caroline mair

LLD: the Little Lace Dress

Portrait of a Lace Dress

The new version of the lace dress is anything but innocent. A Caribbean take on the lace dress. 

or

The Lace Dress: deconstructed

A little girly, somewhat dolly, very sexy, never granny, and always, always fun. Caroline Mair discusses her love of the lace dress.

photos by: Caroline Mair

model: Amy Pierre

Dainty and sensuous, lace has a visceral pull on the feminine psyche for years. We like it so much, it deserved three titles. Love it or Hate it with capital letters, wear it with irony or with a wholesome dose of flair, the bottom line is - you can’t ignore the lace factor. And yes, you’re right. Lady Lace is not new. She was all the rage in 2011, but she still shows no sign of stopping in 2012. 

My favourite way to wear lace? I Love, Love, Love a white lace dress. So girly and quaint and innocent. It’s the best version of the LWD for me (read: Little White Dress). My favourite look of 2010 was what I called the “little girl tough look”. White lace and biker boots and attitude, oh my! Just enough lace, but with an edge to cut the sweetness. And it is still current today. The new lace dress pulls out what is tough and (the word is outdated, but there’s no other way to say it) fierce about woman in 2011.

But now Lady Lace has changed. She has grown up. Evolved into something far more mature and subtle. The most elegant of all lace trends right now is the adult version of lace. No little-girl-lost here. Today’s modern lace look is all about suggestion rather than see-through-ness, more office-appropriateness slash meet-the-parents chic. A delicate lace blouse with a cardigan, or a white lace shift dress (with slip) under a Nero-collar office blazer. There are a myriad of possibilities. You can still be sexy at work. The key is demure, yet responsible.

Lace doesn’t need to be demure or restrained, however, as is shown from a gem of a dress featured in the avant garde Hitting the Spot Lace collection by Trinidadian Robert Young’s The Cloth back in 2009. This piece was ahead of its time, I reckon, looking at trends now. It is a truly Caribbean take on lace, with bold tropical stripes, accentuated by a vivid slash of cool green English lace.

Be bold with lace, don’t be shy. It requires a hell of lot of courage, but it definitely makes a statement. Don’t let this season’s austere reserve intimidate you. Still play and dabble, by all means. Tough it out with yo’ biker boots if you want to, Mama. Wear a sheer lace dress without a slip or leggings, if you feel confident enough. Just make sure a) you wear enough underwear/tank top coverage to be decent, b) don’t wear it around your granny, and c) don’t wear it in church with aforementioned granny, for her sake, please. And yours as well, I assure you.

Because fashion ultimately isn’t about a trend, but rather following your muse and creating your own unique style. The Trendies just help you along, shake it up, make it fresh, and encourage you not to fall into the dreaded style rut. Because, goodness forbid, we Hate that. With a capital H.

My favourite thing about Caribbean fashion is that we can pick and choose what we like from temperate season fashion and tailor it to our Dry Season/Rainy Season 2012 wardrobe. I love dressing for the tropics. So I felt it incumbent upon myself to talk about my insane love of dresses. Tropical dresses. Lace dresses. Oooooh, Lace dresses. With a capital L.

 For more information, and to see the article, go to TeL Magazine:

 http://www.theexclusivelook.com/iss5.html

Vulgar Fraction: Coalition

by CAROLINE MAIR

Port of Spain Carnival 2011, 2012

CAROLINE MAIR takes you into the alternate underbelly of Carnival with Robert Young and Lupe Leonard unveiling their Vulgar Fraction Coalition. 

Photographs by Arnaldo James

“A coalition as fragile as a paper doily,” says Robert Young. “It needs to treated well so that no tugging it will rip apart.” Given his profession of one of Trinidad’s top designers, Young is a man who knows a thing or two about the integrity of fabric. It is art as social commentary in its finest, succinct and pithy and resonant even without words.

