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Posts Tagged ‘fast-fashion’

September 12, 2011, 4:09 pm

By ERIC WILSON

Fast Fashion

Eric Wilson’s posts on the runway shows.

Just a quick dispatch about Donna Karan on a busy Monday afternoon of back-to-back shows. Ms. Karan held her show in a gallery in far-off Chelsea, where Wyclef Jean showed up in a cute straw ball cap and rhinestone studded jeans. Ms. Karan said she has been traveling to Haiti over the last year and plans to have a party tonight celebrating a group of Haitian artists.

There was a drumbeat on the soundtrack during her entire show, which featured mostly sexy, slinky dresses with tribal prints, and full circle skirts painted with tribal masks. People were raving about the necklaces, made of wood shards and Lucite piled up on necklaces and wristlets.

September 12, 2011, 1:02 pm

By ERIC WILSON

Fast Fashion

Eric Wilson’s posts on the runway shows.

A sociologist looking to understand the vast diversity of species that cohabitate the fashion kingdom would do well to observe the audience at a Carolina Herrera show.

At Mrs. Herrera’s show on Monday morning in Lincoln Center, there was Renée Zellweger in a gray form-fitting dress with her legs side-crossed in such a manner as to suggest she was performing a new form of yoga in her seat. On the other end of the spectrum was Nicki Minaj, wearing a tunic made of hundreds of neon puffballs that made her look like a large gumball machine. Compounding the absurdity of this image was the fact that Ms. Minaj was seated between Stefano Tonchi and Anna Wintour.

Susan Tabak, a sort of perennial presence in fashion, though I’ve never really understood her precise role (socialite? blogger?), stopped by to ask if I’d heard that she now has her own perfume. Of course I had, since she and her publicists had sent me at least three e-mails. It is called Sortir le Soir, which I would loosely translate as I Go Out a Lot at Night. But I was more fascinated by her fake eyelashes, which appeared to be an inch long, and her dress, vintage Ungaro, though sadly not from the Lindsay Lohan collection.

“Ungaro,” she said. “E-man-uel Ungaro.”

Mrs. Herrera, meanwhile, was also thinking of rare birds for her spring collection, which included some pretty, pretty prints of sparrows in canary yellow and robin red, and dresses with embroideries that appeared sometimes as squiggle marks, sometimes in grids or stripes that with their silvery palette looked a little Art Deco.

In an unrelated note, and maybe the pace of Fashion Week is getting to me, but on my way out of the show, I would swear I heard a young woman ask the security guard, “Could you tell me how to get to Eileen Fisher Hall?”

September 11, 2011, 6:16 pm

By ERIC WILSON

And they were wearing almost the same thing.

It wasn’t quite a fashion faux pas. Oscar de la Renta, who serenaded shoppers last week during Fashion’s Night Out, wore a khaki suit with a nicely tailored blue shirt, open at the collar. Valentino, who brought down the house at Carine Roitfeld’s party last night with his renditions of “My Way” and “Unforgettable,” wore a taupe-ish suit with a blue shirt and tie.

Fast Fashion

Eric Wilson’s posts on the runway shows.

For a moment, some of us across the way were hoping that their coordinated outfits meant that they might be planning a duet on Ms. Von Furstenberg’s runway, or possibly forming a new boy band.

Alas, Mr. de la Renta said, no. He hadn’t even heard about Valentino’s performance.

“Where was this?” he asked.

Oh, well. Ms. Von Furstenberg’s collection included a lot of simple floral prints on all manner of sportswear, the color-saturated sort that recalled Warhol paintings and Scandinavian textiles. Some of her outfits had little belts with pockets attached; a couple of others came with matching backpacks. Early in the show, there were two brown tweed dresses, one simply cut with an aqua collar, the other nicely draped, both of which suggested that Ms. Von Furstenberg, if she had to, could make a burlap sack look good.

At the end of the show, she took her bow with the designer Yvan Mispelaere and a handful of American flags, which she distributed to familiar faces throughout the audience.

September 11, 2011, 1:10 pm

By ERIC WILSON

The atmosphere before Victoria Beckham’s runway show at Astor Hall in the New York Public Library Sunday morning was somber, with the lights dimmed and some guests noting the queasiness of getting on with the business of Fashion Week, even as the 9/11 memorial services were taking place downtown.

Fast Fashion

Eric Wilson’s posts on the runway shows.

