Fashion Week SS09: Charlotte Ronson

The crowd at the show always says something about the designer. At Charlotte Ronson's show on Saturday, industry heavy-hitters mixed with stylish gamine types. And no wonder: Ronson, who currently has a great diffusion line at Urban Outfitters, is one designer who possesses both street cred and commercial success.

A fashion week power duo - her look is casual chic, mixing a classic white shirt with layered statement necklaces.

Love the Chanel bag with the long strap worn cross-chest mixed with a plaid shirt, shorts and gladiator heels. This outfit strikes just the right balance between dressed down and dressed up for a Saturday morning fashion show.


Black Ray Ban Wayfarers look just right again for this fall--especially paired with a LBD.

Another short, poufy bubble skirt. The shiny silk in a black floral print is spot-on.

Head-to-toe Charlotte Ronson. The jacket--a gray denim take on a motorcycle cut--is particularly covetable.

More schoolboy charm. Note how he balances it out with hair and sunglasses that clearly say "city" not "country" to give the outfit some edge.


THE SHOW

There are two schools of thought about how to design during tough financial times. One is to play it safe, going for a "classic" look to create something the consumer could potentially wear for several seasons. The second is to exaggerate trends to make last season's clothes look outdated--a defining strategy during the last few years in fashion--so that people will keep spending. How many eras have we visited in the last two years? Victorian, '50s, '70s, '60s boho, futuristic styles, Art Nouveau? It's enough to make your head spin--or give up buying handbags, which is exactly what the industry doesn't want.

Charlotte Ronson started off this season's show by playing it safe with lots of gray and dusty pink--a logical transition from this fall's all black looks. The music rocked, naturally (thanks to Sam?), and Lindsay Lohan was seated front and center.


Ronson's gray denim clothes were nicely tailored and more than presentable, but they wouldn't pop--on film or in real life. It would be a shame if we all reverted to true recession wear (think early-mid nineties) and dressed in a uniformly gray way.


Not so the later looks in the show--a blue and white striped cotton cardigan was dip-dyed in blue. Now this is a recession-proof look we can live with: fashion that improves on the current season's trends (cardigans, nautical, dip-dye) and takes them to a new level of creativity.

You can see more Getty images from the Charlotte Ronson SS09 show here.

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Fashion Week SS09: Erin Fetherston

Mercedes Benz Fashion Week kicked off Friday in the Bryant Park Tents. One of the most anticipated shows was Erin Fetherston's. This indie fave designer of the fashion set was tapped by Target last year for a diffusion line that launched in November '07.

A model poses--gorgeous hair and gold cuff bracelet.

One of the biggest trends this fashion week is shaping up to be the poufy short skirt. It brings ballerina charm to 20-something girls with nice legs--but it's a lot more forgiving than a bandage dress.

She too wears the poufy skirt cut, this time in dress format. Love his tongue-in-cheek prep-school look with the newsboy cap, bucks, and blazer complete with a coat of arms.

A great transitional look--taking a floral (poufy skirt) dress, cinching it with a black belt and pairing with a little black blazer.

Two guys in bow ties, one with high-octane silver shoes.

Lynn Yaeger, always in style. The bag with an illustration on front is Lanvin.

Many cute boyish elements--the fedora, the shorts, the pseudo wife-beater, add up to one chic, feminine outfit when paired with T-strap heels.

A model and her handler. As she passed by, she said, "I have about 20 pounds of gold chains on my neck!"

A dress made almost entirely of zippers, by one of New York Fashion Week's sponsors, YKK Zippers.

A girl with a pinstripe bustier over a white button down--Mad Men 2015?

This is not the most flattering photo of Kate Lanphear of Elle, but she is a style icon, so we must document what she is wearing! Note the structured shoulders of the tuxedo jacket, the skinny black jeans, and tough-looking open-toe booties. The gray metallic python bag isn't too shabby either.

