garmets hanging in shop
Here’s all you need to win the fashion game.
By Susan Caba
Photographs by Frank Di Piazza
Boots. Very big for fall and winter, and I’ve got the perfect pair—nearly new English riding boots someone gave me a few years ago. I look for them under the bed. Then I remember: I boxed them up for a garage sale. Yikes! Luckily, the sale is still a few weeks off.
Animal-print shoes. Flirty, feminine skirt, preferably with ethnic flavor. Check and check: I already have zebra-striped, low-heeled mules, which I fell for last Christmas at MARMI in the Galleria. For the skirt, I’ve got two options, but both need alterations. The Ellen Tracy in cream-and-black silk took me through my first job and most of my pregnancy (15 years ago); my mother bought the Egyptian-nomad wedding dress in the souks of Cairo.
Embellished jacket. Trouble—I just gave my only contender to a friend. How rude would it be to ask for it back? Reminder to self: The only old clothes I’ll ever want to wear again are the ones I’ve given away.
I’m playing the “five for fall” fashion game. Given that fashion is not one of my more severe addictions, which five items would add an au courant air to my basic uniform of black slacks with—what else?—black sweaters. (My real uniform is a faded pair of Target men’s sleep pants emblazoned with surfboards, paired with a lime-green tank top, but my son has forbidden me to ever again wear them outside the yard.) So I asked some of the city’s fashion czars and czarinas for advice. Then, just for fun, I shopped my own closet before hitting the stores.
Boots, my friends, are at the top of
the list.
“Every woman absolutely has to have a boot, preferably a flat boot,” says Ken Downing, fashion spokesman for NEIMAN MARCUS, on his way out the door to the New York fashion shows. “Every woman needs a boot to ground the volume of the season.” My riding boots? “You’re good,” he assures me.
Boots—“even slouchy and over the knee”—were also the first words out of the mouth of Debbie Derrick, assistant general manager at SAKS FIFTH AVENUE, though she wasn’t so adamant about the “flat” part. I saw boots of every description on my rounds, including a pair of spike-heeled Vaneli zebra ankle boots for $175 at Marmi. Check MARTE’S SHOES, downtown at the corner of 14th and Washington, for cowboy boots.
When not in boots, the well-shod foot will be wearing animal prints. In addition to those zebra boots, Marmi has a selection that includes cheetah ankle-straps with lime-green wedges ($105). But Neiman Marcus is a veritable zoo of wild shoes—cheetah- and leopard-print pumps by Manolo Blahnik (around $565), zebra open-toe high heels by Anne Klein ($295), ballet flats in cheetah with neon trim by Taryn Rose ($385) and so many other variations, I’m surprised PETA isn’t picketing. For those whose wallets are a little thinner, I found plenty to choose from in the $30-to-$40 range at T.J. MAXX. (Round toes are making a comeback, by the way, along with stacked heels.)
Next up, something “embellished,” a word that embraces a world of ribbon trim, embroidery, buttons, beads and bows. Fur, of course, is a major category.
“Absolutely you need something with fur trim—there is fur trimming on everything,” says Downing, speaking in italics to drive his point home. “There are fur vests, fur bits
on handbags; it’s real, it’s faux. There are jackets, coats—there’s always a touch of fur. Truly, to be the fashionista you want to be, you have to have fur trim.”
VIE owner Melody Tauben is a fashionista, and she has filled her Ladue boutique with turquoise-studded jeans (Streets Ahead, $288), handmade sequined belts (Ibisco, $103–$124) and embroidered and beaded jackets (Biya, $683). The store looks like a cross between a Peter Max painting and a high-end Pier One back when Pier One was the only place to buy ethnic clothing. I flashed back on a lavishly embroidered denim jacket worn by one of my brothers in the LSD era. Note to self: Ask Mom to dig through Jerry’s closet.
“Just do one piece and pair it with something clean,” Tauben cautions. “If you do the embellished top, do plain on the bottom. Or take one of the long ethnic skirts—they’re just gorgeous—and wear it with a tank and something clean and unembellished on the top.”
If she had to do just one thing for fall, instead of having the fun of filling an entire boutique, Tauben says she’d go with a “fabulous knee-length coat, very lean—you can throw it over anything, over jeans, and add polish.” A woman comes into the boutique wearing just such a coat, raw silk with embroidery, over slacks and a white shirt (another Tauben favorite) and does indeed look fabulous.
Next, I wander a few doors down to MERLE FREED, where the embellishment is a bit more restrained and the size range a little wider. The store also carries jeans that, says Freed, “are not made for Minnie Mouse.” Here, too, the jacket reigns as the symbol of the season. It’s shorter, more fitted and more structured—shrunken, everyone calls it. But I’ve decided to just add jewelry to jackets I already have. Freed stocks handmade jewelry made from vintage pieces, and she agrees with my approach. “You can take a basic piece and jazz it up with your own stuff and make it unique.”
So that’s it, I think: boots, animal-print shoes, a good skirt, a fitted jacket and a pair of jeans—and some “embellishment” in there somewhere.
I break for coffee nearby with my friend Alice and fill her in. We’re both sitting there in nondescript clothing undeserving of the word “outfit.” She’s eager to hear what I’m coming up with, and I fill her in about the boots. “Oh, good,” she says, adding that she’s just bought some skirts. Boots would look good with them. Then she asks the question that sets us apart forever from true fashion aficionados: “What’s the point?”
Like, who’s going to notice what we wear, except for our adolescent sons—and they disapprove of any deviation from the established norm. We practically snort coffee through the laughter and decide that’s reason enough to go for the cutting edge.
