Archive for February, 2010
Chic Spring Fashion for Every AgeEmbrace the season’s hottest statements in your 20s, 30s, and 40s.
Stark winter colours dominated Milan’s catwalks Thursday, brightened mainly by Fendi’s Karl Lagerfeld in a collection laced with “strange blues.”
The designer told AFP he was inspired by the American painter Edward Hopper, with a pallette also favouring yellow and grey.
“Yellow, grey and strange blues, not at all navy,” he said.
On other catwalks, D&G, the second line of maestros Dolce and Gabbana, inhabited the colour-free zone that prevailed on Thursday.
Shaggy boots from toe to knee, in black, grey or white, were the common denominator, underpinning wispy dresses, cheeky knit short shorts or woolly shifts, many sparkling with strass.
Blugirl’s Anna Molinari meanwhile teased the viewer with illusory knits.
Fluffy white jackets that looked like fur from afar turned out to be sculpted knits created with elaborate loops.
Molinari’s faux furry theme melted into the evening with grey or dusty pink cardigans over shimmering silver or black shifts.
Frankie Morello answered Blugirl’s understated fun with an edgy collection suggesting neo-punk: all black, save a few red soles flashing from the bottoms of vertiginous platforms.
A live heavy metal girl band drove home the sassy message contained in cuffed jean short shorts over sparkling leggings, or a strass-studded black jacket.
Pointy padded shoulders added to the gothic effect.
“It is darkness, night and mystery,” the designer says. “It is certainly always the opposite of pure white.”
The top designers are squeezing their shows into four days this time after it emerged that Anna Wintour, editor of the American Vogue magazine, would be cutting short her stay.
Wintour, the inspiration for the book and subsequent film starring Meryl Streep, “The Devil Wears Prada,” is regarded by many as the most influential person in the industry.
The highlight of Friday’s shows will be Gianfranco Ferre, Versace and Jil Sander.
Bottega Veneta, Max Mara, Armani and Gucci will follow Saturday, with Marni, Roberto Cavalli and Missoni giving their shows on Sunday.
While there will be other shows on Monday, none of the big names will take part.
Several thousand buyers from around 40 countries are expected overall, as well as 2,000 journalists.
If one is to judge a label by its front row—which is, after all, the point of the front row—what on earth to make of Issa? Its prime seating section proudly showcased the likes of Peaches Geldof and Pippa Middleton, sister of Kate, girlfriend of Prince William. In other words, English girls famous for their relatives.
Likewise, there is a distinct sense that Daniella Issa Helayel’s label is struggling to find its own way—at least on the evidence of today’s collection, which teetered between smart clothes for grown women and overly embellished flotsam and jetsam for It girls. The latter may have brought Issa initial attention in its early days, but Helayel should start focusing on the former, because, to go by what was on the runway, that is where her strengths actually lie.
There was a lovely middle section of plain gray wool dresses that were a lot sexier and smarter than they sound. The quilted jackets with sequined shoulder pads on the outside, however, were not. Similarly, the best dress of the bunch was probably a long, plain deep burgundy number that came toward the end of the show. Yet the completely beaded version of the same style that followed nearly ruined the memory of its chicer predecessor. What’s more, it was worn with ankle boots. Ankle boots? With a long dress? That suggested Helayel also needs to move on from her current stylist if she wants to take her label to the next, cooler, less Geldof-ed level.
There’s only one problem with the jackets on the Burberry Prorsum runway for Fall: Which one to choose? It’s the biggest accolade to Christopher Bailey that (a) that was a real and urgent dilemma, as the outerwear was available to pre-order instantaneously on the Burberry Web site, and (b) it would actually be impossible to go wrong. Every single one of his giant-collared shearlings, military-drab overcoats and parkas—and every hybrid thereof, in all their variations of volume, shape, shagginess, and leather strap and buckle detail—was utterly desirable. Bailey nailed it from the point of view of proportion—oversize and cropped—and practicality. He did it for women who like a frisson of showy seasonal fashion, and for those who want a coat that’s destined for a long life in the hall closet. By 5 p.m. GMT, thousands of mouse-pointers all over the world were hovering in distress over which “Click to buy” button to press.
Backstage, among the seething crowd of paparazzi, film crews, and well-wishers, Bailey gave his word on where all this originated. “I was thinking of uniforms and cadet girls—but it all started when I looked at an aviator jacket in the archive. Then, as I started designing into it, I realized it could be as versatile as the trench—strong and sexy, masculine and feminine.” And just before he was submerged in the next wave of kissing and congratulations, he turned and grinned: “And I really enjoyed it!”
