Here’s one more reason to have a creative crush on Brian Eno. He’s widely recognized for his music, but who knew he was such an articulate visionary?

http://vivoscene.com/feature/brian-eno-music-77-million-paintings/

Here are some excerpts from an interview with Stewart Brand that appeared in a compilation of writings on culture published by Edge.org, Culture: Leading Scientists Explore Societies, Art, Power, and Technology in which Eno seeks to find a big theory about culture “within which one can discuss anything one might call nonfunctional, stylistic behavior – which is what humans actually spend more and more of their time doing.”

Is there a way of understanding why humans continuously and constantly and without exception engage in cultural activity? We don’t know of human groups that don’t produce something that we would call art. It seems to be something that we are biologically inclined to do. If we are, then what is the nature of that drive? What is it doing for us?

If the creation of and engagement in this nonfunctional, stylistic behavior is indeed a result of a deep seated biological drive, then this would go a long way in explaining why people will work so hard and/or drive themselves into debt in order to be a part of lifestyle niches that embody their aspirations. It sure does explain why, despite an overflowing closet, I continue to hunt down and buy clothes that reflect the intersection of emerging tastes and my own.

The first assumption is that all human groups engage in something we would call artistic behavior – if they are at all capable of it, that is if they are beyond the most basic problems of survival, and even when they aren’t, they will engage in decorative, ornamental, and often very complex stylistic behavior. This takes a big chunk of their resources. It takes a lot of energy. So the first question is, Why would that be the case? If it is the case, one would assume that it’s doing something more than just mildy entertaining – it’s doing something important for us.

From starving and sleep deprived fashion designers ducking student loans to suburban shop-a-holics decorating their homes from Hobby Lobby while their husbands trick out their Harleys, this aesthetic communication via whatever lifestyle niche one aspires to be a part of often comes at the sacrifice of seemingly more pragmatic concerns, and has been the frustration of many a political activist (who are themselves often dressed in a way respected by their peers) struggling to motivate democratic participation.

Everybody knows that science is powerful and could be dangerous; threfore, there’s a whole lot of criticism on that basis. What people don’t realize is that culture is powerful and could be dangerous, too. As long as culture is talked about as though it’s a kind of nice little add-on to make things look a bit better in this sort of brutal life we all lead, as long as it’s just seen as the icing on the cake, then people won’t realize that it’s the medium in which we’re immersed, and which is forming us, which is making us what we are and what we think.

Fashion, and the aesthetics it dictates, is not frivolous. And I’m using the term ‘fashion’ not to refer to clothes, per se, but to the mechanism by which shifting collective tastes coalesce.

What is cultural value and how does that come about? Nearly all of art history is about trying to identify the source of value in cultural objects. Color theories and dimension theories, golden means, all those sort of ideas, assume that some objects are intrinsically more beautiful and meaningful than others. New cultural thinking isn’t like that. It says that we confer value on things. We create the value in things. It’s the act of conferring that makes things valuable. Now this is very important, because so many, in fact all fundamentalist ideas, rest on the assumption that some things have intrinsic value and resonance and meaning. All pragmatists work from another assumption. No it’s us. It’s us who make those meanings.

Humans imbue cultural forms with value. From clothing to religion (and indeed, one might argue that the overlap between the two is broader than usually thought) this process occurs through collective selection, where an elite recognized circle of tastemakers is constantly reviewing and accepting or rejecting challenges to norms that shift and evolve over time by responding to what is currently resonating through a population.

This is something that anyone who deals with world finances wold probably understand; value is conferred and the result of a system of confidences among people. But it is not something that religions generally understand. It is certainly not something that fundamentalists understand. For me, so many of the really critical bottleneck-type problems of our time come from that difficulty of understanding that it’s humans who make the value in things. It didn’t get there, it wasn’t in there, it isn’t there all the time, it wasn’t made by somebody else and left there for us to find it. We made it. We put it there.

I’m beginning to believe that in heteronormative singles scenes, from college campuses to urban bars and yes, even my own swing/lindy/blues dancing niche subculture that simple male/female quantity ratios are the occam’s razor that cuts through a whole lot of feminist and cultural theoretical bafflement as to why things seem to have taken a turn away from feminist and new age ideals down to the ‘survival of the sluttiest’ gutter. I’m speculating that much of this race to the bottom is fueled by women competing with each other for disproportionally fewer men with traditional status markers of money, higher education and/or pedigree, and while it’s good to have standards, the fashionable suggestions of the majority of self help and dating literature may be doing women a disservice by suggesting all of us can have our own handsome, tall, wealthy, educated, athletic and creative guy from a great background who’s fantastic in bed, emotionally supportive yet still a bit of a bad boy who all the other girls want but now only has eyes for us… if we only visualize it hard enough.

available from Zazzle.com

While it’s worth noting that ideals vary widely amongst feminists and there are plenty of out-and-proud sluts living the dream, there seem to also be a whole lot of disappointed and lonely women voicing diminishing hopes for finding true love in a hook up culture. Juliet Jeske writes in Dating After Divorce in a City of Sluts:

But no matter how much I keep trying to go for a relationship, the hook-up scenario keeps rearing its ugly head. I might start talking to a guy only to see him leave with a woman who has made it perfectly clear that a hook-up is about to happen. A situation I like to call survival of the sluttiest.

And is there a place for people like myself who want something more traditional? I don’t want to move, but I am really getting tired of being alone.

Um, Julie…. you need to move out of NYC. Because In New York, It’s Raining Single Women!

From National Geographic Magazine via BigThink.com

And the Gen Y college girls have it even worse. As I read Lisa Belkin’s Motherlode blog post After Class, Skimpy Equality, bemoaning the college environment of her daughter versus her own, male/female ratios were the first things that came to my mind.

From thecampussocialte.com

I waded through comments on hypersexualized media culture and third wave feminist female empowerment (mostly valid) to get to the handful that highlighted the demographic realities Belkin seems to have missed. #68, David from Huntington Beach:

You may wish to consider that female enrollment has surpassed male enrollment in higher education. According to the US Dept. of Education as of 2009, total enrollment in higher education broke down 8.7 million male students versus 11.6 million female students (seehttp://tinyurl.com/u0sv). What the author observes may simple be a case of the law of supply and demand playing out in a social sphere. The author states that now there are an equal number of male and female students on campus (as opposed to when she was a student). But for better or worse that statement does not seem to be valid.

