Chanel’s imaginary crystal vision in Paris show for Fall 2012/2013
Posted on 6-03-2012
 

photos:style.com

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DRIES VAN NOTEN’S FALL COLLECTION 2012/13
Posted on 5-03-2012
 

The fall 2012/13collection of DRIES VAN NOTEN. The designer he plundered the Victoria and Albert Museum’s ASIA COLLECTIONS-& he continues to create modern clothes that are wearable and full of historical references and images.Van Noten is known simply for his clothes, and is loved for his clothes—a style that looks complicated and studied on the hanger but is, in fact, quite modern and easy to wear. Because of this, he has engendered a cultlike following: women who wear “Dries” (pronounced “drease,” like please) are uniquely loyal to the brand. When you say you’re wearing Dries to a fellow follower, it’s almost like you are speaking in code about intelligent, artistic design.

DRIES VAN NOTEN told at DAZED:
It’s a lot of Chinese, a lot of Japanese and a lot of Korean. We looked at costumes from the V&A collection. We photographed them completely flat as garments. We printed these images on fabrics and then heat cut the fabric into contemporary clothes, by placing the shape of the kimonos and the dragon curls from China all in a different way so that sometimes the seam of the coat becomes the shape of the dress. We just completely replaced all the elements. That’s what we wanted to obtain – the beauty of the fabrics but on contemporary clothes.

“That’s what we wanted to obtain – the beauty of the fabrics but on contemporary clothes”

The documents are from the V&A (above & below)



That DRIES VAN NOTEN is a master of delving deep into other cultures and coming up with an enriching solution for the modern woman is no secret, judging by the amount of Dries that we saw on show goers. That Van Noten is able to gleam the mere surface of cultural aesthetics and still come up with gold is quite another feat. Quite literally, Van Noten took the 2-D surfaces of costume collections from Korea, China and Japan sourced at the Victoria & Albert Museum and printed them as flat forms on a desirable set of wardrobe cornerstone pieces. The prints were chopped up, spliced, diced and reconfigured so that you could vaguely suss out the origins but you never felt like you were being confronted with a literal pastiche of East Asian costume. “That’s what we wanted to obtain – the beauty of the fabrics but on contemporary clothes,” explained Van Noten afterwards.

(V&A,WSJ,DAZED,littleaugury)

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LOVE- ENERGY-ASTROLOGY:Astrological Predictions by Bella Kydonakis 3-6 of March
Posted on 3-03-2012
 

ARIES:

The more you want to communicate  and to learn, the more you will come out of your enclosure
and the blues.  It would be best if a newly surfaced problem of a romantic nature did not affect
all the other aspects of your life. Venus, in your sign, is giving off her final flashes of splendor and is
helping those born in the last days. Don’t give up if working conditions are not to your liking.With
patience everything will work out.

TAURUS:

You become more flexible and, at last, may be able to negotiate issues which once you were very
adamant over.  A well-hidden relationship of yours is preoccupying you and making you see your life
differently. It may very well be that a Virgo from your past is urging you to take your risks in love.
Friends with artistic and creative interests are prompting you to express your own powers of
creativity. Still  under the favors of Jupiter, keep tuned in to the facts and what’s going on.

GEMINI:

You feel the need to come out but there are matters, of a practical nature, that are frustrating for
you. You should be patient and not spoil your plans.  Keep a steady course and continue to make
dreams.  Good will from a Taurus comes your way and you meet somebody new through an Aries
friend of yourself.  An older in age person, quite possibly a Libra, re-enters your life.

CANCER:

For a short while you become somewhat withdrawn but this makes you stronger. Get better organized
to have better results in your professional life.  A positive reply over a career matter makes  you more
optimistic.  A Capricorn sets standards way too high and you cannot live up to them.  A trip that you
were supposed to take a while ago is coming back on the scene, as an opportunity this time. Problems
arise over a car.

LEO:

You feel the need to delve deep into your soul. You use alot of emotion and this frees you of various
difficulties of the past.  Working with a Pisces will give you solutions but you need to be careful. A
financial matter pertaining to the past will preoccupy you once again. An Aries supports you and
especially so with moves that you want to make abroad.  A Sagittarius  is whole-heartedly expressing
his feelings for you.

VIRGO:

You need to be more flexible in order to handle certain problems in your professional field.  You are
having difficulty in communicating with a member of your family.  Try not to reveal too much; keep
your cards closed because you may be carried away by a Pisces.  You are being obliged by a
Cancer to change your life style and way of thinking.  A good thing comes out of an issue abroad
or a court case.

LIBRA:

Your exercise of diplomacy saves you and is the way in which you solve many problems;  especially
those in communicating with a Virgo and Pisces.  They are bringing out your artistic talents but you
are not very much in the mood to bother.  What you want more is to be with yourself.  You believe
that you have done everything in your power and are now waiting for the results of these efforts.
Either an Aries or dynamic initiative on your part, unties your hands.

