Azzedine Alaïa told me that Audibet ...

October 16, 2008, 3:03 pm
Digging in the Dirt
By Cathy Horyn
The Dries Van Noten show,The Dries Van Noten show. (Nathalie Lagneau/Catwalking/Getty Images)
Bill Cunningham and Jean-Luce Huré.The Hussein Chalayan show. (Jean-Luce Huré for The New York Times)

Now and then I happen to find myself on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at the hour when the children of the neighborhood are going to school and the younger ones are going to Central Park, a westward push of strollers and mothers and nannies. It’s another world, at least at that hour. The door men are friendly, the sidewalks washed clean, the lavender and orange mums thick in the window boxes. And so I found myself on 95th Street and Madison the other morning. I stopped at Yura for a cup of coffee and then headed toward Fifth Avenue with the idea that I’d walk a ways before catching the No. 4 bus for the drab hum of Midtown.

As I walked along, I heard the efficient, no-nonsense cheerfulness of a British nanny with two little girls, about ages four and five. I turned and watched them. The nanny, pushing a stroller while the girls walked beside it, suddenly whipped out a one-gallon freezer bag.

“Here’s a bag,” she said to the older girl, “if you want to collect some leaves and worms.”

An uncomplicated but serious business, collecting worms.

Maybe I’ll think about that next Tuesday, when I return to the park for Chanel’s party to open Zaha Hadid’s traveling handbag pavilion. Hadid and Karl Lagerfeld are expected to be there, as well as (I imagine) a small mob. Well, it is the fashion party season. Hermès is having a dinner for Katie Holmes, in honor of her Broadway debut, on Monday, and Thursday is the Fashion Group’s Night of Stars blowout.

Funny: the conversation here on the blog about shoes, Liz T and Ferragamo. I recall the Ferragamo collections in the late ’90s that Marc Audibet did, and the incredible shoes. Though, it seemed to me, we never saw them later in the stores. Some of you may recall that Audibet did Vionnet for about two seconds last year, before he quit (he told me) over a money dispute with the brand’s owner. Around the time his Vionnet dresses landed in stores, I ran into a European editor at Corso Como 10 and she noted how modern and chic they looked but didn’t know that Audibet had done them. She was surprised, in fact. Both Miuccia Prada (for whom Audibet worked in the ’90s) and Azzedine Alaïa told me that Audibet was really the only person who could properly do Vionnet. But of course there were other issues with the brand’s revival and the thing seemed to founder.

I saw some great-looking sandals at Roger Vivier, flats with triangular pieces (in snakeskin or metallic leather) at the top of the foot and sort of winking up the ankles. They reminded me of those finger toys that kids make from construction paper, like little kites. I’ll post an image on the blog when it comes in from Vivier. Speaking of Liz, they’re sort of a modified version of last summer’s Roman sandals.

Thanks, Kim, for the comments on today’s summary. It’s funny how a lot of the purely romantic clothes, while pretty, seemed swept to the side by bold graphics and digital prints (and, to be sure, by the economic mess). Nostalgia just seems deadly at the moment. Graphic patterns, graphic silhouettes, graphically interesting materials, like the silver metal lattice shoes at YSL and the sharp cuts of certain jackets—these things look modern without screaming it. That’s why I particularly liked the Mumford quote in reference to Balenciaga. “You first”: it’s a consideration that can strengthen a modernist design. Anyway, there are a lot of reasons right now to look back to the 1920s and ’30s.