Goodbye Summer - Last Sandal Purchase of the Season

Retro Looks, Almost at Retro Prices

By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM

Published: August 25, 2010

Pantsuits that echo the days of Glam Rock, “Mad Men” era skirts, austere military coats, sumptuous furs: the looks designers are showing this fall could fulfill your every retro fashion fantasy.

That is, if you can afford the likes of Louis Vuitton, Prada, Marc Jacobs, Balmain, Chanel and Gucci.

I, on the other hand, cannot. So I decided to trawl my favorite New York thrift stores to find some of the original inspirations at a fraction of the cost of their 2010 counterparts. I figured it would be a breeze. But then, while inspecting some cheap 1970s pantsuits, I began to fear that walking around in one would make me look as if I were en route to a Halloween party.

A chat with a stylish colleague confirmed my suspicion. I asked if it was wise to pinch pennies on such a thing. She wrinkled her nose and vigorously shook her head. Too awful for words.

So much for Glam Rock. Instead, I went further back in time and focused on finding affordable versions of one of my favorite retro looks: 1950s skirts that emphasize the wasp waists of their wearers — and that cost thousands of dollars at Saks and Bergdorf Goodman. (While I could have also browsed for military-style jackets, I already own a couple and am not aiming to outfit a platoon. If you’re in the market for one, though, inexpensive versions are ubiquitous.)

First step: You have to be realistic about just how much you’ll save by going vintage. For instance, on a recent afternoon at an outpost of Ina, the designer consignment chain in Manhattan, a luxurious black full skirt by Thakoon was $150. That’s hardly inexpensive, though it is considerably less than a new Thakoon skirt, which is typically around $400.

On the Web, a search for “1950” on Etsy.com turns up many vintage varieties with pleats and high waists, in an array of colors and playful patterns, for about $30 each. On eBay.com, you can snap up vintage skirts for even less — around $20 — while 1950s party dresses go for about $50.

You can also snag the real deal at ShrimptonCouture.com, which is searchable by decade and offers some of the most elaborate 1950s styles around. Here, voluminous sundresses and vintage frocks embellished with satin, chiffon, taffeta and rhinestones — several with built-in tulle underskirts — cost about $175 to $325.

If you’re not in the mood to scour the Web or the city’s thrift stores but still want to try on the season’s retro-inspired fashions, you’re in luck. Major chain stores are filling their aisles with the kinds of ladylike skirts donned by June Cleaver and Brigitte Bardot alike.

At Macy’s, a Jones New York Signature gray stretch circle skirt is $79. Zara, the fast-fashion chain from Spain, is offering several styles, including a swingy black skirt for $79.90 that embodies the trend. At J. C. Penney, similar skirts cost about $25 to $40.

A $59.95 Edme & Esyllte cotton skirt with a green geometric pattern at Anthropologie is, as the retailer describes it, “a twist on the 1950s circle skirt.” The chain’s “feathered perch skirt” — a navy circle skirt with a few feathers artfully arranged at the waist — is $148. The “1952 skirt,” $138, is shorter and splashed with autumnal colors.

Other trends this season are more timeless, like the raft of fur stoles, jackets and vests hitting stores. Several designers incorporated fur into their fall collections. Yet perhaps none embraced it on their runways as much as Chanel did, where fur-entombed models called to mind the abominable snowman.

The good news for those who prefer not to wear the real thing is that fake furs are just as hot. Luxury department stores are selling faux fur vests for upward of $300, but fast-fashion versions are much less costly — and already disappearing from store racks.

Zara has enough fake fur to build a new mascot for every Major League team in the nation. A faux red fox long hooded shell that hits about mid-thigh is $79.90. A black faux fur vest is $89.90. A cappuccino-colored short sleeve vest and a bushy bright-white, long-haired coat are $99.90 each.

If just a hint of fur will sate you, there are chunky knit sweaters with fur detailing in neutral hues like cream, gray and brown for $39.90. And a faux fur leopard-print stole is $59.90.

