Mani/Pedis

Not long after I moved to the Palm Beach area, I started to notice that EVERYBODY had, not just well manicured nails, but fashionable nails.  In WPB you can plan an outfit around the color on your toes.   Get the perfect sandals or strappy heels to go with that tangerine flirt.  Or perhaps, if you use the raspberry crush you have on your hands/feet as a splash color, you can plan outfits for both day and night in West Palm.  I recommend a large accessory like a scarf, belt or giant necklace. 

Strappy heels 

In West Palm Beach and in South Florida, one must splurge to maintain Hand and Foot fashion.  I am talking manicures and pedicures.  And what gal doesn't want to go to a nail spa to get pampered?  The massage chairs, the wine (if it's a classy place), all make it worth it. But it's more of a necessity in the land of the sun and sandals. It is acceptable to show your toes everywhere; even at work, which I disapprove of.   

If you can't afford the spa, that's no excuse girl.  Just spend a few dollars and get yourself a good color from the local drugstore and DIY.   You don't want to get caught at the beach looking like a reptile. I usually keep it simple with a nice nude, when going this route. Oh and don't neglect other hand/foot accessories such as bracelets, rings, etc. 

Getting High: Aesthetic Flying

                Travelogues bog down in the mundane; griping about security lines and procedures, annoying fellow passengers, and the ever more intense provocations of travelers’ impatience.  But such inane prattle misses the proverbial forest for the trees: the tao of travel, as Paul Theroux calls it.  In other words, why travel at all if we fail to stop, breathe, and consider the journey along the way?

              

  In a world in which we are never out of touch for long, hurtling through the air at 350 miles per hour while above ground at 35,000 feet in what is essentially an aluminum tube can sometimes provide more intense considerations of sprawl, planning, and design than takes place at ground level in our day to day lives.

                Yet as South Floridians used to traveling in the opposite direction from the rest of the country, we sometimes ignore these heavenly encounters with our environment that generations ago would have been thought impossible.  As part of our ruminations to spur your thinking on such issues the next time you travel, consider a few favorite South Florida aerial highlights:

      1.    Should you be treated with a westward landing or an eastward takeoff from Palm Beach International, your views of the mansions and grounds of the estates on Palm Beach Island will be unsurpassed.  Will this be the closest in our lives that we get to the residences of the island, aside from ironing rich people’s shirts, cutting their grass, or mowing their lawns?  For that matter, we, the many lowly urban dwellers who live close to the airport pass by the private planes of the rich and famous every day.  Who has not seen the distinctive “T” Trump jumbo jet, or Vince McMahon’s smaller WWE executive jet? 

      Our own PBI provides perhaps a gentrified vision of a public airport unmatched anywhere in the county: our flights are notably less expensive and more plentiful out of Fort Lauderdale and Miami; when we see upgrades to the PBI landing tower we are no more moved than an updated lounge at Mar-a-Lago.  This time, instead of the high hedges of Trump International Golf Club signaling to the public to keep out, it is the market of high prices, the sea of private jets that signifies PBI is not for the masses, though we may live and work so close.

  

2.       Although not specific to Palm Beach County, who can still fail to marvel at the space shuttle launch pods at Cape Kennedy?  Native travelers to destinations in the north and east of this country will often be treated to an unrivaled view of the world famous space center. 

            In fact, one weekday afternoon flight to Washington D.C., I felt our cruising speed decrease. “Odd,” I thought, for this to happen in perfectly normal weather with no turbulence.  The pilot informed us that we were to witness the launch of a space shuttle.  Up out of their seats came those on the left side of the aisle.  And what a spectacle it was – an unobstructed view of man’s quest to reach the heavens, while viewing it from miles away, thousands of feet above the ground.

            3.   Flights in and out of PBI and Fort Lauderdale provide us with an unmatched opportunity to ponder the nature of the suburban sprawl we live amongst.  I talked to a New Yorker once, who said a friend of his just couldn’t get used the differences between the big city life and South Florida.  “Strip mall heaven,” I replied.

            Indeed, views on the long eastward landing pattern to Fort Lauderdale (ditto for PBI) give us a real-time spectacle of our pod-like suburban existence.  Each community, gated or not, demarcated with its roofs of similarly colored pates, shows the design of south Florida as envisioned for years.  The historical Palm Beaches site has some terrific comparisons of what used to be swamps or fields decades ago now transforming into American style suburbia.  Wellington, after all, used to be the world's largest strawberry patch.

