View More Mulberry In Fall 2015 RTW

It’s fair to say that Mulberry has been in a state of flux since its acclaimed creative director, Emma Hill, parted ways with the storied British brand last year. So, while we wait in anticipation for her hotly tipped successor, Johnny Coca (yes, of Céline fame), to take the design reigns in July, the in-house team continues to do a stellar job of holding the fort. Today’s presentation, which took place on the top floor of its lofty West Kensington HQ, is testament to that.

Inspired by the faded grandeur of Georgian interiors in old English country manors, the fall 2015 collection delicately employed tactile textile techniques to riff on classic filigree motifs. This was most successfully translated into touchy-feely knits and striking statement outerwear. Cover stars included a brick-red and white check wool poncho with a supple leather lace-up collar (the perfect counterpoint to stompy boots and leather pants during chilly climes), a cream bouclé tweed coat with hand-painted surface detail and a double-breasted jacket in fuzzy intarsia-check shearling—all of which stayed true to the chic, yet delightfully daffy aesthetic that Hill carved out during her tenure.

As for the accessories? You’ll want to swing the irreverent Roxette shoulder bag—a petal-pink, sheepskin iteration of their much-loved Roxanne tote–straight out the store. Ditto the Jamie: a dainty, miniature take on the label’s vintage bucket bag from the seventies, reworked in butter-soft suede, which this very writer expects to see draped over the arms of Mulberry devotees, such as Alexa Chung and Emma Roberts.

Click And Views 24 Image 1205 in Fall 2015 RTW

Designer Paula Gerbase has kept a matter-of-fact design approach to her label 1205 ever since she began in 2010, injecting London’s often-fussy fashion scene with a minimalist menswear bent gleaned from her time on Savile Row. Beneath the lush foliage of the Barbican Centre’s Conservatory building today, she paraded her fall 2015 collection to the sound of live drumming, a constant thudding that drummed home her repetitive exploration of elevated workwear and lounge shapes—the kind of unassuming garments that reframe femininity with an austere and refined “plainness.”

In her notes, Gerbase called it “a study of the language of adornment” and “the philosophy of decorative thinking,” two rather deep propositions that whispered quietly throughout her textures and treatments. Neither suggested direct embellishment, instead hinting at the complexity of the ribbed knits that became tiered, roll-neck tunics and pleated culottes, and textiles like checked wool or a crunchy, lightweight polyester that she cut into mannish Saharan-esque jackets and mackintosh coats.

The former cinched with a drawstring, creating an hourglass figure that returned with wide, high-waisted trousers, yet was lost elsewhere in the boyish proportions of a navy corduroy blazer and a gray felt boiler suit traced with utility details. Breaking the trailing symmetry of more monastic looks (a bibbed white shirtdress was positively pilgrim), dark gray bouclé added nubby warmth—closing the show with a series of lopsided mélange shift dresses, upon which circular brooches gathered a soft drape at the waist or shoulder.​

View More Azria Fall 2015 RTW

It was a recent trip through Barcelona and the northern Baltic countries that inspired Lubov Azria’s latest collection for BCBG. “We were influenced by all of the beautiful artistry that is still being done!” said the designer, and the decidedly laid-back appeal of the locations in question translated into what she called “a feast of textures,” with imagery hailing from an initial stop in Latvia, and the area’s traditional costume. There were Slavic-style lace-up peasant dresses with leather crisscrosses down the sides and eyelash fringes on the skirts, long shepherd vests with oversize fluffy fur sleeves and pockets, and weft-patterned coats dotted with geometric designs.

A romantic set of diaphanous black frocks with a flamenco flare, embellished with burgundy fringes on the bust, delivered the Spanish influence, while another was decorated with corset-style leather straps. There was a patchworked jacket of matador proportions, with slices of quilted navy fabrics thrown over a burgundy dress. But it was the fur-accented jackets, dyed in poppy hues of lavender and violet, cropped quilted pants, bohemian leather dresses with braided detailing, as well as basic turtleneck knit dresses and sweaters that betrayed where the designer’s heart really lay: home, in Los Angeles, the kind of classic New Age–inspired staples that could be layered transcontinentally, from East to West and beyond.

