Paris Fashion Week: International Art Design Runway

As you know, the runways are meant to be a source of artistic expression, not just trends. And the look from catwalks around the world are more cause to stop, stare and wonder.

Even if your first thought might be, what the heck were they thinking? It’s not as far-fetched as it looks.

Inspiration is all around and it is the outlandish ideas that ultimately influence more conservative looks.

Without the outrageous tilting one end of the scale, how else would we ever strike a balance.

The communication device-inspired creation (above left) from the 2009 fall collection of Nitin Bal Chauhan of the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week in New Delhi, India, Wednesday.

Indian fashion designer Manish Arora showcases an interesting trophy (above right) in Paris, Monday.

A look from Japanese fashion designer Toshikazu Iwaya for Iwaya For Dress 33 (at right) as part of his fall ready-to-wear collection in Paris, Thursday.

And French fashion designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac (above left) presents a tributeto the pre-radical surgery Michael Jackson that I never would have imagined for his fall collection, Tuesday.

Somehow, it all makes harem pants a lot more palatable.

Source: STLToday.com

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Paris Fashion Week: Celebrity Invasion

Karl Lagerfeld unveiled his autumn 09' Chanel Collection to a star studded audience! Kate Moss looked great as she came out to see the Parisian House unveil its new (and very expensive) threads for fall. The supermodel looked timeless in a form fitting tuxedo jacket. Moss channeled her Katharine Hepburn as she paired the jacket with oversized pants that had great detailing at the bottom. We love that she kept her hair and makeup light and let her outfit speak for itself.

Also in attendance was a wrinkle free Claudia Shiffer who showed up in classic Chanel Tweed. The super model rocked the Chanel skirt with black leggings, great Chanel heels, a white blouse, and a Chanel purse to top things off.

Not to be out done Lily Allen and Milla Jovovich also got into the Chanel act. Allen looked cute in classic white Chanel with black trim while holding onto her white Chanel bag. Jovovich looked adorable sporting the latest headband trend. She paired the hairpiece with a gorgeous off the shoulder Chanel Jacket, white skirt, and pink belt. .

All the ladies looked especially French in their Chanel. And the show may be over, but they will always have Paris.

Source: HollyScoop

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Paris Fashion Weekend: Dior And Givenchy

Fashionistas lucky enough to be in Paris were spoilt for choice as some of the industry's biggest names presented their autumn/winter collections.

Christian Dior's John Galliano kicked off proceedings on Friday with an exotic oriental-themed show aimed to "restore a sense of fantasy to the world". Genghis Khan-style fur-trimmed hats, brocade tunics, harem trousers and pieces in vibrant-hued silk and chiffons featured in what was a defiantly luxe collection from the top French fashion house.

The black fishnet tights attached to the invitation to Saturday's John Paul Gaultier show forewarned of the risqué tone to the Frenchman's latest collection. With coats, dresses and even boots made edgier with fishnet-filled apertures, the theme of the day was exposure, right down to the visors covering some of the models' eyes.

And unusual headwear was something explored by fashion maestro Karl Lagerfeld as he opened Sunday's schedule. Working in collaboration with a motorbike helmet manufacturer, the Hamburg-born designer presented a military-themed show that allowed for experimentation with shoulder silhouettes, one of next season's key looks.

Flamboyant French designer Christian Lacroix also embraced sharp shoulders in his show, emphasised by gathered or puffed sleeves. The normally opulent craftsman, who stated he had to "fight with (him)self" to keep his designs simple, presented a relatively minimalist collection that included tailored day dresses in navy and black and full-skirted cocktail gowns.

Givenchy's Riccardo Tisci, a designer known for his gothic touches, presented a collection dominated by black that was dramatically broken up by a pure white section of the show. One memorable highlight included a dress made of hair that stood alongside garments with tufts sprouting from the shoulders, and elaborate headdresses laden with plumes of feathers.

Source: HelloMagazine.com

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French Vogue Tighten Its Belt

Paris, France -- No one was expecting it, but there it was. The "f" word so rarely uttered in the world of high fashion had just slipped through the lips of one of the world's most stylish women.

"I think we need to become more frugal," says Carine Roitfeld, editor in chief of Vogue Paris. "Not on quality," she hastens to add, "just on organization."

The fashionista's favorite fashion editor is sitting on a leather chair in her sparse white office. The shelves are all but empty. There's no in tray on her desk and certainly no computer, "they're not my specialty," she shrugs.

An orange blossom candle twinkles in its glass casing and pictures stand -- some still in their wrapping -- against the wall.

