By Patty Fisher
Mercury News
Article Launched: 10/26/2008 01:34:57 PM PDT
Among the intricate needlepoint and colorful quilts on display in History San Jose's exhibit of local women's handicrafts, the white cotton sock seemed oddly out of place.
The sock did not look like a work of art to me. It looked like the socks we buy in packs of six pair and throw away when the heels begin to wear through.
But this sock was special. It was handmade by someone so proud of her work that she discreetly embroidered her initials in white along the cuff:
"J.W. 1869."
"She Made It!" a new exhibit at History Park in San Jose's Kelley Park, is a trip back to a time before copycat shopping malls; before repetitious "ready to wear"; when just about every dress and pair of trousers, every quilt and handkerchief, every basket and baby blanket was handcrafted by women, who were expected to keep their families not only fed but also clothed and comfortable.
Some women, no doubt, saw all the sewing, quilting, weaving and knitting as drudgery. But many delighted in the work and discovered artistic outlets and surprising opportunities to bring beauty to their otherwise drab lives.
Using common materials such as wool yarn, cloth scraps and even human hair, they turned out precious and personal works of art when simple utilitarian pieces would have sufficed.
"Women weren't always allowed to participate in 'fine arts,' so they used functional crafts as a form of creative self-expression," said Sarah Puckitt,
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curator of the exhibit.
Thus the hand-embroidered table linens that gave everyday meals a feeling of elegance. The crocheted doilies that kept the upholstery clean but also were lovely to look at.
Although most of those creations were used, reused and handed down until they wore out or were thrown away, many have survived. History San Jose has quite a collection of home crafts donated by local families, and Puckitt said she was delighted to have an opportunity to display them.
Even before I saw the exhibit, I started thinking about what the world would be like if women hadn't felt the need to make their surroundings beautiful, whether by picking flowers for the table or embroidering flowers on the tablecloth.
For centuries, great male artists were revered, their work hung on gallery and museum walls and admired. Meanwhile, women's work such as fine rugs, lace and fabrics were walked on, worn and used.
It's not that their talent wasn't admired. It just wasn't considered art.
Today, our definition of art is broader. We have "wearable art" and "body art" and "land art." If you hang a quilt on the wall, it's art.
The quilt I'd love to hang on my wall was made by the ladies of St. Paul's Methodist Church in the late 19th century. It's a "crazy quilt" made from dozens of different fabric pieces and embellished with chain stitch, daisy stitch and French knots. The more I studied it, the more little touches I saw.
The collection of quilts is a reminder that for women, creating art also was a way of socializing. The average farm wife had no time to go clubbing with her gal pals. But at quilting bees and sewing circles, she could trade gossip, recipes, wisdom and advice while getting her work done.
And then it was her duty — and her pleasure — to pass the skills of stitching, knitting and mending to her daughters.
Back in 1832, a 10-year-old girl named Mary Ann Ives stitched what was probably her first sampler. The spacing and spelling are slightly imperfect, and I can just imagine her mother or grandmother gently pointing out the mistakes. Tears probably were shed. But as the text of the sampler suggests, little Mary Ann was appealing to a higher power to judge her work:
"Jesus permit thy gracious name to stand,
"As the first efforts of an infant's hand."
Imagine her surprise if she knew that one day her first shaky sampler would find its way into a museum.
Contact Patty Fisher at pfisher@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5852.
If you're going: "She Made It!" is on display at the Leonard & David McKay Gallery at the Pasetta House in History Park, 1650 Senter Road, San Jose. For hours and directions, visit http://www.historysanjose.org/ or call (408) 287-2290.
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2008年10月27日 星期一
Fisher: Art with quilts, doilies, socks
2008年9月9日 星期二
Sex & Seduction in Sportwear ( From International Herald Tribune)
Sex and seduction in sportswear
Proenza Schouler, Peter Som, Thakoon, Carolina Herrera, Isaac Mizrahi and more
By Suzy Menkes
Published: September 9, 2008
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NEW YORK: Brooke Shields, in a shapely pantsuit, walked the red carpet at Calvin Klein's 40th birthday bash this week.
It seemed like a giant stride from those ads in which the teenage actress proclaimed that "nothing comes between me and my Calvins." But it was a reminder of the subversive sexuality that the house's founder brought to American sportswear.
