Fashion: Yarn Style

Close Encounters of the Beaded Kind

Beads are one of the oldest forms of adornment in human society. The Tutankhamun exhibit at the De Young Museum in San Francisco certainly proves this point:

 

The beaded flail, above, along with the beaded necklaces in this exhibit were certainly stunning. Not to mention the scarab jewels, one of which glows with an unearthly light that scientists think is actually the product of a cosmic fireball that fused sand together in the desert thousands of years ago. One of Tutankhamun’s jewelers shaped this fused glass into a yellow scarab that forms a glowing center in a jeweled mosaic of beads. I know it sounds like I’m making this up, but this just goes to prove that sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. There’s a little movie about the mysterious glass scarab playing at the De Young Museum right now, and you can see it in the exhibit. 

 

My recently completed novel, Secret Possessions, is a mystery that centers around a stolen Ancient Egyptian emerald that is carved into a falcon, representing Horus, the God of the Sky. Now I’m itching to write my next mystery about this incandescent beetle made of meteor-fused glass. (Sorry, no photo available.)

 

“The Golden Age of the Pharaohs” exhibit inspired me to look at contemporary wearable art made with beads. Naturally, I found myself in the formal department at Neiman Marcus, looking at the beaded cashmere sweaters of Naeem Khan:

www.naeemkhan.com/ 

I’ve been drooling over Naeem Khan’s new sweater designs all season, and the Tutankhamun exhibit was the catalyst I needed to go look at these sweaters in person. I had the fabulous opportunity to try on this sweater:

 

www.naeemkhan.com/ 

I think wearing this, I had some sense of what Egyptian queens must have felt wearing one of those beaded pectorals. The weight of the beads is considerable! The photographs of Naeem Khan’s collection gave me no sense of how the beadwork was applied to the cashmere, so the experience of trying the sweater on gave me the opportunity to admire the workmanship in person. Rather than a connected, beaded tie, like a necklace, that was attached to the sweater like a collar, I found  individual beads sewn by hand directly on top of a luxurious cashmere fabric.  What a delicious experience! Wearing one of Naeem Khan's works of art, if even for a moment, was as exciting to me as attending the exhibit at the De Young museum!

A perusal of Valentino and other designers' beaded sweater collection  at Neiman Marcus revealed the same trends. Lovely, sparkling, metal-backed beads had been hand-sewed in a regular pattern by coutoure seamstresses using needle and thread. In the end, I looked at a wide variety of sweaters in different stores on Union Square, and I noted a common pattern. Matching color and shape metal-backed beads, handsewn onto luxury fabrics around the neckline. Some designer sweaters even had knotted threads showing on the upside of the cashmere, or threaded loops that showed where the beads were attached to the sweater. I was kind of flabbergasted. I mean, here I’ve been trying to avoid a “handmade” look in my sweaters, but the cachet of the designer garments seemed to be that the beads had been sewn on by hand! Was this sloppy workmanship, or deliberate couture?  I don't feel qualified to judge. One thing I know is that I’m not going to be dressing like this:

 

But I still can't resist the allure of a bead-trimmed collar.

Bust Shaping

 

 

Why is it that bust shaping is such a mysterious and complicated art? I swear, I was looking through instructions for horizontal bust darts the other day and I started to get that dazed feeling from highschool math when I was trying to figure out how long it would take a train traveling at X miles an hour to get to destination Y, if you stopped at Z town and dropped off seven bushels of apples along the way. Help! Between the bust points, bust dart depth, number of wraps, space between wraps, and so on, I started getting dizzy.

 

I did figure out the various calculations in the end, and put the horizontal bust darts into my new incarnation of “Pink.” But the whole exercise was eye-opening for me. I mean, it was kind of odd that I’ve been knitting clothing for myself for years now, but I was only just figuring out some of the crucial measurements for my bust. For example, what is the dimension difference between my back and my front, and what is the distance between my bust points? I mean, let’s face it, these things have a certain curvature to them that we have to deal with somehow.

 

Why is the bust area so mysterious? I blame it on the Puritan heritage we Americans have. Europeans seem to think nothing of flashing their tops, from television and movies to beaches and breast-feeding in public. But here in America we seem to have this schitzophrenic attitude—pumping breasts up on the one hand with surgical implants, yet insisting on covering them up at the same time. Most American women don’t even seem to know what size bra they should be wearing. Have you noticed that in almost every single Tim Gunn Guide to Style episode the women found out their bra size was completely wrong? Each woman seemed to experience an incredible surge of empowerment after her bra fitting, when she actually knew her own measurements and felt more at peace with her shape.