25 yr old JuliaB from NYC calls out the experience all too close to home:

I think this thing people say about how we shouldn’t pay any attention when young women dress and behave in this hypersexualized way because it’s “their choice” and “a form of empowerment” is reductive and shuts down conversations that really, really need to be had. In my own experience, (and yes, this is all totally anecdotal), especially as woman-to-man rations have increased on many campuses to the point where there are more women, it’s a man’s market. A woman may genuinely want to play, explore, own her sexuality, etc, but in fact what happens is that the men she meets control the terms of every relationship (not being “official,” possibly ever) and sexual encounter (see that chant about “yes means anal” at Yale). Quite possibly, this is not these young men’s fault. Because many of the young men I have met have tried to behave well, but they needed women to teach them. And the women did not, because they were way too happy to be in the young men’s beds at all. And no amount of education, it seems, has made young women speak up and set the terms, direct the men in bed and out, and own their pleasure — they still fear rejection too much. That’s not power.

But David Schwartz from North Carolina really sums it up:

In fact, the “huge academic strides” females have achieved may in part explain why many female students today so eagerly cater to male students’ sexual preferences. Simply put, the scarcer sex sets the terms of the interaction. When women were rare on campus and thus had many potential suitors to choose from, they could afford to be picky and favor only chivalrous gentlemen who treated them respectfully. Now, however, males increasingly are the minority sex on campus. The competition among heterosexual women on campus for male attention and affection (i.e., a social life) has thus become more intense, and females may find it necessary to indulge male sexual attitudes and behaviors that they might otherwise find offensive.

This is not the answer we empowered individual women want to hear, that our options for true love from a Handsome Prince are limited by such forces beyond our control, and the imperative to be extra hot and extra available to stay competitive is all too real in spite of pep talks to the contrary. But oh it could be worse. We American women have it way better than our Russian sisters. Pamela Druckerman writes in Lust in Translation, a remarkable survey of infidelity in a wide variety of contemporary societies:

One reason there’s so much adultery in Russia is that there are so few men. Since the 1980s the average life expectancy for Russian men has fallen from sixty-five to fifty-eight. They die of alcoholism, cigarettes, job injuries, and car accidents….These skewed demographics infect romance…For Russian women in their thirties and forties, let alone older ones, a man who isn’t married or an alcoholic is as rare as a Faberge egg.

Druckerman speaks of the lovely 18 yr old daughter of a sociologist she’s interviewing, and her dim prospects:

She’s animated and confident, especially when describing what she wants in a husband: someone who doesn’t drink or beat her…Boys her age are “very cruel, and they drink.” The few serious ones are more focused on their careers than on relationships, and there’s a lot of competition for them. Katya is so delightful that I want to reassure her that the right guy will turn up. But, considering the numbers, it’s unlikely.

Oh, are we sure we don’t want to hand Katya a copy of The Secret and tell her she just needs to get obsessive with her positive thinking, and/or a copy of The Rules and tell her she just needs to be pretty all the time and not accept a date for the weekend past Wednesday and not put out until that great guy promises his undying love?

I’ve heard countless references to the fact that this notion of partnering up for love, romance and fulfillment is a relatively new notion, historically, I have to wonder how much I – along with my cohort of other attractive, educated, fit and single American women – might be falling prey to an attitude of entitlement when it comes to finding Mr. Right. Smiling and polished on the surface with undercurrents of cutthroat competition (that men are largely oblivious to) are we spouting lofty ideals of finding love and companionship while pretending our lizard and limbic brains aren’t maneuvering for raw status, power and fleeting pheromone fueled seduction?

It’s not difficult to find well meaning friends of both genders to tell us ‘we deserve better.’ But what about Katya in Russia, doesn’t she deserve better? Of course she does. But that’s just the thing; what decent human beings deserve has little to do with anything. The mating marketplace has opportunities and limitations like any other marketplace, and while it’s never a bad idea to aim for your highest aspirations, a healthy dose of reality about the landscape you’re navigating can save some some delusional disappointments. And if you’re determined to hold out for that rare prize fish that has it all, be prepared to compete with a whole lot of other anglers, and be ready to keep putting out that exquisite bait while you wait.

Every once in a while an article appears that articulates a whole lot ideas that I’ve been thinking out loud on. Leanne Delap’s On the Front Lines of the Vintage Clothing War for the Toronto Star does just that. As the demand increases, the finite supply diminishes and trends erupt, crash and burn with almost the same intensity as Forever 21, what does the future of the vintage industry hold? Let’s discuss:

Delap starts by describing a dirty, rundown completely unmarked warehouse where her vintage dealer interviewee “is here to separate a few pieces of golden wheat from a lot of musty, dusty chaff.”

Warehouses like this one are unknown to most vintage shoppers. Even within the industry, their locations are secrets most shopkeepers guard until their hands are cold and dead.

“I’ve known employees who are blindfolded and driven in circles before they are ushered into these rooms,” says Serah-Marie McMahon, the editor and publisher of Worn Journal, the Toronto-based vintage-as-art magazine. “No names, no interaction, no information.”

Sullivan, 35, describes herself as “paranoid” about her secret sources. She has fought her way into a half-dozen of these places, where quality and focus vary, and where she haggles for the items she picks. “I don’t know who else goes where. The (distributors) keep everyone apart, strictly by appointment.

Basically, you are begging for access all the time. I feel like I’m scrapping and scraping every day in this job. It’s war.

…This is the first half of Sullivan’s day, a three-hour sift through other people’s rejects. She wears a mask for dust and grime, and a uniform of men’s black pants and grey cashmere sweater, complete with layers of long johns because these warehouses are not heated. The next step is washing everything in industrial washers. For the Queen St. store, Sullivan only buys clothes in perfect condition, or those that can easily be repaired; at 69 Vintage Collective, she sells by the pound.”

To all my friends who note both my rabid focused passion and skill for digging thru piles of trash for vintage treasures who ask why I don’t do this for a living? The above quote says it all.

Given the increasing popularity of vintage, the more mainstream acceptance of ‘used’ clothing that has morphed into a certain status for ‘the find,’ and the fact that it is a completely finite and diminishing resource, this sort of cutthroat competition was inevitable. And once again, I wax nostalgic for those days decades ago where I’d bring home this stuff by the armload at a mere fraction of what it commands now, wishing desperately that I had the income and place to stash it all for the future. I strongly suspect that if I did have those resources at the time, it might very well have been a more lucrative investment than an index fund. But I digress…

It works like this: Clothing from across North America is donated to charities such as the Salvation Army and to non-profit agencies partnered with for-profit retailers including Value Village. Along the way, a series of independent profiteers sort through the product. These picking shops are what Sullivan calls “wholesale,” where the mountains of goods are roughly sorted and then reserved for European and Asian buyers, boutique agents and third-world exporters. The leftovers go back to the charities, who take a cash cut for the best stuff early on.

