Showing posts with label fashion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fashion. Show all posts
Friday, November 4, 2011
Saturday, October 29, 2011
fashion Spring 2012 RTW
To the tinkling strains of a music-box melody, Marc Jacobs unveiled his collection for Louis Vuitton on a bevy of girls sitting atop a carousel of prancing white horses—a wry comment on the current merry-go-round of fashion, perhaps, of which Jacobs himself is a focus of frenzied speculation.
From the prom-queen tiaras that crowned them to their conventional stiletto heels and handbags, vaguely evocative of the Eisenhower era, these girls were brimming with sugar and spice and all things nice—capturing the mood of ironically exaggerated femininity that has swept the runways.
Chez Vuitton, this mood was embodied by the abundant use of eyelet lace forming fields of daisies. To soften the effect even more, these pieces were veiled in sugar-almond-colored organza layers (or misted with shaded ostrich-feather fronds). Skirts were as puffed as Ladurée macarons, the bouffant silhouette starting either from an Empire line just below the bust or erupting at the hip like the party dresses of a 1920s china doll.
Broderie anglaise was used for exaggerated Vandyke collars, and as insets replacing the alternate diamonds on an Argyle knit. It perforated stiff little faille skirt suits and separates made from leather treated to look like scrunched-up sheets of cartridge paper. And in a playful take on the LV logo, it was used for parasols and to aerate clear plastic purses.
Jacobs took delight in treating some classic masculine wardrobe elements to the ultrafeminine makeover—a biker jacket in powdery spring-chick yellow or baby-blue crocodile perhaps, or a sweatshirt trellised in fine silver thread.
The optimistic daisy motif was blown up larger still for with multi-scaled plastic sequins that trembled on some of the prettiest short evening dresses of the season. To emphasize Jacobs’s fashionable volte-face, Kate Moss—last season’s saucy Vuitton dominatrix—was recast for spring as the ballerina on that music box in a gleaming white baby doll frock and Barbie white stilettos.Hamish Bowles
From the prom-queen tiaras that crowned them to their conventional stiletto heels and handbags, vaguely evocative of the Eisenhower era, these girls were brimming with sugar and spice and all things nice—capturing the mood of ironically exaggerated femininity that has swept the runways.
Chez Vuitton, this mood was embodied by the abundant use of eyelet lace forming fields of daisies. To soften the effect even more, these pieces were veiled in sugar-almond-colored organza layers (or misted with shaded ostrich-feather fronds). Skirts were as puffed as Ladurée macarons, the bouffant silhouette starting either from an Empire line just below the bust or erupting at the hip like the party dresses of a 1920s china doll.
Broderie anglaise was used for exaggerated Vandyke collars, and as insets replacing the alternate diamonds on an Argyle knit. It perforated stiff little faille skirt suits and separates made from leather treated to look like scrunched-up sheets of cartridge paper. And in a playful take on the LV logo, it was used for parasols and to aerate clear plastic purses.
Jacobs took delight in treating some classic masculine wardrobe elements to the ultrafeminine makeover—a biker jacket in powdery spring-chick yellow or baby-blue crocodile perhaps, or a sweatshirt trellised in fine silver thread.
The optimistic daisy motif was blown up larger still for with multi-scaled plastic sequins that trembled on some of the prettiest short evening dresses of the season. To emphasize Jacobs’s fashionable volte-face, Kate Moss—last season’s saucy Vuitton dominatrix—was recast for spring as the ballerina on that music box in a gleaming white baby doll frock and Barbie white stilettos.Hamish Bowles
Friday, October 28, 2011
miu miu spring 2012
What do you actually do as a designer when you’ve designated yourself to show in last slot, in the last city, to an audience that has been looking at fashion for four weeks on young models who, by now, are so zombie-tired that the makeup seems to be slipping off their faces? Well, you grab the last shreds of their severely depleted attention spans, and sum up the season for them, if you can. That’s exactly what Miuccia Prada did at Miu Miu, the brand that has been such a runaway success, with the forties dresses and glittery shoes for fall 2011. And she did it all—but only by the skin of her teeth.
“I designed it in fifteen days, right after Prada,” she declared. “With Prada, I think so much. But with Miu Miu, it’s improvisation.” What, even the elaborate, leather boots with their Western-turned–folk art patterns tooled with 3-D roses were made in less than two weeks? And the Provençal prints, all patchworked together? Yes, she shrugged, as if that were almost normal.
