TRIBEZA

Out of the Closet

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Story by Sarah Wolf

What better way to keep your finger on the pulse of Austin style than to monitor it daily, which is hard to do if you’re stuck in an office or at home waiting for the cable guy. Keeping track of the latest in jean hemlines or gauging the nuances of the toe tip of your stilettos requires skills of observation beyond the capabilities of most of us. And that’s where bloggers can come to our rescue, because not only are they fascinated by detail, they want us to be fascinated too. You can depend on them to tell all—the who, what, when, where, and why of the style of the moment. And “moment” is right, because some of these roving reporters carry cameras—it doesn’t take days or weeks to find out what’s up to the minute any more. But, their approaches are as different as the styles of Alexander McQueen and Marc Jacobs and range from a little wacky to the polished. Here’s what their sites have to offer about how to be fashionable, and why keeping Austin weird doesn’t have to mean keeping Austin casual.

The Beat Reporter: Rachel Youens

Website: AustinStyleWatch.com

Prized Fashion Possession: A Marilyn Monroe– style polyester halter dress in black-andwhite houndstooth. I love houndstooth! I like that houndstooth can be blocky like Tetris, that it can also be woven and that it’s very old-fashioned but also modern. Sometimes you see something and know it’s for you for life. That’s how I feel about houndstooth.

Business journalist by day, style stalker by night, Rachel Youens, the founder of AustinStyleWatch.com, is always on the lookout for outstanding examples of Austin style, which she captures with her trusty digital camera and posts on her site.

“I always carry two cameras on me,” she notes. “You never know when Quentin Tarantino is going to slip on a banana peel right in front of you. And I like taking people with me, visually, where I go.”

The recent UT grad—she has a journalism degree and a day job in that field—has been chronicling Austin’s characters for about a year now (profiling local artists and reporting on gallery exhibits and fashion shows) and doing the whole shebang herself, from snapping photos to writing copy to pounding out HTML. Frustrated that most fashion blogs focus on the frivolous and the expensive, Youens set out to shine the spotlight on people with more creativity than cash. “There’s a reason I call it Style Watch and not Fashion Watch,” she explains. “I don’t really like the idea of shopping as a hobby and pushing stores. Your style reflects your situation—that it’s hot here or that you’re an artist and have no money. That’s way more intriguing than ‘I have a big paycheck and bought $400 jeans.’ We’re not Dallas, and I don’t want to be.”

Youens herself is unapologetically girly and embraces items with a feminine slant and a story to tell: red lipstick, vintage dresses, high heels, and jewelry, jewelry, jewelry. “I always wear dresses and skirts. I own one pair of jeans,” she says, as jaws drop around the city. By way of explanation: “I’m tall (six feet), and jeans don’t fit.”

She wishes people cared more about how they look when they’re out and about; too many people mistake Austin’s “casual” reputation to mean it’s okay to throw on whatever. (It’s a common lament from all three bloggers in this piece.) “It doesn’t take much to look fabulous in Austin,” she acknowledges. “If I’m in a dress, I’m already 10 miles past fabulous. I wish this town were more formal.” Many of her clothes come from her mom, Deborah Youens, a “hippie who was still classy, not hempy or dirty,” and that provenance guarantees that she won’t see her outfit strolling down the other side of the street.

Youens is also a staunch supporter of shopping local: “Behind every one of these boutiques is someone who’s realizing their dreams. We have a great array of shops, from the extravagant to the affordable.” Some of her favorites are Blue Velvet on the Drag, Wish, Gomi, and Parts & Labour, all beloved for their down-to-earth prices and handson service. It’s the same attention to detail that catches her eye when she’s out around town.

“I admire the brave people I photograph,” she says. “They’re not afraid of what a boss will think of them, or whether someone will date them because of what they’re wearing. And I am not into sleeves of tattoos or Mohawks, but I’m glad people who are live in my town. I look at it like art. Don’t be so fashion-afraid, don’t criticize people who express themselves through fashion.” Great advice for embracing the inner artist in all of us.

The Transplant: Marques G. Harper

Website: Statesman.com/TheGoods

Prized Fashion Possession: A Robert Graham jacket I bought a year ago at a friend’s shop in Virginia. It’s this really great black corduroy with blue in between the wales and red and blue piping. Inside it has an embroidered crown, which is also my personal logo. It has a James Bond feel, very Tom Ford when he walked down the runway with a martini in his hand after his last show for Gucci.

