Tuesday 31 October 2017

These Female Fashion Entrepreneurs Are Changing the Way We Shop

These Female Fashion Entrepreneurs Are Changing the Way We Shop
Though at the upper levels of the industry, fashion is still a male-dominated business, it feels like many of the most noteworthy innovations in recent memory have come from women (which you know we're here for!). Female entrepreneurs have been out there making the change they—and customers—want to see happen: Just recently we saw the big breaks of companies like Premme(a clothing line launched by bloggers Nicolette Mason and Gabi Gregg that makes legitimately stylish statement pieces in plus sizes), Fashion Tech Lab (an institution focused on innovating the sustainability space launched by fashion force Miroslava Duma), and Anti Agency (Lucy Greene and Pandora Lennard’s modeling agency made up of a cool, downtown crew that aren’t models by trade). Out of all the thriving companies on our radar, there are three that stand out: The Modist, 11 Honoré, and Stitch Fix. They each target demographics that have been ignored in retail and aim to elicit a culture change in the industry—a shift we've seen overall as of late. Ghizlan Guenez started The Modist after years of not having a place to go to shop for modest clothing; Kathryn Retzer grew frustrated that designers weren't making bigger sizes due to no retail outlet buying them and started 11 Honoré(alongside cofounder Patrick Herning) to do just that; and things are booming for Katrina Lake at Stitch Fix, where they make shopping a highly personal experience via customized subscription boxes.
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Sunday 29 October 2017

It’s Always Fishnets Season Somewhere

It’s Always Fishnets Season Somewhere
The prostitute, courtesan, sex worker — all as presented in popular culture — are exerting a strong influence on the looks you may want to wear now.
In a recent episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the show’s star and creator, Larry David, casts an appraising eye on Paula, who is turned out in the standard-issue trappings of her trade.“Why this outfit?” Mr. David asks benignly. “Why not be wholesome?”Business might pick up, he suggests, if only Paula, who is sheathed in a merry widow and mesh hose, would trade up, swapping the drag for something more discreet.Paula considers, announcing brightly after a beat, “O.K., animal prints gone. Fishnets out of here. I think I can do this.”The scene is ripe with irony: Paula may be about to cast off her working girl uniform, but plenty of civilians — Beverly Hills matrons and their law-abiding like — would happily do the reverse, trading their uptight luncheon suits for latex and leather, all in the service of style.Continue reading the main story
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They won’t have to search far for a role model.
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Wednesday 25 October 2017

The New Fashion Commandments

The New Fashion Commandments
High-Style Guru Reveals the New Trends — Think Velvet and No More Bare Legs
If you don’t have velvet in your closet this season, don’t go out of the house!” Such was the daunting command that Neiman Marcus fashion director Ken Downing delivered to a bevy of fashionistas who packed the second floor of Neiman Marcus in the Houston Galleria to absorb his take on current fashion trends.
And the ladies lapped it up like kittens at the milk bowl.
With an insider’s intel and a comedic wit, Downing challenged the flock to think beyond yesterday into this season’s fashion trends. Yes, velvet is a must. Shoulder pads are coming back, bigger than ever thanks to Balenciaga. True fashionistas will be dressed in red this season. And bare legs are no longer de rigueur.
“I spent my entire career trying to get you out of stockings,” he declared. “Now I want you back in stockings!” Indeed, practically every look that he presented included wide diamond fishnets, many in pink and red.
Downing waltzed his adoring fans through a colorful array of fashions playfully layered beyond reason. An example of the look: an Altuzarra jacket, over a Magda Butrym floral dress, worn with a Needle and Thread pink dress.
As for the color of the season, “I am obsessed with the rich reds,” he said. “I like bordeaux and burgundy juxtaposed with bright red and shocking pink.” Lending reality to that obsession, Downing mixed a wild palette of reds in his designer selections.
Special guest was his pal, jewelry designer Devon Leigh, whose oversized earrings were shown with every look. As Downing noted, “Big earrings take 10 years off of every woman.”
Additional Ken Downing fashion insights
— It’s all about the ’80s, a return to that new wave spirit.
— Asymmetrical earrings are the thing, be it wearing only one major piece or two different earrings.
—Shorts are everywhere going into spring.
— Biker jackets are a must.
— Saint Laurent hoodies are bringing street fashion into the designer world.
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Monday 23 October 2017

