Blog: Patt Morrison | 89.3 KPCC

Patt's Hats: A lei illusion and yellow shoe madness

Patt Morrison — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 16:59:09 -0700

Patt Morrison's outfit from her June 5, 2013 Patt's Hats entry. ; Credit: Michelle Lanz/KPCC

There are so many things I like about this dress – the sleeve length, the boat neck, the fact that it’s navy and not black, and the fact that it wasn’t made in Bangladesh – but mostly it’s the gaily asymmetrical floral design that caught my eye.

The pattern is front and back, and I’m a stickler about those things. It looks like I have been loaded down with festive leis, but also loaded with one too many Mai Tais, so the flower garlands are askew as if I were listing a little bit.

There’s more of my current yellow shoe madness with these very Michelle Obama kitten-heel slingbacks in two different tones of yellow, one a more acid shade and the other more canary, or perhaps chrome yellow. That’s not to be confused with “Crome Yellow,” a very sardonic Aldous Huxley novel parodying the artsy intelligentsia set of 1920s England.

I hope you can see this bracelet. It’s a piece of Victorian mourning jewelry. The Victorians went way, way over the top on this stuff; some of it borders on the ghoulish, with lockets containing elaborately braided locks or even portraits or scenes made entirely from the hair of the deceased. I can admire the artistry but the sentiment can seem excessive. This piece, though, has a black and white enamel border around a tiny fly. Why a fly, I wondered. Then I read the inscription inside:

“From JR to AHR [clearly a husband to a wife] in loving memory of our darling little May Queen, died 7th August 1880, age 14 Mos.”

That inscription made the fly make sense. It’s a mayfly, a creature that lives a few days, or even just a few minutes, and here was this little girl, born in May – hence the May Queen reference to the mythical springtime queen of antiquity -- and died barely a year thereafter. So sweet, so sad, so human, all from an inscription on a bracelet. The girl’s parents are long dead, and so too are any siblings she may have had, but it can touch us more than 130 years later.

Patt's Hats: An homage to the largest perfect diamond in the world

Patt Morrison — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:39:47 -0700

Patt Morrison's outfit for May 20. ; Credit: Michelle Lanz/KPCC

Here’s another version of those capris – these are a lace print from H&M – and while I’ve seen women wearing them with high heels, it just doesn’t seem right somehow. It so sullies the legacies of Mary Tyler Moore and Audrey Hepburn to pair them with anything but flats!

This is my version of a cutaway coat. In a coat like this I could attend Royal Ascot, or invent the telegraph. Obviously it’s a girl version, but I feel empowered, even … princely. At least Fred Astaire-ish. Maybe a pair of spats would make me feel more so. And I could waltz facing forward, not dancing backward, a la Ginger.

As for the adornments, I am not a hearts-and-butterflies kind of girl, but I do like to wear themed brooches in clusters or multiples, and this pair of hearts – just like a poker hand – seemed to work. One is the arrow-pierced one [not to be confused with the Pierce-Arrow, one of the handsomest motorcars ever made].

And the other, the enormous bogus diamond heart, I got from Butler & Wilson, the imaginative London costume jewelry [or better yet ‘jewellery’] designer. It’s my homage to a recent auction of what may be the largest perfect diamond in the world, 101.73 carats.

Harry Winston, the legendary jeweler, bought it for nearly $24 million and has chosen to call it, I am sorry to say, the “Harry Legacy,” which is not the kind of name a diamond like this deserves, one redolent of romance and myth, like “the Hope Diamond” or “the Koh-I-Noor Diamond.”

If you have any suggestions about what to name this magnificent perfect diamond, I’d love to hear them.

My own faux diamond’s name, I have decided, is “The Rhinestone Corazon.” How do you like it?

Patt's Hats: Raid your grandmother's closet!

Patt Morrison — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:58:48 -0700

; Credit: Michelle Lanz/KPCC

From brights the other day to mutes today. You could call this color palette "blush and sand," which sounds like the title of a romance novel with a Valentino lookalike on the cover!

This is exactly the kind of sweater I used to tease my grandmother about wearing, the elaborately beaded 1950s cardigans that you saw on everyone from Babe Paley to Lucille Ball to … your grandmother.

