DSQUARED2 Mummia sandals, $1650

dsquared Mummia sandals, $1650, originally uploaded by retrogemkitty7.

Sometimes I think "new" fashion has lost its edge forever & everything I like is so retro, I might as well just buy the (usually cheaper) vintage version. Then someone proves me wrong. This time, it's DSQUARED2. A friend posted these on fashionism today & my jaw dropped. These babies won't be to everyone's taste, but they are very much to mine.

What? Ms. girly-retro herself likes spinal-cord-heeled shoes called Mummia? Okay, perhaps I have a bit of goth-kid left in me, or I want to channel Lady Gaga, or I just love beautiful, insanely high heels with a sense of humor. Wit is another thing I find lacking in many new designs, but DSQUARED2 has supplied it in ample quantity here. Other bone-heeled shoes in their fall collection have names like Frank N Furter & Rif Raf. Not all of the styles work IMO; the Mummias are definitely my faves, but I'm just thrilled that someone out there is making stuff like this. I can see a couple of my online friends rocking them with avant-garde dresses (perhaps by Comme des Garcons or Helmut Lang?) I'd pair them with a very simple dress in black or blood red; perhaps a full-skirted, rather innocent number, perhaps the tightest sheath I can find. Either way, at $1650, these lovelies are, alas, unlikely to find their way into my closet any time soon. That's a lot of bones. Sorry, couldn't resist!

Portion Control Fail Waiting to Happen

Portion Control Fail Waiting to Happen, originally uploaded by retrogemkitty7.

One of the best things about living in a metropolitan area is the variety of food that's available, not just in terms of restaurants & farmer's markets, but also in grocery stores. The Baltimore-Washington area is very culturally diverse &, as such, there are all manner of specialty grocers here. Looking for an Afro-Caribbean food store? Kosher? Indian? Halal? Latin American? Asian? You probably won't have any trouble finding those. If only there was a Scandinavian food store in which I could purchase lefse, but I digress.

This afternoon, I needed a few ingredients for an Asian cabbage salad, & even though mainstream grocers in these parts tend to carry such items, I decided it would be far more fun to venture over to Asia Food on York Road. I picked up the necessary items, then wandered around the store for a bit, enjoying both the central air conditioning, which our house lacks, & all of the delicious-looking food for sale. Spring rolls... gyoza... steamed buns... I wanted to fill my cart, especially with frozen items. Since our freezer is about the size of a shoebox, I went for a jar of kimchi, which can be kept in the fridge, and this little bag of goodies.

I told myself I'd only eat a few. Ha. They're spicy, they're crunchy, they're salty, & they contain seaweed. These little guys were almost gone by the time I got home! Fortunately, the entire bag only had 240 calories, less than many candy bars, & they were well worth eating a smaller dinner. I'll just make sure I have a seaweed-loving friend around to share the next bag.

Getting a dressing down

Getting a dressing down, originally uploaded by retrogemkitty7.

Assuming you would wear this skirt, where would you wear it? The office? The beach? The symphony? A restaurant where dinner for two runs at least $150? Sadly, it seems many people these days would answer "all of the above". "Casual Friday" has become "Casual Everyday", or, for some folks, "Nearly Naked Everyday". Is it time to bring back dress codes? I say yes.

Old-fashioned? Bourgeois? Downright fascist? Perhaps I am, but I am also sick & tired of going to special events or high-end restaurants & seeing denim everywhere. I don't wear jeans often, it's true. The only t-shirts I wear as non-exercise attire have no writing on them & are so sleek that they could pass for leotards. I am also a theater person & a fashion addict. I know not everyone approaches clothes the way I do - as costume, something that's tremendous fun & a creative outlet. Many people have to deal with rigid dress codes in the workplace & just don't want to be bothered with such things on their personal time. I've heard all of this before & I do sympathize, but I don't understand thinking that the same clothes you'd don to cut the grass are fine for an evening on the town.

I am a regular poster on fashionism, a site that is obviously frequented by people who think & care about clothes more than the general population. Over the years, there have been numerous threads about the way people dress to go out these days, with many members saying they deplore seeing people in jeans & such at "special" events, others saying they think it's fine & do it themselves, & others wondering why anyone cares. Once, I even started a thread in which I stated that I'd like to get a group of people in tuxes & gowns to go out to a sporting event, & one member got so upset you'd think I'd insulted her personally, which wasn't my intention at all. My point was this: if it's okay to show up at the opera in denim, why not go to a baseball game in a ballgown & your best bling? To my mind, both outfits would look equally ridiculous, given their settings, yet one is now acceptable, one is not. I would not, & do not, comment if I see someone dressed far more casually than myself when we are out, yet many people do not do me the same courtesy.

