What's In A Name?

Thinking perhaps you will start a fashion line?  Become the next Project Runway star, and swan your way down the red carpet at Vogue's prestigious Met Ball with fabulous movie stars wearing your wear?  Madame Shock has stern words for you, right up front:  Choose the name of your line carefully.

In the name of research Les Madames selflessly went shopping - yes, the sacrifice! They visited everywhere from Neiman Marcus to the local thrift store seeking examples that might terrify hopeful young designers into thinking straight about names.  Ecoute, mes enfants!

This, perhaps, would not be the best idea in trousers, slacks, or...let's be serious...anything:

Nor would this, as much as it pretends to embrace improvement:

And one suspects the designers of the below item perhaps do not call English their native language - a good warning for those who may be tempted to choose a saucy French word or cool-looking Asian character for their brand name (you would think all those celebrities with incorrect tattoos serve as a lesson here, but that's another post indeed...):

Think, dahlings, of the image you want to project, the picture that forms in your mind when the soon-to-be-adoring masses hear the name of your soon-to-be-selling-out fashion line:

Think also of how a woman wants to feel when she buys and wears your item - perhaps not like another version of a man (that is, of course, yet another post...):

And above all, lieblings, do your research research research.  Madame Shock, for one, shudders each time she sees someone proudly traipsing about with this town name emblazoned across their chest or (god forbid) posterior:

Mon Dieu! Have you ever BEEN to Hollister?  Wethinks mayhap the designers had not... 

What Grows Your Clothes...Who Knows?

While we are on the topic of coffee table books to run out and purchase, here is one to add to the list:  Fashioning the Future: Tomorrow's Wardrobe by Suzanne Lee.

Les Mesdames Chic, Shock et Chausseurs spend oodles of time figuring out how to refashion fashion into unique statement pieces.  This did not start out as an ecological bio-drive toward anything - it was just our collective desire not to be like anyone else and use mainstream fashion and design pieces in odd and creative ways.  However, the eco-pull to recyling and redesigning fashion is relentless - we dare you to create oh, say a Tampon holder out of a Tiffany's Stationery Box and or a ball gown out of old T-shirts and not feel the "aha!" moment of reduce-reuse-recycle. 

Well...behold the newest eco-fashion innovation: bacteria that make clothes.  Vraiment!

BioCouture by Suzanne Lee, for ModeMuseum Belgium

In case you did not immediately click on the arresting image above and/or already purchase the book vite vite, let us explain:  Ms. Suzanne Lee, a London fashion designer, creates couture pieces out of (you won't believe it...):  microbial cellulose.  Quoi, et...pourquoi?  Ms. Lee has found certain microbes that spin threads that can be used to make invisible dresses, the coolest body-armour-style corsets, and more.

She has been featured in Bloomberg News, The New York Times, and was named as one of the 50 Best Inventions of 2010 by Time Magazine.

Ms. Lee calls it BioCouture and we call it encroyable!

Big Nudes White Women Sleepless Nights...Where Were We?

Staggering back into normalcy after the holiday season, dahlings?  Surely you are primed and sassy, eager and bright-eyed, ready to plunge headlong into another year of fashion and DIY creativity.  Non?  Welllll, the Mesdames want to have a cozy, down-home chat about the holidays, with a specific focus on their favorite gifts of the season, so step lively, cherubs!  Eh - Pfft?  Vraiment? Yoo hoo - Hallo?

Big Nudes with Sylvia, First Edition

Ah! Fully recovered now, we see! 

Les Mesdames are not above tossing in some scenery-chewing, jaw-dropping, psyche-searing nudity when more polite entreaties fail.  And it is simply impossible to ignore the photography of Mr. Helmut Newton, d'accord?  Even more difficile to ignore the commanding presence of one of his favorite models, the teutonic goddess Sylvia Gobbel, n'est pas? 

Where is this all going, you ask, other than a fine tour of black-and-white, semi-S&M photography?  Ecoute.  Madame Chausseurs had the great fortune to attend the Helmut Newton exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston this past September, which featured prints from his first three books: White Women, Sleepless Nights, and Big Nudes. 

Featured prominently in the exhibit was none other than the divine Ms. Gobbel (far right, above and below).

