Milan Fashion Week SS08 Wrapup II

Prada

Wow. After last season's collection of heavy artificial materials, this season's sheer, flowy clothes is a great change. The first thing I loved was the dark, moody makeup. The makeup theme -dark eyes and light lips -is made moody and not sexed-up. Miuccia shot for 'fantasy'. And it IS fantasy. Even if it's not dramatic fantasy like Dior haute couture or Alexander McQueen shows, the clothes here are Prada's signature, understated and not-for-everyone sort of fantasy.

See the silk dress on the right -it's amazing how Miuccia managed to combine those peacock-ish colours and still make the dress look pretty and not tacky.

I LOVE that dress on the right with the fairy print. It's so elegant and feminine with a cute, pretty edge.

It's so refreshing to see Prada's intellectual, artisitc clothes not looking like it's usual, boxy self. However, I'm not sure how good they'll look on the consumers or who would actually buy crazy coloured pants (like the one on the left.)

Alessandro Dell'Acqua

While Dell'Acqua's collections have never been as fashion-foward as Prada's, the clothes are always great to see how he mixes his new inspirations with last runway collections' trends.

OK, so the first few outfits of underwear are pretty bad, but I do really like his cocktail dresses. (I have a thing for these fake strapless dresses. They're just so much more practical, modest and comfortable than the usual strapless dress, don't you think?)

I'm not sure how commercial these Japanese-inspired skirts/ dresses will be, but do note the wasit-clinching trend. Ooh, and look at the dress on Du Juan (left,) doesn't it look like flowers are growing on her (and tastefully covering up her private parts?)

Marni

Marni is a brand that I see people wear around a lot. It's so distinctive you really can't miss it. Whenever I see Marni clothes in real life, I've always been so bombarded with the prints and crafty accessories that it didn't occur to me that Marni's clothes are now less nature-like than a few years ago until I read the reviews on the SS08 collections. And even though the crafty necklaces are still there, the clothes now really do seem more modern and wearable.

The dress on the left is one of my favourites from this Marni collection. It's artistic without being too over-the-top. And that dress on Lily Donaldson (right) -it actually looks somewhat classic and sleek, something that is not very Marni-like.

The patent leather bags and skirts are still there, but this time paired with brighter colours.

Perhaps it's an attempt to try out new silhouettes, but some of the clothes like the dress on the right was so different from Marni's usual clothes that I can't quite appreciate it on the Marni runway yet.

Milan Fashion Week SS08 Wrapup I

And we are off to Milan! Sigh, it seems just like yesterday I was walking along via Della Spiga, passing by the huge Armani building and breathing it all in. Anyways, back to the runway. Lets start with the most Italian of them all......

Gorgio Armani
Inspired by the languid sensual summers of Southern Italy, this collection had a much more relaxing and casual touch than Armani's usual sleek, sharp and sexy silhouette. And about time too! I was getting bored of using the same adjectives every season to describe Armani.
I am usually not one for gypsy looking shorts, but I am loving these. Armani upgrades them with the shiny material and the subtle tailoring, making them look feminine and elegant while still being very relaxing and comfortable. They appear to be very versatile too, looking great with equally relaxing looking tops, loose and fitted jackets. I want one of these next season!
Then there were the dresses. Or shorts integrated into looking like dresses (left and right above). He keeps with the theme by using these light flowing fabric further enhanced by its texturized print.
More into the evening, we have these creations. Armani's pairing of the sequence top with the flowing floral skirt is just genius.
Something a little more typical of Armani, the evening wear. I simply LOVE all of these, especially the gold one on the right that was the finale. Simply beautiful. Oh and it looks like I'm going to have to invest in light shawls next season too!

Burberry Prorsum
Christopher Bailey never ceases to amaze me with his collections that are always refreshing but still oh-so-Burberry. This season, the theme was the Luxury Warrior, I have no idea what the means but it looks to me that it involves feminine ruched up materials paired with rocker chic studded elements.
Personally I don't really like the look of these ruched up material. It looks like bunched up muscles....maybe I've been seeing too much Body Worlds.....But I DO like the whole long jacket over a dress and cinched together with a studded belt look. Very cool. And I LOVE the checkered patterns. Definitely more refreshing than the usual Burberry print.

