Here are the looks that I did like from the collection. Just try and appreciate them without feelings of hunger and sadness overwhelming you. And pretend that the blue blazer actual fits the model. It's tough, but try.
To be honest, I'm not too fond of the entire collection as a whole. Style.com quoted Betsey Johnson as saying "This is the grandma show of all time!" She wasn't kidding... They also described the collection's theme as "pirates-meets-Peter Pan". It looked more to me like grannies playing dress up in Charlie Chaplin's closet. The hats just didn't make sense with the silhouettes.
What's funny about Betsey Johnson (no, not her hair, or cartwheeling during the fashion show finales, or her makeup, no not any of that), is that she is so completely random with every show and with her personality in general, that she can pretty much get away with anything. She could tell everyone that pickle perfume is the new big thing and everyone would just say "haha, oh that's just Betsey, doing her thing" and all of her followers would be smelling like pickles.
When I was a college Freshman, she was my idol. I did a hundred presentations on her and my first collection had plaid bubble skirts and crazy color combinations, à la Betsey. I wore flourescent pink fishnets to class and knew if I was an expert on anything, it was an expert on designing like her. I thought that the closest way to learn more about her empire, was to work at the Betsey Johnson store at the Dallas Galleria Mall. It wasn't NYC or LA, but it was about 45 minutes from my dorm room and it offered a discount. My first and only day working there consisted of being given a floral, spaghetti strap sample dress to borrow for the day, seeing as how my non-Betsey outfit was just not acceptable, being scolded by an employee for being kind to "her" customers, being told to wear lipstick and to never have chipped nail polish, and being told that I would be given 7 hours a week at $8 an hour and was to only wear the newest Betsey Johnson items that the Store Managers hadn't already claimed. Not only was this position not cost-efficient, but my love for the designer was quickly diminishing and that was depressing in itself.
Forward ten years and I've been hearing a lot lately about Betsey Johnson leg warmers. Being out of the Betsey loop, I had no idea what they were talking about. Thanks to the wonders of google, now I know what the hip OKC ladies were talking about:
FredFlare , Ebay, and Amazon are all sold out. So if you're jumping on the bandwagon a little late, like me, you should check out Collected Thread on NW 16th Street in the Plaza District.
The shop's owner, Lindsay, will be your crafty little personal stylist and you'll have Betsey Johnson-inspired, locally-made leg warmers in no time!
Happy Leg-Warming,
Kelli
2 comments:
Having lived through leg warmers the first time, I simply cannot bring myself to wear them, but those are SO cute, I may reconsider. Of course, I would have to try making them myself first! : ) I'm off to eat some lovely beef stroganoff-suck on that models!!!
eating a lovely sandwich with a pickle while browsing through runway pics often helps me cope with the models anorexia!
hehe...
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