This week, BurdaStyle gets literate.

ICON DOROTHY PARKER

There are scenes, and then there are scenes. What CBGBs was to punk rock, the Algonquin Round Table symbolizes to modern American journalism. Night after night, The New Yorker’s original leading lights gathered there, trading boozy bon mots and poison barbs across the table as they plotted the agenda for urbane conversation in the Prohibition era. There’s not a writer I know who hasn’t at some point wished to have been alive to make that party. Dorothy Parker was the sharpest wit of the bunch, an acidic advance of the Carrie Bradshaw type, perpetually single, perpetually out, perpetually enmeshed in dubious affairs and perpetually turned-out in Poiret-age get-ups that look oh-so of-the-moment right now.

Of course, for Parker it wasn’t all Manolo Blahniks and cosmo brunches. Forever in love with her married colleague and best friend, Robert Benchley, her razored, verses are painfully sad, the work of a woman trying her damnedest to jibe away the heartache. She was mean, she was a drunk, she threatened suicide all the time and she (annoyingly, I imagine) carried her little pooch around with her everywhere, kind of like that other famous Dorothy. But if Parker was a bitter pill, she was also a keen observer of life’s mundane absurdities, and of her own petulance, and above all, she was funny. A single epigram of hers traverses about as much emotional territory as all six seasons of “Sex And The City” put together. There’s no point in paraphrasing when the work is at hand; here’s to Dorothy, the Wizard of blasé.

Experience

Some men break your heart in two, Some men fawn and flatter, Some men never look at you; And that clears up the matter.

• Dorothy Parker

This week, BurdaStyle gets literate.

BEAUTY ME & THE BEAN

About a month ago, well into the winter blahs, my best friend convinced me that what I really needed to do to shake up my hermit routine was, no, not a vacation, no, not a winning lottery stub, and no, not a haircut, which is what I’d been promoting as my ticket to happiness. What I needed was a detox. She’d do it with me! It’d be great! Like rehab, only different! The detox concept was reasonable, in theory: We’d melt away the winter weight and sweep out the mental cobwebs, all in one ten-day fell swoop. And so, dutifully, I followed her to the organic store and stocked up on lemons, maple syrup and cayenne pepper. We were planning to fast. Or, OK, she was planning to fast, and I was testing the waters of the idea of fasting, a concept that did not, frankly, hold much appeal. I invest a lot of psychological significance in my ability to eat a chocolate chip cookie when I feel like eating one; I often wonder how people with gluten allergies navigate a world without baked goods.

It wasn’t the chocolate chip cookie thing that did me in, though. Day One was easy enough, a blizzardy Sunday with fresh Netflix waiting to be watched. The maple syrup/lemon/cayenne pepper concoction was nasty, but I drank a bunch of water and on balance, I went through the day feeling like I was nursing a hangover I didn’t actually have. Then Monday arrived. I called my BFF at work: “Am I allowed to have coffee?” No, she replied, in a tone, I might add, that was just this side of cranky. (That’s the thing about fasting.)

And thus my detox ended. I have gone days without coffee before, on beach vacations and when I have the flu, but I figure we’re all allowed one addiction and for me, caffeine is it. Not just caffeine; coffee caffeine. I take mine black, no sugar, the better to savor the deep, rotund bitterness of a good dark roast. I like the taste, and functionally, I just can’t do without the stuff. I’ve been drinking coffee since high school, and I became a confirmed junkie the day I installed a coffeemaker in my college dorm room. Every time I brew a pot, the smell is redolent to me of scholarship, of late nights awake over Bronte or Hegel or Tolstoy, of a mind awake with ideas. People have suggested I switch to Yerba Mate; same punch, they assure me, but no jitters. To them I say, I’d slather myself in cof, Coee if I could.

Well, now I can. Juara’s Invigorating Coffee Scrub is made from real Arabica beans, and it smells like it, and thus I get a head start on my morning fix as I exfoliate in the shower. I’d heard before that caffeinated skincare has positive effects on circulation, helping to eliminate bloat, but I’d also heard that drinking coffee ultimately increases bloat through some counterintuitive working of the diuretic process. After a week with my coffee scrub, I see no difference, bloat-wise. But my skin is glossy and drum-tight, and I’m putting faith in Juara’s claims that coffee has passed clinical muster as an extra-strength antioxidant. Sort of makes me feel like I get to have my detox, and drink it, too.