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Sfoglia Nantucket

If anything can be termed "hot" on Nantucket, an island where miniskirts are still revolutionary, Sfoglia is it. Impossible to get into last July 4th weekend, it had calmed down somewhat by this year's Labor Day weekend--because at eight years old, Sfoglia is still considered "new."

The waiting area, where the bench is an old buggy seat (New England was never known for comfort), can get crammed with a mix of regulars and people who make a pilgrimage here. Inside, though, the restaurant doesn't feel overly crowded, even at the height of the night. Open and lofty, the interior is furnished with antiques, and why not? There sure are a lot of them around here. The floors are puritan plank and the whitewashed walls are inlaid with interesting details stashed into bookshelves--island memorabilia and vintage books. A new room off to the right is dominated by an arched marble-topped bar.

The theme is Italian, but this is a new kind of farmhouse Tuscan that would have had the old masters scratching their heads. If you take the Italian principal that every edible local element--from eggs to coxcombs--is potential fodder for a meal, however, Sfoglia stays true to Tuscan ideology. Drawing from Nantucket's substantial farming and fishing resources, Sfoglia combines spaghetti with melon and tagliatelli with sea urchin. The results are intriguing and unusually good.

Dishes that look simple are actually the result of a lot of effort and technique, like the seafood spiedino, skewered scallops that are poached in wine then chilled and garnished with fried capers and a salsa verde. They're not just throwing some shrimps on the barbie here. The afffetati misti was as plain and simple a salad as they come, but also true to Italian cuisine, it was perfectly dressed.

Back to that tagliatelli with sea urchin: Chefs Ron Suhanosky and Colleen Marnell-Suhanosky, a husband-and-wife team who settled on the island after stints at Il Buco and Gramercy Tavern, are obsessed with pasta, so much so that the restaurant was named for an uncut sheet of pasta. The pasta that arrives at our table could compete with the best--we were reminded of Alto--and we're out on "the Rock," not in a major metropolis. Tender, eggy, and springy under a fork, the tagliatelli is simply but lavishly dressed with olive oil, roasted grape tomatoes, parsley, and chunks of sea urchin. Bite into that element and you'll think you've discovered the sea itself.

For traditionalists, every sort of pasta on the menu, including gnocchi and pappardelle, can be made with a basic "scuie scuie" sauce of San Marzano tomatoes and basil. With this one the chefs get down to the essence of the thing and capture the flavors of summer at its peak.

Freshly caught sea bass is a special that night. It arrives at the table as a thick steak cut--not what my delicate friend was expecting--but it's excellent nevertheless, redolent of smoke and char and perfectly cooked. Again Sfoglia turns to fresh local vegetables--in this case Swiss chard and fennel--as groundwork for the dish.

Sfoglia's chicken al mattone--chicken under a brick, the waiter explains--has rightfully earned its title of house special. The skin is buttery and crispy, but the bird also tastes of the light lemony sauce that surrounds it. It's a little spicy from the crushed red pepper, but not too much so. All in all, a beautifully balanced dish.

One of the worst things about traveling is that you can come to crave a dish that's only served hundreds or even thousands of miles away. New York's Sfoglia is no longer considered "new"--it opened way back in 2006--but the Manhattan branch has many of the same dishes on the menu. Not that tagliatelle with sea urchin, however--for that, we'll have wait for another summer and another trip to the Rock.

Sfloglia Nantucket

130 Pleasant Street

Nantucket, Massachusetts

508-325-4500

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The Third-World Photo Shoot Returns

After all the hoopla about the all-black Italian Vogue, which underscored the lack of black models in magazines and fashion shows, American Vogue retaliated this month with a single article featuring all black models--not exactly mind-blowing. Issues of race have infiltrated fashion in other ways as well. The late '80s/early '90s practice of photographing fashion models in third-world countries against a backdrop of native people has returned without much noise from the critics.

J. Crew keeps actual Moroccans mostly out of the picture in their newest "Morocco" catalog, like the blurred sheepherder in this shot (click on the images for larger versions):

The one time they do incorporate native Moroccans, we get an unintentionally hilarious shot--notice where the "local guerrab (water man)" is looking!


