Monique Forster, 25, an author of the recently published primer, “Learn the 1-2-3s of High Fashion,” likes to claim that the book and its companion volume, “Learn the ABCs of High Fashion,” are aimed at toddlers, preschoolers and overreaching parents who may cherish a hope that their little ones will learn numbers by counting Hermès bags or start chanting “C is for Chanel” before they have learned to spell cat.
The idea, Ms. Forster said, “is to immerse your child a world where learning meets luxury.”
Are she and her co-author, Tilan Rajapakse, who together run the company Lil Spoiled Social Club, peddling questionable values to innocent tots? That could be one way of looking at it, Ms. Forster said. But, she added, “the response has been mainly positive.”
The 1-2-3s book ($24) and the ABCs book ($20) are cheeky by design. As Mr. Rajapakse, also 25, said, “At the least, there’s the fun of hearing a child say, ‘G is for Gucci.’” Ms. Forster said the slim volumes, which share a lineage with others like “The Fashion Legends Alphabet,” have found an audience beyond parents and their children.
“Some people see them as coffee table books,” she said. “They tell us, ‘I don’t even have children. This is for me.’”
Kelly Wearstler’s Closet Sale
Kelly Wearstler may be known for her over-the-top interior designs, but her wardrobe of designer and vintage clothing is just as boundary pushing. She favors labels like Balenciaga, Loewe and Rick Owens, and has a penchant for Stetsons, white stiletto boots, balloon trousers and filmy, flyaway skirts — styles that Ms. Wearstler, 56, mixes and layers like a Viennese torte.
She recently culled her closet and is now selling a selection of outré items on Basic.Space, an online marketplace where photographers, beauty gurus and designers of fashion and interiors can offload idiosyncratic wares they no longer want. Other sellers on Basic.Space, a sort of Vestiaire Collective for aspiring aesthetes, include Nick Wooster, a design and retail consultant, and Emily Oberg, the founder of the brand Sporty & Rich.
At this writing, Ms. Wearstler’s items for sale included a Saint Laurent Rive Gauche tasseled bustier ($500), a Givenchy bomber jacket ($650), a peacock-blue Vetements hooded dress ($475) and a pale Dries Van Noten fur coat ($800). She is also offering a handful of décor like lamps and chairs for people who may appreciate her furnishings more than her fashion.
Ms. Wearstler’s personal and decorative styles are often described as a fusion of contrasts, and both may incorporate treasures from her travels. “I always look to the surroundings for inspiration,” she said.
She views her closet sale as a way of sharing aspects of her eccentric sensibility with like-minded admirers, and she said there are more high-end castoffs to come. “There is a certain magic in opening my world to others,” she said.
A Diverse Assortment of Dandies
Sarah Ball, a British portrait artist, is a study in rigorous understatement, her look a fusion of plain Agnès B. tops and Margaret Howell suits. But her subjects, members of that rarefied breed known as dandies, are something else again.
Ms. Ball’s works, which are the focus of “Tilted,” an exhibition through March 23 at the Stephen Friedman Gallery in Lower Manhattan, showcase people she encounters in her native Cornwall, in southwest England. Among them are sociocultural outliers whose images, she said, resonate at a time when gender codes in fashion, as well as traditional boundaries of class and culture, are becoming increasingly fluid.
There is Elliot, bespectacled, titian-haired and wearing a lace ascot. Declan appears virginal in a white Simone Rocha gown. One of the artist’s favorites is Alys, who has close-cropped hair, rouged cheeks and is wearing an old-fashioned point collar.
Ms. Ball, 59, said she first took Alys for a boy, though she is in fact a member of a singular, if often neglected, archetype: the female dandy, otherwise known as the quaintrelle. The scholar Elizabeth Wilson, in an article for the journal “Fashion Theory,” said dandies, male and female alike, “possess a stance of “disdain, provocation and indifference to the world.”
Alys has some distinctive forebears. Among them: Anne Lister, a 19th-century landowner and diarist with a penchant for black riding gear, who was known by the nickname Gentleman Jack. Ms. Lister’s more contemporary counterparts include the actress Marlene Dietrich, whose sartorial tastes included white suits and cravats; Tilda Swinton, known for her blonde quiff; and Janelle Monáe, who has flaunted bow ties and fedoras.
Like Alys, “they are part of a much bigger idea about identity,” Ms. Ball said, and “those things that define us and how other people see us, from religion, race, and gender to the music we listen to.”
