Pleated Goddess Dresses by LANVIN

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LANVIN Spring/Summer 2012 by Alber Elbaz

There came a point in this season in the pell-mell rush of trends the tropical prints, pastels, florals, Deco flapper dresses, and mid-century modern referencing - when a stone-cold thought occured: All very nice, but where does that leave a city woman with a day job? Well, Alber Elbaz, who always organizes his ideas around the condition of women's current lot in in the world rather than scanning the ether to pick out this or that trend, has an alternative to the frilly and the frivolous - he's staging a comeback for the long-lost power woman.

She appeared at the end of his runway in a thunderclap of noise: shoulders, nipped-waist, and thigh-hugging pencil-skirt silhouetted in dramatic down-lighting. This vision of no-nonense Amazon of our times strode past, briefcase in hand and clad in dark tailoring with built-shoulders, and a series of thight, sexy skirts (some slit at the sides); neat, short jackets, and pantsuits, some with the trousers ventilated with slashed seams, too. It's hardly your regular corporate attire, bit within that first section, Elbaz set out the season's most in-depth exploration of go-to-work wear seen at any show so far. It can include dresses and skirts with blouses (in the back-buttoned form, which is beginning to do duty as a new kind of suit), draped hipster pants with jackest, and upgraded versions of sweatsuits. In any case, it was enough to give hope women with an affnity for modern, minimal dressing that one designer. at least, is sparing a thouht for their needs. 

Yet in Lanvin show, there are always changes of gear. Never a one-note designer, Elbaz hasn't yet abandoned the idea of the draped dress - it flew out fast and furious as sheer, tulle, pleated goddess dresses and twists of silk that have become a Lanvin signature. Then things became wonderfully weirder as the designer hit the part where he goes into overload on metallics and abstract embroidery. This time, it involved prints of writing pythons coiled over silk pants and matching blousons, the tops bristling with embellishment. Unsually for Lanvin, it all had a hard, almost slightly menacing, atmosphere about it, but that was cool and exciting, too. Women can't live by pretty flowers alone.

Selections by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories

Photo Credit/Source: VOGUE 

Photography by Yannis Vlamos/GoRunway 

Enjoy my previous post - 

'Beauty Style 2012 by Fendi & Chanel'

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Beauty Style 2012 by Fendi & Chanel

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Fendi Spring/Summer 2012 Beauty Style - This season's FENDI muse is a bit of an eccentric - the kind of girl given to placing decorative bits of gold (or silver) leaf from lash line to brow - and then throwing on a pair of rimless seafoam green sunglasses and a nautical-striped shirt dress for a stroll down the Via Sant'Andrea. "It's a game of textures," said makeup artist Peter Philips backstage. "Mixing fur with leather with a graphic metallic element." Paired with cool nude lips, the look was resolutely bourgeois, with a dash of Byzantine charm.

Enjoy my 1st Beauty-post with wonderful insights of these Maquillage-techniques and Chanel 'Paris-Bombay' Pre-Fall 2012 Beauty-Backstage video at the end of this post. Please, let me know your comments and suggestions. LoL, Andrea

Makeup: Peter Philips for Fendi

Hair: Sam McKnight for Fendi

Models arriving at the Fendi compound from an earlier show wore their hair in chest-length dreadlocks - which made their transformation into Sam McKnight's "madcap mathematicians" moments later all the more remarkable. Their teased, bouffant bobs were "very considered, very structured ... but a little bit destroyed," said McKnight, who finished by pulling out tufts at random. McKnight gave hair its gravity-defying height with Fekkai Coiff Bouffant Lifting&Texturizing Spray Gel before teasing it into a voluminous froth and pinning the end under in a vaguely sixties-esque "faux-bob". He finished with a misting of Pantene Classic hairspray.

"It's amazing!" said model Arizona Muse - dressed in a black blouse, white skinny pants, and her own Fendi fur bib of the tiny silver bits of foil that Philips pressed into place over her upper lids using adhesive gel (models like Candice Swanepoel and Daria Strokous got the same treatment in gold). He traced the upper lashes with a neat winged line of black pencil (Chanel Stylo Yeux Waterproof), then layered on black mascara (Chanel Inimitable). Then, to create balance throughout the rest of the face, Philips dusted transparent pink blush (Chanel Rose Ecrin) over the cheeks and dabbed a bit of foundation (Chanel Pro Lumiere) on the lips.

Chanel Spring/Summer 2012 Beauty Style - "Everything is under the sea", pronounced Karl Lagerfeld over a tablescape of nacreous necklaces and clutch minaudieres fashioned like seashells.

"Have you seen the space?! asked Peter Philips of the white seashell underwater set, when describing the context for the show's neo mermaids with their wet, luminous lids and glistening lips (not to mention the tiny pearl "piercing" along the earlobes, brow, lower lip, and even trailing down the spine). "Karl always has a clear idea of what he wants for the face. He sent me sketches a few months ago," continued Philips, who worked from one of the designer's hand-drawn renderings, as well as fabrics from the collection reflective surfaces, scale-like appliqués, when translating his vision into makeup.