You would think Vogue would stay away from controversial images involving race considering the criticism they recently endured for their LeBron James and Jennifer Hudson covers. This may be why they cast black Ethiopian model Liya Kebede in their photo shoot in Mali (an unfortunate reason to cast a black model). But does it erase the elitist overtones when you use a model of color?

The piece is breathlessly narrated by Sally Singer, who writes of Djenne that "everyone in this bustling market town looks as if they've stepped off the Dries Van Noten catwalk." Riiight. The contrast in expressions and attitudes between the women in the marketplace and the model, despite the similar prints on their clothes, is what fascinates about this photo:


There is another strange photo whose caption reads "Malian children mix traditional textiles with items recycled from the West--'a testament to a visual culture that's profound and inclusive.'" It seems doubtful that the boy in this photo ordered his stained Beaver Creek Colorado sweatshirt from Net-a-Porter trying to mix and match. Aren't these Western clothes castaways donated by American charities?


It's hard not to see the colonialist overtones in this next photo: the traditional outfit, the sherpa walking several paces behind the model, carrying a tiny leather handbag. Notice how many cars are waiting in this ferry line to Timbuktu. The narrator has just informed us that while native Malians wait for hours and hours to be ferried across, the photo shoot crowd simply left their cars with drivers and "hired a boatman to row us across in a long canoe."


Given the number of global, particularly African, influences in fashion this season, it's not surprising that fashion editors would choose to set photo shoots in Africa. But the resulting photographs raise issues that were easily forgotten in the sanitized, rock-music-fueled environs of an Oscar de la Renta show. Where are these prints from, how did Western designers end up appropriating them, and what does it all mean? Are Americans any better than the Europeans who became infatuated with Orientalism at the turn of the last century, or have we merely adapted the same attitudes to a different continent, 100 years later?

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Macondo

Tom Tom and I stopped into Macondo the other evening for a drink or three. Though it would be cruel to subject a place to an official review just a couple of days after it opened, Macondo is already showing some winning traits.

The decor verges on the kitschy, with rope baskets slung above the bar holding bananas and pineapples, but it's also creative, since rope netting is used elsewhere as a screen to separate the dining room from the bar area. One side of the room is tricked out in the grocery-staples-as-decor trend, this time focusing on a Latin theme, while the other side of the room is a long bar. At 5:30pm when we visited, the four bar stools outside on the street were already taken for al fresco cocktails. LES shopping break, anyone?


We came more for the cocktails for the food, but the food at this pan-Latin spot, brought to you by the folks behind Rayuela, more than stands up to the drinks menu. The humita, a sweet corn tamal dressed with a black bean sauce and surrounded by generous hunks of morcila, a spicy sausage I haven't seen on these shores before. The spicy thread continued with the zingy ecuatoriano, a shrimp ceviche made with rocotto cheese, a hidden pepper ingredient, and lots of citrus. Fortunately for the non-spicy Tom Tom the carne empanada was a nice counterpart to the heat.


There were a ton of specialty ingredients in the cocktails, some of which were unfortunately not available, like the guanabana-coco and rum frozen cocktail (Zaya rum, Kahlua Sour SOP, coco, and lime), alas. Next time? When asked how they could possibly source all these ingredients, the bartender confided: Whole Foods. Of course! We should have known the comprehensive wackiness that is Whole Foods' buying strategy would pay off in the cocktail world.

Banana + Cachaca was as good as an alcoholic smoothie, though the chunks of banana made it hard to swallow. Acai + Ron might have been my favorite: a mix of pomegranate syrup, acai juice, mint, Bacardi Razz rum, and Sprite. Thankfully they aren't above using Sprite at this cocktail bar.

All in all, Macondo looks like a promising place to bring friends, especially that bizarre breed of friend that always wants to meet at the dinner hour "for drinks." Here the unsuspecting friend could be easily tricked into ordering food, even anorexics posing as vegetarians, since there are many vegetarian dishes here as well.

