Gucci Fall 2020 Ready-To-Wear

Gucci was back in its week-opening spot today after a season as the Milan closer, and Alessandro Michele got things started with a major bang, staging a show that was as spectacular as it was intimate. A week ago in New York, the fashion show was declared over (a little prematurely, given Marc Jacobs’s own enlivening experience there). Michele is among our most sensitive designers. He feels the immense strain of producing these in-person events multiple times a year—he called them rituals in his postshow presser, and he absolutely intended the religious connotations—but he also understands how the internet age potentially threatens their future. Is it live, or is it Instagram?

Michele is insistent on the live experience, though he’s plenty savvy about social media too. He sent his show invitation via WhatsApp, an attention-grabbing, modern move that also happened to be a green alternative to the mountains of waste created by show production. A pair of WhatsApp’d images followed the invite; one was a snapshot of Michele doing his best #evachenpose, fingers covered in rings and nails painted an aqua blue, and the other was a close-up of a Gucci label stitched with the words Faconnier de Rêves. That’s “Dream Maker” to you and me.

In ringmaster—high priest?—mode, Michele staged a show in the round, exposing the behind-the-scenes action of the hair and makeup teams and the model dressers at work as they prepared the 60 cast members in their looks. There were shades of Unzipped (the 1995 fashion documentary) here, only in this instance the stage revolved, giving the audience full 360-degree views, and—the designer pointed out afterward—doing the same for the models and the backstage crew. “You were our show, and we were your show,” he said in his typically elliptical manner. Entry into the show space was through a backstage area too, and Michele was seen mingling in the crowd.

Inserting viewers in the action would seem a distinctly 21st-century phenomenon, but Michele found himself connecting it with childhood. Last season he paid tribute to Gucci’s Tom Ford days; there were slip dresses, exposed bras, and ’70s-by-way-of-the-’90s pantsuits—the clothes that made Michele fall in love with fashion. Here, he looked further back, taking cues from “the perfection” of little girls’ clothes—pinafore dresses, school uniforms—and, it seemed, from the outfits of those little girls’ minders, nuns to nurses included.

He did something similar at his men’s outing last month; youth, for him, equates to “beauty and freedom.” For whom does it not? But today, as then, he kept the story lively. There were hippie nods, grunge allusions, and Moulin Rouge!–on-the-prairie gowns. And no, he didn’t bypass kink entirely. A patent leather harness was the accessory du jour.

As ever, the rule-breaking irreverence of his clothes was mirrored by the nontraditional beauties who wore them, but there seemed an inordinate number of overly thin models onstage this afternoon. Truer shape diversity would’ve made the communion of this Michele-orchestrated moment more powerful.

A voiceover at the start and end of the show in which the Italian director Federico Fellini celebrates the art of moviemaking illuminated Michele’s intentions today. “Fellini was talking about the sacredness of cinema and the rituals of filmgoing,” the designer explained. “We all belong to the same circus,” he continued, “and I really want to go on repeating this ritual.” Michele is a believer, and in turn, he makes believers of us too.

Source: Vogue

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Louis Vuitton Fall 2020 Ready-To-Wear

“I wanted to imagine what could happen if the past could look at us.”

Nicolas Ghesquière is the cohost of this May’s Met gala (since then cancelled) and Louis Vuitton is sponsoring the Costume Institute exhibition, “About Time: Fashion and Duration,” that the gala celebrates. Ghesquière took as his subject this season the exhibition’s theme: that fashion is a mirror of the present moment—but not any old mirror. At Ghesquière’s Louis Vuitton, it’s a funhouse mirror in which eras, attitudes, and flashbacks intersect. And voilà: we flash forward.

This season Ghesquière enlisted the costume designer Milena Canonero, a frequent collaborator of Stanley Kubrick’s, to create a monumental backdrop of 200 choral singers, each one clothed in historical garb dating from the 15th century to 1950. It was a mammoth undertaking, and quite beautiful. “I wanted a group of characters that represent different countries, different cultures, different times,” Ghesquière explained beforehand. “I love this interaction between the people seated in the audience, the girls walking, and the past looking at them—these three visions mixed together.” The time-collapsing sensation was heightened by the fact that the song the chorus performed was a composition by Woodkid and Bryce Dessner based on the work of Nicolas de Grigny, a contemporary of Bach’s who never found fame.

