I Pretend to be Bill Cunningham

      With the exception of the style on view at various art gallery openings (which I have mentioned in other posts) the fashion in my German city tends to be about as outlandish as that of Topeka or St. Louis.  There are many beautiful women, to be sure, but they tend to be dressed up for work at the office, or dressed up for work at the bakery, or dressed up in their casual mom clothes.  There are plenty of nice department stores and boutiques, but this is hardly a fashion capital, and muted colors are all the muted rage.
       So, when I do see a real fashionista out and about, I try to take a photograph of her with my cell phone.  I was waiting for the subway, when I saw this woman and her absolutely amazing orange shoes.  Are they not the most fantastic shoes you have ever seen?  Don't get me wrong, I know they probably are painful enough to be a way of making witches confess in the fifteenth-century - but seriously!  They just look fantastic.

        My mind was blown once again, when I saw this amazing older lady outside the ballet.  (I whited out her eyes to be polite)  I didn't get a great picture, my phone camera is kind of crappy - but isn't this woman outstanding?  She has a black and white toile-de-joy jacket with hot pink pumps, a hot pink purse, and a giant hot pink flower pin.  She was a work of art!  The huge hair helps too. 
       I also get sad when I see horrible, idiotically expensive dresses in store windows.  Let me show you this one.  Look at this ridiculous thing.  It is some sort of horrible fabric with an awful pastoral scene, just in case you wanted to look like a really ugly landscape painting.  The worst part is how the sleeves are actually longer than the dress.  This looks like something that somebody who didn't quite make it to the final 3 on American Idol would wear to go to a beach party and be found in the next morning, having died in a lawn chair of a cocaine overdose.  And it was $149 Euros - about $190 in USD.  I kid you not.  Almost $200 to be able to be dragged to rehab in a polyester mural of a meadow.  You would would have some serious nose-wiping sleeves, though, if it came to that.
      Nevertheless, I think that monstrosity might not be as absolutely awful as this horrible white dress I saw.  It has a deep V neck that's so deep and that the V goes all the way to the navel.  Who ever thought that was a good idea?  Fine - Jennifer Lopez wore that style once a decade ago, and it was all exciting, and everybody took her picture, and that's grand and all - but this is a wedding dress.  In a wedding dress shop window.  Who would wear that?  Is that something you wear to the church in front of your grandmother?  What is the market of people who want to show their navels on their wedding day, live in smaller German cities, and are in the market for a dress that costs more than most people's rent?  Is that more than .003% of a person? 
       As the great street fashion photographer Bill Cunningham says, "He who seeks beauty, will find it."  I agree, Bill, but as I say, "She who seeks ridiculously overpriced hideous dresses in store windows will blog about them."