Vulgar Fraction, the independent Mas’ band led by designer Robert Young of The Cloth, launched its Carnival 2011 presentation, Coalition, at Alice Yard on Tuesday 25 January. Coalition is a collaboration between Young and designer Lupe Leonard, a graduate of the prestigious Design School at Parsons. Leonard has been producing children’s Mas’ for approximately five years, while Young has maintained an almost fifteen-year presence “on the road” for Carnival.

The designers explain their concept: “Coalition represents a pact or treaty among individuals or groups, within which they co-operate in joint action. While each individual serves his own interest at times, they have all come together for a common cause. However, since the alliance may have been formed as a matter of convenience, it may last only temporarily. A coalition thus differs from a more formal covenant. It is possibly described as a joining of ‘factions’, usually those with overlapping interests rather than opposing.”

The Alice Yard launch included music by 3canal, Moyenne, and North West Laventille Cultural Movement. Tillah the Sound Boi Killer kept it authentic to the spirit of Jouvert, with Shadow and pan tunes through the evening. No ‘jump and wave’ here. No bikinis or beads. This was dutty ‘mas, welcoming in the nocturnal, more underground element of Carnival, just as the tempo of fetes and all-inclusives started to build and heat up in tandem around the country.

The costumes were unnerving, almost haunting – rags and lace and long folds of cloth sewn together. Eyes peering through lace masks covering faces.

“I love that the faces were covered,” says Tillah. “The doily motif was interesting. And the mask being all about coalition, representing the fragility – very interesting. The event itself was small, but it was a good vibe. It’s really good to see events in Alice Yard continuing. It’s an important space for artists. An artist community, almost.”

And where better to hold such an event than in an artistic communal space? Young is emphatic in his passion to involve the community in the artistic process of creating ‘mas. Vulgar Fraction will provide potential masqueraders with a variety of design components they can use to decorate their costumes themselves — a practice similar to elements of the sailor mas tradition.

 “Vulgar Fraction has consistently advocated a return to true creativity, art and design for masqueraders,” says Young. “But the process becomes even more interesting when each person gets involved in designing and building part of their own costume themselves.”

For further information,  go to TeL Magazine:

http://www.theexclusivelook.com/vulgarfraction.html 

Dreaming in Colour

(The designer in her studio in Connecticut. Photo by Jade Gedeon)

CAROLINE MAIR takes you inside the intricate, private, bejewelled world of designer JADE GEDEON

I would like to peer inside Jade Gedeon’s head, just for one day. It is a world of whimsy and fantasy, with delicate greened and bronze foliage, fantastic sculptural insects that dreamily whir and crawl and float through the air, and an eternal sense of youth and freshness and wonder that is simply delightful.

“I knew from the start I wanted to be an artist or designer,” the Connecticut-based jewellery designer says simply. “It is such an integral part of who I am that I can’t even imagine working in an alternate area.”

Gedeon found her calling in design early. She did Art and Design, as well as business for her A and O Level examinations at St. Joseph’s Convent, Port of Spain. […]

During university, at the prestigious Pratt Institute in New York where she pursued a Bachelor degree in Industrial Design (BID), she pursued painting (“hello fine art!” she remarks at this point, revealing her tongue-cheek humour), and did occasional murals and decorating for some “fancy clients in posh suburbs.” She also studied furniture design as part of her BID in Copenhagen at the Danish Design School. Never one to stay still, she also conducted freelance work for several clients who ranged from small start-ups to large corporations, in everything from illustration to toy to retail merchandising and store design. […]

“I took a jewellery metalworking class as a little side dish while studying industrial design and enjoyed it immensely. One of my best friends encouraged me to start a little internet business with her whilst we were in school (hello side income!) peddling our various pieces and it grew and grew… and grew from there.” […]

The company started to make waves, and Gedeon’s pieces started to appear in magazines and on design websites. Once the attention “started to snowball”, in Gedeon’s words, there was no turning back. What was once a tiny side business to create “side income” for a student grew into a fully fledged company, We Dream in Colour.

