Monday, November 15, 2010
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Out of Africa
The masked face with its feathers of hair glares from the instep. And the savage hybrid of a shoe mixes python straps and a sky-high heel with beads, wooden pearls, a cord and a tassel.
When it appeared on the runway at the Louis Vuitton show in October, who could have believed that the fantastical footwear — selling at €1,250 to €2,250 (about $1,650 to $3,000) a pair — could be the hottest item for summer 2009?
Louis Vuitton, Spring 2009 Photo: Catwalking.com
No wonder that the designer Marc Jacobs baptized it the “Spicy,” giving a name to the shoe, as had previously been the custom with the now-fading It bags.
To spice up this footwear, the designer added everything but the kitchen sink — as long as it was out of Africa. Snakeskin, plumes and semiprecious stones set the tone for a shoe that was inspired by Josephine Baker, the famous singer and dancer of 1920s Paris. She resonated with the exotica that was prevalent in a period when the Ballets Russes had set off one fashion trend and the discovery of Egyptian mummies another.
But the surprising thing about the 2009 spring season, where African style is a drumbeat through clothes and accessories, is that it isn’t about the ethnic.
Instead, it is the sculpted, geometric shapes of Africa and its rich, spicy colors that are the strongest forms of identity.
John Galliano brought Africana to Dior, once again by the shoes, which had fertility symbols carved into high heels. But it was the sculpted hairdos by the couture coiffeur Orlando Pita that made the most powerful impact, along with the weave-effect textures of dresses that were pure Parisian.
Dior Spring 2009, Photo: Zimbio.com
Fabric was the story at many shows, starting with the animal prints revisited — but in bright hues — at Lanvin. That echoed an African theme that had been seen in early designs, from Yves Saint Laurent in the 1960s to Naomi Campbell walking the runway for Dolce & Gabbana in 2004 in a leopard-print dress.
The most dramatic example of tribal fabrics was offered by the Japanese designer Junya Watanabe. He came up with bold prints in an African palette of big-sky blue, burnt orange, earth brown and leaf green. Those fabrics were made into pretty summer dresses, while heads wrapped with bunches of wildflowers sweetened the mix.
Africa has had many moments in the fashion sun. Those YSL gowns even had pointed breastplates, long before Jean Paul Gaultier promoted that idea on Madonna.
When the Josephine Baker shows were in Paris vaudeville, ivory bangles climbed up fashionable arms.
The colonial world has also been mined for inspiration. The heat-and-dust colors of stone gray and sand beige, with a hint of military khaki, produced another African scenario. For Hermès, that meant re-creating the effect of desert sands on the surface of rippling suede dresses. For Ralph Lauren, the colonial looks fell somewhere between India and Africa, with low-crotch pants — those sarouel and jodhpur styles that are so à la mode this summer.
Accessories with an African stamp work best for summer in the city, as well as on vacation. Necklaces with a faintly tribal feel look great when in graphic shapes. Bangles are everywhere, from wide cuffs to narrow bracelets, mostly in inventive modern materials to emulate the ivory and horn of now-endangered species.
Junya Watanabe Spring 2009 Photo: Style.com
Bags have just a hint of the wild in their serpent skins or with other natural materials like galuchat (a type of fish skin) or stout saddle leather. For the smaller clutches, a few beads threaded on a cord are sufficient to pass the message — without resorting to the heavy embellishments that are going out of fashion.
But it is the shoes that are leading the forward march of African style — if you can get your hands on them. Chloë Sevigny is one Hollywood star who has managed to get her feet into the Vuitton Spicy shoe, thereby creating a celebrity gold rush for the footwear. The demand is all the more piquant because no pair of these shoes is alike, enforcing a desire for the unique, handcrafted object in which Africa itself excels.
