A Maison is defined by values, prior than from an aesthetic. The grace of Couture is a real human touch that just like an imprint leaves a sign on everything. It is the Valentino sign, that beyond the Atelier, encounters the street and defines a new code.
Today poetry is in the streets. It appears suddenly when necessary, on walls and it asks for it to be read. An antique art, deeply human and real, changes its contest but not its meaning. It opens and it combines. It becomes an instrument for all.
A gesture of love where Couture and poetry come together, maintaining reality as a horizon. Four contemporary poets – Greta Bellamacina, Mustafa The Poet, Yrsa Daley-Ward, Robert Montgomery – entrust their beliefs on love in a small publication: Valentino ON LOVE.
Jun Takahashi from Undercover, looks to love as well, creating collages, overlapping’s and iconographic puns that in their way act as poems: sharp and immediate.
Pierpaolo Piccioli merges the graphics and the verses with a delicate spirit of synthesis. He embraces the layering of the contents within the short and essential silhouettes, engaging words and prints, intarsias and nuances, matter and jacquards in a composite harmony.
He breaks black with color, uncovers legs to place them on high heels. He defines a code where the lyricism of Couture changes it context but not its meaning. It opens, and it includes.
Love is the bond that connects all. The most simple and most complex of gestures encourages to yield its intricacy in the pureness of a feeling, letting the emotion vibrate spontaneously.
The signs merge, resulting ethereal: they let themselves come upon, impalpable, just as sprouts ready to blossom in everyone’s imaginary, blooming in notions that free fantasies and emotions.
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Tags: FALL WINTER WOMEN 2019-20, VALENTINO, VALENTINO FW 2019-20
Thu, March 7 2019 » Fashion Blog
Silhouette. Abstraction. Resolution through hybridization. Chitose Abe takes familiar utilitarian clothing forms, super-scaling them to the point of abstraction, then re-scaling them to fit the body by adding elements from other forms to make a new hybrid re-mix.
A giant sized trench coat constrained through the addition of a down jacket piece that makes a new, elegant, feminine shape, with couture-like volume and sensuality.
A conventionally sized sweater used as the outer layer, re-shapes an over-sized men’s coat, with an inverted play on a more familiar approach to layering.
An over-sized men’s denim jacket is resolved and re-sized with pleating to make a new womanly hourglass shape that accentuates the waist. with the surplus fabric of the arms re-appropriated into dramatic cuffs.
Celebrating the master of the abstract, Jackson Pollock, sacai-style, with prints inspired not by his canvases but by the paint left behind on his studio floor.
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Tags: FALL WINTER WOMEN 2019-20, SACAI, SACAI FW 2019-20
Thu, March 7 2019 » Fashion Blog
Thu, March 7 2019 » Fashion Blog
This woman knows exactly who she is. She’s travelled all over the world, bringing back images, colours and cultures that have permeated her personality. She could be a reporter, like photographer Marie-Laure de Decker, the icon so dear to Isabel who has captured the reality and beauty of our world for 50 years.
Fed by military inspiration and codes adopted from a masculine wardrobe, celebrates, her adventurer style celebrates cultures, comfort and craft: printed and quilted cotton twills, Indonesian ikats, earthy colours, all-terrain knits, sarong-style draped leather skirts, tie-dye camouflage prints…
The thigh-high boots toy with volumes, the Berber-inspired silver jewellery is worn en masse, the Australian shearling and moleskin down jacket warm up the look, cinched with wide belts in leather and metal. A collection that celebrates freedom, self-confidence and adventure.
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Tags: FALL WINTER WOMEN 2019-20, ISABEL MARANT, ISABEL MARANT FW 2019-20
Thu, March 7 2019 » Fashion Blog
Vivienne Westwood© Copyright 2019
It is a pleasure to design and I’m fortunate and lucky to work in fashion. In this collection we have reduced the product to its essence. To me and many more, what’s truly sustainable is to repurpose what already exists, materials which lie dormant, also making use of by-products which would normally be thrown away.