Symbolically, all the strong shows of New York Fashion Week are tapping into that same concept: the reinvention of sporty clothes with an undercurrent of hip sensuality. Leaving behind the pretty, girly uptown vibe that has been the New York fashion look since the start of this new millennium, the clothes are stronger, tougher and more deliberately seductive.
The design duo at Proenza Schouler moved from city smart to tough workwear and it made for a fine transition. Overalls, reworked with a bold zipper and with cutaway straps baring the back, sent a sexual charge through clothes that were otherwise big and even baggy. They were also in the spirit of the 1980s, with rounded sleeves tracing the arms like a crescent moon and a sense of oversize controlled by a cinching belt. Veronica Lake hair streaming over one eye and shoes tilted on heels that looked like metallic tools added a provocative touch.
Sexuality is not new to the designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, who have toyed with brassieres and corset tops inserted into uptown looks. But this season the combination of sporty fabrics like athletic mesh, in an egg shape above billowing track pants, and the curvy shape of the rounded sleeves gave just that subversive thrust that makes sportswear seem modern.
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Today in Fashion & Style
Magical Marc Jacobs: Putting on the prairie
Sex and seduction in sportswear
Victoria Beckham's dream
The shoes told the story in Peter Som's fine show: wrapped in a bandage of Hessian straps to give the effect of feet splattered with sand. The footwear underscored a desert theme, taken at a gallop with "Lawrence of Arabia" as inspiration - hence the models with loose hair, wide cuffed shorts, brief skirts wafting in light layers or mid-calf dresses cinched with leather at the waist.
Som's skill came through in the color palette that went from sandy beige through shades of oasis spring water to sky blue and turquoise, then hotted up to the sunset pink that made a subtle suede dress.
"It's sexier than usual," said Som. But this well-thought-out show was never vulgar and expressed a sporty freedom of a modern woman.
"Seduction and fetishism," announced Thakoon Panichgul backstage to define dresses worked with the effect of trussed ribbons and rubbery nylon coats. With an echo chamber of ideas from Lanvin et al., this collection seemed like it was trying too hard. The high points of the Thakoon show came when he played with print, having dancing legs come out of the stamens of a rose, in a neat metaphor for sporty energy and sweet romance.
When Carolina Herrera shows a skinny, streamlined pantsuit in matador red, you know that the feel for sportswear is galloping through fashion. In fact, although she cited the influence of Italian painting and of Russian constructivists, this show seemed more influenced by the Spanish bullring and the designer's South American roots. Think of frills cascading down dresses that all seemed aimed at that familiar totem: the red carpet.
What worked best was the Herrera hallmark: the beautiful blouse, dramatic in black chiffon, with transparent puffy sleeves and worn with high-waist toreador pants in yellow and black print; or pristine as the designer's signature white blouse with black embroidery and a pencil skirt.
Isaac Mizrahi, showing his couture line on a big ballroom stage, knows all about sportswear - from his signature style in the 1980s and because he has been tapped to design for the iconic sportswear house Liz Claiborne.
What came out on the runway was sports couture: a mix of big, light shapes worn with skintight corsets and bicycle pants in eye-popping fluorescent colors. A shocking pink bra was worn boldly under a floaty dress and a ball gown flipped open to show Day-Glo green shorts. The show was endearing in its energy, although there were some clunky dresses heavy with paillettes and others that looked like Snow White dressing for a 1950s prom. Shiny surfaces and modern fabrics made the new Mizrahi seem intriguing.
Genuine sportswear companies are in their element this season. The Y-3 label, with the collaboration of Yohji Yamamoto, hit its target with its graphic play on the famous Adidas stripes for both sexes. While the male might have a bathrobe of a coat in horizontal stripes, a woman's calf-length dress with shifting layers of stripes gave a different effect. From smart sports shoes (with the three signature stripes) to subtle mixes of masculine and feminine (as a tunic with a bow at the back, worn with racing stripe pants), Y-3 is true to its designer's romantic modernist identity.
Diesel Black Gold is a model of how to give a denim company a sharp fashion edge. By playing with fabric, using fine ticking-striped cotton or paint-splash effects, and by experimenting with new shapes, from drop-crotch to harem pants, the clothes looked as modern as the undulating sound waves projected on the backdrop. If helmets recalled last season's Proenza Schouler show and feather vests mirrored Burberry's collection, this Diesel line still has a personal identity that is fresh and hip.