            The point is not to lament or to praise this type of development - we will do so in future posts.  The point

is that an aerial view can bring home the point that this is where we are and how we have developed – there is no going back.  Can we learn lessons of smart development, or will each new sun belt city or metro area, growing as they are, suffer the same destiny of suburban, strip mall-centric development?

      So the next time your blood pressure rises thinking of your delayed arrival time, or cursing the crying baby preventing your slumber, grab a window seat and ponder.

The Cutoff Jean Shorts - A West Palm Staple

A couple of non trashy ways to wear you jean cutoffs.

You know, when I moved to West Palm Beach, the one thing I noticed local fashionistas sporting was the cutoff jean short.  Coming from Texas, initially I thought they were trashy, yet the shorts have grown on me. Don't get me wrong, plenty of people in Florida wear them and look trashy.  However, after seeing a couple of classy broads donning their cutoffs, I broke down and bought myself a pair.    It is HOT in Florida after all.  

The good thing about jean cutoffs or jean shorts is that you can wear them almost anywhere.  You can put them on with swimsuit and head to the beach or you can pair them with a colorful flirty top for a laid back night at the bars in Lake Worth.   Rock the jean cutoffs with an asymmetrical t-shirt and some flats for the day time or with a fashionable top and a pair of black espadrilles for night.

My look

It's worth noting that the jean cut offs are not for the self conscious. You definitely need tone legs. There are definitely days when I just cannot wear them.  I did feel a bit weird buying a pair in my thirties, but with all the sun, sand and super chill scenes I would feel amiss in West Palm Beach, without a pair of cutoffs to pull out for the summer.  

I cannot decide if I like the look with the pockets showing or not.  What do you think? 

Brutalist West Palm

   Visitors to the small downtown core of West Palm Beach are confronted with an incoherent jumble of visual and architectural styles to grab onto: faux Caribbean-style condominiums replete with the same pastel colors one might see in St. Thomas, Spanish colonial residences converted to offices, even a sprawling and depressing outdoor mall that is as unique as your local Wal-Mart.  (Cheesecake Factory? OMG!)

       Yet for all of the contrasting architectural styles comprising the relatively dull skyline, perhaps no hulk of metal, concrete, and glass provides as gripping a “stop and look” moment as the brutalist-style former West Palm Beach City Hall, opened in 1980.

          Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder.  And some commentators and readers will undoubtedly agree with the co-founder of this blog: “That shit is ugly.”  One can imagine visitors to the city wondering how the hulking mass, just steps from the intracoastal waterway, was ever approved in this subtropical context.  Alternatively evoking the image of an alien fortress, a prison, or some other guardian of the security industrial complex, the concrete old city hall will, at the very least, not engender apathy – viewers will either love or hate the style.

          Brutalist architecture has come under fire from a wide variety of sources.  Theodore Dalrymple, contributing editor to City Journal, for one, critiqued an exhibition dedicated to noted iconoclast Le Corbusier, arguing that “A Corbusian building is incompatible with anything except itself,” and likening brutalism to a form of architectural totalitarianism.

          In some respects, Dalrymple is correct: the brutalist old city hall does not appear to be designed with any of its surroundings in mind, heightening the appearance of a self-contained fortress at odds with the world.  To give a further example of the stark isolationist feel of the old city hall, compare for example one of the designs submitted for a redevelopment of the site from Song & Associates:

This proposal could not be more different from the existing brutalist building: in the proposal’s rendering, you actually notice that the site is close to the intracoastal waterway.  The sloping angles appear to be designed to direct attention to, give better views of, and incorporate the natural beauty of the intracoastal waterway, Palm Beach, and the ocean into the site as a whole.  Overall, the proposal looks harmonious with its surroundings and is generally consistent with what we might imagine when imagining a warm South Florida hotel site on the water in an urban context.

                When confronted with the juxtaposition between the friendly hotel proposal and the harsh city hall, consider the two schools of thought: on one hand, we could rage that our civic buildings should generate a feeling of friendliness and welcome and symbolize our government’s openness.

