(Getty)

Not all black t-shirts are created equally.

Hitchcock Partners, a company that works to help build and maintain brand name companies, recently released a video that investigated how people view the simple black t-shirt.

The company took seven black t-shirts from various different brands, ranging in price, and covered their labels. They asked different people to try and identify which brand belonged to which t-shirt. The participants ranked the t-shirts and soon discovered how wrong they were. They critiqued the design and fabric of the expensive ones while they complimented the inexpensive, run-of-the-mill shirts.

As it turns out, a Prada label and $280 price tag on a black t-shirt makes it seem better made and nicer than a $5 black Hanes t-shirt from Target, regardless of the fact that it may not be as well-made.

Maybe instead of splurging on an overpriced shirt, run to the local drugstore and save money and quality.

The Waldorf's artisanal honey is getting buzz.

The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is currently cultivating a new kind of honey for its kitchens and bars. The hotel, where President Obama stays when he is in town, is used to painstaking attention to detail and extravagance, which makes its approach to the honey all the more intriguing.

Rather than relying on what could be called the Masa Imperative of luxury, after the top-dollar sushi joint that ships in fish from the Sea of Japan and the Bay of Spain with the urgency and costliness of helicoptered transplant organs (indeed, some of the fish are carried in organ containers), the Waldorf has gone in a direction more evocative of the Brooklyn Flea Market: its honey comes from beehives it is now keeping on a 20th-floor outdoor patio.

The initiative, brainchild of executive chef David Garcelon, relies on the expertise of the city’s premier beekeeper, Andrew Coté, who sells his own neighborhood-specific honeys at the Union Square farmer’s market.

“It sounds like a Portlandia skit,” said restaurateur Taavo Somer, considered by many to be the proto-Brooklyn hipster.

Like other aristocratic brands, the Waldorf is figuring out how to embrace the wildly popular (and youthful) do-it-yourself aesthetic that has gripped broader, scruffier swaths of the market.

Refinement and crispness are suddenly handicaps. The new aesthetic is sometimes referred to as “rough luxe,” bedhead writ large.

Upper East Side stylists, personal shoppers, private concierges and boutique proprietors describe the Waldorf honey as the latest in a sea change in luxury aesthetics, which has come largely as a response to what they perceive to be over-licensed, over-distributed, over-accessible luxury brands. If the devil wears Prada and the devil wears glasses, the devil is in luck: Prada frames are available at LensCrafters. Versace is on the racks at H&M.

“Used to be you could just run up Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue scooping up things at Louis Vuitton and you were done. Now it’s meeting the artist and having a relationship and knowing the whole story about how she made it. It’s luxury with soul,” said Aviva Stanoff, whose handmade pillows sell for up to $500 at Barneys, Fred Segal and Saks Fifth Avenue.

“The Louis Vuitton stuff—I’m picking on them, but it’s all of that: Prada, Armani, whatever—is so easy and kind of nouveau-riche. It’s obvious. It’s not interesting anymore. So now we want more of an adventure. Upper East Side women love to have almost a safari in Brooklyn, to walk through my studio and the piles of fabric and little threads or feathers clinging to their Chanel.”

Lisa Devo, whose all natural, recycled package soaps sell at C.O. Bigelow and the Kenneth Salon at the Waldorf, agreed: “They like to call and be speaking to the owner. You don’t call Diane Von Furstenberg and have Diane Von Furstenberg pick up the phone; they’ll just talk to some bored clerk and, y’know, customers get bored of bored clerks.”

Eva Jeanbart-Lorenzotti, who founded Vivre.com, a two-million-member luxe-hunting shopping site, describes a kind of big-brand boomerang.

“Paris, London, Milan, even Tokyo, it all looks the same, everything so recognizable,” she said. “Two beautiful women walk into a room. One, you can tell head-to-toe what she’s wearing. The other is a mystery. Nothing pleases a woman more than people asking, ‘I love that. Where did you get it?’”

Jesse Garza, co-founder of Visual Therapy, a luxury lifestyle consultancy, said his clients are in search of “realness, and not the kind of realness that applies to Real Housewives.”

“None of my clients want Christian Louboutin shoes anymore, because the Kardashians are clomping around in them at breakfast,” he said. “What my clients want now is that thrown-together, put-together look of Jackie Kennedy Onassis.”

