Just links today, no Actual Content. Expect Actual Content to resume next week. I've had what looks to be a hard-drive failure (and of course I do backups on Fridays, so I've lost a week of Very Hard Work, including a new "Secret Lives" …). Any of you who have intercessory powers with the spirits of computing, would you use them to plead for me? Luckily I have backup computers all over the house (that's only a slight exaggeration) so I am not cut off from the Internet …

Check out Lisa's Fashion 101 Rules …

An article from the WashPost about a truly horrific handbag, which costs $52,500. Yes, that's right, FIFTY-TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS. (Thanks to Jonquil for the link.)

I, um, gave a talk at TED this year (and wore a Duro). If you want to see me talk about the Future! of! Dictionaries! you can check it out here. (Warning, starts playing immediately, with sound.)

And Liz Tran, whose art you saw here earlier this year, is doing a daily dress art project for the next month. Lovely!

I thought I'd posted this before but a trawl of the archives didn't turn anything up.

I am in the process of tidying up the sewing room (a never-ending process) and came across this dress, which I haven't thought of in ages. This dress was one of the first major vintage projects I ever did — I had to order the fabric from Britex in San Francisco, as it was WAY before the whole cherry-print thing went mainstream.

This dress probably took me three weekends, what with the covered buttons, the belt, and so on. I believe I had made a trial version in a black and white quilting cotton, and I should dig that one up to photograph, too. (I ripped the underarm on it, but luckily the print was so busy my patch was undetectable, and I kept right on wearing it …)

This probably dates to at least 1996, maybe earlier — I made it to wear to a friend's late-summer wedding rehearsal dinner, I think.

I would probably still wear this, if I ever thought about it. (I think I was a bit heavier in the mid-90s than I am now, so it might not fit now.) But I should really start dragging out more of my more tragic early efforts to post, shouldn't I? Those will be good for a laugh!

Collins recently sent me a copy of The Little Black Book of Style to review; not one to turn down free books, I said "Yea, O Publisher, send unto me," and I was glad I did.

This gladness took the form most often called smugness, as the lovely and talented Nina Garcia agrees with me on all the important points of style, to wit:

"Your closet should be full of only pieces that look good on you and make you feel good about yourself" (see my post here)

"A stylish woman makes me want to walk up to her and say "Where did you get that? … I just have to find out where it is from. A flea market, her grandmother's closet, wherever." (see my post about clothes & stories here)

"Go a little crazy. Be a little dramatic. Have a lot of fun." (the 'crazy' skirt, here)

Now, I know, I know, Ms. Garcia is on The Television, and I am not (or, I am, but rarely, and never talking about fashion) so perhaps I should not be saying how happy I am that she agrees with me, but how glad I am to agree with a internationally-known arbiter of style. But if you have been reading this blog for a while, this is a book you won't get into arguments with, or mutter "What is she thinking?" on every other page. Instead, you will do a lot of nodding (when you aren't gazing lovingly at the Ruben Toledo illustrations).

The one point on which Ms. Garcia and I will have to agree to disagree is the necessity of having a faaaaaabulous handbag. I think that a Chanel 2.55 bag is quite possibly the most horrible handbag ever, totally boring, and expensive to boot. (And it doesn't have a pocket for my Treo, which tells you where I'm coming from.) Nor would I wait a gazillion years for a Hermés Birkin bag, even if I thought that kind of money was chump change. (In fact, I hate the whole handbag-industrial complex, and come the revolution I will cheer as they are driven through the streets in a tumbril.)

The fashion-advice bits (aside from the handbag stuff) are straightforward and sensible; the brief biography she allows herself is interesting and the quotations scattered through the book are apt (although one wishes they were SOURCED, but not everyone is as OCD about that as reference book editors …). Her what-to-wear-when advice is pretty good — I wish she had forbidden wearing black as well as white to weddings but I may have to silently resign myself to being the only person alive to follow that rule.