Without the jacket, those studded belts look just as cool. I especially love the black bubble dress with the black blazer and belt underneath (right) look. Oh and I'm not too fond of that feathery looking pencil skirt (left), looks scary.....
More trenches. LOVE LOVE LOVE that updated trench (left). Looks soooo awesome. And middle outfit with the black trench and the big patent black bag looks soo chic as well. And the purple outfit (right) perfectly illustrates Bailey's mixing of lux materials.
More vibrantly there are these hot pink and blue looks. I especially love the sky blue on sapphire blue combo (middle). Its soo sharp. And that gray dress is just beeeeeeautiful.... so feminine and delicate with a bit of edge from that belt. Perhaps that is what Bailey means by luxury warrior?
Either way, one thing I'm sure you'll all agree with. Next season, the studded belt is THE accessory to have. And from the variety of ways Bailey has shown us how to wear it on this runway, I'd say its a prime investment!

Image Source: Elle.com

London Fashion Week FW07 Wrapup III

London Fashion Week's finished. Now all the fashion people are in Milan, but here are a few more London collections. On Thursday, BG talked about how she liked the Matthew Williamson and Erdem collection. I'm going to blabber on a bit how I don't quite love some of the collections: (Please note that this is just my taste. I'm in no way saying these designers have no talent!)

House of Holland

So I've decided maybe I don't hate those neon-coloured, slogan Tees that much. They're just annoying. Before this collection, I didn't know exactly what to expect. Afterall, he couldn't possibly do endless collections of slogan Tees. And even though I knew I wasn't going to like it, it was more terrible than I expected. The clothes are just so colourful in a trashy way. I know House of Holland is all about being worn to parties, but why would one want to turn up to parties looking like that?

Louise Goldin

Louise Goldin is supposedly this runway season's new London designer to lookout for. Since a few of the online reviews seemed to have liked this collection, maybe it's just me who didn't really get the appeal of these clothes so I'm really not too impressed. Maybe it's because I'm too much of a realist and can't imagine wearing these clothes in real life. Oh well, what did you think of this new designer?

And to finish this post with a pretty collection: Giles
Such a pretty collection! Giles has really improved since he first started. A lot of the dresses from this collection felt very 'fancy tea party' to me.

The techo, tie-dyed looking silk dresses are so pretty -the blue, the purple, the swirl of colours. And look at the dress in the middle, it looks like a painting of purple clouds (together with the white-ish chiffon underneath.)

And finally, the artsy dresses. I love how Giles (for the middle dress) combined artsy, cutout pieces with the simple mid-sleeved dress on top. It's a totally wearable simple dress without looking boring!

Next week is Milan Fashion Week -can't wait to see the Prada collection!

London Fashion Week SS08 Wrapup II

As HG pointed out, London fashion week is always fun to look at, but a great pain for those of us who want to try and imitate the look. Or maybe that is just me...But anyway, lets look.

Matthew Williamson
Matthew's show is one that I always love to check out every season, because one can be sure that it is going to look fun and colorful. This season is no different. The clothes are colorful, fun, chic with a hint of tribal vibe (aztec prints?).

I love how he mixes the prints/colors here in these outfits and it still looks so perfectly put together and chic. I'd never be able to do that no matter how much I study unless I buy the whole outfit off the mannequin.

I especially love this outfit on the left. The simple pairing of plain top with printed shorts, and just a hint of mix 'n matching with the scarf is so me. Note the very colorful sneakers on this runway paired with everything, even dresses, which one wouldn't usually think to pair them with. Looks sooo comfy! Though I wonder if one can pull if off if one doesn't have legs as skinny and long as these models.
Then he has some tie-dyed outfits, which kind of reminds me of Prada and Miu Miu this season. But I do so like black, white and pink. And I absolutely adore pairing these flowy printed tops with structured blazers (right). Again, so me. Blazer is my uniform.
I am STILL looking for the perfect shift dress this season. You'd think with all these lovely creations sprinkling the runways the last few seasons I'd find one by now. But no, they just keep coming on the runway tempting me..... esp like the black dress with the printed trimmings.
Lastly there were these beautiful, flowy, colorful dresses. The printed one here on the right is soo Matthew Williamson!

