Lace has been all up in my face lately – but in the best way. A look on basically every Spring 2011 RTW runway, New York girls are rocking it hard, especially black lace, and even the neighborhood Polish ladies are getting in on the action: the other day on the subway I spotted one bleach blonde 50-something year old woman in a denim dress with black lace trim that, frankly, I kind of coveted; maybe it’s the southerner in me. I couldn’t believe my eyes, but then realized just how much sense it made. Those ladies are about 20 years behind the times, style wise, which happens to align with where we are now, style wise (and of course, where we were 20 years ago happened to align with where we were 20 years prior – the first Stevie Nicks/boho era).
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| Denim and Lace skirt from SpeaksVolumeVintage via Etsy. |
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Denim and lace dress from BD Vintage.
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Dolce & Gabbana denim and lace dress
Lace may be a big look, but denim + lace = not so easy to track down. Extensive googling revealed to me this pretty Dolce & Gabbana dress, which looks quite like the dress the woman on the subway was wearing.
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It would be easy to go terribly awry in lace-ifying denim (see, e.g., Dolce & Gabbana’s lace appliquéd denim in their S/S 10 collection), but this dress seems to have just the right balance, just sort of a hint of lace trim on a softened up denim. I think the fishnets are a bit much here – I would go with solid tights, light and sheer enough to show off the lace.
From top left: Marc Jacobs teal dress with black lace, Marc Jacobs frilly black lace blouse and skirt, Milly black dress with lace, Jason Wu nude and black lace blouse, Jason Wu black lace blouse, Antonio Berardi gray lace dress. Photos via Style.com.
The end of summer is drawing near, and with it, alas, summer looks, but happily, judging from the above photos from the A/W 11 shows, lace doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Here’s hoping for a bit more denim thrown into the S/S 12 mix. For now I’ll have to make do with layering – or tracking down that Polish woman.
Words by Carina Kleter