This week, BurdaStyle gets literate.

FASHION DESIGNER: BON&GING

“Intellectual fashion” used to strike me as an oxymoron. Fashion was something for girls who spent an hour feathering their bangs in the morning. Intellect was possessed by women who had better things to do with their time. I’ve been reeducated, of course: Elsa Schiaparelli was as Dada as Breton and Man Ray; Geoffrey Beene was a mathematician, playing elegant games with the geometry of cut. More recently, designers such as Rei Kawabuko , Hussein Chalayan and Miuccia Prada have proved themselves theory nerds of the highest order. And any great leader of a fashion house must possess a rigorous intelligence. But, in thinking about brainiac designers, and how the idioms of their clothes are like and unlike a writer’s voice, it struck me that all these designers specialize in pyrotechnics, large statements, fashion on an epic scale. The collections they write may be as different as the novels of Dickens, Dostoevsky, Flaubert and Faulkner. But the ideas behind the fashion are just as sprawling.

Where, I wondered, were the fashion designers making collections slender, gemlike, clean and perfected, like the novels I love by writers like Muriel Spark, Italo Calvino, Georges Simenon, Fleur Jaeggy? I found my answer in new line Bon&Ging. Modest in tone, yet punctuated by singular details, the impeccably tailored clothes in the Spring ’07 collection designed by L.A.-based sisters Nanette and Grace Sullano references “The Lover,” by Margeurite Duras. The connection is mostly coincidental: As Grace notes, it was the movie adaptation that provided the inspiration for the clothes.

“We loved the idea that Jane March’s whole wardrobe could fit into one suitcase,” Grace recalls. “And then the other inspirations for this season were a bolt of crinkly linen, and the roses in my garden.”

Previous Bon&Ging collections have shown a similar discipline of influence and method. The Sullano sisters’ debut, shown at GenArt’s Fresh Faces show in 2005, pared down Navajo looks to a modern minimum, and last season’s noir-inspired collection performed the same trick on classic wool trousers and boxy jackets.

“Our aesthetic is a combination of bold and understated, organic and architectural – similar to our individual personalities,” Grace explains. “Nanette is a wardrobe stylist and I’m a designer with an architectural background. But what she share,” she goes on, “is an appreciation for good design for the everyday.”

Only three seasons old, Bon&Ging, is currently sold at Louis Boston, Los Angeles’s Creatures of Comfort, and at the Bon&Ging storefront in L.A.’s Silverlake. But the Sullano sisters have epic ambitions for their line, albeit ones they plan to implement one measured step at a time.

“We’d like to do accessories, and menswear, and maybe eventually a line for the home,” Grace says. “But our plan is to expand slowly. And whatever we do, our goal has always been to create a reasonably priced line without sacrificing the intent of the design.

This week, BurdaStyle gets literate.

PLAYLIST THEN WE CAME TO THE END

I make it a rule not to read “it” books. You know the kind of books I mean: The Corrections, Everything is Illuminated, that Marisha Pessl book, “Calamity Physics” or whatever. I’m not saying these books are bad. I’m not saying they’re good. I’m saying I haven’t read them. And yet: Due to the inundation of book reviews, author interviews and gossipy items about new townhouses and film options, and also due to the everywhere, empty, cocktail party jowling about these novels, I could probably give you a pretty accurate plot synopsis of each of them. If absolutely necessary, I could it while drunk, as part of some pretentiously malfeasant cop’s roadside sobriety test. “Walk the line,” I imagine him saying, “and tell me what happens in Ecuador.” “In Indecision?” I reply, slurring a little on the double “in.” “Of course in Indecision!” he answers, giving me a tap with his nightstick. Then he twirls his mustache.

There probably aren’t any cops pulling people over and asking them about literature. Consequently, all the information about these books that I’ve stowed away despite myself, that data is just sitting there, inert, taking up space that would be better leased by memories of my grandparents or, for that matter, details from fiction I have in fact read. When I do get around to reading The Corrections, say, or Motherless Brooklyn, or The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, I might like them, I might even love them, I might go so far as to invest in the whole Franzen or Lethem or Chabon catalogue. It’s just that I don’t like being told how to feel about a book before I’ve gotten a chance to decide how I feel for myself. I’d rather come around to books on my own time.

