Manolo for the Big Girl

Can you even imagine how unspeakably fab you would be in these robin egg glories? They are, of course, by il Maestro Manolo, from his new Pre-Fall collection.

It is to sigh.

Do you know what you really need to show these off to their best advantage, though?

A yacht.

Growing up we had the sweetest little yacht in the whole wide world named The Night Owl and it still wounds my patent leather soul that I never had the opportunity to wear any of my fabby shoes acquired later in life aboard The Night Owl.

I feel that many of my shoes really need a yacht to truly be shown to their best, and I suspect that when I die and if by some clerical error through the pearly gates (how Chanel!) my celestial residence won’t be a bunch of martyrs in cotton voile maxi-dresses perched on clouds, serenely plucking upon the ten-stringèd lyre. Instead, I will repent from my previous evil ways –namely scuttling about on deck like a sartorially challenged crab in clear pink glitter jelly sandals and sneaker-type monstrosities with neon corkscrew laces and a good deal more layers of rolled-down socks than the weather and confines of good taste required.

No.

I like Yoox. I have no idea how to pronounce it (in my head it rhymes with gadzooks though the internet says Yo-Ox) and the idea that an XXL is a 12 makes that weird vein in my head get all throbby until it looks like my forehead is pregnant with an alien baby but I do like it. Anyway, there are many great steals to be had, but I’m not mentioning any of them until I buy what I like. Last time I recommended a pair of Alexander McQueens and you heartless twitches bought them right out from under me! Hateful!

Velvet Goldmine. Anyone who has any interest in 70’s glam has got to see this film.
Unbelievably gorgeous, as all Todd Haynes films are wont to be, Velvet Goldmine stars Jonathon Rhys Meyers and traces the rise and mysterious fall of David Bowie-like sensation Brian Slade and his alter ego Maxwell Demon. After a staged assassination attempt, his fans turn on him and Slade disappears completely. On the ten year anniversary of the hoax, a journalist (Christian Bale) is sent to uncover the truth about Slade’s disappearance. Toni Collette is a treat as the jaded Mandy, Slade’s (ex)wife who switches effortlessly between American and British accents, and Eddie Izzard is note perfect as Slade’s smarmy agent in big rings and raccoon coat but it’s Ewan MacGregor looking like Kurt Cobain in Iggy Pop drag as Curt Wild the strung out, hopped up visionary of the Next Big Thing…Punk.

The soundtrack is killer with excellent selections from Brian Eno, Shudder to Think and The Venus in Furs (featuring Thom Yorke from Radiohead) but understandably features no David Bowie. This is one of my favorite movies and, had I not had the hangover that ate Manhattan on Monday, would have taken the first spot. For what it’s worth, I do not prefer the director’s cut as I find it too dark.

There, that’s enough of this celluloid stuff, let’s get back to shoes!

A few years ago at one of those truly truly horrific “Industry Parties” where every air kiss comes with a free knife in the back, a New York filmmaker who had a moderately successful doc on her hands was holding court. The subject of Isaac Mizrahi and Unzipped came up. Her response was “Isaac looooooves Isaac.”
Well, that may be true, but I still love Unzipped. Released in 1995, Unzipped centers around the creation of Mizrahi’s 1994 Fall ready-to-wear collection –it’s a frothy doc for folks who rejoice in footage of Andre Leon Talley and funky little fashion troll John Galliano getting their tarot cards read in Paris while gasping over the divinity of a bathroom wallpaper (for which, we are to understand, Donna Karan would murder.) Watch Eartha Kitt speak in tongues and burst into dance! Witness Linda Evangelista pitch a pretty funny fit at having to wear flat shoes for two shows while Naomi Campbell gets heels! Be astonished as Polly Mellen drops pearls of wisdom like “too short looks long!”

Check out the heels incident here.

A warning to Harry Potter fans: if you are a sensitive soul with deep emotional ties to everybody’s favorite gay and aged wizard, Albus Dumbledore, you might do well to avoid Peter Greenaway’s seriously twisted 1989 black comedy The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover starring Helen Mirren and Michael Gambon because it is entirely likely your world view vis the aforementioned magical headmaster will be changed entirely until the last, or at least next to last, trumpet.

For the rest of you, seriously consider renting this flick. The costumes by Jean Paul Gaultier are (not unlike Gaultier himself) sick and magnificent, and the rest of the film follows, er, suit. Witness Helen Mirren’s red dress, perfectly matching the oppressive red dining room of Le Hollandais, lose all as she enters the stark white restroom, and of course the birdcage corset dress that made such a scandal on the theatrical release photos.

Chock full of obscene food, fashion and sex, The Cook also holds the dubious honor of being the only movie I had to watch over the course of two nights because the damn thing disturbed me so much.

Watch the trailer here.

