Couture in the middle of f**king nowhere

My dear friend, ASJINE roving reporter and the scariest looking, shaved-head, 48-inch-shouldered Canali three-piece-wearing dude you'll ever meet - we'll call him "R" - captured on film some of the most "what the f**k?"-eliciting images I've ever seen.

And believe me, I've seen a lot of curious images. And videos. And .avi files on ex-boyfriends' laptops. But none of them, not even Jasmin St. Claire's IronMan stamina or Bridget "the midget" Powerz' ability to "get things done" while enclosed in an in-motion carry-on suitcase, slackjawed me as immediately as this series of photos.

R's description was too "him" to tamper with. Enjoy:

"So we're hauling ass out of Marfa along US 10, heading west for Sierra Blanca, to look at a National Guard run OP overlooking an illegal border crossing called 'Nelly's crossing.'

And then, on the other side of the road, we see it: Prada.

I literally couldn't believe my eyes. It has no entrance, but the goods are real, apparently donated by the firm.

If you're ever in West Texas ...."

$20 says Miuccia stiffed "Slim" with the check for her riblet basket at the Marfa truckstop:
Shoes and handbags worth more than the acre of land surrounding them:
Some want a husband, some want kids -- I just want a wall of stilettos:

Not ready for the housewife dress

After spending last night in the presence of the 18th St. Lounge and Sesto/Senso's haven't-quite-learned-to-discern-between-sophisticated-sexy-and-Bebe-sexy crowds, I felt obligated this morning to counteract all those cheap satin halters, size-too-small embroidered bootcut jeans, and chunky Latin legs stuffed into two-inch short shorts and House of Dereon wedges by stepping up the prep with chocolate brown Isaac Mizrahi round-toed croc-embossed deconstructed-bow adorned stilettos, light pink cotton oxford, straight-leg Joe's Rockers, mid-length khaki trench and a burgundy-brown leather satchel.

As my companion R and I sauntered down ConnAve lightly arguing over the previous night's fashion landscape - "So they weren't you, Johanna, but come on, some of them were still pretty hot," he taunted with a laugh and a finger-poke in my toned side - we both stopped on our own accords in front of the Brooks Brothers on the corner of Rhode Island Avenue. There, for the third time in 24 hours, I found myself gazing at the deliciously laa-dee-dah seersucker shirtdress you see above.* Tilting my head to the side, I imagined a much warmer season and as two ambulances blared by, a much less frenetic backdrop. I imagined wearing it with another man, sandals-in-hand, uniformly licking all sides of a Superman cone (from the Cool Spot, of course) while navigating the twists along the Frankfort pier.

"Now that's you," J declared.

"Yeah, it is. It's so...so over-the-top housewife, isn't it?"

"Hot housewife."

"Yeah...hot housewife...I need to try it on."

"Now? But we were going to..."

"Yes, now. Right now."

And with that, I decided for us both we weren't going to make the showing of Blades of Glory we'd planned on but instead watch me in the three-way mirror fantasize about being the hottest young thing ever to hit a Chevy Chase cul-de-sac.

Determinedly, I walked in, scoped out the primarily do-women-really-wear-this? wares and found my dress. Grabbing both my usual size and optimistically, one size smaller, I went straight to the changing room area not even bothering to wait for the "click" of the door behind me to start undressing.

"Can I see?"

I tied up the cinch, let out a sing-songy "I'm coming out!" and emerged with my best, most exaggerated I'm-so-bored-with-bridge-club-and-PTA pout on my face.

"Whoah," J said, genuinely taken aback.

Eager to get a three-dimensional view of what "Whoah" looked like, I stepped up onto the wooden pedestal - the irony of that action too rich not to let out a giggle - and to my surprise, felt all the blood drain from my face. "Whoah is right," I said in an almost frightened tone, "this is not good. Not at all good. This is bad, very bad, I need to take this off."

"Now? Already? We missed the movie so you..."

"Yes, now. Right now."

