The findingDulcinea Blog

Go-To Sites for New York Fashion Week Coverage

Oscar de la Renta is modeled during Fashion Week in New York, Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009. (Bebeto Matthews/AP)

New York Fashion Week Fall 2009 is happening now until Friday, Feb 20. Since fashion bloggers have all but taken over the Web with excellent coverage, fashion enthusiasts and industry insiders don’t necessarily have to attend the shows to witness the trends that will be hitting stores later this year.

The official site of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week has a schedule of all the shows, designer profiles, daily wrap-ups and other essential information.

Bloglovin is a site for blog discovery, sharing and saving that includes a wealth of fashion blogs like Sea of Shoes, The Sartorialist and Who What Wear in its database. Join this site for free to find new and exciting coverage of the Fall 2009 shows and related topics. Follow blogs, save posts for later and add your own blog to the site.

New York Magazine always has impressive coverage of New York Fashion Week events. You’ll find blog posts, slideshows, videos and multimedia showcases of some trends spotted on the runways. Supplement the magazine’s coverage with the New York Times’ offerings, including backstage videos, model transformations, slideshows and articles by Cathy Horyn and other veterans.

Perhaps most exciting about this season’s shows is the presence of Twitter: the trend #nyfw on Twitter helps enthusiasts read gossip, track celebrity sightings and find out about trends, soundtracks and other notable elements of the shows. Twitter is also a great way to find new attendees covering the events, many of whom  have blogs or other publications in addition to their Twitter accounts.

And if you’re just interested in photos, search the New York Fashion Week tag on Flickr.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

Michelle Obama Wears Isabel Toledo

Photo: Tannen Maury/AP

After weeks of speculation, it’s official. America’s newly minted First Lady Michelle Obama stepped out on Inauguration Day 2009 wearing a pale yellow dress and coat ensemble by designer Isabel Toledo. Made of Swiss wool lace, the outfit is evocative of a look associated with another Mrs. O—Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

The blog Mrs. O, devoted to the fashion sass of the new first lady, points out that the color “Mimosa,” the shade of a champagne and orange juice cocktail, was named by Pantone as the color of 2009 because it “embodies hopefulness and reassurance in a climate of change.”

Toledo said in an interview with The New York Times’ The Caucus blog that she had wanted to dress Michelle Obama in “a very optimistic color, that had sunshine.”

The designer didn’t know until this morning whether Mrs. Obama would choose her ensemble. The first lady is also a fan of Ikram, a boutique in Chicago that carries clothes by designers Maria Cornejo and Narciso Rodriguez; Rodriguez designed the red and black dress that Mrs. Obama wore on election night.

But who is Isabel Toledo?

Based in New York, Toledo was born in Cuba in 1961 and later moved to New Jersey to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons School of Design in Manhattan. For years, she worked under her own label, which earned a name for itself as a bastion of clean lines and classic American style.

In 2007, Toledo was tapped by all-American fashion house Anne Klein to serve as the label’s creative director. Toledo left that post a few months later. Nonetheless, fashion critics have named her as part of the lineage of “Great American Designer.” Among Toledo’s sartorial ancestors is Claire McCardell, a designer who fellow classic designer Norman Norell said could “take $5 worth of common calico and turn it into something a stylish woman would wear.”

May the Obamas continue to embrace simple American ingenuity through this new presidency.

Anne Szustek
Senior Writer

To read more about fashion trends with political leanings—both purposeful and inadvertent—see the findingDulcinea story, “Shoes Thrown at Bush Launch Latest Political Trend.” Another findingDulcinea story, “Penny-Pinchers Go Preppy in Economic Downturn,” highlights America’s return to classic fashion during the current recession.

Five Must-See Lectures

TED.org, which is full of free lectures.

You no longer have to attend expensive conferences or tune in to a live broadcast to experience the intelligence and expertise of the world's brainiest economists, reporters, authors and entrepreneurs. Below are five recent talks that will enrich your mind from the comfort of wherever you and your computer are sitting.

1. Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers: The Story of Success

The author of "Blink" and "The Tipping Point" returns with "Outliers," an inspiring look at how upbringing, personality, fate and thousands of hours of hard work commingle to create the world's most successful people. This lecture is that book in a nutshell.

2. This American Life: The Giant Pool of Money

In audio rather than video format, this talk between This American Life producer Alex Blumberg and NPR's business and economics correspondent Adam Davidson is credited around the Web as one of the best explanations of the subprime mortgage crisis and how it connects to Wall Street's recent failures.

3. The New Yorker Festival: The Next Generation of Fashion

At the 2008 New Yorker Festival, three top graduates from three design schools talk about their own work, their inspiration, and the future of fashion.

4. TED Conference 2008: Samantha Power: Shaking Hands With the Devil

At the 2008 TED Conference, Power, who heads Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights, gives a lecture on genocide based on her book about Sergio Vieira de Mello, a UN diplomat who worked with dictators to protect human rights and was killed in a bombing in Iraq in 2003.

5. FreedomFest 2008: Charles Murray: "Real Education"

Murray, author of "Human Accomplishment" and "The Bell Curve," discusses his book about the American education system, including proposals about how to improve it.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development