I'm not suggesting we return to the days when "well-bred" women couldn't leave the house without a girdle, hose, gloves, full makeup, beauty-parlor hair, & a hat. Okay, I'm getting into hats lately, but I don't want them to be mandatory. I also don't think men should be required to wear a suit & tie at all times. It's well over 90 degrees & humid here today - there are times when certain kinds of clothing are just impractical! I just wish special occasions were a little more... special than they've become, at least from a sartorial standpoint. Dress up in your own, highly personal way, as my rocker-chic friend recently did at a wedding: LBD, black sequined beret, & killer jewelry.

It seems there is strong support for my view in the fashion industry. Okay, I exaggerate. There's one article that I know of & it's in the July issue of Vogue. According to Sally Singer, dressing down is dead & Balmain's $1,624 t-shirt was the final nail in the coffin. Later in the same issue, there's a photo shoot featuring Ewan MacGregor & Natalia Vodianova as a beautifully turned-out"Mad Men"-era couple. Will chic suddenly become "cool" for those of us who probably won't spend $1,624 on tees in an entire lifetime, much less in one shot? Will it once again be unseemly to show up at the office in flip-flops? At the very least, will those of us who enjoy dressing up (some of whom currently don't because they get too much grief if they do) feel a little less pressure not to do so? Time will tell. For the moment, thank you, Ms. Singer

Honfest, 6-13-2010

Honfest, 6-13-2010, originally uploaded by retrogemkitty7.

Whew... I think I've finally recovered from last weekend! Two good friends got married on Saturday & the event was a wedding with a capital W. The ceremony was beautiful, both visually & in terms of the words that were spoken & the music that was sung. It didn't hurt that the choir loft held a truly amazing organist & singers, & there was no shortage of good voices among the congregation, either. The reception, held in a historic hotel that now houses condos, shops, & one of our favorite watering holes, was equally lovely. I did give J a couple of looks because he sneaked off to the bar to check the World Cup score a bit too often for my taste, but he wasn't the only one & he made up for it by taking me for several spins around the dance floor later.

The weekend's festivities didn't end there, however. On Sunday, we braved the steam bath that Baltimore can be any time between May & October to attend the Honfest, a street fair held annually in the city's Hampden neighborhood. We'd never been, even though that area is home to a number of stores & restaurants we frequent. The event is incredibly kitschy, all about celebrating Baltimore "hons" - working-class women with big beehive hairdos, cat-eyed glasses, & over-the-top wardrobes. I'm all about retro, but perhaps I'd harbored a fear that Honfest would be a disappointment, attended by the sort of people who think it's a "cute" event but disparage the city otherwise. Based on what we saw on Sunday, however, I was very wrong. Suburbanites & city dwellers of all races, ages & "types" - longtime Hampden residents, hipsters, families, couples, students, you name it - mingled happily. Given the weather, perhaps I should say we melted happily. There were booths offering all manner of old-school local delicacies (Ostrowski's sausages & The Laughing Crab's fried rockfish sandwiches, to name just two) and trendier fare (cupcakes) as well. I did a bit of vintage shopping & snagged a darling Monet charm bracelet for $18, a true score. We also stopped by local jewelry designer Martha Rotten's booth, which was fabulous, although she wasn't there at the time. Martha, if you're reading this, I still want to meet you! When we were about to keel over from the heat, we made our exit & attended our friend's son's high school graduation party in the suburbs, where things were only slightly less steamy.

Speaking of steamy, we loved the costume the stilt walker in this picture in this picture is wearing, & we found out she was handing out business cards for a local... toy store. It's called Sugar. Welcome to Baltimore, Hon.

Delfina Delettrez

Delfina Delettrez Fendi, originally uploaded by retrogemkitty7.

My name is Altocat & I am a blingaholic. I have loved jewelry since childhood & I was always begging my mother to let me wear her 50's rhinestone pieces, or, failing that, for money to buy others' old costume sparklers at garage sales. In those days (the mid-late 1970's) no one in the small-town midwest wore such things any more & I could pick up fabulous, dangly earrings & dramatic bracelets that would now fetch good money at an antiques show for a quarter, sometimes less. Sigh.

Once you're hooked on jewelry, it's pretty much impossible to stop loving the stuff, & my inner magpie is still alive & well. To this day, I wear tons of vintage pieces, from costume to fine. Actually, when we were dating, I told Mr. Altocat that I wasn't obsessed with stone size, but if he proposed, he'd better do so with a vintage ring in some form of white metal or the deal was off. He came up with a 1940's platinum & diamond ring (okay, I found it while shopping alone, but he loved the design & agreed to it) so I kept him.

