Thursday, September 29, 2011

NYFW | Easy to Love Clothes - Donna Karan



New York Fashion Week - Donna Karan Spring/Summer 2012

For me, one of the most expressive collections - The passion and obsession of Donna Karan have been a guilding principle of every single thing that the designer has done since she has started back in the eighties. Karan's initial success was founded on the Seven Easy Pieces that she came up with, but now the aim of those - to help and empower women through easy wear, easy to understand, easy to love clothes has taken on more universal concerns; helping and empowering has taken a bigger, more dramatic narrative arc. So it is that with next spring's collection we travel, courtesy of Karan, to Haiti, where she has been spending a lot of her time, throwing her energies into rebuilding communities there through initiatives that will foster the notion of exporting Haitian craftsmanship and artistry to the world. Enjoy this fabulous Spring collection, and at the end of this post you'll get linked to the Donna Karan Fashion Show by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories - The Fashion Channel.







Donna Karan's Urban Zen store has carried quietly beautiful graphic mud-colored wraps made in Haiti, with the proceeds of the sales going to charities she supports there. Her spring, though, is all about her idea of the island, with, for instance, the pinwheel prints on full, draped cotton skirts inspired by the likes of Port-au-Prince artist Phillipe Dodard. It is, in essence, a paean to a land she has come to love. That's the back-story, so what about the clothes? And that's were we return to the guiding impulse that led her to set up the company in the first place; fanciful notions don't mean anything, she realize, unless they're grounded in reality. The more explicity literal renderings of her theme aside, Karan drew, then, on Haiti to give her an earthy brown and bone-color palette (with the occasional flash of intense violet; purple is the accent color of spring 2012), and used it for clothes that spoke of ways to soften urban dressing, like a chic pale creamy white  stretch cotton canvas dress flatteringgly draped at the neck, the narrowed, then let loose in controlled waves of volume.




Donna Karan offered up a simple city uniform of organza shirts over gently undulating skirts worn with stretch band sandals on substantial flat-wedge heels. It's the pieces in the Dodard-ian prints that are, though, the heart and soul of the collection. And with the surface of clothes having become so important thus far this season thanks to the endless, endless procession of prints on the runway, Karan's passion for the source of her patterns means that hers go away, way deeper.















































































































by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories - The Fashion-Channel

Photography by Marcio Madeira/firstView
Source:VOGUE


Enjoy my previous DKNY-post - 



Tuesday, September 27, 2011

A Gold-shared Statement by Gucci & Roberto Cavalli




Milan Fashion Week - Layers of prints that have been impressed upon our eyes the last few weeks - Gucci & Roberto Cavalli presented another visual overload of color, tropical fauna, or animal spots - A Gold-shared Glamour!




GUCCI Spring/Summer 2012 - Milan Fashion Week



Gucci / Roberto Cavalli - Spring/Summer 2012



The Chrysler-Building by GUCCI

Not that there wasn't a littel backward glance two, though it was to the social, sexual, and stylistic revolution of the twenties, perhaps most explicity the Art Deco elegance of America - an ocean away from Florence, where in that same decade, house founder Guccio Gucci was just starting to sell luggage from the famiy saddle-makers. In particular, Frida Giannini was looking to the gilded gals of the Jazz Age, those ladies divine and decadent in eaqual mesure: "The women of that time who caused a sensation - Nancy Gunard, Louise Brooks," Giannini said.














There was certainly plenty of their then-radical idea of feminity, and their desire to express their sexuality without constrictons or restrictions in the graphically ornate series of back, white, and gold flapper dresses which, despite the weight of their beaded formations, moved in the most sinuous and lightest of ways; dresses that were an alluring alternative to the kind of hard-edge va-va-voom that Giannini has given Gucci in the past. Elsewhere she worked an androgyne theme but cleaned and gleamed it up with many chic permutations of short, metallic jackest, worn over black pants that tapered long and narrow over the ankles, embellished with gilt buttons.












GUCCI Spring/Summer 2012 - Milan Fashion Week 





Enjoy the video of '1921 Collection by GUCCI' and inside of her Museo celebrating 90 iconic years. Museo GUCCI opened on September 26th, 2011, at Piazza della Signoria, Florence.






Roberto Cavalli's parade of romantic floral dresses, if you took away the molto-Cavalli tooled-croc hip belt, were fluid, realtively quiet, and a kind of great. To the floor and cut on the bias, the sweeping frocks were done in pretty chiffon mixed with strips of black lace that, with varied degrees of embellishement, brought the looks closer to evening. Rendered in solid black or white with gold trim, ornate exotic skins, or opulent beads and sequins, the jackets and vests alos worked with the kicky gladiator minis in that same chiffon-and-lace combination. What felt like a misstep, literally, were the clunky carved wedge pumps. A more delicate shoe would have taken the romance to the next level. What do you thing?















Roberto Cavalli Spring/Summer 2012 - Milan Fashion Week

Selections by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories

Source: VOGUE
Photography by Marcio Madeira/firstView


Enjoy my previous post -