Arguably, all of fashion is a synthesis of the past, but Ghesquière makes a closer study of it than most. He’s compelled by the anachronous. For spring 2018, he clashed 18th-century frock coats and the high-tech trainers of our contemporary period. Here, there was more in play: jewel-encrusted boleros met parachute pants, buoyant petticoats were paired with fitted tops whose designs looked cribbed from robotics, and bourgeois tailoring was layered over sports jerseys. Ghesquière seemed particularly taken with the visual codes of distance and speed—be it race-car driving, motocross, or space travel.

The biggest jolts came from the collection’s sporty parkas, because they tapped into the language of the street. Seventy years from now, or 600, in a tableau vivant of fashion, the early 21st century will be represented by these signifiers of our collective preference for the comforts and ease of performance wear. Ghesquière has long been applauded for his sci-fi projections into the unknown, but he’s just as resonant when he’s locked into the here and now.

We asked him what his hopes are for the future. “What I want is everyone to be safe,” he said. “This world can become a little more serene, that’s what I wish.”

Source: Vogue

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Balenciaga Fall 2020 Ready-To-Wear

Fashion conversations frequently eddy around how much people enjoy ‘immersive’ experiences, but when the audience groped its way into the darkened Balenciaga stadium and suddenly realized that the first two rows were inundated with water—well, that gave ‘immersion’ a hellishly ominous new twist. It was just the beginning of Demna Gvasalia’s procession of sinister characters, walking on a vast stretch of water beneath an apocalyptic sky rent with fire, lightning and churning seas. “It’s the blackest show I ever did,” he said.

Black: its resurgence, the cutting of new silhouettes, its links to minimalism and classicism, is playing throughout fashion this season. To each their own, though. Gvasalia’s route is always freighted with social observation on the state of the world, power politics, dress codes, fetishism. His intense parade of priests and priestesses in long black robes, with their “religious purity, minimalism, austerity” arose from memories of the Orthodox church in Georgia, and looking at the Spanish Catholic origins of Cristóbal Balenciaga. “He made his first dresses from black velvet, for a Marquesa to wear to church,” said Gvasalia.

“I had a lot of clerical wear in my research. I come from a country where the Orthodox religion has been so predominant,” he said. “I went to church to confess every Saturday. Back then, I remember looking at all these young priests and monks, wearing these long robes and thinking, ‘How beautiful.’ You see them around Europe with their beards, hair knotted back and backpacks. I don’t know, I find it quite hot—but that’s my fetish.”

More than anything, though, Gvasalia said he wanted to shift the parameters of menswear, so he could finally get to don some Balenciaga priestly maxi-skirts himself: “How come it is acceptable for clerics to wear that, but if I put on a long jacket and a skirt I will be looked at? I can’t, even in 2020!” But there were no two ways about it—on the runway, these men looked menacing.

On closer inspection, they were wearing demonic red or black contact lenses; their faces brutally augmented with protheses. “Religious dress codes are all about hiding the body, about being ashamed—body and sex is the taboo. Whereas when you look into it, some of these people are the nastiest perverts,” said Gvasalia.

Holding that thought—about constraint, rules and belonging to sects—set him off, designing neoprene suits with tiny compressed waists for women and black leather “Pantaboots” with padlocked “chastity belts” and a whole series of leather biker suits.

It’s telling that Gvasalia has been spending so much time researching Cristóbal Balenciga’s archive—no doubt in preparation for his first Haute Couture collection in July. Maybe some of what he called “our gala girls” in draped dresses with gloved sleeves and built-in leggings are a foretaste?

As for hope, despite the biblical apocalyptic scenario Gvasalia created for fall: “In spite of all that’s going on in fashion and the world, I still love this. I suppose until the day I die, this is what I am passionate about. I love making clothes.”

Source: Vogue

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Philipp Plein Fall 2020 READY-TO-WEAR

Philipp Plein felt bad about the two gold helicopters. Along with the two gold fighter jets and the gold sort-of Sunseeker and the gold supercars that decorated this stadium show space, they were props that had been commissioned late last year. “If I would have known what happened, after the accident, I would not have put helicopters there…. It was terrible what happened, but I couldn’t cancel the helicopters anymore. So I just wanted to say this.” Not only did Plein get that said preshow backstage, but postshow on the podium with Tyga—following a finale featuring Plein-logo, almost Lakers purple, Swarovski-encrusted, number 24 basketball shirts—he added that he was making a donation to the Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation in memory of Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna.

