"The last time I was at a Louboutin party, I almost broke my foot," a woman said as she rode the escalator to the second floor at Bergdorf Goodman last night.
Things didn't get quite that rowdy at the retailer's red-themed 20th anniversary fête for the shoe maestro. Except, that is, when the man of the hour made his grand entrance. As guests tried to get a photo or an autograph of Louboutin—not easy, what with his pack of bodyguards—even industry insiders admitted that meeting the designer is a thrill. "In May, I had lunch with him in Budapest. I know it sounds name drop-y, but I'm from the Midwest, so it was pretty exciting," said Paper magazine's Mickey Boardman.
Bergdorf's Linda Fargo was on the same page—she decked herself out in confetti for the occasion. Just how did she manage to attach it to her skin? "I used lots of fake eyelash glue," she told Style.com. "Originally, I went to the store to get those gold star stickers, like the ones they used to put on your papers in school when you did well, and they looked at me like I was crazy!"
—Kristin Studeman
Sandro Kopp paints his portraits differently: namely, via Skype from Scotland. And perhaps for that reason, his New York friends and famous sitters (often one and the same) have been overjoyed to have the 33-year-old artist in town—although it doesn't hurt, of course, that his plus-one is Tilda Swinton. "It's been, like, Sandro week. I think all of his friends have been throwing him parties," David Maupin said on Saturday night, where his gallery, Lehmann Maupin, hosted a dinner in celebration of Kopp's new exhibition, There You Are, at its Chrystie Street space.
"I think part of it is an extension of his charm and his personality and being an artist—to do this type of work, you have to kind of relate and open up some kind of conversation with your subject," Maupin mused, as Michael Stipe (who'd thrown Kopp a dinner party of his own the night before) arrived with gold, letter-shaped balloons that spelled out K-O-P-P. Meanwhile, Frances McDormand was taking her co-hosting duties seriously: "I'm the hostess; do what I say," the actress said, cutting a swath through the cocktail area. "We're moving to the back room. My name's Fran."
Singer-songwriter Patrick Wolf had flown in from London and serenaded dinner guests before they took their seats underneath enormous rice paper lanterns. (The proceedings were sponsored by Belvedere, Pomellato, and Istanbul '74, the Turkish culture-importing outfit behind the annual Istancool festival.) Kopp, looking very much the man of the hour in a velvet YSL dinner jacket, declared himself not just over the moon—"I'm over Mars," he said. As McDormand started packing up kale salad for the road, the crowd headed off to the after-party at Pulqueria. The balloons didn't make the trip, but Kopp and Swinton did, and stayed until 2 a.m.—which makes the actress' luminous appearance at the SAG Awards in L.A. the following evening all the more remarkable.
—Darrell Hartman
The 18th Annual SAG Awards ceremony was almost like watching the Globes all
over again. Same A-list nominees, same A-list winners, save for upsets in
the Best Actor and Actress categories. Only this time around the festivities
included a drinking game courtesy of the Bridesmaids crew. Kristen Wiig and company's onstage antics echoed the action on the red carpet: For the most part, the vibe tonight was cooler, looser, and more fun—and better for it.
That's not to say the glam factor went missing. Natalie Portman and Zoe
Saldana both nabbed looks fresh from the Paris haute couture shows that
wrapped last Wednesday; the former chose a strapless Giambattista Valli in a
deep shade of bordeaux, and the latter wore Look 17 from Givenchy. Minus the
nose ring, that is—things weren't quite that loose.
Still, there was plenty to like: Emma Stone's black Alexander McQueen,
Michelle Williams' lacy red Valentino, Jessica Chastain's royal-blue gown
from Calvin Klein Collection. We'll be looking forward to seeing what those
three choose for the Oscars. Gretchen Mol's white and gold L'Wren Scott
column dress also made a big impact.
White and gold also proved lucky for a Marchesa-clad Viola Davis. After winning
Best Actress for her role in The Help, she was back on stage again for the Best Ensemble prize.
—Nicole Phelps
For ten years, the Sidaction gala has closed the spring Couture season in Paris. The evening has evolved into a highly successful fundraiser for AIDS education, research, and treatment, but the personality of the actual event is contingent on a couple of other features. One, it's something of a fashion showcase, not quite to the extent of New York's Met ball, but designers do make the scene with a "muse," like Giambattista Valli arriving with Bianca Brandolini d'Adda, Peter Copping dressing Clémence Poésy, or Dita Von Teese sporting Alexis Mabille on her bod and Alexis Mabille on her arm. Jean Paul Gaultier and Grace Jones also made a logical pair, even if she was actually with The Other JPG (Jean-Paul Goude).
