Yves Saint Laurent - His Life and Times

We just finished watching Yves Saint Laurent - His Life and Times/5 Avenue Marceau 75116 Paris, a two-part documentary on the famous couturier who only recently passed away. The first part focuses on his life, from his childhood in Algeria to his quick rise as the head of Dior through the development of his own enduring style. The second part shows the inner workings of his studio as he and his staff put together the SS 2001 couture collection.

This second part was somehow both fascinating and deadly boring at once. It’s a real look inside, not edited to make it seem especially exciting, so it really feels like you’re following people around through their day at work. But as a seamstress, it was incredibly enlightening to see how it all works, from dream to sketch to toile to final creation. The perfectionism and attention to detail is apparent throughout the process.

One thing that really struck me was that, unlike most teams of people working on a creative project, there was clearly only one person in the room designing. Yves Saint Laurent created all the sketches, and his staff was responsible for the implementation. They seemed to defer to him completely, offering only the gentlest feedback and constantly fretting about pleasing him. He was the man with the vision. It really makes you understand why so many successful designers have a diva temperament. Without one person’s unwavering vision, there is little chance for this many people to develop a coherent collection.

At the same time, Yves Saint Laurent was a gentle, softspoken person, and his relationship with his staff was incredibly respectful and kind. He truly appreciated their work and skill, and they appreciated his incredible talent and vision. There was a lovely scene in which he thanks the head seamstress for a piece, and she embraces him, kisses his cheek and says, “Thank you for creating these beautiful designs.”

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Fresh as a daisy

I saw this dress while browsing the blog at Frances May, a shop in Portland, OR that specializes in independent designers. Portland has such amazing dress shops.

Anyway, this dress is by Lorick and it’s so lovely. I’m really into sheers lately. The dress I’m working on now is sheer and floaty and pink. But I think what really makes this one is the matching belt.

When I first started sewing, way back in high school, you could buy kits to make covered belts to match your dress at Joann or whatever. So many vintage dresses were made with matching belts, but not so much anymore. Maybe they are considered old fashioned, because they aren’t so easy to come by now. They’re still around, just not widely available.

On an unrelated note, we’re currently playing through all the music we own. We did this once before by putting our iTunes library on random for an entire month, and it was good for breaking the music rut. Now we’re playing whole albums, in alphabetical order, which is a lot less jarring. We started with Abattoir Blues. I am looking forward to hearing Bad Music For Bad People soon, as I think the Cramps are the best best best music to listen to on a hot day. Right now we’re listening to Morphine, which is also pretty sexy and sultry hot weather music.

Kenn is making mango-coconut smoothies for breakfast. It smells wonderful. That is all. I love summer.

Art and Style: Pepperminte

Hi all. Sorry I’ve been MIA lately. I have been busy busy, sewing up a storm, working on business plans, and playing with my new serger.

In the meantime, I wanted to share the work of this Australian artist/illustrator, Caitlin marie Shearer, aka pepperminte. I just bought a handful of her incredibly inexpensive prints. I really like the Jugendstil-esque style of them, like Egon Schiele paper dolls.

The Cocktail

A quick note to let you know that I reviewed this lovely book, The Cocktail: 200 Fabulous Drinks over at Cocktailia.

You might be interested in the pretty pictures, which are illustrations by one of my favorites, the Australian illustrator Kat MacLeod. Check it out!

Coral crochet scarf

Still addicted to crochet, and working on more complex things now. This is a lace scarf made from KnitPick’s CotLin. I think the color is “island.” It’s a perfect vintagey coral color, which looks rose in some lighting and peach in others.

It’s basically just a bunch of joined motifs from the Japanese crochet book mentioned previously.

I have a ton of the yarn left, since I originally thought I’d make a sweater with it. I think a matching cloche would be pretty, but cloches aren’t very summery, and this color and fiber is. And I’d still have a lot left.

Birthday love

Yesterday was Kenn’s birthday. I came home bearing a fresh bouquet of peonies, since it is that very brief season in which they do not cost 4875988492490 dollars.

I then made gnocchi alla romana and lemon roasted broccoli and coconut panna cotta with a berry coulis. The first and last recipes are from Super Natural Cooking, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Everything from that book is fabulous.

The gnocchi was AMAZING. I’ve never made baked (rather than boiled) gnocchi, nor have I made it without potatoes (these are semolina) but it was so incredible. Might have something to do with the entire stick of butter in there.

We’re continuing to celebrate through the weekend, this morning with whole grain pancakes with berries.

Basil likes to keep me company when I cook.

As an aside, thank you to everyone who gave their opinions on my dress! I’ll be sharing v2.0 soon!

