Smelling Old and New

 

Just a note that the hottest fragrance now could be the drug store staple in the next five years. Choose carefully.

- AP

Alexandrian Winter

 

Perhaps your winter destination is some small island in the Caribbean. Or the slopes of Vail or Gstaad. Perhaps your winter destination is exactly where you are.

If you can travel or not, make the feeling of being away a theme for 2009.

Why Alexandria in the photo and title? If you've read Forster, Cavafy or Durrell, then you know that this city is the Capital of Imagination.

- AP

Cloud Gate - Winter Fashion

 

No, this is not a large-scale Elsa Peretti design for Tiffany & Co. It is the Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor. Seeing so many visitors reflected on its surface got me wondering about the current state of fashion...

As you probably know, some of the best fashion fragments can be found on YouTube. One in particular shows a younger Edmonde Charles-Roux who clearly states that ready-to-wear cannot take the place of création.

She is still right. Clothing that is manufactured to trend, to market segment, and to store buyer's specs can only be what they used to be called: garments.

As designers do a group re-think in the coming weeks and months, while we cannot return to the old days of fashion, we can look forward to that which can astonish our senses.

- AP