What Would Coco Do?

Celebrating the Roaring Twenties in a Special Series

Coco Chanel is considered a fashion icon by some, and in some ways I agree. She must be greatly admired for her contribution to emancipating women from the corset and the hobble skirt. She invented sportswear chic and created comfortable and functional garments for the woman of the new century. She made it fashionable for women to wear costume jewellery and a tan. (Ok, that last one proved to be a mistake in the long-term.)

What I don’t like? The classic Chanel tweed suit and quilted bags. Vile. They are synonymous with bourgeois chic, safe and conservative and make me want to run screaming for the nearest Vivienne Westwood shop for an antidote. (Not that I can afford to shop at either of these labels mind you.) Little black dresses are ok, but a bit dull if you ask me.

One of her most famous decrees goes something along the lines of, ‘before you leave the house, take a look in the mirror and take one thing off’. Good advice, you say. (I say it too.) But did Coco herself follow this admirable principle? May I present two famous photographs of the lady herself as examples:

No. She did not. Just take a look at the sheer quantity of jangly bits she’s wearing: row upon row of pearls, earrings, beaded trim on the hat, rings, bows and bangles upon bangles. She’s practically up to her armpits in bangles! (And just look at that cigarette dangling louchely from her lips – that’s another thing that’s not quite good for you Coco.) Non, non, non!

Just take a look at the sheer quantity of jangly bits she’s wearing!

I took a couple of photographs of myself in homage and found myself thinking, I would never leave the house like this. A rope of pearls I might wear, perhaps with a party dress, but not like this. And I couldn’t bring myself to add all those bangles – it is just too much. Admittedly my outfit is more casual than what she is wearing, but this look seems too common, too predictable. Perhaps it is precisely because these images of Chanel are so well-known, so iconic in themselves?

‘If you doubt, choose monochromatic colors – black and white together form a perfect harmony …’

So what would I do? Whip off those pearls and toss off that black felt hat. Instead, I’d wear my white wool beret and maybe sling on my white leather trench. Because another thing Coco said, ‘If you doubt, choose monochromatic colors – women think of color, and forget about the black and white which are beautiful, and together form a perfect harmony.’ This I thoroughly approve. 

Gold Rush

Oooooo! I was very excited to find a vintage Oroton gold mesh purse in the charity store a couple weekends ago. Although I love my current almost-Tiffany-blue leather wallet, it is starting to show wear. This mesh purse will be a good replacement when the former becomes too scruffy.

The Oroton purse is in mint condition, apart from a little tarnishing on the press-studs inside. It has two buttoned compartments inside, one for change, and another for keys or keepsakes perhaps.

There are no pockets for cards however, which, I am guessing, indicates it is from the early 70s, when plastic cards must have been extremely uncommon. I will have to use one of the two sections for bills for cards instead. Fortunately my current wallet is so tiny I downsized long ago, and am quite used to carrying only the essential few. (My loyalty cards live in a separate card wallet I keep in my tote bag.)

A Little History

Metal mesh purses and bags have been around for a long time, and I own a few bags already: a gold 70s clutch, and two classic 60s pouch style bags with kiss closures, plus a couple of belts in gold and silver. The bags are all by Glomesh, an Australian company founded in the 60s by a Hungarian immigrant couple, Louis and Alice Kennedy. Although the company has been closed for decades, it is being relaunched this year, which will be an exciting event on the fashion calendar. Oroton, another old Australian brand founded in 1938, has also manufactured metal mesh and other luxury accessories and still does to this day.

20s Whiting & Davis bag, available from Dorothea’s Closet for $295. Click through.Another American label I have discovered online, Whiting & Davis, has been making amazing metal mesh bags since 1892 (the company was founded in 1876). The first mesh bags were handmade from different coloured metals, but by the 1920s many of them were emblazoned with Art Deco style, intricately painted and silkscreened with patterns, featuring geometric edges or decadent fringing. Browse the shop and drool. 

It’s a fun way to add a little 1970s glam into one’s life* – or if you’re lucky enough to own a Whiting & Davis collector bag, some Fin de Siècle or Roaring Twenties style. 

A modern vintage style Whiting & Davis bag. Just wow!

* Ed’s Note: I do in fact also own a metal mesh backless top and wonder why on earth I haven’t long-since photographed it and featured it on these pages. How remiss of me.

Thou Shalt Have Fun With Accessories

THE THIRD FASHION COMMANDMENT

I am not a basics kinda girl. I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: I believe in accessories. I believe in the power of a single awesome accessory; maybe even two. But even just one stunning accessory has the power to make an ordinary outfit extraordinary.

Whether your style is minimalist or maximalist, there are some accessories you will need if only out of sheer necessity. We all need shoes certainly, and a bag of some sort is useful, unless you like to carry everything in your hands. Once, I saw a young girl actually doing this. She dropped her credit card in the middle of a pedestrian crossing, and then nearly had an accident while retrieving it. This is not a good look.

