Material Girl - Yikes!

It seems Madonna designed a line of clothing for Macy's named Material Girl targeting the teenage crowd.  The writer in me loves the name play; the mother in me gasped out, "Madonna designed. . .? Huh?  What? For teens?"  The first scene to play out in my brain caused immediate hyperventilation:

"Hey, Mom. How about this dress for prom?"

"You can't wear that! It has those, those things!"

"They're called boob cones, Mom.  All the kids are wearing them.  And look! They're removable, so I can wear pasties instead if I want.  How cool is that?"

At this point my head exploded rendering me unable to continue the fictitious shopping excursion. Some things are not meant to be seen, even if only in one's imagination.

After a calming boost of Grandma's Hot Toddy (see recent post), which I discovered is good for all manner of things unrelated to the cold and flu, I let my fingers do the typing and Googled Material Girl and Macy's to take a look.

Two things surprised me.  First, the clothes were not overtly sexual in design.  I noted only a few items I would refuse to allow my 16-year-old to wear.  Second, the designs are not trailblazing. Most look like fashions my daughter and her friends are already sporting. 

My prediction is that Madonna will earn ooh-gobs of money from her Material Girl line and Macy's registers will cha-ching with glee.  Never a Madonna fan myself, I still have to give her credit for being a savvy business woman. She always did know her audience.

Til next time -
Lisa

The Goldilocks Girls

The fashion industry swallowed a dose of reality and recently decided to embrace overweight models. This is fine with me as I, like most, find the models whose shapes mimic a McDonald's french fry to be unattractive and unrealistic.  It is about time someone in the fashion business pulled his/her head out of the loom and admitted what the rest of us already know: emaciated bodies are unhealthy, and most of us don't fit into a size 00 anyway. 

Here's what bugs me, though.  See, being a chunky monkey isn't healthy, either.  Why must the fashion industry run to extremes? Why can't the models be height and weight appropriate? The classic runway model is 5-feet 9-inches or taller in her bare feet and weighs 110 pounds or less; according to the height/weight chart at Diet Bites that is nearly 20 pounds underweight.  The heftier models run about 20 pounds overweight.

I'd love to see models of any and every height who look like they eat right and follow a regular exercise regimen. The average American woman may not choose broccoli over brownies or exercise in front of the tube while she feeds her NCIS habit, but if she did, then a model's figure (the models who populate my rose-colored world, anyway) would be attainable for all of us with hard work and some willpower at the pantry door. If nothing else, our teenage girls might be inspired to look healthy rather than hefty or half-weight.

I even dubbed my models with a catchy name.  They would be the Goldilocks Girls, not too fluffy and not too flat, but juuuust right. 

Funny thing, but the New York and Paris fashion gurus have yet to solicit my opinion.  I think they're just miffed because I compared their super models to shoestring french fries.  But you know what they say...if the shoestring fits...

Til next time -
Lisa

Labor Laws

Labor Day celebrates American workers, but if we’re honest, it mostly signals the last hurrah of summer. Now, when I was a kid, it also meant my white dress shoes were relegated to the back of the closet because “no one wears white after Labor Day.” I once asked my mom why this was so and her inevitable response was—say it with me—“It just isn’t done.” Labor Day marked the end of white shoes which were to remain in hiding until Easter Sunday and not one second before. This was Fashion Rule #2 in my parents' house, Fashion Rule #1 being No Mini-Skirts Allowed. (Which leads to the secret addendum regarding the rolling up of skirt waistbands and the surreptitious application of eye shadow, but that’s another subject.)

Wearing white after Labor Day is not the fashion faux pas it once was, but old habits die hard, y’all, and even though the fashionistas no longer enforce this particular Labor Law, as it were, my mother held hard and fast to the practice and I find it impossible to break the cycle. I can see myself attending a *NWSALD-Anon meeting for other fashion disasters like myself: “Hi, I’m Lisa, and I’m afraid to wear white after Labor Day.”

I Googled the subject and learned that the Labor Day fashion rule dates back more than one hundred years and, while no one knows exactly where it originated, it may have started as a class distinction. Well-to-do girls knew to abandon their white shoes and girls of a lesser class were clueless (or were smart enough not to dispose of a perfectly good pair of shoes due to color bias). Eventually, the rule came to include not only shoes but fabric as well. Today, fashion designers use white whenever they please, and Labor Day be damned.

So what is my problem, pray tell? I’m stuck in a NWSALD time warp! It kills, because I have the cutest pair of white Candies and I cannot bring myself to slide my feet into them. If I wear them after Labor Day my toes will rot and fall off, I just know it.

So here I sit, sans white shoes (but with my toes intact), to wish you a happy and heartfelt Labor Day.

Have fun and be safe--
Lisa

*NWSALD: No White Shoes After Labor Day