I will freely admit to being a total design snob about new jewelry. Most of the "fine" pieces in my/our price range are utterly boring. I did succumb to the Tiffany key pendant trend this spring, but only after I found a very large sterling one that looks like it could be an actual house key. There is some fun, playful work being done in costume jewelry these days, however, even that tends to be too trend-conscious & imitative for me to plunk down my credit card unless it's by Kenneth Jay Lane or Lulu Guinness. When it comes to accessories, I'm not one to play it safe - I like big, odd-looking pieces, or smaller ones that you look at more closely & exclaim "That's a spider! Eeeew!"

Which brings me to this picture of Delfina Delettrez, heiress, member of the famed Fendi fashion family, & a truly brilliant jewelry designer in her own right. Mr. Altocat & I discovered her jewelry a while ago on a trip to South Beach & now it seems her work is in every fashion magazine I pick up. We wandered into Alchemist, a high-end shop on Lincoln Road, while killing time on our last day in town, & I admired some of the dresses they had for sale, but almost immediately headed over to the jewelry case. Nearly every piece was by Ms. Delettrez & I swooned over her sterling & enamel floral ring. made a bit memento-mori-ish by the inclusion of a tiny skull in the design, her flapper-length strand of cultured pearls spiked with a sterling silver fingertip every so often (the nails are all different colors & can be repainted if the owner is bored with her necklace's manicure) & the piece in this picture, a spectacular sterling silver bracelet in the shape of a spider. Upon opening the spider's back in locket fashion - well, perhaps in poison ring fashion - you discover that she is pregnant; her belly is loaded with cultured pearl "eggs". I tried the bracelet on & wore it around the shop for a while as we chatted with the sales associates, who couldn't have been nicer & admired my antique angel skin coral & diamond ring, an auction find - actually, an amazing score - from a decade ago. Alas, wonderful as they are, most of Delettrez' designs are way out of our price range at this time. The "Black Widow" bracelet pictured retails for $3800. I did manage to find a few of her pieces on Opening Ceremony's website for $190-470, but they don't pack quite the punch that this arachnid delivers.

Ever the bargain-huntress, I recently spotted Martha Rotten's pieces in a local store & they do have a similar creepy-but-very-well-made feel. Skulls, bugs, & eerie baby doll faces abound in Ms. Rotten's work, & prices start at around $38. If you don't live in Baltimore, you can view her work at http://martharotten.com/MarthaRotten/

Prince in a scene from "Purple Rain"

Prince in a scene from "Purple Rain", originally uploaded by retrogemkitty7.

Ever watch a movie you haven't seen in over two decades & realize you still remember it almost word for word, shot for shot? That's what happened when my husband & I watched "Purple Rain" on DVD last Saturday night. I found myself singing along, too, until my husband, J, asked me to stop because he'd never seen the film & was hearing many of the songs for the first time.

I can't tell you how many times I saw this film when it first came out in 1984. I'm sure I caught it in the theater at least twice, & on cable... who knows? As for the soundtrack album, of course I had it, plus "Ice Cream Castle" by The Time & Apollonia 6's "Sex Shooter". I am a huge Prince fan, especially of his mid-80's work; J is not. I did convince J to accompany me to one of Prince's live shows a few years ago, which helped him to appreciate the star's music more; it's just not his first-choice sound. When I asked him if we could watch "Purple Rain" last Saturday night, he wasn't terribly enthusiastic at first, but I asked him to please give it a chance, & he agreed. After a while, he found himself getting caught up in the film's story as well as the music. I was in heaven from beginning to end.

What is it about "Purple Rain"? Why does this film still resonate so with me (& with many others, judging from the comments on my Facebook page when I mentioned we'd watched it?) As one who wanted to move to the big city & make it as a performer, the story is the stuff of my youthful dreams, & the costumes are pure mid-80's ruffles-&-hair-gel-for-both-genders fabulous. The acting is fine, especially for a rock-&-roll picture, & the music... well, it's simply the best soundtrack ever. Ever! (Okay, the music in "Pulp Fiction" is great, too, but for me, nothing can top "Purple Rain".)

If it sounds like I'm on a rosy nostalgia trip here, maybe I am, but for many of us growing up in the upper midwest at that time, "Purple Rain" was more than a movie. It was a shout-out to the world that the part of America we lived in wasn't all bland, all the time. Same goes for the "Minneapolis Sound" - the music of Prince, The Time, Apollonia 6, Sheila E, Jimmy Jam, & others. Finally, people could see that Minnesota was capable of producing performers with a lot more edge than Garrison Keillor & that not everyone in that area speaks with a "Fargo" accent.