I knew it! The key to success is being at the top of the pecking order when it comes to getting first dibs of the second hand supply chain. And remember, this is an entirely different business model than a retailer who goes to market and orders from a manufacturer who creates on demand. From top tier exclusive boutiques all the way to the massive thrift ‘department stores’ like Savers and Value Village, an entire industry has erupted over the past couple of decades and it will be fascinating to watch how they all adapt as demand surely increases (more recession shoppers turn to de-stigmatized used clothing) and supply diminishes (closets have already been purged, people buy fewer new clothes and now resell instead of donate). The real game is to be one of those aforementioned top tier buyers. In fact, those never spoken of relationships are essential to becoming a big buyer.

An individual picker like Sullivan doesn’t have the buying power of the international players, who often snap up huge lots sight unseen. There is generally a policy against “cherry-picking” or “creaming,” which is what small boutiques aim to do — if the Sullivans of the game go in and scoop up the best stuff, the big Japanese guns get cross.

This push-pull drives Sullivan bananas: “There is nothing more frustrating than knowing that behind that door,” she gestures, “there is stuff I’m just not allowed to see. It leaves the country and someone in Japan will pay $200 for a pair of used combat boots.”

I’ve always prided myself on not having to pay the top dollar that curated vintage shops command because I had the eye – and the drive – to dig on my own.  I’ve watched prices go up and my ‘finds’ go down. I was at a former Houston favorite destination, Value Village, and was amazed that I left with next to nothing; coolness nowhere to be found. Because, as now confirmed, a major chain like VV has already funneled the choice picks elsewhere and sent the bales of lame to the barrio, and were charging approx $5.99 a piece for stuff hardly worth that new. As I’ve often told my friends,

These days, you’re not going to stumble upon a Pucci pool cover-up at the charity store.

…Things don’t make it to Value Village anymore. If local boutiques haven’t snapped up the goods before the donations get to those kinds of outlets, then big chains like Urban Outfitters have swooped in and bought off all the good stuff.”

Because if that charity store is actually on the front lines of the donation stream (not a bale buyer like VV) then you can bet some savvy dealer has struck a mutually lucrative arrangement with those doing intake to get first pick on the Pucci.

Delap also highlights a key factor in the increasing value of vintage, top name designers mining the past for items to remake. Note, of course, that these designers are responding to a demand from consumers trickled down from tastemakers who, like me, abandoned much of the dumbed down, over hyped and overpriced retail offerings of the past couple decades in favor of the architecture and detail and heritage references embodied in quality vintage.

“There was always Kensington Market,” says McMahon. But in the past decade, designers with major fashion houses like Dior, Givenchy and Nina Ricci have been fascinated by the archives. At the same time, stylists are dressing celebrities in vintage couture. “And the effect on the industry of shows like Mad Men has been ginormous,” McMahon adds.

Throw in online resale, says Sullivan, “and everybody wants to know where my stuff comes from. I am buying like crazy. Look, this is a diminishing resource and prices are already outrageous.”

But lest anyone think that the vintage industry is an antidote to the furiously fast flurry of the trend machine, think again:

Pricing in the vintage world is set according to demand, and lacks the precision markup formula of department store or chain buying. For instance, the lumberjack coats you couldn’t sell for love or money two years ago are now worth a hundred bucks since Dean and Dan put them on the runway in a Bob ‘n’ Doug tribute, and Japanese buyers scooped all the stock they could get their hands on.

Vintage boots, especially lace-up dressage and English riding boots, are also now in the three-figure range (“We’ve totally gotten over any squeamishness about used footwear,” says McMahon). And because of the one-of-a-kind nature of the product, each item in the space is individually priced, with variance for its condition, rarity, demand and the volume of goods purchased over all.

Yesterday when I was selling to a hip vintage dealer in town I proudly offered a rayon early nineties floral culotte jumper (that I never in a million years would wear now, or would have worn then, but have no problem making a buck off of) and was told that this particular trend so hot 6 months ago was pretty much over.

As in so many facets of pop culture, Sullivan’s measure is the opinion of the 14-year-old cool girl: If it is new to her, it qualifies as vintage. “She’s never seen harem pants. And she wasn’t alive when Kurt Cobain was rocking grunge. It is time to bring it back.

…But the bulk of her buy on this day is in sweaters. The Cowichan-sweater wave has mostly passed, she says, after the Bay flooded the market last year and H&M began to sell $25 versions. She buys a huge load of cream Aran knits (think Prada and Pringle on the fall 2010 runways); at the moment, Gap is filled with $64 versions.

…Among the 14-year-olds and their mothers shopping Sullivan’s selections at 69 Vintage are wardrobers, stylists and, increasingly, tourists from London and Tokyo. They’re going straight to the hub here before the buyers Sullivan is competing with scoop and mark up those old Doc Martens — a couple of times again — before they hit their home streets back in England.”

Given that the hunger for novelty amongst the teen crowd consumes icons from the past at a far greater pace than history can create them, what happens next? In some ways it parallels new retail in that there is a ratio of truly awesome pieces to those merely trendy that someone will buy for that fact alone, and retailers depend on the larger amount of the latter because the former is so rare. But as the cycle is forced by sheer virtue of catching up with itself to eat its own tail once again, I predict the players in the vintage industry will calcify into a more rigid elite, with access to a foot in the door requiring a family connection. Yes, we will see a ‘mob’ of sorts evolve in the vintage industry. It’s pretty much already in place. And as the lumberjack plaid and fair isle-esque chunky sweater trends fade so will the demand for anything resembling one… but what will be left in its place on the next go rounds will be a further delineation between the truly iconic and the cheaper trendy piece, no matter the decade of origin. Labels and brands will grow with heritage cred. Pendleton wool plaid shirts and actual fair isle sweaters will hold their value, acrylic knock offs not so much.

And as those mint condition pieces become rarer while the demand increases and our eyes get weary of rehashed references that have lost their novelty even to the 14 yr old set, I believe it’s inevitable that it will finally start to be financially viable to offer… wait for it… refashioning:

Upstairs, individual sellers, including Toronto vintage legend Rozaneh, rent rooms as boutiques. In the basement there is a collective within a collective called Ransack the Universe, which features artisans reworking vintage clothing and furnishings.