Z-Zegna is a men's line designed to incorporate the luxury and elegance of the Ermenegildo Zegna Italian brand with a more casual and sporty image. By bringing this younger, hipper menswear collection to New York, Zegna is building a wider international identity for the brand.
2008年9月5日 星期五
Wanted: Genius designer
Who will be the Next Big Thing? That's the question that perennially fuels the rave of creativity, stitchery and circus nerves that is New York Fashion Week. It's the tease that attracts the thousands of designers, buyers, editors, photographers, stylists, models, bookers, trend forecasters, sharp-tongued blogosphere sibyls and the strung-out accountants who attempt to ride herd on all of the above to the Bryant Park tents twice a year. It's the dream we all dream of a sartorial Lotto win.
Even with an economy dazed and numbed, the United States remains the world's largest market for fashion, and New York is unquestionably the center of the global fashion image machine. True, consumer pocketbooks seem to be on temporary lockdown. But the assembly line keeps cranking all the same; the maw must be fed.
But who will do it? Cast a seasoned eye across a landscape ornamented with scores of shows during the next nine days (officially Fashion Week runs today through Sept. 12) and what's immediately apparent is that while fashion is healthily supplied with journeymen there is no clear visionary, no obvious genius in sight.
"The business is much too safe," Julie Gilhart, the fashion director of Barney's New York, said last week. "There's just too much money at stake." Thus, we should not expect a season in which designers go out on a limb and propel models down catwalks in get-ups concocted from seaweed or kitchen utensils. (Both have actually happened.) This is not to suggest, as Gilhart also noted, that New York is suffering from talent shortfall — far from it. Among many others, we have the team of Proenza Schouler, with their knack for making middle-of-the-road design seem indie and cool. We have cartoonish pop cultural gadflies like Isaac Mizrahi, and chaste classicists like Francisco Costa at Calvin Klein. We have elder statesman like Oscar de la Renta and Ralph Lauren, who, far from seeming moss-covered and passé, have been more alert to shifts in the cultural marketplace than some who were zygotes when those men first hit professional stride.
We have loopy design theoreticians like threeAsFour, holding up the fort for Downtown Style. And — back from a barkeep hiatus in Majorca that followed his Big Apple flameout—we have Miguel Adrover, the man who captured the imagination of the fashion establishment with clothes made from a recycled mattress and Yankees caps.
Today in Fashion & Style
Still, there is no world-beater. There are no names that suggest clear-cut potential both to reshape fashion and somehow with it the global culture of style. There is no one, to take the obvious example, likely to replace Yves Saint Laurent, who died in June and seemingly took with him not merely a genius for conjuring glamour from whole cloth, but also for draping his designs to suit the mood of his time.
What seems disorienting about this absence is that fashion is no longer a discipline of interest mainly to female consumers and a cult of aesthetes. Like it or not, fashion has become something larger, a viral cultural force that sometimes seems only incidentally concerned with clothes. Cocteau wasn't kidding when he said style is a simple way of saying complicated things — a point the United States Olympic Committee clearly noted (American teams may not have dominated in the medals, but in the parade of nations they killed the competition in jauntily classic Polo Ralph Lauren uniforms), as do politicos. Were the Dead Sea scrolls subjected to more exegesis than Michelle Obama's floral print sheath at the Democratic National Convention in Denver? (Thakoon, by the way.) The voices of the blogosphere say, No.
Yet, contradictory as this may seem, the notion of a Next Big Thing in fashion may itself be culturally discordant. As in film, music and other arts, consumers have wearied of big names and labels. Except on TV, they are bored with diktats, with taste legislated by self-appointed "experts" and with camphor-scented archaisms like "stars."
They have lost the desire to partake of media in hunks: an entire musical album, or a single artist's whole career.
The DIY ethos prevalent among young consumers has led to an overall relaxation of the boundaries of style. Given that a 12-year-old with a MySpace page and access to digital "mood boards" or electronic makeover applications (girltech.com) can become an instant authority on fashion, is there truly a need for the dictators of the front row, the editors who once chose the stars?
"No longer is fashion force-fed to the consumer," said Robert Burke, a former fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman who is now a luxury goods consultant. "They don't have to wait for magazines and editors to tell them what they must buy and must have."
Fun as it is to indulge in the game show fantasy retailed by programs like "Project Runway," with its winners and losers and dubious jackpots, it is probably time to face the truth about the In or Out divide, which is that it is subjectively judged and decreed by a posse of Heathers.