Of course, now I wish I had more of them! The best are the silk-lined cashmere or merino wool ones made in what was, for more than 150 years, the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. The work of Hong Kong tailors is legendary, and now all the 1950s and early 1960s pieces are enjoying a tremendous vogue.

In this case the colors – bronze, blush and sand – are hushed, which lets the beading look more pronounced. The sleeveless top is a silk jersey criss-crossed with stitched bands of darker silk chiffon. King’s X? And then the skirt is bias-cut chiffon in very quiet hues. If designers gave quirky names to prints the way cosmetics makers do to lipstick and cheek color, we could call this one, "Shhh! This is a library!’"

So I’m glad that the shoes get paroled to holler. The nude patent color is ladylike, not loud, which is why I’m surprised but gratified that it’s hung around for a couple of seasons now. It’s a very versatile hue, even if it’s not making it as Pantone's color of the year.

No, the troublemaker part of this ensemble is the jeweled heels. Paul Simon sang of diamonds on the soles of one’s shoes; these are big dazzling rhinestones on the heels of mine. They gleam, they coruscate, they twinkle, they flash – amid all these well-behaved quiet colors, they send out a wink and a message that "I’m really a lively girl at heart, and at my feet."

Patt's Hats: Seeing green and black for spring

Patt Morrison with Michelle Lanz — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:13:35 -0700

; Credit: Michelle Lanz/KPCC

This is my Earth Day homage, with the green cotton poplin coat and the nifty closures. Couture and hardware experts! Can I beseech you to tell us what this type of closure is called? The round metal gizmo is a grommet, but what do you call the short bar at the end of a chain that goes through the grommet to secure it?

I hope there’s some fanciful medieval word for it, because in my fevered romantic brain, it has the feel of the kind of clothing closure that might have been used for a coat of mail or doublet or surcoat or cotehardie or any of a number of divinely archaic phrases for wardrobe items.

Can a print still be spring-y when it’s on a black background, like this one? I’ve heard that there’s a new vogue for prints in tshirts. I would welcome that, because I’m weary of the myriad dreary fan-girl T-shirts, and the clever or hip ones meant to show that you are unique, along with the other two-million people wearing the identical shirt. I’ve seen enough devil’s horns and skulls and snakes to fill the Book of Revelations, so let’s just move along, shall we?

These shoes I wear, but rarely. Otherwise they doze quietly in their red flannel shoe bag: my green patent-leather Louboutins. I’d coveted them since seeing them new in a shop in London, when they cost about as much as my plane ticket. I lay in wait for years for someone to put them up on eBay.

The name of the style is “Iowa.” Did the person in charge of naming styles for M. Louboutin know that Iowa is a flat agricultural state smack dab in the middle of the United States? Or perhaps he or she simply liked the esthetics of a word with three vowels and a consonant. What leads me to suspect the latter is the fact that Paris has a wanna-be TexMex cafe named “Indiana.”

When I went there, it was chockablock with images of Indians, who have nothing to do with TexMex food and are not much associated these days with the state of Indiana.

For the life of me, I can’t remember where I got the bracelet, but the blue-green-colored “art glass” cabochons practically glow, like that magnificent iridescence that you find in nature. It goes by the fine name ‘’goniochromism,’’ which you should really start throwing around more in general conversation. It’s the purview of butterfly wings and peacock feathers and scarabs and abalone shells, of course, and of that changeable taffets which seems to have a recrudescence every few years on the racks of prom gowns, and probably should not.

Patt's Hats: Channeling Helena Bonham Carter

Patt Morrison with Michelle Lanz — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:42:17 -0700

Patt's Hats for April 17, 2013.; Credit: Michelle Lanz/KPCC

Is it, by chance, Helena Bonham Carter’s birthday? This begged me to take it out of the closet this morning, a frock very much a la Bonham Carter mode. [We all do know that her husband, Tim Burton, is from Burbank, right?]

The dress is from Stefanel – anyone know of Stefanel? An Italian company that’s done especially knockout knits. I don’t know that it has any shops here in the U.S. but I hazarded into Stefanel in Europe and liked the attitude, as well as the silhouettes, and this one in particular.

