Sat, March 7 2015 » Fashion Blog
Sat, March 7 2015 » Fashion Blog
Sat, March 7 2015 » Fashion Blog
GILES FALL WINTER 2015-16 WOMEN’S COLLECTION – LONDON FASHION WEEK
GILES CASTS A SPELL ON LFW
This season GILES takes us on a hallucinatory journey into a wild walled garden. Imagine it’s the witching hour in a long lost apothecaries’ playground where, in centuries past, aristocratic revellers indulged in potent tinctures and run amok through its yew tree tunnels and stony cloisters. Now a gang of ghostly girls and phantom queens wander among waist-high weeds in A/W 15’s intoxicating prints and ribbon-strewn gowns.
“I was thinking about the allure of the Chelsea Physic Garden, the phantasmagoria of Arthur Rackham illustrations and the haunted tales of Elizabeth Gaskell,” said Deacon, backstage at his LFW show. “This collection draws on the eccentricity, romance and mystery of English craftsmanship. Trippy haute, if you will.”
These inspirations cast an instant spell on the darkened catwalk as a heartbeat-like rhythm began to play and GILES’ opening girls, among them Edie Campbell, Kendall Jenner and Lily Donaldson, appeared in a series of deceptively strict looks.
Black wool cloaks and PVC frock coats were worn with leather knickerbockers, frilled Victoriana white shirts and Jimmy Choo mules. But the mood was soon spirited away by Jessica Stam wearing a dramatic bodice and tulip skirt in a rich jacquard that conjured up dark gnarled branches dripping in pearl chains and medieval gemstones.
Then it was time to get high as magic mushroom prints and embroideries crept up bell- sleeved fitted dresses and cropped riding jackets, becoming intertwined with silver roots and autumnal tendrils. Meanwhile a regal lattice motif engulfed blouses, smocks and wide skirts all tied up with plaits.
Oversized princess coats and bow-waisted cocktail dresses were engulfed by a psychedelic swirl of canary yellow, absinthe green and midnight black florals on rich silks and crushed velvet.
Finally a refracted acid digital print reminiscent of old master oil paintings took over dramatic ball gowns, pleated frocks and grand coats. Erin O’Connor and Anna Cleveland whirled through the dreamlike-space, spinning the audience into blissful oblivion.
Words Helen Jennings
Fri, March 6 2015 » Fashion Blog
Fri, March 6 2015 » Fashion Blog
Fri, March 6 2015 » Fashion Blog
ANTONIO BERARDI FALL WINTER 2015-16 WOMEN’S COLLECTION – LONDON FASHION WEEK
For fall/winter 2015 Antonio Berardi presents a vision of sculptural sensuality. At the juncture where the juxtapositional architectural tropes employed by Frank Gehry — curve and line, nature and artifice — meet, a vision was conceived.
Light, distorted, magnified and undulated, brought movement and transparency to this vision for fall/winter, a vision that retains the trademark Berardi femininity and dynamism.
Fabric is soft and elsewhere structured, sculptured into shell-like curves that spiral and sweep around the Berardi woman’s form.
A palette of pitch, midnight and emerald is interspersed with splashes of neon pink and lilac and shocks of sunflower yellow.
From the folds of floral jacquard emerge, perhaps surprisingly, flashes of crimson and cerise. And, in a blending of formalwear and daywear, heavy beading and rich embellishment encountershearling and cashmere, bringing the collection out of the realms of the fantastical into the everyday.
The Berardi woman is at once revealed and yet concealed, sensuous yet chaste, in a contradictory but highly compelling state of femininity.
Fri, March 6 2015 » Fashion Blog
ASHLEY WILLIAMS FALL WINTER 2015-16 WOMEN’S COLLECTION – LONDON FASHION WEEK
“Girls. All I really want is Girls. And in the morning there is Girls. Cos in the evening it’s Girls.” Beastie Boys, Girls (1985). “It’s about the girls,” says Ashley Williams. “It’s always about the girls.” The ones you want to hang out with.
The hard one at the back of the bus. The pretty one at the make-up stall. The one you to want to have your back. The one who slapped her guy. Girls in bands? Why not. The high-heeled X-terminator. The gum-chewing, cigarette-smoking bad girl that’s always in detention. B52s to Sky Ferreira. Kathleen Hanna to Shampoo. Chloe Sevigny to Jennifer Lawrence.
The Human League chicks to Lana Del Rey. Viva la megababe. Ashley’s girl. She’s such a hot sensation. Clad in PVC, pink shearling, sheer skirts and Swarovski crystals. Her world is street-smart, sexy, shot through with an arch dose of humour and fully realised in brilliantly bratty slogan prints.
