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“Start anytime, with anything, enjoy the journey and after a while ‘getting there’ will become irrelevant.” – Sylke Golding

Sylke Golding started in a shoe store. Well, she was discovered in one. It’s a dreamy tale of being in the exact right place at the exact right time, causing the trajectory of your life to spin off in a crazy, unexpected direction. One minute, you’re shoe shopping with your sister and two weeks later, Elite Model Management has you jetting off to Paris for the summer to take test portfolio shots. Ain’t life grand?!

Sylke spent the next decade working with some of the most progressive, important fashion houses in the world, namely Valentino, Prada, Armani and Comme des Garçons, both on the runway and in print. And where is she now? Creating small batch, thoughtful fashion in her Brooklyn studio under the moniker Sealmaiden.

No, Sylke doesn’t have her own couture line. Yet. She is a textile surface designer; she creates and executes stunning silkscreen designs onto existing cotton dresses, shirts and bags. She’s a hardworking, self-taught, one woman operation, from sketches to screen-building to hand inking every garment.

Though quite removed from the bright lights of the catwalk, she has discovered her element and a bit of artful meditation along the way: “I have found peace of mind working for myself and by myself, space and time disappear and I am just doing. It’s also lot of work and many long hours spent completing orders and working every day including weekends. But it is totally worth it. I am the boss here! As a model one is rarely allowed input into the creative process. Often you are just there to be pretty and make the clothes look good. But this is mine, I own this.”

Despite being surrounded by fashion icons for a decade, the surprising catalyst for opening her own studio was her husband: “Sometimes it takes another person to make you see things about yourself that you cannot see on your own.” Back in her modeling days, she would keep a little notebook with her to help kill time between shoots and on airport layovers.  She filled these notebooks with doodles–her husband wanted her to do something with them. “A new design usually starts with looking at my old doodle drawings. I am always amazed how ‘new’ they look after not having looked at them for a while. Even drawings I initially did not consider a success. Months or even years later I finally have developed the eye to see it – some things take time.”

Her current designs are incredibly elegant and dramatic with an air of fluidity, particularly her on-trend use of metallic inks on black–nature-inspired designs that read a bit Art Deco. As a model, she loved “Japanese designers best, Comme de Garçons and of course Yohji Yamamoto were really quite something else,” she said. “Later on when I visited Japan, I understood why, what really got to me was their way of making the extraordinary look unassuming and unpretentious.”

“I can’t call out one particular thing that will inspire me. Inspiration is funny that way, it just hits you and you see it. It can happen while walking the streets or flipping through a magazine or watching a movie. Its a accumulation of past experiences and all the things you have seen before and things that caught your eye a long time go and somewhere got stuck in your head…Inspiration is everywhere.”

The Sealmaiden collection is eco-friendly and socially responsible, produced using only ethically sourced, sweat-shop free materials (shirts, dresses, totes) and printed with 100 percent water-based inks. This has always been of huge importance to Sylke, not as a sales tool or a desire to serve an environmentally aware niche market, but in the most sincere way possible: “I love nature and I love eating healthy nutritious foods. I love the natural order of things. I want to help preserve this.”

What’s the next chapter in Sylke Golding’s journey? She’s completed a few semesters at FIT to hone her skills in pattern-making and garment construction and has her heart set on starting her own stem to stern clothing line.  Those notebook doodles will become full-realized fashion sketches and she’ll be hiring models of her own. She’ll be walking the runway again, this time at the end of the show, to gather applause and garner praise for a job surely well done.

All photos of Sylke Golding appear courtesy of Sealmaiden

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Not since Scarlett O’Hara upcycled those curtains to make a crazy green velveteen dress have we seen such industrious textile make-overs on the screen.

Yes, Anne Fontaine’s Coco Before Chanel is the quintessential tweed rags-to-riches saga, in which a poor but clever French girl and her sister climb the ladder from the orphanage to the chateau by making great contacts at a tavern where they sang a funny ditty, entitled Coco (hence the nickname for Gabrielle Chanel).

I took away much from Audrey Tautou’s brilliant portrayal of the iconic designer, mainly a reminder why monochromatic, pared-down simplicity has always ruled in the chic department, and how this can be arrived at with the three R’s: recycling, reducing and reusing.

Coco’s early homemade ensembles were reconfigured men’s tweed suits and women’s work aprons – a collection you might spot on Etsy or other sites where crafty visionaries are putting their green spin on fashion. She takes an old tablecloth plaid dress and embellishes it with a white ribbed bib and cuffs. Her lover’s suits become her riding clothes. Sailor tops she spotted in Deauville inspire simple, blue and white striped cotton tees.

You’d never know this was the genius who would put quilted handbags, designer perfume and the famous pocketed Chanel suit on the map, becoming the true first lady of fashion.

Any Project Runway addict will love watching the textile transformations in the film which yielded both handsome and hideous results. You can just hear host and judge Heidi Klum snort, “It’s just so Octoberfest!”

Would the early Coco have had a chance on Project Runway? Certainly in a green competition, you know, one of those challenges in which designers are tossed newspaper, candy wrappers or high volume acrylic wedding gowns and ordered to remake them into something Tim Gunn finds has the wow factor.

The wow emerging in the extraordinary executions was the lack of wow, the architectural lines and basic black palette which allowed the most important aspect of glamor to shine through: the woman. That was the magnet for “Boy”, her painfully handsome lover who appreciated her gift, and that is what attracts a recession-strapped audience to the sullen-eyed heroine.

In a decadent and wasteful Edwardian society married to costumed corsets, frills and other excess, Coco proves women of real style can wear curtains and still be the belle of the ball.

