I had pizza for lunch today, and it was delicious. So much so that I decided to write down, carefully, what I had chosen. I went to tear a piece of paper off my pad when I noticed that the box was telling me clearly that this pizza had been made especially for me. And I realized that  peignoirs and nightgowns can be just like a pizza if they are custom made.

What’s interesting about the observation is that until around hundred years ago, if you bought new clothes, they were always custom made. Custom made was normal. Most women not only had a dressmaker they were capable of making their own clothes. If you were rich then it was always the dressmaker, and the result was two fold.

1. Clothes used to fit.

2. There were no standard sizes.

Of course there have always been standard patterns, but all dressmakers were taught as part of their art, how to measure clients and adjust the patterns accordingly.  So although your great grandma wore corsets all day, she never worried that she was no longer a size six, because the concept didn’t exist. So how and why did things change?

In the 19th century fashion as we know it did not exist. Of course styles changed over time, but truthfully the concept of something being ‘in’ in January and ‘out’ in June was not something your ancestors or mine would have found credible, because it seems incredibly wasteful.  One man,as they say in the film trailers, changed that almost single handedly. His name was Charles Worth.

In 1858 Worth (an Englishman) opened a shop in Paris, and because he was a talented designer, he attracted the highest class of client, the Empress of France, the actress Sarah Bernhardt, the singer Dame Nellie Melba.  Worth had a distinctive style, he avoided fussiness and frills and created more ‘sophisticated’ clothes, once reason for this was simple. Simpler outlines were easier and cheaper to make.  Clients loved Worth and his ideas were considered, for the first time, better than their own. Instead of dictating what they wanted, the customers waited for him to show model clothes, they then chose a garment and had it made in their size and favorite color and fabric.

Worth was, without a doubt and artist, but his legacy was a complete change in the world of clothing manufacture. As the cult of the designer grew the customers became less and less important until the major requirement became the design. Women didn’t want to look beautiful, they wanted to wear Worth or Chanel or Dior and they wanted in such quantities that a new idea was born, that of creating clothes which didn’t fit any one particular person, but were made to general sizes.

Even so, until the sixties, most dress shops had a department whose job was to take the ‘standard’ dress and alter it to fit the client, but with time even this had died out in all but the best stores. These days it is important that the label reads the right size and the logo says the right thing. Flattering the customer seems to be incidental, and since items are made in standard colors or sizes, the opportunity to for true style and flare is very rare.

So, when is a peignoir like a pizza? When it’s made the old fashioned way, to fit in size and shape, to flatter in color and design. When it is made with the client and the purpose in mind. A peignoir is like a pizza when it is made to order.

It’s an easy choice, or so most people think. Cotton is cheap, practical and every day. Silk is for special occasions, it’s delicate, sensuous and definitely dangerous. Almost opposites.  So you’d probably be surprised if I told you that cotton is often the more expensive of the two, and when it comes to strength, silk usually wins hands down.

Of course there are many kinds of cotton, some combined with polyester and some just left relatively course. I’m betting you’ve had the experience of owning something crisp and cotton only to find the crispness gone when the fabric was washed. That’s because left to it’s own devices cotton is, or at least can be, very very soft. When it’s crisp it’s often because it has been sprayed with chemicals in manufacture. Washing removes the chemicals.

Cotton is derived from the fiber boll of the cotton plant and it the most common natural fiber in use in the fashion industry. It has been spun into thread, woven into cloth and dyed since before records began, but the Greeks only learned about it around the time of Alexander the Great and cotton didn’t become common in the UK until the 15th Century. In contrast the plant was cultivated in the Americas and has been found in Peruvian tombs.

Silk on the other hand is not grown, but farmed, as it comes from the cocoon of the silk moth. Legend has it that the fabric was discovered by the Empress of China when the cocoon of a moth feel into her tea as she sat below a mulberry tree. When she went to remove the cocoon she found that it unraveled and asked her servants to pull the thread out. They were amazed at the length of it and experimented with the creation of fiber and cloth. The fiber the cocoon is made from has a very odd triangular cross section, and this results in the wonderful sheen which has made silk fabric so famous and sought after that for centuries it’s production was regarded as a state secret.

But this does not answer the question. Which is better? As usual the answer depends. Silk and cotton absorb dyes differently. Silk accepts color well and can give great vivid colors which gleam in the light. Cotton on the other hand is matte and and although it dyes fairly well, never seems to become as vibrant. Printed cotton can be stunning, but hand painted silk may once again have the edge, since it manages to achieve a degree of subtlety and shading cotton lacks.

