Tag: photos

Runway Monday: Can’t We All Just Get Along (PR 9:7)

On the most recent episode of Lifetime’s Project Runway, the designers were divided into teams for a three-part challenge. They had to design their own textiles, come up with a theme for a runway show featuring five looks, and create a video to provide a backdrop while their designs were modeled. They also got to meet Betsey Johnson, whose light spirit and sense of fun were apparently lost on all of them. But this blog is about Becks, not those in-fighting, bullying crybabies.

So: Design my own textile… Why do I feel that I’ve done this before? Here, or maybe here, or perhaps here? I’m always game to do it again, however, even though I don’t have all that technological assistance the show’s designers get. I just have paint and unbleached muslin to create something for my theme, which is “Garden Party.”

My first look, modeled by Cassidy, uses my fabric as the yoke of her baby doll dress.


I made her a simple necklace.


The button on the back of the yoke repeats her shoe color.


My second model, Morgan, wears pants made from my fabric, along with a print shirt.


Her gold necklace belonged to my mother.


Her gold belt is paired with gold shoes.


The side panels of DJ’s tea-length dress use my fabric.


You might recognize the necklace from last year’s final collection.


Mattel’s teal belt is paired with platform heels to give her legs more length with the mid-calf hemline.


Simone’s long-waisted bodice is separated from her dress’s floor-length skirt with a band of multicolored stones.


I love these colors with her eyes and hair.


The dress is simple enough for a casual outdoor setting, but a bit more formal for an evening event.


Esperanza models my final look, separates made completely from the textile I designed.


The top has a single button at the collar and dolman sleeves that can be pushed above the elbow or dropped to three-quarter length.


The short, round skirt is as playful as the look from head–with her bright hat–to toe, with her high-heeled Mary Jane shoes.


The full collection.

ETA 2022: The video I made as part of the challenge was deleted by the site host, and I no longer have my own copy.


See you next time on the runway!

Previously this season:
9:6 The Art of the Matter
9:5 Off to the Track
9:4 All About Nina
9:3 Go Big Or Go Home
9:2 My Pet Project
9:1 Come As You Are

End of an era

My mother was an avid magazine reader. I can remember from the time I was a child what seemed to be a steady flow from the mailbox to her lap, as she curled up in her favorite chair, cigarettes and ashtray at hand, and depending on the time of day, her cup of black coffee, iced tea (sweetened), Diet Rite, Coke, Tab, or Diet Coke on the table next to her. The magazines: Time, Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, Saturday Evening Post, Look, Life, Ladies’ Home Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, Good Housekeeping, McCall’s, Redbook, TV Guide, Southern Living. No matter where we lived, those magazines with their articles and fiction, recipes and photos, were a constant. But since the times were a’changin’ as fast as our addresses, she also read Mad, Rolling Stone, Ms., and Mother Jones. I don’t think there was any magazine she wouldn’t read, and even after she lived on a fixed income, she kept up a few subscriptions.


She’s holding Joe Willie the cat here, but next to the end table, you can see her bucket o’ magazines. If your eyes are really sharp, you can also see her lit cigarette. She’s in her early forties in this photo.

By the time she died in 2008, those magazines were coming to her at my address.


Even though I wasn’t as absorbed by them as I apparently was in infancy, I would flip through them and then find homes for them: waiting rooms in clinics and doctors’ offices, Lynne’s break room at work, online friends who might enjoy them. Finally the subscriptions began to run out, and today I got this with the October issue of the lone remaining subscription:

The slogan for Ladies’ Home Journal is “Never underestimate the power of a woman.” I concur, but I would add, “Never underestimate the power of a woman who reads.” A lifetime of books and magazines kept a woman who had to drop out of school in eighth grade to take care of sick family members–whose only work outside the home was as a hospital, Red Cross, and museum volunteer–smart, savvy, aware, and connected to generations of men and women, many of whom thought she was pretty damn special. When I saw my nephew recently, he recounted a story of how her “boys” (a group of gay men who befriended her in her seventies) were going to throw a Wizard of Oz party, at which she would go in character as Dorothy (which was, after all, her name). They were able to find everything for her costume except the ruby slippers–so essential that without them, the party was canceled.

No matter; she pretty much thought all of life was her party, and everything she read was her guidebook for making it more interesting.