By Jacinta O'Halloran, Style Editor for DivineCaroline.com



The occasion calls for couture tears, but I’m a splotchy-faced snot bubble of contorted emotion. Yves Saint Laurent, French fashion prodigy and one of the greatest designers of the 20th century, has passed away. He died of brain cancer at the age of seventy-one. Mr. Saint Laurent does not need my ugly uncontrolled emotion—he’ll be seen off in an elegant sea of chic sniffling silhouettes no doubt—but still I cry. Here’s why I cry:

1. He never finished that dress for me.—He never even started.

2. He had balls.—I know this because he posed nude—wearing only his thick black rimmed glasses—for the advertising campaign for the first YSL men’s fragrance, Pour Homme. This campaign caused great controversy, but YSL questioned why it was more acceptable for a woman to pose nude for an advertisement than a man.

3. He took his balls out of his handbag.—In 1994, Saint Laurent sued U.S. designer Ralph Lauren for copying a tuxedo dress from his 1992–1993 couture collection. A French court found Ralph Lauren guilty of imitating the dress and fined the U.S. designer 2.2 million francs.

4. His father was an insurance man.—My friend’s husband is an insurance man. YSL arrived (with his sketches) in Paris at the age of seventeen—I arrived (looking sketchy) in Paris at the age of seventeen. Sigh, we had so much in common.

5. I get respect in pants.—In the 1960s and 1970s, when women were joining the workforce in millions for the first time, Saint Laurent designed more gender-neutral looks based on pants and jackets. YSL challenged what women were “expected” to wear (blouses and skirts), and dressed women to challenge other socially accepted norms.

6. He was Dior’s head designer at twenty-one.—When Dior died of a stroke in 1957, the then-unknown twenty-one-year-old Saint Laurent was appointed head designer. His first collection for Dior, known as the Trapeze collection, won rave reviews. I cry for that brave young man’s success (and because I feel like a slacker).

7. We had similar taste.—The first dress Saint Laurent designed for Dior was a black silk velvet column tied with a white satin bow called “Soiree de Paris.” The first dress I designed for myself was a black sequin and net contraption called “Soiree de Prom.” I cry for the photographic evidence still circulating in my family.

8. He said,—“I have often said that I wish I had invented blue jeans: the most spectacular, the most practical, the most relaxed and nonchalant. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity—all I hope for in my clothes.” I wish I’d said that.

9. He also said,—“To be beautiful, all a woman needs is a black pullover and a black skirt and to be arm in arm with a man she loves.” Bless his soul.

10. He made us look and smell good.—Saint Laurent gave us the tuxedo jacket, the pants suit, the safari jacket, and the pea coat. He gave us peasant blouses, see-through blouses, bolero jackets, trapeze dresses, and smocks. He gave us Opium and Champagne. He influenced a generation of designers and made me wish I were French.

11. He had his ups and downs.—Pierre Berge, Saint Laurent’s business partner and friend, often said that Saint Laurent was “born with a nervous breakdown.” The designer battled depression, ill health, and drugs on and off throughout his life. I’m just sad that his life was not always as colorful, as sexy, and as beautiful as his art.

12. He saved France.—The house of Dior was responsible for almost 50 percent of French fashion exports in the late 1950s, so Saint Laurent’s success at Dior was deemed crucial for the French economy. After his first collection, headlines proclaimed that Saint Laurent had “saved” France.

13. He inspired confidence.—New York socialite Nan Kempner created a scandal when she tried to wear her Le Smoking tuxedo—perhaps Saint Laurent’s most famous, and at the time, most provocative design—to dinner at a Manhattan restaurant in 1968. When the maitre d’ told Kempner that she couldn’t dine in a pair of trousers, she promptly dropped the pants and dined in the jacket, which looked like a very short dress. There are many more stories like this.

14. He shook things up.—Not only did YSL challenge social norms by creating gender-neutral clothing for women and modeling nude himself, he was also the first major designer to use models from a variety of different ethnic backgrounds.

15. He is survived by his mother.—She may be the best dressed mother in the world, but while the world mourns the loss of a legendary fashion icon, she mourns her little boy. C’mon, that’s sad.

Yves Saint Laurent may have passed on to the runway in the sky, but his timeless classic looks—especially those created in the 60s—will continue to inspire and be reflected on for a long time to come. I hope up-and-coming designers today will not only be inspired by his designs, but by his actions and by his words. I’d particularly like to call their attention to the words of Yves Saint Laurent upon his retirement from the fashion world at age sixty-five: “Fashion isn’t just to decorate women, but to reassure them, give them confidence.”

RIP YSL.

