, but who cut an incredible figure). Michelle Obama. Zaha Hadid. These women look amazing because the strength of their mind has molded their bearing in a way that demands, and rewards, your attention, just as the more classic notion of beauty does.

This is a very roundabout way of getting to today's subject, Renata Adler, here photographed by her friend and colleague Richard Avedon.

Adler's credentials would fill an entire issue of the New Yorker, for which she was a longstanding contributor. Movie critic, prizewinning author on legal affairs, novelist, and usual suspect in that rarified realm of intellectual heavyweights writing for a popular audience, when it really mattered, in the 1970s and 80s.

What I love about the photograph, though, is that this fiercely brainy woman is also radiating serious style. Not in the haute sense, of course, but in the everyday way that most of us long to attain when we've got five minutes to dress and a dayful of mixed obligations that make statement dressing impractical.

While the look is extraordinarily simple, its minimal elements are deliberately managed. Take a pair of jeans. Add a great white linen shirt, cut close to the body. Style with front placket buttons casually undone, and long sleeves very carefully rolled to short-sleeve level. Accessorize with a watch whose plain band matches the shirt. Tan at your own risk.

Anybody can do this, on any sort of budget, and look pretty damn good. But to look fierce as Renata if you're not a natural beauty, or athlete, hit the books. You'll eventually look indominatable, in a way that time can't touch.

(Photo 1978 by Richard Avedon, reproduced in Woman in a Mirror © 2005 The Richard Avedon Foundation)

Patches Not Included

I won't name names or publications, because my intent is not to snark on an otherwise well-written, thoroughly-researched fashion supplement piece, BUT.

In what possible universe does it make sense--in an article on the new austerity and the need to buy well considered, long-wearing clothes, which furthermore cites that British WWII classic on hiding the tatters on the six items of clothing you own, Make Do And Mend--to use these Warehouse jeans as illustrative material on what to buy now?

Take the Veil

Read a wonderful anecdote about Isabella Blow yesterday in Sarah Lyall's hilarious A Field Guide to the British.

Blow was the leading style visionary of recent times. Fashion editor of Tatler magazine, muse to McQueen and Treacy, she was instantly recognizable for her flamboyant millinery. I had the good fortune of seeing her in person twice--on one occasion she was wearing a towering pair of purple platforms, well before every girl on the street was tottering along with head in the clouds and blister remedies in handbag. The lady stood out, in the best possible way.

If only I had witnessed the instance Lyall recounts, when Blow met Nicholas Coleridge for lunch.

"She had once shown up for lunch with her boss, the managing director of Conde Nast UK, wearing a pair of antlers. When he asked her how she intended to eat, given that swooping down from the antlers was a heavy black lace veil that obscured her face, she replied, 'Nicholas, that is of no concern to me whatsoever.'"

EXACTLY. An object lesson in how to wear a veil. Do it as though it is the most natural thing in the world. But do it in the appropriate setting. A veil is correct for a funeral of course, but it is far more effective in jollier situations. Like a really swank cocktail party, where people are actually wearing cocktail dresses (the women, I mean). Or a late-afternoon tea, if you are ever so fortunate as to partake in one. Or a night out at a tremendous cabaret.

One thing about a veil that is important to know: it devastates the right kind of man. The wrong kind of man will have an impulse to mock, because he is made insecure by that which he doesn't know. The right kind of man rises to its challenge and will long to lift it from your face. As long as you're not wearing it with antlers.

(photo by Henry Clarke for Vogue Paris, 1955)

Classic To Be: Ferragamo's Vara Shoes

When you're obsessed with vintage clothing, it's fascinating to observe as a particularly distinctive example of past-era design emerges into popular fashion consciousness as a classic. To actively seek out these underappreciated paragons is a form of trendspotting where the trend has been around for decades, and frequently scorned as fusty and old-fashioned. But eventually enough people realize that the garment, or shoe, or even printed pattern, is singularly beautiful in a way that transcends its era. From that point, it becomes part of the collective fashion conscience: museum-worthy, and highly collectable.

Such has been the case with Norman Norell dresses. Chanel 2.55 quilt bags. Roger Vivier pilgrim-buckle shoes.

I think it will soon be true as well with the latter's Italian counterparts: Ferragamo's Vara shoes. These demure, correct, surpassingly ladylike pumps, with their moderate chunky heel and brass-buckled grosgrain ribbon bow, have been reissued by the company every year since their debut in 1978. They are beloved of a certain type of woman: well-off but not flashy, uninterested in extreme trends, devoted to quality and craftsmanship. In short, your grandmother, if your grandmother lives on the Upper East Side or the 18th arrondissement or in a modest villa overlooking the Arno.

But grandmas like these knew a good thing when they saw them. Without them, there would be no Chanel quilt bags, or Norell dresses, or pilgrim-buckle shoes.

Ferragamo Varas, I've got my eye on you.

Dress Code

A bit behind the curve on this one . . . today the blogosphere celebrated the achievements of Ada Lovelace, who is vaunted by science/techie sorts for having taken one of the first-ever passes at writing a computer language. Its aim was to calculate Bernoulli numbers, the hardware being inventor Charles Babbage's proposed Analytical Engine. (Babbage rather schmoopily called her an "Enchantress of Numbers".)

All this is, of course, secondary to what she is wearing here in Margaret Carpenter's magnificent 1836 portrait.

This currently hangs at 10, Downing Street but will move north shortly to hang in a Byron Museum (did I mention? Ada was also the only legitimate daughter of Lord Bad-Mad-and-Dangerous-to-Know, which makes her math abilities even more impressive, considering his strong inclinations to the verbal).

Anyway, she is outfitted in typical 1830s evening garb, never mind that it is clearly daytime in the manor. Displaying a vast expanse of shoulder and bosom, her shimmering white satin gown is accentuated by a fantastic tangerine crossover cape pinned at the shoulder and belted at the waist. Contrary to information dispersed elsewhere on the internet, her gigot (leg-of-mutton) sleeves are not of the sort known as "imbecile" or "idiot" sleeves (due to the latters' resemblance to evening garb at Bedlam Infirmary)--they do not extend to the wrist because this was the style for more formal dresses of the period.

I like to think, without any authority at all, that her tiara displays an Ancient Greek motif, in honor of her illustrious daddy's adventures during the Greek War of Independence.

Way to crunch, Ada.