TALENTED MANAGERS client TAYLOR WARREN is featured on the cover of The New York Times Thursday-Styles section; May 31, 2007 in a feature/editorial titled: "Knowing Where to Draw the Tan Line" By Cathy Horn
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Knowing Where to Draw the Tan Line
By CATHY HORYN
(c) New York Times - Fashion & Style Published: May 31, 2007
WHEN you look at recent publications like “The Bikini Book” or “The Playmate Book: Six Decades of Centerfolds,” the barriers to wearing next to nothing seemed lower in the 1960s and 1970s. Bodies were softer, more varied, natural — breasts an average C — and Playboy liked to show a girl’s tan line, as if to suggest she had just come from the beach and innocently stripped.
Splash! Now that the female body has undergone a turbocharging — pumped and aggressively perky, with a spray-on tan — you can feel crazily short-strawed in the search for a new bathing suit. It’s not that your body isn’t good enough to be seen on a towel on Nantucket, or that you can’t find a suit from among the thousands sold online and in stores. But there is a definite mental hurdle between what you know looks genuinely sexy and what the rest of the world considers hot, which is a cross between a Gucci model and a porn star.
Last week, at the encouragement of my editors, I threw myself into two days of bathing-suit shopping. I always say: I was born to endure. But their interest in my potential humiliation (was that a laugh track I heard in the Saks dressing room once the saleswoman deigned to unlock the door, the glare that of a police klieg light?) interested me. Was the assignment a form of editorial sport? Was I cruelly being recognized as the Every Woman, with body issues? (O.K.: flab.)
Well. I boarded the escalator at Saks. I rode and rode until I reached the plus-size fashion floor (endure!), where I took another escalator to the lingerie department. The placement of swimsuits in department stores is intriguing. Plainly, the reason merchants put them so far from the front door is that they don’t generate the kinds of sales cosmetics and handbags do.
But women don’t think like merchants. They want what is new the moment it enters their minds — and I hate to point out the obvious, but in the time it takes to reach the top floor of a busy department store, you can order the garment online. Of all the stores I visited, only Bloomingdale’s had its swimsuits on the second floor, next to other summer fashion.
The Chanel boutique in SoHo posed a different challenge. When I asked a saleswoman if they had any swimsuits — I remembered some adorable ones on the runway — she said the only ones they had were on the mannequins in the windows. Maybe she expected me to climb into the window and struggle with the mannequin myself, but she didn’t budge. I left, wondering how she would have reacted if I had arrived in a limo and broken her nail when I dropped my big Fendi buckle bag on the counter. (A Chanel spokeswoman said its swimsuits were very popular this season and had sold out early. “However, the bigger miss was the opportunity to respond with the level of customer service that we strive for,” she said.)
At Saks, I grabbed any suit I thought might look good. Buying a bathing suit is a lot like buying a wedding gown: usually the one you choose is a lot different from the one you pictured in your bedroom. I picked out a coral-and-pink micro-check Missoni one piece ($330); an olive green Lisa Curran tankini ($145); a Dolce & Gabbana leopard-print one piece ($495), and black shirred Miracle Suit ($132), which promised to banish 10 pounds in 10 seconds, and I’ll tell you right now it did no such thing.
The fabric of the Missoni was heavenly but offered absolutely no support or shape. Maybe if I was sitting on a volcanic island with 20 ripening Italian women in their Missonis, it would work, but what were the chances of that? The tankini, on the other hand, made me think I should have a tattoo and boyfriend named Billy Ray.
I loved the Dolce suit. The leopard print was flattering and fun, and the high cut lengthened my legs. The only trouble was, I couldn’t manage to keep up the top, which consisted of two foam-lined cups rimmed in a black ruffle. Without a strap, no pair of breasts, big or small, was going to stop those cups from dropping down like an airplane seat tray. It’s strictly a posing suit.
At Bergdorf’s, the saleswoman was cheerful and well informed. I picked out a Karla Colletto black one-piece ($190), a red Norma Kamali halter suit ($350) and a navy print Cusp bikini ($220). The Colletto was a standout: beautifully made from a soft matte fabric, with a sexy keyhole front and a tapering V-shaped back. The silhouette looked good from every angle.
Later, the designer, Karla Colletto, explained that customers seem to like the fact that the suits, which are made from an Italian microfiber, support the body in ways that aren’t obvious. “We use a lot of what we call silent underwires,” Ms. Colletto said. “Things just have a nice shape.”
On my way to the bathing suit corner at Barneys, I got sidetracked by the Jeans Bar (it happens), where a helpful saleswoman who identified herself as Angelica showed me a pair of blue-rinse Acne jeans, as well as the Seven Classic. “It’s the one that everybody copied,” she said. No wonder: the fit was perfect. You can’t argue with good design, whether it’s in a six-ounce bikini or a couture dress.
I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that the dedicated designers of swimwear, like Ms. Colletto, Gottex and Malia Mills, were my best choice if I wanted shape. At Bloomingdale’s, a sweet saleswoman named Lena showed me an Anne Cole tank ($92) with a gold metal square in the bust. The fit was great. It’s important to stay with your dress size. “People always want to go a size up,” said Rachel Filippetti, a saleswoman at the Malia Mills shop on Columbus Avenue. “We gently try to persuade them if they’re a six, to stick with a six.” Otherwise you get that droop in your bottom.
When I called Ms. Mills at her office in the garment district — like Ms. Colletto, she makes her suits in America, though she is increasingly under cost pressures because fabric mills are reluctant to do small runs — she said that women should forget the body-shape rules they always hear.
“Designers come up with all kinds of different solutions, with a dart or the lining they use,” Ms. Mills said. Referring to the Boob Tube, a strapless top that is a company best seller, she added: “So many gals are unconvinced it’s going to work for them. We happen to cut ours a little differently.” An advantage to devoting several hours to trying on swimsuits is that you gradually reach another nirvana: You look better in less if you’re in pretty good shape — and if you’re not, who cares?
“Without a doubt we sell more two-pieces than one-pieces,” said Ms. Mills, whose Web site shows a range of body types and ages. One of the peculiar graces of being older than the turbocharged hotties is that you more freely connected to a time when body image didn’t matter. You’re 16 and “Jaws” is playing in the movie theaters. By the time I had crossed the threshold of Bloomingdale’s, I was trying on bikinis, cute numbers from Lucky and Juicy Couture. A madras bikini at J. Crew ($100), with hemp strings, made me think I should be singing “Kumbaya” around a campfire.
The thing was I could see myself buying the Karla Colletto keyhole suit, because the fit was unanswerably right, but the girl that remains in me also wanted a bikini. And I could satisfy that impulse by going to the Web, where sites like Ujena, Venus and Victoria’s Secret offer a huge
selection of tops and bottoms for under $50. I still have doubts about Billy Ray and the tattoo, but summer is beginning to shape up just fine.
(c) 2007 New York Times
(ALL PHOTOS BY: Philippe Regard)
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Taylor Warren is managed exclusively by TALENTED MANAGERS
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