Puff Piece

Rick Owens walks us through the fog feature of his new New York store before heading over to Mr. Chow for a celebration dinner...

Giggles with Gareth Pugh and Gang

Gareth holding court in a toga, Richard Mortimer perfecting the burqa, Dazed and Confused's Katie Shillingford nearly breaking a leg, Seven's Joseph Quartana seeing porn in statuary and everyone holding poses in the "gothic garden," one of the many nooks of the sprawling estate where we were staying. These were just some of the boozy shenanigans that happened after Cassette Playa's show in Florence for Pitti Uomo...

Root Beirendonck

"Explicit" was the title of Walter Van Beirendonck's spring collection, shown at Pitti Uomo in Florence—and indeed it appeared to be inspired by woods, wood nymphs and woodies. As printed on one leotard: Get Natural, Get Naked...

New York Fashion Week: Rad Hourani

It's all about androgyny for French-Canadian designer Rad Hourani, whose towering models (all women, except for one, possibly) stormed out in vertical black leather sheaths, decoration-less short dresses over leggings, Japanese-like square backpacks, obsessively straight hair, and chunky scarves and other strappy bits that hung to the floor. To us, it was very futuristic shaman, à la Helmut Lang, but Rad (how much do you love the name, by the way?) told us backstage that he was inspired by Adam and Eve, and the combination thereof.

New York Fashion Week: Rodarte

You might assume, as we did, that Rodarte's fall collection was about punked-out ballerinas, with ripped stockings, studded stilettos and hot-pink tutus. But its designing sisters, the Mulleavys, use a more fine-toothed set of references. Sure enough, Kate Mulleavy told us backstage that they were inspired by kabuki theater and Japanese horror movies. We should have guessed from our peek in the goodie bag, which had a DVD of Ugetsu, director Kenji Mizoguchi's definitive Japanese ghost story from 1953.



Our video of Rodarte's spring 08 collection...

Dark, shaky, blurry and boozy video of Colette's New York Fashion Week party—in conjunction with street label Married to the Mob and Jalouse magazine—at Beatrice Inn, with Uffie on hosting duties and a special DJ set by artist Fafi (who's the one in the feather headdress, in case you have bionic eyes)...

New York Fashion Week: Tom Scott

Loved for his nubby knits, Tom Scott introduced woven and coated fabrics for fall, as well as the occasional metallic and fluorescent flash. While shaggy "cassette tape" hats, multiple layers and secretary skirts evoked a child's game of dress-up, Tom's discriminating eye for asymmetry, a dark color palette and an overall sense of dishabille kept the small collection within city limits. This was the latest in the slow, deliberate evolution of a future fashion star.

New York Fashion Week: Patrik Ervell

From the very beginning, when he made red and blue windbreakers from a silicone-coated parachute material developed by the military, Patrik Ervell has always used high-tech fabrics in his men's line—but never in an over-the-top futuristic way. For fall, as he says in this video, the California native and UC Berkeley grad reworked gold thermal emergency blankets to convey a sense of protection, by which he means both actual protection from the elements and psychological armor. Either way, it's a new gold standard.

New York Fashion Week: Band of Outsiders & Boy

For the uninitiated, Band of Outsiders is a relatively new men's line and, despite the name, Boy is its newer sister line. Both are designed by Scott Sternberg, both are based out of Los Angeles and both are about as preppy as anything you'll ever see, never more than their joint fall presentation, where prep oozed from every corner of the tableau vivant set up in a midtown showroom, from flannel-clad hunting prep to slick-haired collegiate prep. Standout pieces: navy vests with leather buttons, pleated corduroy skirts, shrunken oxfords, tartan cuffed pants and wool coat-dresses. Accessories have always been the core of both lines; for fall, they included cashmere knit ties, varsity gloves, trapper hats with raccoon trim and Band of Outsiders shoes for Sperry and Manolo Blahnik.