 Ultimo's "Bin your Bra" Campaign in London, encouraging women to wear the correct bra size

I experienced my own transformation in March, this year, after attending Karen Alfke’s fantastic Stitches West class on “Knitting Sweaters that Fit.” In her seminar, Karen pointed out that there’s no point in shaping sweaters to your bust if you’re wearing the wrong bra size. The internal architecture has to be right before you layer a fitted garment on top of it. So, following this excellent advice, I went to Nordstrom’s and got a free bra fitting. $300 later—good grief, why are bras so expensive?—I emerged with a new bra wardrobe in a completely different size than I’d been wearing before. It turned out I was wearing a cup size that was too small, and compensating by adding too much width around my ribcage. I discovered in Karen Aflke’s class, after we paired up with a friend to measure each other, that my rib cage is 31” wide, but I’d been wearing a size 38” bra to compensate for wearing a cup size that was too small. Needless to say, it was a relief to get myself oriented properly! For anyone who has experienced this, wearing a correct bra seems to lift tons of weight off of the stomach area, making you look as if you lost ten or fifteen pounds!

 

The bust dart calculations opened my eyes to other important measurement distinctions in the chest area. One of the most useful points for any knitter, I think, is figuring out what the difference is between your front and your back size. You should know this whether you ever knit bust darts or not into any of your sweaters. To find out this measurement, get someone to stand behind you and measure your back from the top of your shoulder to your waist. Then get them to measure you in front, from the top of your shoulder to the waist, making sure the tape measure goes over your bust. In my case, the measurement was several inches bigger in front than in the back. So, clearly, even if I’m following a pattern as written, does it make any sense for me to knit the back in the same dimensions as the front? I need several inches less in the back to stretch over the chest. So if I just follow the pattern, I’m going to get a seam pulling towards the front from the back if there’ s negative ease, or I’m going to get a back that could sag in the ribcage area if there’s positive ease. Neither look is particularly appealing. 

Even if you don’t want to fiddle with bust darts, if you have a several inch discrepancy, you can try cheating by just knitting the pattern as written, but making the back in a size smaller than the front. Make sure that you knit the armholes on the back and the front following the directions for the same size, so that they match each other. So, for example, I would knit the back in a size small and the front in a size medium, and then when I got to the armhole shaping, I would switch to the size small directions on the front so that it matched the back. I’m not sure if this always works, but it’s helped me on some projects when it seems impractical to design more complicated bust shaping. 

And perhaps, while we're investing hundreds of hours on making clothing for ourselves, perhaps we should all check at some point to make sure we're still wearing the right sized bra! 

J

The V-neck Spells Victory

 

Why is it that V-necks are flattering to almost every body type? Apparently, it has to do with the vertical line the V-neck creates, drawing the eye up and down to create an apparent symmetry. Somehow, fashion stylists claim that V-necks simultaneously draw the eye upwards to balance a bottom-heavy figure, and draw the eye downwards to compensate for a heavy top. The V-neck also enhances an hour-glass shape! Don’t ask me how the V-neck accomplishes all this. But after watching one make-over show after another, where the V-neck top was recommended to women with all different kinds of figures, I began to wonder if it’s some kind of miracle neckline that can enhance our look more than most of us realize!

The Petite figure:

Tim Gunn & Gretta Monahan, Bravo TV

If you’re petite, a V-neck creates the illusion of more height by elongating your neck and torso. Pair this top with long pants and high heels, and you’ve added inches to your frame! Look at Gretta Monahan. The woman is tiny, but I didn’t realize it until she was standing next to Tim Gunn. Gretta’s V-neck dresses and high-heels make her look taller than she actually is.

The Pear-shaped figure:

Jennifer Lopez

If you’re pear-shaped, a V-neck draws the eye upwards, creating a balance for your wider hips. Lighter colors, smocking, ruching, pockets and ruffles also keep the focus on top. Just make sure the V-neck is not too low-cut. If you have much more weight on your hips than your bust, you don’t want to emphasize that by displaying cleavage that isn’t there with a super deep V.

The top-heavy figure:

Catherine Zeta-Jones

V-necks look great on top-heavy women because the vertical line it creates opens up the bulky shoulder and bust area. Apparently, a longer V-neck top will emphasize the shoulder-to waist-to hip ratio, making you look lean and balanced. However, women with broad shoulders have to be careful to only wear a thin, deep V. A wide V-neck will actually emphasize your shoulders and make them look even wider! Clinton Kelly and Stacy London recently filmed an episode of What Not to Wear with an Olympic Swimmer from Stanford University with a magnificent set of shoulders. Clinton and Stacy threw out all of her wide V-necks, and switched them with deep-V sun dresses and tops that transformed the bulky athlete into a feminine sylph!

