SPRING FASHION SPECIAL
Many thanks for Mimi Avins’ article (“The Southern California Closet Clean-Out,” Feb. 23), a much-needed reminder that the way women often are perceived is according to their dress. It is my belief that many women feel in need of an inordinate amount of attention, and they dress to get it. Too often, what such fashion flashers really want is assurance that they are OK people. But instead, they send out messages of wild exotica that result in disastrous matchups.
This need for attention begins at puberty with pressure to dress like the rest or be abandoned by the in crowd. Girls of 13 and 14 tend to wear too much makeup, spend an outrageous amount of money on clothes and accessories and are constantly consoling themselves about not being understood and finding Mr. Sexy.
It seems that only after years of terrible relationships do we women finally accept ourselves and realize that we don’t need a shock wardrobe to get the attention of a nice person.
Barbara Hart
Hemet
*
I enjoyed Avins’ witty, observant, and thoroughly insightful article so much that I read it twice. Most important, what was welcome was the absence of any mean or sarcastic tone. What a pleasure to read such quality writing on a lazy Sunday.
Pauline Adamek
Woodland Hills
*
Following Avins’ sensible article on ditching a sleazy wardrobe, what are we treated to? More than 10 pages full of what’s too sheer, too sexy, too lame and too vapid. Most of the models, including the poor thing on the cover, appear to be in need of a meal, not to mention a dress that will hold up on its own.
Where are normal clothes for normal people, clothes that don’t look like a gossamer drape that a 5-foot, 9-inch, 110-pound model would wear to a camera shoot; clothes that don’t cost a bloody fortune, unlike Jil Sander’s $2,340 pantsuit with its $260 Lycra top (a $260 Lycra top?), and clothes that don’t look like something your mother wore in the ‘60s?
At 49, I’m one of the new “older” women. We’re smarter, happier, healthier and more hip than we’ve ever been. We’re holding our careers steady in one hand and pumping iron with the other. We’ve balanced the caustic heat of feminist activism with a considered dose of feminine froth, and we’re smart enough to acknowledge that neither we nor the undersides of our arms will ever look 25 again.
How loud do we have to scream? My wardrobe needs considerable updating, but my wallet will stay shut until I see something worthy of my hard-earned cash.
Marie Martin
Sherman Oaks
*
Reading the Sunday magazine is fun and it’s always a good way to escape the often dreary and depressing news in the rest of the paper.
I particularly enjoyed seeing the beautiful clothes, and I also appreciated the short biographies of the four Los Angeles women, all interior designers and architects. I’m certain that they’ve undergone many years of education and training and worked hard to get where they are, and I certainly don’t begrudge them their beautiful clothes. And I realize that such clothes are part of the fantasy for me. I, like many other women in the Los Angeles area, can only dream of ever owning clothes like these.
But you don’t have to be an architect or interior designer to be fashionable. I am a teacher who earns less than $30,000 a year, and somehow I manage to avoid looking frumpy.
How about one day doing another few pages of fashion and showing us how we can look terrific without spending $2,000 on a dress. Are you up to the challenge?
Shannon Barber
Lancaster
*
How many of the magazine’s readers can afford or are willing to pay the ridiculously high prices for the items you feature, clothes that can be worn for so few occasions?
And if your idea is to show the proletariat the styles they should attempt to copy at lower prices, why are so many of your photographs blurred and out of focus, with the clothes obscured by filters, the photo angles or the poses of the models? If the photographers are trying to win awards for artistry, they should get out of the business of fashion photography and concentrate on their art.
Rosanne H. Erhardt
Northridge
*
Regarding photographer Diego Uchitel’s fashion layouts: While the Patricia Arquette stuff was crystal-clear and provocative, the “Romancing the Dress” section did absolutely nothing for me (blurry, insulting, dumb). Is it just that the clothes are bad, is this camera style just a buzz-thang in the world of photography, or is it that Uchitel gets inspired or uninspired depending on his models? I mean, if I want blurry, I can take off my specs.
I understand experimentation and see it often in fashion-zines. But the great designer ads are always super-sharp and incredibly well-defined in their texture, color and cut. If Uchitel is more interested in his camera work, his pages should be labeled photo layouts and not called fashion spreads.
I like the clothes. I want to see the clothes.
Jill Klein
