Sunglasses are like eyeshadow. They make everything look younger and prettier.

Fashion Week hoo-ha is upon us again, with New York in full swing and London about to be invaded by fashionistas this weekend.

Yesterday our focus was on the lovely Elsa Schiaparelli. Coincidentally sharing her birthday - and it was his 80th - was her fellow couturier the ever-scathing Karl Lagerfeld.

The man is as well known for his quotable comments as for his couture, so here is a selection:

• "I am basically the most superficial person in the world."
• "When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said - and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded - 'It's like hair color. It's nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It's not a subject.' This was a very healthy attitude."
• "Gratitude is a sticky feeling."
• "Coming out after a show is good discipline for me because I have to watch out that I don't look like an old garden gnome next to all these 20-year-old models."
• "Elegance has nothing to do with fashion."
• "I'm sorry. What I say is only applicable as I am saying it."
• "I think tattoos are horrible. It's like living in a Pucci dress full-time."
• "I hate the word 'cheap'. People are cheap. Clothing is either expensive or inexpensive."
• "I really love animals, particularly when they are stuffed with cotton or polyester. That way you can guarantee that they won't bite, won't claw, won't smell bad and make your things dirty."
• "I am made of total egoism."
• "My job is to bring out in people what they wouldn't dare do themselves."
• "Sunglasses are like eyeshadow. They make everything look younger and prettier."
• "I avoid thinking. I want to have an easy life without problems."
• "You cannot take yourself too seriously."

But why have just one Karl Lagerfeld, when you can have two?

Karl Lagerfeld - Face to Face

Karl Otto Lagerfeld (née Lagerfeldt, born 10th September 1933)

Difficult times, outrageous fashion

From Vogue:

Schiaparelli’s designs deliberately subverted traditional notions of beauty - fanciful, bizarre, and irreverent ideas that she developed early in life. Berated by her [Italian] mother for her homely looks, she grew up thinking of whimsical ways to beautify herself.

Her astronomer uncle tried to allay her concerns about a cluster of moles on her cheek by noting their resemblance to the Big Dipper; years later, she recreated the constellation on the chairs in her salon, in embroideries, and on a cherished brooch.

Schiap once took flower seeds and sowed them in her ears, mouth, and nose, in the hopes that she would blossom into a beauty. “To have a face covered with flowers like a heavenly garden would indeed be a wonderful thing!” she wrote in her autobiography.

Elsa Schiaparelli was truly a woman ahead of her time.





Newly arrived in Paris in the mid 1920s after the break-up of her marriage in New York, she quickly made influential connections in the surrealist art world, collaborating on various designs with such artists as Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dali.







She made her name as something of an innovator. In addition to such dramatic concoctions as the Lobster Dress, gloves with gold claws and the Shoe Hat, her design ideas spawned the wrap-around dress, the “miniature hat” fascinator, the peplum jacket, harem pants, culottes, the wedge heel, the women's "power suit" with shoulder pads, the perfume bottle in the shape of the female body, and, of course - Shocking Pink!





Famously described as “ ...an aggressive, brawling, warrior pink” by Yves Saint Laurent, this new and vibrant colour was well suited to the extravagant styles of '30s couture and the glamour of Hollywood, became popular again in the "colour explosion" of Carnaby Street in the '60s, and of course endures today.

Elsa's popularity waned in the face of stiff competition from her hated rival Coco Chanel - she sneeringly called Elsa "an Italian designer who makes clothes",; to which Elsa retorted by referring to Coco as "that milliner" - and others such as Christian Dior and his "New Look", and the House of Schiaparelli closed in 1954. Eventually she purchased a house in the resort of Hammamet (popular with the rich and famous of the "jet set"), and spent her retirement moving between Paris and Tunisia until her death in 1973.





Yet, to great fanfare - and with the support and backing of such grandees of fashion as Diana Vreeland and Christian Lacroix, the House of Schiaparelli has risen once more. It was re-launched in time for Paris Fashion Week in Autumn 2012. Read more about the revival, and M Lacroix's tribute to Elsa.