…Back at the shop, a gaggle of girls is pairing chiffon gowns with Nordic sweaters (mash-up is the next thing in fashion as well as song, says Sullivan). Her philosophy (and brand) is that slavishly following an era — say, a burlesque Dita Von Teese look — is costume. Vintage to Sullivan is creating a new context out of old pieces.

I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard someone comment that since the fashion keeps changing so quickly all they have to do is keep their old clothes and they’d just be back in style. So why doesn’t that seem to work? Why is it still pretty easy to sort at-a-glance the retro cool crowd from those simply wearing tired old clothes?

British style icon Alexa Chung

Because reducing fashion to the binary affair of a pendulum grossly oversimplifies a matter that is far more nuanced than that. My favorite fashion writer, Sarah Mower, explains this brilliantly as she digs through her own archives in celebration of the return of 90s minimalism:

I started to realise that you’ve got to be careful, going back. Some things survive, but some don’t. Proportions have changed. There are small but crucial differences in the ways things are worn now that you don’t necessarily spot right away. This look, re-tooled for 2010, depends on the minutest detail of trouser-leg width and rise, what you put on your legs and feet, what degree of slouch or drape there might be in a top, how you do your hair…

The point is, when you’re making choices of minute degree, a miss is as good as a total embarrassment. Thinking, say, you can simply revert to carrying a sad old 1994 Prada black nylon handbag or pair of elastic boots (remember them?) is almost as bad as misinterpreting ‘going back to the 1980s’ as a free pass to pull out a Nolan Miller shoulder-padded lamé print dress from 1984 and wear it with a Princess of Wales flicky-fringe hairdo.

What still works? Triumphantly, my 10-year-old Viktor & Rolf wide-leg flares do, because they’re stiff and go over the shoe. Any Lycra-stretch bootcut pants, and the Helmut Lang boy-cut trousers, on the other hand, have gone all wrong, hideous by today’s standards. (I am instead eyeing the new lower-waisted versions in Gap’s premium trouser range.) The collection of T-shirts, though probably of vintage value by now, had to go back into storage because in the 1990s they were cut short and tight – and what you need now is a long, drapy blouse.

Working with the subtleties of iconic classic references that are carefully selected, altered and combined in just the right way to telegraph to those in the know your understanding of proportion and cut and the now is a hallmark of stealth wealth style. Few people can pull this off as well as Alexa Chung, former model and now British TV personality. She’s currently touring the US with PBS filming Thrift America, sharing her eye for sorting the gems from the lame. The New York Times did a piece on her titled The Making of Fashion’s Latest ‘It’ Girl.

Despite the attention, Ms. Chung shrugged off the idea that she is original. “A lot of my friends dress like this, and so I feel somewhat bad about how I’ve made a career out of it,” she said.

She said she inherited from her father, a graphic designer, an eye for good proportion. “I just apply that to clothes,” she said. “And I’m dressing for my body. So it’s very flattering that other people might want to borrow my style, but really it’s just making the most of what personally suits me, which is that I’ve got a long skinny leg and no boobs. So I dress to accommodate that.”

Granted, being a tall, thin former model goes a long way in terms of playing with proportions others can’t get away with, but it still boils down to having a certain eye. Lots of other tall thin girls thrift (like yours truly) but haven’t quite made it to ‘it girl’ status. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got an eye for proportion, too. But while I’ve always seemed to have a knack for putting together outfits that are eye pleasing with regards to the body they’re on, mine or someone else’s, back in my teenage costume design days I remained perpetually perplexed as to why my awesome looks never seemed to fit me in with the fashion forward. It’s taken me decades to learn to tune more carefully into the particular nuanced details of whatever silhouette is ‘now’, and I still don’t really, truly jive with the trendy ones. But it sure does help that I’m finally able to afford those few key new pieces to mix in with my thrifted finds; my $200 basic black sleek flat Camper boots that I wear everywhere for the second year running, and the $100+ dark denim jeans that one just isn’t going to find in the discarded offerings of secondhand. Pieces like that are so relevant, so key, that they don’t make it to the sale racks and are very rarely discarded by their purchasers while they are still echoing the shape of the now. So yes, even though I’m sporting that funky fun coat I found for a quarter (and I’ll never tell you where), the rest of my outfit tells you that I very much know we’re in 2010, and I’m making a deliberate ironic reference. And as the NY Times article on Chung highlights a laundry list of her top designer fashion connections, her ability to go ‘high-low’ and mix expensive designer pieces with those thrifted finds is a key part of her style success.

Not everyone, however, admires her approach. Which is exactly why young hipster girls follow her every under the radar move. Because remember, while fashion sends signals to the world as to who you want to be, it even more importantly tells everyone who you don’t want to be. Like me, one who would never want to be associated with the ‘fashionista’ celebrity sycophants. Which is why the fact that Chung’s show is derided in The Hollywood Gossip’s post, Alexa Chung Lands New, Boring Show on PBS, makes me want to watch the show and dress like her even more:

The former host of It’s On With Alexa Chung has signed on for Thrift America, an upcoming PBS program. It will premiere this summer and feature Chung combing through garage sales and flea markets in cities such as Detroit, Nashville and Brooklyn.

Sounds like an utter bore.

Do viewers really need to watch someone show us how to save money? Spending within one’s means is not a very complicated concept. We’ll take a drunken Situation or script-reading Brad Womack over this nonsense any day of the week.

Yes, you go to the Jersey Shore with your bling and fake boobs and logo blaring handbags and hook it up with The Situation. More room for me at the thrift store.

I’ll conclude with one of my favorite quotes on fashion of all time. Costume historian James Laver writes:

“In every period costume has some essential line, and when we look back over the fashions of the past, we can quite clearly see what it is, and we can see what is surely very strange, that the forms of dresses, so haphazard, so dependent on the whim of the designer, have an extraordinary relevance to the spirit of the age. The aristocratic stiffness of the old regime in France is completely mirrored in the brocaded gowns of the eighteenth century, Victorian modesty expressed itself in a multitude of petticoats, the emancipation of the post-War flapper in short hair and short skirts. We touch here something very mysterious, as if the Time Spirit were a reality, clothing itself ever in the most suitable garments and rejecting all others.”

Writing for the Telegraph UK, author Alastair Jamieson digs in to the stealth wealth phenomenon in her widely quoted article, Designer logos are a fashion no-go: The days of the big brash designer label, beloved of WAGS and minor celebrities, could soon be at an end as the world’s top fashion companies move to a new “discreet” luxury.

On left: Paris Hilton in 2006 with logo'd Gucci bag. On right: Gucci's new no logo bag. Was this the damning image that got the article struck from the record?