HOW TECHNOLOGY IS SHAPING THE FUTURE OF SUSTAINABLE FASHION

HOW TECHNOLOGY IS SHAPING THE FUTURE OF SUSTAINABLE FASHION
Technology is really sexy! For me it's better than a thigh-high split in a skirt."
Stella McCartney may have delivered the line with a laugh while onstage at Vogue's Forces of Fashion conference earlier this month, but one got the sense that she was dead serious. The British designer was onstage speaking about ethical and sustainablefashion, and she quickly drew a connection between treating the planet well and updating the industry's old-fashioned — and incredibly wasteful, toxic and polluting — production methods. To her, incorporating new technology into that equation is an obvious choice.
"The younger generations, this is like a no-brainer for them," she said. "If you're lucky enough to have a business, I think you have to approach it this way."
McCartney's not the only one looking to Silicon Valley for ideas that could help catapult her company to the cutting edge of both design and environmental preservation efforts. From startups using bacteria to naturally dye fabric to established industry players using chemistry to close the recycling loop, a whole host of new discoveries are cropping up. Read on to learn about some of the most exciting developments that have the potential to change the future of fashion.
To see the negative impacts that fabric dye can have on the planet, one need only look at the rivers in China and Bangladesh that bear the color of next season's clothing due to improper dye disposal. The amount of water waste involved in dyeing is also problematic.
"A cotton T-shirt requires approximately 700 gallons of water to grow, produce and transport, with 20 percent or more of that water used in the dyeing process alone," explains Natsai Chieza via email.
Chieza is the biodesigner behind Faber Futures and a designer-in-residence at Ginkgo Bioworks, where she is working on a method that uses bacteria-secreted pigments to dye fabric. The technique dramatically reduces water usage, requiring less than seven ounces of water to dye a one-pound piece of silk, and the pigment itself is naturally and non-toxically created by the bacteria. While there are still obstacles to overcome before the results Chieza is able to achieve in a petri dish will be replicable on a larger scale, the sustainable fashion opportunity is so great that she's confident there will be bacteria-dyed clothing on the market before long.
"Interventions that tackle both water use and chemical use in the textile industry are incredibly rare, so this is an area of development many are watching very closely," she notes.
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Friday 20 October 2017

Guo Pei: the Chinese designer who made Rihanna's omelette dress

Guo Pei: the Chinese designer who made Rihanna's omelette dress
hinese designer Guo Pei had been creating couture for more than 30 years when Rihanna stepped on to the red carpet in an extraordinary yellow cape two years ago. Dubbed the omelette dress for its striking resemblance to brunch, it went viral and made the world notice Guo’s work.
The dress wasn’t designed for Rihanna. In fact, it had been sitting in Guo’s studio for three years when the singer’s team came across it after making inquiries into Chinese couture during the run up to the 2015 Met Gala, the theme of which was China: Through the Looking Glass.
Beijing-born Guo, who turned 50 recently, cut her teeth in fashion design following the Cultural Revolution. As Cathy Horyn explained in the New York Times, her career as a designer “began when there was no fashion in her country”. For the past 20 years, Guo has focused on high fashion, specialising in technical work that is grand in dimension and scale and as intricate as that of any Paris couture house. It’s no wonder that she has appeared at Paris couture week, last year becoming the first Chinese national to do so.
The now-famous Yellow Empress cape weighs 25kg, has a 16ft train, features over 50,000 hour’s worth of hand embroidery and took two years to make. The sheer weight of the dress meant that, when it was first shown, at a 2012 show in China, the model made it only halfway down the catwalk before the lights had to be turned off and the show stopped so that she could remove the cape and return backstageRead more at:yellow bridesmaid dresses uk | champagne bridesmaid dresses uk

Wednesday 18 October 2017

Space race: a new tome captures 70 years of Pierre Cardin’s designs
Pierre Cardin’s sprawling legacy of innovation might be hard to quantify, but a new tome from Assouline celebrating the 95-year-old designer, endeavours to do just that. Tracing a career that spans 70 years, the book outlines what it is that makes the influential designer’s work so compelling.
Cardin ‘infused his personality into his business’, Jean-Pascal Hesse writes in the book’s introduction. That infusion formed the DNA of Cardin’s brand: the geometry of his shapes and structures, and the relentless drive to experiment. The book surveys this, along with Cardin’s forward-facing philosophy of business. Consider his creation of what we would now term a lifestyle brand, something that in the 1960s was not de rigueur among France’s couturiers.
We are taken through the beginnings of Cardin’s influential career, from the Cosmocorps collections that made his name synonymous with the space age, through to furniture design and later experiments with structure, fabric and movement. But it’s the images from the 1960s that are among Cardin’s most loved from the book.
‘My favourite is obviously the period when I began to be known in my career for my very avant-gardist cuttings,’ he explains ahead of a Pierre Cardin pop-up shop at London’s Maison Assouline, opening today. ‘For example, the Cosmocorps line, which reminds me the conquest of space. I have always been marked by this opening towards space, the conquest of the moon.’
In an industry known for its obsession with newness and modernity, Cardin’s designs – the famous Bubble dress, or his Plexiglas jewellery – linger on in cultural memory as markers of innovation. And looking back, Cardin remembers the earliest days of his brand as being a fruitful, exhilarating time. ‘Undeniably at the beginning when I left Dior, I was motivated by a big ambition. I wanted to introduce my style more than anything.’
This is not the first Pierre Cardin book from Assouline, but as the designer points out, ‘it is a unique experience in the world of fashion to celebrate 70 years of design’, so this lengthy retrospective is merited. In a preface written by Marisa Berenson (granddaughter of Cardin’s former employer Elsa Schiaparelli), Cardin is described as ‘a man of paradoxes and contradictions... a man with no boundaries or limits in himself as in the universe’.
And Cardin’s work does not begin or end with clothing. Industrial design, furniture, interiors and automobiles all benefited from Cardin’s rigorous eye. But fashion is still at the centre of all that he does, even after 70 years. ‘Fashion is still the best way to express creative vision,’ he affirms. ‘I am first and foremost a fashion designer.’ But as Pierre Cardin shows, work across design fields is how he elucidates his vision of the world. ‘Fashion,’ he is quoted as saying, ‘is an X-ray of society.’ If that is indeed the case, then at its bones, Cardin’s society is rigorous, stylish and endlessly modern.
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Sunday 15 October 2017