Facts about Elsa:

• The surname Schiaparelli is pronounced with a hard "ch", as in "school".
• She single-handedly created the concept of the "boutique" when she started selling her sweaters and accessories in the corner of her popular salon in the Rue de la Paix.
• She was grandmother to Cabaret actress Marisa Berenson and Antony Perkins' widow Berry Berenson, who was killed in the Twin Towers terrorist atrocity (12 years ago tomorrow).
• In her heyday, her clients included Mae West (upon whose curvy figure the aforementioned "torso" perfume bottle was based), Marlene Dietrich, Zsa Zsa Gabor and the heiress Daisy Fellowes. Her style was beloved of Anna Piaggi and John Galliano.
• She experimented with acrylic, cellophane, a rayon jersey called "Jersela" and a rayon with metal threads called "Fildifer" - the first time synthetic materials were used in couture.

"Dress designing ... is to me not a profession but an art. A dress cannot just hang like a painting on the wall, or like a book remain intact and live a long and sheltered life. A dress has no life of its own unless it is worn, and as soon as this happens another personality takes over from you and animates it, or tries to, glorifies or destroys it, or makes it into a song of beauty."

"Never fit a dress to fit the body but train the body to fit the dress."

"I gave to pink the nerve of the red, a neon pink, an unreal pink."

"In difficult times fashion is always outrageous."

"The moment people stop copying you, you have ceased to be news."

Elsa Schiaparelli (10th September 1890 - 13th November 1973)

The Rosa Parks of the gay rights movement

It is most peculiar to think - in this day and age when "gay rights" equals "let's ape heterosexual mariage norms", and so-called "straight-acting" gays viciously decry campness, drag shows, Gay Pride marches and "men who have sex with men who they haven't previously met at a social function or online" - that in living memory there was a time when gay people could be arrested just for being gay.

In the UK it was bad enough, but in the USA ["Land of the Free"™] the opression was seemingly endless. Even in San Francisco. Yet there was one fantabulosa drag queen who was determined to put a stop to all that - José Sarria, Her Royal Majesty, Empress of San Francisco José I, The Widow Norton!





A precursor to Harvey Milk by almost two decades, this plucky subversive performer mixed political aspirations with mind-blowing campness - using his performing "role" as Madame Butterfly to sermonise about homosexual rights and leading a sing-along of "God Save the Nelly Queens..."

The Empress sadly died recently, and her funeral was last Friday. Camp to the end, The Widow Norton left strict instructions to mourners. Female titleholders from her Imperial Court - the gay organisation and charity he started in 1965 - were requested to wear "black/dark full length (understated) mourning attire, crowns, shoulder length veils covering both crowns and one’s face" along with "black gloves (opera length if wearing short sleeves)."

Males titleholders were "respectfully requested to wear dark suits, crowns and white gloves."

In its obituary, The San Francisco Chronicle led the tributes to this remarkable individual:

An Army veteran, José Sarria collected nearly 6,000 votes in an unsuccessful 1961 campaign for San Francisco supervisor that demonstrated the political clout of the city's gay community for the first time.

"He paved the way for every LGBT elected official in the United States," sad Paul Boneberg, executive director of the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. "Before José Sarria, people couldn't grasp that a gay candidate could be taken seriously."

State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, called Mr. Sarria a "fearless community leader."

"When José threw his hat into the ring for San Francisco supervisor more than 50 years ago, he became one of the first to publicly proclaim that there is no reason, constitutional or otherwise, to deny lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people first-class citizenship, respect and dignity under the law," Leno said in a statement. "José's visionary and legendary leadership helped build the foundation for our successful modern-day LGBT civil rights movement."

Before his groundbreaking campaign, Mr. Sarria was known for his drag performances at the Black Cat on Montgomery Street, which helped make the spot one of the country's most famous gay bars before it closed in 1964. In the 1950s, police routinely arrested patrons of gay bars under California's anti-sodomy laws, but Mr. Sarria would often lead the Black Cat crowd outside to serenade the county jail across the street.

Boneberg said it was Mr. Sarria's outrage over the police raids that prompted his run for office.

"He didn't have a suit to wear. He had amazing outfits to perform drag, but he had to borrow a suit from a friend," said Bevan Dufty, a former San Francisco supervisor who dedicated the block of 16th Street in front of the Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Memorial Branch Library as José Sarria Court in 2006. "He was saucy and flirty and off-colour."