Makeup: Peter Philips for Chanel
Hair: Sam McKnight for Chanel

Riffing on "that boyish thing" that's a signature to the house - it was Mademoiselle Chanel, after all, who revolutionized the woman's pant - McKnight gave hair a deep side part and sleek groomed quality using handfuls of mousse (Sebastian Mousse Forte) and a conditioning mask on the ends (Pantene Repair and Protect Intensive Hair Repair Treatment).

"We need to keep the ends looking wet until the show starts, without putting actual oil in the girls' hair", he said, raking a wide-tooth comb over the crown to create seashell-like grooves along the head and fastneing it into a ponytail. After winding it into a hybrid chignon-bun, he misted it with Fekkai Advanced Brilliant Glossing Sheer Shin Mist and something called Brilliant Diamant - a lacquer-like pro shine spray the hairstylist discovered in Paris. "You can only buy it in France", he said.

Nearly 800 lustrous pearl hairpins were created by the fashion house!

The collection's twinkling iridescent dresses and metallic-threaded tweeds called to mind the rippling sparkle of sunlight across the water. So, too, did Philip's glimmering lids, thanks to a wash of creamy white pigment (Illusion d'Ombre shadow in Fantasme). "It turns into more of a glow as it fades toward the hairline," explained Philips, who the dipped into a pale peach shade (Illusion d'Ombre shadow in Emerveillé), which he gently rubbed from the outer corners of the eyes toward the temples. A line of black pencil along the upper lashes (Le Stylo Yeux Waterproff in Ebene) and another in beige on the inner rim of the lids (Le Crayon Khol in Clair). He finished with a coat of Inimitable Mascara "on the top of the lashes only."

Tiny Chanel bags filled with varying shades of Illusion d'Ombre shadow and the company's cult metallic green-gold Peridot polish were handed to guests entered the majestic Grand Palais.

Chanel 'Paris-Bombay' Pre-Fall 2012 - Beauty Looks

Selections by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories

Photo Credit/Source: VOGUE 

Enjoy my previous FENDI-post - 

'Faces by FENDI' Spring/Summer 2012 Collection'

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'CHANEL 'Paris-Bombay' Fall 2012 - Focus on Details'

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Marble Sculptures by Aquilano.Rimondi

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Aquilano.Rimondi Spring/Summer 2012


Tommaso Aquilano and Roberto Rimondi are giving a lot of thought to the Renaissance - both the fifteenth-century art era and the decade they consider to be the renaissance of Italian fashion: the 1980s. (Important distincton: They said Italian fashion specifically, not fashion in general, calling out Gianni Versace, Giorgio Armani, and Gianfranco Ferré). Anyway, the two have been researching artisanal application techniques for their prints inspired by the marble columns in St. Peters's Basilica in Rome and are using a palette of pastels in the tones of faded frescoes.

If you're wondering about that eighties comment, Aquilano's explanation is that he reveres it as a time when Italian fashion simply felt, well, Italian. "It's the craftsmanship and the quality of fabric," he said, "the sense of color, sense of art."

The tale of Roberto Rimondi and Tomasso Aquilano, better known as Aquilano.Rimondi, is one of both hope and caution. The upbeat part we'll  get to in a minute, but before that, the downside. This talented twosome have, even before their own show already made two appearances, moonlighting as the designers behind Fay, the Tod's-owned outerwear label, and creating a 20th-anniversary collection for Piazza Sempione that's now to become a full-time gig. They joked that they weren't trying to give that multitasker extraordinaire Karl Lagerfeld a run for his money, but clearly they're going to need Lagerfeldian reserves of energy to handle everything on their plate. Non of this, incidentally, is intended as a critisism of the Aquilano.Rimondi boys. It's just recognition of the harsh realities that younger independent designers are faced with, to nurture and sustain their own labels, especially when they might have gotten entangled with previous working relationships that rapidly and unfortunately went south - and how.

Aquilano.Rimondi - a collection that contained many gorgeous, and gorgeously rich in artisanal detail, looks. These two have learned to exploit the best handwork that Italy has to offer, taking a youthful glee in pushing themselves to experiment with the trickiest and most elaborate techniques. Spring is no different. They took as their starting point the Renaissance, and another high point in Italian culture - that would be eighties fashion, the era of Ferré and Versace, what resulted was a silhouette both sculpted and sensual, whether it was their dresses or separate pieces: molded tops with skirts that were short and curved, long and lean, or exploded in panels or tiers of pleats.

They brought originality to the plentitude of digitalized photo prints we've already seen all season, with draping and shadows the recalled marble sculptures printed on the likes of pearl gray or parchment creamy gazar, or as gleaming gilded swirls on silk. Then they went crazy with the embellishments, lavishing 3-D beading on their slim skirts worn with crisp short-sleeved shirts, and edging the seams of the dresses with hand-sewn pearls that echoed the graphic banding of seafoam green, lavender, and taupe. The standouts, though, were all those pleated pieces, expertly cut to swing with a grown-up sensuality, and which caught the fluidity and movement that has been one of the most appealing developments of Milan.

Selections by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories

Photo Credit/Source: VOGUE

Photography by Marcio Madeira/firstVIEW


Enjoy my previous Aquilano.Rimondi-post - 


'Artisanal Luxury by Aquilano.Rimondi'

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