The irony is that one step on African soil in this high and mighty footwear would probably bring even a hardened fashionista to her knees. Yet, in fashion, the dream creates desire. And there are, among the dizzyingly high shoes, sandals that are flat and strappy, in snakeskin or gilded fake crocodile, that would be as useful on the shores of the Limpopo River as in the world’s fashion capitals.Saturday, March 14, 2009
Fashion master or mentor? An agonizing choice for young talents
PARIS: Stretching, floating, spreading like ectoplasm or retreating into an oval shape -Gareth Pugh's collection was a screen full of inspiration. The clothes were unmistakably his dramatic and graphic vision; but the diamond patterns, sun-ray pleats, inserts of studs and even the model's floating ponytail slowly spread and then evaporated. After a dramatic menswear runway show a month ago, the 27-year-old British designer took his collection to video, offering an intuitive expression of his world. And on the first day of the Paris autumn/winter 2009 season, he chose a different, off-the-runway approach.
"I wanted to express what we wanted to do with the collection," Pugh says. "Even if it did look more like a long perfume ad!"
When - and surely it is not "if" - this hyper-talented designer builds his brand, he will produce fragrance, handbags, makeup or even home furnishings. But for that he will need big money. And like all start-up designers in their 20s, he is faced with an agonizing choice: master or mentor?
Since he graduated from Central Saint Martin's fashion school in London in 2003, Pugh has been taken under the wing of the designer Rick Owens and his partner, Michele Lamy. Although Pugh's first collections were more show biz than business - making it as costumes for Kylie Minogue's tour - his extreme club clothes, with their inflated shapes and checkerboard patterns, have been turned into a buck.
"We sell the clothes - we really do," Julie Gilhart, design director of Barneys New York, said after congratulating the designer and making a showroom appointment to see the clothes.
But it is no secret that Bernard Arnault, chief executive of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, sponsored Pugh's menswear show in Paris in January and that his people have their eyes on this designer. Asking for anonymity, a person familiar with the situation said that, after Karl Lagerfeld advised Arnault to scoop up Pugh as a major creative talent, the LVMH team approached Pugh and Lamy.
"LVMH is a very big company with lots of people, and they saw something in me that they wanted to bring out," Pugh says, adding that he is extremely happy with the Rick Owens collaboration and wants to "tread water" in these difficult times, having the confidence in himself "that I am going to get to a certain level." Asked if he would ever join the corporate club, Pugh replied: "If someone came along and it was right - never say never."
It has been 25 years since Lagerfeld joined Chanel, setting in motion the idea that, to reinvent themselves, famous old houses had to tap fresh designers. Since then, high fashion has swallowed dozens of burgeoning talents - most famously John Galliano, firstly at Givenchy and ultimately at Dior. But also Alexander McQueen, also first at Givenchy (owned by LVMH) and then at the corporate rival PPR, where the designer has his own line.
Any fashionista could chant a litany of these two-prong careers, those who are working for a big house and also for themselves, kicking off with the famous collaboration between Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs and embracing the more recent fashion hookups, as when Riccardo Tisci gave up his own Italian label to design for Givenchy.
Now that the economic climate is rougher than ever for fledgling fashion companies, it is a brave designer who would turn down the corporate blandishments.Kris Van Asscheis a case in point. On Wednesday, the Belgian-born designer sent out a poetic collection of masculine/feminine clothes, illuminated with metallic torques and bangles. Mannish tailoring, like wrap coats or a four-pocket jacket, layered over soft gaucho pants (slightly too many of them) made for a good and wearable collection.
This latest play on the man/woman theme expressed - not least in the program notes that quoted the French poetBaudelaire's "Les Fleurs du mal" - an elegiac romance. And it could not be more different from Van Assche's other day job at Dior Homme, which gives him the finances to keep alive his own men's and women's lines.
Delphine Arnault, daughter of the founder and an executive at LVMH, was sitting front row. "I've always liked young designers - I find it super interesting, and, anyway, Kris works for us," Arnault said.
As the first generation of the "two-prong" designers reaches maturity, it is easy to see what has happened. Although Jacobs has recently (after an open clash with LVMH) grown his own brand, it is still light years short of the Louis Vuitton sales numbers. The Galliano brand is puny compared with Dior, and the collapse of Ittierre, Galliano's Italian manufacturer, will put thebrakes on any hope of rapid expansion.
