GQ Disapproves of Santa Fe Fashion

Magazine contributor Stayton Bonner blamed it all on Georgia O’Keeffe:

“Ever since her New Mexico paintings hit Manhattan, New Yorkers have clogged the City Different with New Age lameness and Yankee notions of how the American West should look (and it doesn’t look good).

“As a consequence, modern-day Santa Fe is western like an Outback Steakhouse is Australian. Leather cowboy hats with chin straps, designer buckskin jackets, and Botoxed grimaces wander adobe-lined streets in search of a Starbucks.”

Bonner could not be reached for comment on the magazine’s “deeply scientific, irrefutable poll.”

GQ’s Santa Fe entry is accompanied by a photo of a woman draped in turquoise and weighted by a diving concha belt over a skimpy broomstick skirt, denim vest and cowboy boots.

The GQ story ranks Santa Fe as 16th worst on its Glamour Don’t list of 40 shamed cities, including Salt Lake City, Atlanta and St. Louis, among others. Several hipster or tourist meccas like Boulder, Colo., Portland, Ore., Brooklyn, New Orleans and Miami also made the list.

Who’s the worst dressed? The magazine won’t release its top five metropolitan fashion disasters until today.

Santa Fe fashionistas (or is that now a contradiction in terms?) are alternately approving and indignant.

“Yeah, I would agree,” said Lily Falk, owner of Lily of the West and designer of the dress Alan Arkin’s wife Suzanne wore the night he won the 2007 Oscar for “Little Miss Sunshine.” Falk opened her Santa Fe design studio 22 years ago after moving here from Arizona.

“I think people are just too sloppy here — walk down the street!” she said. “I have a business downtown, so I see it a lot. I think people are not presenting themselves in a manner of self-respect. People are overweight.”

Baggy T-shirts and jeans reign, she added, with “things that don’t match, sloppy shoes — it just looks like they don’t care,” she said. “Everybody’s complaining nobody dresses up anymore. There’s no law that says you have to dress like anybody else.”

Santa Feans dressed better 20 years ago, Falk maintained.

“People used to walk around with some taste in jeans and boots and a concha belt,” she recalled.

Larry Tillis, co-owner of Lorreen International Emporium on Galisteo Street, wasn’t backing away from Santa Fe style as exemplified by his own attire Thursday — jeans, nearly knee-high boots, belt with concha buckle and a cowboy hat with a thunderbird on the front.

“This is Santa Fe,” he said of the outfit.

Tillis said the city’s fashion problem is more about too many people running around in cutoffs and T-shirts.

A cursory look at the Plaza on Thursday did provide a steady parade of T-shirts and shorts, most outfits accessorized with cameras, fanny packs and baseball caps.

“Yanks” the problem?

GQ seemed to be targeting the look of a certain class of tourists or second-homers more than locals and long-time Santa Fe residents, as shown by its assorted references to New Yorkers and Yankees when discussing the City Different look. This notion came up when the magazine dissed Santa Fe’s favorite jewelry.

“Turquoise and concha belts clank like cheap radiators down the Whole Foods aisles,” GQ wailed. “Never to be outdone, only Texans skiing atop the Sangre de Cristo mountains in Wranglers and cowboy hats — cigars placed firmly in mouth — can outgun a wannabe outlaw Yank in tackiness.”

At Santa Fe’s Back at the Ranch, which bills itself as home to the largest collection of cowboy boots in the world, sales manager Susan LaPointe was appalled by GQ’s take on Santa Fe fashion.

“I guess they weren’t looking down at their cowboy boots,” she said. “I thought it was insulting. They missed a large chunk of the local Santa Feans. I think they were targeting the tourists on the Plaza.

“We have a very high-end clientele,” she added. “They’re always polished and put together.”

Armand Ortega, owner of the venerable Ortega’s on the Plaza, sellers of hand-made Native American jewelry and fine clothing, was befuddled.

“I’m 61 years old,” he said. “I haven’t read GQ in 30 years. I don’t know what the criteria for fashion is anymore.

“I think Santa Fe dresses fine and appropriate for Santa Fe,” he added. “They’re not on Madison Avenue; they’re in Santa Fe.”