Showing posts with label British Fashion Awards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label British Fashion Awards. Show all posts

Sunday, October 30, 2011

1920's Fringe Look by Marc Jacobs




New York Fashion Week - Marc Jacobs Spring/Summer 2012 

Marc Jacobs prolonged negotiations to assume the design mantle previously held by John Galliano at Christian Dior have been making headlines for weeks. If and when he signs on the dotted line, Jacobs will become a couturier, fashion's fastest-dwindling subspecies.

Jacobs proved once again that he's one of the industry's consummate showmen. The Lexington Avenue Armory was decorated like a dance hall far removed from our current circumstances in both time and place. Old-fashioned lightbulbs were affixed to wooden beams. As the Philip Glass opera Einstein on the Beach got underway, a sweeping gold curtain parted to reveal his entire cast waiting to hit the runway. The models worked it - stradding, reclining, even leering over their bent wood chairs, Chorus-Line-style, eyes fixed on the audience. Enjoy Marc by Marc Jacobs Spring/Summer 2012 Fashion Show at the end of this post!







Once it was their turn, they hustled toward the cameras wearing kerchiefs in their hair and see though plastic cowboy boots on their feet, and in between drop-waist flapper dresses, denim workwear, sporty sweatshirts, and technogingham hat was practically reflective. Some of the silhouettes echoed last season's clingy lines, but just a smany had the boxy, drop-waist shapes of the season's 1920's. There wwas plenty of fringe, even more bold-colored sequins and paillettes, and most perversely, loads of that clear plastic cut and sewn into skirts or dresses worn over buttoned-to-the-neck shirts.

Backstage, Jacobs said, "I didn't want it to feel real." The show in other words, was the thing. This definetly wasn't one of those Marc collections that sends his fans into a tizzy about all there is to wear in the real lives, nor was it as thought-provoking as his bravura performances have been in the past. Maybe he was preoccupied with his talks with Dior?




A fading antebellum dance hall in the Deep South was evoked by the wooden runway with the posts and beams of its central structure garlanded with yellow light bulbs (and in the many scaled gingham prints and the Amy Winehouse-ian do-rags), but although the Cabaret-era dressing informed the general silhouette of the show - the drop-waist chemise dress indefinite shape - this was not another playful twist on period dressing (the Jerry Hall seventies or the comi-strip fifties of recent seasons for instance).

Instead, it provided a master class in classic Jacobs tailoring and enchanting dressmaking, ignited by some futuristic adventures in fabrication along the way. The gleam of that curtain was echoed in the shimmering effect of sequins and reflective fabrics galore - from thick, shining taffetas to something that looked like the colored translucent plastic in which florists wrap their blooms. Tiers of cellophane organza were shredded like raffia for the shimmy flounces of skirts and leafy sequins were embroidered so thickly they resembled windswept fur. Even the shoes (in textile mixes that often included clear plastic) - pumps with classical elegant heel, and no-nonsense two-tone loafers, and the boxy bags (in mid-century diner colors, like ice-blue, maroon, lemon, and Nile green) were pragmatic in their streamlined utility. After the Bettie Page heroines who trotted the Jacobs runway last season with their hourglass jackets and hobbling pencil skirts, this collection represented a return to Jacobs's softer side.
















 Marc Jacobs Spring/Summer 2012 Collection




Marc by Marc Jacobs Spring/Summer 2012 Fashion Show 






Selections by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories

Photo Credit/Source: VOGUE
Photograhy by Marcio Madeira/firstView


Enjoy 'New Look "Bar" by Louis Vuitton'  
Spring/Summer 2012 Collection 
by Marc Jacobs




&

'Christian Dior Spring/Summer 2012 Collection'




Wednesday, September 14, 2011

NYFW | Marchesa Spring/Summer 2012





New York Fashion Week - Fairytale-like by Marchesa duo Keren Graig and Georgina Chapman. They chose to solely focus their idea of evening around a shimmering, glistening watery palette of petrol, lilac, and platinum that was as pretty as it was irony-free was a blessed relief after the last few days. For Spring Graig and Chapman were inspired by Ilya Repin's 1876 painting Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom, and this lead to hourglass dresses - some long, some finishing around the lower calf, that rippled and undulated with pleated tulle fronds, crystal beading, or silvery chaine. ...





The two prettiest, however, were also the quietest: a pale, pale shell-pink bias-cut chiffon dress that, veiledsparkling beading, and a pale ivory dress that flowed from a scale-like embroidered neckline. Some of these were accessorized with feathery purses, but Marchesa also had two better ideas. One model's hair was dyed bright pink, and the hairdress looked fabulous against all the ethereality. The other was to have four drapper guys help each model ascend and descend, the few steps it required to get on and off the runway.


Quite a few collections have opted instead to tell their stories through white, cream, and ivory, but that's another story. Anyway, it's not that the endless visits to the vivid end of the color spectrum doesn't have its appeal, but there have been times when it has felt too cacophonous and loud and distracting; please, turn it down, just for a second. Ditto to all those abstract, digitalized, exploded, and graphic florals. 

Also it has to be said, occasionally it felt like some of those that got the directive Go Big on Bold Hues and Big Patterns acted on it without really thinking through how to work them in ways that will be understandable and desirable to the women who will be buying the clothes. It's like a Bollywood movie: You are dazzled by a lot of flash and color.



Marchesa Spring/Summer 2012

Source: VOGUE
Photography by Marcio Madeira/firstView