Prada

On Sunday, March 30, in the shoe department on the fifth floor of Bergdorf Goodman, ladies of varying age were sitting with box after box piled before them and male shopping companions collapsed at their sides, wearing the typical lobotomized expressions of men forced to undertake a woman’s expedition. A small crowd had gathered near a display of Christian Louboutin pumps made of cork, while others longingly pawed at the mass of Manolo Blahniks. But at the other end of the floor, another shoe stood tall and alone, crying out for the attention it would be denied by most, if not all, shoppers: a Marni wedge with a five-inch black platform and thick straps of brown and chartreuse patent calf leather, a cabbage in a rose bed, one ugly heel.  read more »

I saw the dress first in a magazine advertisement, on a model named Sasha Pivovarova, who was seated with three other pale young women. The clothes they were wearing, I would come to learn, came from the Prada Resort collection for spring-summer 2008.

Even though the way Ms. Pivovarova was sitting, slightly slouched in a way that obscured some of the dress’s finer details, I could tell that it would look great on me. It was strapless (good if one is busty), with a corseted bodice and billows and billows of skirt that give the hipless hips and the already-hipped (ahem) some cover. Black, with pink and white leaves all over. I looked at the picture and pictured myself in the dress on a ship, wind in my face, even though the only time I’ve ever been sailing I was acting as a deckhand, polishing brass fixtures.  read more »