Fashion set design may one day be a lost art (especially with a lighter Louis Vuitton). But at least for fall, these runways sure worked a look...
Playing the market at Chanel...
Suspended animation at Iris Van Herpen...
Dior's electric sky...
Marc Jacobs' little puffy clouds...
Duct soup at Alexander Wang...
Viktor & Rolf gets the show on the road...
Jonathan Saunders sounds off...
It was only a matter of time before a major kicks label teamed up with Givenchy's Riccardo Tisci. As it happened, Nike closed the deal first. As announced a few weeks ago, he's designed four basketball shoes using Nike's iconic Air Force 1 model. (Technically, Converse got to Tisci first in 2011, but that was only for the Japanese market — unfair!)
Pics of Nike R.T., as the collaboration is called, have been trickling out since the news broke, but here are pics taken by the designer himself, possibly at the Nike campus in Beaverton, Oregon. Most of the vaguely ethnic styles are pictured — hi-tops and low-tops — but the knee-high boots are conspicuously missing. Maybe he's wearing them.
The highly entertaining global ridicule of Vladimir Putin and his shameful anti-gay laws is hitting a new high — by going low. After sissified images of the Russian president in make-up, an interactive app that lets users dress him in lingerie, and matrioshkas in the likeness of gay icons delivered to the Kremlin, Putin the Asshole is now getting exactly what he deserves — a butt plug.
Florida-based graphic designer Fernando Sosa created the 3D-printed masterpiece — his second such figurine, following a similar tail-end tribute to Chris Christie — because, he says, "Russia is bringing an all-out war against the civil rights of gay people in Russia. Leading the charge is Mr. Putin and his homophobic leadership."
The Putin plug is a bargain at $23. However, you may want to wait until a skin-safe silicone version is made. This early model is printed from abrasive sandstone and absolutely must NOT be used as a sex toy. Ouch!
If it's de rigueur this spring clash prints and textures, look no further than Acne's latest capsule collection with Liberty of London. For spring, the Swedish house has collaborated with the 140-year-old makers of busily sweet prints, applying them to its own leather items — biker jackets, jumpsuits, skirts, shoes, sunglasses — to delightfully jarring effect.
"When we started exploring Liberty’s extensive heritage for this project, it almost felt like an overwhelming voyage," says Acne's creative director Jonny Johansson. "We realized we had to come up with a strong contrast in order to make sense of it, so the team and I picked one favorite print each and integrated them with some of our classic leather pieces.”
Coincidentally, one of those favorite prints is the Jonny, a paisley pattern made at Liberty’s Merton printworks between the 1890s and the 1910s. Another, Eva, is a Japanese-inspired art fabric originally used for furnishings in the 1880s. Alma, meanwhile, is another art fabric from around 1890, a mix of Japanese design and early art nouveau.
At Liberty of London, Acne Studios stores and soon at acnestudios.com
If you're going to go to all the trouble of making jewelry, you might as well go over the top. That seems to be the thinking behind a new jewelry collaboration between London jewelry designer Dominic Jones and Lady Amanda Harlech, who's known mostly as Karl Lagerfeld's number-one muse after she was John Galliano's number-one muse.
Harlot & Bones, apparently a play on their names, takes its cues from Edwardian mourning jewelry and vintage heirlooms. Its 13 pieces include a "Poison" signet ring in onyx, a black rhodium locket pendant, beetle wing-motif pendants, and gold-plated locket cuffs. The signature piece — as shown in a campaign image shot by Nick Knight and featuring Amanda Harlech's daughter, Tallulah, as a kind of art-nouveau nymphet — is a perfume-bottle necklace inlaid with turquoise stones.
€236 – €1,424 at Colette, Liberty, Net-a-Porter.com, Corso Como, Showstudio. Additionally, a student of the writings of Henry James, Harlech has written a poem accompanying each piece.
A non-celebrity, Laura Simpson is best friends with Jennifer Lawrence, a major celebrity — as well as Dior spokesmuse. The two were thick as thieves at the Oscars, where Laura was Jennifer's plus one. Hers was the neck JLaw inadvertently grabbed as she took one of her trademark tumbles on the red carpet. Now, Laura has written up that episode and more on her MySpace, which apparently still exists. She talks about the ceremony and the after-parties, mentioning who was super-cool and tactfully not mentioning those who weren't. In all, she describes a glamorous yet stressful and pretty phony scene — lacking in food and booze. Here are the best bits...
"How did I get invited to the 86th Academy Awards, you ask? Well, my best friend took me as her date. I met her seven years ago at an event where we both didn’t know a single person. We hit it off over a mutual respect for Chandler Bing, and we've been eating pizza together ever since."
"Right before you get to the red carpet, you get to Westboro Baptists with huge yellow signs of pictures of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Walker saying BURNING IN HELL and other despicable things. It's so surreal and hate-filled, I feel like I am heading to my own personal Salem Witch Trial."