For those seeking coats, Topshop has leopard faux fur in gray for $200 and fawn for $190. A cropped version with a shawl collar is $170. A peach above-the-knee car coat with three-quarter-length sleeves (the sort that screams film noir) is $190.

At Macy’s, an INC International Concepts long-haired black faux fur vest is $89. A short Jack faux fur vest with a subtle gray chevron pattern is $65. Should you and your teenage daughter care to wear matching pelts, the store’s Material Girl Collection includes a black faux fur vest for $34.

Rachel Zoe, the celebrity stylist and reality television show staple, is selling a $79.80 faux fur vest in “chinchilla,” “black fox,” “red fox” and “silver,” on QVC and QVC.com. Her V-neck vest with a faux fur front is $62. A faux fur toggle coat with a wing collar is $118.20, and a faux fur pull-through scarf is $29.

Also on the Web, Boston Proper has a long-haired faux fur ivory “glamour vest,” as the retailer describes it, for $119.

Still, if you have your heart set on acquiring, say, a ’70s-style lamé bodysuit, check out Ricky’s NYC or American Apparel, where shiny high-waist leggings are $49, a small price to pay for a psychedelic experience.

New Sandal Purchases

All Hail the Humble Espadrille!

By DALE FUCHS

Published: August 16, 2010

Castañer's website.

MADRID — The humble jute-soled shoe seemed headed for a museum shelf when Isabel Sauras and her husband took over the family espadrille business, Castañer, in the Catalonian town of Banyoles.

It was 1959, and a wave of belated industrialization was sweeping agrarian Spain. Farmers had abandoned their small hilly plots for stable factory jobs in the cities. They no longer needed those cheap, ankle-tie sandals to work the fields in the summer heat.

Many espadrille factories in Catalonia and the French and Spanish Basque regions cut their final braids. But Isabel Sauras and her husband, Lorenzo Castañer, clung to their rope and, with the help of Yves Saint Laurent and other designers, turned the traditional peasant shoe into a fashion statement.

“It was like when the refrigerator did away with the ceramic water jugs,” recalled Ms. Sauras, 77, who still designs the Castañer line. “We saved the espadrille from a museum future and kept it alive in a very contemporary way.”

Today, the Castañer factory, founded in 1927, creates luxury, high-heeled espadrilles for 15 designer labels, including Lanvin, Hermès and Christian Louboutin, and it crafts its own collections for 17 Castañer boutiques in Spain, France and Japan. Their star model, “the peasant,” is a fixture at Spain’s outdoor cafes. It has sold eight million pairs to date.

According to Ms. Sauras, the factory is Spain’s sole survivor of the jute-soled heyday of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, when Salvador Dalí would shuffle about his native Figueres in a white canvas pair bought at the local Castañer store.

Few of the factory’s original clients would be able to toil in, say, the thigh-high, black leather model that Castañer created for a Jean Paul Gaultier fashion show in the late 1980s. And a small-time farmer probably couldn’t afford the €200, or about $255, metallic-leather sandals with platform heels on display recently at a Castañer boutique in Madrid.

But more than 40 specialized seamstresses still hand-stitch the uppers — decorated with everything from zebra prints to Swarovski crystals — to the coiled jute soles. And the factory uses the same jute braiding machines that its founder, Luis Castañer, employed to supply footwear to Republican soldiers during the Spanish Civil War.

“It was cheaper to give each soldier two or three pairs of espadrilles than to give him one pair of shoes,” said Antonio Castañer, the firm’s financial director. The sandals were so strategic that the army nationalized the factory in 1938.

Spain has long been known for making fine shoes, but few shoemakers themselves are recognized abroad. That’s because the industry is composed of small, family-run workshops and factories too tight on cash, or too set in their ways, to worry about building a brand, according to Josep Maria Galí, a professor of marketing at ESADE Business School in Barcelona. Competition from China has put many of those shoemakers out of business.