Which is why I’m not going to be reading Then We Came To The End. The heat is on Joshua Ferris’s novel in a big way, and before it was even published, I knew Then We Came To The End was set in Chicago, told in the rarely-used second person voice, and concerned layoff attrition in the dotcom era. I also knew that several reviewers had hailed this debut fiction as the best thing since, well, the last best thing. One day, years from now, maybe I’ll agree.

Playlist’s best of the rest, Book Club edition:

1. Peruse: Shop America: Mid-Century Storefront Design. Most of my extended family lives in Detroit, and one of my favorite pastimes when I visit is driving around the shabbier, left-behind precincts of town. Certain streets are like a time capsule of the ‘50s and early ‘60s, the era when the Motor City was in its heyday. Likewise, Taschen’s Shop America shines a light onto a more optimistic, more elegant era of retail design. It’s worth a look.

2. Read: Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. Though I picked up Brian Wansink’s book because I hoped it would teach me to snack less, Mindless Eating is a much more intriguing read than your average diet guide. Based on a few sly behavioral experiments, Wansink’s book is really about is the way we think about food, or, as a matter of fact, the ways we don’t think about food, and eat instead.

3. Re-Read: Bridge To Terabithia. I hadn’t thought about Bridge To Terabithia in years, when the trailer for the recent film adaptation reminded me how much I’d loved the novel as a kid. If you loved it, too, or even if you’ve never read Katharine Paterson’s brief, heartbreaking novel, Bridge To Terabithia more than stands up to grown-up inspection.

This week, BurdaStyle gets literate.

TREND ROAD SCHOLAR

The fall shows boasted more than a few tips of the mortarboard to academic dress: Tweeds and plaid, car coats, preppy jackets and Fair Isle sweaters. But one of the best tricks stolen from the ivory tower came in the form of the Oxford. The adapted brogue made an appearance at several shows, with two of the strongest versions showing up on the Marc Jacobs and Philip Lim runways. At Marc, the Oxford came out with a squared-off toe, a tall stack heel, and a zippered instep; the look was downtown bookish. Lim’s Oxford was sexier, black, olive and camel-colored suede slingbacks perched on a sharp stilettos, with some patent leather shine for added tone-on-tone impact. They’re too cool for school.

STEP TO IT

Here, in a nutshell, is the history of my career as a dancer. When I was four, I told my mom I wanted to be a ballerina. She signed me up for a class, bought me a leotard, a pair of Capezios, and a pink tutu. Returning to the studio after the very first class, the instructor informed her that I was a mite “energetic” for ballet, i.e., that I’d flipped the bird to the barre and had spent the previous hour twirling around the room to my own whimsical choreo. Mom rescued her deposit at the studio by enrolling me in baton twirling, and the pink tutu went on to fame, in our house, as the centerpiece of a chase game called “The Lady with the Pink Hair!!!”

That’s it. I’ve never been a dancer. All my elementary school friends took tap, or jazz, or clogging classes; I read, played soccer, and got my performance kicks by staging elaborate solo shows of “West Side Story” in our living room. By the time we moved to Florida, in junior high, the die was cast: I was destined to be a girl who hovered on a knife’s edge between tomboy and nerd. In other words, I was destined to be indie. I discovered the college radio station in eighth grade and never looked back. Later on in high school, when my more exuberant friends would drag me out to raves, or to disco nights at clubs downtown where we’d nervously flash our fake IDs, I’d stick to the sidelines, hungry to return to the New Wave mopefest nightly parlayed by the DJs at Rollins College. I recently rediscovered a mix tape I made in that era, titled “Summer of Suck.” Anyone who found that tape in a pile at Goodwill would have to assume that its maker was male, gay and in the closet. Lots of Morrissey. Lots of Cure.