Well, Mrs. Prada might be uniquely endowed in having the industrial wherewithal to conjure up a collection midway through the shows, but it takes something rather more than financial muscle to amalgamate the season’s ideas in real time and then still make the whole look particularly your own.
At the beginning of the show, admittedly, it looked as if she wasn’t going to get there. Students of Prada (the label) have already dissected the fact that her acclaimed spring 2012 mainline collection was composed of separates made to seem like total matching looks, which is exactly how Miu Miu began, but with the components more clearly set out: high-waisted A-line skirts, bra tops with cropped, off-the-shoulder capes, and the odd fichu-wrap crossing the body and zipping up in back. All this was delivered in black and gray fabric—a recap of notions about mid-century modern tailoring, perhaps. That, and an intriguing stretchy, shirred midsection piece, like a pull-on, pull-up accessory, with which to cinch in a long shirt. So far, so didactically commercial, but then the show gained traction.
What followed looked increasingly like an ode to a petulant film noir ingenue, someone like the dangerous, corrupted characters of Raymond Chandler’s novels. Gradually, she started putting forth lace trapeze dresses and A-line coats in weird, flat colors like gray and burgundy, worn over peculiar patchworks of acid-yellow and burgundy Provençal patterns, and prints involving micro-tile repeats and Chinese lanterns. Amongst all this, the shoes and boots were a riveting mix of Edwardian velvet, cowboy, and ornate embellishment.
Sound confusing? It wasn’t, but if only because this collection (even if allegedly spontaneously thrown together in haste) stands as a vignette about how to blend many trends in simple-to-wear ways. The red-shadowed eyes, greasy locks of hair, and pallid complexions are optional, of course, although that is how most of the hard-core fashion pack happened to look, too, as they flew away at the end of the show toward a well-earned rest.Sarah Mower
“I designed it in fifteen days, right after Prada,” she declared. “With Prada, I think so much. But with Miu Miu, it’s improvisation.” What, even the elaborate, leather boots with their Western-turned–folk art patterns tooled with 3-D roses were made in less than two weeks? And the Provençal prints, all patchworked together? Yes, she shrugged, as if that were almost normal.
Well, Mrs. Prada might be uniquely endowed in having the industrial wherewithal to conjure up a collection midway through the shows, but it takes something rather more than financial muscle to amalgamate the season’s ideas in real time and then still make the whole look particularly your own.
At the beginning of the show, admittedly, it looked as if she wasn’t going to get there. Students of Prada (the label) have already dissected the fact that her acclaimed spring 2012 mainline collection was composed of separates made to seem like total matching looks, which is exactly how Miu Miu began, but with the components more clearly set out: high-waisted A-line skirts, bra tops with cropped, off-the-shoulder capes, and the odd fichu-wrap crossing the body and zipping up in back. All this was delivered in black and gray fabric—a recap of notions about mid-century modern tailoring, perhaps. That, and an intriguing stretchy, shirred midsection piece, like a pull-on, pull-up accessory, with which to cinch in a long shirt. So far, so didactically commercial, but then the show gained traction.
What followed looked increasingly like an ode to a petulant film noir ingenue, someone like the dangerous, corrupted characters of Raymond Chandler’s novels. Gradually, she started putting forth lace trapeze dresses and A-line coats in weird, flat colors like gray and burgundy, worn over peculiar patchworks of acid-yellow and burgundy Provençal patterns, and prints involving micro-tile repeats and Chinese lanterns. Amongst all this, the shoes and boots were a riveting mix of Edwardian velvet, cowboy, and ornate embellishment.
Sound confusing? It wasn’t, but if only because this collection (even if allegedly spontaneously thrown together in haste) stands as a vignette about how to blend many trends in simple-to-wear ways. The red-shadowed eyes, greasy locks of hair, and pallid complexions are optional, of course, although that is how most of the hard-core fashion pack happened to look, too, as they flew away at the end of the show toward a well-earned rest.Sarah Mower
Eva Mendes: She Wears It Well
Eva Mendes out and about in Los Angeles
In an obstinate response to the rain and the approaching official start of British winter my favourite look of this week is Eva Mendes in a long floral dress. Accessorised with a sturdy heeled long boot, a straw basket and a soy latté or whatever it is she's holding aloft, the 37-year-old actress looks elegant and comfortable, which is style mission accomplished in most people's book. Kate Finnigan
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