Four-inch heels and all, I jumped down the three steps in one fell swoop and banged my shoulder trying to get back into my dressing room, forgetting that it had automatically locked behind me. Once I was let inside, I pulled that dress off my body more quickly than Carrie shed hers in the "Sex and the City" episode where Miranda's plan of trying on comedically campy wedding dresses to ease her friend's pre-wedding anxiety backfired with a rash and a painful realization.

Just like it took a poly-blend wedding gown for Carrie to see she was in no place to marry a man who wasn't Mr. Big, it took for me a three-sided reflection of housewivery personified to see I'm in no place to be anything right now but my single in the city, skinny jeans, square-necked bell coat, peeptoes and black-eyeliner wearing self.

And though we missed a few previews, were forced to sit in the non-stadium-seating seats and grossly overspent on candy and sodas by purchasing at the concession stand instead of the adjacent CVS, yes, we did make it to Blades of Glory on time.

*before you call into question my taste, in my defense, this dress looks considerably more flattering on my frame (with the collar popped) than it does on the thick-waisted woman in this picture

The gun show

In terms of fashion, the spectrum at today's gun show was about as narrow as the bola ties that rested atop a vast majority of the vendors' puckering-at-the-buttons short-sleeve dress shirts.

There were orange/brown/yellow camo jumpsuits, leather vests paired with denim button-ups, polyester dress pants with elastic waistbands, too-tight fringed halter tops with the NRA logo, and tapered balloon-seat khakis with "Shoot 'em first, dial 9-1-1 second" t-shirts complete with cartoon characters and faux blood spatters.

There were mullets, buzzcuts, knicked shaved heads and beards as long as Manson's.

Let me be clear, these clothes, these hair "styles" -- I'm not talking solely about the men.

The first picture, shown above, is probably my favorite of the day. One of my companions explained to me no, it wasn't a joke, and no, I shouldn't - really, I shouldn't - ask the rather menacing, rather humorless merchant in Chinese for a pricelist for display case four.

Once I put on my glasses and realized this man wasn't flanked by a pair of Mickey Mouse Club flags but rather two commemorative Nazi banners, the sass on the tip of my tongue crept back into my throat and I quickly aborted playing the will-my-looks-get-me-out-of-any-situation? game.


Of all the thousands of firearms at the show, I was most drawn to this four-barreled beauty. Not for its functionality (it only holds four cartridges, after all), but for its inevitable "holy shit, does that thing shoot four bullets at once??" elicitation. For the record, it doesn't, and if it did, it wouldn't be a very reliable nor accurate piece. It's not very sexy after the explanation, but if I had the $795 necessary to acquire it, rest assured I would make up one hell of a good story to go with it.

Oh, and yes, I did take off my black polish this morning. Not for long - I'm in between first and second coats as I type, in fact - but I just couldn't bring myself to disrespect the Nation's Gun Show with half-chipped 'Black Ceramic' fingernails. What would Big Dan at the Ammo Shack have thought when he clearly put in the effort to bring his A game with the "Huntin' Terrorists is my hobby" suspenders?

This is my second favorite picture. As hard as both C and R tried to convince me these were not "creepy ex-boyfriend stalker guides" but training manuals for bail bondsmen and repo-men, I found them all too conveniently located next to the only table of geek catnip (i.e. novelty Star Trek and Marvel Comics' weapons).

A way to bring the beauty of machine guns into the boardroom or to your couch for the Sunday morning talk shows. I have the "classics" mug (given to me by R as a gift) and even though I can't prove it with metrics, I know for a fact getting to look at an original, drawn-to-scale Izhevsk Mechanical Works-manufactured AK47 first thing in the morning has made me a more productive, more intuitive analyst.

And finally, my only purchase of the day: a Glock 19 lapel pin. Since I can't afford and can't legally have in the District a real version of my dream pistol quite yet, I thought I might as well get the accessory equivalent thereof.

As I told a friend of mine whose texted response to my pin purchase was, "Did you get a real Glock to go with it?":

"Darling, if I had $950 to blow on an accessory, it would go toward my YSL Tribute Pump fund, not another gun."

