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The latest fashion news from around the web.
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
The Antonio Berardi woman is usually a femme fatale, fitted or zipped into the kind of dress that promises to turn every girl into an Italian bombshell or Christina Hendricks. For his pre-collection, the designer also offered some knitted tank dresses that raised the body-con thermostat. But he expanded his periphery to include experiments with new volumes, especially a pleated bubble (though it still came attached to a fitted tank top) and skirts with a slight flare. There was a slight clunk to the bubble, Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
Milly's Michelle Smith was thinking of a honeymoon in Venice for Resort: the watercolor Venetian skyline print that anchors the collection (twist her arm and she'll reveal it's actually Florence); the warm, fresco yellows; the full-skirted silhouettes. Truth be told, she'd been waiting for the romantic mood to come back around. "The whole heavy-metal trend wasn't my favorite," she said. Milly is a thriving business, and the breadth of the collection is made for devoted customers buying deeply. It didn't va Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
"I like to be as focused as possible," says Christopher Kane, which is why his collections always have such a strong, clear quality. Resort was no exception. Following on from last Spring's bomb motifs, he opted for flaring nebulae, as seen by the Hubble telescope. He explained that he liked "the idea of explosive outwards expansion" (a nice metaphor for what's happening with his business), but all that cosmic hyperactivity also yielded some great prints (translating beautifully into silk cashmere knitwear, too), wit Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
There's been a note of boyishness in the United Bamboo collection lately. Last fall, Miho Aoki and Thuy Pham sent suiting separates down the runway, and now, for Resort, they're vacationing, as it were, in classic Oxbridge, with a range that takes England's Henley Royal Regatta as its theme. It doesn't get more proper than the century-plus-old boat race on the Thames, but no fear that UB is getting stuffy. Look closely at a floral calico, and you'll spot a tiny Pac-Man-style ghost. A larger flower array suggested a Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
Julien Macdonald was quick to point out that his 35-piece collection wasn't resort or cruise; it was a "Christmas flash," which gave it a certain climactic specificity. Baby, it's getting colder outside, so Macdonald made knitwear to throw over his party frocks. For skin not yet kissed by holiday sun, he kept his colors on the dark and it must be said dreary side, with dusty, washed-out jewel tones. Even the white of a classically draped cocktail dress had an aged chalkiness. Macdonald lives on Portobe Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
Elie Saab loves La Fenice, Venice's legendary opera house. As its name would suggest, this phoenix has burned to the ground and risen from the flames three times. For his Fall Couture collection, Saab borrowed the ruched velvet of La Fenice's curtains, the gilt and blue of its decoration, and even the fire and ash of its hellish moments for one multicolored mousseline gown. Given that backstory, the result was understandably a little overwrought. Before the show, Saab said, "If a woman doesn't want 'rich,' Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
Couture embraces worlds. The day that began with Elie Saab's stolid womanliness ended with Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli's reconceptualization of Val's gal as a dolly bird—all short skirt, dropped waist, baby doll, and kitten heels. The mood was compounded by the name the designers gave their collection: The Dark Side of First Love. If that notion has a Lolita tinge, Chiuri and Piccioli made the clothes to match. They even dropped a cage over one girl to let you know she was trapped. Teen psychodrama may fit with the kind of "dark side" idea they've sometimes t Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
The key to Jean Paul Gaultier's latest collection could be found in the opening and closing outfits of his show. First up, a reconfigured trenchcoat in black gabardine. Last out, the same idea in white silk (worn by a bride who played herself down the runway literally with a violin). The trench is Gaultier's signature piece. The fact his latest show was bracketed by it suggested the collection was about him this time: not Mexico or Hollywood or Mars or anywhere else he might have been recently. Being t Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
The history of haute couture is studded with magnificent obsessives like Cristobal Balenciaga and Charles James. Even if Riccardo Tisci's name never makes it onto that list, his latest Couture collection for Givenchy proved that he shares the grandmasters' fanatical devotion to realizing an intensely personal vision through cut, cloth, and, in Tisci's case, extraordinarily elaborate ornamentation. This season, he opted out of a proper show in favor of intimate presentations, where he could better highlight detaile Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
Christophe Lemaire's T-shirt collaborations with favorite artists like ESG, Ariel Pink, and classic Krautrockers Cluster suggest degrees of idiosyncratic enthusiasm and wide-ranging curiosity—not to mention exquisite taste that should stand him in good stead when he enters the rarefied, intimate world of luxury that Hermès represents. (He recently replaced Jean Paul Gaultier as the brand's creative director.) And the collection he just showed for men and women under his own name his Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
