rue-madame's Diaryland Diary

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If you're going to San Francisco...

Well the SF thing may not even happen because now my parents are skittish about travelling.

�Who knows how travel will be restricted if there�s a war,� my mother said to me on the phone.

Then my father got on the line and started complaining about how the president and his cronies are spreading panic and hysteria as part of their war marketing. Neither of my parents enjoyed it when I pointed out that though they disagreed with the anxiety being propagated by the US government, they were choosing to fall victim to it by altering their travel plans.

Of course, part of my reaction was motivated by the fact that if they don�t leave, I can�t move and save money. My parents are getting old, and so I do understand their trepidation. I couldn�t just let their fallacious logic go unchallenged. That kind of stuff makes me crazy.

Anyway, there are all set to go on the peace march on Sunday. The entire planet is having anti-war protests this Saturday, except not San Francisco. The City has to have their parade on a different day because Saturday has already been earmarked for the Chinese New Year�s parade.

My parents were super political when we were kids. They worked for democratic presidential election campaigns, volunteering for Kennedy and McGovern. During the Vietnam war, they went to protests all the time, and my father even made us little suede peace vests. They still have the vests somewhere down in their basement; there are three of them (one small, one tiny and one micro-tiny) and they are brown suede with green suede fringe on the backs.

As much as I like the idea of having protested as a little kid, that was pretty much my only brush with hippidom.

Suede vest with fringe? Puh-lease!

Since I�ve moved from war to fashion, some more notes on the Fall 2003 RTW collections:

1. Marc (black label) Jacobs: I understand the motivation to present a Courr�ges-on-LSD collection, and there were a few pieces that I could see myself wearing, but overall I felt it was too costumey, too overt a statement on wartimes, and not in the good Haute Couture way. I thought the shoes, with their horrid 1970s silhouette, were terrible.

2. Baby Marc: I liked some of the pieces, but it all felt very old Perry Ellis/Marc/grunge era self-consciouly thrown together. There are a few cute coats (a very me one in tattersall plaid) and separates, and the shoes (esp. the flats) are totally ME.

3. Behnaz Sarafpour: I loved how all the models came out in ballet slippers. At first I thought it was a statement about how she didn�t want to take part in the whole Must Have Accessory race; then I read somewhere that she�s taking ballet classes, and so the shoes were just one area where her dance studies are influencing the collection. There were tulle skirts, and some interesting construction details on bodices (that felt very Hussein Chalayan to me.)

I�m sure there are other collections I have an opinion on. I�ll write more on that later.

== Totally unrelated ==

I had the funniest email from Mr Bingo the other day. I have been granted permission to post it, and here it is:

�Ok, who�s the smart guy who designed the first bathroom sink with that little space between the sink back splash and the faucet hardware? That space that is too small for a sponge or some other cleaning device to reach into yet can attract scum like Sunset Blvd? When I get to design my own bathroom, add to the list of free standing tub for two some wall-mounted faucet hardware!

Having just cleaned the bathroom myself, I totally agree.

6:16 p.m. - 2003-02-14

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