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Lynn Yaeger on Tom Ford and Juicy Couture

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  • laika
    moderator
    • Sep 2006
    • 3787

    Lynn Yaeger on Tom Ford and Juicy Couture



    This woman is so freaking fantastic.

    Frockstar

    Haughty Couture

    For the man who has everything, Tom Ford's new store offers umbrellas dipped in gold
    by Lynn Yaeger
    May 15th, 2007 10:11 AM
    A dead alligator's skin, sprayed gold and serving as a table cover, is
    the first thing you see as you enter the hushed, nearly pitch-dark
    foyer of designer Tom Ford's new menswear emporium on Madison Avenue.
    Dare to proceed further, and you find one room decked out as a salon
    with velvet divans you don't dare flop on. Another chamber, paneled
    with the kind of floor-to-ceiling cabinetry that is every lowly
    apartment dweller's dream, offers shirts in no fewer than 340 colors,
    35 fabrics, seven collars (Seven! What can they be? Buttons, no
    buttons, Eton?and four more?) and three cuffs. Once you've chosen, you
    can spend even more money on an umbrella or that archaic item, the
    walking stick, both of which have been trimmed in 18-karat gold.


    Did Ford, who has been famous since the early '90s for the sexed-up
    women's fashions he offered as head designer for Gucci and Yves St.
    Laurent, turn to menswear because, as he once put it, "You can only
    make the slit so much higher, the stiletto so much taller"?



    Who knows. In any case, there are no stilettos in this
    black-and-gold crypt, and the only slits on display are the vents in
    the back of the ultra-traditional suits, which retail from $3,200
    ($5,000 if you want yours custom made). Actually, you can only assume
    the vents are there, since the merchandise is shut up tight in glass
    cases. "Nothing's for sale!" a fellow shopper viewing these austere
    vitrines boomed genially to his companion, his voice ricocheting from
    the massive fireplaces to the high-gloss floors.



    Another area, octagonal (I know because I stood and counted
    the walls under the chilly glances of the salespeople), is lined in
    marble and functions as a perfume bar, because Ford has a new line of
    scents, including one packaged in a black glass bottle and called Noir
    de Noir (Well, you didn't expect it be warm and fuzzy, did you?).



    Alas, you won't catch Tom himself minding the store. Ever
    modest, the designer has explained that, "I can't be in the store
    during opening hours anymore because people want me to sign things and
    take pictures with them with their cell phones."



    But not all of us want his autograph. Truth be told, Tom Ford
    has always given me the creeps. With his shirt cut down to there,
    revealing an artfully hirsute chest, and his "Aren't-I-good-looking?"
    smirk he seems like someone who gazes around the room and thinks that
    everyone around him comes up lacking. Especially the women.



    Ford's antediluvian ideas about women became apparent when he
    headed up Gucci, a brand that he transformed from a moribund company
    churning out horsebit-trimmed loafers, double-G satchels, and the kind
    of printed silk scarves Helen Mirren wears in The Queen. Ford
    infused the label with a caffeinated sexiness, eventually making its
    very name synonymous with slashed necklines and high skirts. If you
    didn't get the message from the clothes alone, Ford wasn't above
    manufacturing a scandal, as when he shaved the pubic hair of his model
    with a Gucci G for an advertising campaign. Stunts like this,
    and the apparently overwhelming desire of legions of tiny women with
    lots of money to zip themselves into his creations, put the brand on
    top until 2004, when Ford abruptly left his post.



    He claimed that he was going Hollywood and intended to make
    movies. It didn't happen. Instead, late last month he opened this
    temple of gilded opulence, the existence of which only serves to
    confirm that Ford has some very dated ideas about sex. The shop exudes
    the kind of smutty glamour that made Helmut Newton's more salacious
    photographs so attractive-repellent back in the 1980s.



    Actually Tom Ford, the store, reminds you of nothing so much as the character Christopher Walken used to play in that old SNL
    sketch "The Continental," where a lecherous seducer with a European
    accent went through comically old-fashioned paces of seduction. Ford's
    heavy silk robe in a Chinese pattern (well, it looked heavy?it's in one
    of those glass cases, so who knows for sure) is just the sort of thing
    a sinister older guy with a lot of money would slip into before
    offering you a line of cocaine or a glass of champagne while all the
    time you're wondering, how the hell am I going to get out of here?



    Luckily it's just a store, and you can leave any time you
    want. Once outside, I crossed the street and immersed myself in a far
    different reverie at Juicy Couture, whose pink awnings are emblazoned
    with the brand's crest, a medallion held up by two terriers.



