Jennifer Lopez at Oscar de La Renta's show

Jennifer Lopez

I sat one seat away from Jennifer Lopez at the Oscar de La Renta's show today and it was very distracting. I really wanted to watch the show, but I also really wanted to examine her jewelry. She was wearing her engagement ring and diamond earrings and an interesting bracelet. She also has amazing skin. I know that's now a well-known fact, but it is stunning to see up close. Her makeup is also impeccable.

Yesterday I was invited to see Victoria Beckham's new collection of dresses that she said were part of a “relatively conservative collection” she has always wanted to design. There were 18 dresses and they were basically different versions of the sheath dress, but some had corsets built into them and some were strapless with 1940s-style lingerie construction holding them up. They all had two-way zippers up the back so that you could slip in and out of them quickly (“one less thing to think about”). And they were all conceived with busy women in mind. I was impressed with one detail that Beckham pointed out: a grosgrain ribbon that came either on the outside of the dress, like a belt, or built inside the dress, to remind women about posture. Beckham knows about posture because, she said, she's always thinking about how a dress is going to look on her when she's photographed. Then I realized that these little grosgrain belts seem to be popping up everywhere. There were a few at Oscar de La Renta, too. One very chic pink silk crepe dress was punctuated with an orange grosgrain belt. I was trying to trace the origin of that little, ubiquitous seasonal trend and it occurred to me: Last season Lanvin designer Alber Elbaz made a whole collection based on grosgrain.