Ecco Domani® Announces $50,000 Donation to the Meals on Wheels COVID-19 Response Fund AND Reveals Collaboration with Fashion Designer Brandon Maxwell

 Ecco Domani Pinot Grigio today announced a $50,000 donation to the Meals on Wheels COVID-19 Response Fund established by Meals on Wheels America. Inspired by fashion designer Brandon Maxwell, who has previously supported the organization and whom Ecco Domani enlisted to give its bottle a bold new look for the 2020 summer season, the donation will benefit the Meals on Wheels COVID-19 Response Fund to help local senior nutrition providers actively responding to the evolving COVID-19 crisis across the U.S., as well as assist with the supply of nutritious meals to vulnerable senior citizens during this pandemic.

While Brandon Maxwell's limited-edition label will hit shelves nationwide on June 1, Ecco Domani was inspired to lend its support and unveil the collaboration early after seeing Maxwell's commendable, proactive response to help those affected by the current crisis.

"Brandon Maxwell's bold approach to design was one of the initial reasons we were drawn to partnering with him," said Maud Pansing, Vice President of Marketing for Ecco Domani. "Not only does Brandon inspire us through design, but his recent philanthropic efforts encouraged us to provide support through our own donation commitment to Meals on Wheels America. We're filled with pride to announce our limited-edition label collaboration with Brandon and hope Ecco Domani fans and consumers everywhere can look forward to embracing their statement-making style this summer."

Brandon Maxwell officially announced his partnership with Ecco Domani on his Instagram yesterday, offering viewers a first look at his limited-edition label which is dressed in his signature monogram and leopard print designs. Classically chic, the label's standout pattern complements Ecco Domani's timeless, quality flavor profile, making it a trusted Pinot Grigio for nearly 25 years. The limited-edition label from Brandon Maxwell marks Ecco Domani’s sixth iteration of its annual Designer Label program.

"When Ecco Domani initially approached me to design a limited-edition label, it felt synchronistic as I grew up around the brand through my father's distribution company," said Brandon Maxwell. "For the design, I drew inspiration from my Fall/Winter 2019 collection to create a label that fully captures Ecco Domani's bold personality and offers consumers the opportunity to make a confident statement, even if enjoying a glass from the comforts of home."

The limited-edition label from Brandon Maxwell marks Ecco Domani's sixth iteration of its annual Designer Label program. The eye-catching bottle will be available for purchase in stores and via third-party delivery services nationwide beginning June 1, 2020.

Brandon Maxwell is a luxury women's ready-to-wear label launched in New York in 2015. The brand was born out of the desire to make women feel beautiful, sophisticated and powerful, with timeless garments that are impeccably tailored. With a focus on craftsmanship, the entire collection is designed in New York City.

Maxwell was awarded the 2019 CFDA Award for Womenswear Designer of the Year, the 2019 FGI Fashion Star Award, the 2019 Texas Medal of Art for Design, the 2018 Woolmark New York Semi Final Prize Award, 2016 Fashion Group International Rising Star Award for Womenswear, the 2016 CFDA Swarovski Award for Womenswear, and was named a finalist for the 2016 LVMH Prize. Maxwell is a judge on Bravo TV's Project Runway.

FASHIONADO

Streetwear Brand 'Social Distance Social Club' Launches Collection

 Social Distance Social Club, a new streetwear brand out of Los Angeles, Ca, launched Friday, April 17, to record-breaking sales. The new clothing line was created to increase awareness around the importance of Social Distancing in the era of COVID-19, while raising money for World Central Kitchen.

The current line-up consists of t-shirts, hoodies, facemasks, crop tops, and tank tops with a straightforward message: Social Distancing Saves Lives. The streetwear collection was created by two young entrepreneurs with strong backgrounds in fashion and brand marketing.

The passion for creating the line came out of their frustration with the mixed messaging in media and government on the importance of social distancing to flatten the COVID-19 curve.

The founders have close friends working in the restaurant industry and healthcare, two of the hardest-hit sectors in the COVID-19 pandemic. They understand the challenges restaurants are facing and the sacrifices the nation's healthcare workers are making.

Inspired by José Andrés and World Central Kitchen, the duo were motivated to create a campaign to raise money supporting World Central Kitchen and #ChefsforAmerica COVID-19 response.

World Central Kitchen is working across America to safely distribute individually packaged, fresh meals in communities that need support by activating restaurants to help meet this demand while providing jobs for their staff and meals for those in need.

Five dollars of every item sold at SocialDistanceSocialClub.shop will be donated to the World Central Kitchen COVID-19 relief program.

With backgrounds in fashion and branding, the founders felt confident they could reframe the Social Distance narrative by aligning the message with an urban streetwear vibe designed to appeal to the America's Gen Z and Millennial generations.

The founders plan on extending the product line to include joggers, socks, jackets, and other small accessories within the coming weeks.

FASHIONADO

Anne Klein's Granddaughter Unites with Iconic Fashion Brand to Launch COVID-19 Relief Effort and Deliver 100,000 Masks to Essential Workers Throughout the U.S.

Anne Klein's granddaughter - Jesse Gre Rubinstein - unites with iconic fashion brand to provide relief during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 WHP Global ("WHP" or the "Company"), owner of the iconic women's fashion brand Anne Klein has united with the namesake designer's granddaughter Jesse Gre Rubinstein to provide relief during the COVID-19 pandemic. To meet the immediate need for Personal Protection Equipment (PPE), the Company today announced the procurement of 100,000 face masks through its supply chain, which will be distributed with Jesse to essential workers and community organizations providing relief across the United States.