POSTED BY Divine Caroline ON 06/05/08 11:06 AM

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By: Shyla Batliwalla

My daily ensembles are fierce a lá Christian Siriano of Project Runway, so people are usually quite shaken when they learn that my favorite place to shop is Target, or rather Targé (as us fashionistas call it). I was delighted to hear that model/actress/designer Milla Jovovich with her partner in design Carmen Hawk, was designing a Jovovich-Hawk collection for the masses at my darling store. As the “reigning queen of kick-butt” in Hollywood, I expected nothing less than “kick-butt” for Milla’s Target debut. But I’m not going to lie. There was no kicking butt involved—it sucked butt!

I expected dazzling colors, airy spring dresses, ruffly tops, and unique designs. I found dull colors, frumpy dresses, shapeless tops, and stale designs. I could not find one piece of clothing I wanted to try on (let alone spend $39.99 on). Instead of finding the ladies section bursting with Jovovich-Hawk designs, I found two picked through racks and one half-empty shelf sequestered in a corner. I remained optimistic as I rummaged through the racks. I saw basic black Capri-pants and some denimy-looking gauchos with a large bow on the crotch. Depression crept over me as I looked at piece after piece of black, off-white, and grey. A particularly horrendous piece was the “Square-Neck Dot Dress.”

Picture a black muumuu that hits your knees with some random ruffles and large white polka dots. Another dreadful piece was the crosshatch apron dress: Anne of Green Gables meets Pocahontas.

I think Milla picked cheap fabrics and attempted to transform then into trendy bo-ho looks, or as my fashion-designer friend, Anne said, “it looks like cheap fabrics mixed with flower power and stamped with a designer name.” We unanimously agreed it belonged in Kmart.

I drove home and popped open a bottle of Chardonnay to calm my nerves after the evening of trauma and disappointment. My hypothesis is that they were under extreme time pressure and never got a chance to do it right. I saw potential (adorable birdy-buttons on a blouse) but it just never got to that “designer” level. Anne said (and I quote), “Some pieces are almost cute but on a whole, I wanted to vomit.”


Fear not my beloved Target, I will never abandon you. You still have a special place in my heart and wardrobe. It’s just that this particular line blew chunks. Your other fancy-made-frugal lines have been extraordinary. I adored Erin Featherstone’s line; I am actually wearing her shirt today. Alice Temperly’s pieces were ethereal; I bought my favorite blouse from that line. I promise to still come visit once a week and buy excessive beauty products and work-out clothes (even though I don’t have a gym membership).

Jovovich-Hawk was quoted on target.com saying, “It’s rare to have the power to change a mood. Great design can.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. My mood was completely transformed. After seeing their designs, I felt like crap.

POSTED BY Divine Caroline ON 05/20/08 15:05 PM

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By Kari Skaflen

In our unending quest for great designers, we’re excited to introduce you to Ms. Joan Vaccianna of Vaccianna Design. We came across the lovely lady at Brooklyn’s Fashion Week(end) this past March and loved what we saw. Her designs are modern, and highly urban and Vaccianna doesn’t shy away from hard edges and obvious texture, pleating and ruching, but at the same time she incorporates a soft, feminine quality to her work through fabrics, color and drape, inoculating us with a mixture between Pat Benatar and a Jade Jagger.

The Vaccianna collection debuted in 2007 and although it’s barely a year old, the line has received prolific and well-deserved press.

Using a vocabulary of “sophisticated funk, and romantic rock and roll,” to describe her collection, Vaccianna is deliberate line. While her look may be very of the moment, she also isn’t afraid to utilized classic elements in her design. As a small signifier of the innate care and high standards she employs in the design and fabrication of each of her pieces, Vaccianna has her developed her signature: gold buttons, put in place to reminder her of, “the value of the talent put into each piece designed.”

Moving on, let’s peek at the collection. A favorite is a jumper that has a built in v shaped waist, with deep exterior pockets sewn in which add to the models shape and give curve and dimension. The sides hare cut out to show a bit of skin and along the back bocie there are two signature gold buttons. Unconventional and striking without being tacky or confrontational. We love it.

A melange of the fresh looks of spring and the staid texturing and volumous fabrics of fall and winter is perfected in Vaccianna’s near (but not quite) bubble dress in pale lemon yellow. The high waist and full skirt never actually bubbles under; volume a texture is created using subtle strips of cut fabric that build upon one another and add shape and movement—perfectly flirtatious without being obvious. Vaccianna also does a killer skinny jean with—get this—front pleats that actually work and don’t make us feel like a kangaroo. Yay! How fun and avant guard will those be to wear about town?

And on the sheer side, there’s a eye-lit front button fitted and quite sheer blouse with bell sleeves that pairs with a tight and structured short in pale pink and a tiny little vest of the same pale pink and gray print: It’s so girly, so spring and all with out being saccharin sweet. We’re totally smitten.

What’s not to love? And, the gold buttons remind us- the Vaccianna line is high end quality design and similarly, the wearer is a crafted, unique individual.

But, more important, would Gilbert know how I can squeeze into my size four jeans?

POSTED BY Divine Caroline ON 05/15/08 16:05 PM

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