It's All in the Wrist

Summer, like winter, can halt the momentum of city-dwellers. The extremes of temperature and other natural elements can be cause to drop on the nearest Bauhaus chair and call it a day.

What you should do instead is look for a window…a small, curtained portal to the creative tidal pools tending to exist during these quieter months. You might find yourself taken with watercolor painting, sailing, a language course, and in the case of many of debut’s curious visitors, the art of design. And it is indeed an art. The genesis of a beautiful garment is often a beautiful sketch. Of course draping and a keen eye come into play, but a sketch can be the livelihood of a designer’s aesthetic (ahem, Monsieur Lagerfeld).

In addition to the Basics Fashion Design book series we stock – an encyclopedic range of finely researched artistic resources – we’ve added a secret weapon to the mix: Hokey Croqui’s sketchpads.  This magical, rounded edge, sturdy notebook features sheets and sheets of pre-drawn mannequins. The artist chooses a favorite stance, his or her favorite sketch tool, and goes to work on the creative. When complete, photocopy the paper and watch the original mannequin’s figure disappear, leaving only a perfectly formed gown…or a Le Smoking…or, well, you get the picture. The layout is at once a shortcut and a training process, allowing for fluidity of the hand.

It’s the perfect lakeside occupation for the casual aesthete and a bit of a vacation for the obsessed sketch artist.   

$20.00 each, personalized by debut, and for your eyes only with a robin's egg blue organza closure

Annual Parsons Senior Showcase

Coming off what was by all accounts an uplifting CFDA Awards event (dubbed by many as the Fashion Academy Awards) it is fitting to ruminate on the recent design school graduates who will perhaps – hopefully – be future CFDA nominees and winners!

Debut New York at just two+ years of age is a relative gelding in the racey fashion world. And yet we’ve been fortunate to capture labels pre-buzz quite often; ergo we tend to be more attuned to the largely undiscovered than the newly acknowledged – it keeps us on our toes.

Fittingly, Debut’s Founder, Lisa Weiss will host the third Annual Parsons Senior Showcase at Debut with co-host – and designer – Sang A Im-Propp (the beautiful woman behind the impossibly chic accessories collection, Sang A).

On Tuesday, June 15th we will toast ten select senior designers and their collections, and subsequently turn our gallery over to this mysterious gaggle of names. Each collection will be housed in its own in-store space, and will be available for purchase at Debut through June 20th. On the eve of the 15th, Sang A will also bestow her exotic collection on us, including choice Summer 2010 bags and clutches, as well as a preview of Fall. We can only hope the showcase will be a glimpse of future fashion history!

Allez donc vous faire bronzer...sur la plage, sur la plage

Following Memorial Day there is usually a palpable shift in the New York-ness of the City, whereby an influx of vaguely unfamiliar visitors populates the island vicinity, while Manhattanites make an exodus “out East” or “upstate”. It’s a bit of an Alien planet feeling.

Rather pleasantly this weekend, however, it seems Manhattan welcomed visitors and residents both. There’s been a happy coexistence on the sidewalks and in stores, and everyone is out shopping. It’s steamy and hot, but with a strong wind coming off the trees. It’s a climate conducive to walking the neighborhoods in search of interesting new items one can only wear when the weather gets like this – that is to say oppressive, but solidly summer. The mission: to find what will keep us feeling light as air and ready to take all the season has to offer.

Debut was well prepared, having ordered in advance a variety of easy, sleek t-shirting options. Draped racerback tank dresses by SHIN are perfect for workday wardrobe fatigue** – they’ll glide on easily and instill a put-together sense of self, particularly paired with high wedges. The new Brazilian label, UMA, offers sheer, asymmetric tanks that appear intricate from afar, but on the body exude an ineffable, languid cool. With these separates we’ll take Manhattan, the Hamptons, Malibu and our plane ride to the South of France come August.

** And it doesn't hurt that summer's heat coincides with summer's sales - 30-40% off!

* UMA's draped "polkadot" tanks - $95.00 each

Why not throw on the lightest crackled leather Dariya Repina bag? The color and chrome chain pair perfectly with whites...$330.000