from Steven Meisel to Kate Betts: a hot june in miami

A June with a bang in Miami, a promising season.

Go figure, normally summer is the low season here and yes it took me years to get acquainted with the idea that, while I grew up where summer is the epitome of the high season, I live in the same hemisphere yet this is the time of the year when either you leave and go to … Europe or you stay put until better times come.

 

ROLE PLAY

The first Monday of the month was sealed with a cocktail at the Moore Building in the Design District celebrating the opening of ‘Role Play’ the Steven Meisel traveling exhibition sponsored by Loewe and Phillips Auctions. Nice groove, pleasant conversations and engaging networking.

Is it Miami up to something that I am missing?Tthis looks like Milan before everyone leaves for the beach: keep up the great job.   

 

MY LITTLE PARIS

It continued in Bal Harbour. 

From Vogue to EIC at Harper's Bazaar, Kate Betts, the fashion journalist born under the wings of Mr. John B. Fairchild turned author, drew Miami's crème de la crème of style to Bal Harbour for a lavish luncheon at Makoto hosted by Lara Shriftman and Sarah Harrelson. A reading of her recently launched book ‘My Little Paris’ followed suit at Books & Books which is becoming the new fashion salon literaire in Miami. 

Bal Harbour stepped up its game from when I was working there, starting with the activities around The Fashion Project curated by Cathy Leff. 

 

#GucciCruiseNYC

This didn't happen in Miami, it was Chelsea, NYC but it marked the calendars as the re-birth of the Gucci legacy.

Cruise was the first collection that Alessandro Michele, th new man at the helm of the Florentine heritage brand, was able to design with enough margin of time. He blocked off a whole City block to have the models strut across a street in Chelsea and walk the catwalk: the cement floor of an art gallery covered in Persian carpets.

Michele’s new Gucci has been called weirdo, nerdy, deliberately grannified, a rag-bag parade of vintage, a fantastical story and a mismatched patchwork of everything. 

In reality the core of the Gucci brand had been long hidden under the carpets like dust, relegated to the closets, stuffed in the attics as a reliquiam of a time gone that we were supposed to forget. 

Michele's sensibility brought it back by digging in those same armoires, those same that one's grandmother has with a romantic and urban feel. 

credit @angelicahicks on Instagram 

The connection? Fashion, with the capital F

I am kinda breaking the rules by putting together the two fashion conglomerates of Bal Harbor and Miami Design District, that are in an unspoken battle of opposite pulling forces, but I agree with anything they are doing, because they unveiling a new existence of Fashion in Miami. 

 

Investing in closet essentials: the art of more with less

“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even if it breaks your egocentric little […] heart, kill your darlings”
— Steven King

Does it ever happen to you that when you have something in mind, bits and pieces of your daily life come to whisper your theory is real?

In a more trivial perspective, this is really what went down: the weekend when I switch the wardrobe is fast approaching and I look at my winter clothing in a survival of the fittest mode.

How am I going to fit everything in storage? I can see piles of keep, give away, donate and toss, like in Sex & the City And yes, I always include a closet party with rosé and canapés because it makes the whole ordeal much more pleasant. 

In a matter of a few days I first listened to an interview, dissertation on Essentialism. The Disciplined Pursue of Less by Greg McKeown and second was privileged enough to attend the award ceremony of the Pritzker Architecture Prize and the unveiling of the tent structure the posthumous honoree, late German architect Frei Otto, designed in 1953.

“You can do a few things superbly well, or a lot of things averagely well”
— Greg McKeown

McKeown's book begins from the idea that we are ensconced in the ‘you can have it all’ mentality in which we must say ‘yes’ unconditionally.

We live in the busyness bubble, an imaginary race to sleep less, be busier than  your neighbor under the false illusion of getting this invisible badge of honor.

Our days unfold through the tangled madness of long to-do lists that only lead us to be counterproductive, frustrated and anxious for not having completed tasks.

A life in which we look for more in a panting and puffing state, without really knowing what and, worst, why.