Both are ‘natural’ fibers which allow the body to breath, an important point when choosing nightwear or lingerie and both can feel wonderful next to the skin, depending on the type of fabric chosen. Cotton mixed with polyester for example can be very crisp, while cotton voile or cotton lawn are luxuriously soft. The same can be said for silk, where silk dupioni has a crisp texture while silk  charmeuse is wonderfully soft and light.

But in the 21st century women are all about practicality and for that reason silk will always be reserved for special occasions because as we all know, only cotton is a practical fabric.

But is that really true? There is a popular conception that silk is not washable. It is true that silk can shrink when washed, but actually so can cotton, and the shrinkage is usually very small. In fact most silks wash well even in a washing machine as long as they are treated fairly gently, the water temperature is low and no harsh chemicals are applied. Even silk dupioni can be washed, though it may loose some of it’s luster. Silk is actually a stronger fiber than cotton, and since it absorbs dye you can wash silk without seeing the same level of color fade as from printed cotton.

So choose you priority and choose your fabric. If you love silk but have always chosen cotton because it’s more practical, you might like to think again.  Take a look at our latest, soft lawn cotton nightgown and see what you think.

Picture from the Huffinton Post

Yet again there is fuss about the existence of plus size models. women who walk along a runway (that’s catwalk to us British) turn and walk back. Apparently it’s great that some of these come close to the size of the average woman. This whole thing is completely ridiculous. Is it good that larger women are being used as models? Yes, of course it is, but the sizes involved (US size 10, UK size 12) are not exactly large, are they. They’re not exactly average either. What amazes me is that there is, or ever has been an audience for stick thin models. Why?
But that’s an old point. ‘Designer’ (and it’s in quotes for a reason) Mark Fast is in the headlines for using ‘curvy models’. He is described, in the Huffington Post, as ‘brave’. Well yes. It is brave, because NONE OF THE CLOTHES FIT PROPERLY.

Is this some important fashion statement about plus size women? Frankly I don’t care. Design should be all about the customer. How to make her look good, and feel even better. Design is not, and should not be about the designer. Here’s one designer who has proved to me that he can take a stunning woman and turn her into the plainest of the plain. Great job. If the idea was to stat a trend for clothes that are too small, sorry, but no, Ive seen the result. If the idea is to start a trend for clothes that actually fit, sorry but you missed the boat. No-one with any sense has ever worn anything else.

What is the purpose of a designer? Purely and simply to save you time. If you know that a particular style flatters you, go to the designer who makes it and buy their clothes.  That’s it. You have a name, you save time because you don’t have to look around. It’s the whole purpose of branding, and the only reason it survives, the convenience of the customer. But for some reason designers seem to think they are important, and the sad things is that women only have themselves to blame for a thoroughly shameful state of affairs where people with silly ideas like this one get space on the air and in print. In fact I wish I wasn’t talking about this at all, in case that was the idea.  So I’ll shut up.

Related articles

• Mark Fast Sends Curvy Models Down His Catwalk (PHOTOS, POLL) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Designer keeps it curvy on the London catwalk (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Designer Mark Fast Continues His Tradition Of Sending Plus-Size Models Down The Runway [Fashion Show] (jezebel.com)
• Bigger Is Better At London Fashion Week (news.sky.com)
• More Voices Join The Plus-Size Fashion Conversation [Style File] (jezebel.com)

Tomorrow I’m going to do something I should really enjoy, and that’s give a talk. I like talking, primarily as a result of ebing overly fond, as my grandmother said, of the sound of my own voice. Fortunately most people seem to find me easy and informative to listen to, so usually it’s a win win situation. But not tomorrow.

Usually when I’m talking it’s an aspect of business, and particularly business on the internet that I’m discussing, but tomorrow I’m talking about fashion, and in particular about wardrobe building and fit. Why is this a problem I hear you ask? Well because somewhere in the audience, and I’ve done this several time so I must ask you to believe me, there will be a lovely lady wearing something that neither suits nor fits, and I will be spending the whole time trying hard NOT to look at her.

For some reason my audiences for these things seem to include a lot of plus size ladies. That could be because plus size is really stupidly defined, or it could be that some people think made to measure is something only plus size people need (really? Yes, some people are that daft) and as we know, there is nothing worse than plus size clothing when it comes to fit and design. Yes, there are some great designers, but the majority? Who on earth decided that horizontal patterns, like border prints, were good for plus size women? No, in case you’re wondering I’m not talking about the size 12′s which have been so recently ‘discovered’ by the media (oh my, they may be fat but some of them are almost human) I’m talking about real women with some meat on their bones.