She's been in this office for eight years but it looks like she moved in last week. She hasn't even had time to hang her pictures, and it's not hard to see why.

Every month, Roitfeld and her small team pull together what is considered to be the world's most fashion-forward magazine.

Vogue Paris may have a fraction of the circulation of its American stable mate -- 139,000 versus 1.3 million -- but what it lacks in numbers it makes up in prestige.

Still, Roitfeld recognizes that even the upper end of the magazine market is not immune to the deepest global recession in decades.

She's prepared to make cuts. And rather than begrudgingly canceling a coffee order or two, she's almost relishing a return to the pre-boom days when challenges were overcome with creativity rather than cash.

"It's become ridiculous," she tells CNN, explaining that where once eight people may have gathered around a table to discuss a photo shoot, now there are 25.

"Some things got too far away. There were people who were flying private jets -- we need to go back to reality.

"I don't want to take the money out of the beauty of the picture, I don't want to change the paper of the magazine, I don't want to change the materials, but we can do it another way."

"When it's more difficult you have to be more creative."

CNN's Revealed joined Roitfeld and five members of her team as they gathered round a glass table to choose the cover of the April edition of French Vogue.

It doesn't happen often -- usually the cover is a fait accompli -- but this time U.S. actress Scarlett Johansson has confused the issue by unexpectedly dying her hair.

"This cover, it was very difficult," Carine explains, "because we want people to recognize Scarlett and then she changed her hair color."

Three mock-ups lie on the table; different fonts, colors and wording cover Johansson's lascivious poses. It's clear which one Carine prefers and, rather predictably, it's her choice that will hit news stands this week.

"I think this is a Vogue image and I want to stick to being Vogue," she says of her decision. "The cover is like the publicity for your magazine. It's very important. We need the more appealing one, the more visible one."

Carine Roitfeld was a highly respected and well-connected fashion stylist with no experience in magazine editing when she took the job as editor-in-chief at Vogue Paris in early 2001.

She was already an old friend of renowned photographer Mario Testino; they met 25 years ago when both were yet to make their names. He's now Godfather to her two children, Vladimir and Julia, who are 28 and 27 respectively, and who both now live in New York.

Roitfeld and Testino later teamed up with U.S. designer Tom Ford during his first years as creative director at Gucci to reinvigorate the brand with an innovative advertising campaign.

Roitfeld was approached by Jonathan Newhouse, chairman of Conde Nast International to take the role at French Vogue.

During her time there, advertising revenue has increased almost 10 percent and circulation is up 27 percent. "It is probably a 'Carine effect'," concludes Xavier Romatet, the president of Conde Nast Publications, which owns Vogue magazine.

"Carine's probably the most creative person I've met in my life," he told CNN, describing her as a savvy business woman with a finely-tuned intuition as to what her readers want.

Roitfeld scoffs at suggestions that she has an acute business mind, saying "I think I'm a terrible business woman."

Still, what she's doing at French Vogue is obviously working and despite persistent rumors that she may soon announce her departure, she insists she has no plans, as yet, to leave.

"I'm very happy here," she tells CNN, before adding cryptically, "but I'm sure something new is going to happen in the next year."

Many in the industry have tipped Roitfeld to replace Anna Wintour in New York, should the esteemed editor of American Vogue choose to retire. Read more about Roitfeld's views on the New York job

Roitfeld says she hasn't been approached about the job and if she was she probably wouldn't take it.

"Of course you'd be proud to be offered a job at this Vogue, because it's the biggest Vogue.

"But I'm not sure I'd be happy to work at the biggest Vogue. It's too big; you have to talk to too many different people. I'm very happy at French Vogue to be able to do everything -- almost everything -- I want to do in the magazine.

"Anyway my husband doesn't want to go," she adds later with a smile.

Roitfeld is anxious not to feed any speculation of a competitive rift between her and Wintour, referring to her U.S. counterpart as the "First Lady" of fashion.

"Anna does a great job... I respect her a lot," Roitfeld says.

Source: CNN

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Alexander McQueen: Fashion in Ruins

INEVITABLY, the talk of Paris fashion has been less about clothes than about money.

Retailers are worried about sales, and magazines are concerned with the loss of advertising. And most designers, listening to the bean counters, have played it so safe with their fall collections that they run the risk of choking. Fashion is in a fractured state.

Still, few designers are willing to admit that the expectations of fashion are changing, or to honestly question the future for luxury goods if the appetite — largely invented over the last decade with calculated marketing more than innovative design — no longer exists. Alexander McQueen’s exceptional collection shown here on Tuesday night, the most ambitious we have seen this season, was as much a slap in the face to his industry, then, as it was brave statement about the absurdity of the race to build empires in fashion.