The story continues at The International Tribune Online
Monday, March 9, 2009
On the runway: The Man/Woman Meld
PARIS: The emotion of womanhood married to a casual masculine confidence - that is the message from an exceptionally powerful Paris season.
It has been spelled out in specifics over fashion's long weekend of shows. Liquid drapes for womanly shapes have taken over from girly dressing - most often shown with tailoring as the distaff side.
Beauty is the goal, for this autumn 2009 season has drawn a definitive line under the "ugly" aesthetic. You could say that fashion has reached a certain maturity, but that sounds stodgy - the clothes are not heavy, even if solid fabrics have often taken over from the ethereal.
The overall impression is that, in a time of world economic crisis, designers have emphatically staked out their own territory, giving each woman, in the free spirit of liberty and equality, the right to choose.
Feminism is not really a fashion issue, but at Comme des Garçons, Rei Kawakubo makes it so. Her collection trembled with emotion, as her models, flesh-colored veils marked with a kiss of sparkly, scarlet sequins, worn over shocking pink sausage-curl hairdos, created a whimsical wardrobe. It was based on solid coats, often in khaki with images of windows sketched as pockets. The childlike drawings complemented shoes with toes drawn on the outside.
Commes des Garçons A/W 2009
"Wonderland," Kawakubo said backstage after an ovation greeted this mystical meld of sturdy checked blankets folded into the tailoring, khaki, denim and knitwear - all embraced by a collection that ended where globules of pearls lay under an ethereal coating of tulle layers. The designer also called it her "secret garden," and it was a wondrous display of clothes embellished not with mundane accessories, but with the unfathomable dreams of a great designer.
Yohji Yamamoto's vision was more immediately accessible: outerwear, streamlined but with subtle challenges to the design status quo. One side of a long coat displaying the shorter hem of a peacoat or a graceful jacket and long skirt with twin zippers slicing the back.
The show's focus was red shoes - soft as slippers and bright as the lipstick that was a slash of color between head and feet. The color came later as patches of scarlet, as if the material had been dip-dyed.
Yamamoto's new collaboration with Ferragamo, melding two companies that both have iconic status in Japan, brought out the best in Yamamoto, whose clothes have always been dedicated to a serene beauty. That was expressed this season through a quiet exploration of intriguing fabrics, some slightly transparent, others with a raw edge and with little, but strong, color bleeding into black.
Yohji Yamamoto A/W 2009
Backstage, Yamamoto described the Ferragamo collaboration as an inspiration, with the shoemaker's technique that created soft boots without a seam. The designer's description of "so much quality - something to last" defined the shoes, his own approach to fashion and the spirit of current times.
"Feathers," said Junya Watanabe backstage to describe the inspiration of a collection of such beauty and grace that it had cynical photographers roaring "bravo." The proposal was the down coat - not so new in itself. But with "Tosca" soaring on the soundtrack and the elegant, shapely long coats and dresses, the show was in striking contrast to Watanabe in his more aggressive, rock 'n' roll mood.
It was perhaps a show on one note. But the designer turned that into an aria, as his noble women, with upswept hair, paced slowly, unfurling a short jacket into an ankle-length coat. The central idea of lightness - even when metallic chains were inserted in the puffy down - was underscored by pleated skirts and draped dresses. And if there was a hint of the Yohji Yamamoto look in the long coats, this was not a fashion echo chamber, but something Watanabe evolved in his own spirit.
The Maison Martin Margiela is certainly in need of help, after its founder has gone on "extended leave," as corporatespeak has it. The mix of intellect and instinct that made the Belgian designer's collections a fashion pacemaker have now become a parody - or even a travesty - of Margiela's vision. Based on a flesh-colored bodysuit and shown in a stadium filled with floating balloons of light, some acceptable, pieces, like trench coats with cutouts, were interspersed with dresses that turned to show a back naked except for a visible bra. Of Margiela's rigorous exploration of a personal vision, there is no sign and Renzo Rosso, chief executive of the "Only the Brave" company that owns his Diesel empire, needs to do something fast.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Sensual Sobriety at Lanvin
Marching purposefully down the wet road of a runway, the women - mostly black clad but one in a scarlet suit - waved at the Lanvin audience.