Erdem
One of the brands I've been keeping a lookout for ever since I saw some of their collection in the Harvey Nichols catalog. This collection is the epitome of British casual chic cool for me.
I love the shape of these dresses, which are so different. One is structured and the other one is all flowy and free. And the stripey print adds structure to one and gives the other a illusion effect. So cool.
Casual cool outfits.

Its so cool how he put bold white stripes over the delicate floral pattern of the silk dress. It makes for a very sharp contrast.
Sharp design to match the bold colors on top of the silver grey. Gives it a slightly futuristic edge.
And these last four are my absolutely favourites. They are just so chic, classy and feminine.
Just LOVE these dresses in their soft, feminine effortlessly cool way.

Ps. Remind me to get bold colored footwear next season!

Image Source: Elle.com

London Fashion Week SS08 Wrapup

Woo it's London Fashion Week! LFW is always more of a fun, just-for-looking week of photos for me, but the clothes are always so young and creative, (though argueably and unfortunately not as practical and commercial.)
Luella
Even though I don't remember ever seeing Luella's clothes in real life before, I've always love the Luella vibe -that preppy, punk, fun vibe. This Luella collection, to me, seems very influenced by last season's collections of other designers such as Balenciaga, Marc Jacobs and Prada. Luella's clothes usually has some really British feeling, like these little flowery prints. I love how she managed to make such otherwise grandmotherly flowery prints look preppy and cool.

And more British preppiness. Isn't it so unfair how the Luella models make huge black spectacles look cool?

The little party dresses are so cute and fun.

Christopher Kane

All I can say is, totally unexpected. Who would have guessed that Kane's new collection would have no tight-fitting, PVC or leather little dresses? This collection is made of lots of light material. I'm still not sure what I think of it. There were some outfits that I liked and some I absolutely hated.
For example, I absolutely hated the snake prints, which was extremely prominent in this collection. Even more ugly than the snake prints are the one pieces that have the snake print plus another type of print, like the middle outfit.
Out of all the outfits, these four outfits were the only ones I liked. I would love the dress on the right (although potentially in another colour.)
The snake print in small doses, like in the dress on the right, actually looks ok and much more tasteful.

Jonathan Saunders
Such clean-cut clothes for a British designer! These dresses would be so great for office, dressy events if you want a bit more than the standard little dress.
Most of the time we really just take black and white clothes for granted. Just take a moment to look at the way the black and white lines are on the dresses, then you can appreciate the design more!

Gosh, I really need to see these clothes in real life. Writing this blog is excellent encouragement for me to go to nice English stores like Selfridges and Brown more!

Classic Burberry Trenches

Ahh the trench coat. The wardrobe staple that every chic girl in town has that never goes out of style and is perfect with everything, over jeans, suits, skirts and dresses. My friend had one last year when we were studying abroad in Europe and she wore it all the time for everything- perhaps beside a jaunt on a paddling boat in the river at Versailles where we could've possibly capsized- but that is understandable. So inspired, this fall, I decided to have a look myself.
Naturally if one is going to splurge on a trench coat, one should splurge it on a Burberry. You can't get more classic than Burberry. They truly never go out of style and will last you forever - unless you have a sudden huge change in body shape, but that is unlikely. They are perfect for all ages. But anyway, just look how cool Gweneth Paltrow and Kate Bosworth look in their Burberry trenches! I am especially inspired by Kate Bosworth updating the classic look with ankle boots, which we will still be seeing a lot of this season.
I always thought that for the classic, there only is one style. But turns out it is not quite as simple. So lets go back to the beginning and start with the very classic one: the hazelmere (or I think that is what they are called). Basically this is the trench coat that is more loosely fitted with a broader shoulder designed to be worn over a suit. This is one of the reasons I want one, because I can never figure out what to wear over my business suit in winter that will look appropriate, though to be honest, it is actually very thin and I don't think it would provide much warmth- even if it does come with an extra layer inside. I looked at ones with extra layers and they are very thin, even though they say they are made of wool, it will never survive a Chicago winter. Besides, it doesn't look very good if I wasn't planning on wearing a suit underneath (very loosely fitted) and I am looking for more versatility in my trench.
After that one... I lost the order of trench evolution. But anyway there is this harbourne, that stops mid thigh, which is less bulky and more fitted.
And then there is the Ivybridge, which is what Gweneth and Kate has on. This is also more slimming and goes almost to the knee, which I think is more classic and gives the body a more elongated look. Actually this is the perfect style trench out of the lot. The only problem is that the extra winter layer they offer is terribly thin (as I was saying before....) and it cannot fit a suit underneath, so its quite seasonal really. I could've sworn that my friend's trench had a thicker and warmer extra layer.... I'll check. I wish they had one that combined all my practical needs and didn't have to compromise the cutting.