Ms. Beckham did away with her customary routine of narrating each look during the show, though you could still hear her say, “I’d like to start by thanking everyone,” just before the music cut her off.

The news from her spring collection, which included the usual array of body-contoured dresses, was the use of thick grosgrain straps with metal hardware along the neckline, which, according her press notes, “reinforces a fresh functionality within the collection.” I have no idea what fresh function they could possibly serve, besides holding up the dress. The straps made the dresses appear less expensive than they really should, given Ms. Beckham’s taste in fabrics.

Her coats, however, were gorgeous, including a navy topper with a side zip, worn with over-the-knee black boots, and a rounded shoulder jacket that gave the impression of a bomber in couture-grade double-face silk. There was a white anorak, too, in a stiff papery fabric that looked devastatingly delicate.

September 10, 2011, 3:01 pm

By ERIC WILSON

Fast Fashion

Eric Wilson’s posts on the runway shows.

Felipe Oliveira Baptista had a nice debut at Lacoste this morning with a collection that featured women’s looks largely based on rugby shirts, some cool outerwear pieces and, for men, a larger-than-usual piqué used on blazers and polo shirts that looked nice and breathable. Mr. Baptista, who is Portuguese by birth, shows his own line in Paris and took over Lacoste this season from Chistophe Lemaire, who scooted over to Hermès.

I can’t say the Lacoste collection was a shocking change from one designer to the next, but that’s probably because the label’s brand identity is so well established that anyone who approaches it is going to start thinking about energy, optimism, sport and preppy colors. One thing that stood out about Mr. Baptista’s show was that he started with a more neutral palette to make it feel “slightly urban,” he said, and then added pops of color here and there, like a blue men’s blazer, or a blue viscose and silk piqué minidress that had a loose fold of fabric draped at the back. His spring outerwear pieces also looked great, with several short Macs, for both sexes, trimmed with leather details.

“I grew up with Lacoste,” Mr. Baptista said. “It was a very big challenge to go and work with a brand that is so worldwide and enormous. I wanted to make things simple, but simple that doesn’t mean boring.”

September 8, 2011, 5:41 pm

By ERIC WILSON

Political correctness has rarely been a consideration for the designers Daniel Silver and Steven Cox of Duckie Brown, who often take inspiration from elements of London subcultures that are not always savory. It is from them, years ago, that I first heard the term “chav” used to describe a group of binge-drinking, disaffected underclass teenagers who once embraced the brand Burberry to such a degree that they began to undermine the company’s brand image.

Fast Fashion

Eric Wilson’s posts on the runway shows.

After their spring show on Thursday, Mr. Cox said that the collection was influenced by “Bexleyheath boys,” young working-class men who are characterized by their loutish behavior and by wearing tracksuits and hooded sweatshirts. It’s a stereotype, for sure, that Mr. Cox and Mr. Silver turned on its head, creating tracksuits in superfine windbreaker materials, and feminizing the look in versions printed with pastel roses.

“It’s a New York fashion designer version of a Bexleyheath boy,” Mr. Cox said. “Imagine you are in the most beautiful gang in the world.”

September 8, 2011, 1:36 pm

By ERIC WILSON

At New York Fashion Week, particularly with the September shows, there is always a slight back-to-school feeling whenever all the editors and retailers reconvene, as they did this morning in Lincoln Center, in all their latest finery.

Fast Fashion

Eric Wilson’s posts on the runway shows.

This morning also happened to be the first day of school for most New York City students, and at least in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, the students were better dressed than the fashionistas. I was particularly taken with a young woman who was wearing an oversize white dress shirt backwards and belted. (It’s also Fashion’s Night Out, so that may explain why so many people look done-up today.)

Lincoln Center, meanwhile, was the usual sea of black, brown and beige, apart from Dani Stahl, a Nylon editor, who wore tight bright red pants in the front row of Richard Chai’s show. Amar’e Stoudemire of the New York Knicks, now such a fashion groupie that he threatens to overtake Kanye West, sat between GQ editors in a brown V-neck sweater and hat. So much for the view of the person behind him.

Oddly enough, Mr. Chai, who is known for favoring a gritty palette in his athletic-influenced street wear, took a different direction this morning with a lot of color, including a peppy striped yellow dress among his women’s looks and brogues for men with neon-hued soles. A couple of the models wore bright lipstick as well, one in a shade of blue so vivid it looked as if she had just downed a Slurpee.