It was a defining moment in the autumn 2009 season, when bias-cut tailoring, fur stoles circling the shoulders and boldly studded dresses with just a soupçon of the 1980s spelt out the new fashion message: sensual sobriety.
The clothes that the designer Alber Elbaz sent out were an ode to women - not that romantic, ethereal creature of male dreams but a modern woman who can take a curve-heel shoe in her long stride; one who needs a suit, with jacket belted above a slim skirt; and whose idea of exposure is a soft cowl swooping below a bared upper back.
Lanvin has become a byword for modern glamour that responds to the female body, rather than controlling, or even torturing it.
Elbaz was on top form, with his nonchalant way of cutting a plain coat so that it covers but never smothers; or using stretch fabrics, on the bias, with never a hint of vulgarity. He seems to get inside the skin of a 21st century femininity, which is about a flurry of feathers crowning a scooped-back pony tail and the way a bodice is tamed into a big flat bow.
Two factors stood out: First, the technical skill that, as with traditional couture, made complex cuts seem oh-so-simple that the actress Kristin Scott Thomas sighed over a silver gray satin dress and imagined herself inside the scarlet suit.
The program even baptized the outfits with names from Arlette to Violette. You almost expected to hear them called out over the soundtrack.
The choice of fabrics also was exceptional, with the introduction of burnt-out dévorée velvet to give substance to surface, while the dresses remained so light.
Above all, this was a wardrobe of clothes from a designer who understands a woman in her different moods - gentle, aggressive, power worker, mother, lover - and makes fashion to embrace all of that.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Rebuilding fashion: Call in the architects
MILAN: Geometric lines, a firm silhouette and buttresses in swoops in cloth - there is a sense that fashion is being rebuilt for a new era.
This is the moment to call in the architects, rather than the decorators. The powerful Milan collections for winter 2009 are from designers who can keep everything clean and clear.
And that has helped Salvatore Ferragamo, where the designer Cristina Ortiz has always liked large, architectural gestures to create a clothing image for this house built on a foundation of shoes.
This collection of tailored coats and short jackets with cropped pants - the better to view the footwear - was calmed down from bold to beautiful. The clothes looked classy and right for now, always with thoughtful design details to illuminate classics, as in cape shoulders, swelling sleeves and even elbow-length gloves to give a feeling of class.
The only decoration was a rose, built into a glove or a neckline, except for the shoes themselves, where intricate fretted work produced leather lace that, in its decorative effect, offset the clean lines of the clothes.
You have to wonder why this elegant outing of desirable fashion, from tailoring to knits, had to end with evening gowns - especially when Ortiz went back to her passion for displaying the body, using sheer fabrics that seem so over. But from the purple color worked into neutrals to the well-chosen proportions, this was collection that put Ferragamo fashion in just the right place.
Etro Fall 2009, Davide Maestri
Veronica Etro was faced with a challenge: How can a house known for intensely decorated fabrics and ethnic wanderings along a hippie trail seem relevant for now? The designer rose to the challenge by literally caging in the excess. Taking a Byzantine theme, which embraced the shiny, gilded fabrics that are the new season's hit, Etro created a lattice of metallic beading that gave a strict, linear structure to the embellished dresses. And where once there were floating hippie de luxe dresses, this show opened with tailoring and with tops and skirts for ordinary daywear. Trained at Central Saint Martin's in London, Etro produced exemplary work on the theme, which never overwhelmed and was deftly blended with the house's more familiar paisley patterns. It was a fine example of moving a line forward without losing its identity.
As a designer of romantic fashion school, Antonio Marras made an intelligent turn toward the classic, founding his art-inspired collection on a strict grid. The designer listed his inspiration as "Picasso and the Masters," the subject of a recent Paris exhibition, but it was the Cubist floor pattern and the wooden closets as the backdrop that instilled the instant message.
So instead of the rich vein of velvet Victoriana that Marras has mined previously, here was a postwar scenario - the Spanish Civil War perhaps - where the models wore pinstripe and khaki tailoring but tinged with embellishment. It seemed almost as if these women had brightened up their drab outfits with their own imagination: embroidery and appliqué. The result was a fine collection, showing Marras as strong and individual as ever but not oblivious to a changing world.
