2005-01-12 - 2:19 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Get Back", the Beatles

So, the obsession with fashion and clothing doesn't seem to be subsiding at all, although the amount of money overall and per item that I am spending has dropped precipitously.

As some of you may recall, rolling your eyes as you do so, I was fretting a lot about finances. In the fall I went on quite a spending spree, although a lot of it -- half to two-thirds -- was business clothes and what I'd have to call "grown-up clothes". Now that I'm in my thirties, I'm less interested in some of the more casual funky looks and am trying to look more sophisticated. Especially since "sophisticated" these days often means "looks like clothes from the 1940s and 1950s", which I ADORE. No hippie rags bohemian looks for me, sorry.

I have set myself a monthly spending maximum. [NERD ALERT] I'm keeping track of what I buy for how much in an Excel spreadsheet. In addition to helping me stay within the boundary I've set, it also helps me see how the most expensive purchases (which means about $50 to me right now) are wardrobe basics that are versatile, classic, well-made, and I expect to keep for quite some time. Last month I came in well under the maximum, which was nice, although I have a feeling I'm going to hit the maximum this month because I am taking advantage of the clearance sales.

I love end-of-season clearance and "additional 20% off" coupons. I love getting something of good quality that I'm madly in love with for less than $15. Even the more expensive purchases I've made are usually well over 50% off. When the spring stuff comes out, I'm going to try to stay away from it until sometime in July. I figure, if I don't know what was in the stores in the first place, I won't even KNOW what I could have bought in my size before somebody else snapped it up.

In addition to the shopping, I've been doing a lot of reading of fashion magazines. Usually this means looking at pictures and trying to learn how to put outfits together, but I've also been trying to understand how the fashion world works. It's all kind of gobbledegook to me since as far as I know there is no "Fashion For Dummies" that explains the history of fashion and what that whole "designer" thing is all about.

The designer thing perplexes me. I have always been vaguely aware of the big names, because they get thrown around a lot -- Prada, Gucci, Versace, whatever. And from what my reading would suggest, these people are the ones who set the trends, and everyone else kinda copies off of them ("knockoffs"). So designer clothes are desirable because they are "originals" and creative. But who's to say some no-name designer might not come up with something original that the big names never thought of? Not only that, but all those big designers copy off of each other, they copy off historical trends in fashion, and they copy off earlier incarnations within the same fashion "house". Has there been a truly original good idea in fashion in the last twenty years? I mean, Pucci supposedly originated those "op art" prints in the 1970s and they're still doing them -- how many different ways can you do a Pucci print before it all runs together, and how is it any better than the knockoffs? It's practically like paisley now.

Another thing about designer clothing is that even ready-to-wear is supposedly of very good quality and fits well. That's very nice and all -- I'm a bit big fan of well-made clothes -- but I'm getting the impression that once you get to a certain price, the value's paid for and beyond that you're paying for the name. Either that or you're paying for rare materials (ostrich leather? wtf?) that are only valuable because they're rare, not because they're more pleasing aesthetically than other, less-expensive alternatives.

There seems to be this huge gap between what appears in magazines and what real people -- even well-dressed real people, as opposed to rumpled people in sweats -- actually wear. Camille tells me that this is partly because fashion is an art form, and many of the clothes invented are never really intended to be worn "in real life". I can see that. But even if you assume that real people are going to take certain aspects of runway clothes and water them down a bit, there's still stuff I see on the streets and in stores that doesn't seem to be coming from the fashion houses at all. I guess The People have their own fashion trends as well.

Anyway. I had seen girls talking about their favorite designers, and I didn't know how the hell they picked one. I couldn't keep them all straight. But then I started noticing something weird. I fell in love with these shoes:

And bought myself the blue bag in this picture:

(not knowing at the time that it was a knockoff "inspired by" a particular designer's bags)

And then I took a closer look at the caption on that the picture I've had on my wall since last spring because I loved the pants and shoes:

It's all Marc Jacobs. It would appear that I do, in fact, have a favorite designer. And it also appears that I only like his "Marc Jacobs Collection", not his "Marc by Marc Jacobs" line, which is far less expensive (relatively speaking, anyway).

The reason I like his collection is because he has an emphasis on the tailored retro looks that I love, plus round-toe shoes and mary janes. The cheaper line looks nothing like his collection -- it's much more bohemian, which does nothing for me.

I also seem to like Ralph Lauren, who designed this circle-skirted tweed suit that is also on my wall:

but again, I only like the collection, not his affordable lines. Blah. That suit costs $4000. I'm a big fan of paying for quality materials and paying people in return for a service, but I get the impression that designers don't really want the general public wearing their clothes. I think they want only a select few to wear them, so that the clothes will be more Special.

And finally, a few words about "signature" bags. Those would be the bags with the designer's name or initials all over them -- a walking advertisement for the company that YOU have to pay THEM hundreds of dollars to carry around. I STILL DON'T GET IT. The girls who buy these bags talk about "quality" and "service" and they certainly do get them, but

1. How much of that price is quality and how much of it is the name?
2. OMIGOD THOSE BAGS ARE FUCKING UGLY!!! UGLY!! UGLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, look at this bag ($545), this bag ($760), and this bag ($965) for examples. Any one of those bags would be SO MUCH MORE ATTRACTIVE if they were made of a regular fabric or leather instead of that godawful "logo" print.)

Not only that, but the whole "signature" thing is so very popular that people buy KNOCKOFFS -- not imitations of the expensive bags, but no-name bags with random letters and symbols on them! WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT?! WHAT AM I NOT UNDERSTANDING HERE!?

GAH.

To end this post on a more pleasant note, here are a couple of pictures from the runways that make me squee!, thanks to Style.Com, home of Vogue and W, who has been kind enough to post slideshows of every outfit from every runway show going back to 2000. I am wasting so much time on here it's pathetic.

Ralph Lauren:

(I am far too short to pull off this look.)

Monique Lhuillier:

And finally, although his Spring 2005 stuff didn't really grab me (except maybe these pants and shoes, well, all the shoes actually), take a gander at Marc Jacobs. Apparently his fascination with designing clothes and putting outfits together does not extend to his own, god bless 'im.

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