Looking back, I see my indie rock fetish for what it was: A posture, a way of faking cool because I wasn’t. I’d hug the corners at the popular kid parties, rolling my eyes at the crowd, and saving my best sarcastic jibes for Ashley, the truly cool girl who was my best friend in high school and the person who got me into those parties in the first place. Don’t get me wrong: I loved the music. I’m fanatical about music to this day, and there are plenty of songs I had on old mix tapes that have lasted long enough in my love to show up on my iPod. And my high school aloofness saved me from a lot of pain, trashy trouble less reticent girls got into, drug problems and bad grades and one night stands and other rep-destroying dramas. But as much as my indie girl persona was a positive creation, an identity I adopted out of a genuine passion for the rock, it was also a negative one, a way of hiding. I lived in constant fear of making a fool of myself. The mannerisms of indie rock, its seen-it-all, know-it-all, over-it-all froideur, provided me with a perfect excuse to stay out of sight in public.

And never was the distance between my heart and my head greater than when it came to dancing. The me that had spun around ballet class lived on inside, and though I always wanted to dance, I never let myself. People might see me; I might be no good; I might be mocked. The dance floor looked like a gantlet. That was then. Now, dancing is back, and even the indie kids are learning to get down on it, courtesy of bands with guitars that like pogoing beats and twisting up loops on their laptops. Judging by the fervor for rave redux coming out of London, the ass-shaking wave hasn’t even begun to crest. Thank god: The hipsters need dancing. There’s a fascism of cool plaguing New York City right now, a set of spoken and unspoken rules about what to wear, what to listen to, what to watch and, crucially, what to think, that is as uptight in its way as the guidelines for membership at any blueblood country club. I visit Williamsburg, home base for this crowd, and the whole scene seems overwhelmed by a kind of palpable nervousness, everything bathed in irony, everyone afraid to care.

It’s past time to get over this attitude. The nice thing about growing up is that eventually, ideally, you surrender the adolescent fear that people might see you for who you are. One day, you look in the mirror, and you think it might be OK to stop being cool and stand out from the crowd. You kiss your boyfriend in public, cry when life moves you, and you head out onto the dance floor, and you dance.

This week, BurdaStyle gets its groove on.

I’ve not bought any new manufactured clothes for over a year now. It all started last year when I challenged myself to go without for 6 months. I’d heard about a woman that was wearing the same brown dress every day for a whole year and this got me thinking about my own wardrobe. I’ve never really enjoyed clothes shopping, when I needed something I would go to one shop and hopefully buy what I needed in there. I wasn’t prepared to wear the same dress for a year but I as I’d been learning to sew I figured I could make my own. I mentioned my idea on my blog and asked if anyone would be crazy enough to join me on my challenge and to my surprise there were many. So, from this personal challenge the Wardrobe Refashion blog was born. My sewing skills have improved dramatically, I save more money and I’m recycling old clothes into new.
So, now I’m here to let you know about using recycled fabrics to sew your own clothes. This week I made Franzi 9302 using 2 old skirts I bought for 50c each at the thrift store. You will find my step by step instructions here: https://www.burdastyle.com/howto/show/48

A new vest, costing no more than a dollar and my time, would you have known it is made from 2 skirts?

It feels great to know that I’ve saved items of clothing from the landfill and it goes to show that although the clothes you find at the thrift store may not be something you’d wear as they are, they have the potential to become something new. So instead of buying new, why not give refashioning a try? You’ll save money, help the environment, improve your skills and have fantastic new individual clothes to wear and nobody else will have the same!

The BurdaStyle team is very excited to have Nichola posting bi-weekly on BurdaStyle.com! We also really like Nichola's own blog nikkishell.typepad.com as well as the Wardrobe Refashion blog- where you can check out everyone else who pledged not to buy new clothes for the next six months: nikkishell.typepad.com/wardroberefashion

This week, BurdaStyle gets its groove on.

ICON KELLY FROM BREAKIN’

Let me be clear on this, right up front: Breakin’ is an awful movie. The script is feloniously bad: There are plot holes you could drive an aircraft carrier through, the dialogue is like nails on a chalkboard, and despite some hamfisted attempts at sketching depths, the characters are so cartoonish they make Bugs Bunny seem nuanced in comparison. The directing is worse; the acting, worst of all. But the dancing! Watching Breakin’ again recently, I found myself transported back to a time when hip-hop was new, when graffiti art and beatboxing and scratching DJs and sneaker freakism all felt revolutionary and exciting, dispatch from the cultural underground. How far we’ve come.