Cocktails for a liquid diet, food for everyone--what more could you ask for? Macondo should be around for the long haul.

Macondo
157 East Houston Street
between Eldridge and Allen Streets
New York, New York
212-473-9900

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Commerce

Sometimes it seems as if the whole of one's existence—trying new restaurants, admiring retro-modern interiors, sampling overpriced local ingredients, hanging out in the West Village, referring to oneself as "one"—could be summed up as Stuff White People Like. Commerce restaurant in the West Village is no exception. On a recent evening, we witnessed dozens of white people shelling out top dollar for expensive food in a casual setting, yet none of them seemed to mind. Why?

For one thing, the food is good. It may be all over the map, with Thai curries mixing with French bistek all on the same menu page, but it's consistently well executed. It's worth noting that Grange Hall had to close because the low prices of their locally-sourced food couldn't cover the rent in this historic space, even when the place was packed every night, but now when a new restaurant comes in with fancier, higher-priced fare, it's criticized as too lofty for its britches. These Commerce Street britches may be casual, but they sure ain't cheap. You can't really fault Harold Moore and co. for their strategy.

Jib Girl, the Sea Wench, and I visited Commerce after the Bruni, so chef Harold Moore, who was in the kitchen at Montrachet before, might have had some more time to work out the kinks. The infamously addictive breadbasket was just as tempting as promised, with all sorts of little buns in different flavors. That night's market special mixed an asparagus and artichoke fricasse with mushrooms, truffle and, according to the menu, poached "hen" (not rooster) egg with fabulous results--all the flavors of spring were perfectly represented here.

The Sea Wench and I split Beau Soleil oysters with green apple gelee, mint, and lemon ice--these were as inventive as something Josh DeChellis might have whipped up at Sumile. The sweet-and-sour tang was interesting, but, as a white person (see photo, right), I secretly wished for something more boring: plain old oysters with mignonette sauce, so that we could better taste the oysters.

"Ragu of odd things"--the "odd things" being oxtail, trotters, and tripe--had the real earthy depth of a good stew. Served with homemade orecchiette cooked perfectly al dente, this was an excellent, rich pasta dish.

If other restaurants serve "elevated comfort food," Commerce seems to take comfort food and turn it up to eleven. Each dish starts as something expected and then gets thrown for a loop. Mushroom and fontina ravioli sounds normal enough, until you keep reading and learn it's served with caramelized salsify (the French "oyster plant" herb) and parmesan emulsion (read: foam). While this sort of culinary sleight of hand can be confusing to white people, we like to be kept on our toes, especially if we can feel like we're taking a risk. Here the risk pays off with an end product that tastes reassuringly familiar and satisfying--this dish is essentially gourmet cheese ravioli.

Both Jib Girl and the Sea Wench went for the snapper as an entree. Oddly for something served in a nouveau-speakeasy setting (though less so when you realize Commerce's secret weapon is chef de cuisine Snir Eng-Sela, formerly of Blue Hill, also responsible for the bread basket), this was one of the best Thai dishes any of us had had in recent memory. The fabulous green broth had real flavor and gingery kick, the snapper was perfectly poached, and the eggplant and charred scallion offset the other elements beautifully.

Again going way out on a limb for a white person, I ordered an entree that featured bone marrow...in the bone. Outrageous! Fortunately, the experimentation involved in eating this rich, gelatinous substance was rewarded with comfortingly familiar food, sliced sirlioin steak. It was hard to believe that this hadn't been cooked on a charcoal grill in some West Village backyard, the char was so nicely redolent of smoke.

By this time, we were stuffed. The various appetizers, the decadent entrees, and a couple pricey bottles of wine meant the tab added up—about $100 per person. You may not find a bargain at Commerce, but you'll find a fabulous meal and a convivial atmosphere. Who knows? With a formula like this, Commerce could be more than just stuff white people like and become a real destination restaurant.


Commerce
50 Commerce Street, between Bedford and Barrow Streets
New York, New York
212-524-2301

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