Another part which I want to extend is working with Africa and for now, we got some hand-painted fabric made in Burkina Faso, working with the United Nations; and I remembered the skills of the village I grew up in, making house slippers and I used my off-cuts to make these slippers to accompany the collection.
What’s most liberating to me is using fabrics I was collecting, sitting on my treasure for more than 30 years because I loved them and I always thought one day I’ll use them. I’m cooking my leftovers, it’s just a great feeling. The world is constipated, the system needs space, you always need to make room. We over produce, we over consume, we overdo everything. We need space.
We have done a small collection which I find more than eloquent because there is going to be another one in 6 months and one should look forward to that. This is the 7th collection I have done as Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood and I called it that because it was a difficult one – I reached the 7 season hurdle: transfiguration.
Clothes make us feel better, fashion is a tonic, something which refreshes our individuality. There is a sacred value in making beauty. To finish this all off I would like to quote Vivienne and say that, ‘fashion is about eventually being naked.’
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Tags: ANDREAS KRONTHALER FOR VIVIENNE WESTWOOD, ANDREAS KRONTHALER FOR VIVIENNE WESTWOOD FW 2019-20, FALL WINTER MEN 2019-20, FALL WINTER WOMEN 2019-20
Thu, March 7 2019 » Fashion Blog
‘Défilé’ Co-ed Collection
Degeneration is a decadent process through which an entity is reduced to its purest core. At Maison Margiela, collections are composed through a pyramidical structure where ideas developed in the Artisanal ateliers filter into consolidated form. For the Autumn/Winter 2019 Défilé co-ed collection, creative director John Galliano induces the digital decadence identified in the recent Artisanal show and proposes a purified sense of restraint. From one collection to the other, this image of degeneration is demonstrated through the reduction of garments themselves.
The overstimulation created by a computer-generated culture of artifice alters reality and confuses fabrication for truth. With cyclical centennial timing, a new era of decadence sets in: excess inevitably followed by decay. Oversaturated by impressions, the millennial generations native to life in cyberspace begin to search for authenticity. Through the evolved language established at Maison Margiela, John Galliano employs decadent cutting to reduce familiar garments to their most authentic form – their core, their silhouette, their proportion – retaining only the memory of what once was.
Appropriating the inappropriate, traditional wardrobe staples fragmentise and migrate to new areas of the body. A flannel coat transforms into a dress, an equestrian trouser mutates into a bustier with a skirt, and a faux leather trench coat morphs into shorts with decortiqué hems. Trousers cut open and flattened become skirts, dresses or capes, their voids filled in with fabric. Flat cutting appears in jackets and dresses brought to life in strategic cuts from which three- dimensional shapes are raised and back-panelled in contrasting lining.
Through degeneration, conventionally gender-specific garments become truly genderless, heralding the combinaison: a top and bottom in one. Excess rears its head in the decadent symbol of pink flamingos, illustrated in the flamingo sequence print fabricated entirely from computerised textures and forms. Exercised in the juxtaposing panels of black or grey outerwear, its sensory overload highlights the contrast between overflow and degeneration. Through this inverted excess, Maison Margiela proposes a new idea of purity.
Materials
The idea of degenerating garments down to their purest core embraces the use of humble fabrics from the classic men’s wardrobe. Here, herringbone, flannel, equestrian and cavalry twills, Harris tweed, felt and coats created in collaboration with Mackintosh represent a feeling of authenticity. Wadding overlaid with chiffon, in outerwear evoking Maison Margiela’s Glam Slam bag, links to the idea of nomadic glamour. The honest character of these materials is contrasted by the over-satiation of a flamingo sequence motif made up of pink flamingos and artificial textures and structures, woven in jacquard as well as printed on nylon. Echoing a sense of excess, embroideries composed of beads, pearls and sequins adorn lace, a glamorous element reflected in plume trims. Organza features in overlay on chunky knitwear and cotton poplin shirting. Next to elements of chiffon, duchesse and tulle, it cements the Maison Margiela codes of unconscious glamour and reverse dressing.