Qiutian jian, gun show!

Pass it on, ladies.

Please allow me a brief digression from fashion critique for this public service announcement. Ladies, it is of the utmost importance, so please pay attention.

Two Thursdays ago, while on a first date at the Ritz in Georgetown, a couch-ful of ladies had my waiter deliver to me a note and a second Kir Royale after my companion excused himself from the table to take not his first, not his second but his third non-emergency 10+ minute phone call in the space of an hour.

The first hour, mind you.

The note read, "He doesn't deserve you. Leave now. We speak from experience."

He didn't. I didn't. And they did.

Tonight, while enjoying the 75-degree breeze, the onion loaf and a single cut of black-and-blue filet on the Morton's downtown terrace, R and I had the displeasure of sitting next to a young couple, the male half of which spent the better part of the evening booring into his bluetooth earpiece, save for the three minutes he tried unsuccessfully to get the attention of a guy on the opposite side of ConnAve who he was convinced was a former frat brother at Tulane. After his "NATHAN! Yo, dude, NATHAN! Up here! UP HERE!" episode, it got to the point where we weren't even annoyed when he guffawed about how much "frickin' Chivas Regal" he had left over from last weekend's dinner party, we were just stunned his much more attractive, much more polite (she kept shooting everyone in their vicinity "I'm so sorry" glances) companion was still sitting in her seat, calmly nursing her glass of Cab Sauv and doing her best to look occupied with her text logs.

"I'm going to have to pass the note forward," I thought to myself, "I just have to."

And so on our way out, I gave our waiter the proper instructions and handed him a note neatly cursived with those same 10 words.

Ladies, don't put up with it. Don't let your fellow DC sisters put up with it, either. Pass it on.

The exhibit.

Today was the perfect New York Saturday.

I woke up to crisp, Upper West Side hotel sheets, had an early-morning, on-the-go breakfast of Spanish tortes and cappuccinos from Zabar's, and enjoyed a long sunny walk through a Central Park teeming with runners, strollers and in-love couples.

Finally, we exited the park in the 60s and made our way up the flight of shallow concrete steps to the entrance of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art.

'American Chic' was a much smaller exhibit than I expected, both in size and audience. Housed in one of the Met's smallest spaces on the lowest level, Nan's collection of evening gowns, pantsuits, resort wear, jewelery, and high heels was only given one medium-sized room and three tiny auxiliary rooms, all of which were completely devoid of natural light.

And any sort of guidance.

Harold Koda, the exhibit's handler, offered his patrons very little insight as to why or how he chose and grouped the pieces he did. Within some of the individual showcases, themes were identifiable - in the stunning 'black and white evening' collection, for example, where I learned that this classic combination, in Nan's own words, "is often the guise of the vamp and the femme fatale" and "allows a woman to project a quietly charged elegance and controlled allure" - but for the vast majority, there seemed no obvious logic behind Koda's selections.

In the room off to the right of the main hall, a one-shouldered seafoam green cashmere column dress was flanked on one side by a pair of navy, high-waisted raw silk trousers and on the other by a red bandeau bikini. In another showcase, a very '80s long-sleeved tri-colored velvet knee-length holiday frock stood shoulder-to- shoulder with a sleeveless beige Yves Saint Laurent silk crepe cocktail dress with matching shell-button bolero. And next to that, Mrs. Kempner's 1949 pink and purple strapless coming-out gown.

Huh?

One might have thought the essays preceding each floor-to-ceiling display would have served as a guide to that particular collection, but again, no. Though they were extraordinarily well-written, these pieces were little more than general commentary on Nan's upbringing, her lifestyle and and her couture-as-art viewpoint.

Overall, it was a showcase hardly worthy of a woman whose style Andy Warhol called "iconic."

But as I told R in response to his apology for our mutual disappointment, the privilege of getting to see the 1969 Madame Grès bordeaux silk jersey gown with crucifix-esque back - the one I risked getting booted to capture on film when I snapped the illegal photo above - was well worth the trip.

Well, that and the triple berry pie from Cafe Lalo.