Inquiring minds want to know…
…what do you do when someone copies your look? Don’t you hate it when you take the time to put together a new outfit, or try a particular hairstyle, and then someone runs out and copycats you down to the smallest detail?
I’m always perplexed when someone (especially an adult) does this. Sure, designers produce and stores sell multiples for a reason, but you know what I’m talking about: when someone attempts to take over something in particular that may be your signature. I usually lean toward being the bigger person and overlooking the poor soul who hasn’t the creativity to develop her own personal style (and throwing shade in private).
What do you think? Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery or is this busted behavior?
Image via SomeEcards
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QOTD: Karl Lagerfeld on Design
“Design has no meaning unless people wear the clothes and enjoy them. The purpose of design is to make people feel good, not to express the pain and suffering of the world in taffeta.”
– Karl Lagerfeld, head designer and creative director of Chanel (InStyle, July 2012
Image via BornRich.com
QOTD
“Your dresses should be tight enough to show you’re a woman and loose enough to prove you’re a lady.”
-Edith Head, Academy Award-winning costume designer
Image via Life
Motivational print via Ex Libris Journals
Perry Varner Takes a Bite out of the Big Apple
Fashion industry consultant, Parsons alum and Montgomery native Perry Varner has returned to Alabama for a series of not-to-be-missed fashion events. Find him at The Royal Experience, Radar Magazine’s second anniversary function and fashion show in Huntsville this Sunday. He will also be hosting Runway Obsessions: For Colored Girls who Considered Fashion When the Rainbow is Enuf (a clever twist on Ntozake Shange’s work) in Montgomery at the Davis Theatre on March 9. He spoke with me recently about his motivations and projects.
Mr. Varner has described starting a “movement in fashion.” When asked to elaborate, he noted the lack of designers of color on Fifth Avenue.
“I want people of color to have more visibility when it comes to the impression we make and our buying power when it comes to these brands. I want people to be more conscious of supporting brands . That’s why I came to NY. I’m getting a better understanding of what it means to brand and how little some brands reflect the people who wear the actual items. There are no black designers on Fifth Avenue. Not one. People don’t know that when they go buy red bottoms [i.e. Christian Louboutin] and Gucci; there are no people of color that represent these products.”
Varner, who is known for masterminding fashionable events, received a bachelors degree from Auburn University Montgomery, and received additional training at Parsons in New York. He started as a promotions intern with Earthlink Live and later was fashion director for 205 Flava. He also designed and launched several nightspots, including the popular Amani Raha.
During those experiences, he says “I began to only focus on fashion. I found that being submersed in fashion-related events gave me the most pleasure. It took me 13 years to figure out what I wanted to do, and the last couple of years to get it right. It wasn’t easy. Whatever sacrifices I made, I did it. I’m in a way better place now [for it]. I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything. I’d do it the same way again. I have no regrets. Somewhere between me thinking this could happen and pursuing it, it happened.”
Now, as a fashion consultant, Varner designs events within New York’s fashion industry and recently hosted a major brunch with numerous media partners and brands during New York Fashion Week. But it’s not all hobnobbing with the fashion elite. Varner also teaches a course at Harlem Children’s Zone and has plans to further cement his mark on fashion history with his latest project, a book he hopes to publish soon.
“The History of Black Fashion in America is about how black people have shaped fashion over the last one hundred years in America. It journeys what we’ve done as people of color and what our contribution has been to pop culture in fashion,” he shares.
What else can we look forward to from Mr. Varner?
His latest Style Experience, “Runway Obsessions,” focuses on empowering women. “I have over sixty models and all female designers. I’m honoring six females from the community in each city where we’re doing the show, women who are making a difference. It opens up a lot of opportunities for the models and designers. In each city I use local models and I feature designers from that particular city. I created Style Experience to give people here [a New York-style fashion experience] with beautiful eccentric people, the red carpet, and paparazzi.”
Runway Obsessions will hit the catwalk in Montgomery on March 18, Birmingham in July, and Atlanta during Labor Day weekend.
For more on Mr. Varner, click here.
Images courtesy Perry Varner
If the Shoe Fits…
A sharp-eyed reader pointed out that I recently cooed over the studded slip-ons worn by Idris Elba at the Golden Globes last Sunday, despite having come down hard against people who wear sneakers with formal wear in a previous post. That’s the thing about fashion. Just when you roll your eyes at someone in a Canadian tuxedo, O Magazine decides it’s what’s hot and happening for Spring.
Sigh.
But isn’t that what’s wonderful about style? We have the opportunity to have fun with it, to take one special piece, wear it in an unexpected manner and change the conversation about what’s fashionable. If – as in Cinderella’s case – one shoe can change your entire life, imagine what a wardrobe of well-considered clothes and accessories can do?
I’ll go on record as saying I prefer evening shoes with evening wear, and that anyone who deviates should have an awesome pair of sneakers (studded, bedazzled or otherwise “dressed up”) to make me reconsider. Beat-up Nikes just won’t cut it on the red carpet.
I’m not sure socks with sandals will ever be in style either, no matter what Donatella Versace would have us believe in this ad featuring Cindy Crawford’s doppelganger daughter Kaia Gerber, the new face of Young Versace.
But I’m open to being proved wrong.
Image via Versace
Quote of the Day
“Simple things can be just enough to impress! Sometimes, we try to go over the top to impress, [when] an impression is a simple feeling someone gets when they NOTICE something about you… sometimes going over the top gets [you] un-noticed!” – Chris Coleman, WBHK 98.7 KISS FM Radio Personality
Same Chic Different Day 