    Instead of a fetid eroticism, the Juicy Couture store pushes
    the notion of Grown Woman as Princess. If Tom is a sleazy roué, the
    Juicy team, Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor, appear to have as
    their ideal customer the preternaturally perky Elle Woods, heroine of Legally Blonde.
    Woods loves bubblegum pink and Chanel quilting and tiny dogs, and so do
    Pamela and Gela! The pair's first success was a frankly hideous velour
    tracksuit, more often than not pastel, that allowed grown women to, in
    effect, walk around in their pajamas all day long. From this humble
    garment has grown a business that includes everything from panties to
    perfume to pet clothes.



    Infantile and sticky as their aesthetic may be, it comes as
    rather a relief after Ford's mausoleum. Instead of an interior that
    relies heavily on ebony and marble, the walls here are?no
    surprise?pink, and everything is out in the open, which means you can
    immediately finger the price tags. If Tom's store is intended to remind
    you of a decadent hotel suite, the Juicy Couture shop is like a game of
    Candyland, with crystal-ball finials decorating the curving staircase.
    (Tom has a staircase too, with a sign in front that reads "By
    appointment only" and makes you wonder, with a shudder, what that
    appointment might entail.)



    Slogans on the Juicy walls, rendered in kindergarten colors,
    include "Smells Like Couture" and "Juicy Kisses." This juicy business,
    faintly repulsive to begin with, is repeated ad nauseam on everything
    from underpants ("Girls Gone Juicy") to tote bags ("Juicy Girls Club")
    and even a bed for dogs ("For Juicy Dogs Who Like Stuff Love G&P").
    Still, it's hard to be mad at a place that has cotton summer dresses,
    albeit in pink, for $168, which on this stretch of Madison Avenue is
    the equivalent of $16.80.



    But it makes you wonder: In 2007, are these competing sexual
    fantasies our only alternatives? Tom Ford wants us to go back to a time
    when depravity wore a smoking jacket and velvet evening slippers; Juicy
    Couture thinks we should dress like giant six-year-olds, and sport a
    wristwatch that reads "Live for Sugar."

    But an overdose of saccharine can make you just as sick as an art-deco evening scarf choking off your windpipe.




    ...I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable.
  • Casius
    Senior Member
    • Dec 2006
    • 4772

    #2
    Re: Lynn Yaeger on Tom Ford and Juicy Couture

    [quote user="laika"]


    Actually Tom Ford, the store, reminds you of nothing so much as the character Christopher Walken used to play in that old SNL
    sketch "The Continental," where a lecherous seducer with a European
    accent went through comically old-fashioned paces of seduction. Ford's
    heavy silk robe in a Chinese pattern (well, it looked heavy?it's in one
    of those glass cases, so who knows for sure) is just the sort of thing
    a sinister older guy with a lot of money would slip into before
    offering you a line of cocaine or a glass of champagne while all the
    time you're wondering, how the hell am I going to get out of here?

    [/quote]

    I loved this! I can picture that skit in fact. haha


    "because the young are whores. dealers come to carol to get the rock"

    Comment

    • kucejoe
      Senior Member
      • Sep 2006
      • 348

      #3
      Re: Lynn Yaeger on Tom Ford and Juicy Couture

      [quote user="laika"]


      Truth be told, Tom Ford
      has always given me the creeps.



      [/quote]



      +1





      Thanks Laika. I think the fact that I would rather walk into the Juicy Couture store says just about everything...

      And I am going to try to work the words "fetid eroticism" into everyday conversation

      Suspension Point Store (Online + Montreal, QC) / Tumblr / Instagram
      ...

      Comment

      • clay
        Senior Member
        • Sep 2006
        • 284

        #4
        Re: Lynn Yaeger on Tom Ford and Juicy Couture

        FARKING GREAT!

        Comment

        • laika
          moderator
          • Sep 2006
          • 3787

          #5
          Re: Lynn Yaeger on Tom Ford and Juicy Couture



          so glad you liked it guys! The Christopher Walken bit is so hilarious and so true!



          I must remember to post more of her articles--she is really so brilliant and funny. I once had the good fortune of bumping into Lynn at Barney's, and I've always regretted that I was too shy to approach her. [:$]

          ...I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable.

          Comment

          • Faust
            kitsch killer
            • Sep 2006
            • 37852

            #6
            Re: Lynn Yaeger on Tom Ford and Juicy Couture

            Hahaha, nice! Who does she write for?
            Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

            StyleZeitgeist Magazine

            Comment

            • laika
              moderator
              • Sep 2006
              • 3787

              #7
              Re: Lynn Yaeger on Tom Ford and Juicy Couture



              ^She writes the column called "Frockstar" for the Village Voice, and she occasionally does pieces for NYT Style Mag.



              Perhaps you have seen her around--she is quite a character.



              ...I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable.

              Comment

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