Showing posts with label coco chanel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coco chanel. Show all posts

Sunday, September 4, 2016

No White After Labor Day

Fashion has long dictated that no one should wear white after Labor Day.

The tradition started in the Gilded Age and many modernists of mode deem that the ban was instituted to separate the elite from the hoi polloi or lower classes, however the real reason was probably that at the end of summer people returned to the city and the smog of coal smoke, an enemy to white.

That be said, the author Tom Wolfe has worn white throughout the year. His first suit was to emulate southern gentlemen ie plantation slave owners, but the material was too heavy to wear during the summer, so the novelist waited till winter, completely freaking out the gentry class. According to Wikipedia Wolfe has said that the outfit disarms the people he observes, making him, in their eyes, "a man from Mars, the man who didn't know anything and was eager to know.

Not everyone agreed and Norman Mailer said, "“There is something silly about a man who wears a white suit all the time, especially in New York."

Of course Norman Mailer was never a man of satorial splendor and his bias was rejected by Coco Chanel, the czarina of style.

“Women think of all colors except the absence of color. I have said that black has it all. White too. Their beauty is absolute. It is the perfect harmony.”

She was right and few people sport white better than the 'droogs' of CLOCKWORK ORANGE.

No matter what the age.

Got Milk.

Monday, October 15, 2012

555 Chanel

In Thailand five is called 'ha', so 555 is used for ha-ha-ha on SMS messages and Chanel # 5 is short two 5s for their recent Brad Pitt promotion for men's Chanel # 5. I have bought Chanel # 5 for my mother, sisters, girlfriends, and wife over forty years. The history of the fragrance shifts sands to the early part of the last century. At age 12, Coco Chanel was sentenced to a convent orphanage run by the number-mad Cistercians, for whom the prime number 5 represented to completeness of spirit and whose name was derived from the cistus, a five-petal rose. According to Wikipedia in 1920 Mlle. Chanel commanded her master perfumer, Ernest Beaux, to develop a fragrance with modern innovations: "I present my dress collections on the fifth of May, the fifth month of the year and so we will let this sample number five keep the name it has already, it will bring good luck." I'm Irish. I live a good part of the year in Thailand. Luck is the harvest of good deeds and chance encounters. This afternoon I watched Brad Pitt sell his soul for Chanel # 5 Men "Life's not a journey. Every journey ends, but we go on. The world turns and we turn with it. Plans disappear, dreams take over, but wherever I go, there you are: my luck; my fate; my fortune. Chanel No.5, inevitable." Attributed to Glenn O'Brien, editor of INTERVIEW Sorry Brad, not inevitable, but tres avoidable. As James Steele infamously stated, "No commercial value, no sell-out." and then emailed his copy for the ad. Life is a journey. From point A to point Z and letters in between, as this world revolves 365 days a years. For Coco the number 5 was magic. It was luck. I roll the dice. They come up five. A destiny. Chanel # 5. - james steele He's living in Thailand. He knows nothing of the modern world. Me? I remain faithful to the fragrance Penhaligon - London and a good glass of Cote de Rhone. As always I'm a simple man looking for a good roll of the dice. To view this masterpiece of sell out please go to the following URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mGs4CjeJiJQ