ALEXANDRA JACOBS GOES SHOPPING: Miracle Dress Edition

This week's Thursday Styles will bring Critical Shopper Alexandra Jacobs to Stella McCartney's newly relocated SoHo boutique in search of the fabled Octavia Dress. This, apparently, is the latest cunningly designed frock to hit the scene that promises to hide the wearer's every figure flaw, in this case, by actually superimposing a the image of a new body shape over whomever it is covering. Genius!
Also, sold out.

Actually, flattering though it may be, one would still need to start out with a reasonably slender frame in order for this skintight dress to have its full effect, but the shapely appeal is obvious, and also moot, since all the starlets seem to have snapped them up. Anyway, Jacobs continues to shop, finding McCartney's new home far more hospitable in almost every way than its previous location. She notes that the staunch vegetarian designer has finally left the neighborhood famous for butchery for a place on the more environmentally fitting "Greene" street. Jacobs stays away from tangents this week in favor of high praise for the unlikely groundedness of the pop-star bred designer. "At its best," she writes, "Ms. McCartney’s work has always summed not baronial splendor, nor the grinding rigor of being famous, but a kind of wry whimsy about the puzzle of being female in the 21st century."

That is lofty praise indeed, though Jacobs leaves not with a miraculous dess, but some $25 children's leggings, an extravagant gift for a fashion savvy child who is getting started early on label chasing.

Critical Shopper: The Promise of the Cure-All Dress By Alexandra Jacobs (NYTimes)
Stella McCartney 112 Greene Street between Prince & Spring Streets, SoHo