Around the Web: May 15th through June 6th

Interesting stuff from around the web:

• Indie fabric resources at Real Simple - Holly from Decor8 put together a great list of independent sellers of textiles, check it out!
• not martha - to make: pies baked in tiny jars - This is so cool. You can assemble these little pies, stick them in the freezer, and have freshly baked mini pie whenever.
• HEL LOOKS | Fiona Timantti (25) - gosh, this woman in Helsinki looks so severe and so beautiful.
• Vegetarian myths, debunked. - By Taylor Clark - Slate Magazine - I wish every omnivore I interact with in my life could read this.
• TheDieline.com: The Leading Package Design Blog - Just discovered this wonderful package design blog via Oh Joy!

A prototype - your thoughts?

Lately, I’ve been working on designing a new dress. I’d love to get your thoughts.

This is the muslin, still needing some tweaks. It’s designed to be made in two coordinating fabrics, because I love two-tone anything. There are so many possibilities when you make things in two coordinating fabrics. The next couple of designs I have in mind are more slinky, but I wanted to do one with a bit of structure that could be made with standard easy-to-find cotton prints, which come in such a huge array of fun prints.

And here’s the first prototype.

Now. I expected it would still need some changes after finishing one prototype, and I was right. I thought the design lines were great on the muslin, but once I made it up in two different fabrics, it was quite different.

My main issue is the curve of that front seam. I think it’s cut far too high, especially at the arms. It doesn’t look too bad on the dress form, but on a person, it’s not so great. So I am happily making it up again, but prototype number 2 will be in a very different colorway.

I’m happy with the rest of the dress though, it looks great and is really really flattering. And it has design details I love, like an inset midriff and pockets.

See those front pleats? There are pockets hidden in the outer pleats. I believe most dresses should have pockets. Not all, but most.

The sleeve hems echo the lines of the bodice. (ugh, ignore the cat hair please).

A side view. The top yoke (the black part) will extend much farther down on the next one.

Here I am wearing it the other day.

In this shot, you can see why that curve looks weird. Because it doesn’t curve under the arms, when an actual human with arms wears it, you get the illusion of points instead of a gentle curve. It’s just the way arms hang from the shoulder. Thus the importance of trying designs on real people, not just dress forms.

So now on to version two! I would LOVE to know your opinions on this dress overall. Like it? Hate it? Is it something you’d wear? Something you’d want to sew? etc.

Fudge magazine

I love Japanese magazines, and every once in a while I have to indulge myself. I normally go for the street style magazines like Cutie (tag line: “For independent girls”), because they show actual real people with real style. (By the way, if you like street fashion photography, that’s one of the themes for the next issue of JPG.)

But this one has such nice photography and styling, I chose it in spite of being a bit more high fashion. Here are some images from Fudge (tag line: “NEW TYPE FASHION MAGAZINE for GIRLS.”)

Hurray for LA

We drove down to LA last weekend for family things, and I think it was one of the best LA visits ever. It almost made me love Los Angeles. I guess visiting all your favorite old haunts within a couple days will do that.

I didn’t particularly like living in LA, mainly because the sprawl is awful and the traffic even worse. Unlike other cities I’ve lived in, you can’t just walk outside, wander down the street, and find something to do. You have to find something, make plans, and drive 40 minutes. Always.

But LA has its magic, it’s true. There are undiscovered places not crowded with hipsters, beaches and sun, quirky neighborhoods, incredible art, and classic cars. I even like the seedy ruptured glamor of hollywood, in a way. There is some truth to the crumbling fairydusted LA sketched in Francesca Lia Block novels, but like a lot of things, you have to step away for a while to see it.

Here’s what I did:

• Baked a giant red velvet cake for my mom’s birthday, which was amazingly delicious. My brother said it looked like a cartoon cake.
  
  
  
  
• Visited Acres of Books, one of my favorite places on this earth
  
• Had cocktails at Yamashiro high up in the Hollywood hills, looking out over all of Hollywood at sunset

  
  

• Ate yummy vegan food and spent a day wandering around Silverlake
  
  
• Walked around Echo Park and saw baby swans in the lake!
  
  
• Saw some incredible homes in Los Feliz
  
  
• Had Chai and soup at The Bourgeois Pig, sitting in the back room which has been made into a crazy dark enchanted forest room (not pictured), while they played Nick Cave
  
  
• Drinks at The Dresden and Boardners
  
• Hanging out at a friend’s loft in downtown LA and eating homemade veggie tacos with pretty skyline views
  

Pretty hard to beat that for a fantastic weekend.