Mr. Garza pointed to the recent popularity of a $3,010 heavy knit sweater that was part of Chanel’s latest spring collection, a notable departure from the brand’s classic flat jacket. At a recent show, Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel’s creative director, bragged that it took 3,000 hours—125 days—to hand-embroider a sleeveless coat.

While bespoke has always had cachet, handmade has become an obsession in fashion; witness the likes of Salvatore Ferragamo’s blousons of interwoven leather and raffia inspired “by the art of manual knotting threads and plaiting straw.”

There’s also holistic, repurposed art (at a recent check, Bergdorf Goodman’s seventh-floor curiosity shop had three wall sculptures of upholstery coils, each handmade over a six-month period in Brooklyn, ranging in price from $8,000 to $19,500), twee literary affectation (Marc Jacobs briefly sold hand-embroidered Olympia Le-Tan-designed book clutches that would look at home in Greenpoint’s Word bookstore, save for their $1,500 price tag) and foppish hobbyist whimsy (Tiffany’s $375 sterling silver harmonica, for example).

“We’re seeing more traffic on the road less traveled,” said Scott Schramm, Henri Bendel’s senior vice president in charge of general merchandise management. “It’s definitely quirkier, more independent, more imaginative. Our girl is more curious, and when you have curiosity, you have more confidence too, more uniqueness; it’s almost rediscovering that luxury is about specialty, not a uniform.”

He said buyers and customers were not only embracing brave new merchandise, but brave mixes and matches as well, specifically citing the pairing of a traditional Hermès bag with a Tom Binns cuff. Those cuffs are almost Damien Hirsts: a gold-plated shark mandible, a bejeweled oversize silver safety pin and, for 2013, a hulking gold-plated hammer-and-nail cuff.

Meanwhile, the status of a Tiffany engagement or wedding ring has been challenged by the likes of Sam Abbay, who runs a make-your-own-wedding-ring workshop in the Financial District and whose client base has shifted from Brooklyn to Manhattan in recent months.

“Tiffany’s or Harry Winston or Cartier, they’re selling rings they’ve already had designed,” said Mr. Abbay. “You can mix and match this carat or this cut or this setting, but it’s not that much variety. I mean, isn’t that how they do things at Chipotle? Lots of the city’s richest women have pretty much the exact same symbol of their husbands’ love.”

While the Waldorf eschews the exotica of Yemeni Wadi Do’an or Sidr honeys, the most expensive honeys in the world, it is doubling down on its newfound folksiness: Mr. Garcelon, its executive chef, explained plans to expand the beekeeping patio to include herbs and vegetables. But first, he plans to develop a private, locally sourced cheese label as a honey pairing.

Mr. Garcelon cast the decision as a mix of ancient tradition and modern environmentalism: “Sure, it’s great for the environment, for local pollination, for our guests to know that it is made right here. But it’s also great for me in the kitchen; any really old recipe from Europe was made with honey, not sugar. So we get to return to that real flavor: honey in soup, honey in salad dressing, honey in ice cream.”

If not for the nine-foot, two-ton, 119-year-old bronze and marble clock sounding Westminster chimes every quarter-hour behind him, the conversation could have been happening in Brooklyn’s Park Slope Food Co-op.

“The other day, an older man, the kind who wouldn’t be caught dead with Chanel because that’s too nouveau-riche for him—old-school, real true Upper East Side—was name-dropping a restaurant on Smith Street,” said Jonathan Butler, founder of Brownstoner.com and the Brooklyn Flea Market, who grew up on the Upper East Side and said he went to Brooklyn “maybe five times” before he was 21. “I was amazed that Brooklyn was even part of his universe.”

editorial@observer.com

Pilati and Golbin.

“You can find greatness everywhere. You just have to look for it,” said Harper’s Bazaar editrix, Glenda Bailey, quoting former Yves Saint Laurent creative director Stefano Pilati in a brief, prepared introduction. Ms. Bailey had been charged with welcoming the recently departed YSL designer to the stage as a part of French Institute Alliance Française’s Fashion Talks program. (Other fashion stalwarts this year include former president and executive creative direct of Coach, Reed Krakoff and designer Dries van Noten.)

With considerable buzz about Mr. Pilati’s exit after ten years at Yves Saint Laurent—one which had been the subject of many rumors—it was inevitable that the elephant in the room would be addressed. A throng of eager YSL devotees crowded Florence Gould Hall to witness Pamela Golbin, chief curator of Paris’ Musée de la Mode et du Textile, in conversation with Mr. Pilati.