With a runway of broken mirrors surrounding a garbage heap made of props from his own past collections, Mr. McQueen created a stage to symbolize the sudden crash of luxury exuberance. The clothes he sent out were a parody of couture designs of the last century, spoofing Dior’s New Look and Givenchy’s little black Audree Hepburn dresses, as well as their reinventions by new designers at those companies in the last decade — himself included. It was a bit of a Marie Antoinette riot, poking fun at all the queens of French fashion.

“This whole situation is such a cliché,” Mr. McQueen said before his show. “The turnover of fashion is just so quick and so throwaway, and I think that is a big part of the problem. There is no longevity.”

Mr. McQueen, in effect, was calling fashion’s bluff when he opened his collection with a suit in a 1940s silhouette, with a nipped waist and flared skirt in houndstooth wool, worn by a model who walked with her hands on her hips and posed with the exaggerated gestures of an Irving Penn photograph. That was followed by a houndstooth print on a mink coat in a Poiret shape and wool jackets that were defaced with embroidery that looked like a Jackson Pollock painting.

All the models wore hats by the milliner Philip Treacy that were made of trash-can liners and aluminum cans, or recycled household objects; the makeup, inspired by the mad look of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil,” gave the models the appearance of plastic faces that were all lips. The music, as well, was a mash-up of songs from his prior shows, with bits of “Vogue” and Marilyn Manson’s “Beautiful People.”

This was, Mr. McQueen said, an ironic exploration of a designer’s reinvention. The irony is that designers say that fashion is constantly being reinvented, yet they continue to show the same shapes and trends of decades past. (Ergo, this season the collections have been fixated on the 1980s.)

After the triumphs of his recent collections, this was a risky show, entirely uncommercial and intentionally provocative, and it generated extreme reactions. Dennis Freedman, the creative director of W, was visibly ecstatic watching the show; but another magazine editor, afterward, compared the trash-bin styling to “a collection inspired by Wall-E.” And some questioned whether Mr. McQueen, by including such obvious references to trash, was targeting John Galliano’s version of Dior, which, in January 2000, included a couture collection inspired by hobos and that led to protesters wearing plastic garbage bags outside the Dior ateliers on Avenue Montaigne.

Throughout his career, Mr. McQueen has relished pushing people’s buttons, though maybe less obviously since moving his shows from London, where he had developed the reputation as the enfant terrible, to Paris in 2001 after he sold his company to the Gucci Group. Mr. McQueen turns 40 next week, so he is no longer an enfant, though his work remains challenging and confrontational, especially this season, when it seems like the right moment for a deeper exploration.

While he is mocking the establishment for running circles over fashion history, isn’t Mr. McQueen as guilty as the rest?

From 1997 to 2001, he was the designer for Givenchy, one of the luxury brands owned by LVMH, and his tenure there was frequently marked by conflicts with management and mostly negative critical reviews. Before he showed his first collection, succeeding Mr. Galliano, who had moved to Dior, Mr. McQueen offended many French journalists by declaring that the original work of Hubert de Givenchy was “irrelevant.” Amy M. Spindler, the New York Times fashion critic, wrote of Mr. McQueen’s couture debut in 1997: “This was basically a pretty hostile collection from a gifted designer who seems in conflict about his role in the Givenchy studio. How members of the audience responded to the show depended on whether they were fascinated by that hostility and vulgarity or repelled by it.” The same could be said today.

During his early days in London, Mr. McQueen’s collections were sometimes described as misogynistic. The shows made audiences uncomfortable, and equally fascinated, most controversially in 1995 when he referenced the ravaging of Scotland by England by showing brutalized women in a collection called “Highland Rape.” He later transformed models into animals with horns on their shoulders or wearing leather masks like falcons; and in a 2000 collection, he showed models in a setting that looked like a mental hospital. The historian Caroline Evans, in “Fashion at the Edge,” noted that McQueen’s aesthetic of cruelty was actually culled from historic sources, “the work of 16th- and 17th-century anatomists, in particular that of Andreas Vesalius, the photography of Joel-Peter Witkin from the 1980s and ’90s, and the films of Pasolini, Kubrick, Buñuel and Hitchcock.”

