David Barrie

You've been shopping - we won't tell...

Hidden away in the packaging options of designer fashion retailer Net-a-Porter.com is something shocking.

If I was a right-wing columnist, I'd have a field day. A person who harbored the need to drive a flat-bed truck in to a designer store, my excuse. An anti-packaging eco-warrior, confused. 

For first, we had the worry of men hanging around fairgrounds offering kids sweeties.

Then, we had clinics and pharmacies handing out methadone to heroin users.

Now, we have Net-a-Porter offering 'Discreet Packaging'.

As an email shot said earlier this week:

Hide all your fabulous NET-A-PORTER purchases from inquisitive eyes with our new Discreet Packaging. Your secret is safe with us! Your items will arrive in an unbranded recycled brown paper bag and we'll be the only ones who know...

In other words,

You've been shopping - we won't tell ....

Fortunately, I'm a slut for fashion. And no Iron Man. But if you don't believe me, go here and click on Packaging Options.

But please be aware - and this is an act of exceptional public service - that the anonymous package just delivered to our door might not be a part for your ventilation system, a bulk purchase of lo-price instant coffee from Staples or a job-lot of ricin - but something by Balmain that nestles on Rodarte heels. 

Remember, Shhh...your secret is safe with us...

Image by Fulanoinc.

 

Lehman Brothers, Robert Mugabe and the Death of the Giant Handbag

Always one to ask the key questions...

Now that Lehman Brothers has filed for bankruptcy, Robert Mugabe has been tamed and the Beijing Olympics are over, is the age of the epic handbag, the supertanker Tote almost over?

It was this Ferrgamo bag spotted in a shop window in Florence back in 2006 that first got me thinking. It was retailing at $18,000.

Then came a stray reference in the Financial Times to bundles of financial derivatives being called synthetic collateral debt obligations - and pictured on the net as something like this:

Then came the ubiquitous Dior ads on the back page of magazines like Vanity Fair:

Then there was Mark Levinson's book on how the shipping container changed the world economy:

Self-portraits by fashionistas on the net of their handbags - and themselves: 

Then Fortune Magazine reports that Bain & Co. forecasts that

the $270 billion luxury goods market will grow about 2% this year once exchange rates are factored in; that's still in positive territory, but sharply down from the 6.5% growth in 2007.

Then art critic Peter Schjeldahl of the New Yorker reports that the catalogue to an exhibition of contemporary art at the New Museum in New York made reference to

earthquake and flooding in China, the cyclone in Myanmar, the tornadoes and flooding in Iowa.

Then you notice Hermes Birkin bags on Flickr just left behind on seats of Swiss trains:

Then finally Grazia magazine publishes a Bag Special that declares

Mary Poppins gets an 08 Makeover. The newest bag shapes right now are boxy and ladylike.

So farewell complex financial derivatives.

And goodbye to Lehman Brothers.

Farewell the giant tote.

And good riddance to 'handbag elbow'.

Image of SDO chart courtesy of Bionic Turtle. Evergreen container: jot.punkt. And apologies to sophierosensvard for taking her image out of context.

The Cinderella of the Volga

Here's Natalia Vodianova on a recent tour of Russia raising funds - and promoting Nina Ricci - for her charity, the Naked Heart Foundation:

Vodianova's tour manages to grab no less than 22 pages of this month's Vogue: a Versailles Revisited romp through an orgy of fund-raising gigs that includes a 220 ton ice palace and, God help us,

A Slavic Tania Bryer lookalike called Polina Kitsenko paying €90,000 for a privately performed love song by Bryan Adams.

Vodianova's charity is devoted to creating modern parks for less fortunate children in Russia, spreading health and happiness in Natalia's homeland, according to her charity's website.

But not once does Vogue tell you what the organization does other that it somehow relates to children and Vodianova thinks that play is therapeutic.

Over at Vanity Fair, there's a ten or so page spread given over to Madonna to promote her new album:

The piece contains a shockingly pretentious comment on her new documentary on Malawi:

I feel this film was seriously influenced by Godard...He's the one film-maker I was always inspired by...