It is a mystery how Tommaso Aquilano and Roberto Raimondi were able to stage their own carefully crafted show for the Aquilano.Raimondi label, as well as Gianfranco Ferré, where the brand is in financial turmoil.
The two must have worked extremely hard to get both collections together. But maybe they need to draw back at this point and decide what is their USP, or unique selling point. Is it the fact that they make rich clothes that are at the same time young and fresh? Or could it be that they have a spirited way with the back view, so that almost every exit has a drape or an origami fold?
In a nutshell, these talented designers need to decide if they want to be decorators or architects of a fresh, upscale Italian look.
Dolce & Gabbana's "Hello, Dali!"
Then there was the heavy duty for Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana of dressing the front-row stars: Kate Hudson, Scarlett Johansson, Eva Mendes, the "Slumdog" star Freida Pinto and Naomi Watts; and the three supermodel blondes, Nadia Auermann, Eva Herzigova and Claudia Schiffer. Not to forget the ghost of Marilyn Monroe, who appeared as a print in a show that was almost all in black and white, with explosions of Schiaparelli's shocking pink.
This celebrity-packed show just did not work as presented - although out of the "Hello Dali!" context, suits with elongated skirts and the graphic black and white polka dots and squares might have looked larky.
Mauricio Miranda
Instead, weighed down with the circle sleeves and obvious accessories: a glove hat and lipstick cases on black suede shoes (but also spirited double-layer sunglasses) the clothes looked less than joyous. They evoked just that prewar period when the lights went out all over Europe and Schiaparelli's wacky style became instantly outmoded.
Anything from Dolce & Gabbana is always beautifully realized: the animal patterns as flocked velvet surfaces, the screen prints and the chubby furs that had style and class. But so many designers, not least Yves Saint Laurent, have been in this territory. And to bring out this show at this particular crisis moment seemed - well - surreal.
Suzy Menkes is fashion editor at the International Herald Tribune.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Prada's garden of earthy delight
By Suzy Menkes MILAN:With rubber waders rising thigh high and scarlet riding coats split at the side, Miuccia Prada's wickedly witty show on Sunday confirmed her place in Italian fashion's counterculture.
Prada's garden of earthy delight included the best coats and suits of this Milan season - precisely cut out of felt or leather and spreading from a small waist. They were topped with hairstyles that looked like the models had been up to something in the hay - even if the rings of sparkling red around the eyes suggested pure glamour.
"The collection was a take on the country," said Prada, as if we would believe that the scarlet tailoring or a slim dress with carwash strips of fabric would not be snapped up as city cool.
The way that Prada distanced herself from the punk-style power woman of this Milan season showed her absolute independence. In the enclosed space, with layers of seating around a small arena, which Rem Koolhaas, the set's architect, called "a retreat," the collection had a powerful sexual charge. That came not least from shoes that looked like a cockscomb had been hit by a scattershot of studs; or from the rubber boots climbing bare thighs to reach hefty shorts.
The show swayed subtly from garden to salon, as the autumnal russet of a sculpted coat switched to a plush brocade velvet while keeping the same silhouette: voluminous, with a bared portrait neckline, deep sleeves and a belted waist.
There was plenty of black to set off the bright colors and taken individually, the dresses and suits were spot on for a wintry financial climate.
"You need to uplift yourself, because it is difficult trying to be positive," said Prada. "But I am in a good mood."
Suzy Menkes is fashion editor at the International Herald Tribune.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Missoni & Ballantyne
By Suzy Menkes MILAN: With soft shades of peach, apricot or powder pink, touched with blue, there was something sweetly appealing about Angela Missoni's exploration of the family heritage: knitting.
The snoods that draped like a nun's wimple around the face, the layer-on-layer of comfort clothing and the ultra-long scarves, their fringed ends sweeping the floor, made perfect outfits for global freezing.