So tomorrow, I apologise in advance to the poor lady who is going to feel victimized by what I’m saying. If only I could make the people who sold her those ill-fitting clothes, feel as bad as they should, the it would ‘all be worth while’.

Related article

• Blazers, vests and sweaters (fatchic.net)
• Fashion First, Whatever the Size (nytimes.com)
• New biz markets fashionable clothes for fat girls (the-f-word.org)
• Sidibe’s Designer States The Obvious: “It’s All About Picking The Right Silhouette For Her Shape.” [Dressing For Success] (jezebel.com)

14 Saville Row, London, W1

I’ve no idea whether the Queen’s designer ever created nightgowns for her Majesty, but I am sure that if he had, they would have been very stylish. Not chic you understand because Hardy Amies despised chic as being too much of the present, whereas, as we all know, style is eternal.

An intelligence office during World War II, Hardy Amies set up shop in post war Britian chosing an uninhabitable mansion in Saville Row (where else?) where Sheridan had once lived.  His early financial backers included Virginia Cherrill (once married to Cary Grant) and despite the post war regulation of, for example, the number of pleats on a skirt, built a reputation which lead to him becoming  designer to Princess Elizabeth, later Her Majesty the Queen.  He is said to have disliked the mini skirt, so it’s difficult to imagine what he would have though of grunge.

Why do I mention this? Anyone interested in fashion will be fascinated by the Hardy Amies archive, which has been opened at 14 Saville Row in London, to celebrate what would have been Amies’ 100th birthday. Entrance is free, but by appointment only.

Bonnie is a beautiful plus size model.

Having spent ages simply trying to find mannequins we could use to display our clothing at shows or in occasional pictures I wasn’t surprised to hear that plus size mannequins aren’t common, but I was surprised to see the following quote from Leif Anderson, co-owner of Gender Mannequins, a Canadian company who sells mannequins throughout the world.

Asked

Magazines and fashion models are often blamed for creating unrealistic body standards for women. Surely mannequins contribute to that as well?

He replied

I don’t think so. They’re just coat hangers. I’m not trying to say that people should be one way or another. The fact is, clothes look the best on this type of shape. I’m not judging anybody for being one way or another. The fact is that if you put a pair of high boots on her (gestures toward a skinny mannequin) and a little mini-dress, it looks good. I’m selling clothes here. I’m selling a dream, not reality.

I have to disagree. I can think of lots of clothes that do not look best on ‘this type of shape’. Some styles actually need curves in order to look good. Ask anyone who has ever tried to sell lingerie! This attitude is however pretty typical in the fashion industry as a whole. Think of the fuss they make on project runway if they’re asked to make something for a plus size client! There seems to be some belief that fashion can’t look good on the plus size figure; we can all think of plus size stores that prove the point, but plus size models can look good, even fabulous. We are all a little more cautious about spending money at the moment, so surely giving us something we can relate to is MORE likely to make the sale? When I can look at something on a women with a real shape, AND see that it looks great, then I KNOW I want one. Am I alone?

A couple of days ago I went to a meeting full of women. The usual mix, some who looked as though they had spent several years in front of the mirror preparing, others that looked as though they’d thrown their outfit together without benefit of electric light. Invariably their appearance was at odds with the short business presentation they gave, but it’s true that humans make really quick decisions, with the result that some of these women had lost the audience before they even began to speak. I often wonder if they know.

There are rules on how to dress for what. I’ve even included some on this site, but to be honest I’m not really big on rules, just their existence tends to make me want to break them, so I was delighted to see a lady who was clearly aware of the fashion rules, but had broken them with fabulous results. She didn’t just look good, she looked stunning. It reminded me that nothing looks better, nothing has more presence, than a person, man or woman, who is at ease with themselves.

Some years ago I did a short course in graphic design. After we’d been taught some of the basics of creating pages which looked good, our instructor asked us to bring in examples we found in print that showed off the rules we had learned. Without exception we found that the really outstanding designs broke the rules we had been given. So, we asked, what was the point of the rules? Our instructor gave us the chance to find out. For a week we each strove to produce a peice of stunning design without following any of the rules we’d been given, and for a week we failed. In the next week the task was to produce a peice of design that followed the rules, and in each case we succeeded. In the last week we returned to the first task. A peice of design that wasn’t merely good, but stood out. Only a handful of us succeeded. In each case the starting point was the design which followed the rules to the letter, but then……. Just a small twist, an additional color, a forbidden font, and the result, where it worked, was outstanding. Competence came from the rules, flair, or even brilliance, came from applying the rules and then breaking them. Our instructor left us with a simple instruction. To keep to the rules until we had learned every rule and good apply them without thinking, only then could we start to break them.

