Last night, we had some friends and their kids over for dinner, and afterward settled in to watch this documentary: Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton. Originally created for French television, the movie provides a glimpse of Marc Jacobs, probably the most influential and interesting contemporary American designer, as he balances his own line with heading the esteemed Vuitton house.

The narration for this movie is a little bit strange, with some probable translation issues and an extremely fast pace. There were a lot of “WTF?” moments. Like, why did they play bagpipe music every time they showed footage from Tokyo? At times, it also seemed to be a bit of a publicity video, with lots of video of MJ being very quirky and lovable, and interviews with people like Anna Wintour and Sofia Coppola talking about how amazing he is.

That said, there is quite a bit of insight into the design and production process. We get to watch a roomful of people designing and presenting inspiration boards and collages at Vuitton; we see how an old acrylic purple sweater from the 70s “inspires” a new cashmere version; and we see the workshops operating at an incredibly frenzied pace to get the collection ready. Seriously, it was more like Project Runway than I imagined, with seamstresses going without sleep and literally running across town with dresses as the runway show begins.

There were also some glimpses at Marc Jacob’s creative philosophy, which I found really interesting. He’s immersed himself in the world of art, becoming a competitive collector, and admits to having an inferiority complex about not being a “true” artist. He doesn’t own a car or even his apartment; apparently, his only real possessions are the art he’s collected. His love for art certainly influences his work, from collaborations with artists like Takashi Murakami to the conceptual nature of some of his design.

While this documentary was a bit more shallow than the Yves Saint Laurent movie, I think you see a really different side of the fashion world here, one that’s more commerce focused, yet prefers to align itself more with high art. It left me with a few questions about where that line is.

I’m a bit of a connoisseur when it comes to red lipstick. I’ve been wearing red lips since I was a teenager dyeing my hair black and listening to siouxsie. It seemed every rockabilly, punk, or goth girl I knew was on an endless quest for The Perfect Red.

Though red lipstick has become more of an occasional thing these days, mostly out of laziness, it holds a special place in my heart. Few things are as simple and transforming.

So let me share with you my favorites to date.

The queen of them all, in my opinion, is MAC Russian Red. This is a simple, true, matte red. Also, it smells like vanilla or something.

But after that, I would have to go with some of the lipsticks from Besame, a retro makeup company run from Los Angeles by a gorgeous lady called Gabriela Hernandez. The packaging is high-quality, old-fashioned, and gorgeous gold-toned metal. The quality is amazing and the colors are beautiful. This goes for everything, not just the lipstick.

My favorites are Red Velvet (a deep, neutral red), Cherry Red (a very cool toned pinkish red), and Noir Red (a really dark silent film star type color).

The reason I mention this now is because Besame is clearing out their current line to make way for new products and everything on the site is extremely cheap. Lipsticks are $6, about a third of what they usually cost. I am struggling with this because I really do not need more lipstick. sigh.

(By the way, the red I’m wearing in the above photo is gorgeous, but I have no clue what it is. My friend Mari gave it to me, and it’s in an unmarked pale mint green tube.)

This is my beautiful new dress, which Kenn bought me for my birthday. He is really good at buying me clothes. It’s been a year since I bought any new, non-handmade clothing, so dresses as gifts are a special treat. Polka dots and plaid are two of my favorite things. And bows. Also, pockets.

Other birthday gifts included a new lens and lots of great books. And this weekend, we are escaping to Sonoma to relax, drink wine, and ride in a hot air ballloon (!!)

I know this blog has slowed down lately, but only because I have been extremely busy working on stuff in my studio, scheming and dreaming. But I don’t want to talk in too much detail about my plans until I have something to show for it.

(cue the Beastie Boys’ “She’s Crafty”)

Have a lovely, warm & sunny weekend everyone!

I have been waiting patiently for Fifi Lapin to start selling prints of her fabulous bunnyness again, and finally they returned to her etsy store.

Today, I received this print of Fifi wearing Luella’s spring/summer 08 collection, inspired by Enid in Ghostworld.

I love Enid, I love Luella, I love catwoman, and I love bunnies.

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.”

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.

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.

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.”)

I’ve taken up swimming again lately, for which I wear your typical plain black sporty speedo one piece (though I do have a pink swim cap and goggles). But it’s made me think about summer swimsuits of the splish-splash-playing-in-the-pool variety (as opposed to the swimming-laps-for-exercise variety).

Nowadays, swimsuits are usually kind of flimsy and rarely seem to be built for curves. If you’re lucky, you might get some sort of shelf bra in there but that’s about it. One look at the swimsuits of the 40s and 50s though, and you can see that they were nothing less than feats of engineering: Pieced full cups, shirring, smocking, and strategic seams galore.

I’ve never made a bathing suit. Could be fun if I could manage the elastic shirring bit.

{more gorgeous vintage beach images from millie motts}

I bought this odd 80s sun dress for a few bucks recently. I thought it was really dowdy in that sort of horrible laura ashley way, but at the same time, the bodice is really beautifully cut. It has a very fitted princess cut, elastic shirring in panels at the back, and I like the crazy pockets. And recently I’ve had a bit of a textile crush on these kind of faded flowery large scale grandma patterns.

So I chopped a good foot off the hem and it’s really a new dress. The perfect thing to wear to the nursery this weekend and bake a cherry tart.

It even sort of matches the flowers we bought at the farmer’s market this week.