The first sign of trouble was the proliferation of aging deadheads and
20-something-"I wasn't
even alive in the 60s, but all that free love and dope seems cool,
so I'll borrow my parents Lexus SUV to drive over to the mall, buy
a $75 designer tied-dye shirt and $120 pair of Calvin Klein
*weathered* cut-offs, and relive the summer of love while I'm
on spring break"-hippie-wannabes.
marie
And, on cue, from today's New York TImes (which always seems to know about
THESE things):
April 25, 1999
Feeling Groovy Doesn't Come Cheap
By ALEX WITCHEL
I like a a guy who says "nice to meet you" while he's kissing both your
cheeks. A guy who inventories his outfit -- "Karan pants and top, Gucci
belt, Prada shoes and overcoat" -- and answers the question "How much
do you cost?" with a hoot, declaring: "It's a fortune, darling. But after you
wear good clothing, it's so hard to go back."
Derek Khan, 41, knows from
good clothing. He is a top
music stylist who dresses
Lauryn Hill, Sean (Puffy)
Combs, Salt 'n' Pepa and
Monica. Now, I admit it had to
be explained to me that the
Monica in question was not she
of the Oval Office, but a
hip-hop artist Khan finds so
fabulous he says, "The minute I
saw her, I dropped on the floor
and kissed it." He was so
excited telling the story, I didn't
have the heart to ask what
hip-hop was. He already had his hands full with me.
We were setting off on a styling spree to achieve the latest fashion craze,
haute hippie. Yes, the very term is an oxymoron. Back in the days when I
was a baby hippie myself, all it took was a pair of bell-bottoms and a peasant
shirt bought at a "head shop" (rolling papers situated near the cash
register),
total cost about $30. But these days, the fashion world has determined that
ponchos and peasant blouses, beads and flowers are all back and better than
enough to feed a commune for a year.
Kelli Delaney, the senior fashion editor at Glamour magazine, says the hippie
trend "is a backlash to the almost masculine streamlined forms of spring" --
items like messenger bags and straight-leg suits with boxy jackets. "The '60s
hippie clothes are feminine, flowy, sexy," she says. "You feel groovy
wearing them, loose and unstructured. It's a relief to women to be sexy
again." Not to mention groovy. But looking groovy in the 1990s isn't the old
"anything goes" mentality of the '60s. Today's hippie look is more refined,
pardon the expression: better fabrics and expert tailoring, a nod to the past,
but modern. For this, I needed Khan.
Now, for the record, a stylist is not a personal
shopper limited to the
inventory of one store. A stylist has access to the
private showrooms and
collections of many designers and, as Khan says, "has
an eye and encourages
you." Khan's eye, by the way, costs $10,000 a day for
those without
recording contracts. When I shamefacedly admit that my
idea of a fashion
high is getting into bed with a catalog, he is
surprisingly nice about it. "My
clients are just like you," he assures me. "Most
artists are very understated.
The glamour is a persona."
Our first stab at glamour was Chanel. We would not be
going to Gucci, Khan
announced, because "they have too much press already."
Though Tom Ford,
Gucci's head designer, is a guiding force behind the
resurgence of the hippie
look, sewing feathers onto jeans and beads onto
blouses, Khan was adamant:
"The Daily News did a story on how to make the jeans
yourself. When it gets
to that point, honey, it's overdone."
At Chanel, Khan was greeted warmly by Anne Fahey, the
executive director
of fashion public relations. Neither she nor Khan
seemed to grasp the irony
of searching for hippie duds in the temple of the
pastel suit, which was
standard uniform for all those mothers bemoaning their
daughters'
bell-bottoms. ("Why do they have to drag on the
ground?" I remember, was
a popular refrain.)
Ms. Fahey led us into a suite of offices where Khan
flung open the closet
doors and started pulling clothes. "What do you think
of this?" he asked of a
knit skirt with thick horizontal stripes that looked
more librarian than hippie,
and not haute at all. I shook my head. He immediately
removed it. "I try to
