Posts in Fashion
Spring Shopping Spree at Louis Vuitton

Want to update and spice up your spring wardrobe with some timeless, classic, yet up-to-date and modern accessories? Here is a look at the great classic and ultra luxury brand Louis Vuitton. The brand is known for its iconic travel luggage and signature LV leather goods. Nothing will spiff you up like a pair of über-glam sunglasses and a small piece of fashion jewelry or, of course, a new handbag.

Malle Fleurs- A romantic piece rooted in Louis Vuitton history, the Malle Fleurs is a reinterpretation of an iconic piece created in the 1910s for our very best clients: the flower trunk. The water-resistant metallic tray and Vuittonite lining mean …

Malle Fleurs- A romantic piece rooted in Louis Vuitton history, the Malle Fleurs is a reinterpretation of an iconic piece created in the 1910s for our very best clients: the flower trunk. The water-resistant metallic tray and Vuittonite lining mean that flowers, water, or soil can be put in the tray without damaging it.

I’m absolutely in love with this Louis à Paris silk scarf, which comes in two colors, and these My Fair Lady sunglasses, which will give you that classic Audrey Hepburn look. I was looking for some fresh spring colors and found these pink beauties for all different budgets (well, they’re clearly on the high end, after all, since it’s one of the premiere luxury brands, but you can find little things à la Breakfast at Tiffany’s).

Here we get into magenta and dark burgundy colors. I especially love this super chic color which Louis Vuitton calls 'amarente' and the iconic Alma bag which comes in four different sizes–PM, BB, Mini and Nano.

I also fell in love with these classic brown and black staple Louis Vuitton colors. Especially the Alma PM in smooth glossy mirror patent leather with iconic monogram canvas. The oversized LV signature that adorns its instantly recognizable shape is embossed. It is perfectly understated and elegant. The Capucines BB handbag in golden jacquard fabric is inspired by the ornate decorative elements of the Baroque style (you know how much I love the rococo and baroque styles). The precious jacquard is produced on a loom that weaves more than 3000 threads into a perfect fabric. Perfect for a night to shine!

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Accessories, Fashion, Handbags, Luxury, sunglasses, scarfsTrès Haute DivaLouis Vuitton, Sun glasses, scarfs, bracelets, bags, accessories, Paris
Kaiser Karl’s Last Kollektion

Karl Lagerfeld’s Last Ready-To-Wear Collections at Chanel and Fendi

Karl Lagerfeld, a giant of the fashion industry, died last month in Paris at the age of 85. As creative director of Chanel, with whom he worked for 36 years, and Fendi, with whom he worked since 1965, he became an internationally recognized and highly-regarded cultural icon. By combining his brilliance as a designer with his cultural sixth sense, he was able to revive the house of Chanel and make it a worldwide fashion phenomenon, while at the same time designing collections for Fendi as well as developing his own fashion line. As Chanel’s success grew, so grew the lavishness of the sets Lagerfeld designed to showcase the six fashion collections he designed each year—sets backed with everything from Scandinavian icebergs to rocket ships to the Eiffel tower. He also created the concept of the traveling pre-season show, taking his shows everywhere from Seoul to Dallas to Versailles.

“I have to work on my collections,” Lagerfeld told Silvia Venturini Fendi in the weeks before his death. And then again, the day before his death, he gave her the instruction, “I want the bow.” Since she was four, he endearingly called her ‘la petite fille triste,’ the sad little girl. But “now is not the time to be sad,” said Venturini, on the occasion of Fendi’s presentation of Lagerfeld’s last collection. Indeed, it was a celebration of Lagerfeld’s creative genius. His stamp was upon every detail of the collection, revealing what Venturini called “facets of him.” She remembers him gently guiding his dressmakers and tailors, drawing their attention to his sketch and saying to them, “I’m sorry, but it’s a millimeter off just there…”

The collection was exquisite down to the last millimeter, filled with stiff, high, buttoned up collars that Lagerfeld so often sported himself, razor-sharp tailoring, and hosiery and shearling beautifully ablaze with Karl’s reimagined Fendi logos in his own handwriting (known as “Karligraphy”). Adding to it was a 40s style black suit with Art Deco palm fronds worked in to create a subtle tone-on-tone effect. His mostly neutral palette, set off at times with splashes of pink, yellow, turquoise and red, together with his precise tailoring (see the cocoa-hued suit with the white piping) served to unify the entire collection. As a finishing touch for most of his designs, he added broad ribbons, threading them through the belt loops and allowing them to trail gracefully from behind.

When Gigi Hadid closed the show in an exquisite translucent yellow-gold dress, all rose in honor of the beloved designer. Then came a film clip in which Lagerfeld was asked to make a sketch of what he was wearing the first day he worked at Fendi— 54 years ago. Karl, of course, recalled exactly what he had on and sketched it out as effortlessly as he’d sketched out all of the designs he’d created over the years.

