Style Matters

Little Edie Sedgwick mixed with Auntie Mame. Can you guess what the Gucci website wants you to focus on? It’s the $2,980 tweed striped jacket. The bag, the leggings, the belt, even the glasses are for sale in the how-to-style-it dropdown.

Feeling young and adventurous? A look from Balenciaga’s spring 2018 runway, it was also shown this way on the designer site. Streetwear gone amok from Balenciaga creative director Demna Gvasalia. Where to focus? The gigantic orange bag, the blouse that has way-too-long a shirt tail? Nope, it’s the checked, padded jacket, which sells for $2,150.

A Burberry look that’s expected for the runway. But wearing this tulle and lace-embroidered dress with a chunky wool scarf and argyle socks, as suggested on the Burberry site? Anyone, anyone? The dress is $3,495.

The jacket is probably the most celebrated of all Chanel designs. And here in an ensemble on the Chanel site, it gets star billing. The navy blue and silver tweed sells for a heart-stopping $6,900. In case you’re wondering, the espadrilles are $775, the socks $175, the satin pants $1,650.

A refreshingly straightforward look from the spring 2018 collection of Belgian fashion designer Sophie D’Hoore, known for her sculptural, oversize fit. The plaid jacket is $775 at farfetch.com.

An unexpected pairing of Prada mohair beaded sweater with feather-trimmed skirt as styled on netaporter.com. What makes it all work is the nod from the black pumps with red button and elasticized pink strap to the sweater.

Jenna Lyons may be gone from J. Crew, but her legacy of pairing different patterns flawlessly –here, pinstripes (pants, $88.99) and florals (blouse, $98) — lives on. The black and white shoes ground the look; the peony lucite earrings give it some pop.

This runway-only look from the Tory Burch fall 2018 collection has relatable ideas.

Even the runway looks from London-based designer Rejina Pyo like this organza wrap-tie blouse ($593.88) and wide-leg denim trousers ($621.83) make good-looking wardrobe additions. And hosannas to Piyo for choosing some grown-up girls to sashay down her runway.

No fancy bells and whistles needed to make this Vince washed silk blouse ($295) and coordinating twist skirt ($295) wanna haves. Easy to understand and wearable for a variety of occasions.

This polyester cardigan/jacket isn’t preciously styled. The appeal: its $99 price (zara.com) and its runway look translated to reality.

I SPEND way too much time browsing fashion on the web. But last week while engaging in my favorite pastime, I found two similar jackets – one for $99, the other for $2,980. I immediately sent both photos to Little Birds Kathy and Nancy, my sparring partners for What’s in Her Closet?, asking if they could tell which was which. That conversation led to Nancy asking us if we had noticed how over the top one of those jackets was styled. (I think she may have referred to the look as the creation of someone who had been taking way too many hallucinatory substances.)

Still, her comment made us think about how stylists put together those enviable (or not) ensembles to be photographed to live on store and designer websites.

Fantasy fashion on the runway is a given, but trendy sites like Gucci and Burberry also go to extremes to showcase their merchandise off the runway. (Talk about extremes. See Gucci’s latest show where models carried replicas of their own heads. Ugh.)  As a recent Wall Street journal story noted, Gucci, which combines colors, patterns and periods, frequently in the same outfit, has scored big time with millennials. Burberry is fighting for that same large demographic. (BTW, we have no clue how women in their 20s afford Gucci, Burberry et al.)

In addition to looking at sites from buzzy designers featuring “young and adventurous” outfits, we were also inspired to look for sites that presented their wares in a more down-to-earth way.  Above are some photos of what we found and our thoughts about them.

Oh, and, as for those two jackets with prices exponentially apart, we hope the differences are in the craftsmanship and quality of material.

—Janet Kelly

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