View More Tome Fall 2015 RTW

For their fall 2015 collection for Tome, designers Ryan Lobo and Ramon Martin looked to two women, both distinctly accomplished and entirely unrelenting in their (markedly different) pursuits: Belgian dancer and choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and, well, fashion designer Donna Karan. “It’s never an architectural or abstract reference for us,” said Martin (which is all good and well; despite the elegance of some collections’ references, at the end of the day most women really don’t want to look like buildings). “It’s the air of both of these women that we’ve taken—how they approach their work and what challenges them as creatives, what they strive for. They’re tenacious women, obviously, when it comes to their craft. Very strong with a very, very feminine hand, and the same sort of approach to shaping their work to a woman’s needs or a woman’s form.”

De Keersmaeker’s costumes, specifically, came into play, as seen in the loose-fitting, open-backed little black dress with swirling balletic skirt that closed the show or the primly starched white shirtdresses that opened it, but it was Karan’s banker stripe and quintessentially “New York” urbanity that carried through, whether it was her banker-stripe shirting (here reinterpreted as a long, lean shirtdress, or a mandarin-collared style paired with an A-line patch-pocketed patent leather skirt) or her 1992 “Presidential” ad campaign photographed by Peter Lindbergh. “This is not a fantasy,” said Martin of Karan’s revolutionary nineties designs. “This is an approach to a real woman’s life. It’s as full and intense and full of responsibility as the President of the United States.” And there were clothes for that on display today: sumptuous, double-faced camel coats and vests cinched with thick white patent belts; stripy, silky frocks and embroidered gauzy ones; long knits worn over longer lace and under short patent and felted jackets with patch-front pockets. Long, bias-cut silk dresses slit nearly to the hip were paired with those jackets, too, in a neon take on butter yellow and black. There was even a fluffy pink whimsy of a coat, which sauntered down the runway between the sleeker looks. “It’s nice seeing these two different forces that have some kind of synchronicity that you would never associate with each other,” said Lobo at a preview of the collection in early February. “When you think of Belgian artistry you don’t think of Donna Karan. We like that meld.” We’re guessing their customers will too.

View More Images Ohne Titel Fall 2015 RTW

There are designers whose perspectives shift with the seasons, and there are those whose collections remain, no matter the mood in fashion, recognizably their own. Ohne Titel falls into the latter category: Flora Gill and Alexa Adams specialize in graphic, body-conscious, somewhat space-age engineered knits, and they do them exceptionally well. For fall, however, the duo couldn’t resist the current of seventies nostalgia that’s been percolating through the collections. Their jumping-off point was artist Tom Wesselmann, whose Pop Art paintings of the era are almost luridly vibrant. “The idea was subversive color,” Adams said backstage before the show. “Off colors that nearly clash, but don’t.”

There was, in turn, a curious harmony to the mostly long and lean layers of cobalt, magenta, tan, and aqua that followed, an assortment Adams called “a total knit lifestyle.” Adams and Gill, more so than most, like to geek out about new knitting techniques; one in particular involved tone-on-tone plaited multidirectional ribbing on turtlenecks, tunics, and ballet-style wrap cardigans, which Adams said “almost reads as geographic, like crops.” Fluffy tuck-stitched cotton tape yarn appeared to float atop color-blocked knit dresses and flared sweater pants, an effect Gill likened to macramé. Lurex-laced sweaters and dresses offered a modern nod to the last days of disco, while hand-knotted suede net-and-fringe belts took the Me Decade theme more literally (though the effect when layered was more graphic than groovy). Woven fabrics also worked their way into the mix; shirtdresses and pleated skirts came in slick polyurethane-coated chiffon, while the quintessential seventies knit pattern—space-dye—also doubled as a digital print.
One subtle standout was a sharp black trench, texture-blocked in suede and glossy leather, paired with what Gill called “eyelash pants” knitted from shiny, shaggy black tinsel. “It’s every different texture imaginable in one black look,” she said. In Ohne Titel’s hands, even the seventies look like the future.

