Based on the poll results, it would be fairly safe to assume that cheese made out of human breast milk isn’t going to become the next gastro-fad. No matter how much chefs might like it to be, as sixty-two percent of you said there was NO WAY you would ever try it. Count me in. An intrepid twenty percent stated they might try a bite, and one lone voter thought it sounded tasty. Methinks they were just bored that day.

Anyhoo, this weekend saw the Kids’ Choice Awards go down, and some, er, interesting red carpet choices. More on those later. I want to know what you think of Ms. Katy Perry and her outfit.

Here is the Jimmy Choo Zap sandal, in which the five inch heel lights up when it touches the ground.

Just think, you and your preschooler can finally match!

Except these will cost you approximately $2445.00 more than those Skechers they’ve been clamoring for.

(I apologize for all the music references that seem to be popping up on the blog lately, but come on, I had to do this one!)

I wish I could say this picture of poor posture at the Oscars last night was an aberration, but methinks Miley Cyrus could find a good use of time in walking around with a book balanced on her head.

I don’t know if she thought she was about to have the girls fall out of the dress if she pulled her shoulders back, but if so, that would be an indication that it wasn’t fitted properly, and thus NOT WEAR IT.

And with that, my old-fogey-ness is confirmed.

If you haven’t heard, there is currently a huge kerfluffle going on about a Friend of Teeny Manolo, Tavi Gevinson. My esteemed colleague raincoaster wrote about Tavi’s fantastic blog long before Tavi was sitting in the front row of couture shows in New York and Paris. And writing for Harper’s Bazaar, and being on the covers of magazines and being BFF’s with the women behind Rodarte.

Which, by the way,  has apparently gotten some fashion insiders quite annoyed.

And hey, I suppose that is their right to get annoyed at things.  I get annoyed all the time, I totally understand.

However, instead of taking the, ahem, adult high road and demurring politely when asked about the thirteen year old blogger, they are instead swinging for the bleachers.

Perhaps they are thinking that if Tavi wants to “play in the big leagues” she should be ready to take some criticism, and to some degree, that is true.  But they also need to take into account that no matter how mature she seems, she is still a thirteen year old.  And they are grown women. There is a difference between being candid and just being cruel, and it seems they have no problems being rather harsh about a teenager whom they see as their rival. 

One even had the temerity to criticiz Tavi’s father:

Why wasn’t Tavi at school?

At the Dior show, trying to fight my way backstage to get a quote from John Galliano, I nearly fell over a tiny, grey-haired woman who, from the back, I took to be a septuagenarian Japanese fashion fanatic, as she was dressed head-to-toe in Comme des Garçons. When she was ushered into the inner sanctum before me, and turned around, I saw, with a sick lurch, that it was actually Tavi Gevinson, the 14-year-old fashion blogger from Chicago. She was being shadowed by her father, an English teacher, and has recently dyed her hair the trendiest colour.

As a mother of a 14-year-old, my first thought was,“Hang on, isn’t it term-time in America, too?”. Had I not been so busy trying to attract Galliano’s attention, I would have asked Mr Gevinson why he thought it was right to take his daughter out of school to go to haute couture shows, where she would be treated like a celebrity by paparazzi? Or why he thought it OK for her to model for Pop and Love magazines last year?…

…It’s all happening too fast for Tavi, and I wonder if her father knows how to protect her from it. I hope she’s got her nose to the grindstone, catching up with missed lessons this week, but it’s hard to imagine a kid being able to come back down to reality after that.

I’m sorry, but there are some things that are possibly once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, and traveling to France to meet John Galliano would seem to qualify as one of them.  I would have no issues  taking my own son out for something even less exciting than that.  The quote above speaks as sour grapes masquerading as “motherly” concern to me. 

I think that Tavi is a wonderful writer, and her appeal to both the general public and the fashion world is undeniable.  Perhaps she may not always have the spotlight shining on her as brightly as it does at this moment.  Perhaps she will lose interest in the fasion world and its denizens and move her considerable talents on to something else.

But, she’ll always have Paris.