Old Hollywood has had a hold on Giorgio Armani since he was a boy. His first suit today—the skirt limning the body, then flaring out just below the knee; the draped jacket with the definite shoulder; the crepe silk overcoat thrown insouciantly over the lot—could have been Carmen Kass playing Carole Lombard (with Sharon Tate's hair). Even the shoes with their thick Perspex heels chipped in. The outfit set the pace for the designer's Armani Privé show not retro but remarkably restrained and busi Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
Karl Lagerfeld has often insisted that his collections come to him in dreams, but following his new Chanel couture show, he claimed the dream this time had been a nightmare. "No, no, just kidding," he quickly added, but there was a weight to the clothes that suggested a darker thread in Chanel this season. Compared to the glistening sci-fi whites of his Spring couture, these looks had a moody tinge. The colors, for a start: maroon, loden, navy, brown, camel. Next, the fabrics. As the show unfolded, there were velve Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
A retro strain ran through Consuelo Castiglioni's Resort collection. Aside from the swags, ties, and ruffles and the emphasis on an hourglass silhouette, there was a governess-y tinge to a high-waisted skirt with a green striped satin blouse as well as to a rust-colored bibbed blouse with leg-of-mutton sleeves. Castiglioni name-checked the Bauhaus for its influence on the graphic print of a long summer dress, and that design movement's resolutely unromantic quality hovered over the clothes. The costume jewelry, on the other hand, was all boldness and sensuality. Outré and prim in the sam Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
Alexis Mabille went through a phase of thinking it was modern to mix his ready-to-wear and his couture into one homogeneous stew. Reason prevailed when he realized that wasn't doing his craft any favors. But with his new couture outing, he maintained a ready-to-wear fundamental by building his collection from mix-and-match separates. He started out with a basic eight top-and-bottom combinations and managed to double, maybe even triple them. Admittedly, it was mostly by exchanging a skirt for a pair of Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
If the clothes that Bouchra Jarrar showed for her second haute couture collection weren't quite as severe as the austere stonework of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs that provided their backdrop, they definitely had a classical rigor about them. Jarrar set out to offer a complete wardrobe from jackets, dresses, and a trenchcoat to the goddess gown that closed the show in a way that reflected the breakfast-to-bedtime ideal of traditional couture. That meant her emphasis was on what she felt was e Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
Right now, in the Paris hotel rooms of many fashion editors, there are bunches of flowers, plastic-wrapped and raffia-tied. When they returned to their rooms after the Dior couture show today, did the attendees make the connection between what they'd just seen on the catwalk and what was sitting in a vase in front of them? Stephen Jones created headgear that looked like a florist's plastic wrap. Someone else contributed the raffia belts. And nature did the rest. "It's the most inspiring teacher," said John Galliano, Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
Clare Waight Keller's knitwear background means she has a natural curiosity about the textures and treatments of fabric. It's one way she's making 195-year-old Pringle of Scotland more modern. From her men's collection for Spring, Keller carried over the waxed silks, glowing reds and blues, and translucent white, in poncho-like shapes. She dissected traditional plaid into grids, which were woven into two tank dresses and layered, one over the other, to form the familiar pattern. She feathered fil coupé Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
Francesco Scognamiglio has received a lot of press lately for dressing Lady Gaga not only on the red carpet, but also in her Madonna-esque video for "Alejandro." He's also outfitted her Madgesty, for that matter. The emerging Italian designer is manna for fashion risk takers, but he's playing it safe for Resort, riffing on the season's most popular motifs: cardigans and T-shirt dresses in blue and white marinière stripes and denim sailor pants, with accents of anchors and embroidered crests here and there. Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
"Fun, sensual, insolent." Miuccia Prada's prescription for Miu Miu's Resort collection nailed its naughty little heart. The clothes were inspired by lingerie shapes and lingerie fabrics like crepe de chine, satin, and sable, but there was another story, too. Prada's undying reverence for Yves Saint Laurent is a strong strand of her design DNA, and there were echoes of YSL's notorious 1971 collection, the one that was scandalously inspired by the shady ladies of Paris in the early 1940's. That old-time raciness was r Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
In its heyday, Cerruti's womenswear elegantly tempered men's tailoring with soft sensuality. It's an aesthetic that Richard Nicoll instinctively understands, as proven by a Resort collection that featured structured jackets layered over elongated, silky draped tops, or an overcoat in double-faced gabardine topping tapered, printed pants. Nicoll's clothes are distinctly urban in their impact. Here, he deconstructed an oversized mac and put it back together again as a chic biker jacket, and used a substantial jersey Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
