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As he proved all over again in a show of commanding beauty and regulated elegance, Haider Ackermann is a designer on the very top of his game. He has the power to create desire, and the authority to offer his thoughtful, ravishing clothes in a runway performance that packs a substantial emotional punch. His fall [...]
November 25, 2011
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The pulse of tough urban life throbbed through Jean Paul Gaultier’s collection. That meant revisiting the various codes of his house-from the ditch coat to the corset-and layering them with some inner-city grit, in order that his girls gave the impression of the type of eighties party animals that were swarming to get into the [...]
November 25, 2011
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The thunderous sound of galloping horses filled a glacial school gymnasium Sunday night, and heralded a Givenchy collection that interested in strong tailoring that reflected the faultless precision of traditional riding clothes and toyed with the play of a masculine-feminine mix. Literal equestrian references ran the top-to-toe gamut, from the enormous solid-disc earrings (intended to [...]
November 25, 2011
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“It’s an concept I’ve had for many years, about corporate clothes, and business-dressing. i needed to play with it. So I imagined a corporate, Balenciaga, Inc., and what your complete different women would wear to work there,” explained Nicolas Ghesquière, as he was preparing his show yesterday. “And we’re inviting you to a genuine office [...]
November 25, 2011
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Office attire and what it may mean to the trendy woman is proving a growing preoccupation this season. Up to now, we have seen files opened at the subject from designers as different as Donna Karan, Balenciaga, and now, in his way, Junya Watanabe. Tailoring inside the mannish sense isn’t a departure for him, though: [...]
November 25, 2011
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“The contrast between a really sleek and tailored uniform, and intensely fragile work,” said Massimiliano Giornetti of his vision for the Salvatore Ferragamo collection. This translated right into a strong show where a vision of Russia played out beneath crystal chandeliers and across a parquet floor. There was Russia within the military greatcoats and capes [...]
November 25, 2011
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One fringe of fashion is tilting toward the darker, more sophisticated side of sexuality-but who would ever expect an Emilio Pucci collection to head there? It is a sign of Peter Dundas’s growing confidence as a pied piper to the pack of the recent and fashion-conscious that he devoted the hole of his fall collection [...]
November 24, 2011
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More fur is flying than ever this winter. Using leather, reptile, and every kind of animal pelts is so embedded in fashion now that it’s often hard to inform which material is which, or maybe to differentiate between what’s real and what is fake. It’s safe to claim, needless to say, that it is all [...]
November 24, 2011
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In a set as elegant, nuanced, and thoughtful because the designer himself, Raf Simons’s final show for the home of Jil Sander proved a gorgeous coda to his remarkable career here. In his design trajectory, this inventive Belgian has reimagined menswear, changing the trendy male paradigm within the process (to embrace a thin pubescent line [...]
November 24, 2011
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Chez Donatella Versace the mood was Rooney Mara goth chick–meets–Flash Gordon galactic goddess. Guido’s Rooney–bangs wigs gave all of the Versace girls that dramatic look, and a cross motif also played to the Gothic theme-there have been crosses silk-embroidered on a quick black velvet coatdress; spangled in dark jewels at the bustier of a shapely [...]
November 24, 2011
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Fashion people live for the rare occasions when a show is so good it sends an involuntary wave of emotion through their veins. At Bottega Veneta, that sort of unfakeable visceral reaction had spectators sitting forward of their seats as Tomas Maier began to send out women wearing dark, perfectly tailored coats and suits, walking [...]
November 24, 2011
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As a general rule in Italy, more is more. So it is not surprising, perhaps it’s even understandable, to witness a polished and classic Milan-based house like MaxMara getting over excited with accessories. The mariners caps, knee-high buckled spats, and suspenders that accompanied the garments on this morning’s fall show can have easily left the [...]
November 24, 2011
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Word has reached Milan that it’s Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee this year, and No. 21′s Alessandro Dell’Acqua, for one, is showing his admiration for the British monarch-in a way of speaking. True, you are not especially more likely to spot Her Majesty going around in a miniskirt along with her bra showing anytime soon, nonetheless it was [...]
November 24, 2011
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This is the article about going to the collections; sometimes what can appear like a one-off notion gains traction, and before you already know it, it’s shaping as much as be among the many more insistent impulses coursing during the shows. That said, it isn’t always necessarily due to its prevalence, but since it sticks [...]