26 years after "Purple Rain" was released, I am living in an urban area, making a living in the arts, though alas, not as a rock star. I did manage to go dancing at First Avenue once in the early 90's (to a DJ playing the hot techno hits of the day) & had a blast. Two years ago, J & I drove past the club when we were in town for a family reunion, & my heart fluttered a little, just as it would have back in 1984. I still listen to Prince's music on a regular basis, hope to catch his live show again someday, & managed to see The Time perform at Artscape a couple of years ago. They sounded great, Morris Day was handsome as ever, & there was Jerome, holding his mirror. For that evening, all that had changed was that we were in Baltimore, many miles from First Avenue & Lake Minnetonka.

Life can change in an instant

Life can change in an instant, originally uploaded by retrogemkitty7.

I usually write about fashion & lifestyle topics here, but April 15th is a significant day in our house, & not just because taxes are due. Seven years ago today, I nearly lost my husband. Actually, he was my fiancee at the time; our wedding was set for October 31, 2003.

What happened? J is an architect & was standing on a 16-foot ladder, trying to get onto the roof of a building that his firm was renovating. It was unusually hot that day & the roof hatch was stuck; as he gave the hatch an especially hard push, the ladder came out from under him. Fortunately, someone was with him & called 911 immediately. The stairs were narrow & rickety, so the fire department had to remove him from the building via a fourth-floor window - downtown, at rush hour, no less. The ambulance immediately took him to Shock Trauma, not far from the site of the accident.

I knew nothing of this for several hours. When I got home from work, there were phone messages from his office & mine; people had been frantically trying to get a hold of me. I finally spoke with his firm's secretary & was told he'd been in an accident on the job site. The fact that he'd been taken to Shock Trauma made me (literally) sick to my stomach. As the name implies, you don't end up there unless you're in pretty bad shape. Because we weren't married yet, it took me a couple of hours to get the hospital's authorization to drive downtown & see J. All that time, I had no idea what had happened, only that it was very serious.

When I arrived at the hospital, J was on a gurney, naked except for a sheet. His clothes had been cut off at the accident scene. (Ever the smart alec, he informed me of his clothesless state with a smirk.) I stayed with him into the wee hours of the morning, only leaving the room when the hospital staff needed to x-ray him or (ugh) put his right leg in traction. The results of the x-rays were frightening: he'd fractured his right shoulder & broken the right side of his pelvis in five places, including the hip socket. J is a marathon runner who has qualified for Boston twice. When I asked one of the doctors when he'd be able to run again, she replied, "Run? Let's work on walking first." Hardly what I wanted to hear, and I was glad J was on so much morphine that he missed that comment. Eventually, we decided it was best for me to go home and get some sleep (something which was not going to come that night without the aid of a cocktail!)

J spent a week in the hospital. He could have been operated on within a day or two, but the hospital wanted the best orthopaedic surgeon on their staff to do the surgery, so we had to wait untill the weekend. It was a very long week. I paid no attention to visiting hours, staying far beyond those times, & am sure I made a few enemies on the hospital staff, but I was too worried about J to care. I brought him balloons, food, a plant, an Easter basket, magazines - anything I thought might cheer him up. At first, he was on too much morphine to read; he'd even nod off in the middle of a sentence, sleep for a few minutes, & pick up the conversation where he'd left off, providing both of us with some much-needed comic relief.

Finally, the surgery was done; Humpty Dumpty had been put back together again. The breaks had been very clean & J was in great health before the fall, so his prognosis was as good as it could be. A physical therapist began teaching him to bounce up & down a flight of stairs on his backside - an important skill, since he wouldn't be able to walk for 10 weeks - & he was sent home. Despite the stair-bouncing lessons, he spent his first few weeks at home in a rented hospital bed that took up a substantial portion of our living room. He received in-home physical therapy, spent a lot of time watching movies, & even did some work from home (talk about an odd reason to be telecommuting!) Luckily, he had excellent Worker's Compensation coverage through his firm; otherwise, this medical adventure would have cost us a quarter of a million dollars.

J was a model patient & made an amazing recovery. Our wedding went on as scheduled - we even performed in a play together the month before the Big Day - & he wasn't up to much running on our honeymoon, but snorkeling was fine. He was able to resume running marathons in 2004 & has since been in a few "ultra-running" events as well, including a 50-miler to celebrate his 50th birthday in 2008. The doctors warned him that he may eventually develop arthritis in his right hip, but so far, he's had no sign of that.

Awful as this whole ordeal was for us, we were very lucky. J could have been paralyzed or even killed in such a serious fall. As I mentioned before, we were well-insured, so we were spared the financial ruin that can accompany a medical catastrophe. We also had amazing support from our families, friends, & co-workers, for which we're grateful every day, not just on April 15th.

Oh, & I caught J on a stepladder in the kitchen this morning, which gave us both a good laugh. He has to climb a larger ladder in the show he's currently rehearsing. As long as there's no roof hatch involved, I guess I can deal with that... but I'll try not to think about it.