"I really never understood the next big thing," said Kim Hastreiter, an editor of Paper magazine. "How can someone be a genius this season and next season they're not?"
She added: "This completely drives me crazy. Everyone can be raving one season about how great a designer is and then the next season they're dumped."
People do not become "un-brilliant," Hastreiter said. "Designers really suffer from this because you get lifted up and put in this place and then someone else comes along and is put in that place and it's never really about the work."
Passionate fandom, the widespread devotion that also helps invest a star with authority, seems quaint today. Every anonymous nobody with a social networking page or a "fun wall" can build a cohort, whether imaginary or virtual. Appended to the snapshots of everyday people and their sartorial innovations on blogs like Scott Schuman's The Sartorialist (thesartorialist.blogspot.com) are kite-tails of commentary from scores or even hundreds of commentators, who hold highly evolved (and occasionally creepy) views about what fashion is and should be.
In a lot of ways, the life and career of Saint Laurent are instructive and also helpful in understanding why it is futile and also probably dumb to sit around waiting for his avatar. "That world is gone," his former partner Pierre Bergé said days before Saint Laurent's death.
By that Bergé meant, as Jill D'Alessandro, an associate curator at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, recently explained, that "fashion was more about artistic and creative output" when Saint Laurent held his first runway show in 1962 than it was about celebrity name-checking and the creation of the latest "It" bag. "He was adapted to his times," D'Alessandro said. "He was someone who wanted to help with social change. The world was also changing a lot then, and he very consciously wanted to be part of that."
The extent to which he succeeded should be clear come November when the de Young presents a full-scale Saint Laurent retrospective.
The film director Jean Renoir once wrote a letter to Ingrid Bergman, motivated by what I am not quite sure, in which he cautioned the actress against falling for the hype axiomatically attached to the next big thing. "The cult of great ideas is dangerous and may destroy the real basis for great achievements, that is the daily, humble work within the framework of a profession," Renoir wrote.
And it's that quote I plan to take with me into the Fashion Week fray, with a hope that the onus of expectation placed on any single designer (even New York's favorite son, Marc Jacobs) will eventually yield to something more flexible, plural and modern, to use a hated fashion term. The next big thing may not be a single person at all but a yeastier and more broadly based network of shared information and connections.
It's an optimistic thought, and none too reasonable, given the financial stakes. But there has to be a role for fashion more interesting than producing a few hype artists whose greatest skill is slinging a dumb It bag off the licorice-whip arm of this season's hot socialite.
"Very few people have this ability to be the great designers and also generate the necessary buzz and excitement," Gilhart of Barneys said. "It's a trap." So formulated around star-creation right now, she added, that the business may actually be "closing out a lot of opportunities for people who are original and good and who actually have something to say."
More Articles in Fashion & Style » A version of this article appeared in print on September 4, 2008, on page G1 of the New York edition.
Roadster by Cartier
A Day in a Life with… Roadster by CARTIER
From name to bottle A classy, sporty convertible, speed and the wind in your hair, plus a shiny, "state-of-the-art" vehicle... That’s what comes to mind when you hear the word Roadster. Familiar to Cartier fans, in the house’s vocabulary it already refers to a watch model, from which several of the design elements were borrowed: the “winding knob” cabochon cap, the play of polished or satin-finished chrome decoration. Another house trademark: the item’s weight – and it is a real heavyweight! Thick, sturdy glass, chrome-sheathed cap and precision mechanism, if you’re looking for a blunt object, look no further! |
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GUERLAIN HOMME by Guerlain
GUERLAIN HOMME by Guerlain
- Created: 2008
- For: Men
- type: Citrus - Aromatic
Resolutely fresh and energetic, Guerlain Homme draws its inspiration from a famous cocktail, the mojito. The ad campaign, signed Jean-Paul Goude shows a ‘primitive’ green-eyed man lapping up water from a source surrounded by wild animals…
2008年8月29日 星期五
Converse One Star For Your Back-to-School Wardrobe
LOS ANGELES, Aug 27, 2008 / FW/ — Preppy meets casual, the Converse One Star Fall 2008 collection offers budding fashionistas contemporary denim, knit dresses, sweaters, graphic tees and outerwear for an irreverent look at a great price.
Together with a vintage, rock n’ roll-inspired accessories line, the pop culture assignation usually associated with Converse and the century old history of the brand that has influenced music, arts, sports and fashion, the Converse One Star brand continues its evolution.
