Coutorture Community Must Reads 01/07/09 Frou Frou Fashionista admired a lingerie spread with Dita Von Teese featured in a French magazine called L'Express Style...
Wrapping up the list of our favorite shows from Fall 08 is British brand Modernist. We've said from the start that this list has no real rhyme or reason save for the fact that the five shows each impacted our impression of Fall 08 as a season. Bringing you this list was as much about having the galleries back up on the front page as it was talking about them again. We think it's reason enough. So, after bringing up Prada, Preen, Yves Saint Laurent, and Miu Miu, we're going to finish up by talking about the Modernist Fall 08 show.
British brand Modernist, headed by Abdul Koroma and Andrew Jones, showed their second collection as part of London Fashion Week this Fall 08. The collection, feminine and appropriately paired down with a strict palate of red, charcoal, and black was a stark and striking contrast to the opulence that overran New York Fashion Week the week prior. Everything from the cool grey backdrop, to the thick painted eyebrows and slicked hair, to the shapely garments that layered over one another quite beautifully, made this collection on of our favorites. To our surprise the brand is stocked sparingly in the United States and abroad, but we're confident that will change if they keep moving in this direction.
Yesterday we got to check out a whole boatload of fresh fall Raf Simons and Helmut Lang. However commercial, it kind of put us in a darker mood. You know, dark for us--we typically gravitate towards the nerdy stuff. We're going to cover London Fashion Week this year and though we always report on the shows remotely, we feel a refresher course is in store. So we went on one of those endless fashion tangents that starts with Helmut Lang and ends with something much more avant garde--we had on our minds the London coverage and the clothing from yesterday. We ended with Gareth Pugh. We ended with the picture you see at left and realized that it's amazing and scary and we really like him. So, a few things you might like to know about the designer. He's British (obviously), he's 25 or so, he's most likely more broke than most designers (who are mostly broke) because none of his fashions were for sale until his Spring 07 collection, he's stocked at Dover Street Market, and Anna Wintour (and therefore Style.com and, er, everyone else) approves. That picture is the stuff of nightmares and we can only hope for more of this come September. Sorry there are no spreads to offer, that cape isn't exactly Shopbop-friendly.
It's freezing, we know. It's also late enough in the season that some of us may have started actively daydreaming about summer. This video by The Teenagers might just facilitate that process. Oh, and it's f-ing hilarious. So, if you're the sort who is focusing on the Barney's Warehouse Sale rather than the 3/15 deliveries (one of the biggest spring deliveries), at least you'll have a laugh. Bonus points: the appearance of a plum silk tie neck blouse, and the narrative acting as our Ode to London Fashion Week part two.
Catwalk Queen takes a look at the model controversy casting a shadow over London Fashion Week. Some believe designers are excluding models of color on purpose, while designers claim they are choosing those who best display their clothing. Catwalk Queen believes it's time to make a move to better represent your customer base.
This video is our ode to London Fashion Week. We really fancied some of the collections presented this year, so, in tribute, we dug up this ridiculous video detailing 1960's London fashion in a manner that makes Tuesday seem possible after all. King's Road, the shopping street that made punk, mod, and The Beatles possible, is now completely gentrified (not that there aren't new shopping prospects London has to offer). In this video you will learn that, even in the 1960's, people were talking about there not being anything left to create, and that fake eyelashes make plain English girls look like movie stars.