little black dress | Frivolous Universe

GENDERFUCK DEUX: Avengers-inspired bowler hats, sexy lace backs, & singing for your supper

By: Kim Philley

10-07-2012

Yesterday, FU got off to a gender-bender start with Kelly Lynae Robinson’s excellent post JASON and TIM (GENDER)FUCK: Menswear with a Dash of Womenswear Worn with Total Confidence; I thought I’d ride the trend with a scarlet flash of menswear juxtaposed with an ultra-fem dress.

This is my favorite little black dress. It has a lace plunge of a back that is a little Mireille Darc without going all the way.

There’s something about a bowler hat. Its simple form can shape-shift with the flip of a rim or by turning it inside out. No matter how you wear a bowler, cheeky is what you get.

So French!

You can’t make this stuff up.

These silhouettes are, you guessed it, inspired by the 1960s spy-fi series starring Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg.

Forget diamonds—how gauche! Chartreuse sapphires are a girl’s best friend.

When the going gets tough, the tough start tra la la’ing. Need to lighten your mood? Open your piehole as wide as a chickadee being fed a juicy worm.

And it don’t matter if you can’t carry a tune in a bucket—the bucket is on your head, not wrapped around it like cheesecloth.

Sometimes we have to keep on truckin’, even when we’re off key.

Little black dress: tiff by Tt (Macy’s, Boise); green sapphires: Central Market (Phnom Penh); wool bowlers: Platinum Mall (Bangkok)

Comments

ELEPHANTS DO IT BETTER: A classic little black dress and a black-and-white BCBG Max Azria get me nowhere. Thank goodness for great friends and ice-cold coconuts.

By: Kim Philley

20-03-2012

Kim

Girls, boys, girl-boys, boy-girls, and pachyderms — it’s been a difficult week. I just mustered all I could recall of my high school/Phnom Penh-cuss-out French to send this text message to someone I perceived, until moments ago, to be an honorable Frenchman: Je ne suis pas une putain. Pour médiocre boom-boom, je crois Rue Cowboy!

My facial expression pretty much sums up how I feel about the men I meet when I get all gussied up to go out on the town in Bangkok. No offense, Mr. Fancy Elephant, but when I ask you, How was your Thai massage at Wat Pho? “I just want massage do by you,” is not an elegant elephant reply. Please stop it with the sexting.

Who said chivalry is dead? Here’s hoping it’s just frozen in the Greenland ice sheet, it’s DNA soon-to-be-revived by global warming.

A hot Thai photographer snapped this actual Polaroid of me at The St. Regis Bangkok on Friday night. If I had my Sharpie-druthers, I would hand-caption it, When I was a copywriter in Bangkok . . . To remind myself that all situations are temporary and that my time on earth is fleeting.

This is my go-to little black dress. I bought it off the sales rack at the Boise Macy’s, but the brand is nearly un-Googlable. The label reads tiff by Tt and it’s Made in Los Angeles. Someone is selling one on eBay. And that “Tt” ain’t Trina Turk — not for what I paid. The lace chevron cuts much lower in back, so I’m sorry the St. Regis photographer failed to snap a rearview. As my Twitter-friend Tommy quipped, i’m bringing sexy back. to the store. because it’s broken and i’ve hardly used it and i want my money back.

Thank goodness for good friends. The night, and the St. Regis dress, were redeemed by a good ‘ol Soi Nana crawl with the so-much-fun-they-should-be-illegal Gabi and Skip Yetter and the lovely Miss Eliza Chute. Most tourists visit Nana for the boom-boom. We went for the Thai young coconuts.

And no, salacious Frenchman, that was not a euphemism.

The Dress Below: BCBG Max Azria

Earrings: Lumphini street stall, Bangkok

Bracelet: Wooden snake, Indonesia