Say what you want about Plein—and we always do—his presentations are impressive. This one featured not only Tyga but also Jada Pinkett Smith opening the show, Missy Elliott in the audience (due to perform alongside Timbaland at the closing party), and a cast that was sprinkled with faces including Maye Musk (because PP had been in touch to try to cast Elon’s new truck but ended up casting his mom), Cameron Dallas, Bambi, and Gigi Gorgeous. Most impressive of all was that there were 3,000 people in the audience (totally immune to the coronavirus outbreak barely 20 miles away) holding up their phones and streaming it all to social.

The true motive behind all this hoo-ha was the launch of a fragrance that Plein has named No Limits. He hard-selled it from the podium at the beginning of the show and had said earlier that the set was an imagined landscape if you had a no-limits credit line. He expanded thus: “Women have a lot of ideas. They would probably go shopping. And guys would probably do what I would do. I mean, I think I’m a good example for being a little bit crazy, and what I would do is make a big party like tonight.”

The clothes that reflected this party were perfectly Plein-ian. They featured more tiny wannabe studs than a PUA convention. The emphasis was on gold—although PP says he’s a silver man—as a line in the sand to this challenge to Paco Rabanne’s domination of the balls-out, all-subtlety-barred fragrance consumer. There was some pretty good suiting for men and some half-decent (but still more-than-risqué) sequined dresses for women, and cool emoji embroideries on a fishtail parka featuring graffiti dollar signs.

By the end of this seemingly endless but endlessly entertaining show, you had to hand it to PP: He’s a democratic designer. What that says about democracy is another issue entirely.

Source: VOGUE

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Charles Jeffrey Loverboy Fall 2020 Menswear

“It was a modern-day Scottish sacrifice,” said Charles Jeffrey at the beginning of his show debrief. There was an installation of a hollowed-out tree hung with CDs and topped by a disco ball silhouetted against the dark on a platform at the end of his runway—a place for the ritual propitiation of the ancient, abused forces of nature. So it seemed, as his characters came and went, some dressed in costumes hung with horse brasses and sporting huge equine quiffs, others in Loverboy tartans, and still more in pannier dresses. Another sect looked like a cult of eco-paganists clinging together in their own dance of lament.

Let’s leave the narratives aside for a minute. What you see in these show pictures, shorn of surrounding context, is a clear view of his most accomplished, extensive setting out of his stall as a designer yet. Jeffrey has traversed that stage of his career where he’s presented generalized symbolic statements and reached a point where his tailoring fits impressively and sexily, starting with a teal all-in-one trompe l’oeil suit. His waisted, puff-shouldered jackets, flared asymmetric suits, and tartan trousers have magnetic swagger, and he’s gathered in a put-together softness in flower-sprigged prints. Good dresses. Great coats. Fun, bright Loverboy-fanboy sweaters and jersey polos.

There was a two-sided press release with this show. On one, a swirling, free-associative Scottish reel through folk tradition, art inspirations, and reimagined Glaswegian youth culture, undercut with intergenerational anger: “An older, hidden generation have made brutal calculations, and we’ve inherited their catastrophe.” On the other was his densely printed “Manifesto For Conscious Practice,” which contained the most salient takeaway. “We are working every day to improve our processes and working practices to ensure that we mindfully and with accountability respect our environment as much as we respect the people on whom the brand relies,” it began. “As part of this drive we are continuing to place equal value on human wellbeing alongside financial growth.”

Performing and costuming a fashion show confrontation with dystopian ecological disaster is one thing—many fashion shows have an undertow of this today. It’s another matter to actually do something concrete about it. Jeffrey is making that effort. Having gathered his team to study the weekly online sustainability course offered by the London College of Fashion, he is establishing better practices.

For Jeffrey, it goes beyond choosing to use GOTS-certified cotton, cutting down on chemical processes, and using recyclable plastic in packaging. “I think it’s about localism,” he said. “It’s about making sure that with the people you hire, that you’re giving them opportunity and training them. In a logistical way, too, it’s making sure that nothing transports too far, that fabrics are sourced nearby; that our teams go out to the factories we use to make sure the standards are okay.”