Creatively, it certainly looked like he did. Burberry is on home ground here: not trying too hard, keeping at one authentically cool thing and exploding into a look that is simple to get, yet exists in a myriad of options, all of which take care to emphasize sex appeal. It’s a simple equation: jacket; skimpy, drapey, lacy skirt; and a pair of amazing boots—either right up to the thigh or (again, the agony of choice!) shearling-lined and bristling with straps.
Was it more important, though, that there was a sensation with this show that the parameters of fashion—its presentation, communication, and selling—were finally being forced open as the world watched? It was globally live-streamed, viewed in 3-D by clusters of invited guests in New York, Tokyo, L.A., and Dubai: That much only seems semi-novel in a culture that’s already assimilated the availability of show material in record time. What’s new, and super-clever in this case, is the simultaneous pre-selling of the clothes on the runway—and for three days only. As a brilliant piece of fashion-business management, it was an Olympic-style streak ahead that will leave other competitors seething.
After losing the rights to his name and taking the Spring season off, Alessandro Dell’Acqua was back on the runway today with a new label and a somewhat new approach. He’s named the collection No. 21 after his lucky number (his birthday is December 21), and as he said backstage, “It’s about real women.” Or to put it another way? “There’s more daywear.” Dell’Acqua’s focus on masculine staples like crisp blue cotton poplin shirts, boxy knits, and camel trousers puts him in step with the general direction fashion is heading in—a smart move in these more practical times.
But the designer didn’t entirely forsake his louche side. The shift dress that opened the show, for instance, was practically staid coming; going, however, it was a different story, with a plunging rear view and ruched zipper. The lingerie details he loves turned up in the form of cool, understated lace tees and tanks, and above-the-knee skirts. And for evening, he was embellishing peekaboo chiffon in a gorgeous shade of emerald green with feather trim in the back.
It’s going to take some time for Dell’Acqua to build this new image as a go-to guy for sportswear, but a classic leopard-print ponyhair coat made modern via its neoprene bonded leather trim and a pair of sexy fitted leather motorcycle jackets look like good starting points.
To take a lead now in the headlong rush and cacophony of multi-platform fashion-news generation, it takes a clear mind to figure out what women want, and what we’re lacking. And, far more radically, to address aspects of the system that have been (to say the least) annoying the hell out of many. Miuccia Prada did that today with a calm shrug.
“It’s normal clothes,” she said backstage before her show. “Classics. Revising the things I did in the nineties.” Behind her, models, hair done up in sixties beehives, were changing. Among them were Doutzen Kroes, Catherine McNeil, Lara Stone, and Miranda Kerr, young women whose relatively curvaceous beauty has generally exempted them from being cast as exemplars of female gorgeousness on runways such as Prada ’s for the past few years.
The clothes themselves were a deliberate, and quietly humorous, compliment to the womanly. If it’s the possession of breasts that’s been bothering model-casting agents for the past few years, this collection was a nightmare scenario for them. The ample bust was the unavoidable focal point of the silhouette, picked out in balconies of lace ruffles and upstanding pointy-bra formations on raised-waist, wide-skirted dresses and coats. Any girl on the runway who didn’t have the natural Bardot-esque equipment was bestowed with it by means of frothy fabric placements, but the eye naturally migrated to the ones who did. The others, young and pretty as they are, marched on in the usual kind of anonymity. In fashion, appreciating the exceptional is always more interesting.
Model politics apart, this was not a one-issue shape-lib show. For aficionados, the collection was, as the designer promised, a thorough revisiting of Prada’s strengths. She worked the house double-face cashmere into flattering dance-skirted fifties-sixties dresses and skirts, detailed jackets and coats with double-layered collars of cable knit and fur, cut A-line skirts in patent leather, and reprised her signature scratchy-grid prints. Then she broke into an extended riff on Prada knitwear, made into tweedy peacoat-ed suits and chunky belted sweaters. By the time she sent out black coats, smothered with jet embroidery, the entire repertoire of brand Prada—down to the pointy pumps and kooky tweedy socks—had been refreshed and reconsolidated.
It was nice to see that Prada envisages this being worn by women other than the zombie army of teen models that has roamed her runway recently—and that has influenced others to mimic that uniform aesthetic. Customers, she can be assured, will like that shift—but will it have a bigger ripple effect than that? Miuccia Prada is a fashion-industry influencer. Let’s see who scrambles to follow the leader.