Greg thinks it’s best to live in a JOMO (Joy) state of mind and avoid the FOMO (Fear) like a pestilence.

Hyper-connected reality leads us not to think but to act in a routine that almost resembles flocks of migrant birds that, on a predetermined day of the year, all move somewhere else.

The solution to this? Less but better, to say it with Dieter Rams, that is: focus your choices towards innovation, part exploration of what works for you and part elimination of what doesn’t work for you. 

Frei Otto was an architect whose visions, talent, humbleness contributed to humanity with the simple concept of more with less.  ‘A good design never gets old’, confirmed Shigeru Ban during the panel introduction in a heartfelt tribute to his friend and colleague who was being awarded the prize after life took him away.

The tent is perfect, it holds up without a center pole, it protects you from the rain and keeps ventilation moving in and out, it’s white and blends within the environment, but more so, it’s so current yet planned and created 62 years ago.  

Look, I am not going all Socrates on you, I am shooting a dart to my point, which is not really mine, as McKeown uses a closet as a metaphor to explain all these honing and pruning of your life, but I am really going to use the closet as the main focus.

What Otto contributed to my cogitations? The element of timeless.

Try to read all of the above in your own closet and it translates as follows.


  • You can’t have it all in your closet, can you?

If you let your budget rule your closet you end up: frustrated (honestly, who can afford runway prices?), frantically buying fast fashion (knock-offs and the ethical dooming proposition of  wearing the product of a child’s labor), losing sight of what your style is while being drifted away by the El Nino effect of trends bombarding you and blurring your judgement.

  • Busyness bubble is the equivalent of having too much that we don’t have anything to wear for the right occasion.

Sounds familiar?

  • FOMO is the pressure of the hyper-connection, the pressure to perform no matter what, to spend your paycheck in that pair of shoes you saw that blogger wearing at the event. Or falling for the latest IT bag which will be surpassed by another at the dawn of the new season. 
  • Hyperconnectivity: we have a daily impulse that calls us to buy and own without knowing why, without a rational criteria other than being prompted by the endowment effect command which makes us love more things that we own. 
  • Timeless is the opposite of trendy and I will never get tired of mentioning it. Trends are what keep fashion moving and your closet alive, but when trends trickle down, it's time to move on to the next. It all makes sense when you are at peace with your own style where your way of dressing speaks your personality away. So, by criterias of pruning, honing, de-cluttering, cleaning, eliminating you master the art of more with less. 

With me it's a work in progress, how about you? Take over the comment area! 

7 reasons why you should forget everything you know about New York fashion week

 

Should George Orwell have assisted the Fall Winter 2015 New York Fashion Week, he would have opened the book like this:

'It was a bright cold day in [February], and the clocks were striking [ten] [when the temperatures dropped to one]'.

When your first time at New York Fashion Week is because you got invited to attend a Carolina Herrera runway show at Lincoln Center, it's Valentine's Day, it will be the coldest NYC winter weekend in twenty years and "50 Shade of Grey" opens in theaters: it's like an apocalyptic version of '1984'. 

There's life before and after a #NYFW

My first fashion job was at Pitti Donna (I know right? other generation, decades ago), then I graduated to Milan Fashion Week, traveled to Paris a couple of times for Paris Fashion Week. New York only matrialized in my itineraries in 2015. 

I would be dishonest to dismiss the excitement, despite the almost half a century of anagraphic years on my shoulders, I felt like Eloise at the Plaza. Actually I was. 

The collection really walks down the runway

The real Karlie Kloss opened and closed the show and it's a statement: nothing more magical, she owns the crowd, the catwalk with the power of her smile (body, legs, stature,posture,walk). You must come to terms that it's no livestream, you are standing there, you end up breathing in every second through your pores. It's the smell of fresh plastic lined up on the pristine catwalk, a vague mix of blowdried hair and make-up. 

 

Carolina Herrera is the undiscussed Queen of New York Fashion Week and all you can expect was delivered.

Professionalisms from the way A-listers are seated to the grace and elegance of her appearance on the catwalk wearing her signature impeccably pressed white blouse.