Ennio Capasa poured on the sex appeal at his last two runway shows, inching hems way, way up the legs and cutting leather second-skin-tight. For Resort, he focused on the label's bread and butter, sophisticated tailoring with a dollop of edge. A white tuxedo with a notched lapel looked sleek and sexy; his gray flannel double-breasted pantsuit was boxier yet still sharply cut. If a pair of tops with built-in scarves to wrap around the neck looked too much like a Phoebe Philo-ism, Capasa was back on home turf for evening. Two black gowns closed the lineup, one fitted and clingy, the other asymm Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
"An antidote to laziness," was how Alber Elbaz described the show for Lanvin's menswear today. It was all about action, mobility, urgency—to the point where some of the clothes had a frenetic, unfinished quality, with ragged seams swirling around the body and rough hems edging, among other things, a biker-influenced jacket. Elsewhere, there were the narrow silhouette and the fundamental athleticism of torsos wrapped at waist or shoulder, or the sporty leanness of a striped top over what looked like Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
The venue for Thom Browne's Paris debut was a modernist architectural landmark—the headquarters of France's Communist Party, designed by Oscar Niemeyer. The mind ran riot. How would the master showman of fashion surrealism rise to his surroundings? Surely there'd be at least one guy in a long train. Well, surprise, surprise. Browne left the architecture to speak for itself as he mounted his most commercial show to date. The opening a march-past of "astronauts" promised signature space o Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
Fashion is a means to an end for Agnès B., a platform for her engagement with the world through art, social activism, and strategic alliances. For instance, at her show this season, she gave away a bottle of water that Philippe Starck has designed to publicize a French initiative to make access to clean drinking water a universal right. This meeting of the minds with Starck is the kind of rencontre she loves. And that sense of collaboration could have been the theme of her latest show. Alongside the ca Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
With a collection that put the sports in sportswear, Balenciaga's Nicolas Ghesquière turned his back on formality in favor of an emphasis on speed, mobility, and all things technical. The fabrics ran a gamut from shiny treated cotton to something whose selling point was its bulletproof-ness call it Kevlar-lite. The lineup's futuristic tinge meshed more compatibly than previously with Ghesquière's work on the house's womenswear (and the lookbook compounded the compatibility still further). And even Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
You want a great night out to go on forever. At least that's how Acne's Jonny Johansson felt after partying at Le Tango in Paris with Christopher Lundmann and the rest of his men's design team. It made him think of the kind of summer dances he used to go to when he was growing up in the Swedish countryside, and from that came a collection that combined a seventies silhouette with the disco languor of jersey and an androgynous schoolboy element. Imagine a Junior League Studio 54 in Stockholm, and you'll get Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
Kim Jones' kid-in-a-candy-store reign at Dunhill continues this season with his discovery in the archives of a cigarette lighter that Picasso engraved with a portrait of his mistress Dora Maar. The house's heritage is wayward enough that you'd imagine Jones indulging his own magpie sensibility to his heart's content, and there's certainly something of that in the accessories that were visible on the catwalk. The hip flasks the models were carrying, for instance. But magpie or not, Jones once again exhibited discipl Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
It feels like Paul Smith has spent so long embedded in the early sixties sharp-suited mod end of the London style spectrum that this season's embrace of the rather less structured late sixties was cause for celebration. With Donovan, Hawkwind, and Led Zeppelin on the soundtrack, Sir Paul showed tie-dyed silks, star-studded pants, and a jacket in a tone-on-tone print that looked like the kind of William Morris wallpaper pattern rich hippies used to drool over. Smith caught the mood of that moment, when andro Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
With its Swedish roots, Acne has no weighty fashion heritage to live up to. "We can do what we want," says company founder Jonny Johansson. For Resort, that meant a collection that was, somewhat incongruously, inspired by Black White + Gray, the recent documentary about the relationship between Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe. "Their mix of uptown and downtown, against a backdrop of 1970's New York," was how Johansson described it. Hence the leather pants and waistcoats with butch biker Read more
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:55
Sit through enough fashion shows and you can begin to question their efficacy—until you hit one that so beautifully amplifies the designer's vision, your faith is reaffirmed. You just slump back and surrender to the complete package: styling, music, emotion. And, of course, the clothes. Designer Mihara Yasuhiro achieved this today with a presentation that combined quietly poetic outfits, rare feats of fabric technology, and some of the most jaw-dropping visual effects yet seen in a fashion context. Tears were shed at show's end. Japanese design company WOW created a shadow Read more
