Tom Ford’s Orgy of Glitz

New York Fashion Week ended, much as it had begun, with a blinding dose of déjà vu. “I feel like I’m in a time machine,” said a guest, lounging on one of the white banquettes at the Tom Ford show, ogling Madonna in black satin. The show was being held downtown on Vesey Street, but…

The ‘It’ Accessory Is Officially Back

It Bags were over in 2008, or so declared trend pieces in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. In the face of the biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression, the very notion of those symbols of turn-of-the-century conspicuous consumption—the Fendi Baguettes, the Chloé Paddingtons, the Dior Saddles, and many others that cost…

I Can’t Believe It’s Butter!

ON A LATE spring evening in 1536, a dinner party was held in a garden in the Trastevere neighborhood of Rome. The festivities were presided over by Bartolomeo Scappi, a provocative chef who was known for comparing cooking to architecture, and for treating the tabletop as a stage for flamboyant displays that on this occasion…

Jean-Luc Godard and ‘French Girl’ Style

If a single garment has inscribed itself on fashion’s collective memory, it may well be Jean Seberg’s jauntily striped Breton sweater, worn for her role as Patricia in the film “Breathless.” A boyish badge of disaffection, the look was so often reproduced that, as the designer Scott Sternberg observed, “it’s become its own cottage industry.” But the impact of that sweater, and of that 1960…