After losing the rights to his name and taking the Spring season off, Alessandro Dell’Acqua was back on the runway today with a new label and a somewhat new approach. He’s named the collection No. 21 after his lucky number (his birthday is December 21), and as he said backstage, “It’s about real women.” Or to put it another way? “There’s more daywear.” Dell’Acqua’s focus on masculine staples like crisp blue cotton poplin shirts, boxy knits, and camel trousers puts him in step with the general direction fashion is heading in—a smart move in these more practical times.
But the designer didn’t entirely forsake his louche side. The shift dress that opened the show, for instance, was practically staid coming; going, however, it was a different story, with a plunging rear view and ruched zipper. The lingerie details he loves turned up in the form of cool, understated lace tees and tanks, and above-the-knee skirts. And for evening, he was embellishing peekaboo chiffon in a gorgeous shade of emerald green with feather trim in the back.
It’s going to take some time for Dell’Acqua to build this new image as a go-to guy for sportswear, but a classic leopard-print ponyhair coat made modern via its neoprene bonded leather trim and a pair of sexy fitted leather motorcycle jackets look like good starting points.
To celebrate the opening of Maison Moschino, the company’s new hotel in Milan’s Viale Monte Grappa, Rosella Jardini and her Cheap & Chic team changed up their show format, flying in British pop sensation Pixie Lott to perform and enlisting Italian actress Asia Argento to deejay. Instead of sitting in orderly rows, guests swigged Champagne and stood cheek by jowl in a clear plastic tent as models streamed past them. The concept, as the designer described it afterward, was “all of the different women who come out of the hotel.” There was a “Chanel lady” in a bright pink tweed boucléjacket and skirt, and an “Hermès lady” with a black Kelly bag perched upside down on her head. With Carla Sozzani’s famous 10 Corso Como store just steps from the hotel, Jardini sent out “shopaholics” carrying blue shopping bags with “Full” printed on one side and the Moschino URL on the other. Those were just for show, but the designer did debut a new collection of luggage, dubbed Lost and Found. There were even maids in black and white uniforms who playfully swatted the people lining their way with feather dusters.
In other words, this was trademark Cheap & Chic: nothing too serious, full of fashion in-jokes, and contagiously upbeat. To wit: The last model out sashayed by in a spangled shift dress with big block letters that read: “Fashion must go on!” Just in case it doesn’t, though, it was a clever move for Jardini and co. to branch out with this new hotel.
Glam grunge. That was the (somewhat mixed) message at Just Cavalli. The models wore flashy charm necklaces and fur collars over plaid flannel button-down shirts and pleated black leather minis, or teamed oversize brown, gray, and black patchwork sweaters with tiny loden green kilts and black and gold brocade leggings. The layered look is a key Fall trend, so points go to Cavalli for doing it in his own irreverent, leopard-spotted way. Oh, yes, this show had leopard spots, sometimes two or three different prints in one outfit. There probably aren’t tons of girls out there who are going to rock that head-to-toe look, and add a lace-edged dickey into the mix. But there are plenty who’d be thrilled to combine Cavalli’s cropped, drab-green aviator jacket (with acid yellow shearling lining), a pair of the designer’s exuberantly colorful leggings, and one of their own T-shirts.
Where things went amiss was with the molded leather pieces and the blazers made of furniture velvet. The quality didn’t quite look up to snuff, and the fit was off. Bulges at the hips? No, thanks. The one thing that the Cavalli girl isn’t going to compromise on is her sex appeal. Better to stick with those crazy leggings.
To describe Fendi as verging on reserved and sober when there was a white lynx coat right there in the middle might seem fashion-delusional, but even the Roman home of superdeluxe furs has indeed caught the season’s mood of restraint. In this winter, when all leading designers are concerned with calming and reshaping the silhouette, Karl Lagerfeld seemed less interested in showcasing the furriers’ storied technical fireworks than pulling back to work on swing coats; soft, billowy blouses; mid-calf dirndls; and a slightly countrified, muted palette of gray, navy, beige, and mustard. Even the footwear was a play on the sensible and utilitarian. Not teetering statement platforms, but high-heeled booties detailed with ribbed rubber toe caps and top lacing akin to Wellingtons or the Muckers that horsey girls wear in the stable yard.
It’s all relative, of course. Backstage, and close-up on the racks, there was more state-of-the-art fur expertise in evidence beyond the patchworked coats and vests (and that exceptional lynx) visible on the runway. The passage in what could pass as camel hair was actually shaved beige fur. The velvety nap of the eveningwear was constructed from ribbon strips of organza and fur, too. Still, from the point of view of the current drive toward chic practicality, it was the least showy coats—the simple, narrow, collarless suede cardigans with shearling on the inside—that could turn out to have the greatest fashion appeal in reality. Which is what it’s all about now.