Afterwards, Lagerfeld’s co-workers and the models he’d helped with their careers were in tears. “I just feel so lucky I got to meet him and be a part of it,” said Bella Hadid. Venturini Fendi broke the somber mood by repeating what Lagerfeld said after every collection: “And now, the next!”

It’s like entering a painting. Karl Lagerfeld’s last set for Chanel is a place of beautiful snow-decked chalets high in the Alps, a serene winter-wonderland with the Chalet Gardenia at its center. After the models take their places in front of the chalet, a voice in French announces a minute of silence. A hush falls over the vast Grand Palais.

The stillness is broken by Lagerfeld’s words, spoken in French, coming over the speakers. In an interview with the press he is asked why he took the job at Chanel 37 years ago, a job he’d first turned down. “…Everybody was saying to me to not accept the appointment because it was the impossible mission of reviving a maison. Today, we try to reanimate even the most absurd brands, but at the time there was a need for new names…When they asked me a second time, I accepted because everyone was saying to me: ‘Don’t do it, it won’t work. But it’s the first time that a brand became a fashion thing again, apparently, something that you want, even to the Queen Mother of England…I will never forget, when she got out of the car. We’d made the decor look beautiful, I can tell you that! A fortune—flowers and everything. She said in English: ‘Oh, it’s like walking in a painting.’ And that, I will never forget.”

To the sound of wind and the music of Nils Frahm’s Spells, Cara Delevingne steps out of the chalet in a long pied-de-poule coat and white-legged tweed suit. The other models proceed down the snowy lane of the Grand Palais in big coats over slouchy trousers and mismatched tweeds, followed by Nordic sweater dresses, colorful down jackets, classic black and white evening cloaks, ending with white feathered cocktail dresses looking like snowballs. Sparkling sequins, icicle and snowflake motif jewelry and accessories complete the impression of fragile snow creations.

Virginie Viard, Lagerfeld’s right hand and successor, takes a short bow. A brand spokeswoman confirmed that she had continued tweaking the clothes following Lagerfeld’s death.

The show ends with the soundtrack of David Bowie’s Heroes (which I found to be jarring, given the beauty of the show) with the models strolling down the snowy lane during the finale, wiping away their tears and the audience rising to give a standing ovation.

It was a delicate memorial to the iconic Kaiser Karl who transformed something like an irrelevant (at the time) Fashion House into a worldwide empire. — nowfashion

It should be remembered that, by the late 1970s, few cared about Coco Chanel’s legacy. Her canon had been put in the shade by Yves Saint Laurent until Karl Lagerfeld was hired into the house by the Wertheimer family in 1983. It was Lagerfeld who irreverently illuminated the codes of Chanel—irradiating them in the constantly changing sidelights of the events of four decades’ worth of current affairs, the serial revolutions of fax, the Internet, social, and the global reach of fashion to new generations in Asia, and beyond…. the unforgettable memory of Karl Lagerfeld’s elegant, frivolous mind was lifted onto the Olympus of the fashion greats — Vogue

Karl Lagerfeld's reign at Chanel ended beautifully — Still, fashion changed forever the day Lagerfeld died. With the power of his personality and his talent, particularly as expressed through his work for Chanel, he bridged eras and captivated generations of star-struck admirers within and outside the industry, a constant Olympian presence in an ever-more frenetic fashion landscape. He stayed relevant by refusing to ever look back, but only forward. — WWD


Photo Sources: vogue.com orientpalms.com nowfashion.com fendi.com chanel.com wwd.com

Fashion, Karl LagerfeldTrès Haute DivaKarl Lagerfeld, Chanel, Fendi, Après-Ski
Highlights from London Fashion Week Fall 2019 RTW

Valentinoesque Volume sweeps the Runway in London

Who’d ever think that a flyer for discount furniture could inspire a fashion collection. Hear what designer Matty Bovan had to say about it: “It had this headline, ‘In Uncertain Times, This Is a Cert!’ which I thought was so disgusting and perverse and hilarious, I had to use it for this collection.” He added, “It’s an ode to England, really,” harking back to the superstitious days of the 17th century.

Today, there are known to be 92 naturally occurring elements. In the days of the Greeks there were only four: Earth, Air, Fire and Water, all of which Mary Katrantzou uses as inspiration for her collection, “The Elemental, ” which reflects the creation of the universe.