This actually came out a while ago (in time for Christmas, natch) and I meant to write about it, but somehow never got the chance.

Christian Louboutin, in collaboration with Mattel, came up with “Cat Burglar” Barbie.  Now, I know that most of the people who collect the more expensive dolls are not children, but still.   Cat Burglar?  I thought Barbie was supposed to be anything from a vet to an astronaut, but I never would have expected thief in a skin-tight leather bodysuit and Loubs.

And seriously, I don’t care if she has a better shoe collection than I do, this doll is ugly as hell.

When I was about seven months pregnant this summer, a bunch of the women in my family went shoe shopping at one of our favorite stores, Nordstrom Rack.  If you’ve never been to the Rack, you have spared yourselves a marathon day of searching for that perfect something, but you have also lost out on an always fun shopping trip. It is where all the local Nordie items that were deemed unworthy by the wealthy are deemed fit for us poor people to desperately paw through.

Anhyhoo, I couldn’t really do any clothes shopping, so of course I went directly to the shoes.  Oh, the shoes.  Racks and racks of shoes, some of them obviously deserving of a place on the clearance table, others not so much.   I almost always find a pair that I’m willing to buy, it just depends on the budget at the time if they will actually accompany me home.

As I was perusing the aisles, my eyes spied what looked to be very cute loafers.  I’m a sucker for loafers.  At places like this, you have to be very quick, because there is always some chick shadowing you and trying to invade your rightful personal space (and shoe picks) so I grabbed them and put them in my basket.  My M.O. is to collect all the promising looking shoes into my personal possession and away from the shifty-eyed bitch to the left of me, and then take a look at them all when my basket is full.

Well, when I got to this particular pair of loafers, I saw immediately that I loved them.  They were sort of spectator-ish and looked to be made of linen, which I thought was really interesting.  Then I looked at the label.  They were from Taryn Rose.  Oh my! And the price?  Only eighty bucks, which if you know anything about Taryn Rose shoes, that is an absolute steal. 

So I tried them on, and noticed that there was a very tiny black mark on the left heel. Aha, that explained the discounting.  I was willing to overlook the mark, it was toward the inside and I didn’t think anyone would be looking that closely at my feet as I was walking.  I mean, you never know, but I was willing to take the chance.  It wasn’t an egregious mark, and hey, I could always blame it on my kids and no one would think twice.

When I modeled them for my family, they loved the shoes, but a few of them had puckered brows as they looked down at my pregnant feet.  It seemed that my swollen-ish feet were stretching the linen on the top of the shoe in an ugly way.  An ugly way that meant the shoes weren’t worth buying.

But wait, the swollen feet were a temporary condition, I exclaimed.  I can still triumphantly purchase these lovely, comfortable shoes!

However, I was counseled against buying them since I couldn’t be absolutely sure if the stretching was a part of the shoe, or if it was my feet, or any other number of uncontrollable factors.  I wept, but they were right.  I didn’t want to spend eighty bucks just to have them sit in my closet forever.

So maybe I’m just in denial and I have fat feet, but I’d like to think that if only I hadn’t been pregnant when I tried those shoes on, I would in fact be wearing them right now.

What was your pair of shoes that got away?

This actually came out a week or two ago, and I missed it because I was doing something impractical, like giving birth or something.

Anyhoo, I’d heard a lot of buzz about the collection, and decided to take a look for myself.

All right, I am seriously digging the Sgt. Pepper jacket.  I don’t know that I would actually buy it, but I am digging it nonetheless.

Not so enthralled with the leopard-screened sweater dress. 

The color palette you see in these photos is pretty indicative of the entire collection. Soft, soft, colors and soft, soft fabrics, including cashmere. 

All in all, there are very reasonably priced articles of clothing that I would certainly purchase for myself, and some great showstoppers, such as the Sgt. Pepper jacket and a fabulous trench coat that many adults would spring for if it came in their size.

Legendary designer Vivienne Westwood, normally known as the godmother of London punk and new wave fashion, had a much, er, different show yesterday.

Behold some honestly disturbing garments made for grown women: 
 

Somehow, I doubt the diaperista trend will catch on.