Manolo for the Big Girl

So yesterday I wrote a post about the Prada pre-fall, and it mysteriously disappeared! I’m not blaming anyone, but I have it on good authority that a certain notoriously jealous and high-collared whackadoo whose name may or may not rhyme with Snarl Globberfeld got so mad when he found out La Miuccia got to outfit the actual PRINCE OF DARKNESS he bit his pet marmoset and had to take to his bed for a week.

The post went a little something like this “blah blah blah concept of pre-fall blah blah blah fry a chicken on a sidewalk blah blah Miuccia Prada is a goddess” and then something about Neiman Marcus and probably a self-deprecating bit about my inability to maintain healthy human relationships because I’m a fundamentally empty person with $20,000 worth of shoes that hurt my feet and a gaping void in my soul.

or, um, you know, something.

Anyhoodle, what I wanted you to do was check out these little delicately ruffled two-piece from Prada’s pre-fall collection. They’re available now and gives just that little something extra to a pair of basic black sandals.

I love the sandals and you’d probably get a ton of wear out of them but personally I’m holding out for La Maestra’s real Fall/Winter goodness.

These over-the-top darlings have been in my stylebook since February and I know the moment I saw them that they –especially the ones with the big sculptural ruffles– are going to be all over the darn place in just a few months.

Because I don’t wear a 39.5.

Miu Miu bi-color satin pumps under $200 smackeroonies, at net-a-porter.

Oh, and SPEAKING of Prada remember how yesterday I showed you those wacky ruffle shoes that I’ve loved since February and said were going to be all over the place? Check out this month’s Harper’s and remember who told you first.

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?

I could almost hear the sales assistant stretch out her arms as she said it.

Earlier today I’d called Neiman’s Last Call to ask them if they still had this fabulous full Saint John party skirt I’d fallen in love with a few days earlier but was foolish enough not to buy, even though it was marked down from $750 to practically nothing. I won’t torture you with the details, but rest assured this skirt is EPIC and at a vanity-sized 16 it allllmost zipped up.
I was filled with loathing at the idea of someone else buying my skirt before I had the chance to strap on William Shatner (there’s a sentence I never expected to get paid for. WS is, of course, the name of my corset) and see if the thing would zip up once I moved my innards around. If it didn’t fit then, I’d pass, but just to be safe, I called the store to ask them to hold it for me.

When the sales bunny told me “they only came in really big sizes” I got excited. If the 16 almost zipped up, surely the 18 would fit like a dream! Did St. John really make 18’s?

I paused and she continued, “yeah, I mean, they’re big… like…I saw a TWELVE.”

Speaking of 12’s, here are my latest loves, the Miu Miu Patent Double-Strap Mary Janes in Antico, a dusky nude rose.

Available up to a size 42 for $450 at Neiman’s.

Hey, compared to yesterday’s Valentino’s (Which clocked in at $1595 plus tax. Yowch.) they’re positively reasonable!

Have a superfantastic weekend everybody!