The sweater-ribbed knit band at the bottom puts an edge on the frou-frou of the skirt, as do the big hardware snaps on the bodice. [That word, froufrou, or frou-frou, meaning fussy or embellished, or covered with "furbelows." "Furbelows" is one of my favorite fashion words.

"Froufrou" dates to France in about 1870, when women’s clothes were exactly that. Sarah Bernhardt, one of my style icons, starred in a play entitled “Frou-Frou.”

Of course Bernhardt gets to die ravishingly and at length in the play – she had more ways of expiring than James Bond’s villains ever dreamed up – and even though she only performed in French, American audiences ate it up when she toured here. Bernhardt said she could always recoup her fortunes in the United States, and “Frou Frou” helped her to do just that.

This dress, with the taffeta bubble skirt, reminded me of the style worn by Tom Wolfe’s New York society matrons in “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” It’s the magnificently seminal social novel about race and wealth in 1980s New York. Wolfe he called the women “social X-rays” for the bony gauntness they cultivated. If you have not read it, you really must. It lays the groundwork for the lifestyles of the Wall Street rich and notorious of today, and is one of my favorite novels.

The Lucite heel on the ankle boots – "Perspex," as the British call it – gives the effect of floating, ballerina-like, across the floor – an effect I will never achieve in real life, so must rely on footwear to give me a semblance of it.

I coveted the Lucite-wedge shoes that Maison Margiela sold briefly at H&M, but didn’t have the stamina to wake up at dawn and line up at 6 a.m. back when they went on sale, so these shoes gave me a bit of the same look, along with a full night’s sleep.

Patt's Hats: Time for the rights of spring – color!

Patt Morrison with Michelle Lanz — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:36:02 -0700

Patt's outfit for April 12, 2013.; Credit: Michelle Lanz/KPCC

You don’t believe it looking out your windows in Southern California today, but spring it is. Perhaps I am forcing the spring by wearing bouquets on my stems – I think I can identify ranunculus, poppies, dianthus, and maybe roses?

I don’t know how authentically botanical fabric print designers think they ought to be, but I have an unshakable childhood recall of a bedroom in my great-grandmother’s house wallpapers in blue roses, and I was for years thereafter convinced that I could grow myself some blue roses.

And is there a happier color than this jacket’s coral/peach, or a springier fabric than the cotton-blend pique? It’s not as strenuous a shade as it would be in its brightness equivalent elsewhere on the color wheel, like electric blue or acid green. [And if it were, well, I’d wear it anyway!]

But the cloche hat – Daisy Buchanan, eat your platinum heart out. The ruched ombre silk ribbon on the crown and the minute bits of bent and curled ostrich feathers, like hatchlings on the hat! [I like saying that even more than I like writing it: "ruched ombre." It sounds like a fantastical concoction of molecular gastronomy: "the rambutan brûlée this evening is topped with ruched ombre."?

Any bets on whether the May release of "The Great Gatsby" will revive 1920s chic? Who’s ready for dropped waistlines, lower heels and long sautoir necklaces?

A brief history of my evening with Stephen Hawking

Patt Morrison — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:54:40 -0700

Patt Morrison and Stephen Hawking at Cal-Tech. ; Credit: Dave Coelho/KPCC

The renowned physicist, cosmologist and lover of Indian food is at Caltech for his annual dinner and lecture visit. I broke naan across from him Thursday at dinner, which was cooked by a class of adept Caltech students.

I had a short interview with him, and with the student-chefs, which will be airing on “Off-Ramp” soon. As we took the photograph, I had just made a little joke, which accounts for his smile [producer Dave Coelho didn’t get a smile, but maybe he’s not as funny nor as glamorous as I am].

Patt's Hats: An ensemble in honor of the late Margaret Thatcher

Patt Morrison with Michelle Lanz — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 17:05:59 -0700

Patt's Hats for Monday, April 8.; Credit: Michelle Lanz/KPCC

The twinset, in russet and camel colors, was my ‘homage’ to Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first woman prime minister, who died Monday at the Ritz Hotel in London.