A well-chosen accessory, whatever it’s function, can lift the spirit. 

Accessories can change your look from night to day, and they can make or break an outfit. They express your personality. They can be practical or utterly frivolous and in both be cases utterly necessary – one fills a need, the other feeds the soul. A well-chosen item, whatever it’s function, can lift the spirit. And make a short girl tall too.

Gone are the days when your shoes, bag and gloves had to match however. This is a look that is so far past passé it’s old fashioned. But when this simple and easy-to-follow rule is thrown out, how does one choose the perfect accessories to complement an outfit? 

There are quite a few things to ponder: size, occasion, season, age appropriateness, colour, and quantity as well as quality. Read on to find out more!

Have some real fun with accessories by making visual puns – adding magpie earrings rather than cats is so much more interesting! And how fabulous is that bag? A little pop of red really stands out against all the white and black and denim ‘neutral’. Click through to Polovore for shopping details for this outfit. Miaow.

Size Matters

Just as one chooses clothing to suit one’s figure, so should accessories be carefully considered. Accessories should balance one another; your shape, and complement your clothes too.

Jewellery A longer necklace will flatter shorter necks, as well as fill necklines and draw the eye. On the other hand, if your choker is actually choking you, then it’s not the right look. Large hoops or chandelier earrings work beautifully with short hair, or updos. 

Other accessories An enormous tote will overwhelm a petite figure, while a tiny clutch will look equally out of proportion on a generous figure. If you like to wear gloves, here’s a simple rule to follow: the shorter the sleeve, the longer the glove. A belt at the waist flatters the long-waisted, heels lengthen anyone’s legs (a desirable trait for most). A skinny belt may not be the best choice for a heavier figure – select something wider. And so on.

All neutral garments are a great canvas for some bright accessories, though I’ve deliberately kept the cuff bracelet a neutral tan to keep the number of colours down. Click through to Polovore for shopping details for this outfit. Pop!

What’s the Occasion?

Some accessories are clearly meant for evenings and partying hard, others are more hard-wearing for the daily commute to the office. Don’t dress for the office as though you’re going nightclubbing obviously, or wear beach clothes in the city – you won’t be taken seriously. This is not a hard and fast rule however, and will depend upon the kind of workplace you have, whether it is more relaxed and creative, or strictly business.

’Tis the Season

The season will of course affect your choices. A winter wardrobe offers a greater variety (or a greater need) of options and fun accessories to play with. It is rarely an elegant look however to mix seasons: for example, wearing flip-flops through the rain and sleet, or sweltering under a heavy scarf mid-summer. There are a number of weather-ready items that we all use that don’t need to be purely practical. Why carry a plain black umbrella when you could be twirling one in hot pink and bedecked with frills besides?

Age Appropriateness

Accessories should be age appropriate too, and by this I mean not aging, as well as not bestowing that unfortunate mutton-dressed-as-lamb look. Of course, whatever your age, if you want to look 15 years older, wear a string of pearls and a twin set with your box pleat skirt and low courts! The key to looking chic is in the way you combine your accessories: mixing high and low will achieve a fresh and spontaneous kind of elegance that is far superior to a tired and safe, conservative version of style. For instance, that twin set and pearls might work in any shade but pastel, or given some attitude worn with jeans and fierce heels, or a leather skirt.

… slightly off-kilter is more interesting and modern than matchy-matchy.

A mix of slightly different shades of coral pink and blush creates a warm palette without being boring. A hair clip in a strong red rather than pink or cream makes this outfit less sweet. Click through to Polyvore for shopping details for this outfit.

Quality Counts

Unique accessories can be found at all price points if one hunts around, and vintage is always a fantastic resource for something truly unique. Often the vintage piece is as beautifully made and designed as a modern designer item, at a fraction of the cost. It’s true however that the really amazing pieces are at the higher end of the scale, especially when it comes to quality of design and manufacture. Always buy the best you can afford, especially those items that are either classic (ie, will never go out of style) or you foresee will be used frequently. Spend less on the very fun and trendy items.

Just Add Colour

If your outfit is predominantly made up of neutrals, take the opportunity to add a pop or two of colour in your accessories. Do make sure if the accessory is near your face that it flatters your complexion. A general rule of thumb would be no more than two or three colours and textures, at least so one avoids that awful alternating colour scheme, ie, blue hat, red scarf, blue shirt, red pants, blue shoes etc. A better alternative might be a blue shirt and red pants worn with black ballet flats and a camel beret, a silver necklace and black bag; neutral shades mixed with colour do not look so OTT. 

It is a balancing act, and slightly off-kilter is more interesting and modern than matchy-matchy. The more detailed or colourful your garments are though, the simpler your accessories should be, and vice versa.

