I Love What An Hermès Scarf Can Do For A Man, Milan

January 2011, Milan

From my archive, Fall 2008

On the Street.....Third Avenue, New York

On the Street.....Slim Jeans vs Hipster Jeans, Florence & Milan

Slim Jeans

Hipster Jeans

On the Street.....Two Portraits, Paris

On the Street.....Uptown, New York

On the Street.....George C., Paris

On the Street....Eveline, Paris

On the Street.....Robert R., Paris

On the Street....Angelika, Milan

I saw this young lady in Milan several times this past season. She is one of the crop of new bloggers. (Read her blog here.) I loved that she's a bigger, curvier girl than most of the other bloggers who you see in the press and tend to represent the genre.

The subtle thing she achieves so successfully in these two looks is to complement the sturdy but beautiful shape of her legs with an equally strong shoe. A daintier shoe would be overpowered but these shoes create a beautiful harmony for the lower half of her body.

Tomorrow I'll post an image of a different young lady I met in Paris with a similarly curvy body type but a different method of creating body harmony.

UPDATE

I love a post like this. It creates a real and important conversation.

A number of the commenters are upset by the word "curvy." They feel I should have used the word "normal." However, normal is relative. There is a young lady on my team who is 5'0", and another who is 5'9". Which would be "normal"?

Look at the man walking across the street in the first image, and the height of the umbrella in the second - and Angelika relative to each. This girl is taller than most, and has the bearing to match. Regarding the curves...just because you don't see them does not mean they are not there. Is there a minimum degree of curviness to be considered "curvy"?

Remember, curvy is a body shape, not a weight. To be honest, you can't really see in these photographs most of the curves - chest, stomach, hip - this woman has.

I get emails all the time from self-professed curvy girls who want to see representations of their size on the site. What sucks is that when I try to put a photograph up to talk about these issues, the post is hijacked over the political correctness of the words.

So help me understand; what is the modern way to speak about size? I'm not married to the word curvy. I'm just trying to describe her in the best way I know how. Let's not hide from this issue; I don't want to be afraid to talk about it on my blog. Help me describe this young lady without using the word "normal," but in a way that addresses her body size and still references my point about the size of her legs relative to her shoes.

Last week I did a post of older women every day, and I was proud of that. I am proud to be a blog that is showing women of different sizes. I don't want to lose the potential power of the post by being caught up in wordplay.

On the Street.....Elisa, Milan

On the Street....Before Ferre, Milan

On the Street.....Winter White, Florence

On the Street..... Lee Radziwill

On the Street.....Via Bergognone, Milan

On the Street.....Piazza degli Affari, Milan

On the Street.....via Manzoni, Milan

This woman was such a vision in her monochrome look. Her sole splash of color - a vintage red Hermes Kelly bag. I tried to communicate with her after the shot but the language difference was too much of a barrier.

On the Street.....Doyer St., New York

On the Street.....Piazza Oberdan, Milan

This is one of my favorite shots in a while.

I love shooting older people not because I think they are more stylish than any other age, but rather because they have different design references than someone 20 or even 50 years old.


For instance, I have never seen a scarf rolled under the chin like this Milanese woman has done. So chic and so subtle; I love the waves of fabric cascading over her shoulder. Maybe in her younger days all of her girlfriends wore their scarves this way but I've never seen it.

This is pure inspiration for me, and inspiration at its most powerful because it doesn't cost money for anyone to recreate that element.

On the Street.....via Sant'Andrea, Milan

On the Street.....After Louis Vuitton, Paris

Joan Burstein, Browns London

On the Street.....Via Bigli, Milan

Costanza Pascolato of Vogue Brasil

Costanza is a great example of how to mix style and fashion; she has an incredible way of maintaining a consistent personal style while always updating her look with the "it" items of the season.

On the Street..... via Luca Beltrami, Milan

The Sartorialist on Twitter

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In the process of taking over the account I was not allowed to migrate followers so please take a moment to resubscribe.

On the Street.....Wigmore St. , London

Garance In Her New Prada Shoes, Paris

I had a great laugh the other day in Paris. Garance had recently written a very tongue-in-cheek post about how to be shot by street style photographers.

Well, when she broke out her new Prada shoes (the ones that everyone wants but very few have), she fell into her own trap. It seemed that her every step was snapped by at least three photographers. Don't get me wrong, they weren't interested in her....just the shoes.

On the Street.....Guernica Leather, London

On the Street.....Darkside Of The Street, New York

On the Street.....Manly Men, Florence

On the Street.....Everywhere Flare, NYC, Paris & Milan

On the Street.....Just Off Corso Como, Milan

On the Car....Lapo Elkann, Milan

On the Street.....Park Avenue, New York

On the Street.....Together, Paris & New York

On the Street....Checks & Stripes, Florence

UPDATE - Before Winter Is Over, Try Tweed & Denim

On the Street....rue Saint-Honoré, Paris

I love the colors - Red, Purple, Forest Green.

Looks like this make all black seem so boring.