November 24, 2011
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A bright-blue satin cape isn’t a military-green flak jacket, and ruffled short skirts are faraway from standard issue. Welcome to the Moschino military, where the troops have more in common with toy soldiers than actual ones and the sole enemy is boredom. But you didn’t expect a home like this, built on whimsy and irreverence, [...]
November 24, 2011
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If there’s something Gucci stands for as a brand, it’s decadence, but q4 Frida Giannini placed its aesthetic right into a very different historical context than the familiar, hard-edged sexiness of the nineties or the brittle, shiny geometry of last season’s Deco-flapper collection. Instead, she’d found her inspiration inside the Pre-Raphaelite period, recasting Edward Burne [...]
November 24, 2011
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In a Milan that has lately been much fascinated with a depressing-side sensuality on one hand, and army-drab at the other, Anna Molinari came out all guns blazing with on the contrary on both counts. Silvio Berlusconi can be gone, but where does that leave the joys-loving regazza who craves everything over-the-top, hot, and colorful? [...]
November 24, 2011
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Lit by overhead neon-light strips, and with purple carpet embellished with deco-Navajo motifs underfoot, Miuccia Prada‘s 41-strong girl army marched out one after the other with martial precision of movement, kohl-smudged eyes, and ironed hair lengthened with extensions in contrasting (but natural) shades to their very own. When they returned for his or her final [...]
November 24, 2011
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Why most black? Are things really that bad? (Never mind, don’t answer.) But seriously, what happened to all that fashionable optimism that was sprouting just five months ago? Glorious pastel confections; happy, shimmering clothes? Sure, it’s fashion’s swinging pendulum, and fine, it was spring, but wasn’t it feeling good? It was! Then fall 2012 happened, [...]
November 24, 2011
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Giovanni Boldini’s dashing portrait of the Marchesa Casati with a gleaming black greyhound was a place to begin for David Koma’s show that explored both the graphic styles of sixties minimalism and the romantic exuberance of eighteenth-century fashion. For Koma, the greyhound embodies “aristocracy and pure elegance, and simultaneously it is so fast and sporty!”-the best [...]
November 23, 2011
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Every collection by Michael van der Ham consistently starts with the cloth. And so for fall the Dutch designer crushed, draped, and pleated rich organza, silk, and silk jersey into what has end up defined as his beautifully fragmented, signature style. This time however, it was a deconstructing of the image-perfect vision of the early [...]
November 23, 2011
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With the powerful, relentless tread of warriors on a warpath, the Proenza Schouler girls, with their shaggy Chrissie Hynde hair and thick-heeled riding boots, stomped the runway like an avenging samurai army-wearing a few of the most enjoyable clothes we’ve seen all week. “We’ve been working hard!” said Jack McCollough backstage after this exhilarating show-and [...]
November 23, 2011
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Edward Meadham, along with his pastel-pink marabou jacket, lace-trimmed shorts, plastic daisy necklace, and glitter heels, is the type of designer a stranger might take for a dedicated club kid. Wrong. “I never exit,” he says matter-of-factly. “But i love imagining what it would’ve been wish to visit those clubs in London within the early [...]
November 23, 2011
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The leading forces in London Fashion Week’s resurgence in credibility inside the world’s eyes are absolutely Burberry and Christopher Kane. It may seem odd to say an exponentially growing 150-year-old megabrand and a tender independent designer within the same breath, but regardless of the intense disparity inside the size in their respective businesses, the moves [...]
November 23, 2011
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You have never seen the likes. At Ralph Lauren, the curtain was raised at the show, with the intention to speak, by the strains of the theme music to Downton Abbey. Instantly, the full audience was transported, misty-eyed, to watching PBS at 9 p.m. on a Sunday night, not the Ralph Lauren show at 10:00 [...]
November 23, 2011
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Paul Smith has had a career-long design crush on clever-looking girls (sometimes in glasses), who borrow their clothes from a man’s wardrobe. During this narrative, many facets of English psychology-let alone, the complexities of traditional menswear fabric manufacture-are involved. First of all, Smith was considering how the pattern of a paisley gentleman’s dressing gown could [...]
November 23, 2011
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“I desired to use waves of color on this collection-but taken from stuff you use in way of life,” said Mary Katrantzou, partly-explanation of the intense digital patterning and Ecole Lesage embroidery covering every curve, plane, and flowing chiffon swirl in her fall collection. Yes, you probably did read that right: the storied Parisian couture [...]