(Godard would love this - I interviewed him once and he's a total slave to pop.)

Once again, there may be mention of a generic concern for children but the article doesn't give readers the faintest idea what the charity she represents does.

There's something in all of this that says that you can personalize a brand but you can't personalize a cause.

You can attach your name to something: but the media is interested in you, not what you think or hope others will think you're about.

In effect, what may be genuine conviction becomes myth-making, as Vodianova and Madonna harness their image-making credentials and abilities to a cause but can't escape being represented as a brand.

Madonna continues to be Queen of Pseudo Fetish Super Pop.

And for the umpteenth time, Vogue recycles Vodianova as Cinderella.

Vodianova image by Mario Testino. Madonna by Steven Meisel.

Dolly mixture

So a girl will be out in a dress and it will seem quite simple. And another girl will say, 'That's nice, but what's that?' pointing to a wooden carving on her shoulder. And then the girl will say, 'It's a wooden owl, actually, it's hand-carved'. And her friend will say. 'Lovely.'

Stylist Cathy Edwards sums up the look of her friend Emma Cook and her clothes designs in an article in the London Independent.

Absolutely nothing to do with the publicity picture of Alison Goldfrapp and an over-sized owl for her latest album  - but kind of connects - and is a great account of friendship any way...

Thanks to Style Bubble for the link to Emma Cook...

Art's best kept fashion secret

What fuelled the action painting of American artist Jackson Pollock?

Was it angst? Nope.

Testosterone? Nope.

A sublimal drive towards fractal expressionism? Nope.

Tucked away in the print edition of this month's edition of V Magazine is the answer:

Pollock wore Converse All Star sneakers!

Time to re-write that macho history of Abstract Expressionism?

Wire is so passé

I can't resist sharing a second image from this week's Sunday Times' Style section, giving us all an inside track on the ultimate new fashion accessory: the cardboard box.

Move over Oskar Schlemmer.

Wire is so passé.

A warm glow of sustainability

When I came across this scene on a street in Shanghai not too long ago, I was filled with a warm glow of sustainability.

Of the ingenuity of humanity, the miracle of the bicycle and the circular metabolism of solid waste in cities - described by writer Herbert Girardet as a calmer, serener vision of cities.

Little did I know that the guy in the picture could have been a photographer's assistant, collecting props for a fashion shoot published today in the Style section of the London Sunday Times:

The coat is by Burberry Prorsum, made of gold foil snakeskin and retails at £6,500 ($12,900) - and is pretty gorgeous.

The pile of cardboard is by I Don't Know Who, with a current retail value of £100 ($198) per tonne.

When you next meet a Martian, I defy you to try and explain the style connection between the two.

Extreme embroidery

The only exciting thing in this month's American Vogue is an advert from Balenciaga for its Spring 2008 collection.

What a fantastically weird look this is!

Fashion writer Sarah Mower describes it as

standout shoulder lines, hand-span waists, and belled (almost panniered) hip volume, marched in on vertiginous knee-high woven-leather gladiator boots.

The creative director of Balenciaga describes graphic volumes that are like car bodywork.

Others allude to crosses between Laura Ashley, a Poision video, cocoons and general extreme embroidery hell.

What I like about it is that the fabric design may well be printed flowers but from a distance the collection looks like  it's modelled on Frida Kahlo's corset.

The look seems to have no place in contemporary lifestyle which thrives on the soft, blousey and myth of normality. 

There's something bizarre and ugly about this collection that reminds me of the work of photographer Joel-Peter Witkin.

The multi-colored, lace-up, peep-toe knee-high boots are pukey Grecian urn-ism when set against embroidered carpet.

But then in a world of gauche  D & G, gold-glittery Burberry and fin de siecle, flourish-of-a-brush Prada, these robotic hydrangeas, pansies, peonies, daffodils and anemones look beautiful.

It's dramatic, baroque and a look that's close to a circus or cocoon freak-show.

And for some completely incomprehensible reason, it works.

I love it.