Now, you may have noticed that the article cited above is not linked. Well, interestingly enough, when I accidentally navigated away from the page and tried to find my way back… all the links that had originally led to this Telegraph UK article now lead to the fashion home page…and the article is nowhere to be found in searches. Which all of a sudden made it far more compelling than before. What is it that was so damning that someone very influential managed to get it struck from the Telegraph UK record? Whom did Alastair Jamieson offend? Fortunately, however, it was also ran by Gulf News, and the Ottawa Citizen, and I’ll be sure to provide extra block quotes of all potentially damning words.

One of Gucci's logo free bags

Shall we begin?

Handbags and accessories with large logos are being removed from designers’ collections to be replaced with more subtle designs as part of a move to “anti-bling” fashion.

Gucci, whose bags featuring a giant double G emblem have been seen on the arms of celebrities including Paris Hilton, said last week that a recent move to downplay logos was paying off, leading to a surge in profits.

“Our groups are moving towards fewer logos, more discreet luxury,” said François-Henri Pinault, the chairman and chief executive of Gucci’s French parent PPR, which also owns Yves Saint Laurent.

“It’s a question of adapting our ranges very rapidly to this new perception of luxury, a luxury which is more subtle, more sophisticated — which is what we are doing.”

Oh yes, Paris Hilton is so 2007. Sounds like while at one time an association with her tabloid celebrity antics sold bags, now the last thing Gucci wants is to be seen with her. Which only lends support to the argument I highlighted in a previous post about celebrities falling out of fashion.

“There is a distinct trend for quieter, discreet logos in a time of fashion that is altogether more pared down. A quieter mood has arisen from financially skittish times,” said Harriet Quick, fashion features editor of Vogue. “We have moved through that era of everything being very noisy for the sake of it.”

The profits at Gucci are a vindication for its chief executive, Robert Polet, who last year risked the wrath of fashion commentators by trumpeting his £800 (Dh4,561) Jackie and Pelham handbags, where the brand logo is barely noticeable, as an example of the “less ostentatious” products demanded by post-recession shoppers.

So was it Robert Polet who fired his wrath at Jamieson and the Telegraph UK?

His admission was an extraordinary turning point in the top-tier designer industry, where design labels have made billions of pounds by having accessories with big logos showcased by rappers and footballers’ wives. Chanel set the bar for conspicuous consumption in 2008 when it designed calfskin handbags resembling its own black and white carrier bags.

Louis Vuitton has made millions from its recognisable “monogram” LV logo pattern. But research published recently showed that higher-spending consumers prefer more discreet branding. A study by Joseph Nunes, professor of marketing at the University of Southern California, said top-spenders are “willing to pay a premium to have ‘quiet’ goods without a brand mark”.

But here’s the ever present dilemma: you of course want to appeal to the truly wealthy consumers who establish the legitimacy of your brand image and create the aspirational competition… but what to do with the much, much larger demographic of aspirational nouveau riche (or indebted middle class) whose volume purchases are essential to your bottom line?

Fashion houses face a global dilemma in the wake of the recession. In Western countries, many shoppers who spent beyond their means in the past decade have stopped buying designer clothes and accessories, but in Asia, particularly China, spectacular sales growth is being driven by a new generation of aspirational consumers who still favour goods adorned with large logos.

I seem to recall the original article exploring the aspiring Asian consumer in more detail, but of course now that that window is closed, I guess we’ll never know….

I’d been pondering the increasing sightings of hipster girls in frumpalicious fashions, and when I toured Urban Outfitters Boston outpost on Newberry street, I knew the trend had reached the critical masses.

"Grandpa Cosby Sweater" from Urban Outfitters online catalog, Sept 2010

The fact that this look is gaining traction is a sign of backlash against both the ‘pornification’ of American culture and the conspicuous blinged consumption that is now ‘so 2007;’ an outdated symbol of the delusional bubble years.

The first thing that caught my eye was a table of loudly patterned acrylic 80s sweaters refashioned into cardigans by the house brand “Urban Renewal.” I didn’t even need to touch them to bring back memories of scratchy arms and static electricity. It did, however, help explain why the Buffalo Exchange buyers fell all over themselves when I brought in a vintage 80s Jantzen cardigan – most likely worn by a bona fide grandpa – that I’d discovered at the Blue Hangar. In fact, I just scored another one half off $2.99 at my favorite secret thrift store that’s not only a Jantzen, but has a Polish (?) name written in sharpie on the tag. Hard to believe it sat there for a few weeks unclaimed; I guess not everyone is hip to the grandpa sweater jive…including the judges of this season’s Project Runway.

from Project Runway, Season 8,

Those of you who following may recall the judges’ opinion that this particular look echoed the JC Penney catalog of decades past; perhaps “Team Luxe” should have taken it further into ironic land. Regardless, it appears that the big, bulbous, bulky, curve disguising sweater that hits a woman in all the wrong places (that ribbing right at the hips) is destined to become a wardrobe staple.

I’ll grant that a decade of shrunken waist length fitted sweaters is destined for a shift, but if you’re going to go long I’d recommend a more drapey knit that will subtly skim your curves. Give a hint of what’s under there, without it being in your face. And who knows, maybe my latest Jantzen score will grow on me; silhouettes that at first might seem appalling tend to become more palatable once the eye is used to seeing them on the young and fashionable, and the higher grade acrylic used by a name brand like Jantzen isn’t quite as scratchy.

Of course, if you have the legs for it, you can sauce up the frump by pairing your grandpa sweater with another big trend for the fall – Pantslessness. Yes, we’ll cover this in greater detail in another post, but lets just say that tailored, structured designer ‘briefs’, leotards and bootie shorts are losing their shock value as our eyes become accustomed to a bit of ass cheek on the runway and in the nightclubs. But please, oh please, never let this look make it to the cubicle halls…it’s something that’s definitely not for everyone. (again, exactly why the younger generation is all over it.)

About a month ago the LA Times All the Rage column, Slouchy Chic: the Boyfriend Cardigan Rears its Grungey Head, suggested fully bare legs as a styling option for your grandpa sweater, giving it the fashion sanction of Stella McCartney:

But Stella McCartney designed what’s becoming the prototype for the look — a camel-colored cable-knit number that was worn pants-less by a model, no doubt to punctuate its distinctiveness.

Stella McCartney's luxury grandpa sweater

Okay, she’s beautiful. And naked. But see what I mean about hitting one’s hips in all the wrong places? If this makes her butt look like this, imagine what sort of tragedy awaits ordinary women.