Image: Time out

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My partner in Sixties vintage couture crime, artist Joan Davis, called me the other day and said I had to check out Torso Vintages, an ultra cool used couture outlet in San Francisco’s Union Square.

In town just a few days to pedal her flower-powered paintings, Joan had immediately sensed where to dig up archaeological relics of Pucci and Gucci – the way my pug can sniff a German Shepherd or hamburger a mile away.

I jotted down the name to this source for  shifts and clutches. Sure, there are ample consignment shops around in  chic towns like ours, but few sell what connoisseurs consider three dimensional art, i.e. something Jacky O. or Lily Pulitzer would have worn to lunch at Harry’s Bar with the girls. You have to weed through lots of synthetic yardage and depleted, tired boas to find the real gems.

As it turns out, the source she told me about is among the vendors strutting their fabulous stuff on the hottest new online boutique for the real McCoys of vintage fashion style.

Yes, hopeless fashion romantics such as Joan and I are the types 1st Dibs is banking on to do for Geoffrey Beene A-line cloaks and YSL Jockey Hats (above)  what the Web site did for haute  furnishings: Gather the best offerings from dealers around the world to sell for a range of prices.

That range at 1st Dibs cuts a wide swath:

From the doable after a glass of wine with lunch: Whimsical Pierre Cardin sunglasses from the 1960s. $250.

To the the pretty pricey: 1960s Pucci shift, $400, and Ungaro dress, $650.

To the investment statement: M. Haskell 1940’s Multicolored Fringed Bib Necklace USA, 1940’s. $3,250.

To a taste of  Samantha Jones at Versailles: Hermes Birkin of Matte Black Porosus Crocodile. $65,000.

John Hadeed, owner of Torso Vintages, finds 1st Dibs is helping to put him and others in his stylish field on the map in a big way.

“We’ve had calls and emails from all over the country and the world,” the collector told SF Gate.  “We’re dealing with people who really love clothes.”

Michael Bruno, the clever founder of 1st Dibs, hired vintage couture expert Clair Watson (above) to supervise the fashion site and locate the first dealers. They include seasoned second-hand harvesters with a penchant for Hermes, such as Createurs de Luxe, and the owner of the Way We Wore in Los Angeles, a dealer named Doris Watson who is offering her most precious and rare works of art to the website.

The good news is vintage is on a roll because of the recession and our renewed appreciation for classics over buying new junk made abroad.

Check out the site and see if there is anything you can afford (that’s bigger than a size 2 or 4) to add to your wardrobe. All you do is click on the era that suits you (from Deco to Contemporary).

What’s the best deal you can score on the site? Perhaps an undesirable Chado Ralph Rucci evening bag for $175. This is not the place to pluck the deal of the century.

Main Image: 1st Dibs

Image two: Vintage Shopping Guide

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Eco-fashion has come a long way. There are more styles and fabrics to choose from than even this fashionista has time to covet. But The Battalion‘s ultra cool and super sexy eco-conscious couture caught me by the bootstraps and hasn’t let go.

Maybe it’s their sophisticated and stylish silhouettes or their use of sustainable and versatile bamboo, organic cotton blends that make The Battalion so irresistible. No matter, their clothes drape and cling in just the right places. They’re form fitted for today’s smart, modern and active woman.

Designers (and sisters) Chrys and Linda Wong are The Battalion. They grew up making clothes out of found fabrics and vintage pieces. When they started designing their own collection, it was meant to be “a modern, edgy, comfort driven line created for the woman who is never satisfied being mainstream, a true bohemian with an eternal quest for personal style”.

And their Spring 2009 line has achieved that and more. It’s made up of jersey and knit dresses and tops with a romantic yet edgy flair (aka bohemian). I love the one-shoulder tomato red dress as well as the Lucia Blouse, available in black or lilac.

From last season, there’s the Eldorado corsett vest, the Mikail Ballerina Dress (below) and these sassy striped Jaclyn legging-pants.

I crave the clothes, but it’s also comforting to know The Battalion is as committed to having sustainable, low carbon footprint business practices as it is to dressing today’s woman in sexy eco fashion. Top priority is placed on recycle and conserve in everything from manufacturing, packaging to shipping.

Get ready to garner all sorts of attention when you wear The Battalion.

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There’s “penny pinching” and “getting your money’s worth”, but what happened to “more for your money”? Where went the possibility of making a true investment and feeling secure and confident that yes, you spent your money well?

In these trying, financially frenzied times, the possibility of more of anything is very rare indeed. That’s why UK-based Vintage Academe is so significant. It’s much, much more than a fancy internet shop.

It all began last November 24th when the website launched with little more than a vintage frock or two in stock. Two British fashionistas, with business minds to boot, joined forces and closets to offer the everyday style savvy woman a chance at quality vintage clothing.

Vintage Academe “sources from the most important names in fashion and couture history: Balenciaga, Balmain, Dior, Lanvin and Yves St Laurent, to name a few, as well as a carefully selected collection of unlabelled pieces, chosen for their beauty, historical significance or wearability (and often all three).”

The focus is on quality – the goal is a glamorous selection of beautiful, timeless pieces that will never go out of style. Personally, I’d much rather put my hard-earned money towards a fabulous classic than the latest fast-fading trend.

But the fabulousness doesn’t stop there. Peruse Vintage Academe and you’ll find clothing care tips and The Journal, a blog-like stadium offering the latest fashion news. And of course, there are the Academes or special events held locally to gather like-minded vintage vixens for sharing, exploring and enlightening themselves about all things vintage and couture.

If you live in London and consider yourself a suitable student of vintage, sign up here for the opportunity to apply for an invitation to these exclusive affairs. Do it because I can’t (living in L.A. does have a few disadvantages), and then report back to me all the delicious details.

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