Fashion
The Rodarte Designers Discuss Learning the Couture Art of Tutu-Making to Create Black Swan’s Ballet Costumes
Oct 18th
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New York Magazine’s Jada Yuan reports: Last night, amid congratulations from Alec Baldwin and Angela Lansbury at Cipriani 42nd Street, Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte became the first fashion designers to be honored with a National Art Award from Americans for the Arts. Kate, who always gives their speeches, said she was reeling, given they only started making clothes after having graduated from UC Berkeley with degrees in art history and English, respectively, and moving home to live with their parents. “Laura and I moved, didn’t work, and watched horror films for a year and our parents didn’t say anything to us. I wonder if they had any thoughts of, ‘God, the kids I have are just going nowhere,’” said Kate. Now they’re not only winning awards and putting on some of the most highly anticipated shows at New York Fashion Week, but they also just designed costumes for loyal Rodarte customer Natalie Portman’s new ballet movie, Black Swan.
Portman had introduced the Rodarte sisters to Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky, and from there, Laura said, it was “a meeting of the minds.” Rodarte did all of the costumes for the performance of Swan Lake in the movie, as well as “different things throughout,” More >
Bruno Frisoni Is Done With Couture, But Not With Expensive Shoes With Wooden Flowers on Them
Oct 14th
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New York Magazine’s Charlotte Cowles reports : Roger Vivier artistic director Bruno Frisoni has decided to nix the label’s couture collection. “When I showed couture in January, I was thinking it was something that wasn’t me anymore,” he said at an event at the Roger Vivier boutique last night, looking a bit sad. “I thought the time had passed.” Because who wears couture these days, anyway? A couturier for 30 years, the French designer could think of only “one or two” women who might wear the label’s couture designs. “But in what occasion, really? For the big couture houses, the purpose isn’t really about dressing people anymore.”
But there’s no need to mourn the death of another couture label: Instead, Frisoni has decided to launch a less expensive limited edition line, titled Rendez-Vous, which features sixteen handmade bags and shoes that will tour his boutiques nationwide (it’s currently on view at Saks). By “limited,” we’re talking batches of ten copies for each piece, including all the different shoe sizes (which has been very complicated, one of the label’s employees told us in a hushed tone). The designs include a shoe embroidered with wood flowers, a wooden clutch with a jeweled ladybug clasp, and More >
Christine Ettelson’s Knit Jewelry Gives Traditional Weaving Methods a Modern Update
Oct 12th
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New York Magazine’s Lauren Murrow reports on Christene Eddleson’s Knit Jewelry : Though she designed and sold her own jewelry to a few boutiques in her native Chicago during high school, Christine Ettelson thought she had ended her short-lived fashion stint when she left to study comparative literature at Brown. After graduating and moving to New York in 2008, she happened to work in the same building as designer Julie Haus, who noticed her striking, handmade accessories. Haus asked her to collaborate on her resort 2010 collection, which Ettelson styled with her knit wool and leather jewelry and belts. Her eponymous new line is now stocked at Julie Haus’s Soho store, and she’s planning a pop-up shop at Inven.tory early next month.
Each hand-knit piece takes up to five hours to complete, incorporating far-flung methods like Kumihimo, a Japanese braiding technique; Lucet braiding, a form of Renaissance cording; and locker hooking, a type of weaving. After originally learning to knit as a child, Ettelson is intent on pushing the form, experimenting with materials like leather cord, thick threads, felt, and metallic trim. She mixes various yarns and threads to create swirled, customized hues — the fall collection’s reds and whites were inspired More >
Victoria’s Secret says Goodbye to an Angel
Sep 29th
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CBS’s Joyce Lee reports, “After posing as an angel for the past 13 years, supermodel Heidi Klum is leaving her post as Victoria’s Secret.spokesperson.
“All good things have to come to an end. I will always love VictoriaWorld’s Top-Paid Models and never tell her secret,” the German-born mother-of-four said in a statement, obtained by the Associated Press, Friday.
Klum, 37, is among the most famous supermodels in the world, strutting her stuff in international catwalks and appearing in print and TV ads for fashion labels and brands like McDonalds and Volkswagen.
She landed in the number 2 spot of Forbes’ list of the world’s top-paid models, reportedly earning $6 million last year.
Although no specific reason was given for her departure, Klum said she will focus on her other ventures, including her hosting gig on “Project Runway,” which is in its 8th season, and her new clothing line with New Balance, to be sold exclusively on Amazon.”
PICTURES: 2009 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show PICTURES: World’s Top-Paid Models
Katie Holmes discusses her upcoming fashion line
Sep 28th
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The New Yorker’s Amy Larocca sits and talks to super actress and super mom Katie Holmes about her upcoming fashion line: Check it out!
You put your collection together with your stylist, Jeanne Yang. How did you get into designing? I started making clothes for Suri when she was born, designing dresses, and then having seamstresses sew them, because I don’t sew very well. As a child, I was always drawing clothes, and I’ve always loved fabrics, and when Suri was born, I wanted to have certain things be from me and created just by me for her. And so that kind of got me into it, and then one day, Jeanne and I were getting ready for something and we thought, men have such beautiful tailored shirts, they have such a uniform, and we thought it would be nice to make things that are simple that you can have forever.
Were you always into fashion? I always loved clothes growing up. My mother had a drapery business. And now, part of being in this business is that you’re around really nice clothes. You do these photo shoots, you get exposed to Hermès and Chloé and Armani, and you start to feel the More >
Stylist Tina Chai Believes in ‘Skinny’ Shoes
Sep 23rd
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New York Magazine’s “The Cut” sits down with Stylist Tina Chai and the result was simply marvelous!