Finding your own individual style is just like striving for excellence in design. First you need to learn the rules and apply them without exception. Then, once you’ve educated yourself through following the rules, you break them and in the breaking you find the individual ‘flare’ that expresses the individual ‘you’.

Do I need help to feel somber? No. I can manage that perfectly well for myself, thanks. And frankly from the look of Agent Provocateur latest collection I’d say they’d taken the ‘pared down’ thing a little too far. Two spots and a couple of chains for $290?

There are some trends to admire. Deep, rather than dark colors can give a wonderful feeling of warmth and luxury, deep purple’s and teals will be high on our list as we prepare for 2010 – but frankly they’re my favorites anyway. Here are some of the ‘rules’ we live by at Certain Style

• Black is never ever ‘out‘.
• Grey and navy always look smart
• Torn tights and stockings may be fashionable but they look AWFUL, whether it’s called grunge or ‘distressed’
• There are three colors in the ideal outfit, not just two
• Business clothes require high contrast e.g. navy suit, ivory blouse, grey suit, white blouse, etc. etc.
• As you get older brighter colors may suit you more – don’t get stuck in a rut
• If something is ‘in‘ there is the instant implication that at some time it will be ‘out‘. If something is ‘classic‘ it’s never ‘out‘. Which makes the better wardrobe investment?
• Red is much easier and fun to wear than people seem to think

You look best in colors that suit you Find out what these are – find out what the trends are and wear those colors from your palette which are, supposedly, ‘in‘ if that’s what makes you feel good. Otherwise, just wear what suits, as to whether it’s in, if you look and feel great, who cares?

Helen - originally designed as a nightgown, makes a great evening gown!

Sometimes invitations come at the wrong time. You need to dress in a particular way but you can’t, perhaps you’ve had a stay in hospital or recently gained (or lost) weight or for any number of reasons you find you want to go somewhere and the appropriate clothes are hanging in your closet, but they don’t fit.

There are lots of ways to react to this

Rush out and buy more – if you have time, money and a local store that sells your size of the right sort of garment.

Buy from the Web – as above, if you have the time and can wait for the delivery.

Make something yourself. Have you done this before? Do you have the time? Maybe not then.

http://www.mccallpattern.com/ , http://www.voguepatterns.com , http://www.sewingworld.co.uk/Sewing_Patterns.html?gclid=CMCYgqbFkJYCFQXGsgodaAMxEg

Order something to be made – not as silly as it may sound – there are many ‘fashion emergency’ services to be found on the internet where you can get something made to measure in under two weeks, if you have the time, the money (there is usually a rush fee) and are willing to gamble that they will get it right. (Peggy Lutz at http://www.plus-size.com usually operates a fashion emergency service for size 12 and up (her 2X is equivalent to a size 36) and of course at Certain Style we are always happy to create something custom made to your size.

Decide not to go. This is defeatist and I’m ashamed of you. Hide your light under a bushel? Really that’s a no.

Go in what you have – much better. You’ve been invited for your company (probably) and your sparkling wit can sparkle in anything, so do your best and go anyway. This is great, and probably the ‘correct’ approach psychologically, but it’s not something I find easy. Try a variation.

You have got just the right thing. You looked in the wrong place. Look in your closet again. And your daughters and your husbands and your sons (if necessary, though probably to be avoided). Now look at your lingerie. Some garments are relatively ‘easy fit’ and far more forgiving of changes in size than others.

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Do you have a wrap? Silk wraps can be pinned in place to make supersmart tops for trousers.
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Do you have a camisole? These days underwear as outerwear is not just acceptable it’s fashionable. If the whole ‘what do I do with my bra straps’ thing bothers you – you can buy decorative bra straps from several internet sites.
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Do you have a nightgown? It’s easy to ignore the possibilities of nightgowns, but depending on the fabric these can be very versatile garments. Nightgowns are rarely designed to be tight fitting, and with the right underwear and jewelry can make sophisticated evening or cocktail dresses as you can see in our picture.

Do you have a shawl or a sarong? Shawls can be pressed into service as evening stoles while throws can be used as capes or wraps in a fashion emergency. Sarongs don’t have to be kept for the beach. Tied correctly they can make fabulous dresses. http://www.sabinesarongsplus.com/

Clothes can have more than one use, think about that when you buy, and like Cinderella you can always go to the ball.