Black Tie Delights: Tuxes, Top Hats & Tails... Say Hello To 2013

This is supposed to be an Advent Calendar post, but as I've been knee-deep in business admin and book stuff for days I've completely lost track of time. So I hope you'll forgive me if I leave the Advent windows to one side for a moment.

I was thinking of next year – as you do this time of year – and I wondered what note The Library could end on? Then I thought of fashion – as one does during this whirlwind party season – and I thought of tuxes and tails. I'll be wearing one on New Year's Eve in Sydney. It seems like the perfect sartorial point to finish up on.

Tomorrow, Friday and the weekend posts will be the last for this year, and as The Library is taking a long break they're very special ones. We're releasing some preliminary details of our Grand Paris Garden Tour, so I hope those who are interested will pop in to see what we have for you. (Do email me if you're keen: I'll add your name to The Interested List, which is growing by the week.)

I'm off to wrap some more books up for Christmas gifts. In the meantime, here's a look at one of the key trends coming our way next year – The Black Tie Delight.  

Tuxes and tails to help end the year in style. Mr YSL, you would be proud. 

{Top image by Bill Ray}

TUXES, TOP HATS AND TAILS

FROM 2012 TO 2013 IN HIGH SOCIETY STYLE...

Peter Beaton's beautiful millinery store on Nantucket Island, off Cape Cod – a favourite of Hilary Clinton. 

Marlene Dietrich in Morocco, 1928. {Source unknown}

A piece from Celine's Spring 2013 collection.

Celine and many of the other recent Spring 2013 fashion shows were all about tuxedos and black tie glamour. {Via Harper's Bazaar}

A piece from Lavin's Spring 2013 collection. {Via Harper's}

A piece from Alexander McQueen's Spring 2013 collection. I think this one is meant to keep off the blowflies? {Via Harper's}

A piece from Ralph Lauren's 2013 Spring collection.

More of Ralph Lauren's tux lux, from the company's elegant online magazine.

Dobson's wickedly whimsical 'Tuxedo' stilettoes. {Via Zappos.com}

A tux-inspired wrap dress, by Diane von Furstenberg. Love this.

Bow-tie pasta. Saw this in New York earlier this year. Fell head-over-bowtie in love with it.

The magnificent Miles Redd.

More of Miles Redd. {Source unknown: will find and insert}

An illustration of the well-known stylist Brad Goreski, who works with Kate Spade. Mr Goreski is famous for his bow ties.

A Kate Spade dress from the most recent collection, inspired by Brad Goreski!

Ashley Olsen.

Our Cate.

Dior's 'Tuxedo' nail lacquer.

The  newest hotel in Hollywood – or Beverly Hills – which is called, very wittily, 'Mr C'. The logo? An irreverent bow-tie gentleman. Very Oscars.

The toiletries at The Plaza hotel in New York, which are finished with little bow ties.

Rachel Taylor, from a GQ Australia shoot. Lookin' good Rach!

Brad Pitt. We know he's fallen out of fashion over the Chanel ad, but let's forgive him. He seems like such a nice guy?

And to finish off... some Christmas cheer from Martha Stewart. How's this for a celebratory setting?

See you tomorrow for a special travel post, and then a special Paris on on Friday... xx

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Vogue Living. Just Beautiful.

Isn't this beautiful? It's quite possibly the most beautiful cover of Vogue Living I've ever seen. If the frighteningly big 'Kitchens and Bathrooms' line wasn't there, it could be a magazine masterpiece.

It's the Sydney home of interior designer Cameron Kimber. This house was formerly a shoebox-sized, 1880 cottage tucked down a gritty, inner-city laneway. The original interior, according to Cameron, was "ugly, brown, plastic and hideous". A real 1970's mash-up.

Now look at it. Cameron has reconfigured the rooms and removed the dirty brown decor. Amazing what a switch of living spaces and a crisp, clean black and white palette can do.

Here are some more images, via Vogue Living and my archaic scanner. {Above 3 images via the lovely Bumble At Home blog. See link below}

    

Love the coco-cola coloured leather on the Louis XVI chairs. So modern. And the gilt frame. I do love a bit of Versailles-style gilt. Especially with black to temper it.

And the mahogany bureau that's been transformed with black lacquer. A huge expense, but look at the difference.