But Castañer is now one of several family-run Spanish shoemakers who are capitalizing on traditional craftsmanship to carve an international niche. For these artisans, perhaps their greatest problem will be continuing to find skilled workers willing to wield a 15-centimeter, or six-inch, needle.

“I don’t know what we’ll do in 20 years, but we’ll manage,” said Felix Fuster, a fourth-generation espadrille maker who exports his hand-made men’s styles from a workshop in the eastern province of Castellón. He relies on a legion of seamstresses who work from home. “The average age is 70,” he quipped.

Amid the towering jute wedges on display at a Castañer boutique, a modern shopper might have trouble recognizing the original canvas flat, worn mostly by men in only one color combination: white with black ribbons. In 1930, a pair cost two Spanish pesetas, or about a cent, Ms. Sauras said.

That ankle-tie look, born in ancient Mesopotamia, might seem chic in pictures of Ancient Greece, but the espadrille traveled the Mediterranean no thanks to fashion. It owed its popularity to the practical properties of the soles, made of esparto grass, hemp and later jute, according to Luis Castañer, the founder’s grandson, who oversees production at the Castañer factory.

“Jute isolates the feet from cold, humidity and heat,” he said.

In Spain, the espadrille became a wardrobe staple in the 14th century throughout the so-called Crown of Aragon, a region that included Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic islands. Each town would give their espadrilles a unique signature — a wider ribbon here, a thicker sole there, an extra crisscross at the back of the ankle. These regional varieties are still worn at town festivals.

But how did those lowly scuffs morph, Cinderella-like, into a fashion staple?

“The struggle to stay alive,” Ms. Sauras said. “We had 130 people working for us in a small town and we felt terrible to put all those people in the street. But it wasn’t just altruism, we wanted to do something different.”

So in the 1960s they turned the peasant shoe into a back-to-roots statement for the Catalan middle class and a beach-vacation look for northern Europeans who had recently discovered the Spanish coasts. They also started traveling to trade fairs in Paris.

That’s how, in 1970, Ms. Sauras met Yves Saint Laurent. He asked her to make him a satin pair with a 2-inch wedge.

“He said he had tried espadrille factories in France, but nobody could interpret his ideas,” she recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t know if we’ll be able to do it, but I understand what you’re looking for.”’

Soon Ms. Sauras and her husband managed to produce a model with gold satin ribbons, red satin uppers and gold thread mixed with jute coils. Yves Saint Laurent set them sauntering down the runway. “It was a sensation,” Ms. Sauras said.

She gave shape to his jute-braid fantasies for the next 15 years. She also worked closely with designers at Christian Dior, Armani and Louis Vuitton.

Now the Castañer family tracks their espadrilles around the globe. Their list of celebrity feet includes Grace Kelly, Meryl Streep and Scarlett Johansson in Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”

Sometimes they seem to view the world from the ground up.

Like the time in the 1970s when Ms. Sauras followed a woman in “perfect white slacks and a navy blazer” for blocks in Manhattan, staring at espadrilles she was certain were Castañer. A security guard finally shooed her away. The owner of the suspect shoes was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

“She must have thought I was crazy,” Ms. Sauras said.

It’s hard to imagine how the Catalan peasants of yore might react to the espadrille’s modern mutations. But at least some traditional clients don’t mind if their beloved symbol of regional identity now dangles from manicured toes in Saks Fifth Avenue.

“My mother and I enjoy seeing them” as fashion shoes, said Emma Guardiola, a 33-year-old government worker who laces on espadrilles each year to dance the “baile rodado” in the main square of her town, Cinctorres, in Castellón, Valencia. “It’s something you’ve seen all your life taking another form. And to keep producing the simple version we wear, you have to have demand of another type.”

She and her dance partners stick to the classic look, however: white canvas uppers, red laces and a flat, braided sole.

Vintage Fashion: Bill Blass Fall 1985

New Purchases

Fall 2010 - Photographed by Melvin Sokolsky