She came to rule the world. She did it. With applications for one-way tickets to Mars now open, this is the intergalactic girl to beam you up and escape planet earth with. As her print spells out. “Improve your image. Be seen with me.” Who wouldn’t want to be? “Boys. They’re a dime a dozen.’ Sky Ferreira, Boys (2014).
Fri, March 6 2015 » Fashion Blog
ERDEM FALL WINTER 2015-16 WOMEN’S COLLECTION – LONDON FASHION WEEK
The absorbing depiction of the Parisian apartment of a fictional art collector created by Robin Brown for Helly Nahmad Gallery’s Frieze Masters The Collector, acted as the conceptual impetus for Autumn Winter 2015. A masterful study of character through environment, the notion of building a narrative around a muse captured Erdem’s imagination.
A sense of broken down decorum surrounds his protagonist for the season, the world in which she exists is one of faded glamour where vestiges of an affluent past merge curiously with undeniably modern elements, her wardrobe an amalgamation of decades. The collection acts as a visual memoir of her life through an intense colour palette of regal purple and jewel like hues, applied in offbeat pairings, echoing her peculiarity of character.
The aristocratic richness of materials within the collection is tempered through elements of rawness. Suggestions of loss of grandeur is expressed through metallic jacquards, oddly reversed to expose a textural underside as if through thrifty repurposing, its traditional floral chine intensified through garish accents now revealed. Elsewhere mid-century dress making techniques are explored with pinked antique jacquard cut by hand and then re-stitched to achieve a collage effect, distressed texture found within its fragmentary composition.
A nod to the romance and realism of Visconti’s A Conversation Piece, Erdem explores the clash of culture within her world through transitional pieces where needle punch techniques allow a blending of opposing fabrics; a utilitarian camel coat in weighty wool seamlessly melding with and unexpected rich and ornamental jacquard. Elsewhere luxuriant leopard printed fur coat, an imagined 1950s heirloom, is seemingly and incongruously patched with a wild 1970s shearling back.
Throughout, her imagined surroundings are implied, oval and damask motifs suggestive of stylistic 1960s wallpaper are applied to textural cloque and elsewhere found as guipure lace where delicate contours are engineered around the body, high necked on an organza base to emphasise form in dramatic bold colour combinations. These baroque, sculpted silhouette garments are paired with equestrian inspired boots by Nicholas Kirkwood, underlining the odd, irrational style of Erdem’s muse.
A theme of reveal and conceal, allowing an underlining sensuality from outwardly ladylike designs, continues with the damask motif applied to cutwork midi length, long sleeved leather dresses whilst a rose crested fil coupe balances short hemmed translucency with embroidery-panelled laced ankle-boots and an ostensibly Victorian ruffled high neck – a nod to the contradiction within our muse.
Elsewhere uninhibited short skirts of distressed fil coupe diaphanous dresses are matched with Watteau backs and flounced mini dresses in thread patchwork come to life with phosphorous accents and ostrich feathers, redolent of a spirited Claudia Cardinale character.
This allusion to the golden age of Alta Moda is interrupted and cleverly juxtaposed with the glacially restrained silhouette of the classic Hitchcock anti-heroine form, lending an urbane air through pencil skirted suiting and rounded shoulder outerwear worthy of Kim Novak. The theme of texture continues through tailoring, with hounds tooth Italian tweed left raw and frayed.
The irreverent nature of our muse and her transitory world is epitomised in a speckled narrow engineered rib knit, transmuting seamlessly into a fil coupe gown of unexpected volume and adorned with ostrich in a declaration of tenacity, achieving enduring allure through adversity.
Thu, March 5 2015 » Fashion Blog
PETER PILOTTO FALL WINTER 2015-16 WOMEN’S COLLECTION – LONDON FASHION WEEK
Evoking the narrative and precision of board games, Peter Pilotto and Christopher de Vos rediscover their multi-hued layouts throughout their AW15 collection, with references of snakes and ladders, connect four and ludo.
Shiny counters and pieces, winding mazes and chromed cabochon buttons trace circuits down pinball inspired ensembles. Tracks are needlepunched through boucle jacquards and textures shiver resplendant with intricate handwork.
Tundra whites, dusty rose, caramel and hunter green are shot with chartreuse, peacock blue and mandarin. Tactile snowflakes are knitted into split collar ski sweaters for an opaque density that returns in the chenille-effect of baby alpaca intarsias.
Diverse tactile embellishments continue as wool embroidery blooms across silk crepe picked out in icy crystals flowers, creating a futurist motif through woolen eyelet lace.
Wed, March 4 2015 » Fashion Blog