(Works in progress. Photo by Jade Gedeon)

To date, the company has appeared, or was featured in high profile magazines such as Marie Claire, In Style, Real Simple, Self, Body + Soul, Rockpile, US Weekly, Aventura, and Fitness, just to name a few. It is the darling of fashion and design websites like Daily Candy, Design*Sponge, Decor 8, dooce, Zoozoom, Outblush, HeySusy, Daily Outfitting, FashionTribes, Sub-Studio Design blog, and Miss Malaprop. It was featured on Living Green with Sara Snow on CNN in October 2008. The Naiad Mini earrings were even worn by Isabel Lucas in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in the summer of 2009. […]

The North American retailer Urban Outfitters soon heard of We Dream in Colour and contacted Gedeon. Their products were soon being sold in about 34 locations across the United States, including Australian, Canada, Korea, Japan, and Latvia. 

“Would you believe that [Urban Outfitters] managed to find us?” A note of charmingly humble incredulity lingers on Jade’s tone.  “A common thread is that the buyers are looking for smaller boutique lines to add depth to their selection and we catch their eye.”

But despite Gedeon’s humility, there is well-deserved pride in We Dream in Colour’s quality and brand. “I do think it is crucial that we’re able to fortify the buyer’s interest with self-confidence in our product. We know how much we put into our work and how well it has consistently performed.”

(The work desk. Photo by Jade Gedeon)

“Making beautiful things” is the driving force behind We Dream in Colour. […] The name evokes the importance of beauty, colour, whimsy and fancy that exists in Gedeon’s inner world, that she feels compelled to share with the world. Much of this beauty stems from Jade’s strong connection with her childhood in Trinidad. She spent the first few years of her life in the US, ones which she can’t particularly remember, but she was really in constant motion back and forth between the US and Trinidad to visit Gedeon’s maternal family. They moved to Trinidad permanently when Gedeon was around the age of six.

“I am always dashing for a chance to come home when I can,” admits Gedeon. “Perhaps spending my childhood here has cemented some sort of magnetism to Trinidad. There is just so much depth culturally and physically. The architecture, the people, the food, the language, the light, the forests, the beaches… I could go on and on. It’s unreal. I love it all. […]

This love of nature can be seen in her jewellery, particularly in her line of botanical pieces. She developed a particular finish to capture the green of nature, and the verdigris patina has become a signature of sorts, almost iconic of Gedeon’s verdant pieces.

“I played with a lot of different finishes,” she says. “There is a little magic in the fact that you can make a number of one piece and each will take on its own subtle character. No two are the same. And the verdigris patina stuck when I combined it with the botanical pieces. It was so beautifully obvious. Green is such a great calming and grounding colour. I liked the idea that while I was hustling around New York City I could still have a little snippet of something lush on me. A little talisman of sorts (and easier than walking around with a potted plant).”

(Athena earrings. Photo by Jade Gedeon)

Gedeon waxes almost lyrical about the joy of her patina: “I love a good patina and any hint of history and wear. It adds depth to something that can be fairly frivolous. There are so many things today that are produced to be used for a small moment and then discarded. It’s such a shame. I adore the idea that something can be crafted with care, loved by its owner and continue to grow more beautiful with age and handling and even have a history beyond one person. I’ve got a great collection of antique jewellery pieces that I’ve slowly built up that serve as an amazing muse.” […]

Sometimes you encounter a young designer that just makes people sit up and take notice. And it is hard not to take notice of Gedeon and We Dream in Colour. We just hope she can continue to make beautiful things, in her words.

[…]

For the full story on Jade Gedeon, go to Dreaming in Colour by Caroline Mair, page 30 on the TeL Magazine website:  http://www.telmagazine.com/ 

See Jade Gedeon’s exquisite work at http://www.wedreamincolour.com/