Cake Style

“Fashion is social commentary, but to me, it’s the whimsy of it and how women and men use clothes to express themselves,” says Cindy Crawford in a recent interview with WWD about the resurgence of MTV’s House of Style. And she is right. Fashion can be used to shed light on subversive topics (gender, feminism, sexuality, politics) as well as open doors for self-expression. When I was in college, my roommate, Julie, was a tremendous Siouxie and the Banshees fan, as well as The Cure. It was one of those times that the outside of a person truly reflected what was on the inside. With her dyed jet black hair, heavy kohl eyeliner and scarlett red lips like a vicious slash on her face against her pale sun-starved skin, there was no mistaking that Julie idolized Robert Smith’s ethos and wanted to mold her lifestyle, not just her clothing, to that philosophy. She was sullenly angst-ridden, totally withdrawn and did strange things like brush her hair by the light of a single candle in the middle of the night.

There seems to be less of a risk in expressing yourself through fashion in today’s world as opposed to previous decades, like the 1960s where wearing a beaded halter, daisy-chain necklace and bell-bottom jeans meant that you didn’t just look like a hippie, you lived the lifestyle. Now, a woman wearing her ath-leisure to a business meeting wouldn’t be mistaken for a professional athlete, she would be on-trend. Perhaps today we are not as easily attracted to using clothes as our calling card and instead want there to be a focus on the person wearing the garments. This is where a true designer has the opportunity to rise to the top. For someone to be able to design something for you where your outside is reflective of what you hope people see on the inside, is a true talent. They must brush aside their first visual impressions of you and take the time to get to know who you are as an individual. You must evolve into the designers muse, if you will. Become that true self that you only show once the walls have been chipped away; this is who the designer wants to create for and this can only be achieved by a personal one-on-one meeting. (This is one of the reasons we insist on meeting our clients in-person for any commissioned cake at Ron Ben-Israel Cakes.)

New York fashion designer, Rachel Comey, told Jill Singer ofSurface Magazine that she loves to “take something that’s really bad, some horrible memory from your childhood of crushed velvet or something, and turn it into something cool.” For clients of Ron Ben-Israel, many of them feel the same way about wedding cakes. Most have attended a wedding at one time or another in their lives and the feedback is almost always the same: the cake was just “okay.” When they taste the variety of cakes and decadent buttercream fillings at Ron’s studio+bakery, their eyes widen with surprise as if they just slipped into a perfectly crafted pair of butter-soft leather shoes from Italy and will never shod their feet in anything else ever again. Their tastebuds are awakened and their senses are aroused. This is the effect that fashion and art can accomplish when skillfully combined.

The focus that Ron has always placed on his cakes is a harmonious balance: the inside is reflective of the outside, or to put it another way, the cake should always taste as good as it looks. Having studied under the watchful eye of his mother and tutelage of chef mentors throughout the years, Ron has fully embraced what the pastry arts should be: design intertwined with function. A cake cannot just be pleasing to the eye as it is something one must also consume. I guarantee that each of us owns a pair of shoes or an article of clothing that looked so good in the store we just had to buy it. And then they reside in our closet indefinitely because either the garment is scratchy or the shoes pinch our feet. Frankly, life is just too short to endure bad fashion. An even truer statement is that life is even shorter when forced to choke down an unpalatable cake on the most important day in a couple’s life. So choose wisely, my dear friends.

Rachel Comey photo by Dean Kaufman for Surface Magazine
Ron Ben-Israel photo by Hannah Soule for Ron Ben-Israel Cakes

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