SCORPIO:

Now is the chance for you to become more subtle and flexible in manner and claim, through
associates, what is due you financially.  A Gemini will play an important part in your negotiations.
Meeting up suddenly with an Aries will spark up changes in your life, so long as you can unglue
yourself from your past. There will be financial opportunities that will get you out of your current
bind.

SAGITTARIUS:

You have relaxed somewhat and are no longer feeling the pressure you had a little while ago.
Surely you are confused and you do not know where you want to head for. That’s why avoid
overbearing discussions, especially with persons who do not have an organized plan to propose.
A Taurus supports you. You fear taking a chance in matters of love at this point in time.
Do not allow others to get involved in your life. Protect your space by not being absent-minded.

CAPRICORN:

You have steered your interests towards finding solutions to your financial issues.  You will succeed
in doing so if  you decide to deal with property near to water. You clear things up with an Aries
and this helps you move ahead.  Emotionally you are very sensitive but you manage alright and
especially when it comes to a Virgo.  A Gemini at work is on your mind because he is sending out
contradictory messages.

AQUARIUS:

You still feel dependent upon others and this makes you lose your strength.  Certain problems
with a Virgo may now be resolved since you will be able communicate more and make clearer
your position.  A Gemini appears in your life and pushes you to make a financial move that will
be to your advantage.

PISCES:

You try to communicate with those around you but you see that this is difficult; you need to give
more explanations than you wish.  Difficulties arise with a Gemini, Virgo and Sagittarius. It is
good if your decisions are derived from intuition and communication with yourself. Not from
information that may be wrong.  For those born during the first 10-day period things look
favourable. That’s why get up and get active, even if its through others.

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A Retrospective By Stefano Pilati at Yves Saint Laurent
Posted on 1-03-2012
 

Stefano Pilati officially stepped down from his role as creative director at Yves Saint Laurent yesterday. During his eight years at the helm of the house (preceded by four years assisting YSL’s previous designer, Tom Ford), he’s produced a rich body of work. His very first collection — a decidedly un-Ford lineup of girlish, ruffly silhouettes for spring 2005 — was widely panned, but had a great long-term impact: He’s now credited for single-handedly starting the tulip skirt trend in the mid-aughts. His last collection for YSL will walk in Paris on Monday. There’s no word yet on what he’ll do next; meanwhile, former YSL menswear designer Hedi Slimane is expected to take his place. Enjoy a comprehensive look back on Pilati’s many seasons of YSL womenswear collections.

SPRING 2005

FALL 2005

SPRING 2006

FALL 2006

SPRING 2007

FALL 2007

SPRING 2008

FALL 2008

SPRING 2009

FALL 2009

SPRING 2010

FALL 2010

SPRING 2011

FALL 2011

SPRING 2012

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Prada autumn/winter 2012
Posted on 24-02-2012
 

Looks from the Prada Fall 2012 runway.

Miuccia Prada’s Fall 2012 collection was a pleasure trip, pure and simple. No hokum, no conceptual hijinks, just beautiful clothes beautifully done.Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder—and the creator here as well. Prada’s geometric pantsuits were pulled from her “Ugly” collections of the mid-nineties, the graphic squares recalling ’60s psychedelia, and ’70s wallpaper (the inevitable trickle-down of the flower child decorative explosion). But today there is a kind of beauty to them, and to the jewel-encrusted black tailcoats, trousers and open-front pinafore dresses festooned with baubles. In fact, they were just unabashedly beautiful.

Does that mean this collection was Prada on hold? Kind of. It felt like a moment of retrenchment rather than Miuccia pushing our buttons and shoving us over the edge. Then again, sometimes it’s a relief to take a moment, smell the roses and indulge in Prada’s vision of twenty-first century beauty. Be careful: it won’t last longer than a season.

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INSPIRATION CHANEL FW2011-12… Rodarte FW2012-13
Posted on 23-02-2012
 

Winter jumpsuits… with or without belt? CHANEL had shown a chunky green bouclé one with big cargo pockets in their FW 2011/12 collection left… and RODARTE proposes a waisted clay colored version for FW 2012/13  right.

(intothefashion)

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A dark glamorous collection for Gucci autumn/winter 2012
Posted on 22-02-2012
 

At today’s Gucci show in Milan, morose-looking models walked down a bruise-colored carpet in heavy, sinister makeup. The lighting was dim, the backdrop was dark, and the clothes were almost all black. Which reminded some critics of another lugubrious topic: the European economy. Writes the Telegraph‘s Luke Leitch:

This is set to be a gloomy year for Italian fashion — analysts suggest sales will decline by 5.2 per cent in 2012 — and Gucci’s opening show today captured that mood perfectly.