Love gingham and checks. They should have never gone out of interior design fashion. I suspect they're coming back in. (Just hoping out loud there.) On second thoughts, if they're in Cameron's house, they probably ARE back in interior design fashion.

Unfortunately, I can't go into detail on the furniture and changes Cameron has made as I'm a little behind deadline, but do look out for the Vogue Living on your newsstands. It's a beautiful issue this month.

Oh – Some more details of this interior can be found on the delightful Bumble At Home blog - here.

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Australia's New Museum of Fashion

With so many of us fascinated by fashion, and with so many of us blogging about it, reading about it in magazines, browsing the latest collections on Vogue.com and of course buying it, it's surprising that there is no dedicated fashion museum in Australia, nor other cities, for that matter. Nor more fashion exhibitions?

Museums are changing – slowly. For years the V&A in London seemed to skimp on fashion exhibitions, however that does appear to be changing with the newly renovated Fashion Galleries. (There are also great online archives available here: www.vam.ac.uk/page/0-9/19th-century-fashion) The Met in New York also falls short on fashion shows – I was disappointed in the recent 'Schiaparelli-Prada-Impossible Conversations' exhibition (above, images via Vogue), but I'm not sure what I was expecting? Schiaparelli herself? And whenever I go to the Musée Galliera in Paris, it always seems to be closed. (Sadly, it's now closed until spring 2013.)

Perhaps I feel nothing has ever come close to the extraordinary show of Audrey Hepburn's personal clothes at Sydney's Powerhouse many years ago. Did any of you see it? It was moving because we knew who wore them; how much love she had for them. Audrey was more than a clothes horse. Her best friend was Givenchy. The woman adored fashion. And it showed. {Image from Funny Face.}

This is why exhibitions need to be more than just galleries of clothes. They need to tell the stories of who wore those clothes. And why the wearers loved them. Fashion is so much more than just clothes don't you think? It is so much more than hemlines and heels, and what's been in season or 'on-trend' (hate that phrase) for the past ten decades. It is even more than an expression of individuality, class, status, style – or indeed history. Fashion is a mirror of our lives. Clothes sit on our bodies for so long, it is no wonder they become part of us. Part of who we are.

This is why I love the concept that author, custodian and curator of the famous Darnell Collection, Charlotte Smith has conceived.

A new Australian fashion museum that reveals the narrative behind the clothes as much as the details of the garments themselves.

I was fortunate to meet the glamorous (it takes a lot to pull off gold lamé at 9AM!) Charlotte Smith yesterday at a fashion breakfast to launch 'Fashion Meets Fiction', a fantastic new exhibition at the Burrinja Gallery from Nov to Feb. The author of the bestselling books Dreaming of Dior and Dreaming of Chanel, Smith has some stories to tell. She told of how she inherited her godmother Doris Darnell's treasured collection of dresses and outfits, collected over 70 years, which was shipped in 72 tea chests from the US. She told of how she found, in those 72 tea chests, priceless Cartier diamond brooches (hidden between old Victorian petticoats so Customs didn't find them!). Plus perfectly cut Chanel gowns and unimaginably beautiful Dior suits made by the man himself. The collection – the largest private vintage clothing collection in Australia – soon became a book, then another book, and now it's going to form the basis of a dedicated fashion museum. Australia's first.

What was even more interesting than hearing about this amazing new museum was hearing about the stories behind the outfits that will go in it. (Such as these, above.) 

There was one story of a dress that had been worn by a woman crossing the Wild West to start a new life in the Gold Rush Fever of California. It was her only good dress. Perhaps her only dress? For years, she altered that dress to reflect the trends, mended it, patched it, and held it together with love. Who knows what that dress went through? But it was significant enough for the owner's family to have passed it down, from generation to generation. That dress has become part of their family's history.

This is, I hope, what Australia's new fashion museum will show. 

Thanks to Charlotte Smith for a wonderful morning. I can't wait for your idea to come to fruition.

PS No details of the museum have been released, however it is going to be in or near Sydney, and it is going to be soon. I suspect the launch will be 2013. But I will let you know. In the meantime, visit thedarnellcollection.com for details. Or if you want to see the 'Fashion Meets Fiction' exhibition from November onwards, it's at Burrinja, 351 Glenfern Road, Upwey.

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