"Uniting the brand Anne Klein with the founder's family at this critical time and making a commitment to distribute 100,000 masks to those on the frontlines helping our communities, is a win/win. This is just the beginning of our planned collaboration with Anne's granddaughter, Jesse. We're thrilled to partner with her," said WHP Chairman and CEO Yehuda Shmidman. 

"I am honored to have the opportunity to play a role in supporting my grandmother's legacy by highlighting inspiring individuals who even during this time of great uncertainty, embody the vision and strength to empower their community and uplift those around them," added Jesse Gre Rubinstein, founder & CEO of social media agency, Hello There Collective. "My hope is that this initiative serves as the launch of a powerful network that can both support and inspire others to help not only in the present, but as we begin to rebuild."

Additionally, WHP has tapped Jesse and her agency to spearhead the upcoming launch of Anne Klein's new social series, featuring notable individuals making a difference and connecting communities during this global pandemic.  Following in the footsteps of Anne Klein who inspired so many, Jesse will host a Facebook Live series featuring the heroes of today, inspiring the next generation of trailblazers, with guests from a variety of industries who are championing aid during the pandemic.

FASHIONADO

Tom Ford Fall 2020 Ready-To-Wear

The Friday of Oscars weekend is no time for Tom Ford to be in New York—not when Jennifer Lopez, Renée Zellweger, and Miley Cyrus, along with Jason Momoa, Jon Hamm, and Jeff Bezos, are descending on Los Angeles in the party-filled lead-up to the big awards ceremony. All of them were in the designer’s front row at Milk Studios in Hollywood tonight, the star wattage across the country somewhat dimmed on the opening day of Fashion Week.

Ford has had his naysayers, those who’ve criticized the new CFDA chairman’s move west. But he was utterly in his element here. His power and persuasiveness as a designer is glamour—both his own and that of his A-list clients. How many times did that picture of Zendaya in his spring 2020 molded plastic breastplate on the Grammys red carpet zing around the world? How many more photo opportunities did Ford create tonight?

The proximity of so much fame suggested that he might have had a red carpet collection in store for us. That didn’t come until the end. Instead Ford seemed interested in extending the conversation he started recently, filtering concepts of simplicity, ease, and wearability through an L.A. lens. There was glam of a laid-back variety. He described it as “chic, possibly slightly stoned, and very sensual,” and said he was inspired by a 1967 Bob Richardson photo of Baron Alexis de Waldner and Donna Mitchell sharing a cigarette or a joint. “For me it’s very L.A.”

Replacing last season’s rolled-sleeve tees were sweatshirts sliced at the shoulders, a little boxy and oversize, which were paired with sexy bias-cut embroidered skirts. One model tossed a leopard spot duster coat over a logo sweatsuit in athletic gray—she could have been dashing out for a Kreation juice. Another accessorized her track pants with a sweeping tie-dyed caftan in sunset orange, very Saturday in Malibu. The last time Ford brought his show to L.A.—on the eve of the 2015 Oscars—was the last time he put denim on the runway. It turned up again here, faded and patchworked, with a haute DIY feel. The guys, usually so precise, wore slouched-on satin pants with their embroidered dinner jackets.

The disco ball started twirling to the Fugees’s version of “Killing Me Softly” as Ford sent out his high-glam dresses. The million-dollar question is: Could any of them end up on the most important red carpet of all this Sunday? Our money is on Bella Hadid’s slinky crystalline number with double velvet bows. Ford was definitely speaking J. Lo’s language; she was first on her crystal stilettoed feet to cheer him on.

Source: Vogue

FASHIONADO

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

Fashionado

H&M USA Provides Over Two Million Dollars Of Product For Communities Impacted By COVID-19

H&M USA is providing relief for communities around the country affected

by COVID-19, as well as allowing customers additional ways to

contribute to the effort.

H&M cares about the health and wellbeing of not only its customers and colleagues, but the community at large, especially those affected by the current pandemic.  Therefore, H&M USA will make an in-kind donation of over two million dollars of product to organizations like Children's Defense Fund,  GLAM4GOOD, Los Angeles LGBT Center and the Nashville Rescue Mission.  The product donation will include bedding, sheets, children's and adult clothes amongst other pieces, to help these communities meet their needs in this hard time.

Also beginning today, H&M USA is partnering with Givz so that for every $60 spent on hm.com/us, H&M USA will donate $10 to charities providing support and relief to those on the front line of the pandemic, for a total donation of up to $150,000.  Customers can choose to donate to a myriad of organizations like CDC Foundation,  Direct Relief, Meals on Wheels  and GLAM4GOOD amongst others.

In addition to these efforts, H&M Group has taken actions in the previous weeks to help aid in the fight against COVID-19 around the world.  In March, H&M Group began quickly arranging for its supply chain to produce personal protective equipment (PPE) to be provided to hospitals and health care workers around the world.  In addition, H&M began letting global aid organizations utilize H&M social channels to spread the message of health and safety around the COVID-19 pandemic to followers around the world.

Alongside these actions, H&M Foundation made a $500,000 donation to the WHO's COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund. 

FASHIONADO

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

FASHIONADO