I do not say that 8 Femmes, today’s glammy movie is the glammiest movie that will ever be made. I am only saying it is the most glamorous movie that has ever been made.

I’m sure that modern science, once it has sent a middle-aged man to Jupiter supplied with pills ensuring readiness for all the interplanetary nookie he can, ahem, stand, that the fine doctors and scientists will turn their heads to creating a film that is actually glamorous at a molecular or even sub-atomic level.Until then 8 Femmes, a stylishly torrid, often humorous murder mystery (and each actress has a musical number!) will just have to tide you over.

The day before Christmas sometime n the late 1950’s, eight women in an isolated French estate try to figure out which among them is responsible for the master of the house’s current state of repose (read: dead, locked in a bedroom with a knife in his back) The cast is stellar. Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Beart, Virginie Ledoyen and Ludivine Sagnier as the sweet young daughter before she got her kit off in Swimming Pool.

I don’t want to give too much away but I will tell you that Catherine Deneuve, who plays the freshly-minted and not-entirely-grieved widow and Fanny Ardant, the murdered man’s sister of ill-repute have the single most glamorous catfight I’ve ever seen. Lily ponds and shoulder pads be damned.

Watch the trailer here and prepare to die of chic.

First of all, you’re not going to find “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” on this list. Yes, Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly is a delight to look at and the chicest example of that old hooker with a heart of gold chestnut, but voluntarily pseudo-helpless women –no matter how good they look in Givenchy– bore me to tears. Holly Golightly lacks inner resources and what’s more I firmly believe her character is directly responsible for the popularity of those loathsome “Return to Tiffany’s” heart and toggle gewgaws which are so tacky as to provoke in me the most violent and unrestrained of purple fits.

Oh, and don’t get me started on the girls who run around in the most ridiculously large sunglasses because it makes them “feel like Holly Golightly.” Hepburn’s signature shades were plain old Ray-Ban Wayfarers.

Still, I suspect my beloved readers would attack stately Château Gâteau –by which I mean my apartment (we take the wide view on châteaux here at Manolo for the Big Girl)– with pitchforks and blunderbusses (blunderbi?) were I to exclude all Audrey Hepburn flicks from this list.

It is thus with an eye to the sanctity of my already high renter’s insurance premiums that I offer unto you “Funny Face.” Released in 1957 and starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire, it’s essentially an extremely fast and loose biography of photographer Richard Avedon —-Astaire’s character is Dick Avery— with a handful Gershwin tunes and Givenchy thrown in for good measure.

The real treasure of this little flick is Kay Thompson who gives a fantastic send-up of Harper’s Bazaar editor and glorious wackdoodle Diana Vreeland. Her imitation is brilliant, from her constant use of “pizzazz” to DV’s signature hunchbacked ballerina posture. In fact, the best line in the film –and a valuable life lesson to boot—comes in right after the first number, “Think Pink” (click to watch it on Youtube) where La Thompson admonishes the women of the world to wear nothing but –you guessed it—pink.

One of the honchos exclaims that her campaign is a triumph and that he hasn’t seen a woman in anything but pink for weeks. “

What about you?” he asks as he eyes her in her charcoal suit.

“Me?” she says “I wouldn’t be caught dead.”

Okay gang, it’s Friday afternoon and my day has consisted solely of coffee and the bitter bitter tears shed over a pair of all-but-destroyed Pradas. I’m in need of a little levity. I’m ALSO in need of getting this song out of my head and decapitation seems to be the only option.

Francesca and Plumcake want to know:

How do YOU get an earwormed song out of your head?

Have a great weekend everybahdy!

I don’t like lace. I don’t like it on me, and I don’t especially like it on most women, particularly my sisters of the plus size travelling pants. I don’t like lace on big girls for several reasons. One, good lace is expensive, often prohibitively so. That means most of the lace we end up seeing is Not Good Lace, and there are very few things more offensive to my eye than Not Good Lace because very few things look more obviously cheap.

I also dislike lace on big girls because it can tend to make us look overripe. I am all for looking gorgeous and luscious and va-va-voom, but I find just as there is a fine line between stupid and clever there is also a fine line between sexy and blowzy.

Yet my head has been turned thanks to Miuccia Prada. La Maestra, who hates the frilly stuff so much she made an entire lace collection just to prove she could. Anyway, I decided to throw caution to the wind and pick up this black lace dress from Kiyonna to wear to a last-minute symphony date next week. The key is wearing a very modern shoe so as to avoid looking like the mourning furniture in a particularly syphilitic turn-of-the-century bordello. Anyway, all this leads to the big question du jour.

Francesca and Plumcake want to know:

Have you ever changed your mind about a fabric or look you either hated or thought you could never wear?

Warning: anyone who says “yay crocs!” will be banned forever and forced to wear Old Navy for eternity. I’m not in their pay anymore, remember?