Stockholm Fashion Week: +46

Preserving the progressive spirit of +46—a semiannual fair of hot new designers from Sweden and beyond—Annika Berger (of Skyward) created an installation for her small art-terrorist collection. Thrillingly spooky and confusing, the show was a cross between a haunted house and a construction site, entered through a dark hallway full of tree branches and blasting with strobe lights and a soundtrack of noise. This dropped you off in an enormous trashed-out room with cardboard boxes, cables that snaked into infinity, floodlights with minds of their own and random industrial ephemera. Black tarps suspended from the ceiling sectioned off small cubicles, inside which models stood motionless (minus one on a treadmill) in top-heavy, graphic-print getups that focused on headgear. White arrows on the floor directed you in circles, making the experience an unnavigable environment that, through reverse psychology, gave Annika's collection a sense of place.

Stockholm Fashion Week: Sandra Backlund

Sandra Backlund's knitwear—or, more accurately, wearable knitscapes—possesses a violent gentility, with its cascading bells, bouncing caulifloral clusters, baseball-sized chenille pompons and knotted drainpipes. Her indefatigable dresses, resembling armor made from soufflé, seemed to burst with joy as they pulled and ached and exalted the body, not unlike the way a chandelier dangles precariously from a ceiling to shower light across a room. Which is exactly what Sandra did, lowering the theater's huge glittering light-beasts to runway level so her models could walk around them, which perfectly hammered home her message of strength through fragility.

São Paulo Fashion Week

The scene, the freaks, the curvy-cool Oscar Neimeyer-designed venue and other random moments from São Paulo Fashion Week, with music by Brazilian sensation Cansei de Ser Sexy.

São Paulo Fashion Week: Amapo, Neon, Fabia Bercsek

Three more fave collections...




Still pics from Amapo, available in São Paulo at Surface to Air...

São Paulo Fashion Week: Isabela Capeto

Isabela Capeto is a Rio-based designer, but made the most of São Paulo Fashion Week by installing her fall collection on twirling mannequins in her São Paulo store. Isabela has a uniquely Brazilian aesthetic—a sweetly naive and kind of nutty one at that—with pulsing bright colors and handmade prints, but never in an over-the-top Carmen Miranda way. For fall, as if she needed to get any bigger in Japan, Isabela says she was inspired by a recent trip to Tokyo, hence the jumble of cityscape prints, kimono-esque shapes, funky jewelry and pink wigs (what is it with the Japanese and colored hair?). In addition to Rio and São Paulo, you can find her irresistibly cute wares in Barneys in Japan, Browns in London and Colette in Paris. Be sure to check out her new perfume in a bottle designed by Surface to Air, a three-dimensional version of her flared-skirt logo.

São Paulo Fashion Week: Alexandre Herchcovitch

What would São Paulo Fashion Week be without its premier provocateur? Here, highlights from Alexandre Herchcovitch's fall collection, which, he told us, is all about math (or "meth," as he pronounces it, cutely), geometry and graphs, as if the body didn't exist...




And this is his men's show later in the week, plus a moment with him backstage. By the way, in both of these clips, can you spot Alexandre making his finale hidden among the models?...

São Paulo Fashion Week: Osklen

If you've been to the Meatpacking recently, you probably noticed a new little store called Osklen (and maybe you realized there's another in Soho). Designed by Oscar Metsavaht—who, by the way, is a former doctor—Osklen began as a ski label, which has to be a first for Rio de Janeiro, where the company is headquartered. But something clicked and now Osklen, now a major label in Brazil, is a kind of cross between Moncler and Marc Jacobs, which is to say quirky, wearable and expensive. And like Marc's infamous collection for Perry Ellis ages ago, Oscar went grunge for fall...

