Designer

…..These sketches are part of my “Croquis Series”…..They are quick sketches to jot ideas down…..I do them when an idea comes to me so I don’t forget it latter….For each collection I can sketch well over 200 little drawings of clothes, shoes and accessories….Not all of the sketches become part of the collection, Actually, it’s a much smaller percentage of them that become reality…..The rest I save for another collection, or just store away…..These are croquis I did for my Anne Klein Resort /Summer 1986 collection……I always loved the look of sheer fabrics especially when combined with something opaque in one garment…….Starting at the far left is a silk Organza coat with a cotton poplin collar, lapel, front band and facing, and oversized pockets. The sleeves were finished with cotton bands that rolled up…or not…..The sheer organza shirt has a poplin shirt collar, and stand….a placket front, two breast pockets with buttons, and the 3/4 sleeve had cotton buttoned cuffs….It’s sketched with stretch cotton crepe Capri pants……The sheer chiffon shirt had a poplin notched collar, placket front and ribbed knit cuffs on the 3/4 length sleeves [sketched pushed up]…It’s sketched with a ribbed knit skirt…..The short sheer chiffon “sweater” had short sleeves with sweater knit rib bands finishing it off…..The chiffon jacket below has cotton crepe trims. It is shown worn over a rayon/cotton lycra blend dress……..The linen/cotton blend tunic sweater in the center is worn over a short chiffon skirt…The sweater had exaggerated ribbed borders…..The fabric ideas jotted down…were just that…ideas….Some would be changed later when the sketch got put into sample making……..Considering these croquis were done over 38 years ago……I think they are still modern, and I would use them today!

…………….In a sea of ridiculous clothes that walked down the Fall 24/25 runways there were a few voices of sanity………I LOVED Isabel Marant’s Fall collection as seen on YouTube. This is just a tiny sampling of the beautiful WEARABLE outfits she presented……..My kind of clothes!

………………….I was still in high school when this picture was taken so it must have been 1965 0r 1966……..My brother Mauro, the oldest of three boys, is 7 years older than me. He’s 6’3″ to my 5’10″…. He had recently come back from his tour in the service when the photo was taken. He was stationed in Berlin, Germany during the cold war, and the Berlin Wall, while the Vietnam War was building up at the other end of the planet….My Mom in the middle was our rock…..I know for certain I would not have become the person I am today without her….She supported, and ENCOURAGED everything I ever did!…I thought the world of my brother when I was very young, but as we got older we had very little in common, and the age gap seemed to widen us. We weren’t very close…..It was when I got older, and started to work, and he married and had a family that our lives started to converge again. I loved his wife Kathy and I adored his blond, blue eyed children!………Today we are very close….We are all the family we have left. I depend on him for all the questions I have no answers to, and he always comes through for me. I speak to him almost every day…..even ask him when the next Yankee game is on….He put the “YES” app on my phone so I could find out for myself, but I still would rather call him and ask him…..Thank God for facetime!…..He’s very smart in ways that I never was. He was always great with math, and I had to go to summer school! He’s a tech and loves gadgets, and can fix almost everything!!!. To me it’s all a great mystery…but….he has always said to me….”you can push a pencil around a piece of paper like no other”………We are really two different sides of a coin, but we are brothers, and we love each other, and in the end that’s all that matters.

…………………….This is my brother John and me in front of our house on Long Island………..I would guess, since there are never any dates on the pictures, that I was about 5 or 6 years old which would make John about 10 or 11. He was the middle child with my brother Mauro being the oldest. There is an age gap, because my parents had another child between John and me. The baby was a girl who was full term, but was still born. They named her Grace………My parents waited a while before deciding to have another child. Then I was born on July 23, 1948…..I would be the last…..the baby……Growing up John and I shared a bedroom until he went to college….He was a great dresser and had terrific taste. When he would leave early in the morning for  baseball or basketball practice before school started, I would “borrow” his sweaters without his permission, and wear them to school…..He was a senior in High School and I was a freshman, and we were on opposite sides of the school so I was never worried he would see me….When I got home, well before him, I would neatly fold them the way he had them, and put them away…..He never knew……,He had a girlfriend when he was 13 years old and she was 14, so I rarely saw him. He was always at her house or was practicing one of the many sports he was involved in…..a true jock….He would come home for dinner, and then back to her house around the corner….then back home to sleep…….He was with her all through school, and after college they married. They had four children……They had a long happy life together…..He was a very happy go lucky guy with a wonderful smile, and the best head of thick hair when he was young!…He became a very respected physical education teacher and coach for many of the boy and girls teams in Garden City High School on Long Island……He was the type of person to let little bother him…..My brother John suddenly developed cancer, and died within two weeks after having a heart attack in the hospital….He passed away on February, 22, 2019…..He was 76 years old…….It was all so quick and  shocking to all of us….When I found out what happened he was already in the hospital and in a coma…..His son told he wasn’t going to make it…I was alone in the room with him when I said goodbye to him…..I don’t really know if he heard me……Some people do believe they can hear you…..I hope so……I told him I loved him very much………….It’s strange, because I never think of him as gone from this world…………….only gone away.

……………I usually don’t comment on, or review designers collections, but after watching the PRADA show on YouTube I couldn’t resist………YEARS AGO I used to love the Prada collection…and even wore Prada’s men’s clothes…but that was many years ago. Over the recent years there have been a few garments I have liked……but….in general the collections have been disappointing. to me….I was hoping the new Winter 2024 collection was going to surprise me in a good way….but in MHO it was a huge fail. I’m sure there will be those who do not agree with me, and will shout hosanna and cry about the beauty of the clothes that walked down the runway, and worship at the alter of Prada…..For me it was just UGLY….from the top of their heads to the ugly shoes they were wearing, and the bags they were carrying were all a BIG NO…..There was so much that was wrong it’s hard to call anything out that I thought was terrific. The skirts were ridiculous and the dresses were just shapeless sacks with bows or flocked flowers, or silly cheap looking streamers down the front. The jackets some will think were good, but for me they were just oversized straight boxes, and that’s the best I can say for them…Oversized jackets seem to show up on many runways, but other designers did them much better……..If I was forced to pick out something it would have to be the shirt sweaters that were layered under a few jackets, some very simple shrunken sweaters that were very generic, and could have come from China, and one black fit and flare coat that did stand out…….The rest was a forced disaster…….I do not think the collaboration of Prada and Raf Simons is a success, but then I never really liked anything….or few things Simons designed. He never seem to be at one house for very long before he was let go….perhaps there was a good reason for that?…..I guess Prada is just into strange ugly clothes…….However, you should watch the show on YouTube and decide for yourselves.