The dashing Milanese, clad elegantly in a blazer, neck-foulard and thin-rimmed sunglasses, was greeted with much applause as he took his seat on stage. Mr. Pilati’s comfortable grin gave the impression that he had little to hide behind his shades… Thankfully Ms. Golbin started right away with the big question. Four weeks have passed since Mr. Pilati broke ties with the PPR mega-brand and Ms. Golbin inquired about how he was holding up. “I have a great state of mind! I’m really good, which is very unusual for me,” Mr. Pilati replied earnestly. He said that with his new found freedom, he has his “career in his hands.”

The Observer didn’t get too much more on the situation, except that the designer seems content with his numerous accomplishments and not having to dwell on the future: “I haven’t planned anymore,” Mr. Pilati told Ms. Golbin about his next professional step.

The designer with Glenda Bailey.

Most of Tuesday’s talk focused on Mr. Pilati’s quick ascension to the top of the high fashion world: From his internship with Nino Cerruti to his work at Giorgio Armani in men’s ready-to-wear (1993-95) and then a stint in Prada’s fabric research department, before becoming Miuccia Prada’s right hand man at Miu Miu (1995-2000). Mr. Pilati demonstrated a natural talent for selecting fabrics and navigated the politics of the design world well. It came as second nature for him— common sense—as if “to cook pasta without water!” Mr. Pilati credits Signora Prada as one of his major inspirations and mentors. The atmosphere at Prada though, was more familial than at Yves Saint Laurent, the designer stated. Prada was about the meaning whereas YSL was about managing an image. Mr. Pilati started at the famed French maison in 2000, working under Tom Ford, an experience he called challenging, but which gave him great confidence. Mr. Pilati was charged with reviving declining sales at the fashion empire and making YSL profitable, which meant creating “what the market was asking for.” Accessories became the principal solution and to this day, some of Mr. Pilati’s most memorable creations are iconic shoes and bags. He said the learning process of making coveted accessories as a highlight of his tenure at YSL, where he served as creative director from 2004 until this March.

Mr. Pilati describes himself as a passionate and complex person who loves to be spontaneous. These characteristics certainly influenced Mr. Pilati’s prêt-à-porter designs at Yves Saint Laurent and his work was not always adored by critics or the legendary founder himself. “To be controversial makes people think… there is always criticism… A controversy makes people stop… they can think what they want.” However, the passing of Mr. Saint Laurent in 2008 “gave me freedom,” Mr. Pilati confessed.

“If fashion was elegant it would be nicer to walk around and see people,” Mr. Pilati concluded with élan. When asked how the fashion world should remember his decade at Yves Saint Laurent, the designer commented that he doesn’t need any fanfare to commemorate his work,” Fashion is a privileged place.” Mr. Pilati’s words highlight his contentment with his achievements and the generous lifestyle he leads. It seems that despite all the fuss of calling it quits at Yves Saint Laurent, Stefano Pilati has found great peace.

Narciso Rodriguez, who co-hosted the bash, is a self-professed "big fan" of Ms. Steinkamp's work; he's a bit of a collector, as it turns out. "I love Pat Steir's work, and I have some Thomas Ruff that I really love. I have a few of his pieces," he said. And how does Narciso Rodriguez strategize getting through Fashion Week? "I try to keep focused, keep cool, drink lots of water," he said. Just like basic training!

Pretty bad, apparently. According to a shocking report on Vanity Fair's Web site by Jessica Flint and Elizabeth Hurlbut, Vanity Fair employees are being forced to brown bag it.

Coming only a week after it was revealed that the magazine reused its July 2007 cover of Barack Obama, it seems like life at the magazine is growing bleaker by the week. Take a moment the think about this fact: The staff of the world's glossiest magazine is bringing lunch to work.

Then again, it might not be so bad over there: The bags used to transport the lunches—everything from "Last night's home-cooked meal" to (gasp!) "Bread and a can of tuna"—are from Louis Vuitton, Missoni, and Prada. One staffer is even wiping crumbs away from his or her face with a napkin from the St. Regis.

But the real question is: Did they have to lug these bags themselves (tuna cans are heavy!) or could they have them Fed-Exed to their desks?