What happened in between was flawless fashion by the book, where traditional sophistication meets digital prints while following and mimicking the waves that the water makes. Curvaceous lines were the fil rouge that tied the looks as they were appearing on the catwalk. 

The massive use of flats all throughout the presentation was a regreshing and modern statement, a very #theItalianway one: you don't need heels to feel elegant or make a look so. 

You expect creativity, not a potlock of the best of in a huge meatloaf. 

Inspiration, attention to detail, luxury are all ingredients that weren't spared. 

Bravo!

It feels like winter

  • The prohibitive (inhumane)  temperatures shock your flesh, at least those segments of flesh exposed when the doors open to the street, and it's exhilarating, refreshing (baad pun) and invigorating. You are ready to make it. 
  • The Nivea handcream in the compact round blue and white tin is your life saviour.
  • How about when 'smoke' comes out of your nose and mouth even if you don't speak? It reminded me of when we were kids and pretent to mimick our parents smoking, it puts a smile on my face: I was in a pretent world like when I was a child. 
  • I dreamed for this to happen, I went through years of FOMO, actually only the Missing Out part of the acronym. I wanted to attent a a gashion week fall edition because I wanted to proof to everyone and reassure myself that I am not a #thatssoMiami pal clueless of what winter is. 

The real numbers

 

  • 11 years without seeing snow falling. DONE
  • 5 pairs of shoes brought for three days, a record of editing
  • 3 layers of legwear worn contemporarily, never happened to me before (at the time of press, before living in Miami, I lived in Milan, Florence, London, Manchester, Grenoble, visited Venice, Paris, Brighton, New York several times in the winter, so I am not really an islander)
  • 4 hot chocolates unregretfully drank in one afternoon
  • Can we have brunch at 10 and lunch at 1? because we did, regardless the strict fasting rules of fashion week
  • the times I thought I had the perfect outfit and I didn't? countless
  • The times I was able to fix the wrong look? this calls for arctic polar expedition on heels survival manual and equals the above

What should a fashion week NOT be about but goes viral

This is my Edna Mode corner of stating the facts. 

All opinions are mine and I encourage you to dispute, discuss, rant and disagree with me: GO!

  • constructed, manipulated, sponsored street style: must say New York and Milan are infested by it and you must stay away from them like the weed or you end up getting caught in the net of the "bananas", "amazing", "fabulous", ohh and ahh 
  • scams: this video and this video show the unfair amount of insolence, ignorance, pretense and clueless presumption we are surrounded by. How many do you know who may very well be in awe of Betsy Ross stars and stripes theme? 
  • stylists/rappers/reality TV starlettes improvised designers. Ever stopped for a second to wonder what do  Alexander McQueen, John Galliano and Oscar de la Renta have in common? Studying, appreticeship, practice, talent, genius, patience, inspiration, dedication, passion, elegance, style, determination. A real, full, complete, hefty, mesmerizing collection comes down the runway fathered by hard work, technical knowledge, expertise, research, history, legacy. Then stylists help put it together for someone else to wear. In other words, a spaceship cannot be lauched by someone who went to Cape Canaveral on a field trip.  
  • was it a New York Fashion Weak to say it with my fellow Italian compat Angelo Flaccavento at Business of Fashion? For as much as I am grateful and forever humbled by having had the chance to be at New York Fashion Week, there are very few moments worth chills or standing ovations. Fashion is not sameness, copy-cat, mocking, aspirational, fast, approximate, DYI. Fashion is not what people see from the outside: a bunch of crazy outfits, people being photographed in the streets and outside Lincoln Center 

I am one of the lucky ones to have had the honor to attend one a few of the real exceptions: i am proud of it as a passionate of all-things fashion and a fashion writer. 

Thank you for letting me tell you my version of it. 






My New Year's Wish is better than yours

Kid you not, it is really wonderful it is and at the end you will make it yours too. It's no shoes, fur coat or bag this time, but that doesn't mean you can't be fabulous. 

