The Blonds

New York and London Fashion Weeks: It’s Highlights, People!

Gentle reader,

The fashion carousel spins around once again, holding many breathless in anticipation of what will be coming our way for Fall/Winter 2014-2015.  I am not so spellbound this time myself, mostly because I’m too goddamned busy running around trying to sell clothes for this spring and driving back and forth to the Desert building a skin care empire.  It would be remiss of me, though, to ignore the New York and London Fashion Weeks entirely so I’m going to share a couple of the most intriguing moments and be on my goddamned busy way.

Most go-to fashion news sources regularly fail to feature the amusing shows from The Blonds at each NYFW and I’m guessing it may have something to do with the line’s marketability. 

Gucci FW 2012

Just Gowning Around: Dressing for the Holidays 2012

Gentle reader,

I felt a little superficial attending a fashion book party last week while our friends in New York were bailing themselves out of a hurricane only to dig themselves out of a snowstorm a few days later.  If know my New Yorkers, though, they’d all want to know what to wear when the extreme weather conditions subside, so I coaxed my party cohort DJ Martinez into her best Bananarama-circa-1983 look and made the best of it.

We were the first guests to arrive at Melrose Avenue’s BOA Gallery so I got a chance to check out the book and sample the VeeV açai liqueur cocktails before everyone else got there.  The book, Style Protocol by Reinaldo Irizarry, seems to be a good basic men’s guide for dressing.  There are tips on choosing the right shoe, tying the right tie and mastering the choice of shirt for your needs, and I’m sure all of those are helpful.  I’m just not sure it’s anything you couldn’t find during an evening of Google searches and it’s odd that it seemed so basic considering the fact the very charming Reinaldo and his friends showed up to the party in dinner jackets that appeared to be made from various upholstery fabrics.  Hmmm.  But the book is cute and could be a good gift for someone who is challenged in the area of sartorial basics.

Dj Matinez James Tuttle

DJ Martinez and me.

Another area that may be challenging is dressing for those elaborate One-Percent holiday parties now that the Ninety-Nine Percent have triumphed at the polls.  I’m the last to mix politics and fashion but I was taken aback when I saw a couple of my most beloved clients the morning after the elections looking like they were ready to cut a bitch.  I simply reminded myself that I chose to vote for my civil rights while they were voting for their bank accounts so I couldn’t really hold a grudge.  “That’s why we live in a democracy,” I assured them with a smile, and they went on their not-so-merry way.

Burberry Prorsum

Sheer Nerve: London Fashion Week Spring 2013

Gentle reader,

You know, I was trying to watch that English chef with the weirdly large biceps fix up an Italian restaurant in Philly on Restaurant: Impossible the other night but it was hard to pay attention because I was getting all these texts from a kid staking out our front door and asking to kick it on our couch for the night.  Normally, we make our friends quite comfortable here but this guy stayed over one night last week when his apartment was “being fumigated” and after we’d gone to sleep, he drank all our tequila and moved the living room furniture around.  Then he climbed into bed between us and grabbed my dick.  Given that Scott was out of town and I was here alone, there was no way I was having a repeat performance of that shit.

Luckily, I had enough time between texting and wondering if I should call the police to learn that a successful Italian restaurant does not usually have a twenty-five page menu, microwaved pasta and décor that dates from 1984 when the Flashdance soundtrack would’ve been playing in the background.  Remember those leg warmers and torn up sweatshirts?  Wow, that was an era that never really needed to happen!

There were no leg warmers or sweatshirts on display at London Fashion Week for Spring 2013.  There wasn’t room for them with all those stripes that followed us from New York.  First, at Temperley London they formed bands of opaque color on sheer long dresses and full skirts in silhouettes inspired by the Dior New Look.  Later at Paul Smith they appeared horizontally and in varying widths on jackets and pants where there was also a healthy dose of color blocking on maxidresses in dark reds and yellows.  Stripes and color blocking both showed up at Jonathan Saunders’ feminine collection that ran the gamut of color.

Temperley London

Temperley London

Let Them Eat Cake

TUTTLE MODE | THE COLLECTIONS

 by James Tuttle (@TuttleMode)

Gentle Reader,

If you were anywhere near the California desert this Presidents’ Day weekend, you may have noticed the atmosphere being a little more fierce and fabulous than usual.  Yes, gay polo players and their friends from around the globe converged at Indio’s luxurious Empire Polo Club for the Second Annual U.S. Gay Polo Tournament.

Since there are no good shirtless pics of Nacho Figueras, here’s Alex by Thomas Synnamon.

We first met up on Friday to stick-and-ball the horses we’d be playing and discuss strategy with the pro players who had been assigned to each team.  My team’s pro, Jorge Vasquez from Kentucky’s Lexington Polo Club, suggested that we keep it clean and follow behind each other to pick up the ball if our teammates couldn’t get a good shot.  It sounds like common sense but, since polo is basically hockey on horseback, you’d be shocked how many times it doesn’t work out like that.

See Shells

TUTTLE MODE | REVIEW

by James Tuttle

Gentle reader,

As Scott and I are shown to our seats at this intimate venue, Barre at Vermont in the Los Feliz neighborhood of L.A. to see “The Shells Show,” we remark at how adorable the place is and how we’ve always seemed to miss seeing our friend Jai Rodriguez in his cabaret performances here.  The vaulted ceilings and modernist light fixtures take a back seat to the assembling crowd, which is good looking and pretty homo-heavy.

Shells gives new meaning to open mic.

And don’t get me started on the hot waiters!  I try not to look too much because I’m not the type to gawk, especially since we are on our date night before Scott goes off for three weeks on a movie in Fort Lauderdale.  It’s really not fair when they keep coming right up to your table, though.  I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ve seen our tall, cute waiter Bryce without his clothes on but I can’t find a reason why that would be.  This kind of thing happens frequently in L.A.