The Coco Principle

As well as going overboard with too many colours, do be careful about going overboard with too many accoutrements. If your outfit is very bold or colourful with lots of detail or trim, then you probably won’t need any fancy accessories at all. In that case, stick to a very plain shoe and bag, and consider whether you need to wear jewellery at all. If you outfit is minimalist or neutral coloured, then go all out with a knock-’em-dead necklace, or killer heels.  

Occasionally a maximalist look will work, but you need to be very confident you’ve nailed it, or risk looking like a clown or a Christmas tree. Coco Chanel advised us to take a look in the mirror before we walked out the door, and take one thing off – sometimes we need to take off more than one! Most days I prefer to wear less – far less than even Coco suggested. It’s best to go with your instinct. If you feel you look a little silly, chances are you do. And even if you don’t, your unease will be visible to everyone. A bold outfit requires equal confidence to carry it off.

I distinctly remember when I was about 18 years old and studying art, I started wearing lots of ethnic style jewellery, and I wasn’t shy to pile it on. One day, while working at a casual job in a biscuit factory (art materials cost a lot), I looked down at my hand at the paua shell inlaid bangle, the three or four rings, and had an ephiphany. I was wearing far too much jewellery on one hand, I realised with mortification. Sheepishly I slid most of them off and stuffed them into my uniform pocket. Strange time and place to have an epiphany I know, but it’s a true story.

Ever since then I’ve erred on the side of minimalism: no more than one ring per hand (sometimes only one ring altogether), or two slim rings stacked on one finger, and never a bangle and watch on one wrist. On the rare occasion I might wear a stack of wooden bangles, 1920s style à la Nancy Cunard. Likewise, a silk scarf knotted around the neck makes a necklace superfluous, and a headband under a hat is too much. You don’t want to ruin the impact of your fabulous accessory by wearing too many – you won’t be able to see the ring for the bling, as it were. 

Accessories should certainly fit in with your environment and suit your personality, but they also provide an excellent and low-commitment opportunity to play with fashion and bring a little joy into life. Just get the balance right, walking that fine line between practicality and pleasure. Don’t be afraid to experiment either, especially in the safety of your own home before you venture out the door. And if you do get it wrong a time or two, there’s no harm done – it’s not brain surgery after all. Accessories are easy to remove and slip into your bag and pretend it never happened. Life’s too short to dress in a humdrum fashion – don’t miss out on all the fun!

~

Come back next week for the Fourth Fashion Commandment. If you’ve just tuned in, or would like to refresh your memory, click here to review all the Fashion Commandments.

Maybe I Want to Look Cheap

Image from Anne TaintorIn the spirit of the Second Fashion Commandment Thou Shalt Stay Classy – or rather, in defiance of it, I had a little giggle when I remembered the Anne Taintor address book my sister Star gave me a few years ago. It’s full of vintage fashion and advertising photographs that have been subverted with modern witticisms. Sometimes you really do want to look cheap, and then all fashion faux pas are forgiven.

Here is some more amusing mid-century fashion advice – for bachelor gals as well as married ladies, so no one need feel like she’s missing out.

Housekeeping Monthly in May 1955 exhorts wives to:

Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you’ll be refreshed when he arrives [home from work]. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.

And Retronaut brings us these delightful 1938 newspaper clippings.

(Visit both sites for other hilarious suggestions.)

Image from RetronautImage from Retronaut

Double Exposures

Louis Vuitton :: Wonder // D-Type Lens // No flashA while back I posted some 1940s photographs of shop windows – many of them were taken from the inside looking out. Even more fascinating that the window displays were the glimpses of the people on the street, ordinary people in their day-to-day clothes juxtaposed against high fashion. So I was inspired to take my Hipstamatic to the streets of Melbourne, experimenting with different combinations of lens and black and white ‘film’. I knew I wanted something that looked both vintage, and captured detail with clarity. 

Although it was a bit hit and miss as far as the reflections were concerned – depending on the time of day, the cloud cover or lack of it, who or what was passing in the street – that is what I enjoyed: the surprise element in the result. I am especially pleased with the Louis Vuitton hot air balloon pictures.

Louis Vuitton :: Wonder // D-Type Lens // No flashLouis Vuitton :: Wonder // D-Type Lens // No flashChanel :: Wonder // D-Type Lens // No flashChanel :: Wonder // D-Type Lens // No flashChanel :: Wonder // D-Type Lens // No flashReading about Eugène Atget recently, I discovered that the Surrealists very much admired and respected his work, especially his shop window photographs for the surreal effect they created. Atget himself did not consider himself an artist however, but a documentarian.  

I love both points of view, the often strange convergence of reflection with consumer goods, like a double exposure, and the documentation of current fashion that one day decades from now I will look back on in fascination. 

Gucci :: Wonder // D-Type Lens // No flashHermès :: Wonder // D-Type Lens // No flashRalph Lauren :: Wonder // D-Type Lens // No flashPrada :: Wonder // D-Type Lens // No flash