A few quotes from Mary Katrantzou’s website help describe this stunning collection: “Clothes consume the body, fusing form with fabric, the woman with the elements.” Some look like “nebulous supernovae” surrounding the woman in “balls of energy.” “Ombré effects romantically evoke dawn and dusk, the shifting of the moon and sun, a shimmering horizon . . . compressed into tailoring and expanded into cumulus gowns.” “Hyper-real collages, combining flora and fauna” remind us of the creation of the earth. “Ostrich-feather appliqué like comets’ tails trailing away from the body . . .vaporous trails of organza that frame the form shaded with an aurora borealis of rainbow hues, and finally the subdued shades of midnight black and a twilight grey,” bring to mind “the quintessential beauty of celestial bodies divine.”

Mary Katrantzou Fall 2019 Ready-To-Wear

Mary Katrantzou Fall 2019 Ready-To-Wear

Principessa Orietta Doria Pamphilj (1920–2000) inspired this collection by Erdem Moralioglu. He was deeply moved by the story of her family, who stood against Mussolini in the days of Italian fascism and paid dearly for it. After visiting the Principessa’s Palazzo in Rome, one of the three largest palaces in the Eternal City, he studied its beautiful furnishings, paintings and wall coverings, rich with brocades and florals, and drew from them when creating his designs.

Richard Quinn Fall 2019 Ready-To-Wear

Richard Quinn Fall 2019 Ready-To-Wear

Think florals, think England. Think corsets, think Dior of old. Add these two to latex body suits, tights and opera gloves and you must be thinking: Richard Quinn.

Once an intern at Dior in Paris, Quinn tells about how that influenced his designs: “A lot of the Dior archive pieces had a corset within the dress. All of our dresses have a corset, so you really get the extreme waist.” He goes on to say, “We wanted to keep it classic, but with a darker element, and we wanted to be more extreme this time, and more elevated with location and atmosphere. We wanted to have a world.”

Toss in some marabou feathers, tulip-covered jackets, and maxi dresses, and you’ve got quite a world.

In this season’s collection, Roksanda Ilinčić aims at contrast, saying, “We live in a time that plays on contrast and I’m sure I’m not the only designer who is addressing this. There’s a sort of anxiety we are all feeling about the time that we are living in. That’s why there’s a contrast at the beginning of the show, which is more sober and minimal, and the end, which is more dreamy.” Her evening dresses are opulent, yet modern.

“Even though you’re entering this fantasy world, it should be wearable,” remarks Emilia Wickstead on her Fall collection. Inspiring her fantasy was Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy, which, among other things, was filled with marriage celebrations, tragic deaths and family reunions. “I wanted to draw people into the nostalgia of that world,” she says. In doing so, she creates voluptuous designs, glorious gowns of scarlet, black and white, many with a couture-like finish.

Set against Ryan Driscoll’s backdrop portraying the gods and goddesses of Greek mythology, Hannah Weiland’s girls walked out, as Weiland says, “looking like myths.” Such was her inspiration for Shrimp’s fall collection.

Molly Goddard describes her new collection as “Dressed For The Storm.” And so it was, with wind machines blasting at gorgeous tulle dresses covering gray trousers and feet shod with knee-high walking boots.

David Koma Fall 2019 Ready-To-Wear

David Koma Fall 2019 Ready-To-Wear

Designer David Koma draws on Shakespeare in his latest collection. “The narrative in Shakespeare embraces power and regalness,” he says. “I wanted to communicate the same sense of confidence in this collection.” And so he does, drawing on designs from the Edwardian period to create a series of gorgeous dresses, some of which were embellished with snakes and butterflies of real silver threads and beads.

Peter Pilotto Fall 2019 Ready-To-Wear

Peter Pilotto Fall 2019 Ready-To-Wear

Peter Pilotto and Christopher de Vos found their print inspiration for this season’s designs in the iridescent ceramic creations of Zsolnay. A series of gorgeous metallic plissé maxi dresses added to the sparkle.

Victoria Beckham calls her latest fall collection “an A-Z of a woman’s life. She’s a lady, but she’s not ladylike. She’s proper, but she’s not prim.” Here we see small, snug argyle sweaters undergirded with blouses having big pointed collars. And chain prints. And pencil skirts. And not to forget, the Beckham dresses, which pop with vermillion and 40s to 70s silhouettes.

Meaning to reflect “contrasts in British culture and weather,” Riccardo Tisci aptly calls his second collection for Burberry, “Tempest.” Nevertheless, Tisci aims his designs toward Burberry’s international market, stating his intention to be “including, not excluding.”

 
Fashion, Eveningwear, LFW, London Fashion WeekTrès Haute DivaLFW, London Fashion Week, London Fall 2019 RTW, Erdem, Roksanda, Matty Boven, Mary Katrantzou, Richard Quinn, Emilia Wickstead, Mary Goddard, Burberry, Shrimps, David Koma, Peter Pilotto, Victoria Beckham, Halpern, Matty Bovan