It was localism which circled him back to his Scottish roots for this collection. “I visited the Orkney islands and witnessed this pagan ceremony which has been going on for over 200 years. It’s a pageant that’s all about loving nature, amongst the rural families that live there.” The Horse Ceremony of Orkney involves ploughing contests and elaborate hand-crafted costumes. Their influences permeated the mad Teddy Boy horse-mane quiffs, the leather harnesses, and the lines of pom-pom, heart-shaped embroideries. Traveling on to Glasgow, he studied Margaret Mackintosh’s arts and crafts flower drawings.

Back to nature, again. Charles Jeffrey is a responsibility-taker and a realist; he didn’t hold back on acting out the doom he and his younger employees fear in this show. But he’s nevertheless a romantic, and a leader too. That must give those who work for him a rallying, optimistic sense of fun and purpose, even as they put on a show warning of impending disaster.

Source: Vogue

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CAAFD Emerging Designers Outshine During NYFW S/S20 Collective Showcase

The Council of Aspiring American Fashion Designers yet again unveiled various emerging brands during New York Fashion Week.  CAAFD welcomed six thoroughly screened, approved and selected brands from around the globe representing their country of residence or origin. Among the newly selected and returning brands were:  Moon Chang, A Humming Way, Farida Temraz’s Temraza, María Sonia, Yufash and Phoenix Ba. Collectively the brands showcased their spring/summer 20 collections after each other. Individually, the brands exquisitely showcased their unique work of art and passion, exhibiting mix of bright colors, elegance, flare, couture,  and some edgy. With a fully packed, standing room only, six designers showcased at one sitting. Fashion professionals and celebrities among the audience waited patiently as each brand took their turn to grace the runway.   

Egyptian designer Farida Temraz opens the show,  presented her couture brand 'Temraza' with flare and elegance. Though the designer has made quite a name for herself in the red carpet circuit in the previous two-three years, this was Farida Temraz's first being listed on the official fashion week schedule as part of CAAFD newly selected Designer and she did not disappoint. With a total of 24 pieces, the collection consisted of evening gowns, cocktail dresses, and bridal couture. The color palette picked by the designer was mostly pastel with the occasional electric blue and white seen in a couple of pieces. Temraza's common thread was the floral element which Farida Temraz used in almost all her pieces, giving them a refined and elegant touch. She presented with two bridal options - a trumpet gown with a halter illusion neckline with off-shoulder sleeves and a ball gown with ruffled sleeves completed with a veil. The gowns provided with a wonderful contrast between the modern and the traditional.

Phoenix Ba Spring/Summer 20 Floral Motifs Collection Exhibited Majesty. The Toronto based designer presented 15 pieces in her collection and showed surface textile techniques in her collection. Her opening piece was a double-breasted dress with floral motifs on warm tones. The collection consisted of evening wear with A-line and sheath gowns. There were also a couple of skirts, a pair of pants with a tube frill top along with a floral jumpsuit. She incorporated the floral theme throughout the collection as each piece had intricate floral work in it. A lot of different materials were used like mesh and tassels in a couple of pieces. Phoenix Ba's love for hair accessories was also on display as each model walked with floral hair bands or other floral hair accessories matching their outfits. Her finale piece saw a model in a peplum top and pleated skirt walking down the runway. 

Paraguayan Fashion Designer Maria Sonia Shines Bright with Colorful Silhouettes  - Her Spring/Summer 20 brings ‘hope’ to the mood and climate of the world. Think of Spring and every bright color that comes with it. And that is exactly what you will find on the runway for the Maria Sonia Showcasing at the NYFW. The CAAFD approved designer presented a collection of 15 pieces. The colorful collection has been inspired by the designer's roots and the scenario was quite different from what you generally expect at a fashion show's runway. The models walked boldly, freely on the runway, lifting their trains and showing them to the audience. It was a rhythmic dance as the model twirled around to fully show their outfits. Maria Sonia wanted to focus on the evolution and empowerment of women and on the runway, she did just that. Her collection was bright and playful. It consisted mostly of gowns and cocktail dresses. Though the silhouettes were mostly structured, there was a sense of free flow in Maria Sonia's pieces. It was topped off with the floral head fans which could be spotted on all the models. Overall, it was fun and vibrant. Looked like spring had finally arrived! 

