I’ve been dressing very casually lately, so I made a point of putting on a dress for MrB’s belated birthday dinner on Sunday. Dress: Alexander McQueen (2010) Shoes: Prada (2010) This dress by Alexander McQueen is homegrown vintage. I wore it for the first time during a 2010 trip to L.A., for dinner with my…
What Wendy Wore
What Wendy Wore: Columbia Spectator Slow Fashion
The Columbia Daily Spectator — the undergraduate news organization of Columbia University in New York — had its annual fundraiser last Friday. This was a pleasant change, because the dinner has been held in January or February for ages. Last year, the students told the board of alumni trustees, of which I’m a member, that…
Going Wide With Frame Jeans and Diane Keaton
I need to do a YouTube video about my whole history with jeans. I’ve realized that since my teenage years, I’ve always been searching for a style that’s not readily available. Over the past decade, I’ve been bedeviled by the persistence of skinny jeans/jeggings, which was a style I loved in the 1980s — when…
Coachella 2019: What Wendy Wore. Again.
For a lot of people, Coachella is a high-fashion moment — a runway in the desert. Then there’s me, wearing the same thing three years in a row. I wore the same hat, shorts, boots, and denim jacket (tied around my waist in each photo) at my first Coachella in 2016 too — the only…
What Wendy Wore: Double-Vintage Ossie Clark
On Tuesday, MrB and I attended the Awards for Excellence dinner for the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Dick Tofel, our friend and the president of ProPublica, was among the honorees. Four recent alumni were also recognized and I was absolutely blown away by their work: I…
What Wendy Wore: Valentine’s Day 2019
I was mildly disappointed with myself last night for being sartorially lazy on Valentine’s Day. You know I love theme dressing, yet I didn’t wear my vintage Moschino heart dress … … or my vintage Gemma Kahng heart vest. But I decided to forgive myself for not dressing to code because I did have an…
Throwback Thursday: 2014 Oscars, 2019 GEM Awards
In 2014, I wore a Zang Toi trench gown to the Vanity Fair Oscar party. Last week, I wore the same dress to the GEM Awards — aka “the Academy Awards of the fine jewelry industry” — where I posed for a photo with Monica Stephenson, the founder of ANZA Gems. What Wendy WoreDress: Zang…
What Wendy Wore: New Year’s Eve 2019
I hope you had a fantastic New Year’s Eve! I had a wonderful dinner at Balthazar with MrB; my stepson, William; my designing friend Stacy; and talented journalist siblings Jesse and Abby. View this post on Instagram New Year’s Eve at Balthazar #nye2019 #happynewyear #friendandfamily #newyearseveparty A post shared by Wendy Brandes (@wendybrandes) on Dec…
Year in Review: What Wendy Wore in 2018
For 2017, I was proud to be able to do a “What Wendy Wore” year in review post featuring 12 slow-fashion outfits. In 2018 — despite Henry David Thoreau’s famous “… beware of all enterprises that require new clothes” — some of my most notable looks did require something new. I mean, I normally don’t…
MrB Is the Cat’s Pyjamas, Plus What Wendy Wore
MrB had been asking me for a while what I wanted for my birthday — which was yesterday — as well as the holidays. I kept saying nothing, and that was before we tried to save Purrkoy the kitten’s life last week. After that, I wasn’t in a particularly celebratory mood, and I figured those…