Critical Shopping

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Cintral Wilson walks into Oscar de la Renta for her Critical Shopper Times column this week prejudiced against the designer. "In my mind, he was one of those gilded old luxury designers like Valentino, worn exclusively by women so morbidly wealthy that they can wear white satin on the soles of their shoes since their daily walk involves only the floor mats of bulletproof limousines, Hereke silk carpets and the soft, clean heads of the middle class." But she emerges from the store a fan. "From the first rack, I was clutching insanely craft-saturated sleeves and staring into them as if they were kaleidoscopes, wondering, 'How many nuns went blind?' Layers upon layers of meticulous, eye-crossing detail, created a mesmerizing depth of texture." [NYT]