For women, traditionally athletic silhouettes were re-imagined to be more feminine. Fall color palettes and collegiate-themed logos, the preppy urban style is achieved.
The One Star women’s footwear — from houndstooth skimmers and wedge oxfords in berry and taupe, to metallic Skidgrip® footwear styles and satin ballet skimmers in fuchsia and black proposes a youthful rock & roll look.
For men, rugby-striped shirting and military jackets evoke this season’s One Star style of prep school and punk rock. Using deep green, navy and red, accented with vintage gold and blue, the look is uniquely One Star and effortlessly stylish.
The fall One Star footwear collection for men includes retro skate and soccer shoes, as well as a suede hi-top-style shoe.
The Converse One Star fall collection also marks the debut of vintage-inspired, versatile accessories for men and women. Sold exclusively at Target, the newest addition to the One Star roster includes canvas totes, striped neck scarves and bowler bags for every day.
Converse One Star Collection is available at select Target stores nationwide and at www.target.com beginning August.
Essential essences
White flowers… for him and her
2007’s star flower was iris. No one flower has taken this year’s crown, but jasmine and white flowers are present in many of the latest scents. Yves Rocher introduced a gentle, slightly fruity jasmine christened Tendre Jasmin and Bulgari presents Jasmin Noir, a sweeter, woodsier floral. New for women from Givenchy, Absolutely Irresistible features, not rose like Very Irresistible, but – you guessed it – jasmine. A jasmine garbed in orange blossom and fruity and woodsy notes. White flowers are also at the heart of Diesel’s new perfume, Fuel for Life UNLIMITED, presented as a ‘bouquet of white flowers (…) wrapped in licorice’ and fruity notes. It boasts three white flowers: Casablanca lily, tuberose and jasmine. Another white flower – albeit a more imaginary one – is unveiled in the packaging and the ad campaign for Kenzo’s new men’s scent, Kenzo Power. After Dior (Fahrenheit 32, Dior Homme) and Gaultier (Fleur du Mâle), Kenzo is also exploring the floral register for men with Kenzo Power. Garbed in spicy and woody notes, the whole is nevertheless quite floral for a men’s scent. Unusual on men, but why shouldn’t women wear it too?
Another trendy flower this season: classic violet. Women will find it in Love in Black (Creed) and Féerie (Van Cleef), and men can get a hint of it in Lalique White.
Gourmet fusions
Feel like a tequila sunrise or a mojito? Good timing, because fragrances in the gourmet register are in. Gaultier’s Ma Dame, a light floral, has a bright, Tequila Sunrise-style splash of grenadine syrup and tart orange. There’s a similar fusion-cocktail concept happening at Guerlain, with Guerlain Homme, a men’s scent blending lime and fresh mint, mojito-style. The overdose of mint in Roadster, Cartier’s new fragrance for men, is softened with sweet, lightly vanilla notes, somewhat reminiscent of an After Eight after-dinner mint. Looking at more men’s scents: Emporio Armani Diamonds’ energizing trail is warmed up with cocoa, and in Givenchy’s Play, the opening wood-citrus-coffee blossom blend evokes an imaginary rhubarb-wood sensation. For more gourmet experiences: an exotic plum note blends with burnt amber and white flowers in Calvin Klein’s latest, Secret Obsession. And for gourmets of the gourmand, Reminiscence is completing their Les Notes Gourmandes collection with 2 new notes, including Si Do. The bottle’s ‘violet-macaroon’ hue reveals a fragrance weaving together ambrette, carrot and woodsy-floral notes.
Women’s Woods
The trend towards woodsy scents for women that started some time ago (and was most noticeable in 2007, with Saint Laurent’s elle) isn’t over yet. Women love flowers, obviously, but woodsy notes had clearly been set aside for too long. So in the U.S., Estée Lauder has left the floral register for a major woodsy scent, Sensuous. Fashion designer Tom Ford has also decided to launch a woodsy perfume, White Patchouli, with bergamot, ambrette seed and white flowers for the white facet. Patchouli is here to stay. Christian Lacroix presents C’est La Fête Patchouli, and Esteban introduces Patchouli eau de toilette. Lancôme is also exploring a woodsy register, with their woodsy-floral, Magnifique. It weaves rose, the brand’s significant flower, with woodsy notes of vetiver and sandalwood, and the slightly smoky notes of nagarmota (a variety of papyrus from India).