Marques Harper landed in Austin several months ago to take over the fashion and style desk at the Statesman. Since then, the New Jersey native has adapted, ever so slowly, to Central Texas heat, he’s gotten hooked on breakfast tacos, and his blog, The Goods, has relaunched with loftier taste, video clips, frequent posts, and a dishier slant. Think OK! Magazine edited by Tim Gunn.

“I’ve always believed that fashion is part of our culture,” Harper declares. “I want to make it more accessible to readers. We’re influenced by celebrity, and I understand celebrity. I’m a guy who at one point would go to Barnes and Noble, buy every celebrity magazine, and go home to read them.” Hence, a plea to skeleton-thin Courtney Love to eat a donut runs just after a lament on the continued popularity of carpenter jeans. A little catty? Sure. Entertaining as hell? Absolutely!

Harper’s goal is to subtract the mystery and fear from fashion and encourage Austinites to branch out beyond our jeans-and-T-shirt Texasness. We’re well on our way, he notes, because of the distinct influence from both coasts and the city’s burgeoning film industry. “Austin draws people from all over,” he says. “It’s got a very different vibe in terms of style from the rest of Texas.”

But we, especially Austin men, are too focused on casual. Some measure of informality is fine—a crisp ensemble will wilt in 105-degree heat, after all—but many people cite Austin’s casual reputation as an excuse to be lazy with their ensembles. “Instead of wearing jeans, even expensive jeans, why not some nice dress slacks?” Harper asks of local fellas. Himself a denim fan (Lucky and 1921 are fave brands), he elevates jeans with colorful sneakers and immaculate grooming just to prove that even a little effort goes a long way.

“Fashion is an expression of who you are. It says something about you when you wear jeans, flip-flops, and sunglasses or when you’re wearing your best thing and having a great day. If you’re going to present yourself to the public, why not dress up? It shows you appreciate yourself and the people around you.” And right now, on the cusp of evolution, there’s much to appreciate about Austin style.

The Entrepreneur: Beth Lambert

Website: StyleShaker.com

Prized Fashion Possession: My grandmother’s wedding dress. It’s a cocoa-brown-and-ivory jacket and dress set. It’s fitted and timeless. I wear the cap-sleeve jacket separately with jeans and a cami, and it’s hot. People ask me about it every time I wear it.

Don’t call Beth Lambert a blogger. Labeling her website, Style- Shaker.com, a blog is like calling Starbucks a cozy little neighborhood coffee shop.

Sure, Style Shaker recommends beauty products, instructs readers on how to copy Eva Mendes’s style, and trumpets the opening of new Austin shops—all services that you’d expect of a local fashion blog. But it also does the unexpected, tapping into Lambert’s education and expertise in marketing, business, and fashion, acting as a virtual storefront to a handful of local artisans, such as Solid Gold and Violet Rouge boutiques, and providing readers a heads-up about online sales and coupons for local businesses. “The key is giving people real-time information on where to go, what to do, and where to shop, and saving shoppers time and money,” Lambert says. She scours stores and their sites so you don’t have to.

Launched in early 2006, Style Shaker possesses the polish and professionalism of Lambert herself, who has a B.S. in biochemistry, of all things, and an M.B.A. After stints in strategic marketing and biotechnology, she now immerses herself in Style Shaker full-time, profiling local designers, noting trends about town, and pointing readers to online “steals and deals.” She also writes for America Online’s Style List and is consistently called on by various national media to speak for the record about Austin style.

Which, she points out gently, could use a bit of creativity. She sees that women have a lot to learn from local men, who dress to suit their personalities and whatever activities they’re embarking on that day. “You can look at a guy and know by how he’s styled that he’s saying something about himself and where he’s headed—if he’s going to work, if he’s in a band, or if he’s taking his boat to the lake,” she says. But young women “have started to be more generic. It’s all about looking hot, looking sexy. We’ve lost some of the girls who want their outfits to say what they’re about.”

Plus, the city’s laid-back attitude is almost anti-style, Lambert notes, but Austin’s youth, musical influence, gorgeous natural resources, and recent population surge all work in its favor. “There are a lot of transplants who’ve brought in different ideas, and Austin is growing,” she says. “We embrace the nightlife and all things that come out of it, and we embrace the daylife outside and on the lakes, which makes Austin a very unique city to Texas and even the nation.”

“Austin will stand on its own in two to three years and have a signature style,” Lambert predicts boldly—and judging from how well she does her homework, there’s little doubt that she’s right.

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