                I, however, beg to differ.  Brutalism, for this author, in the context of a government or civic building such as the old city hall, is the architect’s way of demonstrating in as outspoken and outrageously confrontational a manner as possible, that our city/country/state is muscular, robust, and doesn’t take any mess.  The highlighting of concrete and the deliberate contrast to the building’s surroundings speaks to me of a confident, unapologetic view towards the world: we are Man, we have conquered our surroundings, we are stronger than nature.  We do not need to be coddled; we are permanent.  Of course, my view directly conflicts with critics like Dalrymple who complain that concrete “does not age gracefully but instead crumbles, stains, and decays” and rail against brutalism’s alleged destructiveness.

              But just as the cascading upper echelons of art deco skyscrapers call to my mind the expression of an age in which anything was possible, in which we reached ever upward in our quest to modernize and perfect, and in which man had proudly industrialized, (cf. Detroit’s Penobscot building, at right), I do believe brutalism has a place, even in subtropical, cheesy, and corrupt West Palm Beach.  And although critics of the building’s style can quibble about its aesthetic beauty, our discussion necessarily leads to a more substantive and practical question regarding the building's successor - the sprawling new city hall complex on Clematis St.:

Is it more “brutal” to have a unique and statement-making building to represent your city tucked away on a relatively sleepy lot, or was it in fact more brutal for politicians to spend $154 million (in a city with 18% of people living below the poverty line) inexplicably placing the new city hall complex smack dab in the middle of a main commercial strip, replete with Saddam Hussein palace-style bathrooms, in the face of popular discontent?  Which is the true symbol of oppressive and totalitarian architectural and site design – brutalist structures, or brutally insensitive and inane politicians?

FAD - Fashion of Palm Beach County

C.Z. Guest and Joanne Connelly, circa 1955, Palm Beach, Florida

Photo by Slim Aarons/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Palm Beach County, is an untapped well for the fashion and art aficionado.  Palm Beach County ranks number nine out of counties with the most millionaires.  Where does one go to look at and be inspired by high fashion and art?  To an area with disposable income, an area like Palm Beach County.

Honestly, to find most of the millionaires in Palm Beach County one would need to venture to Palm Beach Island.  It has it's own culture of art and fashion. You can find fashion labels on Palm Beach Island, that you would normally only find in the big city.  Couture stores, Gucci, Pucci, Louis Vitton and the like are all located on this tiny sixteen mile island that has around 30,000 residents at most; during  snowbird season of course.

It's not just Palm Beach Island, West Palm Beach also has it's own flare when it comes to fashion and art.  Though West Palm Beach was once an area for the hired help, it has become an attraction for those who can afford vacation properties.  And those who can afford vacation properties, can also afford resort wear.

FAD will examine, highlight and focus on all aspects of fashion, art and architecture when it comes to Palm Beach County.  Not all fashion, art and architecture in Palm Beach County is created equal.

I am Giovanni aka Blamegirl and will be the fashion voice of this blog.  I have years of experience working in the fashion industry and will provide a unique voice when it comes to fashion in Palm Beach County.  I've recently relocated to the area from Texas and have observed a change in the fashion here.  

WELCOME

      Palm Beach County; home of transplants and natives of all kinds: east coasters, hippies, yuppies, snowbirds, billionaires, sleazeballs, immigrants, corrupt public officials, hangers-on, wannabes & never was’s, slicksters, hipsters, retirees, and freaks and geeks of all shapes and sizes.

     Into this cosmic slop of a melting pot we wade, having noticed the utter lack of erudite commentary on the bustling arts scene of our fair county.  In this vein we desire to highlight fashion, art, and architectural trends that may ordinarily be covered with only two or three lines in our local papers, or that may be ignored altogether.
     Viewed through the lens of someone relatively new to the local area, (having relocated here 5 years ago), I hope that my discussions will attract attention to the wide variety of artistic and architectural flourishes that we dwell among.  I plan to cover the totally overlooked unconventional and avant-garde scenes to the extent they exist, with a special emphasis on performance and guerrilla art, seeking out and championing absurdism in our daily lives.  Routine exhibition openings with the usual wine and cheese, as we know, grow stale.
     In contributing to the arts and architectural highlights of FAD Palm Beach, I am dedicated to the mission of installation artist Allan Kaprow, who declared “The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible.”