ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories: New York

Monday, September 19, 2011

NYFW | Van Gogh's Sunflowers by Rodarte

New York Fashion Week - Rodarte Spring/Summer 2012 - Last season Kate and Laura Mulleavy were inspired by the sun-kissed Great American plains and the world evoked by the movie Days of Heaven. This season they are staying en plein air in the sunflower-filled Provencal fields of Vincent van Gogh's unbridled imagination.

There is more mid- and late-century couture influence in some of the gala shapes: swathed fichu necklines and bodices erupting into buoyant skirts, for instance, and even a Reine Margot bodice or two that seems plucked from the Christian Lacroix archive. But the fertile and poetic Mulleavy imagination grafts these touches onto modernistic effects. Mediterranean skies are lit by a full moon, and a brilliant Milky Way is evoked in gleaming metallic brocades, crystals nestling in the folds of knits, and clunky heeled sandals in reflective-mirror silver.

The Mulleavys seemed to have all bases covered, from the ethereal to the rock star, which will serve their fan base, represented at their show by an eclectic best-dressed celebrity front row that included Taylor Swift, the enchanting Fanning sisters (all in soft ivory lace and tulle layers), Rooney Mara in a black Goth ensemble, Saoirse Ronan in a printed peplum number, and Beyoncé Knowles in a tea-stain tulle puffball.

'Rodarte's Van Gogh Spring/Summer 2012'

Photo Credit/Source: VOGUE

Photography by Marcio Madeira/firstView

Enjoy my previous post -

'NYFW | Long Island's North Shore by Ralph Lauren'

Friday, September 16, 2011

NYFW | Long Island's North Shore by Ralph Lauren

New York Fashion Week - Fast-forward nearly 40 years, when, after various returns to that time and place, Lauren's eye is fixed once again on the gilded mansions of Long Island's North Shore. Ralph Lauren's Spring 2012 collection is an homage to the world he helped create so indelibly all those years ago, with a gentle, romantic, yet moneyed look: ruffled georgette blouses; slithery, slippery bias-cut dresses: charmeuse wide pants so light and fluid they were like lingerie in trouser form ...

... the cross-body purse wittily reinterpreted as a bag that looked like a fringed silk shawl; and strappy pearl python sandals on metallic high heels that evoked Chrysler Building at a time when it was still only a twinkle in the eye of its architect, William Van Alen, and not twinkling on the Manhatten skyline.