Today's Extraordinary fashion items is really about sensuality-how a woman feels on the inside. In the '80s women used suits with exaggerated shoulders and waists to make a strong impression. Women are now more comfortable with themselves and their bodies-they no longer feel the need to hide behind their clothes.
Donna Karan

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
Cecil Beaton

I've used a lot of jersey, but I've also done a lot of complex pattern weaves in these fabrics in solid colors, and there are lots of little dresses for cocktail and evening. I've done a series of very important evening dresses as well, just to show that these two ideas can also work well together. Today's Womans fashion items can wear an important evening dress or a simple pant and top. It's all in the personality of the woman.
Giorgio Armani


Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear. Anatole France


Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
Dave Barry


Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.
Edwin Hubbel

Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.
George Santayana

The goal I seek is to have people refine their style through my clothing without having them become victims of fashion.
Giorgio Armani

Clothes don't make a man, but clothes have got many a man a good job.
Herbert Harold Vreeland

Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
Jean Cocteau

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
Mark Twain

I don't design clothes. I design dreams.
Ralph Lauren

A fashion is merely a form of ugliness so unbearable that we are compelled to alter it every six months.
Oscar Wilde

I wish I had invented blue jeans. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, and simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes.
Yves Saint Laurent

Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.
Coco Chanel

The expression a woman wears on her face is more important than the clothes she wears on her back.
Dale Carnegie

The novelties of one generation are only the resuscitated fashions of the generation before last.
George Bernard Shaw

I base my fashion sense on what doesn't itch.
Gilda Radner

The dress must follow the body of a woman, not the body following the shape of the dress.
Hubert de Givenchy

All the American women had purple noses and gray lips and their faces were chalk white from terrible powder. I recognized that the United States could be my life's work.
Helena Rubinstein

Style is an expression of individualism mixed with charisma. Fashion is something that comes after style.
John Fairchild

I did not have three thousand pairs of shoes. I had one thousand and sixty.
Imelda Marcos

I wear my sort of clothes to save me the trouble of deciding which clothes to wear.
Katharine Hepburn

Chanel is composed of only a few elements, white camellias, quilted bags and Austrian doorman's jackets, pearls, chains, shoes with black toes. I use these elements like notes to play with.
Karl Lagerfeld

While clothes may not make the woman, they certainly have a strong effect on her self-confidence — which, I believe, does make the woman.
Mary Kay Ashe

About half my designs are controlled fantasy, 15 percent are total madness and the rest are bread-and-butter designs.
Manolo Blahnik

They think him the best dressed man, whose dress is so fit for his use that you cannot notice or remember to describe it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A good model can advance fashion by ten years.
Yves Saint Laurent

A woman's dress should be like a barbed- wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view.
Sophia Loren

Fashion anticipates, and elegance is a state of mind ... a mirror of the time in which we live, a translation of the future, and should never be static.
Oleg Cassini

I like fashion to go down to the street, but I can't accept that it should originate there.
Coco Chanel

When in doubt, wear red
Bill Blass

When his wife asked him to change clothes to meet the German Ambassador: If they want to see me, here I am. If they want to see my clothes, open my closet and show them my suits.
Albert Einstein

"Women thrive on novelty and are easy meat for the commerce of fashion. Men prefer old pipes and torn jackets."
Anthony Burgess

Richard Babcock, the father of Pat Babcock Sorensen, was an architect who built furniture in his spare time.

Tired of finding, hauling, displaying, watering and disposing of the bulky, needle-dropping, space-guzzling evergreen every Christmas, he came up with a simple and non-messy alternative to real Christmas trees.

He designed two wooden trees - a life-size version that stands at 6 feet and suspends from the ceiling with a thin wire and a 3 foot tabletop version which uses a base stand for support. Both were designed to be easy to set up, take down and store compactly, making the trees are a smart and stylish alternative.


above: Dick Babcock with his suspended 6ft Cherry tree in 1994

Prompted by recognition (In 2002, the suspended tree placed as a finalist in the national Hammacher Schlemmer Search for Invention® contest), and the Babcock family's long-standing affection for the trees, Pat speculated that others would value them as well. So, they patented the design and formed a business and the PossibiliTree was born.


above: Pat Babcock Sorenson, right, and and her business partner Nadja Reubenova, left. (image by Tom Wallace for the Star Tribune )

They produce a limited number of 6ft suspended trees and 3ft table top models in Walnut wood, Cherry wood or Birch wood (the tabletop version in Walnut is already sold out for 2011). The trees are manufactured in the US and use reclaimed or “deadfall” wood whenever possible.

Some examples of the trees from previous customers:






above two images by Tom Wallace for the Star Tribune

Their appearance harkens back to mid-century modern design and they look as great bare as they do adorned so you can keep them up all year round.

6 foot suspended tree


A favorite of architects and designers, this tree is visually stunning and ethereal. An award-winning design, the 6ft suspended possibiliTree, with 10 rows of branches, shows off ornaments beautifully. Floating 18 inches above the floor, there is plenty of room underneath to place gifts. Comes pre-strung and rolled in a bundle. Simply unroll it, hang it, fan out the branches, and decorate. (Ceiling hook not included.)


Note: as of 12/04/11, there are 93 6ft suspended possibiliTrees available

Height: 72" plus length of wire
Weight: 13 lbs
Diameter at Widest: 53"
Compostion: Wood, .07 GA/125 lb Test Wire
Comes With: Storage Box, Instructions
Note: Requires 9' or higher ceiling

3 Foot tabletop tree


Clean-lined, unfussy, practical. The 3ft Tabletop—only 28 inches at its widest—is made for smaller living spaces, but would look great as a second Christmas tree in the foyer or family room of a larger home. You can decorate this tree during the holidays and enjoy it for its artful simplicity, unadorned, throughout the year.


Note: The Walnut tabletop tree is sold out, but the Cherry wood and Birch versions are still available

Height: 35"
Weight: 3.2 lbs.
Diameter at Widest: 28"
Compostion: Wood, Metal Rod
Comes With: Cotton Bundle Cloth, Storage Tube, Instructions