 

View  More Images Armani Privé in Spring 2015 Couture

Giorgio Armani designed his Privé collection around a single motif, that of the bamboo plant. It was all over the prints on the daywear (multiple versions on cropped, wide pants), recurred in bugle-beaded embroideries, in Plexiglas neckpieces, in delicate appliqués on organza. The symbolism was primarily meaningful to him, but not because of its Asian associations, he said. “To me, it’s like women today. Bamboo is a strong wood. It bends gracefully when the wind blows through it. It’s flexible. Its leaves make a beautiful sound. But afterwards, it always returns to how it was, standing up straight again.”
Armani’s salute to the resilient woman comes on the eve—well, there’s a little less than a month to go—of the Academy Awards. A couple of his prominent customers, Kristin Scott Thomas and Juliette Binoche were in the front row, doubtless scanning the runway for red-carpet options. Armani shrugged off the question of whether he puts extra Hollywood firepower into his eveningwear at Oscar time. “No,” he insisted. “And I’m not sure whether a lot of people will like what I do, because what I aim for is a more simple elegance.”
Spoken too modestly. In fact, the collection fell into two halves, the first loosely definable as day-to-cocktail pant looks, many with black obi belts, and the second, a myriad of his event-wear possibilities. True, there are no bouncy crinolines or draggy trains on offer. Armani’s core clientele, his women of substance, will find plenty to pick and choose from in his more classic beaded dresses or perhaps a black jumpsuit with an artfully graphic. asymmetrical halter top. But there are things here to flutter newcomers’ hearts too: a midi-length narrow powdery blue tiered silk shimmy dress, lightly embroidered with bamboo leaves, and a delicately pretty frock, almost redolent of ingénue thirties movie glamour, constructed of sheer black organza with foliage appliqués. Roll ahead to February 22, and we’ll see who wins them.​

View More Images Jean Paul Gaultier in Spring 2015 Couture

What unites people all over the globe, across the divides of gender, age, sexual preference, religious creed, and nationality; carries the promise of eternal happiness; and, has (all being well) some rather fabulous ensembles into the bargain? Score zero if you said Beyoncé’s next world tour. The answer is, of course, weddings. The universality of marriage, and all its attendant finery, was the theme that Jean Paul Gaultier alighted on for his first haute couture collection since shuttering his ready-to-wear business in a blowout show last fall.

One might argue that showing myriad variations on the wedding dress was a pretty shrewd business move on Monsieur Gaultier’s part, since they’re often what drives women to spend gazillions of euros ordering The Dress for The Biggest Day Of Their Lives at Paris’s couture houses. But this is Jean Paul Gaultier, and where there is a theme, there is usually humor—in this case, there was as much here for first-time brides as there was for the first (or indeed second or third) wives club—veiling waspish and sharply observed social critique. The most romantic act can, as America is discovering with same-sex marriage, also be politically charged. (Let’s hope the U.S. Supreme Court decides in favor of not allowing it to be constitutionally banned or go unrecognized in four states later this spring when it weighs in.)

Gaultier didn’t let that changing face of modern marriage pass him by, so much of what was shown here focused on the idea of joining together the traditionally grand froufrou wedding dresses with the clothes of the groom, creating looks that through the miraculous work of his ateliers were able to brilliantly fuse feminine and masculine codes into single asymmetric looks. Other times, he transformed the likes of a tuxedo trousers’ satin side band or a bride’s headpiece into something sportier, morphing them into an athletic track pant stripe or a baseball cap which spoke directly to his love of the street. Yet there was more than witty and wonderful wedding shenanigans going on here. Offering up a diametrically opposed viewpoint on what haute couture can be, Gaultier elevated the prosaic cardigan into some madly chic things, whether it was a belted version in gold chain mail edged with shards of Swarovski crystals, worn with fluid black smoking pants, or transformed into a long evening dress worked to superb effect with beading that resembled Burmese python skin; the kind of refined and glamorously grown-up things that plenty of the loyal Gaultierites in the audience would be thrilled to say “I do” to.

View More Images Valentino In Spring 2015 RTW

Roman sandals and a breezy silk print dress: Who wouldn’t want to buy into the fantasy of taking off on a summer holiday in Italy? Like Dolce & Gabbana, and their excavations of Sicilian culture, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli at Valentino see no reason to look beyond their own city to find layers and layers of history to inspire them. The past they chose for spring looked vaguely seventies, an era in which Mr. Valentino Garavani’s alta moda reigned happily supreme in Rome. The designers are no literalists, though. The techniques they have at their fingertips—pristine, crunchy, cutout tablecloth linen, rippling treatments of georgette, mind-blowing embroideries of minute feathers, beads, and crystals—have been passed down directly, hand-to-hand, from the master himself, but they’ve been lightened up. So much so, that you can see a good deal of skin these days through the dresses on a Valentino runway.