But oh the less practical ones look so chic and smart on! I want one! I was thinking of this beige color since it IS the original color and we are going for classic here, but Gweneth and Kate looks soo cool in their black one as well. Oh the choices!!!

New York SS08 Fashion Week Wrapup III

New York Fashion Week is over! OK, so instead of going through a few shows like I usually do, I'm picking the outfits that I liked from Marc by Marc and Philosophy. Why those two collections? Not because they are particularly directional or Nina-Ricci-stunning, but because they are contemporary, young and affordable (if you only buy a few pieces.)

Marc by Marc Jacobs

I think this is the first Marc by Marc show that I didn't like on first sight. Usually I adore the way accessories are piled on seemingly randomly and the cute clothes. But this time, the clothes were just really colourful -and I mean lots of colour in single garments. This collection was definately not my taste. These three were practically the only looks I liked.

Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti

I've never paid too much attention to Philosophy until I noticed that the Co-ed dept of a department store I like sells it. I never seem to find anything I want on the racks but hey, I'm sure I'll find something someday so I'm keeping note of the runway collection.

I really like the dress in the middle but really, where would I wear it to? But the subtle black patterns are such sooo pretty!
The red beaded dress on the right is so cute, short and slinky. It would be such a fabulous flirty cocktail dress. Sigh, I'm already looking foward to next summer!

OK so here's a tiny issue BG and I are now thinking about. Our hairstylist recently started working for another hair salon. BG's not too fond of the new salon -it's not as comfortable and she liked the hair technicians at the old salon. So the question is, should we follow him to the new salon or stick to the old salon and change stylists? OK, like I said, not significant at all but just something that we are mulling over in the last few weeks of our summer holiday.

How to Dress if You Are Short

A few simple dos and don'ts can give the illusion of extra inches.

1. Wear tops whose details pull the eye down vertically; V-necks are a good choice.

2. Tuck shirts into pants to make your legs look longer, which will make you look taller.

3. Opt for clothes that fit close to your body. Bulky ones - like oversized jackets and tops - will draw the eyes out horizontally.

4. Try slim pants that closely follow your thighs and butt to make you look taller.

5. Wear vertical stripes - for instance, a pinstripe suit.

6. Don short skirts, avoiding skirts that cut slightly below the knee or at mid-calf.

7. Slip into higher-heeled shoes. Letting your cuffless pant legs drape over high shoes will provide an instant look of height.

Tips & Warnings

• Try dressing in monochrome, matching your hosiery and shoe color to the rest of your outfit to create an uninterrupted vertical line.
• Browse in the petite sections of clothing stores.
• Avoid cuffed pants, which can make you look shorter because they visually shorten the leg.

There Aren’t Any Picnic Dresses in This Collection

When he isn’t busy giving his friends homemade tattoos using a needle and ink and the stick-and-poke technique more familiar to jailbirds than designers; or D.J.’ing at a weekly Smiths and Morrissey ’80s night at the downtown club Sway; or playing his cello; or slouching with old friends like Chloë Sevigny; or bicycling around town with his jet black asymmetrical fringe blowing across his supersize Ari O glasses, Benjamin Cho is pretty busy at his day job being a strangely brilliant, deeply idiosyncratic fashion designer, one known in the business for a certain rare distinction.

What is that? Well, his publicity handout refers to his staunchly original views. That is one way of saying that, in a generational field of highly professional but generally uninspiring fashion personalities, Ben Cho is conspicuous for his iconoclasm and cool.