Chunky party earrings are making a comeback. [NY Times] 

Interior decorator Jonathan Adler (who recently wed The Observer's Simon Doonan) will open his first Upper West Side store at Columbus Ave. and 74th St., right next door to the Housing Works Thrift Store. The shop will be his eighth and will open before the end of the year. [WWD] 

A lot of people are scrutinizing Sarah Palin based on her fashion sense. Meanwhile, Kazuo Kawasaki has reported a surge in sales for the Republican vice-presidential nominee's $375 rimless frames. [WWD] 

Prada is denying that it is seeking a Dubai-based investor and blames its delay on going public on the economy. [Vogue UK] 

All types of men are wearing lightweight scarves this season. [NY Times] 

“It’s very retro. It feels like a costume, or a film. Like Clockwork Orange or a Mad Max kind of thing,” said Lara Greenberg, eyeing the Marni monstrosity. “It’s a statement.” Ms. Greenberg, an interior designer in her thirties with curly blond hair swept back, was wearing a stylish white trench coat and a pair of low black wedges. (Chinatown, $40!)

A woman named Gail, standing nearby, was less circumspect. “Those are insane,” she said.

This “runway wedge” (and really, where is the line that separates a wedge from a stripper shoe?) is hardly alone in a shoe season that seems to be foisting tackiness upon us and calling it couture. Prada, Miu Miu, Dolce & Gabbana, Pierre Hardy, Marc Jacobs, Gucci and others (even Old Navy!) are peddling everything from the ankle-cuff stiletto (dominatrix much?) to the spike-heeled patent leather, lace-up loafer. (We thought booties were for babies.) And don’t forget the inches-high, covertly slutty, Balenciaga-influenced gladiator sandal, a style we do our best to ignore in flats but absolutely reject in a heel.

Such shoe strangeness is everywhere: creeping into fashion spreads in everything from Vogue to Us; decorating shop windows all over Soho; peeking out from under those equally unappealing maxi-dresses. It may be expensive. It might be “wearable art,” as its (few) proponents argue. But it is godawful ugly.

‘A Little Fashion-Victimy’

Perhaps we should have anticipated this turn for the trash. After years of watching women stock their closets with those perfect Louboutin peep-toe pumps, with their tell-tale and perfectly sexy red soles; the classic Manolo ankle-tie in its metallics and pastels; and the Jimmy Choo Mary Jane with its straps across the arch and golden buckle, it seems inevitable that more adventurous designers would stage a revolt, a.k.a. give us something else to buy already.

But turning the actual heel of the shoe into a candlestick or a stem, a move some genius at Prada decided to green-light, is too easy, too silly. Same with slapping a spike, or a cork wedge, on a sneaker. As with men, height in heels does not make for automatic beauty. (And speaking of men, their reaction to these babies, judging from a casual survey of office heterosexuals, ranges from “hideous” to “horrible” to “yeesh.”)

Back at Bergdorf, a customer who won’t give her name because she “works in the industry” was examining a pair of Gucci wedge tennis shoes ($550). “They’re a little fashion-victimy,” she said. A pair of Dolce & Gabbana snakeskin lace-up booties (with black sneaker-style laces no less), selling for $1,195, were even more tragic.

But when it comes to heels, Prada, as is its wont, is definitely the most violent offender this season. Anyone else remember their hollow-soled horrors modeled by Cameron Diaz in Harper’s Bazaar a decade ago? Now it appears as though the house, which is also carrying a line of safe, classy leather stilettos this season, hired Wavy Gravy to dash off a few sketches. With thick candle-snuffer heels and cartoonish patchwork of colored leather, Prada’s “Groove is in the Heart”-esque Mary Janes look like the work of someone on acid, or at least weed. Hydroponic weed.

And how about their boots? These consist of a gold cuff that covers the calf attached to a black-and-gold peep-toe heel (though modest) with a strap over the arch ($970).

“They go too far,” said Chantal Deneef, a Belgian woman in her mid-40’s who was shopping at Bergdorf. She was wearing blue mascara and lots of perfume. “But that’s the problem with fashion at the moment,” Ms. Deneef said. She blamed the proliferation of ugly heels on newly wealthy Russians who want something more extravagant. “We European people won’t wear that,” she kindly explained. “We are very—not so fashionable, but more simple,” preferring “something chic, something that stays.”

Meanwhile, the specious argument that these shoes are actually “sculptural” objets d’art (that depreciate immediately upon wearing, we hasten to add!) was burbling at the Prada store in Soho—once, let’s recall, the downtown outpost of the Guggenheim museum.