The article doesn’t list the price of this particular Stella sweater, let’s assume that if we have to ask we can’t afford it. If this isn’t a quintessential example of stealth wealth, I don’t know what is. And I can’t imagine this one is made of scratchy acrylic. But the LA Times does acknowledge the obvious:

Fortunately, the greatest thing about this trend is that it doesn’t necessitate a heavy investment — just a bit of shopping know-how.

Doppelgangers of the Stella McCartney cardigan can be successfully foraged for at local thrift stores (or in gramps’ closet).

Did Tom Wolfe have it right when he claimed that much that is strange and crazy and wonderful in American culture has a way of starting out on the West Coast and eventually filtering East?

For those of us far more fascinated with the inception and dissemination of fashion trends than the consumption of them, the neighborhoods of San Francisco have always been a buffet of people watching for the street style destined to seed the runways and department stores. And Guy Trebay of the New York Times nails it in his opening line of Fashion Diary: The Tribes of San Francisco:

IF a decade spent following the fashion flock will teach you anything, it’s that fashion people seldom have much to do with generating style. This little-appreciated truth naturally comes to mind as the Fashion Week juggernaut lumbers toward Manhattan, a rolling, continuous loop of live-streamed, Tweeted product-placement set to ambient glamour-buzz cranked out by the Industrial Hype Machine.

…What she likes about San Francisco style, said Ms. Grim, who is in her early 40s, is that the town is remarkably free of fashion hierarchies and in-crowd tyrannies. There is no shoe of the season here. There is no It bag. Except perhaps for the pulp-novel heiresses Vanessa and Victoria Traina (who anyway are almost New Yorkers), there are no Vogue-anointed darlings-du-jour.

Photo: Heidi Schumann for NY Times

One thing notably absent, however, in Trebay’s analysis is the influence of Burning Man culture on the San Francisco fashion scene. Given the thousands of key Burner players whose default world residence is the bay area yet keep their culture alive and well year round, I find it hard to believe that their DIY radical self expression anti-corporate style wouldn’t permeate out onto the streets.

Interestingly enough, even though the quirky, innovative aesthetic is pervasive, my handful of trips to San Francisco hunting for the corresponding retailer sources – especially local designers – have left me standing mostly in resale shops or malls in tourist destinations. Ever so often there will be a brave entrepreneur opening a collective of local designers, a curated vintage store in a high rent district that mixes in refashioned pieces, or a boutique carrying avant-garde designers from NY… but those are the exception, not the rule.

Even locals tend to concede, unasked, that San Francisco has historically been an also-ran in fashion terms. “Every time a designer from here has a little bit of success, they disappear to New York,” said Gladys Perint Palmer, executive director of fashion at the Academy of Art University, whose fashion department has an enrollment of 2,500.

Allow me to digress for a moment… 2500 fashion students? That’s about 1000 graduating a year, and that’s just one school in one city. A private, for-profit school with 5 digit tuition. Are there enough jobs in the industry for all of them? Um, no. Back to San Francisco…

Ms. Perint Palmer was referring specifically to Nice Collective, a San Francisco-based label founded in 1997 by Joe Haller and Ian Hannula in part to capitalize on distinctive elements of a local style that, like so much else in the Bay Area, seems to be generated by some loopy organic collective impulse rather than an editorial cabal.

It’s so good I have to restate it: “generated by some loopy organic collective impulse rather than an editorial cabal.” But really, especially since the ‘youth revolution’ of the 60s, has that editorial cabal really dictated much? I’d argue that the best they can do is distill and co-opt the shapes, colors and styling that settles out of the collective choices of the loopy ones. And where do those loopy young ones go for the raw materials of their sartorial expression, especially when their piled into shared bedrooms in sky high rent apartments? You guessed it – thrift stores. Which has over the past couple of decades seeped into the mainstream to the point of becoming a standard style option, perhaps even one with far more cred for the find than the spoon fed trends of the big stores. Trebay quotes a former department store buyer:

“The stigma attached to used-clothing is gone,” she added. “You can either spend $300 on a top at Neiman Marcus or go to the thrift store and buy a bag of clothes for a tenth as much.”

Exactly. And this leaves one with far more time and disposable income for living, not just posing like a well dressed doll.

…Or you can do both and then mash up the results, as the women of the Mission tribe do.

“Those girls are the local Holly Golightlys,” Mr. Ospital of M.A.C. said of women like Rachel Corrie, a waitress at Tartine, who as she left work last week hopped onto her bike wearing what looked like a gingham onesie, feet shod in gladiator sandals and a velvet equestrian hunt cap passing as safety gear perched atop her head.

Girls like her are all over the Mission. You see them flying down Valencia Street on Vespas, their wildly improvised get-ups composed of, say, rags scavenged from the Bay Area’s fabled thrift shops (Out of the Closet in the Castro, Eco-Thrift in Vallejo, the Goodwill outpost just off the 101 Freeway in San Rafael), Marni skirts, vintage SM leathers culled from an eclectic assortment of goods at Marc Josef’s locally legendary antiques shop, Tradesmen, and wingtip shoes.

…“People will wear vintage with some D.I.Y. thing they made themselves with some piece that they couldn’t resist in a boutique,” Ms. Grim said. “They’re not afraid to mash things up.”

Because it might be that one innovative, interesting piece from the boutique, something that might have been inspired by vintage, might even have been made from vintage, but definitely didn’t happen prior to this decade… that’s the piece that communicates that subtle status that signals to other members of the targeted tribe that you’re doing well enough, and care enough, for bits of investment dressing.

“It’s a very difficult city to read,” Mr. Lopez said, owing largely to the local distaste for ostentation and hype, a suspicion of anything that requires a high-degree of difficulty to pull off and that people spend a lot of their lives in cars.

“San Francisco is definitely about quiet style,” he said. “People care. They have the clothes, but they wear them in private. They bring in the most amazing stuff for consignment and I’m always thinking, ‘Where did you wear this thing?’ ”

Stealth Wealth indeed.

When Women’s Wear Daily features ‘Cheap Week’ as a branded theme, that’s a sure sign of the times. Rosemary Feitelberg writes Frugality in Fashion Amidst Economic Slump:

While restrained spending has always gone hand-in-hand with a shaky economy, now, more than ever, Americans are bragging about their rock-bottom fashion finds.

Really? I’ve been doing that with my friends since the 80s. Apparently cheap chic has gone fully mainstream. And ‘fast fashion’ outlets are all too happy to provide alternatives to the traditional department store outlets.

