All Present and Accounted For

All present and accounted for??? Great! Let’s get started…

For all of you that joined me yesterday, you may recall that my day started out with a bit of blogger’s block. Therefore I decided that I would spend a portion of my day on a visual input / data collecting field trip… An “inspirational reconnaissance” mission, if you will …

So at around 1:00 p.m. I decided that I would go to one of my favorite restaurants in the world for lunch, LaGoulue… However, no one sent me the memo that the President of Iran had taken over all of Manhattan. There were Secret Service Agents, NYPD officers, camera crews, ambulances, fire trucks, helicopters, National Guard (well the National Guard might be an exaggeration) – but you name them and they were all there – present and accounted for… Therefore a walk that what would have taken me 10 minutes from my chariot depot (also known as the “D” Train at 59th Street) to LaGoulue, on Madison at 64th Street, took me almost 30 minutes. I was forced to take all sorts of twists, turns, and detours in order to avoid the motorcade of Mr. Ahmadinjad, or as Whoopi Goldberg call’s him, Mr. I’m-a-dinner-jacket. But thank God I did… When they say that everything happens for a reason – believe them…

Usually I like to take the scenic route to LaGoulue which is along Central Park South… But due to the high security at both The Essex House and The Ritz Carlton, I was forced to take a more pedestrian route down West 57th Street… For those of you not familiar with Manhattan, 57th Street is the equivalent to Main Street USA with fancy stores, sprinkled with hundreds of tourists, messengers, shopaholics and every day schleps. So off I go down Main Street…

I must admit there was a bit of excitement and energy in the air… All this pomp and circumstance surrounding the reconvening of the great minds within the United Nations all working towards solving the ills of the world. Now we can all criticize the United Nations as much as we want (as I often do especially as concerns Darfur), but just imagine this world without the U.N. Just imagine…

Okay, where was I… Oh yeah, walking up 57th Street - Main Street USA… So there I am, walking, grunting, bitching and moaning… And all of sudden - - - BOOM!!! BAM!!! KAZOOM!!! - - - There they were!!! Huge! Ginormous! Towering and Magnificent! PHOTOS… Photos of Black People, Asian People, White People, Hispanic People, Auntie Emm and Toto too… There they were - all the splendid colors in the rainbow of humanity… They were all there – “present and accounted for…” All in the windows of Bergdorf Goodman!!! You heard me – Bergdorf Goodman… I almost got crushed by the M57 Cross-town bus as I darted across West 57th street to make my way towards this shrine of New York City Cool. To be exact it was a shrine to New York magazine’s “New York Look Book” by Amy Larocco (author) Jake Chessum (photographer). But it was simply “cool” to me…

I could barely contain myself once I reached the window… Quite honestly I was physically shaking… What a beautiful and bold move on behalf of Bergdorf Goodman!!! To acknowledge all of our contributions to the flavor of fashion in New York City in such a magnificent and glorious way… I immediately began snapping photo after photo after photo… Then I decided to move on to the next phase of my reconnaissance mission – I started stopping and snapping photos of people (especially people of color) as they walked in or out of Bergdorf Goodman; I snapped as they sauntered or pranced by Bergdorf Goodman; hell, I even snapped people that were merely standing in the vicinity of the venerable Bergdorf Goodman… As my dear old grandmother would have said if she were there to see me, “I was a picture snapping fool!!!”

Speaking of my dear old grand ma-ma… I must say that there was only one person that almost spoiled my paparazzi styled photo shoot and she was a feisty 55-65 year old black woman that had somehow decided to channel Diahann Carroll’s Dominique Deveraux on this glorious afternoon. At this point I will show a bit of restraint for my non-African American visitors by not taunting them with the old salt in the wound catchphrase… Come on you know the one… Yes that one… Okay – if you insist… BLACK DON’T CRACK!!! Well Ms. Deveraux with her beautiful full head of gray hair, her Armani tailored suit, a huge Bergdorf Goodman shopping tote and a Goyard handbag to die for, was the picture of elegance… Of course this meant that I had to get up my nerves and bring my A-game to capture this particular prey… So I slowly began tomove in... But before I could get the words out of my mouth she quikcly turned to me and said in one shot, “Young man you had better get away from me with that camera - I don’t know where those pictures of yours might turn up…” In that moment, I had a vision of Oscar De La Hoya in his fishnet stocking scandal - - - and inorder to make myself feel better, I immediately put her head on top of those photos and walked a away with a big smile on my face… I was ashamed of myself for having such an awful thought, but it did give me a chuckle…

As I stood there still marveling over these beautiful photos in the window of Bergdorf Goodman, I was overcome with the feeling that if I waited a few minutes longer I would perhaps get the “mother-load” of shots… Perhaps a shot of Beyonce or Rhianna walking out of BG’s, or even Kerri Washington or Halle Berry. What? It could happen??? So I gave myself an extra 15 minutes before I would call it quits…

Now in all of my excitement, I failed to realize that there were other people standing around taking photos of these magnificent windows as well… However, when I did become aware of this I instantly noticed that there was one guy in particular that caught my eye… He stood out in the crowd of Japanese, Italian and French tourist as he had a similar look, if not energy, to famed photographer Terry Richardson (one day I will become more proficient in blogging where I can hyperlink certain names so that those of you who are not familiar with Terry Richardson can simply click his name, take a look at his website, and then quickly return to Cut, Sew and Blog)… But I digress/meander… Where was, I… Oh yeah, the bootleg Terry Richardson dude… Kidding… Well here is this guy snapping away… At certain points I couldn’t tell if he was simply snapping away at the windows or if he was snapping away at me snapping away at the windows… Then I decided to dismiss him as some sort of hipster taking photos for his blog as well… Wait - Did I just say blog - - - Oh No He Didn’t… All of a sudden I was overcome by a twang of jealousy as my fellow bloggers camera was of the professional make and all I had was my trusted Casio Exilim… I also believe that it was this twang of momentary jealousy (jealousy of the mine is bigger than yours variety) that compelled me to ask him what interested him in the windows??? As you may have noted, at this point, I had become a bit territorial of my “folks” in the windows…

Now are you all ready for the “mother-load”… It turns out that Mr. Bootleg Terry Richardson wasn’t bootleg at all… In fact, he was none other than Jake Chessum… You got it - - - Jake Chessum as in the photographer of the work in the windows and the book in question - New York Look Book… I didn’t know where to put my cracked face… But at this point it didn’t matter… I couldn’t stop praising and thanking Jake for his work, generosity and spirit by presenting New York with this glorious tribute… I knew for a fact that there would be thousands, if not millions, of people that would see these windows and understand that fashion is not the sole property and/or province of the rich, white and privileged… I knew that this book would stand as proof of our collective contributions… I am sure that Mr. Chessum must have thought me to be a bit loopy but I seriously did not care… I was truly honored to meet him… I was even more intrigued at this point as to how he was able to pull off such a major coup at Bergdorf Goodman... However, it seemed that he too was still in shock over this coup… Unfortunately, Jack was running off to a meeting with the author of the book, Amy Larocco , but promised he would contact me so that we could chat… There is also the possibility that I freaked the poor guy out and he decided to get the hell out of Dodge before psycho designer really got loopy… But no matter what I am glad that I met him and moreover, that I am now able to share this story with all of you…

(ab0ve) Photographer : Jack Chessum

Therefore, I believe my inspirational reconnaissance mission was a complete success… Now it’s up to you to let me know what you think???