*Member of the European Parliament and former French Justice Minister Rachida Dati talks politics, class prejudice and fashion while “being fashion,” as my little cousin is fond of saying. My little cousin doesn’t think I am fashion because “you have to be fashion, you have to feel fashion…Fashion people go out to party every single night.” But I think Dati, with her black leather pants and red lipstick, would make the cut. After all, not every politician—male or female—can pull off black leather pants. Respect. As Dati explains her fashionista ways in The Observer interview:
“I’ve always been like this, even when I was 15, 20, it was always important to me to be well-dressed. It’s important for me to hold onto my femininity because it’s authentic to me and, you know, I was asked not to. I was told by my predecessor [at the Ministry of Justice], Elisabeth Guigou, a very pretty woman, that it wouldn’t be long until I gave up my high heels. Well, I never wanted to do that.”
*With the Oscars coming up, I thought I slip in a plug for Moment Magazine’s July/August 2009 cover story “From Ghetto to Glamour: How American Jews Toppled Paris Couture and Redesigned the Fashion Industry.” One of the designers profiled is Diane von Furstenberg, the Belgian-American inventor of the fabulous wrap dress:
“Born two years after her mother’s liberation from a Nazi concentration camp, Diane Simone Michelle Halfin early on adopted her mother’s optimism. During the frigid winters, Lily Nahmias had been forced to march for days in the snow. So, in true survivor spirit, after the war Lily took her entire reparation check from the German government and blew it on a new sable coat. ‘She had been so cold in the camps and she never wanted to be cold again!’ says von Furstenberg.
In 1973, in an age of counter-culture experimentation when women tried on pants suits and men sported Nehru jackets, von Furstenberg introduced the wrap dress, an unapologetically feminine design. Her genius was to rebel against trend. ‘Women were ready for clothes that let them be both sexy and successful, powerful and practical and the wrap dress satisfied those needs,’ she says.”
*An Olympic plea to Russia’s Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin and all of the other ice dancing couples for Sochi: Please stay away from costumes depicting Australian Aborigines, Canadian cowboys and anything that you don’t have a very firm grasp on either through birthright or extensive experience.
*It’s Saturday night but what to wear, what to wear? University of Leeds sent female victims to nightclubs to investigate. The results, as summed up by the Daily Mail: “Women who showed off around 40 per cent of their skin were approached by twice as many men as those who were more covered up…For the purposes of the study, each arm accounts for 10 per cent, each leg for 15 per cent and the torso for 50 per cent.” Thank you, University of Leeds!