Forever 21 - Times Square flagship store from Sugar Rock Catwalk

While the average American may not be glued to London’s FTSE or Japan’s Nikkei, he or she is more inclined to acknowledge the reality of his or her own financial situation. At Forever 21’s new 90,000-square-foot Times Square flagship Friday with her teenage daughter, Donna Georgio said she is definitely shopping at stores such as Marshalls and TJ Maxx more than Bloomingdale’s like she used to. “Part of it is due to clothes being too expensive and I’m afraid of losing my job or getting into debt,” she said. “I’m 50 years old. I’ve had all the clothes and have gone from having Audis and BMWs to a Volkswagen. My priorities have changed. But I can still hook it up and look good.”

What is interesting to note is that nowhere in this article does Feitelberg mention, even in passing, the essentially slave labor necessary in this race to the rock bottom price. Not that designer labels are above exploitation, mind you. It’s just that, ironically enough, the big names have been the target of enough high profile anti-sweatshop campaigns to force them to implement at least minimal supervision of their subcontractors. But the Forever 21 customer is highly unlikely to care about much beyond getting that trendy dress for $12.

Consumers have plenty of reasons to be frugal and will keep trading down and saving money for years to come, according to Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates Inc., a New York-based retail and consulting banking firm. “People are looking for value and the consumer mind-set has changed forever. All you have to do is look at what’s going on with Mango, Zara and H&M [financially],” he said. “The most dramatic example is Japan. I have a home there. It used to be the biggest place for luxury [shopping]. Everything has changed there because the standard of living is declining and that’s what is going on here.”

W. David Marx noted this shift in Japan back in 2008 at Businessoffashion.com in a blog post titled Japanese Women: From Luxury to Yuru Nachu:

Just five years ago, the Japanese luxury market looked like it was headed for an era of permanent dominance. The economy had finally started to uptick after a long decade of recession in Japan. In came a relatively-unprecedented New Rich — mostly, internet millionaires and employees at foreign investment banks — who ushered a wealth-obsessed zeitgeist into the popular culture. Conspicuous consumption was in.

As an analogue to this movement, female style gravitated away from the street fashion of the 1990s to a style called O-nee-kei (“big sister style”), popular among mainstream females in their early twenties. The O-nee-kei girls were convinced that the only chance at future happiness was a rich suitor, and the bibles of this fashion movement — magazines CanCam and JJ — told them exactly how to dress in order to snag a man in a decent income bracket. The styling was mostly cute office conservative, but instead of designer fashion like in the 1990s, the clothes came mostly from cheap domestic labels. Handbags, however, needed to be from Louis Vuitton or Gucci, and jewelry meant Tiffany, Bulgari, and Cartier. The bling was all in the accesssories.

These O-nee-kei girls would not think for a microsecond about Parisian mode. In fact, these girls started to openly preach a love of “real clothes” — a term to describe inexpensive, trendy apparel from exclusively Japanese companies, mostly designed by young women the same age as customers. Although CanCam‘s focus on looking “classy” to attract rich men kept the luxury handbag on the menu, the “real clothes” rhetoric of “unreal foreign fashion labels vs. real Japanese brands” offered omens of wide-scale luxury rejection.

Ah ha. Keep the easily recognizable status symbol, but skimp on the quality couture clothing that the men they were chasing didn’t care about, anyway. What happens, however, when the supply of rich young men dries up with a global recession? While some girls just step up their game, all too many decide to play a different one.

Yuru Nachu style featured on Businessoffashion.com. W.David Marx photograph

With the less robust economy and a visible rise of underpaid young workers, the New Rich Pageant of 2003 has gone out with a whimper, making the princess-y O-nee-keilook appear somewhat shallow. In this recession-adjusted cultural atmosphere, everyone wants inexpensive, low pressure, and comfortable clothing. This year has thus seen the rise of the Yuru Nachu (“relaxed, natural”) style, which could be a long-term challenge to previous luxury attitudes. This “fashion ethic” is based on relaxed silhouettes, muted colours, and layering organic textiles. From loose “Bohemian” flower print dresses to off-white linen tunics, young women from all taste and consumer subcultures have embraced some variation of this fashion look.

Although Yuru Nachu reflects many of the global industry’s spring trends, the look has succeeded wildly thanks to its ability to connect with young women’s need for a less consumerist take on fashion. Out with the exclusive leather handbag, and in with the $12 “eco bag.”

When the cheap canvas tote replaces the Louis Vuitton as the anti-status status symbol, something is afoot. Back to WWD:

“If you look back at the boom years, a lot of that spending was accessed through credit. Debt-fueled affluence or aspirational consumerism is going to be challenged to return and is not about to get us back to where we were.”

Needless to say, he is not counting on shoppers to start spending more freely anytime soon. “From a big-picture macroeconomic standpoint, we are expecting a very sluggish recovery in the economy that is probably not conducive to consumers waking up one day feeling a lot better about everything and willing to spend again,” said Tuhy

This is bad news for big name ‘luxury’ brands that depended on the aspirational consumer to provide the bread and butter by overpaying for logo laden bags cranked out in third world factories.

“Conspicuous consumption is not very chic right now,” Christopher said. That behavior is counter to the Veblen effect, named after economist Thorstein Veblen, who first noted that decreasing the value of high-end goods only decreases people’s interest in buying them, he added.

Obviously Veblen wasn’t around long enough to witness The Gilt Groupe website. What’s different about now versus Veblen’s Victorian age is that the ‘democratization of fashion’ has 21st century ‘aspirational’ (translate – can’t really afford it but buy it anyway) consumers going after the same luxury brands as the actually rich, which in the long run turns into a cannibalistic effect of sorts. Decreasing the price doesn’t necessarily increase the interest – for it’s safe to assume that, by definition, far more people are interested in these items than can afford them – but instead increases the accessibility of the brand. Which will, in time, decrease the interest of the truly rich who establish the status of the item in the first place.

Consumers are kidding themselves if they think fast fashion distinguishes them from the masses, said Ellen Ruppel Shell, author of “Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture.” Topshop may have certain status for being London based and the same might be said of the Swedish chain H&M, but the reality is that neither is all that different from Wal-Mart, she said. “Frugal chic is kind of a label in itself now. But I would argue that we are deluding ourselves. These goods are mass produced, sold all over the world, available to everyone and they don’t involve a lot of creativity,” Shell said. “Truly fashionable people are able to go to thrift stores to find something stylish.”

Yes! Count me amongst the truly fashionable, then.

Oh please let it be true. Susannah Frankel writes for The Independent, New model army: Why fashion has fallen out of love with its A-list clotheshorses:

The symbiotic relationship between fashion and celebrity, as seen everywhere from the red carpet to an increasingly sophisticated print media, has been the most ubiquitous and, it almost goes without saying, money-spinning phenomenon of the era. That is, until now.

