Paris Fashion Week
Issue 16 of Novembre is now available to order from KD Presse. Make sure to select the Natasha Stagg and Guillaume Sbalchiero cover :)
Holiday magazine issue 394, the New York issue, launches today. I’m in a portfolio photographed by Mario Sorrenti and styled by Camilla Nickerson (!).
Below are the show notes I wrote for the All-In SS25 show.
“So, Tess, a few ground rules,” says Katherine, an associate in Mergers and Acquisitions played by Sigourney Weaver to her new secretary, played by Melanie Griffith. “The way I look at it, you are my link to the outside world. People’s impression of me starts with you.
“You’re tough when it’s warranted, accommodating when you can be, you’re accurate, you’re punctual, and you never make a promise you can’t keep. I’m never on another line, I’m in a meeting. I consider us a team, Tess, and as such we have a uniform: simple, elegant, impeccable.”
So begins the attempt at transformation made by a Staten Island-accented working woman with hair so bleached and teased it is crumpling an edge she may have at the office (Working Girl, directed by Mike Nichols, 1988).
“You might want to rethink the jewelry,” warns Katherine, whose apartment Tess eventually enters to feed plants and check messages. This is where the magic happens, the outer-borough 30-year-old assumes, mimicking the shorter vowels recorded on Katherine’s answering machine.
A quote attributed to Coco Chanel echoes in her head as she wipes dark eyeshadow from her face, takes off a gold bangle, samples Katherine’s perfume, mounts a taupe powder-coated treadmill: “Dress shabbily, they notice the dress; dress impeccably, they notice the woman.”
But even after a haircut, she can’t ditch the spray and pins completely; the jewelry shrinks, but enameled earrings and pearl pendants drip from Tess’s viasage at all times. Layers of leather, tulle, stone-washed denim, ruched satin, hosiery, shoulder-padded wool, and French-cuffed cotton compete for space on a body in transition.
Dress for the job you want, they say, but what we want, we now know, is a story that moves. We want the before and the after—excitingly foreshadowed. We want youthful irreverence informing progress. Where is she going, if not always up? Behind all these textures, a set of lingerie purchased by a cheating boyfriend hides (lacy in the wrong places, accentuating the woman but not her mind).
Dress shabbily, and maybe the dress will distract from a sneaky move to make that deal from the front desk, not the corner office. Dress impeccably and before you know it, the only way is down and out. Just ask Katherine once Tess takes her spot.
“You can bend the rules plenty when you get upstairs, but not while you’re trying to get there,” concludes Tess, at the end of the movie, in jeans and an oversized sweater. “And if you’re someone like me, you can’t get there without bending the rules.”