November 23, 2011
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Matthew Williamson showed his fall collection inside the hallowed auditorium of London’s Royal Opera House on Sunday night, and such an extravagant setting turned out to be entirely fitting, not just for the theatrical repertoire the designer went directly to unveil, but in addition as a celebratory location for the brand’s fifteenth anniversary. In honor [...]
November 23, 2011
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As a reaction to the prettiness of his spring collection, Erdem Moralioglu started work on his fall clothes by “looking on the codes of what it’s that makes a woman-and turning them on their head!” And although the designer stayed true to the ladylike DNA of his brand with elegant silhouettes evocative of mid-century high [...]
November 23, 2011
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Somehow, last week in Ny, it seemed a lot less newsworthy. In fact, isn’t it the town that loves a sheath dress like no other, preferably in some glorious hue, and richly embellished; the type of dress that requires heels, jewels, and, should it be during the chillier months, a precise coat or a swathe [...]
November 23, 2011
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As a choir of angels echoed in the course of the Palm Court of the Plaza hotel Wednesday afternoon, Marchesa’s Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig sent out a chorus of frothy, gilded frocks of the top order. Their otherworldliness was inspired by William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s dramatic nineteenth-century painting A Soul Dropped at Heaven, and the effect [...]
November 23, 2011
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Peter Pilotto and his design partner, Christopher De Vos, went on a whistle-stop tour of Hong Kong and Beijing last fall and met the Chinese women who’ve been buying their clothes. It blew their minds. “It’s so impressive to peer the strongest pieces of our collection worn by these amazing Asian ladies,” said Pilotto. “They [...]
November 23, 2011
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It was his first full-fledged show in London, but his reputation as an articulator of young street-cum-preppy culture with a powerful dose of style knowingness preceeds Jonathan Anderson. The gangly, boyish-looking Northern Irishman has graduated throughout the presentation stages of the recent Gen sponsorship scheme (a British Fashion Council mentoring program, supported by Topshop), to [...]
November 23, 2011
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It may only were midday, however the lascivious thread running through Holly Fulton’s fall runway collection-borrowed from D.H. Lawrence’s classic tale Lady Chatterley’s Lover-cranked up the warmth inside the British Fashion Council show space at London’s Somerset House on Tuesday. Palm fronds gave the impression to lazily sway and exotic insects flitted across Fulton’s clinging sheaths, [...]
November 23, 2011
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The Saturday afternoon before his fall Pringle of Scotland show, design director Alistair Carr was drinking coffee on the label’s atelier just off Sloane Square. Carr didn’t look slightly flustered, despite a) the show being under 48 hours away, and b) the truth that among the pieces for the overall looks he was engaged on [...]
November 23, 2011
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“We want the woman so that you could walk off the runway and straight into the road,” says Kate Phelan, the recently installed creative director of Topshop of her debut outing for Topshop Unique, the brand’s hip, higher-end label that falls under her aegis. “There needs to be a realness to what we do; that [...]
November 23, 2011
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At the moment, when London is so slick and grown up and perfectly rendered-Jonathan Saunders, Christopher Kane, Erdem, Peter Pilotto, et al, all are evoked-it is simple to forget that a number of the designers who began back within the nineties were no slouch inside the beautifully made stakes either. That will include the likes [...]
November 23, 2011
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For anyone with a task in fashion, the collections could be a stressful time for plenty of reasons. But, you recognize, on the end of the day, it is a pretty unbelievable thanks to make a living. In what other industry would a lunch of individualized tins of Petrossian caviar served by handsome waiters in [...]
November 23, 2011
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Every trend has to start somewhere, start the conversation, get the ball rolling, that sort of thing. So if the preponderance of oversize looks which have been mooted for fall (and, so it happens, pre-fall too) had a Runway Zero, then it might, it isn’t wildly overstating the case, be traced back to Acne. For [...]
November 23, 2011
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The stellar front-row line-up on the Mulberry show-Michelle Williams, Lizzie Olsen, and Lana Del Rey, let alone Michelle Dockery and Laura Carmichael (a.k.a. Downton Abbey’s Lady Mary and girl Edith Crawley)-was a reminder that while London could be pulsing with thrilling fledgling design talent there also are some heavy-hitting brands on the town. The antic [...]
November 23, 2011