So much informs Mr. McQueen’s collections that things get lost or obscured. In addition to Dior and Givenchy and Pollock, the new fall collection, titled “The Horn of Plenty,” included leather coats and poof dresses with a pattern inspired by Bauhaus and clowns, a magpie print inspired by the drawings of M. C. Escher, and dresses made of duck feathers after Matthew Bourne’s production of “Swan Lake.” The invitation showed an image of a woman with a trash bag on her head by Hendrik Kerstens, photographed in the manner of Dutch portrait artists, which was the starting point for Mr. McQueen’s exploration into recycling. (The image was recreated in a hat by Mr. Treacy.)

Some of the fabrics were made to look like refuse, including a wet-looking black paper nylon that resulted in dresses that resembled Mr. Givenchy’s chic styles, only made of Hefty bags. A charcoal silk cape looked as if it was made of bubble wrap.

“I’ve never been this hard since I’ve been in London,” Mr. McQueen said. “I think it’s dangerous to play it safe because you will just get lost in the midst of cashmere twin sets. People don’t want to see clothes. They want to see something that fuels the imagination.”

It’s an interesting issue that Mr. McQueen raises by challenging the status quo. While he did not exactly propose an obvious solution for the times, he at least suggested a viable alternative to the never-ending recycling of other designers’ fashion, which was to recycle his own. ]

Source: The New York Times

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Paris Fashion Show - Fur-Covered Helmets

Paris, France — Karl Lagerfeld gave fur, the staple of stoles and coats, a new raison d'etre Sunday, sending out fully functional mink-covered motorcycle helmets as part of his winter 2010 ready-to-wear collection.

Fur epaulettes also added a quirky touch to military jackets and dressed up long, lean and clean-lined evening gowns.

"Now everyone is on scooters, even chic women, so we had to do the helmet," said Lagerfeld, who has reached ueber-celebrity status as the designer for Chanel and Fendi. The helmets, made by French brand Ruby, are road ready and outfitted with an iPod connection that pumps music directly in, he said.

The mostly black collection also included short dresses with sharp, square shoulders and built-in caplets worn over skinny pants with a vertical red stripe down the back.

Lagerfeld said the powerful shoulder was the starting point for the collection.

"Unlike the shoulder pads of the 1980s, these shoulders don't jet out horizontally, but rather wrap around the shoulder like a bridge," he told reporters backstage. "It gives the attitude for the whole look without looking like an old truck driver from the 1980s."

One look that definitely did not scream truck driver was an ankle-length black turtleneck gown adorned with thick sparkly ropes like tinsel at the throat and the square shoulders.

Accessories, a cash-cow for many luxury labels, included diminutive square-shaped purses on a ropey strap, fingerless mittens like those Lagerfeld himself often sports and heavy silver earrings that covered the entire ear like a metallic earmuff.

Source: The Canadian Press

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Fashion Secretary

Since Ikram Goldman, owner of the eponymous Chicago boutique, became the unofficial Secretary of Fashion to whom Michelle Obama turns for all her key sartorial decisions, East Coast arbiters of chic have been as twisted up as a braided leather belt. How can a mere retailer, not to mention one from the famously frumpy Midwest, have so much fashion clout? Oscar de la Renta, Arnold Scaasi and others say they don't understand why Mrs. Obama relies on a shopkeeper, when she could - and should - be going directly to them. "I don't think the inaugural gown was flattering in any way. She could have looked much better," sniped Scaasi in the New York Times with the cattiness that comes so naturally to those in the fashion world. He added that it was "strange to think that the wife of" a head of state "would choose clothes from only one store."

Apparently, he's forgotten about Marie Antoinette, the world's first clothes horse, who, like Michelle, relied mostly on one retailer to choose her outfits. Rose Bertin was a fat, porcine-faced seamstress who owned a fancy dress shop in Paris, where the French queen liked to shop. During the eighteenth century in France, dress merchants, called marchands de modes, were the most powerful style arbiters, and Bertin, thanks to her association with Marie Antoinette, grew to international fame, while setting a standard for fashion excess and snobbism that's endured to this day.

As a result of Bertin's power, according to Joan deJean in her book, The Essence of Style, the taste and aspirations of the queen's subjects were greatly elevated. So eager were women to ape Marie Antoinette's look that many were driven to squander family fortunes or accumulate staggering debt. Some of these Emma Bovarys before their time even fell so low as to take lovers to pay their dressmaker bills, thus leading to accusations that Marie Antoinette's fashion passion was destroying the morals of the nation. Could it happen here? In this economic climate, I wonder.

