Category: Chanel

Yves St. Laurent’s perennial style

Cold Cream 'n' Roses

By now, everyone knows that Yves St. Laurent died Sunday, June 1.


Yves St. Laurent in 1993

I do not consider myself a fashionista (which is why I don’t blog often on fashion), but IMHO Yves St. Laurent and Coco Chanel are the most influential fashion designers of the past century. I make that judgment in view of the way that their styles have trickled down to what the Brits would call high street fashion and have become perennials (the word “classics” somehow suggests museum relics).

Chanel introduced skirt and dress suits, jersey knits, and the LBD (the little black dress for those of us who are not fashionistas) to women. Yves St. Laurent feminized menswear such as bush jackets (La Saharienne), tuxedo jackets, pea coats, and matched jacket and pants. Those styles are with us still.

Sometimes, high fashion is best restricted to Vogue and the runways. The styles of Yves St. Laurent and Coco Chanel found mass appeal.

Buzz on the OPI India Collection

Cold Cream 'n' Roses1 Comment
While I thought it was ignorant on the part of OPI to use an ad showing a model holding a huge turkey sandwich for its India Collection, I have to agree that the shades are very pretty:



OPI India Collection

It’s also worthwhile to note the buzz that this collection has been getting:

Beauty Anonymous (found through my BlogRush widget) writes:

Lunch at the Delhi looks quite rosy-pink red in the bottle. It delivers a glossy red finish on the nails with pink and coral undertones. Surprisingly, I found the color reflects a warm tone of red shade under natural lights or indoor lights. Unlike the sexy, dominant power of deep reds, bold reds or true reds, Lunch at the Delhi is a soft, sweet tone of red with a girly woman characteristic. I have tried many kinds of red nail colors before from different brands. Lunch at the Delhi is one of the few that suits my complexion nicely, and is appealing to me.

Edwina Ing-Chambers, beauty columnist for FT (which, like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, has discovered the value of lifestyle reporting) writes:

Besides, it turns out that this stuff [blue nail polish] is flying off the shelves. When O.P.I. launched its “Russian Navy” shade of varnish in November, one Manhattan boutique sold 1,800 pots of it in 24 hours and since it launched in the UK it has sold out three times. Plus its new “Yoga-ta Get this Blue” shade – more indigo-ish for spring – is already trotting out of the door.

Ing-Chambers then waxes rhapsodic about Chanel’s Blue Satin, the “it” shade of nail polish for the season. Another blue she likes is Essie’s Aruba Blue (which is unfortunately named, in view of Aruba’s mismanagement of the Natalee Halloway disappearance case):

She describes this as “lighter, brighter, kind of Renaissance tone; Botticelli would probably have loved it.”