Leave it to Gucci to turn all this terribly unglamorous talk of austerity measures (lower minimum wages, eew!) into something expensive like feathered coats. “A dark glamour”, is how Frida Giannini, Gucci’s designer-in-chief described the collection she hopes women will yearn for next winter.

“Romanticism” and “military references from the 19th century” as her main inspirations. Sheer purple pants fit into this vision, too, apparently, as did long capes and lots of velvet. In roughly-tied back Pre-Raphaelite hair, morbidly heavy make-up and deathly, ripe-red lipstick her models strode through the company’s velvet-benched fashion amphitheatre dressed as broodily Romantic anti-heroines: even the large-print and jacquard florals were glummed up by placement on a black background.

(via:Telegraph)

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The ‘Greek Princess of prints’, Mary Katrantzou’s Autumn/Winter 2012 show
Posted on 22-02-2012
 

““I wanted to use waves of color in this collection—but taken from things you use in everyday life, I also was looking for different silhouettes to emphasize embroidery and embellishments”, she said backstage and, Katrantzou scarcely needed to add, to frame those extraordinary prints that have propelled her lickety-split to the top of the London fashion class. Hence a godet skirt, so difficult to engineer print-wise that she made only four of them. Or frothing torrents of chiffon. Or a strictly corseted shape she’d extracted from some historical research (specifically Elizabethan England) without, she was quick to add, “crossing into the territory of costume.”

Katrantzou also extended her repertoire in other ways. For the first time, she focused on a single color top-to-toe, like the crayons on her invitation. And she’d chosen deliberately banal subject matter to match the colors. Green meant grass, for instance, rendered as an ornamental lawn working its way down a floor-length gown. Yellow was expressed in a mandala of No. 2 HB pencils, erasers attached. They were rendered in rubber by the Lesage embroidery atelier in Paris—not only the first time Lesage’s artisans had worked with such stuff, but also their first collaboration with a London designer. Clocks, hedges, telephones, spoons, and forks also provided source material. The bodice of a rococo red velvet dress featured a red typewriter, its keys providing a coiling abstract geometry on the skirt.”  Katrantzou’s conceits were so beautifully conceptualized—here never more so than with the bathtub that foamed with crystals and pearls—that her elevation of the quotidian to the sublime was, once again, easily one of the finest pieces of theater in London fashion week.
This is the kind of collection with so much depth, richness and invention, it’s virtually impossible to dissect it all, to discuss every facet of its innovation, to articulate exactly how it felt to see designer create something so mesmerising, so unique, and hands-down so jaw-droppingly, unapologetically beautiful.

(photos:style.com)

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Christopher Kane’s japanese orientalism fall 2012
Posted on 21-02-2012
 

A lavender world enveloped Christopher Kane’s show today as the runway and benches were decked out in a parma-violet carpet. But just when you thought this indicated a kitschy 70′s theme, out came sharp, modern black pinstripe suits, long tuxedos (some in ponyhair), loose leather trousers and smart little belts—a far cry from last season’s schoolgirl innocence.

Imperial-style dresses then emerged, pulsing with metallic wood-grain prints in deep indigo, held in place by thick black leather piping. They crossed, wrapped and knotted, hinting at a Japanese Orientalism. But Kane doesn’t do literal; he subverts it. For instance, the velvet embossing on sheer dresses and pencil skirts looked like antique tablecloths. But there was nothing antique about it. Rather, it suggested: out with the old and in with the new. A sea of reds infiltrated the second half of the show, in which Kane took the iridescent sheen of techno fabrics and magnified it to electric reds so bright they almost looked neon.

(photos:Haifa Wohlers Olsen NYF)

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Marios Schwab’s modern romanticism for Fall 2012
Posted on 21-02-2012
 

Rarely has a show referenced so many eras in the history of costume without being beholden to any. Marios Schwab opened with a selection of black, white and beige day dresses with plunging sweetheart necklines, dropped waists and spidery geometric embroidery. The collection soon segued into the intricate cocktail dresses for which Schwab is best known. The tension between the hidden and the revealed is something in which Schwab revels, perhaps owing to his father’s work in the lingerie trade.

High jewelled collars were offset by transparent décolletage-revealing chiffon that were nipped in by tailored corsetry in a way that was almost Elizabethan. Intricate beading gave the impression, from a distance, of dazzling Velasquez-like brocade. Waists were strongly defined while hips wereemphasized with sequin overlays, a motif that even found its way onto the seasonally mandatory astrakhan outerwear.Classic lace pieces were individualized by undulating art-nouveau necklines, an effect replicated by sinuously appliqued skeins of tulle, applied to see-through blouses and swirling lily-green helix prints. The closing full-length gowns, meanwhile, gave a thoroughly modern take on Pre-Raphaelite high romanticism. From the Dietrich-aping first looks to the dramatic Lady-of-Shalott dresses, by the end of the show it was clear that Schwab is a dedicated history buff.

(photos:style.com,hint)

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