The Hourglass Figure:

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Marilyn Monroe

V-necks are fantastic for the hourglass figure, because the symmetry they create emphasizes the balanced curves on the top and bottom. V-neck wrap tops and wrap dresses seem to be the biggest Tim Gunn favorite for the hour-glass figure. My caveat with the wrap top is, when you have a certain density up there, how do you avoid the sagging of the wrap, which gives the illusion that you are “falling out”? I prefer the halter dresses favored by Marilyn Monroe:

 Halter dress that belonged to Marilyn Monroe

Okay, so considering how flattering the V-neck is, why are there so few great classic knitting patterns with V-necks out there? Is it just me, or does the standard pattern seem to be a shapeless crewneck with little or no waistshaping that makes 75% of us look like a short sack of potatoes? Many of these sweaters look “cool” because of the elaborate cable designs, lace patterns or fairwork panels across the yoke of the sweater. But the truth is that the high-necked look with pattern detailing that calls our main attention to the base of the throat is not a flattering look for most women. Neither is a design that is cables or colorwork all over, without anything to create a vertical up and down eye movement that balances your figure:

Recent Rowan patterns: Magazine 44, 45, 46

We know the women in the above photos have good figures--they're professional models!  But look at the damage the traditional crew-neck and all-over cables, lace and color stripe designs does to their shapely figures! Why spend $100 on yarn and untold hours to disfigure yourself that way? Put any one of those sweatered women in the Marilyn Monroe halter dress, and I bet they'll look like they just lost 15 pounds.

V-day has arrived

Bucking the knitting trend, I’ve decided to put the V back into Victory. This will be the year of the fitted V-necked sweater for my knitting wardrobe! My goal is to knit 12 figure-flattering sweaters between now and November of next year, and I’m aiming for a good percentage of them to be V-necks. I’m also going to take a leaf out of Kristenlynnea’s book, and work on perfecting a few patterns by knitting several variations of them before I move on. I want these finished sweaters to become an integral part of my wardrobe that are flattering and finished-looking garments I can wear again and again.

 The first step is a new incarnation of “Pink.” That pattern turned out really well, so I’m planning to make two more of those with minor variations. I also have my eye on this scrumptious pattern by Jared Flood: 

 I'm going to have to alter this by narrowing the V because of my broad shoulders. I think this sweater definitely calls for some kind of scrumptious silk blend, don't you?

In Search of the Beaded Collar

I was so inspired by those cashmere sweaters designed by Naeem Khan! In the past, I’ve been tempted by beaded knitting, but it seems like so much work, and so many of the beaded sweaters you see just look like the yarn got small pox or something.

If all I'm going to get from untold hours of work is a bumpy texture to my knitted fabric, I'd rather do a simple lace pattern or splurge on artyarns beaded silk! There are a few Rowan patterns that do more than that. Instead of sprinkling beads in a regular pattern throughout, the beads are actually used to form a design.

In Rosa, on the left, the beads form lines that draw the eye to the intricate upper design of the sweater, which is also executed in beaded zig-zags. Apparently, this takes some 4,000 beads! Holy cow! Bianca, on the right, is nicely designed in that the knit and purl stitches form an X pattern, with one bead at the center of every stitch. Very thoughtful. But strangely, the overall effect of the cardigan is a bit matronly--I'm not sure I would spend so much time on something unless I'm sure it's going to look fabulous! Some day I would love to make the design below, Cobweb, but I wonder if it might be a bit young-looking for a woman approaching her 40's. What do you think?:

For my personal sense of style, I most like the simplicity of Naeem Khan’s design, where the beads are combined into a dazzling edging! Just one simple gesture to crown a classic sweater and turn it from potentially drab to glamorous.

 

The above sweater is one of my favorite looks, because it’s so simple. Just a few rows of crystal beads at the collar. A deep V-neck would be most flattering for my face and figure, but this pattern looks way too complicated:

If I did use beads to frame a V-neck, it would have to be a much simpler design. I am thinking of “Pink,” knitted in a different color, with a few simple rows of beads in the same color of the yarn ornamenting the V, instead of that dubious ribbing the pattern calls for. 

I don’t know about you, but in a needle size larger than a four, you can see the uneven bands in my ribbing, which is never perfectly symmetrical. I frankly felt that this gorgeous sweater deserved more than a simple ribbed band to finish it off, but I wasn’t sure of what else to do. I don’t think I’ll try beads on this version of Pink, because the peach color plus the fuzziness and beads on top of that just seems like too much feminine fouffiness. Besides, I have an anniversary gift from my husband, pink pearls, to wear with it.