Madame Shock et Sylvia Gobbel Nolleau near St Tropez

You see, les Mesdames Chic & Shock bear great love and gratitude for Ms. Gobbel, she having saved them from small-town mediocrity and religious-cult-smothering (would we lie?!) as 19-year-old babes-in-the-woods.  She sponsored them in a fantastic, rock-and-roll summer haunting Parisian nightclubs (Castel! Le Palace!) and French Riviera fun (Le Club 55 et Byblos - bises!) on an elegantly oversized sailing yacht.  We salute Sylvia, in this exhibit and in her current return to modeling.  C'est Magnifique!

Madame Chic et Sylvia circa 1989

And you really wondered what this all had to do with favorite gifts, didn't you?  Ah, ye of little faith!

Aside from the gift of osmotic chic generously shared by Sylvia so many years ago this year's prizes were indubitably the fabulous coffee table books Madame Chausseurs procured at the MFA Houston exhibit:  Big Nudes, Polaroids, and more.  If you don't have any...snap them up at Amazon, vite vite, schatzi!  LOVE!

Ho Ho Hostess Gifts!

Madame Shock recently sat down to draft a manifesto regarding what to bring and what not to bring to a party host or hostess.  But in the spirit of Christmas she has decided not to lecture, admonish, or browbeat - we all know the rules, right?  Well... maybe she'll write that missive afterall...  It's just that she's a tad foggy from a marvelous little soiree last night and hasn't the strength for numbered lists at the moment. 

She would never leave anxious party-goers hanging, however, no matter how hungover.  So Madame Chic has graciously agree to discuss only "the classics" until Mme Shock has sufficient recovered:

1. Flowers - does it even need to be said? Self-contained (never bring them without a vase or pot), low-odor (please don't clog diners' senses with heavy scents), and, if they come from your garden, pest-free!  Madame Chic once choked down an entire 7-course meal in sheer terror of the earwig that had crawled out of the centerpiece and under her plate...somewhere.  She still shudders delicately at the memory.    



Richard Donnelly's handmade delicacies

2. Chocolates - parfait... unless you know the hostess to be diabetic: small, portable, beautiful, delicious (the chocolates, bien sur, pas the diabetic hostess....).  Madame Chausseurs has been showering lucky hostesses this season with the most delectable boxes of handmade goodies from Donnelly Chocolates.  A mixed box of Spicy Chipotle, Chinese Five Spice, Saffron, Chai, and Hazelnut Gianduja morsels - all in dark chocolate or truffle versions - practically guarantees a repeat invitation. (Although -it pains Madame greatly to have to spell it out, she has taken on this task and must see it through to the bitter end: no mass-produced chocolates that can be purchased in supermarkets and chain drugstores, s'il vous plait.)



vintage scarves from Echo, Jugoslavia tourist board, and Schiaparelli

3. Wine - everyone loves wine!  Except those in recovery or staunch teetotallers.  So know your audience before showing up with a bottle of your finest.  After that perfunctory recon, any good-quality wine is always welcome, but the enticingly unusual or small-label bottles are of course more impressive.  And take care with presentation - a bow is good, an unusual gift bag is better, and something highly unusual - like the vintage scarves Madame Chausseur collects - is best.  Madame has a general thing against scarves when worn by anything other than wine bottles (ah, perhaps that story later...) but you must admit they make charming one-of-a-kind gift bags.  She collects interesting specimens in her travels for just such occasions, and is particularly fond of her 1960s-era "Jugoslavia" tourist scarf (shown above, center).  After all, dahlings, nothing says chic like a gift from a no-longer-existing country. 

Of Cowpies, Fryes, and Dyes

In a 2009 post Madame Shock did what she does best (pish posh, dahlings, no tittering, it's ONE of the things she does best): buying Louboutins for half-price and dyeing them to fit her fancy.

Madame Chausseurs - sorely put out by a victory on her own territoire - sniffed that c'est tres simple bien sur to dye suede, but leather is a whole different animal (yes, technically the same animal, but treated differently and...well, we digress...).  

Shhhh, it's pigskin...

It just so happened that Madame Chic had been shopping at that very moment.  Yes, imagine - shopping!  Standing in a tiny boutique in a tinier Wyoming town she was desperate for some very tall footwear to separate her dainty soles from the omnipresent muddy, mottled, gray-brown muck.  Madame had been blissfully enjoying a secret rendezvous on a private ranch until her dire lack of sturdy chausseurs began to threaten the romance. 

