Kateri Butler

article placeholder

How to Build a Sweater

Kateri Butler
Photos by Michael PowersZen and the art of knitting? Ha! Try tense and anxious as you count out those stitches to shape a wearable garment, says knitwear designer Eugene Ong, who relaunched his expanded line Ujein — with backing from an Italian manufacturer — earlier this year. No, there’s no......
article placeholder

Jersey Girl

Kateri Butler
Photos by Michael Powers A pair of jersey crop pants bought designer Rachel Pally a house. Specifically, a pair of crop pants worn by Jessica Simpson from Pally’s spring 2004 line. One In Style photo later and Pally can’t keep the pants in stock. Over the past year, her eponymous......
article placeholder

Destiny’s Child

Kateri Butler
Designer Carlos Rosario keeps on the right side of destiny. After all, this is a guy who shows up in Hollywood with stars in his eyes and tinsel in his hair, can’t speak a word of English, searching for a job — and ends up on a big-budget movie for......
article placeholder

An Anti-Pretty Pretty Boy

Kateri Butler
Photos by Michael PowersYou could call Charles Stolarek a meta-designer. There are his clothes: oddly beautiful and thought-provoking, droll and subversive. The Museum of Jurassic Technology comes to mind. And then there are the ideas behind his clothes. His second collection for his Wooden Mustache line last fall started out......
article placeholder

Wearing the Pretty

Kateri Butler
Photos by Michael PowersAs a designer, Desanka Fasiska is not, as she puts it, trying to reinvent the wheel. You don’t need an instructional diagram to put on any of her outfits. Not that she doesn’t appreciate the avant-garde. She wants to be of the moment, even a little ahead......

Hasta la Vista, Baby

Kateri Butler
Photo by Jack GouldStocker Avenue, between La Cienega and Fairfax. A moonlit midnight. Streaking east past the rows of oil derricks perched on the hill, each mighty pump rhythmically bobbing and slurping up the fossilized past, I encounter isolation primal and profound at 55 mph. The darkness invokes thrills and......
article placeholder

Wise Guy

Kateri Butler
Photos by Michael PowersIt was a twisted-sister ride on the road to becoming a clothing designer for Jeffrey Sebelia, whose line Cosa Nostra is infused with rebel wit and messed-up elegance — a glamorously decadent rock & roll spirit. Oh, he was always interested in fashion. In awe, really. He......
article placeholder

The LBD Rules

Kateri Butler
Photos by Larry HirshowitzO the marvels of the little black dress. It’s perhaps the most iconic garment of the past century. The dress of liberation. Of revolution. Chic at its most radical. It’s the dress that was designed to take you anywhere anytime. That may seem an impossibly quaint notion......
article placeholder

Everything Old Is Vintage Again

Kateri Butler
Non, je ne regrette rien . . . except giving away a drop-dead 1950s Don Loper evening jacket (silk with a sweeping satin collar that could cut glass) when I moved to Paris many years ago. I know, I know. What was I thinking? Fresh start, blah blah blah. That......
article placeholder

JC Superstar

Kateri Butler
Photography by Michael PowersThe style set flipped when Juan Carlos Obando, or JC as everyone calls him, debuted his eponymous line last October at L.A.’s Spring 2005 Fashion Week. Everyone wanted to know where the heck this guy had come from. Such a bright and beautiful talent, such a thrilling......