The 7 women's fashion items that men hate
You may have noticed the short trousers (cropped kick flares, in fashion terms) Theresa May wore at the Tory Party Conference this week. You may have thought, "Good for you, TM, some fashion-forward trews". More likely you did a double take, tried to defend her ringing the changes ("She's got the legs for it") and then gave up, because frankly they did look all wrong.
I tell you who will not have appreciated these trousers, and that is men. Some, after suppressing the urge to shout "Kirk to Enterprise!" might have tried to get their head around them. The rest will have been thinking: "Aren't they too short? (Answer: yes)" or. "Are those culottes? I hate culottes." The overwhelming response will have been bafflement because cropped flares are firmly in the category of Clothes Men Will Never Like (excepting architects and people working in fashion).
The items on this list barely vary from one decade to the next. Women's taste in fashion changes and adapts but men's doesn't budge: they have a fixed shortlist of things that provoke a visceral negative reaction, and another list of things they like, without knowing why.
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Thursday 12 October 2017

Princess Diana inspires Off-White look in Paris

Princess Diana inspires Off-White look in Paris
The most important outfit shown at Paris fashion week so far was not an intricate silk gown or a tastefully cut trouser suit. It was a pair of white cycling shorts and a double-breasted blazer worn by Naomi Campbell as she stood in front of a troupe of 36 models dressed in looks inspired by Diana, Princess of Wales.
This tableau was the finale of Off-White’s spring/summer 2018 fashion show, held in the sumptuous 19th-century Salle Wagram theatre. Off-White is a youth-centric brand with a tendency towards irony – the straps on its most popular handbags look like police barriers – overseen by Virgil Abloh, Kanye West’s creative director. Diana was the inspiration for the collection, which sought to explore more complex territory than the princess myth of glamour and tiaras.
Some of the looks were loosely inspired by the princess, such as the first model’s leather skirt and matching leather blouson, its most Diana-ish touch the white popped collar. Others were more direct: here was Diana dropping the kids off at school in double denim, or Diana in her dotty pink dress, or Diana on her way to the gym, as suggested by Campbell’s cycling shorts.
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Tuesday 10 October 2017

She takes her kid everywhere! Farrah Abraham poses with daughter at risqué fashion

She takes her kid everywhere! Farrah Abraham poses with daughter at risqué fashion show featuring Phoebe Price busting out of her lingerie
Farrah Abraham doesn't seem to be the most conservative of mothers.
The Teen Mom star was slammed years ago for posting to Instagram a photo of her daughter Sophia Laurent, aged eight, in a bikini.
Now the part-time porn star has brought her little mini me to a fashion show where women were dressed in lingerie.
The reality TV star walked the runway of the Anthony Rubio show in Los Angeles on Saturday.
She was wearing a black silky long dress with a yellow lace coat.
Her offspring also wore yellow and was seen backstage with mama as well as two models, 45-year-old Phoebe Price (in black lingerie and red boots) and Sophia Vega (in a sheer bustier top). Sham Ibrahim wore a red dress.
And Farrah was holding a dog that appeared to be hers.
Last week the TV star was in Greece modeling a swimsuit.
On Instagram, the vixen gave designer Catwalk Connection a shout-out while tilting her hips and offering the camera a wry smile.
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Monday 9 October 2017

The 7 women's fashion items that men hate

The 7 women's fashion items that men hate
You may have noticed the short trousers (cropped kick flares, in fashion terms) Theresa May wore at the Tory Party Conference this week. You may have thought, "Good for you, TM, some fashion-forward trews". More likely you did a double take, tried to defend her ringing the changes ("She's got the legs for it") and then gave up, because frankly they did look all wrong.
I tell you who will not have appreciated these trousers, and that is men. Some, after suppressing the urge to shout "Kirk to Enterprise!" might have tried to get their head around them. The rest will have been thinking: "Aren't they too short? (Answer: yes)" or. "Are those culottes? I hate culottes." The overwhelming response will have been bafflement because cropped flares are firmly in the category of Clothes Men Will Never Like (excepting architects and people working in fashion).
The items on this list barely vary from one decade to the next. Women's taste in fashion changes and adapts but men's doesn't budge: they have a fixed shortlist of things that provoke a visceral negative reaction, and another list of things they like, without knowing why.This must be connected to anxieties about rogue dental assistants, Nurse Ratched, and memories of colonoscopies. We think they're fresh and Swedish, but men genuinely find them disturbing. On the plus side, they really like anything khaki and militaryesque, particularly jumpsuits (it's a Hot Lips thing, or possibly a Maverick/Goose thing).
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