One more thing: the return of citrus signatures
First niche brands went into citrus notes in a big way, and now the big names are getting in on the act, too. Dior has introduced Dior Homme Sport, distinctly dominated by citrus, and even Guerlain is temporarily leaving their ‘Guerlinade’ register with a citrus scent. Though spicier and muskier, Lalique White is a citrus scent too.
Fragrance Collection 08 - 09
Fragrance Collection 08 - 09
Gold and diamonds, trails of white flowers, black & white, wood for women, grenadine and mojito… osMoz decrypts this falls fragrant trends for you. A special report cahier presented like a trend book.
By Nicolas Olczyk
… What’s new?
Like 2007, fall 2008 is going to be full of new launches. Certain fragrances came out this summer so that they’re already in the starting blocks as summer winds down and people come back from the beach. Like last year, there are lots of new hopefuls, but this year, it looks like men have attracted the lion’s share of brands’ attention. Indeed, new men’s scents can be found not only from Prada, Cartier, Dior and Paco Rabanne, but also Armani, Givenchy, Guerlain ou Kenzo.
When it comes to faces, they’re rolling out the red carpet. Justin Timberlake is representing the new Givenchy, Calvin Klein recruited the curvaceous Eva Mendes, Jude Law signed on with Dior, Lancôme called upon actress Anne Hathaway. And with diva Beyoncé representing the women’s version, Giorgio Armani chose young actor Josh Hartnett for the men’s version of Emporio Armani Diamonds…
As for models, we can’t help noticing that British model Agyness Deyn is fragrance’s new It girl. This spring Burberry chose to personify The Beat, and now she is the muse of Jean-Paul Gaultier’s latest perfume, Ma Dame this fall. In both cases, she incarnates a hip young woman with an off-beat look.
Fans of beautiful bottles will be thrilled. Rare and expensive, the new Acqua di Parma fragrance is an old-school, fine-fragrance chypre presented in a silk-lined box. Another charmer, the bottle for Van Cleef & Arpels’s Féerie is like a sapphire with Tinkerbell perched on top. The stunningly modern bottle of Cartier’s new men’s scent, Roadster, evokes the watch of the same name. As for Lalique, the brand is launching a fragrance extract for men in a crystal bottle for their new fragrance, Lalique White.
MAN by Calvin Klein
MAN by Calvin Klein
- Created: 2007
- For: Men
- type: Woody - Spicy
MAN perfectly expresses Calvin Klein’s cutting edge minimalism and sexy style. MAN is the essence of the modern man in a signature fragrance. A crisp spicy woody scent, defined by its distinctly masculine aura and artisanal craftsmanship.
2008年8月28日 星期四
Secret Obsession by Calvin Klein
Secret Obsession by Calvin Klein
- Created: 2008
- For: Women
- type: Oriental - Floral
Sensuality, fantasies and… secret obsessions
Sensuality, fantasies and… secret obsessions
‘Between love and madness lies… obsession’: that was the starting point for Secret Obsession. Over 20 years ago, the Obsession ad made a huge stir. Secret Obsession’s is also attracting a lot of attention. It features the actress Eva Mendes in a provocatively sensual, almost sexual attitude. More floral than the original Obsession, Secret Obsession has conserved the original’s oriental character and the promise of an aphrodisiac love-potion.
The American designer continues his exploration of freshness with the launch of 2 new essences in his Splash collection. Planned for an autumn release
The American designer continues his exploration of freshness with the launch of 2 new essences in his Splash collection. Planned for an autumn release, they focus on fig and gardenia, after this spring’s grapefruit, pear and basil scents. Described as an aquatic floral, Gardenia was designed by Jean-Claude Delville. Fig is a green, citrussy and spicy essence by Yann Vasnier. Eaux de toilette 10 oz., recommended retail price: €61.