Tina Chai originally intended to be a lawyer. But after slogging through an uninspiring stint as a paralegal, she traded contract filing for photo shoots, landing a job at Glamour, which paved the way to Vogue‘s hallowed halls, where she worked for nearly five years. After a decade as a freelance stylist, Chai has cultivated an array of clients, working for glossies like i-D, styling shows ranging from Band of Outsiders to Lela Rose, and consulting for such retail brands as Theory and LOFT.
But it’s the industry’s wide scope that she loves most. “One of the really amazing things about fashion is that it allows you to act out your fantasies,” she says. “I can be all the things I’m not: I can dress like a sailor, even though I get horribly sick at sea; I can wear something really sporty, even though I’m the most uncoordinated person on the planet.” In other words, she may not be a lawyer as she had once planned, but she can still dress the part (albeit in green Prada Mary Janes). We talked to Chai about her tomboy style, Fashion More >
Milan fashion shines in wearable luxury
Sep 20th
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As written by Rueters correspodent Antonella Ciancio, Italian fashion designers created shimmering, fluid looks for their 2011 spring/summer collections, mixing fringes and lengths to seduce women as conscious of their bodies as of their money.
Crystal embroideries, golden belts and mirror heels shone at the Milan shows ended on Tuesday. A longer calendar and a new central location attracted more buyers than last year, confirming signs of recovery for luxury good brands.
“Buyers increased to over 15,000 this year, with more coming from Asia and the United States,” Mario Boselli, president of Italy’s National Chamber of Fashion, said on Tuesday.
“There was more vigor, also because of the improved economic situation after the crisis,” he said.
Fashion houses Cavalli and Ferragamo said sales continued to rise in the third quarter, but kept a cautious outlook for the rest of 2010, as many see 2011 as a test year for recovery.
A relaxed, sensual elegance inspired Dolce&Gabbana, whose bride-to-be models wore white clothes made from bed linens and tablecloths in a tribute to Italy’s best sartorial tradition.
Crystals were sewn on long-slung robes, like those seen at Armani, whose blue collection was inspired by desert nomads.
“I wanted very sexy clothes, but wearable,” Armani told reporters after his glittering, linear More >
First-Ever Plus-Size Show Hits N.Y.C. Fashion Week!
Sep 16th
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People Magazine’s Thailan Pham reports: ‘It wasn’t all stick-thin models ruling the runways during New York Fashion Week, as curvy stars like Nikki Blonsky, Gabourey Sidibe and model Emme sat front row yesterday to take in the first-ever plus-size show during fashion’s most high-drama week. “This is a milestone in the plus-size community. We’ve never had anything like this,” Blonsky said at the OneStopPlus.com presentation on Wednesday. “To be in New York City Fashion Week, which I think is the biggest fashion week in the world, to be here is just a huge thing for us.” And plus-size model Emme, couldn’t have agreed more: “You have to join forces to make a statement and to be part of a revolution. It’s monumental in its reach,” Emme told PEOPLE, adding, “I think the big statement that’s going to be made with this fashion show is not only going to be made within the full-figured community but I think it’s going to talk to the bottom line of design houses, designers, and business people involved in fashion,” she said. “Why don’t we make clothes above a size 12? Why don’t we load heavier in sizes 14, 16, and 18 in stores? Just change More >
New York Fashion Week’s garden variety: Carolina Herrera, Donna Karan & Barbara Tfank
Sep 14th
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LA Time’s correspondent Booth Moore reports on the NYC Fashion Week experience:
Maybe it’s the grow-your-own food movement, the popularity of farmers markets, or simply the fact that these are spring collections, but botany is sprouting up as a theme all over the runways.
Carolina Herrera took colors, prints and floral appliques from 18th century botanical plates for her collection, which included a gown hand-painted with the image of a flower, along with its name and species.
For her Garden of Eden-themed collection, Monique Lhuillier worked with cherry blossom print taffeta, draping it into a pleated A-line cocktail dress and a ball gown. (Also spotted: “sage green,” “mint floral” and “poppy” organza.)
At Donna Karan, shoes were decorated with leather leaves and gauzy long slip dresses were “saffron-stained” and “tamarind-distressed.” A rough-textured, jute-colored nubuck jacket was reminiscent of a seed sack.
Jenny Packham, who is fast becoming a favorite of the red carpet set for her lovely gowns — many of which have sleeves, for those who care about that sort of thing — tapped wallpaper specialists de Gournay to design the moody, hand painted florals for her finale gowns, one in a silk crepe de chine with a beaded tulle shoulder.
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New York Fashion Week: Marc Jacobs’ ’70s show
Sep 14th
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The LA Times’ Boothe Moore breaks down the Marc Jacobs show @ NY Fashion Week:
At Marc Jacobs’ spring/summer show, the look was unmistakably Jodi Foster from the 1976 film “Taxi Driver.”
Which is not to say that the models looked like preteen prostitutes exactly — but that they looked like bright lights in the dark city.
Hearkening back to the 1970s, these are clothes for strutting your stuff and looking like you’re living large even if you’re not — long, floaty halter dresses in geometric prints; slinky, one-shoulder striped jersey gowns; puffy sleeve blouses worn with even puffier long skirts cinched with leather sashes and finished off with overgrown corsages; zigzag patterned metallic knits and enormous straw hats with the rims turned back.
Suiting was a focus, but it was glam suiting, such as a cropped butterscotch satin jacket and matching short-shorts, a sorbet pink satin pants suit with flared trousers, or an over-sized blazer embroidered with bands of silver and gold sequins, worn atop fluid cream silk crepe trousers.
It might not have been the most thought-provoking Marc Jacobs collection, but it was exuberant, from the pink, purple, black and gold color palette to the glitter-dusted platform sandals. Top it off with great-looking structured, flap-front handbags, More >