“I think maybe there are people who look and say, ‘Oh, that’s horrible,’” said Andrea Bettiol, who was visiting New York from Brazil, gesturing toward a $700 pair of Wavy Gravys. “It’s the same as art. There are a lot of people who see a picture and the paint and say, ‘Oh! This is just white paint, I can’t understand.’ Taste is taste.”

So would she buy them? “Never. It’s too expensive.”

The renowned artist, photographer and self-portraitist Cindy Sherman was also shopping at the store, which she clearly does often, greeted as she was with kisses by the staff. So what did she think of the shoes?

“These crazy heels, and the colors and just all the textures … it’s just so inventive,” Ms. Sharman gushed. “And it just seems really fun.”

Maybe these shoes just need a bona fide intellectual to appreciate them; someone with less quotidian concerns than pleasing men or, you know, walking down the streets of New York looking relatively pulled-together and sane.

“Oh, yeah, oh, yeah,” Ms. Sherman said, when asked if she would actually purchase one of these Prada-trocities. “I don’t have a top choice yet, but probably one of the ones with the crazy heels.”

Even though the way Ms. Pivovarova was sitting, slightly slouched in a way that obscured some of the dress’s finer details, I could tell that it would look great on me. It was strapless (good if one is busty), with a corseted bodice and billows and billows of skirt that give the hipless hips and the already-hipped (ahem) some cover. Black, with pink and white leaves all over. I looked at the picture and pictured myself in the dress on a ship, wind in my face, even though the only time I’ve ever been sailing I was acting as a deckhand, polishing brass fixtures.

I sent pictures of the frock to friends; I told my husband about it, imagining that it might be a viable Christmas gift. On the corner of Prince and Broadway one night, I saw it in the window of the Prada flagship, high on a pedestal, lording over the tourist crowds. “That’s the dress!” I said to my husband. He looked. “It’s pretty,” he said.

There was a big box for me under the tree on Dec. 25. It contained an iPhone. A fabulous gift. But still … the dress. Could I afford it? How much did it cost, anyway? Online searches proved fruitless. Then the dress turned up in an Elle editorial spread: “Price available upon request,” the caption said. And then again: on the cover of the New York Post’s Pulse section. Only they had the balls to report the cost: $13,670.

Understand: I’m not a fashionista. I have some nice shoes, a Marc Jacobs top, a Diane von Furstenberg dress. And each of those splurges is sitting proudly on my Visa bill. I hadn’t even seen a 13K dress before; and also, isn’t that the total amount I put on my credit card last year—including trips to Italy and Brazil?

The first time I visited the labyrinthine Prada store to visit the object of my obsession, trembling a bit, I was wearing jeans, Nike’s, a puffy coat and a fake leopard-print polar fleece scarf from Old Navy, and no one at the store would come near me. The dress was hanging in the back—a size 40, which would fit, I thought. I touched it, and thought “100 percent silk,” which the friend who had accompanied me confirmed, digging out the tag. Also, the price: a mere $11,815.

I was too chickenshit to ask to try it on.

The next day, I returned in knee boots and DvF dress, with two fancier friends in tow. A friendly man who thought he might actually have a shot at selling this number (and clearing God knows what kind of commission) warmly ushered me to the fitting room, which had one big wall of mirrors and another with some nonoperative video screens. “Those used to show you changing clothes,” said one of my pals.

I stripped and step­ped into the dress—the first I’ve ever tried that zipped in the front. Perfect. I admired myself for a few minutes while my companions snapped a few photos, before we were busted by security. It did look good, I was right! Look at me! But … Yet … Um … This was it?

A spokeswoman for the company later attributed the cost to the 15-meters-plus of fabric, the Prada-exclusive print, the voluminous underpinning and the corseting, “which makes it practically a haute couture dress,” she said. The Marie Antoinette-esque Vera Wang gown with handmade flowers that I tried before my wedding a year and a half ago was $9,000. The Prada dress … Well, I’d have even less occasion to wear it—meaning, no occasion at all. My husband’s brother’s wedding is going to be at a YMCA; my other friends are getting married in a naked plot of land they bought in Rhode Island. The dalliance in the dressing room wasn’t about me, but about a fantasy of another life, some other world, where I’m on a ship, with nothing to do but drink Champagne and look at the sea. I have so much money that I don’t even think about money. I might even wear gold jewelry!

But back in this world, in that mirrored chamber, I still, at 32, looked like a girl playing dress-up. And that, I’ll admit, was something of a relief.