For those of you who haven’t seen Breakin’, our proxy for the film’s journey into the demimonde is Kelly, played by Lucinda Dickey. Kelly is a sweet, lily-white aspiring dancer, and when we meet her, she’s working up a sweat in a hardcore modern dance class, led by the nefarious mentor dude who soon puts the moves on her. For some reason - car trouble or something - her friend from class, a lispy black guy, winds up taking her down to Venice Beach, where she makes the acquaintance of super-breakers Turbo and Ozone. Ozone is smitten with Kelly; Kelly is smitten with the pop & lock dance moves going down on the boardwalk. Having served his dramatic purpose, the lispy black friend disappears from the movie, and here on out, Turbo and Ozone play Beatrice to Kelly’s Dante, guiding her into the dark heart of the hip-hop party scene. Well, sort of: They do go to a club, because Turbo and Ozone got served, and Ice-T is DJing, incredibly, but the place is, shall we say, suspiciously well-lit for an off-the-grid happening. Ozone and Turbo lose this round, because their breakdancing rivals have brought along a girl with sweet moves; thus Kelly, alienated from her careerist dancer peers back at the studio, winds up joining Turbo and Ozone’s gang. Needless to say, they go on to glory, and everyone gets what’s coming to them, except for lispy black friend, who has turned to vapor.

This is what I love about Breakin’: I love the leotards, I love the cheesy F/X, I love the fact that Jean-Claude Van Damme has two unrelated cameos, and most of all, I love that this movie is one of those that unironically promotes the idea that - hey! - dancing isn’t about “Swan Lake” or Merce Cunningham or the Juilliard School, it’s about passion, the kind of passion that drives a disabled kid to get down like a champ on the Venice boardwalk. Secondarily, the film is also about winning: Breakin’ is structured around a series of dance-offs, which winds up undermining the whole “dancing = joy” theme to the extent that it’s not merely good and pure-heartedness that carries the day, but practice, innovation and drive. As such, the movie is an evergreen slap-in-the-face to anyone who thinks that there are shortcuts to success. Hip-hop and a capitalism go hand and hand, and that is why Breakin’ is the perfect time-capsule film for the Reagan ‘80s. Plus, you know, the clothes.

This week, BurdaStyle gets its groove on.

BEAUTY REN REVIVO-TONIC

I am the queen of stupid injuries. Other people lay themselves up tackling black diamond ski trails, or training for marathons, or going to surf camp in Costa Rica. Aside from a recurring case of wrist tendonitis due to whacking the ball too hard at tennis, all my serious injuries are ones I have to lie about later. Some highlights:

• Age 12: Demonstrating a schtick I liked to call “whine-aerobics,” I slip on the tile in our kitchen, fracturing and spraining my left ankle, as well as chipping loose some interior bone. Crutches for six weeks, three months in an air cast, physical therapy thereafter. I tell people I fell horseback riding at camp, something that actually happened to my cousin.

• Age 18: My third weekend at college, I am at a soccer team house party, tipsily flirting with the cute senior sweeper on the landing of the stairs; his teammates are bringing out the kicked keg, and I back up a few steps, to give them room… Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk. I re-sprain my left ankle, pull my groin, and jam two fingers on my writing hand trying to catch myself. Inasmuch as this happened in public, there’s really no way to lie about what happened, except to my mom. I tell her I got over-aggressive on a slide tackle at soccer practice.

• Age 23: Sleeping over at my boyfriend’s basement flat in Camden, I have set the alarm extra early, so I can finish memorizing lines for an audition; stumbling out of bed in the dark, my eyes half-shut, I trip over the script I’d left on the floor, and land eye-first on the hard back of his desk chair. Because I am happy to have an eye, after that one, and because this anecdote is so pratfall absurd that everyone assumes my boyfriend hit me, anyway, I tell people what really happened when they ask about my black eye. Except my mom, who is far from London, and whom I never tell at all.