São Paulo Fashion Week

Vivienne Westwood spoke about her collaboration with Melissa, Brazilian makers of colorful plastic shoes who've previously collaborated with Judy Blame and Alexandre Herchcovitch, and took the opportunity to expound on American exploitation ("We're all going to die if it continues"), the virtues of Barack Obama, her manifesto on art and culture, why we must consume less and the real reason Naomi fell...



And here are the shoes, jelly plastic versions of Westwood classics, in a variety of Smucker's colors...

Following Hint's footage of its making, Ben Charles Edwards' "Eat Your Chiffon"—a dinner party hosted by Natt Weller and Zandra Rhodes, with a host of fashion names—finally goes live. Part I is the anticipation, Part II is Zandra multitasking in the kitchen while reminiscing about dressing Princess Di, the genius of Poiret and how “London still has a cutting edge, but the rest of the world doesn’t want to admit it.” Part III, the finale, sees Zandra and co. settling down to dinner and chewing the linguistic fat—Andrew Logan on how Divine was like a brother to him, Piers Atkinson on Zandra's brush-sweeping technique, Marios Schwab and much more. It's a fashion feast.

Part I


Part II


Part III

Dean Mayo Davies ducks into a dinner happening chez Zandra Rhodes. Video footage by Michele Mei...

On Nov. 30, the great and the fabulous braved wintry London weather to gather at designer and color queen Zandra Rhodes' penthouse in Bermondsey. The occasion? A dinner party organized by Natt Weller (host of Dangerous To Know club and son of the legendary Paul Weller, founder of The Jam and The Style Council) and filmed by Ben Charles Edwards (best known for shooting drag diva Jodie Harsh), whose vision for the art film was a twisted mix of John Waters' Eat Your Makeup and the seventh chapter from Alice in Wonderland. Hence the title: "Chapter 7: Eat Your Chiffon."

As Zandra whipped up a storm in the kitchen (pea soup garnished with sesame salt to start), her illustrious guests began filtering in. First to arrive was Andrew Logan, iconic artist and jeweler extraordinaire who took the red dress code to extremes with a crimson suit, red velvet and bejeweled slippers, ruby-glass neckpiece and doorknob-sized ring. Elsewhere in the eclectic mix were new music sensation Bishi; ceramicist Kate Malone; Barbara Grispini, creative consultant to London Fashion Week; prop stylist and accessory whiz Fred Butler; hot women's designer Marios Schwab; and Piers Atkinson of Fashion Week tabloid The Daily Rubbish (which isn’t rubbish at all). When asked by Andrew about his conversation-steering strategy, Natt replied that he was "influenced by The Fern Cotton [teeny-bopper TV host] approach. A lot of listening is involved.” After all, you can’t plan chemistry.

Keep an eye out for the short when the first of three parts launches online in January. It's one of many future projects from Glass Loves, a fashion/art/communications company that previously worked with Zandra's Fashion and Textile Museum.

While you wait for the premiere, enjoy Hint’s cryptic, fly-on-the-wall video footage of the events and remember the off-camera wisdom of our pink-haired hostess: “When dyeing my hair, I put the coloring on my head as usual, but the secret is to wrap it up tightly in a turban and leave it on overnight, sleeping in it. If you don't, your hair will come out as only a pale pink. And who wants pale?!”

Lost footage from Stockholm Fashion Week. In the first video, Helena Hörstedt's impeccable, all-black spring collection and a visit to her studio. In the second, the fairy-tale collection of Nikoline Liv Andersen, winner of the +46 Fashion Award. (Click here for Hint's backstage montage of Stockholm Fashion Week.)

Animated accessories by Yoshiko Creation are the current obsession of Tokyo-based Polish illustrator and Hint contributor Przemek Sobocki...

Brits (and non-Brits who show in London) at Noovo: Gareth Pugh, Patrik Söderstam, Boudicca, Peter Pilotto and new Cacharel designers Eley Kishimoto. Guess which one got borracho off his ass one night, threatened a couple of burly Spanish bouncers and was subsequently pummeled on the street?