There even seemed something Antarctic in those colors, suggesting streaks of sunset over the glacial ice. But Missoni's warm-up of fashionable knits was unmistakable. The point of the show was the weaving techniques that were projected on the backdrop. Geometric patterns on the woolly leg warmers, less abstract florals on dresses and tweedy mini-coats were faced off with plain surfaces, where texture was the message. Even the mule shoes had a nubby brocade finish.
Being a family company, there is yet another generation of Missonis to inspire and to make sure that a glitter of Lurex worked into mini dresses could take the clothes from an adult comfort zone to the party scene. Angela Missoni said backstage that her daughter Teresa had been the source of the draped headwear while Teresa's sister Margherita sat front row in a sophisticated version of the pink-tinged layers.
Ballantyne Fall 2009, Photo by Giovanni Giannoni
"Working with shapes and colors like a futurist artist," said the designer Dawidh di Firmo to explain the way that graphics lines were woven into geometric shapes.
Nature was the counterpoint to geometry, with butterflies and water lily petals worked in Ballantyne's exceptional intarsia techniques. But colors throughout were strong: purples brighter than in any Scottish hillside heather and dashes of orange and blue for a more urban take on the collection.
Suzy Menkes is fashion editor at the International Herald Tribune.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
The It bag is over. Cue the hit shoe
Balenciaga shoes, farfetch.com
PARIS: Like an attention-grabbing wild child who finally grew up, the handbag has resumed its former role as a polite appendage to the family of fashion.
After its decade in the limelight, the It bag is finally over. That does not mean that purses, holdalls and totes are finished. How could we live without them? But that the focus is on other accessories: designer jewelry, broad bangles, wide belts and madly creative shoes.
The bag is now blending with an outfit as though it no longer wants to show off its voluptuous shape, rattle its heavy metal chains, or be a one-season wonder that is then auctioned on eBay to pay for the next hot design.
The deflation of the bag's status is partly from fashion fatigue. When a Victoria Beckham, a Paris Hilton or any reed-thin Hollywood star wears a uniform of skinny jeans and sexy top, jazzed up with a vast bag, there has to be change to entice customers to buy.
Judging by the designer offerings displayed in post-sale shop windows, shoes are out to steal the limelight, with mighty platforms, carved heels, cages of straps and all sorts of decoration, from feathers to beading.
Since the "model wobble" was a feature of the recent runways, the concept of "falling for" a pair of these pricey pieces is going to take on a whole new meaning. Yet, to some extent, the It shoe makes sense, in that it is a rare piece of footwear that survives the assaults of uneven sidewalks, heel-trapping grids and wet weather. Only flats - and they are the least fancy styles on offer - tend to linger in the closet.
A bag can give lasting pleasure, maybe even be passed down from mother to daughter, as were the Hermès Kelly, Chanel's classic quilted purse or even - in the pre-Tom-Ford era - Gucci's bar-and-bit bags.
Inevitably, classicism is on the way back in a jittery financial climate that is encouraging customers to look for lasting value. So there is also an emotional and intellectual reason to look for a fresh fashion start after the dramatic end of the bling-bling era.
Clothes themselves, after taking a modest position during the era of star accessories, have become more substantial. So bags become polite partners, not flashy competition, to a leather dress or to black and white patterned pajamas, both color and texture folding in together.
The concept of sustainability, a conscience about a wasteful society and the pertinent problem of finding the money for new purchases, all contribute to a mind-set where the It bag seems frivolous.
Yves Saint Laurent Spring 2009 shoe
photo: International Herald Tribune
Luxury companies have anticipated the change. Where there are logos, they tend to be quiet and classic - the Stephen Sprouse collaboration with Louis Vuitton excepted. And the more familiar LV logo canvas or Damier patterns make up the main stock.Bags have also become smaller, with the clutch or traditional purse competing with the vast empty space in which a woman's life - phone, wallet, makeup, scarf, sneakers, change of hose, food and water - is hurled.
It all adds up to good sense, and sensibility to changing times. And if there is also a history of a recession producing wild design, well, those fantasy shoes, where design and craftsmanship are compressed into such a small space, could add a springtime fillip to clothes recycled from the closet for another season.