ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories: Sarah Burton

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

British Fashion Awards 2011

British Fashion Awards 2011 -

Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen - 'Designer of The Year 2011'

Mary Katrantzou - 'Emerging Talent Ready-to-Wear 2011'
Christopher Kane - 'New Establishment Award 2011'
Stella McCartney - 'Red Carpet 2011'
Victoria Beckham - 'Designer Brand 2011'

For Victoria Beckham's Spring/Summer 2012 Collection, the sportswear trend that has swept the New York season thus far was also an important element in her focused collection. But Beckham grafted her own luxe couture sensibility onto that, crafting a boule shaped anorak out of thickly woven Mikado or translucent gazar silks, for instance, or simulating the perforated, aerating sports mesh that we have been seeing everywhere in chic devore velvet. Enjoy Victoria Beckham Spring/Summer 2012 Fashion Show at the end of this post! LoL, Andrea

Beckham’s crisply tailored coats and little shift dresses (some slyly spliced with sheer net slithers) in thick bonded jersey had a Mod flavor to them – emphasized by Stephen Jones’ chic little kepi hats, and tailored leather purses (her latest design hangs from a fine chain; you can “play with it like jewelry,” Beckham explains). She kept that sixties vibe but added movement via pleats set at the hipline like high fashion tennis frocks.

Even those signature hourglass dresses that seem poured over the body sublime had a sportswear touch; they were suspended from straps that looked like rock climbers’ safety harnesses.

Victoria Beckham cemented her high-fashion status by winning Designer Brand of the Year at last night’s 2011 British Fashion Awards. The designer once derided at as a wannabe beat industry stalwarts Stella McCartney, Burberry and Tom Ford to one of the annual ceremony’s most prestigious accolades. So will the award convince Beckham that it’s time to bring her show to London Fashion Week?

It’s a move much desired by the British Fashion Council, which organises the BFAs every year. Beckham runs her business out of London, but is said to present her collections in New York partly out of concerns over a snarly response from the British press.

Last night’s award would seem to provide one of the most formal reassurances available that the designer is respected. After three straight years of nominations, London may be sending a message: Beckham has a place in the British fashion scene, if only she would claim it.

If Beckham does make the move to LFW, she’ll be in good company. Stella McCartney announced last week that she will host a special fashion presentation at LFW in February 2012. McQ also said it would present its first catwalk show during the A/W ’12 shows. Previously, Burberry surged to must-see status when it brought its Prorsum show from Milan to London for LFW’s 25th anniversary season in 2009. Matthew Williamson, Vivienne Westwood and Temperley also returned, and have stayed.

Selections by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories

Photo Credit/Source: VOGUE

Photography by Marcio Madeira/firstView

British Fashion Award - 'Designer of The Year 2011' -

Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen Spring/Summer 2012 Collection

'Silvery Mother-of-Pearl by Alexander McQueen'

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Silvery Mother-of-Pearl by Alexander McQueen

Paris Fashion Week - Alexander McQueen Spring/Summer 2012 by Sarah Burton: "It's all about Gaia, the wonder of nature, the sea."

With this one, she, like Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy and Karl Lagerfeld at CHANEL, and VERSACE, made her theme aquatic. Burton, howeever, must have thought long and hard before taking that plunge though, because the underwater world was also the ominous, apocalyptic theme Alexander McQueen explored in his last show, "Plato's Atlantis", for his spring 2010 collection. He saw the world drowned by global warming and women morphing into sea mammals with crustacean feet.

Enjoy the Alexander McQueen Spring/Summer 2012 Fashion Show at the end of this post by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories - The Fashion Channel.

Burton's way of looking at clothes is lighter than that of her former boss in both senses. Her collection despite the fact taht it honored McQueen's classic silhouette in the strict, suited opening, and his aggression in the lace-masked heads and gleaming, fetish black leather is actually far more life-affirming and free of construction. But there is not one iota of slipping back in the question of quality. In fact, this show, with all its allusions to coral, sea anemones, barnacles, frondy seaweed, silvery mother-of-pearl, and bone-white seashell, was practically at the level of a Parisian couturier, but created out of McQueen London studio, with the help of those many interns and their chiffon-massaging fingers.

Rich and imaginatively extraordinary as it was, it also elevated the McQueen identity to a diplomatic fantasy-plane beyond which questions can't be asked. Speulations as to exactly which dress the Duchess of Cambridge might choose from this fantasia are impossible. Like most women, she never dresses this opulenty in real life. Any woman who wants a translation of the froth and the curviform peplums which appear here will without a doubt find it in the parallel commercial collections Sarah Burton has sorted out just as beautifully.

Observing it all somewhere a little further off, David Burton, the designer's photographer-husband, remarked, "When you think about everything that's happened to her in the past eighteen months, you just couldn't make it up, could you?"