Are you of the "You don't say your wishes loud, or they won't come true" family? I am and it won't matter, because my n.1 wish is available in endless quantity fo everyone. 

As a matter of facts, we have it in our hands everyday and we tend to dismiss it as a good that you can ignore. 

Do you laugh at least once a day? (Yeah, not one apple, one laugh).

Do you set the table and sit down for dinner with your family?

Ever thought of switching the phone off at lunch break and read a chapter or two of that book you have been wanting to finish?

When's the last time you went for a stroll in the park? Or to the beach (never remember this and i live at the beach!)

Have you ever stopped to count the rice? [READ the STORY]

“We must stop living a life where we have no time”
— Marina Abramovic

How many of the questions above you answered with: "I wish I'd have the time?". Ok, the rice sounds dreadful, unless you do the experiment like Cec did. 

Too many times I have said that, to realize that they were all stories I had made up. Time is there, it faithfully runs like a river, always at a constant speed. Actually, if you remember from science or Spiderman, light is faster than anything else. So why we let our franctic lives run faster than the light and eat up, like PacMan the time we have?

We take time as a given, it's there like our family home where we always go back to. When the house has to go, all the memories that make you who you are today will always reside with you and accompany you to the next adventure. When time is gone, it is gone. Can you rewind and twirl with your daughter cause you missed it while you were checking Instagram? Can you see again your son's first goal because you had to check the stocks online? 

"We live in a world driven by technology, the best and the worst news. We must stop living a life where we have no time" says Marina Abramovic of what motivated her to opening the MAI, the institute where experiments as simple as sleeping and counting the rice are conducted. Such an eye opener: guilty as charged. And no, I can't stand being a Kardashian-ed victim of technology in which if you don't post you don't exist. 

So yes, I have asked Santa for 

time

We live heisty lives and we are missing it all. 

Let's regain grasp on our lives instead of missing it all while we look further.

To a year filled with time. 

Cheers, 

Francesca xxx

 

When we put up the Ritz @ Anthropologie

The luxury of a massage and a spa day in my household is equivalent to have a personal styling sesh.

We are always up for shopping? 

All it takes is good disposition, sitting on a sofa, sipping coffee or champagne (depending on age, there's always a good reason for bubbles and sparkle).

We met Mely during one of those family outings to Anthropologie - we love it there, and by "we" I include Petunia the dachshund who is welcomed with treats and compliments everytime we venture. 

Mely (@themorenasalad on IG) is the personal stylist at the Miami Beach store and this is not a paid post so we spontaneously did everything, no staged fittings or promotions. We liked eachother, she is awesome, she gets me as she has two teeanger daughters herself, and the holidays seemed the right occasion to freshen up our closet and have fun dressing-up. 

The room had libations, coffee, juice, music and all that jazz that you can only find for Christmas at Anthropologie: they know how to do it ... hello for getting us into the mood. It was the right amount of quiet, that one that doesn't leave room for awkwardness. In other words, I would have stayed all day, reading a book and keep trying on clothing. 

We went a little speakeasy meets Downton Abbey for me: black lace kimono worn as a blouse, midi black tulle skirt and the  peach stole cinched at the waist. Imagine how many other outfits i can rcreate with those 3 guys. 

  1. Black lace kimono over a white tee, ripped washed jeans and Vans.
  2. The peach stole with a baby blue taffeta dress and printed yellow platforms, so decadent Miu Miu.
  3. Black tulle skirt with a white tank and silver sparkly thong sandals.

I could go on forever.

Cec just went from her inseparable Vans to an embroidered grey tulle skirt with pewter/copper sequins and a silvery printed v-neck shirt. 

It was all done in a jiffy.

Look who's ready to party!

from Design Miami to Cult Collective: where art, fashion and design meet

Design Miami/

It started with a star-studded panel that included among the mostest, Craig Robins, Marina Abramovic and man of the moment Peter Marino.

35 galleries from allover the world, 5 coming from Italy bringing the best in design. 

The highlight?  "Counting the Rice" at the Marina Abramovic Institute a relational art experience that wants you to really count rice and separate the grains from the lentils. Seems silly? 

