Saturday, May 29, 2010

The Row

Once I heard someone say in reference to the Olsen's clothing line, The Row,  "Those girls bug the shit out of me but their clothes are perfect."

That always stuck in my head because A. It was funny, but B. I thought, what a compliment that actually is.

And actually, how true it is. Not the 'bug the shit out of me' part, because I actually really like them. More so after working with them and finding them to be almost abnormally normal. I worked with Ludivine Poiblanc and she styled them for a portrait for Katie Grand's LOVE magazine. Up until the shoot I had all these expectations of how they would be. How far removed from society, quiet, secretive, and cocooned into a little world of their own in which no one else existed. But as it turned out, they were cool as cucumber. They chatted openly about where they live, designers they like, life at the office (where they spend most of their time apparently), Whole Foods, the decision to move back in together because they spent all of their time together anyways... They were so open and normal, I was almost shocked.

That gave way for me to take a truly objective look at the work they were doing at The Row without any of that 'another celebrity trying to be a designer' bias I had previously. I always thought they had great style, even though I probably would never have said it outloud, but as we all know, great style does not a designer make. So over the past few months when working on jobs, I slowly started to include The Row in my requests, what I knew they were great at was basic simple tees and tanks, just the extra bits and bobs you always end up needing on a shoot. But then when working on ad jobs that required me to do pulls at Barney's, I kept coming across their full line. And the verdict? Well, as it turns out, aformentioned dude was right, the clothes are Perfect. Yes capital P.

Its sort of like... and this might sound really bad, but its a really big compliment actually... The Row is the American Apparel of high end fashion. Ok so before you go jumping to all sorts of conclusions about what that means, and recalling not so good images of polyester jumpsuits into your head, let me just explain what I mean. The Row is a one stop shop for any and every basic wardrobe element you could possibly want. The perfect blazer, the perfect little black dress...leather skirt, trench coat, leather jacket, soft beautiful tshirts and tanks, wool wrap coats for winter, silk slip dresses and to top it all off, almost everything comes in my personal favorite color palette of black, navy, grey, and white.

Now lets be honest, I was slightly underwhelmed when I saw the show on style.com for FW10, there wasn't really a WOW moment for me in it all. BUT! We must keep in mind that this is not the place you go for bells, whistles, and woohoo, this is the place you go for key wardrobe pieces in quality fabrics that you are going to keep forever, and thatg you will likey be wearing over or under your woohoo pieces for seasons to come, even as your favorite woohoo pieces are going out of style. These are clothes that don't go out of style, timeless, classic, and chic... for two girls who worship the ground Francisco Costa walks on I think its very safe to say Costa would be proud.

Some looks from fw10

No comments:

Post a Comment