This time last year – and as presciently as ever – the Prada Group sent out a press release to accompany the launch of its new women’s wear campaign for Miu Miu stating, in the opening paragraph, that it marked “the return of the model as opposed to the celebrity” to fashion’s most hallowed frontline. Shot by the super-fashionable duo Mert Alas and Marcus Pigott, the images established just that, featuring an array of painstakingly sought-out new models remarkable for their fresh personalities and entirely unrecognisable faces.

In February this year – in a move that was equally unprecedented – Marc Jacobs very publicly rid his catwalk show’s front row of the formerly requisite A-list contingent, telling the influential American Vogue website Style.com that his love affair with celebrity was over.

“It generated so much press [but] at a certain point it was like, ‘Did anybody actually watch the show?’ “

Snooki proudly sporting Coach

And remember, Marc Jacobs has the likes of Madonna in his front row. But in this new era increasingly dominated by reality TV, the newest crop of ‘celebrities’ aren’t always as aspirational. Access Hollywood asks Is Snooki a Pawn in the Gucci/Coach Bag War?

According to The New York Observer’s Simon Doonan (via Celebuzz),  Snooki is a pawn in a reported raging style war – with the weapon of choice being supple fine leather..Doonan claims that various fashion houses are engaging in “preemptive product placement” or “unbranding,” by sending Snooki new purses from their competitors’ collection…He adds, “The bottom line? Nobody in fashion wants to co-brand with Snooki.”

Back to Stengle quoting Karl Lagerfeld on his decision to use professional yet anonymous models:

… ”Why? Because I love them. They have the right look and class.” Ah, class … and with this in mind, he adds, “Their overexposure in ‘people’ magazines also makes it that one may be a little tired of celebrities and the red carpet.”

Ah yes, the now ubiquitous red carpet. With the wall of brands behind it. When even a nobody like me can all too easily find herself on one, you know it ain’t that special anymore.

Stengle writes an eloquent historical summation of the rise of the celebrity/fashion phenomenon:

It wasn’t until the Eighties – significantly the decade in which designer fashion first identified the potential of its power – that the relationship between fashion and celebrity began to gather momentum, and the seeds were planted for the behemoth it has become today. Giorgio Armani dressed Richard Gere in American Gigolo, and the response was such that the great Italian designer soon ensured that the front rows of his twice-yearly men’s and women’s wear shows were as star-studded as his jewelled evening gowns. Gianni Versace was quick to enter the fray. Speculation was rife as to just how much either designer was prepared to pay anyone, from Sofia Loren to George Michael to attend their shows, resplendent, it almost goes without saying, in Armani or Versace designs.

Versace, in particular, went on to invest huge amounts of capital in advertising campaigns shot by big names such as Irving Penn, Bruce Weber and Richard Avedon that featured everyone from Elton John to Madonna (yes, her again) and from Jon Bon Jovi to Lisa Marie Presley. If ever designer muscle was fully flexed, it was here. The fact that the label had the weight to employ not only the world’s most feted photographers but also so many of its most famous stars was a potent formula that few – before or since – could ever match. By the late Nineties, it was rumoured that Nicole Kidman was being paid no less than $2m simply to wear Christian Dior to significant social occasions.

It was also during this period that fashion magazines began featuring celebrities as opposed to models on their covers on a regular basis – and it was doubtless quite a coup when, for the December 1998 issue of American Vogue, Anna Wintour landed Hillary Clinton for that purpose.

After the rise… the fall:

Within five years, however, the effect of such originally ambitious intentions had been watered down beyond all recognition. Testamant to this was the appearance of the alleged TV “stars” Amanda Holden, Hermione Norris, Tamzin Outhwaite and Ulrika Jonsson on the cover of the November 2002 issue of British Vogue, a decision that moved some high-minded commentators – and Sir Roy Strong, the flamboyant former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, in particular – to bemoan a celebration of the “trash-ocracy” in British culture. This was hardly “aspirational”, the thinking went, and that, surely, was the point of such glossy titles.

Yes, the ‘trash-ocracy’ is the opposite of aspirational. And not what middle class suburban moms aspire to with their handbag purchases.

From Neiman Marcus' fall offerings

The Associated Press article featuring Neiman Marcus’ Fashion Director Ken Downing’s predictions for the fall has been widely featured in newspapers around the country. But the declarations of Downing I found most useful were not his recommendations of what to buy this season (feathers, lace, pantsuits, whatever). Of far more interest were the words on what compels her to buy at all, which are especially relevant in a belt tightening economy:

“A customer’s not interested in buying something she already owns,” he said. “She wants something that has absolute newness that she just desires and can’t live without.”

Ah yes, the perfect quote to support my irresistible sells fashion category!

Author Jamie Stengle offers a few more gems that give us further insight into the process of forecasting and influencing the trends we see in the malls at every price point:

Downing, luxury retailer Neiman Marcus’ fashion director, has been digesting designer offerings from New York to London to Paris to Milan to come up with a list of trends sure to get people running to the mall.

“I really create the attitude and the message and the mood of the season that the company will be following,” Downing said.

His fashion forecast is then integrated into everything from the Dallas-based company’s (www.neimanmarcus.com) marketing message to what buyers look for to how mannequins are dressed.

Do not try this at home

I really like Stengle’s use of the term digesting in reference to the trend distillation process. No, all the big name designers do not coordinate their lines around specific trend messages.

To create that trend list, Downing watches for recurring themes at fashion shows around the globe. Then he checks out whether designers are producing enough of those trendy items he’s honed in on to fill store racks.

“We start to talk about do we have the critical mass to make these bold predictions?” he said.

For instance, he said, “If we believe in green, we need to have green everywhere.” (This fall, by the way, green will be everywhere, he says, especially in the military-influenced olive.)

Boots of all heights are also in the fall forecast, he said. And a structured handbag is a must, not to mention pearls, “ropes and ropes” of them. Also, he says, keep an eye out for capes, ponchos and vests.

Olive green military? Excellent. Easy to thrift. And looks good with my new red lipstick kick. Ropes and ropes of pearls? Hello 80s retro Chanel knock off possibly spurned by Patricia Field’s god-awful costuming in Devil Wears Prada? And ponchos? Seriously? C’mon, we were giggling about that in 2003, it’s got to be a least a decade before you can try that again. If you’re going to invest actual money, go for that pantsuit with a killer cut. Frilly lace tops can be found at the Buffy.