I could go on. The toe I broke having sex in the shower. The cut on my jaw sustained trying to ford a wet snow bank in high heels. The hand slammed in a door as I left a fashion week party. The worst part about these injuries isn’t the pain, which in recent years at least, tends to fall into “cramping my style” rather than writhing and keening territory. The worst part is the sense of remorse, the knowledge that if only I paid more attention, lived with more wisdom, was temperate, I’d be healthy and whole. This remorse comes over me, especially, the morning after a night of dancing. At a friends’ wedding a few months ago, for example, I enjoyed myself so much that by the end of the night, I was convinced my legs were falling off. Hell, I wanted them to fall off: Dragging myself back home, they were nothing but dead weight. I was toast, and the next day, I was still toast.

It’s really unseemly to complain about pain so decadently sourced. At first, I didn’t. I tried to shake off the ache, but just crossing the brief distance from bedroom to bathroom sent my feet into active revolt, and though a cool shower helped, the two-block walk to my brunch date nearly did me in. My parents called, and I couldn’t keep my trap shut: My mom suggested arnica gel; my dad, a veteran of army marches, told me to suck it up. Which is what I did, if the definition of “sucking it up” is broad enough to include a cab ride to a spa for a steam soak, foot massage and pedicure.

It was at the spa, awaiting my appointment, that I stumbled upon Ren’s Revivo-Tonic Cool Comfort Leg and Foot Gel. This was so precisely was the doctor ordered that I bought the stuff on the spot and headed to the dressing room for immediate slather. I’m not saying Ren worked miracles - overexertion is overexertion, and you’re supposed to hurt - but the Tonic did help assuage what was most bothering me at that point, the sense of dull heaviness ass on down. Right away, my muscles tingled with a vigorous minty sensation, the arches of my feet un-tensed, and by the time a new coat of polish was drying on my toenails, the swelling in my legs had visibly improved. I even managed to walk home, and since then, I’ve recommended Revivo-Tonic to all my waitress, bartender and harder-partying friends. They ask me why it works, and all I can do is chalk it up to the same miracle that allows fried muscles to keep on dancing all night in the first place. My credo: Injuries made in ignorance should be healed in ignorance. Which is better than my old credo, act first and lie later.

This week, BurdaStyle gets its groove on.

FASHION DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION

We have entered the age of simultaneity. Once upon a time, not too long ago, in fact, retro looks had their day in the sun and then faded again, replaced by the next old idea newly exhumed from the thrift shops. No more: Looks for spring and fall range across a vast spectrum of inspiration, with the ‘20s, the ‘30s, the ‘40s, the ‘60s, the ‘70s, and pretty much every formerly degraded look from the ‘80s represented, somewhere. The really postmodern thing is go time-traveling in your closet, mixing and matching among the epochs. Straight-up homage would be so…predictable.

Now the ‘90s are coming back, too, a little ahead of schedule but looking on-target nonetheless. Early ‘90s Alaia and Leger have already been making their influence felt on the red carpets and the runways, their body-conscious dressing recalibrated for the millennial era’s skin & bones silhouette. Young English designers such as Christopher Kane are giving the look another update, by looking back to the neon palette of the rave era, and though we’ve seen those electric flashes before, in respects paid to punk and New Wave, the young Brits are painting bright with broader strokes, and their Ecstasy style is of a piece with the hoodies, graphic patterns, baggies tees and techno sportswear being remixed by a host of on-the-cusp designers. Cassette Playa, pictured, is the standard-bearer for the nu-rave scene. Though designer Carri Mundane makes her clothes for men, her “life inside the video game” aesthetic has captured the imagination of plenty of girls, too, among them pop star M.I.A., and Cassette Playa’s neon-splashed boombox and bleeding eyeball tees have been selling out at trend-starting shops like London’s Pineal Eye and Seven New York.

A somewhat more sober reinterpretation of rave could be seen on the Karen Walker Spring ’07 runway. The New Zealand designer, who has a rare knack for giving on-the-pulse looks a ladylike spin, paired her cocoonish, fuschia anorak with a natty gray silk dress, draped a dove-gray blazer over a baggy skirt in blinding yellow, and gave a demure dress an acid flashback by putting fluorescents into its floral print. Brooklyn up-and-comer Sunshine and Shadow, meanwhile, gave her athletic, made-for-moving Spring ’07 collection an African remix, putting abstract, tribal-inspired patterns on hoodie vests and drawstring dresses.

Dance is all over the place in fashion these days. Press inquiries: Melissa Dinan 1.212.219.3305 x224 (Steven Alan)