If you're unfamiliar with a twinset, it's the classic matching sweater-duo ensemble, sleeveless or short-sleeved sweater under a cardigan, a style much favored in the U.S. by June Cleaver and sorority girls in the 1950s, like the classic insufferable rich sorority girl parody from “Auntie Mame":

And in Britain by a lady of a certain age and certain class. It is usually worn with pearls, ideally three strands. Odd numbers of strands are considered more chic than even numbers. It’s probably what she wore “off duty” as prime minister.

One can’t see her [see, I’m channeling her already!] lounging about Number 10 Downing Street in velour sweats, but on duty and on display in her prime ministerial position, though, she almost always wore a kind of uniform, a brightly colored suit, ladylike but not alluring, and not unlike what the Queen wears. [In the same spirit, the Queen wears twinsets when she’s off-duty and having fun, which is to say at some horsy event or another.]

Because Thatcher was Britain’s first woman prime minister, Britons enjoyed handicapping the relationship between their head of state [the Queen] and the head of government [the prime minister]. Theirs was not the affectionate relationship of, for example, the Queen and Winston Churchill. And the best sartorial story about the relationship is the story – which has entered into myth if not into the annals of fact – that Mrs. Thatcher’s office once called Buckingham Palace in advance of a joint appearance to find out what the Queen would be wearing so Mrs. Thatcher wouldn’t commit lese majeste and wear the same color.

The Queen, Mrs. T’s office was informed, doesn’t take any notice of what other people are wearing.

I wrote about Mrs. T when she came here in 1991 to celebrate the 80th birthday of her “political soulmate,” former president Ronald Reagan. She visited the Reagan library, under construction, and the JPL, among other spots. You can read that account here.

And here’s my obituary of the former PM.

I last saw her in 2002, in St. Paul’s Cathedral, at the celebration of the Queen’s golden jubilee. I actually heard her before I saw her – that unmistakably clear voice whose pitch she worked hard to shape into the pitch and tone that became part of her political toolkit. Her funeral, next Wednesday, will be at St. Paul’s.

Now back to my outfit! The skirt is a vintage Sonia Rykiel, which is worth the constant battle with moths to keep it in repair. I like vintage for myriad reasons: no one else is wearing what you’re wearing … the fabrics are usually of much better quality and more interesting than present-day ones … and unlike current store-bought things, vintage has the merit of being environmentally friendly.

I was tickled to see my viewpoint endorsed by the accomplished Vanessa Paradis, the charming and glamorous French singer and actress, Chanel model, Lagerfeld muse, and the new face of H&M’s new environmentally conscious line. Here she talks about embracing those virtues herself. Merci, Vanessa!

Oh, I spared the oysters and didn’t wear pearls with my twinset. Rose gold is the choice du jour. Real? I wish!

Sandi Gibbons on journalism, working for the DA, and why she's retiring

Patt Morrison — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 12:30:11 -0700

Robert F. Kennedy's speech at the Ambassador Hotel. Sandi Gibbons the woman in the white dress on the bottom right.

She’s spent her life on both sides of the microphone.

For half of her career she was a reporter, finding herself in places like the Ambassador Hotel ballroom on the night Robert F. Kennedy was shot, and in the courthouse covering Charles Manson.

For the other half of her professional life, she spent a lot more time in L.A.’s courthouses as the spokeswoman for the L.A. County District Attorney’s office. She served three DAs, and now she’s hanging it up. Her retirement lunch was attended by three past and present DAs, with a fond message from a fourth, and as many of her reporter and DA friends could fit in the restaurant.

Sandi Gibbons has tales to tell, and here she recounts a few funny, moving and plain old perplexing ones from her life in court. And I can tell you from knowing her, she is one great dame.

Correction: Original headline spelled Sandi Gibbons' name "Sandy"

Patt's Hats: Think pink!

Patt Morrison with Michelle Lanz — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:42:39 -0700

Audrey Hepburn I am not, but every once in a while, a girl’s gotta go for the gamine look, right? The ankle-length or capri trousers, the ‘50s pink and black color scheme. This is not the ‘’Breakfast at Tiffany’s” Audrey Hepburn, but the 1957 “Funny Face” Audrey, the intellectual beatnik girl who agrees to do a photo modeling shoot for Fred Astaire in exchange for a trip to Paris, where she can to worship at the feet of her “empathicalism” guru, Professor Flostre, who turns out to be just another “mec” on the make.

