In the spirit of my previous Vogue cover art reviews, I will be calling out just a few of the artistic principles employed here:
- Color choice: With a persona as glamorous as this, what other choice is there but red? Note that the red here is the “little to the dark, without going burgundy” I mentioned in my recent post Steps to Successfully Wearing Red & Black, a wonderful red for those with deeper coloring.
- Visual weight: Clearly the dress is of a light-weight fabric. I am confident that if it were not so, we would see more of the actress’s hair. Adjusting the volume of one’s hair is the primary way of adapting to fabric weight.
- Taut vs drapy: Generally speaking, taut fabrics are congruent with the hardness of visible bone structure, drapy with soft roundedness. Pictured is an example of a slender person of soft roundness. Agreed?
Read more on this issue at the Runway Scoop. Unlike Maria Palma, who identifies with Angelina Jolie, I feel no connection to her at all. She’s just an extraordinarily pretty face.
BTW, you could buy me a subscription to Vogue
Good analysis of the cover. I really like it, Angelina looks soft and beautiful. And I like the one with her and Brad in the desert with the crazy wind and sand around them.
Thanks.
She certainly does look soft and beautiful. Makes me want to wear red, too. But I probably won’t.
I had never thought about relating the volume of hair to the weight of the fabric! I’m amazed.
I definitely have been wanting to wear sleeker clothes but my hair evolves from close to the head toward longer and fuller – until I get the itch to cut it short again. If I continue to wear thinner weight clothes but have longer hair, then it would look better pulled back and so, what’s the point.
Dilemma when someone wears lightweight clothing but heavier weight coat?
Can I ask a question about balance in design here? I have a silky dark navy raincoat with white pin dots. I like the contradiction between the feminine fabric and the full-out trench detailing. It isn’t my best look – the fullness, the belted trench, the epaulets and belted sleeves, the full cape back bodice, the half cape front bodice, the semi-dolman sleeves – but I like it.
Here’s what I’m wrestling with. It was an 80’s style with the rounded extended shoulder pads. I replaced these with smaller and somewhat crisper. The former length balanced all this “design.” But it was ankle-length on me – I’m 5 feet with that all around hourglass.
My first thought was that I had to be careful how much I shortened it because of needing to balance the top fullness. So I have it around mid-calf, perhaps a bit higher. Looking at runway pictures I see many similar full cut trenches that are knee length and even above the knee. It gives a very wide poofy effect even on the slender models.
What do you think?
Vildy, I’m so glad you liked the post, I was specifically thinking about your request for more on texture when I wrote it. 🙂
It also makes a difference the colors of both the hair and the fabric, light in color being lighter weight. I wonder if that is part of why I can never really do a full tweed coat? As much as I think they are beautiful, they are just too heavy and textured for me. With light-weight hair, I suppose the best one could do for a winter coat would be to choose a very smooth, fine fabric, maybe a cashmere blend, in a light color, if you dare.
My off-the-cuff reaction to the thought of shortening the trench (which sounds DARLING) is not above the knee. But I will come back with a more thorough answer “after I finish my coffee”.
I do miss my ’80s trench.
A tweed coat for you?
We were downtown in Philadelphia strolling and window shopping and stopped to eat some Five Guys greasy, spicy takeout french fries in front of the store that was next to a clothing store. A tweed coat caught my eye.
Very spare in detailing, collarless, a slender wrap, a modified aline skirt, knee length. The fabric was a brown and offwhite tweed but smooth and fine. The tweed was therefore midway between a pattern and a full nubbly tweed.
There was a street person standing in front of the shop and he noticed me peering at the coat and said, “You’re looking at that brown coat, aren’t you? Everybody stops to admire that. I think it’s the belt, though.” 🙂
The effect of the coat was less “brown” than a frosted brown because of the tweed tones. Not a heavy brown. The belt was a wide brown patent leather – really the only decoration on the coat. And in one way it “made” the coat but if you imagined it sans belt, it was still beautiful and sophisticated.
You could wear a tweed coat that looked like this.
How can I want a coat after just a description?
Yes, I could wear a tweed coat like that. Please send a link, if you ever find one.
I’ve never seen anything like it. It was not meant to be very warm – a la the sweet young thing style where coats are very close to the body and not any thicker than suit jackets.
Can you sew? I can. And I was thinking that a thrift store find could have collar removed, or a mandarin collar, and front denuded. Even a euro-style hidden zip. And any boxiness slimmed down if present. Those wide belts – this was more like a sash belt – are everywhere still in the inexpensive trend shops.
Can I sew? Not much. The biggest trick, too, is finding good fabric, although having a thrift store find made over is probably the way to go about it.
I was beginning to think I wouldn’t want it anyway if it wasn’t meant to be warm, but perhaps something like that would be a suitable spring coat, which I do not have.
Thanks, you’ve given me lots to think about. 🙂
Definitely more of a spring coat.
While I can’t find any picture like it, there is an eBay black tweed coat that looks very like the fabric. If this link works, then it cycles through a number of pictures and eventually gets to a real closeup.
http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-WOMENS-CASHMERE-WOOL-TWEED-COAT-UK12-BNWT_W0QQitemZ150075739709QQihZ005QQcategoryZ11570QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
I was able to see that, thanks. I like it! I prefer without the fur collar, even though I have a brown fur collar that looks really good on me.
I’m going to have to play with belting coats. I love the brown patent idea.
Christmas eve I met a young lady from Europe in the most unique, but still classic-looking tweed coat, with belt, I’d seen. It’s stuck in my head.
Can’t wait to feel up to shopping. Right now I’m not sick, just working up a proper boredom. lol
Further report on tweed coat.
I was able to see it close up in the daytime vs. at night through store window.
I tried it on, too. Very slim cut so the large was too small. They wanted $65 on sale – way too much for my budget. But I could inspect how it was made.
It is a herringbone tweed, the kind where it reverses direction. They used this feature to hide the princess seaming that began about an inch from the shoulder. I had to look really close to find it!
The belt is brown patent mock croc and I remembered it as perhaps a sash because in the window they didn’t bother to tuck it into the thread loop and so it had a careless, jaunty air.
It did have a collar after all – poetic license on my part to remember it without. But it would look 100% better without. The collar is longish with rounded edges like basset ears. 🙂 meh
Here is a link to an eBay item that has the same herringbone weave. It’s actually brown but the coat I saw is more of a chocolate brown and the white is whiter and doesn’t griege out like many herringbones. Snappy.
It does not have any buttons or closings but overlaps in a tailored way, not the languid look of a cashmere wrap coat.
It does have two unobtrusive pockets hidden in the princess seams and they have narrow rectangular vertical flaps. They seem superfluous.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-Brown-Herringbone-Tweed-Winter-Coat-3-4-Length_W0QQitemZ130050688123QQihZ003QQcategoryZ106131QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem
Actually, that coat sounds very similar to (what I remember about:) the one the young lady from Europe was wearing. Except I think there was something unique about her sleeves; perhaps they were very full with knit cuffs.
I do like herringbone … and need a slim cut. I will very likely be looking all over just to see if there’s anything like that anywhere around here.
Thanks for the update!