"We finally arrive at the red carpet and as we exit the car, my date eats shit and uses my freshly done Lauren Conrad up do to break her fall. The crowd goes wild. There are flashbulbs and people circling yet no one asks if I need any help because unless you are famous at the Oscars, you are completely invisible."
"...you realize you are STARVING and haven't had any food since breakfast at 9 a.m. It's hot and you feel like you're going to pass out. After waiting for my date's category, her dad and I decide to hit the bar and just watch from the monitor behind the bar and slam a few drinks to make this tolerable."
"My date comes out after her category and we decide to watch the rest of the show in the greenroom where there is pizza. This is where the presenters and winners are hanging out and it's pretty jarring. Some guy picks up my purse that had fallen off my seat and I say 'Thank you… Channing Tatum' and my dress gets caught on Jennifer Garner and we awkwardly laugh and someone tries to separate us. The lovely pregnant Kerry Washington asks me if she could have the Slim Jim in my purse."
"After the show we go backstage where I meet Brad and Angelina. Brad Pitt smells amazing, like nothing I've ever smelled. Eventually we ask what cologne he's wearing and he tells us, 'I don't wear cologne, it's just my musk I guess.' I have to choose not to believe him because it would just be unfair to mankind. Angelina is gorgeous and elegant and they are like The Sun and The Moon."
"...[I] decide to follow Bill Murray around the party. At one point he looks in my direction and winks at me while dancing to 'If You Want My Body and You Think I'm Sexy' by Rod Stewart—a moment, I now realize, my whole life had been leading up to."
"I get home around 3:30 a.m. with an earring/hair headache and major Barbie feet. The whole experience was completely exhausting, overwhelming and surreal. I think what I took most away from the evening was how lovely all the women were. Actresses tend to get a bad reputation but every woman I met was lovely, witty and introduced themselves to me even though I wasn't famous—even Anne Hathaway. And Kerry Washington, if your marriage doesn't work out… CALL ME."
You wouldn't think an innocuous, oversized, and rather slouchy thick-knit coat from Libertine's runway a year ago would be especially ripe for imitation, but someone at Valentino apparently thought otherwise. The similarity is striking — really, there can be arguing that the former informed the latter. But is it copying or tweaking an idea? Does the fact that it's an established house doing the appropriation lend credence to the original? And is this kind of 'influence' as pervasive as people say, and does that make it ok?
Delfina Delettrez, an Italian jewelry designer with a surrealist slant, has a new collection out in collaboration with Yoox. Called Frozen Garden, it's comprised of two things — flowers and creepy crawlers of the cute sort, à la caterpillars and grasshoppers — rendered as gold rings, bracelets, necklaces and earrings.
This video, created by PES — the Oscar-nominated (Fresh Guacamole) stop-motion animator — depicts a strange world bringing all of those things together...
Even at 79, Giorgio Armani can still strap on his boxing gloves and go to the mat. After his fall collection in Milan yesterday, which Anna Wintour very visibly skipped as she moved on to Paris, he held a post-show press conference and took no prisoners.
Never mind that La Wintour has repeatedly taken a less-than-adoring view of the Milan collections and that his was the only major show on that last day of the Milan calendar. Point is, no one snubs the industry titan; he was going to mouth off.
And it didn't end with the Vogue editor-in-chief and recently anointed artistic director of all Condé Nast magazines. Armani's vituperative rant also ensnared other Italian designers and the Camera della Moda itself. WWD has the blow-by-blow. Here are the best bits...
“There are some who prefer to snub the Giorgio Armani show and go to Paris...She [Wintour] took an airplane, dumped Mr. Armani and went to Paris.”
“When we decided to show on the last day, other big brands were involved. But currently this is an empty day. Is this protecting Italian fashion? Where is the Camera? I rejoined it, but I can always exit again. I can just put in a phone call.”
“Why should I always be the moron [translated from an expletive] penalized because of a person, who, for better or for worse, like or dislike it, is powerful? I feel penalized."
"She said she was sending her people. But if you go to see your dentist and he puts you in the hands of his assistant, what’s your reaction? They told me ‘She went to see the Privé in Paris; she has no time to see the ready-to-wear in Milan.’ She is influential and powerful. But, perhaps, I'm influential as well.”
“I wanted to bring an owl with me this morning” [referring to Dolce & Gabbana’s show theme]. “I think that the exaltation of the idea that designers can be just completely free to express their fantasy is really dangerous. I’m very happy that others do what they do. I respect my colleagues. I’m happy with what I do, but I feel like a black swan in doing clothes with a function and with an attention to the commercial aspect."
“It’s very easy to do a V-neck dress with a bold print" [possibly referring to Prada]. "It’s more difficult to make a suit or a jacket look new. It’s easier to freewheel."
"Nobody is courageous enough to say that if the fashion industry wants to be supported by the Italian government, we have to offer a product which is not only smoke and mirrors but that has a functionality and can bring economic results. Otherwise, fashion loses its credibility."