Of course I had to sneak in some commentary in this ensemble: the shirt in sweetheart-pink with stylized black silhouettes of classic runway shapes over the years … and the shoes, with the pink-and-black face of a sassy manga girl. This one I like. Some of the sex-bomb manga girl illustrations look more like teen boy fantasy porn versions of those classic Keane portraits of solemn-faced, big-eyed children.

If you think Meryl Streep was a tough cookie in “The Devil Wears Prada,” check out the original: Kay Thompson and her star turn as the glamorous, tyrannical fashion mag editor in “Funny Face”! [Why do the handbags carried by women in the movies always look empty? Par for the fantasy, I suppose.

The only woman who comes close to achieving the empty handbag is the Queen, who, if rumor is believed, carries only a handkerchief and lipstick and eyeglasses in hers, maybe one or two other items, and on Sunday some money for the church collection plate. I’m convinced she keeps it handy mostly as a prop. Poor lady: it’s always a sedate British-made Launer handbag and she orders four new ones a year. Maybe at least in her imagination she goes online and buys a Stephen Sprouse Louis Vuitton neon graffiti bag, just for the heck of it.]

The Harry Potter cast did a little bit about the Queen’s handbag for her 80th birthday:

Patt's Hats: Brown and orange and rose gold all over

Patt Morrison with Michelle Lanz — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 17:25:24 -0700

Patt Morrison's outfit for March 26, 2013. ; Credit: Michelle Lanz/KPCC

For good or ill, I have six-months’ worth of winterish wardrobe in a part of the world with six weeks’ worth of winter. Indoors and AC are great equalizers, yet I am rushing to get in the wools and tweeds before we start sweating – probably in April. [President Richard Nixon loved to have a fire in the fireplace of the Lincoln Sitting Room in the White House, so much so that he cranked up the AC so he could enjoy a cozy fire even in August.]

So I had to give a season’s last hurrah to this Jacquard brocade coat with coppery embroidery and brown velvet piping, worn over your plain ol’ brand X brown jersey dress.

Rose-gold is such a flattering shade, hence the bracelets. [The lampshades at the Belle Epoque Paris restaurant Maxim’s were made of soft pink silk because it made ladies’ complexions look so much better.]

Brown and orange doesn’t sound like a very tasty combination, but they do work, I think, in the subdued brown tartan shoes with rhinestone buckles the color of sunset. They put me in mind of the more prim Pilgrim buckles on Roger Vivier shoes like the ones Catherine Deneuve made famous in "Belle de Jour," a movie all about a young woman who was rather the opposite of prim behind closed doors.

The crosshairs tartan pattern in the center of the buckles make me think of a submarine periscope, which makes me think of the Lusitania — sunk 98 years ago this May 1 — which served to help nudge the United States into World War I. Now that I think of it, the brown felt and velvet hat is rather World War I-ish, too.

Hi, sailor!

The Oscars were almost a month ago, but...

Patt Morrison — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:40:11 -0700

Patt on the Oscars red carpet, as the guest of her good friend, producer Gale Anne Hurd.; Credit: MUWT RUN/AMPAS

I just found this image, which I'd like to share with you.

Here I am on the Oscars red carpet, as the guest of my good friend Gale Anne Hurd, producer of the “Terminator” and “Alien/Aliens” films, the wicked little political comedy “Dick,” which I love, and now “The Walking Dead.”

She’s vice president of the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – the Oscars. And one swell gal, to boot.

She’s wearing a St. John couture gown that looks like it was made for her; there’s something hieratic, almost Egyptian, about the severe lines and the black and gold of the gown. I’m in a long pewter lame [yes, there should be an accent over the “e” in “lame” but I can’t get this keyboard to type in French] contemporary off-the-rack dress, but the oh-so-glam amethyst silk velvet coat is from Jean Patou, the Parisian designer, circa 1923.

You might have found Zelda Fitzgerald or Isadora Duncan in a coat like this. It was lent to me by Susan at French Laundry; it was her grandmother’s, which means her grandmother cut quite a figure in her day, to have a Patou cocoon coat. No wonder Sue is such a lover and expert when it comes to fabric; she restores and cleans vintage clothing and costumes and fabric sent from all over the country. I’ve walked in and seen hanging there a costume that Lana Turner wore in a period movie, or a Yohji Yamamoto piece getting spruced up on its way to a private collection.