2008年8月23日 星期六
Paris in Motion
Alexis Mabille: In his program notes Alexis Mabille claimed to be dressing a gaggle of fun-loving, unconventional characters who populate an artsy alternative school. He does in fact offer an alternative take on haute couture, one that banishes stuffiness and staid propriety in favor of an attitude that's fresh, young and sportif. It's a vision in which couture and ready-to-wear comingle proudly, blissfully mindless of any old-fashioned fashion caste system. Yet as for that unconventional claim, that's where Mabille really makes hay or HEY. In truth, he doesn't reject convention; he embraces it, starting with traditional notions of French chic. His runway ran rampant with it. He just expresses it with moments of willful irreverence. Take a singular idea, the drop-waist shirtdress. He rendered it cut lean and dark, with pleated schoolgirl propriety, in an artsy black sack rendition, and as an out-there clownish pink polo. He tinkered as well with tuxedo and military motifs, while showing fabulous pants both slouchy and lean, and what may be the only young-looking caftan this side of a Talitha Getty photo. In short, Mabille seems to be just what couture needs: a young, informed talent who doesn't let his deep respect for the milieu get in the way of a good look.Anne Valérie Hash: With an offering of 16 outfits, Anne Valérie Hash boiled down her haute vision to a concise essence that the designer said was inspired by the "vegetal realm." It translated into some very pretty fare, especially a dress with a petal-like sleeve, and delicate sculptural pleating effects on crepe dresses that subtly evoked the folds on a flower. Equally fetching was a dress of translucent lace and organza panels. Hash's talent lies in making clothes with sensual flair. A long black dress with a plunging neckline was a case in point — it looked sexy without being vulgar. Hash added a bit of drama to the mix with oversize jewelry from Naomi Filmer. But in the couture world of big effects and theatrical gestures, Hash's arty approach, though quite enchanting, felt a bit timid.Stéphane Rolland: Now in his third solo season, Stéphane Rolland has established a look based on spangles and flounces tempered with "Dynasty"-style glamour. This couture outing, he explored volume, massed sequins on the shoulders of a dress or a jacket and even a Goth moment done up with more sequins. It was more flash than dash.
Giorgio Armani's New York Tour
Looking no worse for wear after the Costume Institute gala at the Met, the designer did a question-and-answer session at the Fashion Institute of Technology early in the day, then headed uptown to the Hearst Tower, where the Couture Council of The Museum at FIT gave him the first Couture Council Award for Global Fashion Leadership. When he and Glenn Close ascended the escalator, dozens of black-clad men and women broke into applause. A Swarovski-sponsored luncheon hosted by Harper's Bazaar and its editor in chief, Glenda Bailey, attracted the likes of Sarah Larson, Eugenia Silva and Ziyi Zhang.
"I actually made the worst-dressed list before I met Mr. Armani," Close admitted.
Against the backdrop of the skyline, Armani couldn't help but show his appreciation for Manhattan. "It is a very beautiful city, and I found it even more beautiful this time," he said.
As he prepared for his return to Milan later that afternoon after his three-day stopover in New York and a vacation in Antigua, he was left with one question: "I would like to ask Nadja Swarovski how I can get through security with this?" Armani joked, referring to the award.
At FIT, students greeted him dressed in black T-shirts with "I Met Giorgio Armani" on the front and "at FIT" on the back.
The designer told the group, "You must not take advantage of people who are willing to live off fashion. Keep in mind that the goal of your product is the same goal I have had for so many years — to improve people's image through fashion. You must remember that fashion serves a purpose: to make people feel more attractive when they get up in the morning, get dressed and look at themselves in the mirror."
Before Armani left, the students gave him a T-shirt that read, "I Met the Students at FIT."
But Armani's trip to New York was as much business as pleasure. After touring the site of his upcoming Fifth Avenue flagship Sunday, on Monday he drew a crowd of 500 to Saks Fifth Avenue for a signing of Roger Hutchings' book, "Armani Backstage." "We were originally scheduled to have Armani back on 9/11, but we haven't had him since, so to have him in our flagship store is a very special event," said Stephen I. Sadove, Saks' chairman and chief executive officer. The Armani products are in 38 Saks doors.
"This is a significant step up in Giorgio Armani's beauty business development," said Laurent Attal, president and ceo of L'Oréal USA. "The business has a lot of potential in the U.S."
2008年8月22日 星期五
Serge Noire by Serge Lutens
Serge Noire by Serge Lutens
- Created: 2008
- For: Men
- type: Oriental - Woody
‘From the phoenix – that mythical bird (…) rising from its ashes – is born a timeless, land-less scent, from neither here nor there,’ Serge Lutens tells us. This ‘gray oriental’ for him or her is like ‘the memory of the wind suggesting a shape,’ ‘a future silhouette.’ This garb of black cloth (serge is a fabric) is also a play on the designer’s first name.
