It’s just too hot, to be haute!

Have a great Tuesday!

0 comments permalink |  7:52 AM |  7.14.2009 | 

I have a fashion crush on Michelle Obama!  She looks amazing lately! She’s trendy, sophisticated, appropriate and classic all at once. I continue to see her belting her suits and jackets which I absolutely love. If you want to see more, check out www.mrs-o.org, a blog dedicated to the fashions of our nation’s First Lady.

0 comments permalink |  9:00 AM |  7.10.2009 | 

These are amazingly beautiful.  Enjoy!

Photography – Billy Kidd, Model – Jeanne from FORD/RBA, Wardrobe Styling – Shannon Campbell, Makeup – Lorri Mitchell, Photography Assistant du Jour – Corbin Chamberlain, Location – MY HOUSE!! For more, www.billy-kidd.com.

0 comments permalink |  8:05 AM |  7.9.2009 | 

Fashion Phoenix’s “Fashionable Summer Reading” is a collection of essays written by Susan Di Staulo. Susan is a fashion designer, illustrator and model living in Scottsdale with a passion for fashion and arts education.  For more information, click Susan Di Staulo.

Yves Saint Laurent Fall-Winter 2009/2010 (source frillr.com)

“FINDING YOUR OWN STYLE IS NOT EASY, BUT ONCE FOUND IT BRINGS COMPLETE HAPPINESS.” —– Yves Saint Laurent

Yves Saint Laurent passed on June 1st, 2008. He was a ‘designer’s designer’ and a masterful couturier. His work was legendary, consummate, inspiring, artful, and just beautiful. The deep and jagged puncture wound his loss leaves in the heart of fashion, the soul of style, and the tactility of luxury will never heal.

There are many words thrown around loosely these days, including “genius” and “maverick.” When one ascribes these attributes to Yves Saint Laurent, one is not speaking out of term. His vision, artistic output and inventive thought process were a salient and solid backbone of clothing and fashion design. My first remembrance of YSL was all the ‘rive gauche’ perfume commercials I saw on American TV when I was a young girl. I didn’t know Rive Gauche, or “left bank’ was a phrase used to mean intellectual and bohemian, words with strong signification for YSL. I suspect it best to take a chronological overview of this great talent…

Yves Mathieu Saint Laurent was born on August first, 1936 in Oran, Algeria. His childhood seemed to bear some resemblance to that of his artistic inspiration and hero, Marcel Proust. YSL was a very shy, yet creative man very close to his mother. Young Yves took refuge in drawing, reading fashion magazines, and designing costumes for self produced ‘theater’ shows he would invent for his family to watch. By the time he was seventeen, he won first place in a design contest. This achievement carried him forward positively. Such an honor instilled him with confidence and enabled him to finish his academic studies and enter the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, a fashion design school in Paris. The year was 1954.

His tenure there was only for a few months, however he met someone very important: the Editor of French Vogue, Michel de Brunhoff. It was Brunhoff who introduced him to the person who gave him the strongest bedrock possible from which to ground a fashion career: Christian Dior.

When Yves met couturier Christian Dior in 1955, his entire life changed. Dior saw some of his sketches and hired him on the spot as an assistant. The House of Dior was one of the most organized design studios around. The business was well run, and YSL was able to garner both artistic and business knowledge from the atelier. So meticulously run was this salon, that YSL was able to take control of the helm seamlessly after the death of Dior in October 1957. For a relatively unknown acolyte to inherit such an honor is uncommon. However, in November of that year, Yves was given the regal title of Head Designer.

YSL Turtleneck Trapeze Dress at Bergdorf Goodman

Many were pleased with this decision, yet many dissented and felt the end of the House of Dior was imminent. However, on January 30, 1958, Yves debuted the legendary and original “trapeze’ look famous to Dior and instantly he was golden. The trapeze look was heralded as genius and YSL quickly became regarded as a fresh, innovative, and proficient successor to Dior. His passion and devotion to the process of creativity are what made him the “maverick” and the “genius” he is widely acknowledged to be to this day. He continued to design under the Dior label until 1960, when he was drafted into the French army. This nerve wrecking experience took a definite toll on the already fragile disposition of Yves. The result was extreme emotional fatigue and he was dismissed from the army and hospitalized. The ordeal was life shattering. He fully expected to return to Dior and design after recovery, yet he was replaced by designer Marc Bohan. Though he tried to regain his post through legal action, he was dispelled. But Yves moved on, as one does after any great and tragic liaison of the heart, and went forward to start his own self titled line.

His personal partnership at the time with Pierre Berge branched into a professional one. Berge abetted him financially and soon Yves Saint Laurent was presenting collections under his own name. He also continued with costume design for prestigious theatre companies in France. The combination of theatrical fanfare and utilitarian design culminated into a melding of genius work. Yves’s was able to manifest art and design as one. His devotion to his occupation was fueled by his love of women, art, and freedom.

Yves Saint Laurent (sourced dailymail.co.uk)

Some notable quotes from Yves Saint Laurent…

“I love women. I love the bright and attractive people and things of this world; the flame and also the moth, the dancer and the dance. A line of music, a face of a Vermeer portrait, a character in an opera, or a model born in Harlem. I like to watch the way a model moves in my clothes. The way she gives them life, or if they are wrong, stubborn, the way her life rejects them. A good model can advance fashion by ten years.”

“Dressing is a way of life. It brings you joy. It can give you freedom and liberation, help you find yourself and to move without restraint. Isn’t elegance about forgetting what one is wearing? What is wonderful about my art is that dream and reality can become one. There is just one step between the two.”

0 comments permalink |  9:22 AM |  7.7.2009 |