In 1965, Mr. Sarria declared himself "Empress José I, The Widow Norton," an homage to the eccentric San Francisco figure Emperor Norton. With that act, Mr. Sarria founded the International Imperial Court System, a fundraising network that has raised millions for charitable causes through costume-ball fundraisers and remains one of the oldest LGBT organizations in the world.

Nicole Murray-Ramirez, a San Diego human rights commissioner and Mr. Sarria's successor in the fundraising organization's leadership, said Mr. Sarria was "the Rosa Parks of the gay rights movement."

"José would say, 'I was tired of being treated like a second-class citizen,' " Murray-Ramirez said. "I hope the community will rediscover José and realize what an important person he was."

A pioneer, and a singularly remarkable person.

RIP, Your Majesty....





José Julio Sarria (12th December 1922 or 1923 – 19th August 2013)

[Eternal thanks to the lovely Mistress Maddie for enlightening us here at Dolores Delargo Towers about this fascinating character. Even if it was only after she died.]

This weekend I am mostly dressing casual...

...like Miss Louise Allbritton!

Les Girls

Gene Kelly with Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall, Taina Elg in "Les Girls" (1957)

Mitzi Gaynor (born 4th September 1931)

Mitzi Music Monday

Utterly Brill!

In 1992, the consummate guide to feminine charm Boobs, Boys and High Heels: Or How to Get Dressed in Just Under Six Hours was published - and soon became essential reading for club kids, society dames and drag queens everywhere.

It was the product of the fertile imagination of Miss Dianne Brill, legendary hostess, sex-kitten, sometime actress, party-goer and "face" of the 80s New York nightclub scene.















Crowned "Queen of the Night" by Andy Warhol, she emerged from Florida to hit New York with a bang. She become a fashion model and muse for Thierry Mugler, Jean Paul Gaultier and Vivienne Westwood, and launched her own menswear line, worn by such luminaries as Prince, the Rolling Stones and Duran Duran.

Throughout the 1980s, she seemed to be everywhere and seen with everyone who "mattered". As David Hutchings, writing in People magazine in 1985 put it:

The door of the rented limo opens and out comes a vision in outrageousness: a Valkyrie by Fellini. In five-inch stiletto heels and a three-foot blond mane that's been streaked, permed, sprayed, pressed and fried, she stands a formidable 6'2". For this grand soir at the Palladium, New York's club of the moment, she's wearing "something simple - rubber with fringe." The dress is fluorescent white, unthinkably low-cut and as tight as Saran Wrap.

The lady in latex is Dianne Brill, a 26-year-old fashion designer who has become, seemingly overnight, First Citizen of Manhattan nightlife. If there's an opening, a party, a lotto drawing, anything where cameras are clicking from Harlem to Tribeca, she is there. In an era when status is determined by visibility, her bursting hourglass figure is the highest profile in town. When she arrives, the party begins.

Sometime in the 90s she gave it all up, married film producer Peter Völkle, moved to Switzerland and had three children. However, married domesticity did not stop her flair for beauty and fashion, and in 2008 she bounced back into the spotlight with the launch of a range of cosmetics including the fabulously titled "Eye Underwear". Her lipsticks have names such as "Silk Stockings", "Thigh-High Nylons" and "Leopard Brassiere".

Facts about Miss Brill:

• She reinvented the infamous "pencil test", suggesting that women wear a corset or push-up bra and put a pencil in their cleavage - if the pencil doesn't fall, the woman's cleavage is perfect.
• Her rules of survival in the hedonistic 80s club world were: "no drugs, no booze, no weekend gallivanting".
• A mannequin was created in honour of her buxom figure and is still used by Agent Provocateur today.
• Her son Keenan is a male model in his own right.

An interview with Dianne Brill on the Societé Perrier nightlife website.

Dianne Brill official website

I think today should be...

Marilyn Miller (1st September 1898 - 7th April 1936)

...a "Say Something Hat" Day!

Our birthday girls agree.


Yvonne De Carlo (1st September 1922 – 8th January 2007)


Gloria Estefan (born 1st September 1957)