I think I could blindfold Sue or her business partner Pam and hand one of them a piece of cloth and she could identify material, weave , era – and probably color!

Sitting as close to the stage as I was, I enjoyed the Oscars not as a TV event but as a live stage show, and the feeling was altogether different.

Patt's Hats: An H&M steal and treasures from Italy

Patt Morrison — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:49:00 -0700

Patt Morrison's outfit for March 19, 2013.; Credit: Michelle Lanz/KPCC

So, I don’t need a baton to wear these boots, right?

Good.

As for above the knees, the whole notion of mirror prints fascinates me – take a look at a piece of veneered vintage furniture where you see the pattern on the wood replicated in mirror fashion. What an engrossing idea for a print!

So here it is on this jersey dress from H&M, at such a great sale price that I got a similar one on an ivory background.

Now here’s the nifty part: the necklace, whose colors are precisely the colors in the dress. This, like so many of the favorites in my closet, has a story. I was in Florence for my first visit to Italy – and I’m overdue to go back – and kept seeing this wonderful shop which was always closed. In the window were beautifully colored resin reproductions of vintage costume and fine jewelry, dress clips, sautoirs and the like.

For four or five days this went on – the tempting window, the locked door. Finally, on my last day, the shop was open and I bought a couple of things, including this. The designer was a woman named Angela Caputi, whose work has since crossed the Atlantic.

They look like huge edible gummy jewels – and sometimes I wish they were!

Also, I'd love your opinion on the following:

Which is the best shopping scene in a movie:

The shopping scene in Pretty Woman

Or the one in the Preston Sturges’ comedy, “The Palm Beach Story” from 1942? The scene is from about 47:50 to 51:30 [some of the prices seem a bit high even for now, but wow, for 1942!]

Claudette Colbert, fleeing her adorable but impecunious husband Joel McCrea, is flat broke on a Florida-bound train when Rudy Vallee, a stuffy millionaire, rescues her, in a manner of speaking.

Patt's Hats: Red on red for the College of Cardinals

Patt Morrison — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:30:12 -0700

Patt Morrison's outfit for March 14, 2013. ; Credit: Michelle Lanz/KPCC

In honor of the College of Cardinals and the papal selection this week … ecclesiastical crimson!

I hurried out this morning too quickly to remember to put on my “holy” – not “holey” – socks. There’s a shop in Rome that’s sold long red silk hose to the princes of the Catholic Church for umpteen hundred years, and a friend of mine one stopped in and bought me a couple of pairs. I’ll have to keep those for another day.

Crimson, scarlet, cardinal, flame, vermilion, ruby – enough synonyms for ‘red’ to fill a book. Hey, they did: there were many single-themed books in the 1990s, books entirely about salt, or coal, and several about a single color. I’ll have to go look for the red, blue and yellow volumes.

In the meantime, the skirt with the laser-cut pattern that looks a bit like daisies and a bit like the symbol for nuclear poisoning … and this hat that bridges the era between the Edwardians and the Jazz Age, Elsie Janis meets Greta Garbo, head-on.

But oh, the scarf — what some people call burnout velvet, and what the Europeans call cisele velvet, from the French word “to chisel,” as in cut away – this in a pomegranate-red silk by Paloma Picasso.

Wear it as a scarf … or use it in the bullring. My reasoning: Paloma Picasso’s father was Pablo Picasso, who painted, among other things, bulls.

Ole!

(FYI, there’s really no such thing as “bloodless bullfighting”)

Patt Morrison is photographer Gary Leonard's angel

Michelle Lanz — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 16:41:32 -0800

Patt Morrison poses for a picture in front of the Regent Theater in Downtown Los Angeles.; Credit: Gary Leonard

Well, not quite, but he did ask her to pose for a photo in front of the angel wings artist Collette Miller painted in front of the Regent Theater in Downtown Los Angeles! He also asked others to stop by, including Councilman Eric Garcetti and KPCC's own John Rabe.