You might claim that he has not sold out, were it not that selling out carries with it a kind of vague Warholian hipness. Rather, it is that, given the chance (and he has had many in his 30 years) to become one of the anointed young designers, to hop on the Council of Fashion Designers of America bandwagon, to collect silly fashion game-show prizes, he prefers to stay stubbornly indie.

“New York fashion has really become synonymous with clothes that are like chic picnic dresses,” he said. “I think people are sick of everything basic and safe.”

Fashion, as is well known, has allowed itself to become commercially wary and domesticated. Even the approved eccentrics get flak. “When I look at blogs and these people criticizing Hussein Chalayan’s electronic dress are saying, ‘But who is going to wear that?’ like they’re so insulted he had this brilliant idea,” Mr. Cho said, “I’m thinking to myself, ‘Why is that even a question?’ ”

Mr. Cho, who will show his spring collection tomorrow, is not likely to do any deals with Target. His clothes, which are slightly hippie-organic, waver between hardness and softness, between the eminently practical and the surreal. If Elsa Schiaparelli’s car smacked into Vivienne Westwood’s, the ambulance crew would find Ben Cho. Although this is meant as a compliment, it may help explain why he is not likely to get picked up soon by Nordstrom or Bloomingdale’s any time soon.

“Well, there’s Colette,” he said the other day, referring to the Paris boutique that is among his handful of hard-core loyalists. “There are a couple of others that carry me, but I’m not totally sure,” added Mr. Cho, who led a peripatetic childhood as the son of the opera singer Young-Ae Kim and a physicist who worked for NASA, and who grew up in San Jose, Calif., and yet now stands for more or less everything that once made downtown New York an exciting place to live.

This was the New York of pre-Soho House vintage, of course. This was before fashion design became a profession whose risk quotient is roughly equivalent to deciding to become a C.P.A.

“The truth is I don’t want to sell to a million stores,” Mr. Cho said. “I don’t want to put myself out there making these chic stupid dresses.”

The biggest career error he ever made, he said, came during the season after Vogue discovered him and when his designs started appearing in European magazines like Purple and Self Service. “Suddenly, everyone, and I mean everyone, said, ‘Now you have to do conventional pieces, you have to do a simple sweater and a pant,’ and I had never sold pants, and so, honestly, it really threw me off.” He paused. “No one wants a simple pant from me.”

As it turned out, what they want is the zigzag sequin dress that even close friends told him was a little too $1.98 hooker, and that a group of Vogue editors implored him to destroy before showing Anna Wintour his line. “Even my friend Fun Fun, who understands my hard-core ideas, laughed and said I was going too far with that dress,” he said.

“But by now I trust my instincts, and I kept it in. And that, of course, was the dress Vogue chose to run as a big picture.”

And so, when the Rodarte girls, two former unknowns from Pasadena whose first collection was a galloping success, asked Mr. Cho for some career advice, he was quick to offer this wisdom: “Don’t let them make you expand too fast. Don’t let them force you to make conventional pieces. Everyone is always telling you to make things more basic. Protect yourself from that.”

If experience has shown him anything, the market secretly hungers for the unruly. “There’s always room for wild clothes,” he said. “The stuff they tell you to weed out.”

Fashion’s Calendar Girl of 1941 and 2007

Among the events listed in the Fashion Calendar of March 3, 1941, are a half-dozen runway shows at now bygone department stores, and the wedding, at Hampshire House, of Gogo Schiaparelli, the daughter of the designer Elsa Schiaparelli, and Robert Lawrence Berenson, a vice president of the Grace Line shipping fleet. (The bride’s trousseau, it was noted, was being copied by the apparel manufacturer Horwitz & Duberman to be sold exclusively at Bonwit Teller.)

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Photographs by Orrie King for The New York Times

LITTLE RED BOOK It has kept the show dates straight for some 60 years.

Among those listed in the issue of Sept. 3, 2007, are 257 fashion shows, including one for designs inspired by Snoopy, the “Peanuts” dog, and sponsored by MetLife, the insurance company.

Times and fashions have changed. Ruth Finley, the publisher of the Fashion Calendar, has not.

She has not changed her formula of printing tightly spaced listings over dozens of pages so that the thousands of players who attend New York fashion shows know what is taking place when, and where. Or, at least, she had not changed the formula until this summer, when Ms. Finley, now 87, capitulated to the demands of industry readers and published the Fashion Calendar online.