It's a small book, though, and it is padded with the plots of important fashion movies (!) and thumbnail 'who-dat?' sketches of fashionable rock stars (!!) and an incredibly brief timeline of 'fashion history', none of which is especially useful to anyone who was born before 1995. The paragraphs (one each) given to Africa and fashion and Asia and fashion were also a bit painful, and could have been cut without harm to the book or Ms. Garcia … there is also a series of Q&As with various fashion-y people, the quality of which is uneven. Some of them are funny, revealing, and generous, and some of them seem to have been emailed via a Blackberry from the back of a cab.

In short, if you want a petite, elegantly-designed, sensible book on style, this is for you. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but there's nothing stupid, either (except for maybe those Africa- and Asia-in-fashion paragraphs), and that's not to be sneered at. I recommend it!

I am in a veritable tizzy waiting for this to come from Sew-Retro Vintage Patterns. My own fault for ordering something right before a holiday weekend, but hey, when you find a pattern like this, you pounce!

This may be my autumn go-to dress pattern, although I'm not nearly as willowy as the gals in this illustration. But notice, if you please, the high-necked, cut-on-the-fold front bodice, perfect for big prints, and the really cute buttoned back! There are even side-seam pockets, wonder of wonders (although I might also cut the skirt on the fold to eliminate that front seam).

There's plenty more where this came from at Sew-Retro Vintage Patterns … check out this one! Me, I'll just go back to watching the mailbox.

Isn't this pattern adorable? It's so pretty … I wish it were a bit bigger, but it's such an old-fashioned, teen-at-first-boy/girl party kind of dress. I would have worn this to DEATH when I was fourteen. I would have been like a preschooler with a favorite pink shirt, demanding to wear it every day (thus making you wash it every night).

Anyway, this pattern is at MOMSPatterns, and it's Jen's (and MOMSPatterns) one-year anniversary today! And she's offering us a 20% discount to celebrate!

Jen says: "Use coupon code oneyear20 in your shopping cart when placing an order and your savings will be reflected when you check out. Sale starts NOW and will end at midnight, EST on Sunday, September 16. You'll be able to use that coupon again and again throughout the sale, so check back daily for new inventory to snag!"

There's also a new search on her site called Memory Lane which allows you to find patterns by copyright date! I love this …

So happy anniversary, Jen, and thanks!

First of all, a great big welcome to all of you who are here because this blog was a Yahoo! Pick!

In the Yahoo! interview it was mentioned that occasionally I rant about the Handbag Industrial Complex (you know, the folks who bring us horrible things like this):

That is ridiculous, isn't it? Just horrible. I can't imagine paying $10 for that, much less the TWO GRAND it actually costs.

And even if you aren't looking at the two-grand end of the scale, lower-end handbags aren't any better. Tiny little handles, so that you can't carry them; covered with nonfunctional locks and useless metal bits and dangling braids and whatnot; branded with logos so large that you look like a mobile billboard. I hate them all.

Which is why I bought an old-skool Coach bag on eBay:

(Don't worry: I removed that stupid hangtag first thing.)

I needed a bag that *wouldn't* hold my laptop — to prevent me from carrying it everywhere. Something that would hold a hardcover book and a wallet and my treo, but not much else. I wanted good leather, but no huge logos. And I wanted a cross-body strap to keep my hands free, which is IMPOSSIBLE to find in a handbag these days, unless you head to the Magellan catalog and get the ones that scream "TOURIST IN EUROPE — COMING THROUGH!"

I really wanted green bag, but a weird green — so this olive is perfect! A green bag works with black or brown, so no switching back and forth — who has time to do that?

I pretty much hate the modern Coach bags, with their splashy ad campaigns, tacky logos everywhere and (I've heard) quality problems, but the old Coach bags are something else. They have clean lines, neat colors, and even the most beat-up ones have a certain careless chic. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that old Coach bags are going to be the next big thing. What with the continuing 80s revival, can't you see a bunch of skinny Brooklyn hipsters deciding that these bags have huge ironic potential? You heard it here first.

