APR
2010
20

Rebuilding Lindsay Lohan

Manolo says, the Lindsay Lohan debacle has reminded the Manolo of the entire Britney Spears rolling fiasco of three years ago.

At the peak of this man-made disaster, the Manolo had the few concrete suggestions to help Britney regain her self-respect and dignity.

So, the Manolo must now prescribe the radical making over.

Britney Spears, We Can Rebuild Her.

Britney Spears must, like the astronaut Steve Austin, be rebuilt from the ground up. Her closet must be emptied, her hats and shifts and frilly scanties must be burnt to ashes, and she must be guided by someone much smarter and more capable than she.

Who would this person be?

The Manolo the Shoeblogger, who else?

Of the course, the Manolo Plan for Personal Style is not the quickie fifteen minute daytime television make-over. It is something more akin to the arduous Kung Fu training, involving dedication, long hours of practice, and the seriousness of intent.

There would be books to be read, and movies to be watched, and lessons in elocution and deportment and how to sit like the lady…

Of the course, at this point, the Manolo would probably settle for getting her to regularly wear the underpants.

And this is more or less what the Doctor Manolo would prescribe for La Lohan (after the several week long course of detoxification).

Ideally, the Manolo would send Lindsay Lohan off to college for the few years, preferably in Kansas or Minnesota, to be among ordinary peoples with ordinary aspirations. There she could be exposed to books and ideas, and perhaps develop some notion of having to work for something you want. Not that college is for everyone, but she is much smarter than average, and only 23, so it is not too late.

But, of the course, it will not happen.

Lindsay Lohan will instead most likely spiral downward until she hits bottom. If she survives, she will recover some measure of self, but her career is sadly now that of Tatum O’Neal, when it could have been maybe that of Jody Foster, or at the least Claire Danes.

As the Manolo said earlier, it is all so sad-making.

Giuseppe Zanotti’s April in Paris

Manolo says, whimsical, tri-color, Eiffel Tower High-Heeled Sandals?

Giuseppe Zanotti High-Heeled Eiffel Tower Sandals
Giuseppe Zanotti Eiffel Tower

And now, the Manolo will serenade.

Maestro, musical accompaniment, if you please..

The Manolo sings…

I never knew the charm of spring
I never met it face to face
I never new my heart could sing
I never missed a warm embrace

Till April in paris, chestnuts in blossom
Holiday tables under the trees
April in Paris, this is a feeling
That no one can ever reprise

I never knew the charm of spring
I never met it face to face
I never new my heart could sing
I never missed a warm embrace

Till April in Paris
Whom can I run to
What have you done to my heart

Merci!

APR
2010
20

Lindsay Lohan: Things That Fill the Manolo With Sadness

Manolo says, this is your face…

Lindsey Lohan: Young, Fresh Faced, Beautiful

This is your face on Hollywood…

(more…)

The Thoughtful Dresser

The Thoughtful Dresser by Linda Grant

Manolo says, today begins the American release of our friend Linda Grant‘s magnificent new book, The Thoughtful Dresser.

Make no mistake, if, like the Manolo, you are the reasonably intelligent person who likes the clothes, and the shoes, and thinking about why people wear what they wear, you will adore this book.

Here is the brief selection…

In the summer of 1971, I had perfect shoes. They were pink suede wedges with suede ties that did up round my ankles like Grecian sandals. They were the most beautiful shoes I have ever owned, and I was twenty and had no idea that in all the years to come I would forever be trying to find their replacement, as if they were a love tragically lost, or the Platonic ideal of shoes, or the shoes God had made especially for me. Whatever I was wearing, I only had to look down at my feet to know that they were encased in pink suede.

[…]

I wore the shoes every single day, until they fell apart and I dropped them in the kitchen bin in an act of affirmative confidence in the future: that I was only twenty and that for the rest of my long life there would be other shoes — but there was no next pair of shoes, none as good as these. Never again would I have a pair as beautiful and wearable. It must have been in part their pinkness, but also the wedge and the thongs they were tied with which all combined to make them stand outside time, outside the era they came from. The point about those shoes is that I coudl wear them right now, today. So the past goes on tormenting you, the memory of brief intense friendship with shoes — yes, exactly like a lost love.

Ayyyy! A la recherche du chaussures perdu!

Of course, it is only natural that this passage would appeal to the Manolo, for as the Manolo has long noted in his own writings, the quest for the perfect item of clothing, the perfect pair of shoes, is exactly congruent with the search for the divine. They are one and the same, expressing as they both do the innate human desire for the transcendent.

But more than that, such quests are also the reaffirmation of life.

This is something Linda Grant expresses wonderfully in her book, that far from being the frivolous frivolity, the shopping for and wearing of clothing brings pleasure, brings joy, brings wholly human satisfaction, which moreover has the power to repair and restore one’s soul.

Out of suffering comes the demand for pleasure. When we have suffered we do not care less about clothes, but more. To love clothes is to embrace life in all its joyous variety, even if all you ever do is turn the pages of a magazine and long for a fairyland, crave couture ballgowns you will never own. We all need daydreams.

So you must read this book — part autobiography, part biography, part history, part manifesto, the curious combination to be sure, but completely brilliant and utterly insightful. It will convince, as few other works can, that thinking about clothes is the ancient and worthwhile, indeed noble, human activity.

P.S. The Thoughtful Dresser Blog.