Yufash Spring/Summer 20 showcased unisex collection. The designer exhibited a mix of casual, dressy and evening wears with simplicity in mind.  We saw men with t-shirts with bold shining prints and the ladies with glowing evening wears with technology influenced prints. The kind that when the light goes off you become the attention of the room as though you weren’t already noticed. Using various colors from dull to the brightest you can find on the color spectrum, Yufash brand executed elegance with minimalism. The long blue dress and the orange finale dress were few of our favorites.  The designer, Kadri Klampe is an Estonian-born, founder and designer who created Yufash as a unique and forward-thinking brand made for the confident and powerful women of the world, with all garments fabricated exclusively in England. Founded in 2015, Klampe and Yufash have since experience skyrocketing popularity, including having designs featured on the hit television series Scream Queens. Yufash is one of the few designers chosen as part of the CAAFD’s incubate/nurturing program, returning for her second seasonal showcase after her previous career-defining CAAFD showcases. 

A Humming Way Spring/Summer 20 Collection Met with Warmth and Excitement During CAAFD NYFW.  An Indian brand inspired by the old world regalia of the state of Rajasthan in India. With the support of CAAFD, this was the first time that the designer brand was showcasing their collection at the New York Fashion Week. The collection was titled "Matsutake," and represented the mushroom's characteristics of adaptability with utmost brilliance. Matsutake is also known to spread a feeling of hope and that is what Sweta Agarwal tried to emit through her showcasing. The collection had 14 pieces in total. It had a mix of cocktail dresses, gowns and jumpsuits all in a palette of soft pink, browns, gray and white. The collection had a lot of mirrors work to trace the roots from which the designer label began. A humming Way's entire collection was soothing and quite welcoming. 

Moon Chang, the brand to close the show, presented their Spring/Summer 20 Collection leaving audiences in Awe. Her Collection was titled, "Hybrid Beauty." It showed Moon Chang's personal journey during the time she was going through PTSD. The mood was set with the haunting yet musical music being played in the background. The models make-up was done in a way to make their eyes look swollen. She presents a collection of 11 pieces with the focus color being black. Moon Chang described how she survived the death situation with the words "Being Cute." In her collection, she incorporates cuteness with the use of ribbons, ruffles, and flowers. The cute elements with her oversized dresses created a contrast of cuteness in ugly places which is what the designer wanted to show through her collection. Moon Chang, as one of CAAFD favorite brands never disappointed. Her presentation were met me one word sentence, “WOW”.

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Tom Ford NYFW SPRING 2020 READY-TO-WEAR

How many times have you heard that the streets of New York are a runway? Well, the same is true of the subway, only maybe more so. There’s glamour and grit down there, same as above ground, but down below there’s a captive audience.

Tom Ford is the new chairman of the CFDA, and after starting in June his first move was to shorten New York Fashion Week. Simultaneous with the consolidation, designers have been producing more experiential events. We’ve seen bands, modern dancers, and a 75-person choir this week, but only Ford arranged for a private viewing of a disused platform of the Bowery stop on the J/Z line lit an electric pink for the occasion. Many of his 180 guests were surely subway first-timers, but the regular commuters got a big kick out of it too.

What is Mr. Slick doing in the subway? Ford’s notes made mention of the famous shot of Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick emerging out of a manhole cover. The subway also jibes with his new-since-last-season interest in simplicity. “I think that it’s a time for ease,” he wrote, “and in that way a return to the kind of luxurious sportswear that America has become known for all over the world.”

Enter look one: a jersey scoop-neck tee with the short sleeves rolled up to the shoulders and a duchesse satin skirt so white it was beaming. Not exactly subway-safe, it was low-key fabulous and synthesized the compelling high-low essence of the collection. Or consider another example: satin blazers cut characteristically strong and worn with elastic-waist nylon basketball shorts. “These torture me,” Ford wrote of the shorts, pointing out that he doesn’t let his son Jack wear them, even though his classmates do. “I’m always fascinated by things that ‘torture me.’” Ford didn’t play it completely contrary, though. The molded plastic tops were a luscious homage to Yves Saint Laurent’s Lalanne breastplates via Issey Miyake. And Ford’s tailored men’s jackets were typically loud and louche.

Connecting with one of the key messages of the season so far—let’s call it the nearly naked trend, for now—Ford threw a dress coat over a leather bra, cut a jumpsuit so it fell open to expose a strappy bikini top, and sent out a pair of slinky maillots. Of course, the millennial designers doing the same have probably been studying Ford’s old Gucci shows. That legacy of great American sportswear Ford was talking about? He has a stake in it. What’s new is old, that’s just how fashion works. Credit Ford, he’s expanding his vocabulary.

Source: VogueRunway

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