5 Tops 100 Hours

The next time you see somebody on "Project Runway" look like they shit a cow after being told to create an outfit in 24 hours, slap them silly for me. I created five tops in 100 hours, and if I were to compute the time spent actually sewing them it would be a mere fraction of that time. Since Rebecca was out on location for the next four days I had unlimited access to the workshop and all the equipment to make the clothes I love to wear, and I did just that. Let's go through each top, one by one:

On Day 1 (Tuesday) I sewed a top made of some stretchy green fabric I bought from the remnant rack at Michael Levine's. It was absolutely hip, exciting and beautiful to work with and look at, but there was only enough to fabricate a shell with. Since there wasn't enough material to make sleeves I had to employ something else so I used some great fishnet material to finish the job. I always like making tops with fishnet sleeves so I can show off my 7-star tat sleeve (go to Purple Panther Tattoo), so I tricked out some fishnet arms and I'm very pleased with the results. How's that for hip, exciting and beautiful?

Day 2 (Wednesday) had me making a purple velvet top. This was a challenge, to be sure, because it wasn't crushed velvet and there almost wasn't enough material to finish the job. In fact, one of the arms had to be cut in two segments in order to complete the top - a sleeve is usually cut in one piece. Ironically, it was the two-piece sleeve that had better ease than the one-piece sleeve! This piece was so tight I'm going to have to cut out pasta and ice cream for the next five years.

On Day 3 (Thursday) I made a tank top of bamboo material. Since I already own several pieces made from bamboo I was excited to work with this material. Bamboo has a texture that feels like cotton but has a coolness to it that feels more like a poly blend. In fact there were times when I felt like I was working with a lycra/polyester combination, so unfibrous was the material.

Making the tank top was a challenge because bamboo is very delicate, sometimes too much so. On three occasions the material got caught in the fangs of the feed dogs of the sewing machine (between the bobbin and the walking foot), the last time being the worst. The fangs took a big bite out of the material and I had to pull the material out leaving a nice rip in the fabric before I could even finish the job. Nuts!

Day 4 (Friday): Equally sensitive was the purple bamboo I purchased on closeout at Mood for only $3.oo (what a find!). This tore quicker than TP and three bad turns with the scissors required some quick repairs. I do not recommend this material for sewers with serious patience issues or quick tempers. God knows I lost mine after the second time I accidentally cut through the fabric. The top turned out okay but more than slightly looks like the walking wounded!

There was supposed to be a fifth top, a black crushed velvet stretchy thing, but I wasted most of the day constructing a muslin that turned out worse than the actual top itself. Although it's procedure to make a muslin practice run I made so many revisions that it took up most of the day. Nuts!

Truth be told, making cool clothes in a limited amount of time felt more like "24 Hour Catwalk", the short-lived show hosted by Alexa Chung and an uber-bizarre group of sewing professionals, all veterans of the fashion industry, especially tough muffin JustRaymona. I wish I had JustRaymona helping me with these delicate fabric nightmares. Time is tight.

Anna May Wong: Daughter of the Dragon

Turner Classic Movies recently screened their Asian film festival, and sandwiched in between annoying Charlie Chan and even more annoying Jackie Chan they showed a magnetic but obscure actress named Anna May Wong. Like Louise Brooks and Lizabeth Scott she fell short of major stardom in spite of the fact that she illuminates a film the minute you see her. She holds her own effortlessly next to Marlene Dietrich in "Shanghai Express", no small feat. She was sexually radiant in a silent film called "Piccadilly" playing a sinister Jazz Age showgirl. Many of her films, good and bad, were screened during the fest. Because of her ethnicity she was cast for the most part as unscrupulous Dragon Ladies, a sheer waste of her talent as most of these pictures were absolute B-movie trash. One of them hit a nerve, though, and it was called "Daughter of the Dragon".

Filmed in 1931, the film begins with Anna May Wong playing showgirl Princess Ling Moy knocking 'em dead in London's West End. Backstage after her show she's promised a meeting with her long lost father, who turns out to be the infamous Fu Manchu(!). She's taken to his hidden lair where he tells her she's the heir to his evil empire. Fu Manchu tells Ling Moy, "I wish I had another son to exact my revenge."
Ling Moy, desperate for her father's approval, vows, "I will be your son!"
There's an overall melancholic need for approval as Ling Moy desires to be accepted by her father, and later by Ronald Petrie, the blandly blonde English gentleman she lusts for.
"Will I ever have golden hair and eyes of blue?" she yearns for his love as much as she does her father's.
"Strange - I find you oddly attractive", is Petrie's left-handed compliment. Just to make sure she can successfully seduce him she relegates his fiancee Joan Marshall, equally blonde and bland, to her evil Chinese torture dungeon.
Of course Scotland Yard, led by Chinese detective Ah Kee shows up on time and heroically saves our two British white bread lovers and kills Ling Moy, but not before she fatally shoots Ah Kee. The film ends with the heroic Chinaman and the dastardly Dragon Lady dead in each other's arms, like a lover's clutch. The message: Chinese women belong with Chinese men, and not with good, upstanding Englishmen.

While I was watching this movie I couldn't help thinking how incredibly dull the good, vanilla-white English were in character and physical appearance, and how the movie only came alive when the exotic and gorgeous Ling showed up on screen. I also asked myself what the significance of showing Chinese torturing the imperialistic British was in this film, and all I could think of was some bizarre payback for the real-life abuse the Chinese suffered building railroads in America just fifty years before the release of this movie. It felt like some form of cinematic revenge.

The great irony about Wong was that although she was always cast as a Chinese woman she was born in Los Angeles, California and never dated Asian men, but American men. In spite of all that she had to play the exotic Pekingese just to make it in the movies. Even in real life she yearned to fit in somehow, just like in "Daughter of the Dragon", and that's why this silly B-movie is bigger than its intentions.