Never one to throw away a man for lack of appropriate footwear, she had located acceptable - cute, even - Frye platform kiltie brogues in the only boutique in town but - quelle horreur! - the only remaining pair taunted her from the shelf in a muddy, mottled gray-brown the precise shade of the very muck she was desperate to avoid. 

But what to do?  And what to do vite vite, before another Cowpie-in-the-Peeptoes debacle ruined another romantic, candlelight dinner in a private tent on the pampas (or whatever the term is for amber waves of grain that hide cowpies from unsuspecting fashionistas)?  The suspense! The drama! But never fear...we would never leave Madame Chic stranded with date pains in the great plains as fate reigns ... 

Everything always comes back to Audrey...

Oh, excuse nous, s'il vous plait ...the Mesdames got sidetracked in a little My Fair Lady reverie just at the exciting point in the story!  What did Madame Chic do to rescue her romance and her pieds?!  She called Madame Shock right on the spot (well, technically not on the spot, because super-secret ranches in tiny Wyoming towns get simply PAS de cell reception, but we'll skip that part of the story...).  And after a quick trip to the drugstore down the street and a purchase of one bottle of black shoe polish...voila!  You'd never know they were anything other than standard, reassuring, big-city-girl black, n'est pas?

Perfectly Un-Cowpie Black

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mesdames Shock & Chausseurs wish all their fabulous readers an elegant, safe, wonderful holiday.

Madame Chic, being European, is spending the holiday in Monte Carlo with Stuart Weitzman, Valentino, & Gucci. She sends kisses and a few photos, and tells everyone not to eat that jiggly cranberry stuff. She's convinced it leads to cellulite.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Louboutin Love for Less

Once upon a time Madame Shock was a mere mademoiselle, sent abroad at a tender age to acquire some polish and education. (She ended up meeting Mademoiselle Chic and getting kicked out of school for stealing a ladder from a farmer's barn and using it to climb out the dormitory window to go clubbing all night...but that's another story.)

Armed with a copy of Born To Shop Europe and an "emergency" credit card, Mademoiselle Shock practically ran straight off the plane and into a secret Parisian shoe sale. There she acquired the most divine, velvety grey suede Christian Dior pumps. Knowing she could never wear grey before 30, she whisked her prizes to the Shoe Guy (see "Add-An-Inch" entry) for a quick dye job. Voila! Perfect buttery-soft, deep black masterpieces (that she wore clubbing, of course).

Ah, but Madame, you say, WHAT ABOUT THOSE GORGEOUS LOUBOUTIN BOOTS IN THE PICTURE??? You have been very sweet in allowing Madame her geriatric reminiscences, so here's the secret. Those boots, which Louboutin himself declared in InStyle magazine to be one of his favorite all-time styles, were sold out in black before they even hit the shelves. But the hot pink version (which we find very chic, indeed)...well, they languished in stores like pumpkins after Halloween until they were finally reduced to half price. HALF PRICE, dahlings!

Madame Shock snapped up two pair: one to keep in all their dramatic, hot pink glory, and one to dye a perfect buttery-soft, deep black.

And now she just might go clubbing.

The Good Book: Your Inspiration Bible

There are so many books we should be maintaining - a food journal, a diary, our kids' baby books - but the most purely indulgent (and low-maintenance!) is your Inspiration Scrapbook.

You know what we're talking about: every designer, stylist, or artistic personality has some version of it - a bulletin board, a wall, a book, or a poster filled with images and objects that inspire their current creative endeavor. YOU, my dear chic friend, ARE your current creative endeavor, so your book is a never-ending journey through the styles, people, ideas, quotes, colors, pictures, clippings, musings that help you pursue your vision.

We prefer a book over a wall or bulletin board for several reasons: it's portable, it's able to fit in a tiny office, and it maintains a permanent archive of all our past genius!

There are no rules, other than to fill it selfishly with exactly what you like. Our current pages are filled with lots of fashion tearsheets, of course, plus quotes, travel dreams, clips from gossip rags illustrating what we Don't Want To Be, and great examples of women growing old gracefully (check out the guns on Betsy Bloomingdale, 40+, in 1969!).

Go forth and gather, paste and post!