Since it opened in 2001, Ikram has been a favorite of the city's most fashionable women, including Mrs. Obama, who's been shopping here since her husband's books became best sellers several years ago. But now with the Obamas in the White House, and American women eager to emulate Michelle's elegance, Ikram's influence has grown. Suddenly, this pudgy, 41-year-old mother of infant twins, has a Bertinesque power to shape the fashion choices of women across the land.

In 1991, when I moved here with my family from New York, I felt as if I'd been exiled to Style Siberia. About the only good news on the fashion front was that my Bergdorf Goodman credit card worked at Neiman Marcus on Michigan Avenue, where my first year in town I found a black Marc Jacobs dress at half price. I also bought a Prada skirt on sale at Ultimo on Oak Street, the only place in Chicago that sold anything even remotely hip. Thanks to a couple of lively boutiques I'd ferreted out in my neighborhood on the near North Side, I managed to uphold a semblance of Manhattan chic. I'm proud to say I never once succumbed to crewneck sweaters, shapeless parkas, dowdy blazers or galoshes, and, as the years went by, it got easier to dress well. I've watched Chicago's fashion life evolve, and recently, there's been an explosion of design talent and independent boutiques across the city. Only now, though, with the Israeli-born Goldman, has Chicago reached its style apotheosis.

I've walked by Ikram many times, admiring the Lanvins, Yohji Yamamotos, Alaias, and Narcisco Rodriguezs in the window. One Christmas my husband gave me a gorgeous pair of silver drop earrings with green crystals from the store. And once, I actually talked to Ikram herself. I called her about a story I was doing for a magazine, but when I mispronounced Proenza Schouler, the high end brand co-designed by two former students of the Parsons School of Design, she snapped at me officiously: "If you don't know how to say it properly, you shouldn't be asking me about them." Then she hung up.

Remembering that experience, I've been afraid to go in the store -- until last week, when curiosity overwhelmed me, along with a need to buy a cocktail dress for several upcoming spring events. As a buffer against what I expected to be the sales staff's disdain for my mid-priced, cloth-coated person, I took my friend, Monica, a willowy, black-haired beauty who looks as if she knows not only how to pronounce Proenza Schouler but how to wear it well.

We walked over on a gray, blustery morning. I let Monica, dazzling as usual in leather pants and a full length fur, push through the glass doors first. Though the boutique has strong Asian accents - filigreed wood doors hanging on the back wall, exotic ceramics and dark wood display cases that look as if they came from a Chinese museum -- Ikram has the feel of Paris: everything is exquisite and très cher. Immediately, I saw ten things I wanted, including what looked like a zebra fur handbag with a sculptured silver clasp and a pair of diamond earrings by Loree Rodkin.

Ikram Goldman was no where in sight. Several sales associates, dour looking women in black, and one glum man in a white polo shirt, stood around. They didn't appear to have much to do. Besides us, there was only one shopper in the store - a stocky, jeans- clad woman who was shopping for tee-shirts, a strange pursuit in Chicago's temple of style.

"Are you looking for anything special?" a pretty Asian girl in an adorable green print dress by Tracy Feith asked with a bright smile. She said her name was Jun and asked us our first names. When I recovered from the shock that Jun wasn't a snob, I explained to her my need for a basic spring cocktail dress. As Jun set off cheerfully to search the racks, Monica and I inspected the arched nooks holding shoes and scarves, handbags and sweaters.

Eventually, Jun led us to the rear of the store, to a circular fitting area lined with mirrors and fawn velvet covered benches. A beige carpet imparted a boudoir hush, drowning out the sounds from the rest of the boutique. I tried on seven dresses. The least expensive, at $1,250, was the same red and black print silk Thakoon that Michelle Obama wore the night her husband was nominated for president, only cut several inches shorter. The most expensive, at $6,745, was a structured black silk and chiffon column embroidered with white birds by Alexander McQueen.

I modeled each of the dresses for Monica and Jun, enjoying their exclamations of enthusiasm. Jun was really getting into it, finding different shoes to try on with each dress and offering suggestions for alterations (an extra charge). There was one dress, we all agreed, that stood out - a violet silk blend Jason Wu with embroidered black florets. It had a fitted bodice and straight skirt that reached just below the knee and a graceful neckline that draped over the shoulders. It fit perfectly, as if had been made for me. It was the most beautiful dress I'd ever worn, and I understood perfectly why Michelle Obama is so drawn to this young designer. The only problem was the price -- $3,900.

If I put the dress on my credit card, I'd be doing my part to stimulate the economy. But then I'd have to pay for it at the end of the month. I left Ikram empty handed. Emma Bovary I am not.

Source: The Huffington Post

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