“I was avoiding it for a while,” Ms. Finley confessed with a girlish laugh, sitting in her East 85th Street apartment, where the phone, which is connected to her office on East 87th Street, kept ringing with calls from designers wanting to know what time they could have a show.

Actually, few people are more aware of the history of New York Fashion Week than Ms. Finley, who has recorded the showings of American designers for decades: Hattie Carnegie and Norman Norell in the ’40s; Bill Blass and Oscar de la Renta in the ’50s; Halston and Stephen Burrows in the ’60s; Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren in the ’70s. Pity the poor designers who do not heed Ms. Finley’s advice when choosing the time and place for their shows to avoid a conflict with someone else.

“She’s the only constant in the industry,” said Donna Karan. “God bless anyone who can keep this industry together.”

As a journalism student at Simmons College in Boston, Ms. Finley came to New York one summer to visit family friends, two fashion writers who were complaining that Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman had invited them to events at the same time.

“They were very upset,” Ms. Finley recalled. “That gave me the idea.”

She set herself up in a $55-a-month, bedbug-ridden apartment at 6 West 52nd Street (ELdorado5-3693), across the street from “21.” One of her first typists, who came every Tuesday night to compile the calendar on blue mimeograph paper, was an 18-year-old named Doris Roberts, now better known as Raymond’s mother on “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Ms. Roberts’s family had a stenography agency in Times Square and made copies for Ms. Finley.

“It was tough at the beginning,” Ms. Finley said. “Norman Norell, who used to do an evening show that was black tie — that’s before your time, wasn’t it? — he decided he didn’t have to clear it with us, and then the show ran into a very big charity event that took away all his ladies.

“After that, he called me personally every season,” she said. “He wouldn’t let his secretary call me because he realized it was too important.”

Today Ms. Finley fields an average of 50 phone calls a day from designers checking the calendar for potential conflicts. She refused to say how many people subscribe to the biweekly publication, which charges $425 a year. But the stapled calendars are a common sight in designer showrooms, recognizable by the red covers that show a sketch of a much younger Ms. Finley answering a telephone that has a cord and a rotary dial.

“We always kept the cover a bright color because people’s desks were so messy,” she said. “This way, they could find it.”

Ms. Finley, who has never really had a competitor, remains sharp as a stiletto. She said she continues to publish the calendar because it makes her feel needed. Her husband, Irving Lein, a clothing manufacturer on Seventh Avenue, died in 1959. Ms. Finley raised their three sons alone and never remarried. Her youngest, Larry Lein, is helping with the transition of the Fashion Calendar to the Web.

As the office phone rang again, and her cellphone jingled, you might think that Ms. Finley was the most connected person in the business.

“Oh, I love working with people, I really do,” she said.

In July, Ms. Finley was injured in a serious car accident, on a Friday. She was back in the office on Saturday. “I just thought it was whiplash,” she said.

Asked about retirement, she said, “I plan to keep publishing this for another 15 years.”

Trend Watch: We’re noticing…Ombré

It’s back-to-school season, and time to brush up on your fashion vernacular. Ombré— pronounced like “man” in Spanish— is the approved term for graduated shading. Ombré is ubiquitous this fall, appearing on everything from evening bags and dresses to shoes to scarves. With Prada at the helm and Louis Vuitton, Alberta Ferretti and Holt Renfrew Private Label following suit, this is guaranteed to be a very shady season.

Editor's Pick: Savannah Miller at Holts

When the fashion world heard that Sienna Miller was launching a clothing line with her sister, there was a current of apprehension among the excitement. Sienna was well-known for her creative boho style (and anyone who cared to delve deeper would learn that Savannah had superlative design credentials of her own, working as she had for Alexander McQueen), but a hint of skepticism remained: Would this be another collection thrown together by a celebrity, that would look altogether different once the paparazzi flashbulbs dimmed?

Well, no. Twenty8Twelve, as the Miller's sisters line is called, is among the coolest new labels out there. And today, September 7th, Savannah Miller, is making a public appearance at Holt Renfrew in Toronto, where the line is being sold. Check her out.