Technique
The decadent cutting first proposed in the Spring/Summer 2019 Artisanal collection informs techniques. As classic garments are deconstructed, their components migrate on the body: a trouser becomes a cape, a coat morphs into a short, another coat transforms into a halter-neck dress. Employing the Maison Margiela code of shadow play, one garment is evoked within another through stitching or the placement of components associated with other parts of the body. In flat-cut jackets and skirts, strategic cuts form three-dimensional shapes raised and back-panelled in contrasting lining. Capitonnage jackets – one bonded to bias-cut chiffon – bring to mind Maison Margiela’s signature Glam Slam bag. Reflecting the artisanal vocabulary established by John Galliano at the house, techniques such as decortiqué, unconscious glamour, reverse dressing, dressing in haste, anonymity of the lining, nomadic cutting and the memory of garments are intrinsic parts of the collection’s genetics. Keeping in line with the gender-nonconformist philosophy of the house, every look was fitted without attention to gender.
Palette
The palette sees a contrast between excess and degeneration. A multi-coloured sequence motif features bright pink flamingos among a sea of oversaturated hues. It is juxtaposed by the authenticity and purity of blacks, greys and ivory.
Accessories
Jewellery draws on the futuristic language of cyberspace in silver-plated palladium display rings and cuffs worn on gloves featuring the flamingo sequence motif. Echoing those codes, necklaces and ear cuffs constructed in the image of flattened bicycle chains also draw on the image of inverse excess. Detached collars in flamingo sequence printed neoprene with clear material detailing appear inverted. Mary Janes draw on the unnerving idea of magnified doll shoes introduced in the Artisanal collection, and appear in rubber, leather and patent leather. The Louis 22, a square- toe heeled boot in flamingo sequence print satin, nods at the shoes of Louis XIV and further takes its name from Maison Margiela’s numeric code for shoes. Finally, a round-toe heeled boot features in leather. Alongside the Glam Slam and the NDN, the collection launches a new take on the existing 5AC bag in a fabric that reacts to UV rays and changes colour accordingly.
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Tags: FALL WINTER MEN 2019-20, FALL WINTER WOMEN 2019-20, MAISON MARGIELA, MAISON MARGIELA FW 2019-20
Wed, March 6 2019 » Fashion Blog
Wed, March 6 2019 » Fashion Blog
Wed, March 6 2019 » Fashion Blog
Wed, March 6 2019 » Fashion Blog
Chain of Inspiration
A sudden inspiration invites you into a journey, where unknown sceneries take your breath away; unknown scents captivate you. You find yourself humming songs and getting to know unforgettable taste, thinking thoughts you never had before. Chance encounters continue to stimulate our creativity.
“DOUGH DOUGH” is a free and flexible textile with outstanding shape memory, and the ability to stimulate a person’s imagination, turning them into artist and creator. New for this season is the inclusion of a wool-like fibre into the fabric mix, in a variety of colors, allowing for a softer feel and texture.
The new fabric this season is called: “BLINK” and has a color palette reminiscent of layers of colored lights. This resin printed fabric creates a new pattern, resembling a kaleidoscope. Through our unique discoveries, new possibilities arise.
« DOUGH DOUGH » est une matière que l’on peut modeler librement et qui possède une mémoire de forme exceptionnelle permettant de stimuler l’imagination de chacun en révélant leur fibre artistique et créatrice. Cette saison, DOUGH DOUGH évolue encore : des fibres d’une grande douceur telles de la laine sont incorporées au tissu, dans une large variété de couleurs.
« BLINK », l’innovation textile de cette saison offre une palette de couleurs rappelant celle des spectres lumineux. Des motifs en résine sont imprimés sur le tissu formant ainsi un effet kaléidoscope. À travers nos innovations, de nouvelles possibilités de porter le vêtement apparaissent.
ISSEY MIYAKE x UN Continuing our shoe project with UNITED NUDE in its sixth season, two new styles are introduced.
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Tags: FALL WINTER WOMEN 2019-20, ISSEY MIYAKE, ISSEY MIYAKE FW 2019-20
Wed, March 6 2019 » Fashion Blog