"We live in a world driven by technology wich is good news and our worst enemy" explained Abramovic. "We must stop living a life where we have no time".

Don't we all relate to that? We live in the intention of catching the next train and we are never present to the train we are riding now. So I did challenge my daughter to the experiment. Result: total fail. She separated all grains and lentils while contemporarily counting the lentils, while my attempt produced a small pile of rice and a bigger one of lentils and finished with me leaving the station for a glass of champagne. She ended up being filmed by no less that Mrs. Karla Otto in person. #proudmama

Opening reception for Cult Collective

Danny Santiago is for Miami what Yves Saint Laurent was for Marrakesh: chic relaxed luscious glam elegance.

Santiago is a name larger than life not only in Miami and, believe me, whatever he touches becomes splendid. He is an avid collector of Fashion, the one with the upper case F and modern design, uber stylist (hello "Sex & the City" the Movie) and pedegreed print titles of the likes of Vogue Italia and Vogue Gioiello. The man who never sleeps is now the creative mind behind Santika with A-lister jewelry designer Erika Peña.

Told ya we were in front of royalty.

Santika is a capsule resort collection inspired by the iconic divas of the 70s and just as that it would suffice to dive into those flowy caftans, add a maxi tasselled necklace and live in them all year long. But those two are a powerhouse of brilliant stilistic eye, design and talent, just talent of the sweetest form, the one that welcome you open heartedly every time you pop-in. You can't leave Miami without visiting them: the pop-up store will be open until the 10th of December. Living in Miami without being stung by the Santika bug is like visiting London and missing Mayfair .  



The domino-effect of becoming a contributor - Episode n.2

The hottest month of summer was a busy one chez nous that brought an avalanche of love. In an attempt to return at least a portion of that affection, I would like to jolt a few notes on how grateful I am for having met the two beautiful women behind www.DDmag.it , Isabella and Luisa.

The galeotto [as intermediary] of our meeting was Instagram - yes, that thing that glues my nose to the phone consistently. I would say I am dedicated to its growth,  not addicted nor obsessed, like to a plant that needs to be watered, nurtured, vitamin infused and talked to.

We had our first meeting in an elegant, unusual, stucco-ed and delicious cafe-bookstore-gallery in Piazza della Scala chatting along like old friends do. 

In reality, we became friends and we are not old, for the press. What happened after, was a first of a series of stories on how live in Miami Beach as an Italian - no matter if a one-time visitor or a local, the flair and spirit are the same. 

check it out at @luisarasia 

'You discover a door with a graffiti message you have never seen before and you can buy locally-grown produce [...] and that opens a whole new world' ...  continue reading here 

Just because they are splendid hostesses, the following week I got the whole contributor feature - the VIP treatment on the mag for which I had to be paparazzed. I mean I had to answer questions, my moment of fame, I had to dress up for press time like at the Festival del Cinema di Venezia.

It's time to graciously return the favor, host them in a third episode of the domino-effect series and dedicate them some space like in a salon littéraire.

 

CHICfb 4 Wowcracy: 'Heavenly Beauty' by Dawid Tomaszewski

http://wowcracy.com/en/lab/user/11614/project/865#

Berlin-based Dawid Tomaszewski has been a brilliant presence at the German edition of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week and has presented 'Heavenly Bodies' for the fall. 

Dark Soul Dress

It's where the curves of a woman's body meet with 'geometric abstraction'. The rigueur of the color black and the sartorial cuts let femininity prevail over lines and structure. A subtle game of courtship where the woman wearing any of the creations is the winner. 

The looks are layered with pieces that have their own independent life: a tunic can be a dress, a pair of silk cropped pants can live without the top and mingle with a simple white cotton blouse you have in the wardrobe. Heavenly Bodies inspires a sense of sophistication that slips into minimalism. 

Luxurious materials, comfortable styling are the most prominent ingredients to a poised medley of tailored and fluid pieces. A sensible research was applied and it resulted in a mature presentation worth our attention.