I'm not going to have a lot of time to sew this autumn, so I've been really thinking about doing some kind of SWAP (Sewing With A Plan) program so that I don't do as I normally do, which is make completely random items that coordinate only in the sense that they all fit me (more or less).

However, I want to base my planned sewing around a new dress template (don't worry, I still want to make a Duro or two) and I can't decide which one. This is very distressing, especially to someone as decisive (not to say impetuous) as I am. Seriously, I feel most things are Not That Complicated: the important thing is to pick something reasonable and DO IT.

That said, the something I'm going to Pick and Do will have something like this kind of bodice: a center seam with a faced collar. They're very easy to sew, they look nice with cardigans over them (a problem for the Duro), and they do well with prints. I need to make one up and see how it does with a little jacket over it, too. I'm just not OBSESSED with them yet!

Unfortunately, this one, from Turtle Bay Trading Company, is just *slightly* too big for me.

And — aren't the psychodynamics of this pattern envelope amazing? The woman on the left (who looks a bit like Téa Leoni, I think) is obviously being confronted with some entitled upstart (look at that nose in the air!) and is on the point of delivering a well-deserved set-down. Either that or the All-Beige Wonder has just said something so staggeringly inane that Ms. Leoni is looking at her and wondering just exactly how much brain activity is required for standing upright, and revising her previous estimate downward.

Since the fashion cycle has gotten so wonky, and since the advent of air-conditioning, and because of who-knows-how-many other reasons, quite a lot of dresses that no one in their right minds would wear in July are now sold then. Which means that by Labor Day, they are all on sale.

Take this one for instance, at Bloomingdale's, in a small range of sizes (although that range includes 24W!) going now for $69-79. It's all silk, and it's quite elegant. And yes, it also comes in black. (Click on the image to visit the catalog page.)

This is a perfect holiday-party dress for those of us who think bare arms and shoulders in December is a great way to catch a cold, and/or folks who hate managing a drippy shawl, or who just want to look a little more covered-up. It's so rare to find a holiday-party dress that's not bare and still looks witty and dashing and elegant — something that is the female equivalent of the tuxedo, in fact, which I suppose is why this one works!

I think I would wear this with huge cloisonne beads or very large cloisonne cuffs, and high heels — as high as I could manage. Maybe black patent heels with a very square heel and a round (or at least not very pointy) toe, so they would look like men's classic tuxedo pumps, and a black patent clutch. And red lipstick. Definitely red lipstick.

I would NOT wear it with a pin or brooch that featured any of the following: Christmas trees, Santa, candy canes, holly, blinking lights (especially not blinking lights that were intended to represent, say, a reindeer's NOSE), or the words "Ho Ho Ho." There's festive, and then there's festooned. There's a difference.

Leslie at goodcrafternoon.com sent me this link to Melissa (at fehrtrade.com) and her awesome dress, made from an Ikea shower curtain.

Oh yes, a shower curtain. Which is only part of the awesome. The rest of the awesome consists of this being her first project using piping (which she made herself) and that it's lined! Obviously, Melissa is a goddess.

Here's a picture of the bodice, gloriously piped:

Where does Burda come in? Well, the pattern is the 124C pattern from the May issue of Burda World of Fashion (as reported by Ikeahacker.com).

You guys know I love using Ikea fabric *and* piping, so for me this project is (as the kids say) made of win. It also makes me want to duck into Ikea tomorrow when the boy and I do some back-to-school shopping out in that anteroom of Hell known as Schaumburg, Illinois. (I'm sure that he'll have patience for that after finding a new backpack and shoes, right?)

Click the image to visit Melissa's great blog and congratulate her on this dress!

Or "GBS," as I like to call it, now that we're friends:

Note: I am not the person doing really cool research on the British road system. I'm the other one.