The designers’ ability to fashion exquisite fairy-tale dress is well established–and each one of them here is perfect in its own way. Such is the restless eye, though, that the things that didn’t belong to that familiar category seemed more arresting. A bold baroque print of flowers and curliques looked great in a passage that included a simple-seeming burgundy and white vaguely forties midi dress with a softly gathered raised waist, and collar and pockets embroidered with tiny beads. A lone navy devore velvet and tulle dress with a pattern shooting up from hem to bodice was one of the most outstanding dresses of the whole season. Question, though: Did every model have to be so young? In a season where so many designers are embracing multiple ages and ethnicities, it would be good to show that Valentino is for women as well as girls.

View More 88 Images Valentino in Pre-Fall 2015

Your distinct look with the flower little ones with the overdue 60s along with early seventies continues to be trimming into the framework because spg series, as well as a identical bohemian soul grabbed your creativeness associated with Valentino’s Nancy Grazia Chiuri along with Pierpaolo Piccioli with regard to pre-fall. His or her trademark long-sleeved lace-trimmed garments emerged sprigged having mimosas, lilies-of-the-valley, along with four-leaf clovers along with were being used having matching sixties-style rearfoot floral-print footwear (although they would have searched just as stylish used having blank feet), although Aran knit sweaters emerged padded which has a wedding ring associated with multi-colored blossoms. A great artistic perspective will be certainly not too far absent in the German property, and also this season your set of two drew from the smorgasbord associated with motivation which began having Botticelli’s Primavera along with broken with all the wonderful perform associated with moving Manchester tattoo Celia Birtwell. In a way which width associated with fine art record decorative mirrors your impressive selection of this particular skilled set of two, which find a way to deliver some your ethereal a great daily clothing in the same manner they start a red-carpet just one. Views associated with Botticellian pastoral happiness were being woven into the materials associated with cozy hooded knitwear along with patchworked in suede A-line skirts, and people alluring artisanal information loaned an expression associated with ambiance to help the thought of transitional salad dressing. Possibly your classic denim jacket emerged done having butterflies, any recurring along with endearing Valentino leitmotif. To comprehend compared to 50 appears to be within the series, fans from equally stops with the variety will truly possibly be spoilt with regard to collection of unabashedly pretty clothes shock as to. And yet it’s tricky to take faves given how many standout bits right here, no matter if you’re your fresh hottie shopping for prizes season, your fashionable doing the job mommy on the lookout for somewhat practical wonder, or perhaps some time concerning.

View More Images Valentino in Spring 2015 Couture

Zoom in, in addition to keep zooming in, in addition to presently there you’ll obtain the motive Valentino haute couture will be such a exceptional in addition to outstanding enterprise. Think about the small, wiggly rouleaux edgings about the upturned collars. Examine the passed red cross-stitching and the heart-shaped spots regarding suede appliqué about the peasant smocks. Think about the leather-covered beans clustered about the shearling-lined vests. Then visualize what competence journeyed in to creating clothing, anywhere at the conclusion, with the palest dreary clouds sailing across it is skirts, all of them outlined in small hand-sewn sparkles. No place on this planet may this particular function be done in addition to in Rome.

Helen Grazia Chiuri in addition to Pierpaolo Piccioli weren’t referring to all of that fairy-fingered goody following your show, nonetheless. They were a lot more interested in discussing the psychological, national solutions they’d fused collectively to arrive when it reaches this images: generally an exhibition on the function regarding Marc Chagall, that the makers noticed in Milan, confusing with the adore poetry regarding Renaissance Madeira. The actual about Chagall has been that she has been any painter held associated with an pretty much mystical tenderness. He has been furthermore Jewish, an immigrant via Paris for you to France, who held piece of art images regarding his / her long-lost small town residence living, peasant blouses in addition to big, tiered clothes included. For the Valentino pair, the selection has been furthermore about “the strength regarding adore, ” any reconciling people feeling in your dim occasions. Repeatedly, that magicked marvelous one-off dance in to creatures nobody otherwise might actually generate. ​.