I can’t really argue much with anything “Loosely inspired by the effortless style of post bop musicians,” and that’s probably why Steven Alan’s Fall 2013 collection was without a doubt one of the biggest highlights for me as I ran around from Fashion Week events, to meetings, then to coffee shops to write up whatever deadline I was up against. Between the overall presentation and the inspiration behind the collection, I couldn’t really stop thinking about it.
The Old Oxford: The Lady in the Suit
(All photos by Jesse Untracht-Oakner) When you see a woman truly wearing a suit it catches your eye, and she is an image hard to forget. When Balzac wrote that “If clothing is the whole man, it is even more so the whole woman,” in 1830, he probably didn’t envision Marlene Dietrich, Katherine Hepburn, Grace Jones, or Patti Smith transforming garments traditionally made for men into something subversive, iconic, and beautiful. Amber Doyle is in that school of women who can […]
The Old Oxford: Downton Abbey, Gatsby, Don Draper, and Costuming Drama
There was this one shot from the premiere of the third season of Downton Abbey that has really been sticking with me. It wasn’t the epic moment when the Dowager Countess and Shirley MacLaine shared their first scene together, anything having to do with Bates in prison, or Lady Mary throwing a fit when Matthew decided he wanted to be the latest of the show’s martyrs and not accept a windfall of cash that he inherited (days before their wedding, no less). […]