Category: Accessories

TIME TALES: As the watch industry grapples with the challenge of launching new products during the coronavirus, Cartier is not skipping a beat, and — through a recently created online platform — is presenting three timepieces on Friday: a retooled Pasha, the Santos-Dumont and the Maillon, which carries a prominent new design. 
“Reading the time is secondary,” noted Marie-Laure Cérède, director of watchmaking for Cartier, explaining her approach to design for timepieces at the storied French label. It’s all about aesthetics, she added, pointing out that she generally doesn’t wear watches that are “on-time” — set to the proper time.
The luxury executive started her career at Cartier before a 12-year stint at Harry Winston where, as creative director, she moved the brand into jewelry watches and large complications. She returned to Cartier in 2017 as deputy director of watchmaking before rising to her current post, which she has held for three years.   
Reflecting the age-old struggle of the high-end watchmaking industry, that is, to draw on a house’s tradition while introducing fresh relevance for a current audience, Cérède describes it as paying homage to the brand’s legacy while introducing a new “vocabulary” for the future — at once daring, forward-looking but

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Maria Tash has been at the forefront of experiential jewelry retail. The piercing artist helped popularize luxury piercing jewelry made from precious metals and stones, opening stores that serve as both fine jewelry boutique and piercing salon.
Now that her six retail locations are closed due to coronavirus lockdowns, Tash is bringing her experience online. The jeweler has begun offering complimentary virtual piercing checkups, conducted via FaceTime and Google Hangouts. The appointments will be available in five languages: English, Spanish, French, Italian and Arabic.
The 15-minute time slots will match consumers with piercing artists to review healing, post size, jewelry changes and any other piercing-related questions.
“The recent launch of virtual piercing checkup technology provides us with a way to stay connected to our clients globally, and we can continue to be an expert resource for anyone with questions on piercing, healing, ring and post sizing, and aftercare,” Tash said in a statement.
“It’s a wonderful and rare opportunity to meet and speak with my senior, lead piercers from my stores around the world for complimentary advice…They give our piercers the opportunity to be creative, share their deep knowledge and inspire, as well as allay client piercing concerns while simultaneously fostering their vision for

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DIRE DRESS CODES: Like many nonprofits, Fashion Girls for Humanity has redirected its focus to the global pandemic to help develop PPE — or personal protective equipment — goods.
The group has teamed with Fashion for the Front Lines to create two information hubs to highlight available resources, including downloadable patterns to make face masks and medical gowns. There is a list of hospitals and health-care facilities that are in need of donations or purchases of PPE. There is also information about companies producing PPE goods.
Fashion Girls for Humanity was started nine years ago by Julie Gilhart, Kikka Hanazawa, Miki Higasa and Tomoko Ogura. As part of the COVID-19 response, the group is helping Care + Wear, a leading resource for health-wear, by starting a campaign to raise funds for its Gowns for Good Made in America.
The group aims to raise $250,000 through its GoFundMe page. The initial plan is to produce about 5,000 gowns each week to start through a group of New York-based factories and then 10,000 each week once things get rolling. Each $25 donation allows for a gown to be donated to a frontline medical worker. As part of the Fashion Girls for Humanity effort, the gowns

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ALL SEWN UP: Art projects, baking, Marie Kondo-worthy cleaning — many started their days of self-isolation with lists of must-do activities that quickly dissolved into hours of Netflix and Instagram. But that was not the case with photographer Chris Makos. He recently reached into his memory banks and returned to sewing photographs, while squirreled away in his country studio.
Growing up watching his mother sew on her Italian Necchi sewing machine, Makos said he was always fascinated by how you could take two things and with just a bit of sewing make something new. After practicing the technique with paper as a boy, Makos started sewing together photographs in 1976.
A former studio assistant to Andy Warhol, Makos shared the technique with the Pop artist. Warhol bought a Bernina sewing machine to keep at it with the help of Makos’ friend Michele Loud, who sewed together most of the photographs. Warhol continued to make sewn photographs until his death in 1987.
Makos explained why he first shared the idea with Warhol: “He needed something new to do with his photos. I thought it would be a perfect fit, because Andy was all about multiples.”
Makos has stitched together various personalities including Man Ray, David

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Before the coronavirus clamped down in America, New Yorker Patsy Tarr donated her prized collection of Geoffrey Beene to the Phoenix Art Museum. Speaking from quarantine in Miami, Tarr, who’s traded her signature designer duds for ath-leisure these days, said a roof leak at her East Hampton home, where she meticulously stored more than 350 garments in her attic for decades, cinched the decision. Her connection to the southwestern museum dates to 2009, when it exhibited nearly 40 of her most whimsical custom pieces, particularly jumpsuits and boleros, in “Geoffrey Beene: Trapeze.”
“Dennita Sewell, the curator, did such a nice job that I felt I owed her,” Tarr said.
Her level of devotion to a single designer is a rarity in fashion’s current fast-paced cycle. Tarr said it was even atypical in her circles back then. Their relationship began in 1979 when, in her words, “she threw herself upon him,” to concoct a no-nonsense wardrobe that could take her from motherhood duties by day to glamorous philanthropist by night without fully changing. He identified her circumstances as ideal for jumpsuits, which she wore for 20-odd years in every fabric and style, from wool with long sleeves to seersucker halters. Sans collars, these

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