 

I did a search on Ravelry for sweaters with beaded collars to give me inspiration for my next version of Pink and found a total of zero photos of completed projects with beaded collars. Apparently, Lily Chin has designed a sweater with a “beaded Grace Kelly collar,” whatever that is, in her book: Knit and Crochet with Beads, but there are no existing photographs that I can find. 

 

What is a Grace Kelly collar anyway? I suppose I’ll just have to keep looking for a beaded collar pattern. I’m sure there's one out there somewhere!

 

Inspiring Sea Scape

 

We went to the Marine Reserve today at Moss Beach at the lowest point of the tide. We walked all the way out on the reefs where the seabirds were and stood at the edge of the ocean, where the waves were frothing against the rocks.

All sorts of fascinating creatures were clustered in the tide pools. The more we looked, the more fat starfish we found, sunning themselves on the rocks.

The seaweed bobbed up and down in the low tide, looking as carefree as the white egrets and seagulls that walked among them.

If only my experience with my sea sweater were as relaxing and free as walking among the seaweed in the ocean wind! Instead, the sweater has been something of a trial. Knitting with such fine-gage yarn on size 2 needles, I tend to loosen my gage. By the time I was six inches up from the waistband, I discovered my gage had migrated from 7 stitches/inch to 6.5, and the fit was way off. After unraveling a week’s worth of laborious knitting on tiny needles, I am now approaching the waistband again, using double decreases to compensate for my looser gage. I am determined to have good waistshaping in this ultra-fitted cardigan! At least, I hope it will be ultrafitted. We’ll see how the gage progresses.

 

At least the colors are as lovely as I hoped. The silver edge seems to draw the variegated ranges of grey, blue white and silver together, and it does give the effect of a foaming ocean wave, as I had hoped.

 

Designer Inspiration: The Beaded Edge

www.naeemkhan.com

In search of more inspirations for cardigan edging, I went through the 2009 and 2010 collections of superstar designer, Naeem Khan. Every one of his designs is like a little jewel. And not surprisingly, he uses jewels to edge his cashmere sweaters.

http://www.naeemkhan.com/

I think sometimes we knitters & designers try too hard to make projects exciting and original. The result is a lot of fuss—complicated lace and cable patterns, sideways or grafted construction. All the fuss becomes the focus of the garment instead of simple lines that show our figures off to the best advantage. Look at the simplicity of Naeem Khan’s cashmere designs:

http://www.naeemkhan.com/

Just a fitted silhoutte in black or grey, made with high quality fabric. All the glamour comes from the fit, the quality of the yarn, and one exceptional accent at the collar of the sweater. Naeem uses mirrored glass as a collar for the first sweater and a jeweled bead tie in the second. But one could replicate the look of the bead-tie sweater by finding the right necklace to wear with it. And perhaps one could get a similar look to the mirrored glass collar by using a lace inset in the same color yarn. Or you could knit the beads into a collar for the sweater, if you dare.

http://www.naeemkhan.com/

What most strikes me about Naeem’s  sweaters is the way that their understated elegance highlights the beauty of the model’s face and figure. It’s not a case of the sweater wearing her. The jeweled trim and sweater shaping are all designed to make her shine. 

http://www.naeemkhan.com/

The high quality materials and the finished look of the pieces doesn’t hurt either. My greatest pet peeve with the ultra-complicated knitting patterns that seem to be in vogue right now is how high the bar is to producing something that looks like a finished garment.  The problem with patterns that require a lot of craft from us is that they often end up looking like craft projects. I’m not saying that we knitters shouldn’t experiment and have fun playing with colors and patterns and yarn. But there’s something to be said for this collection of Naeem Khan’s, which masters one basic design that brings out the best of a woman’s figure and then explores variations on the theme for added glamour. The shape of the neckline or the beading changes, but the important elements remain the same. Without the perfect fit and the smoothness of the cashmere fabric, these bead-trimmed sweaters would be garish instead of glamorous. 

 

http://www.naeemkhan.com/

I think back to the interview with Kristenlynnea, who has been making her own clothing since the age of eleven. But the sweater designs she chooses now haven’t become more complicated. Instead, she seems to have distilled the handknitting process into the basic elements of single-color, smooth-textured, fitted garments with one design element to add drama. Perhaps knitting a simple sweater isn’t about mastering the basics—it’s about mastery itself.