Another characteristic of the gala is the lengthy speechifying that precedes dinner. Not, in itself, unusual at such things, but it's always seemed a little off that they're not somehow translated for the non-French speakers in the audience. A shame, when the information being imparted is so worthy. Plus, Sidaction's work is international. Plus, the gala comes at the end of a fashion semi-week, when Paris is awash with out-of-towners. I seemed to be surrounded by people who'd quickly stretched their bilingualism to the max. Oh, well, there was always a special postprandial edition of Club Sandwich, where the Anglophones whose French had been tested and found wanting could blow off some nonverbal steam.
—Tim Blanks
Karl Lagerfeld understands decor as well as he knows fashion. The premises for his new signature collection Karl are an opulently minimal series of salons in an hôtel particulier on the Left Bank, so it made sense that the food for the dinner party he hosted on Wednesday night to launch the line should also focus on the bare opulent essentials: caviar, foie gras, and lobster, with a logo-fied iPad as a takeaway. One of the T-shirts in his Karl range features a fanciful self-portrait with the handwritten message "I Love Gossip." Plenty of that in a room full of fashion people, though I spent much of the night talking about obscure Eastern European films with the encyclopedically informed Anja Rubik. How often do you get the chance to have a real talk with anyone about Dusan Makavejev's scatological Sweet Movie? Especially while chunks of foie gras are drifting back and forth under your nose.
Rubik stars in the commercial that Trey Laird made for the launch of Karl. It was pre-loaded on the iPad. Sui He is also in the ad. She spoke no English when she arrived in New York a year ago but now sounds as politely precise as an elocutionist. On the day of the shoot, Sui was intimidated by the ease of the more experienced models. "It was like a competition," she said. Everyone's a winner in the finished product, which premiered at the dinner, but Sui seemed a little taken aback at how persuasive she was as a minx.
"It's a new mix," murmured Lagerfeld to the camera at the end of his film. Right on cue, Azealia Banks appeared to perform. The neighborhood is "nice," so she didn't get to play more than two songs, but a ruckus was duly raised, and the hair of the haute bourgeoisie peering down into the yard from their windows was surely curled (presuming they could understand her four-letter wordplay). From caviar to c-you-know-what…It may have been a new mix, but it was the same old polymath Karl.
—Tim Blanks
After the success of the Double Club in London, Paris was an obvious target for another of Prada's cultural interventions. The 24 h Museum was exactly that, an imposing exhibition space constructed inside the Palais d'Iéna for all of one day. Prada's collaborators this time were the art provocateur Francesco Vezzoli and Rem Koolhaas's design team AMO, who mimicked the traditional museum setup with a central gallery of classical "sculptures" (photographic images of ancient statues mounted on Perspex, with contemporary features superimposed). There was even a monumental techno-goddess in the grand stairway of the Palais, à la the Winged Victory at the Louvre.
The 24 h Museum opened last night with a party that was a work of art in itself. First, there was a dinner for 120 or so, in the central gallery. As party guests began to arrive and the gallery's metal grill doors were briefly closed, it became clear that we were actually in a huge cage. That fit right in with the conceptual mind games Vezzoli and his patron Miuccia Prada play so well. Super-chef Alain Passard, who specializes in extraordinary vegetariana, did the menu. I tasted a hibiscus reduction for the first time in my life. Entertaining (on a grand scale) footnote: All the tableware, glasses, and cutlery apparently came from Miuccia's home. After dinner, there was a disco in the Salon des Refusés, the room where museums would traditionally store things that were rejected from exhibitions. Kate Moss directed the music—Dexys Midnight Runners, David Bowie, George Michael, the hits of your (or at least her) life.
It's easy to imagine the Herculean effort that went into making the 24 h Museum happen. That's power. But it looks like power is Prada's theme this season. The shadow cast by Miuccia's star-injected men's show last week is a long one. She got another celebrity turnout last night, from Polanski and Deneuve to Salma Hayek and Diane Kruger, with a smattering of art world stars. Still, the ever-contrary Vezzoli said, "This is a night when romanticism trumps power." Mind you, it was romance with a twist. The artist also claimed inspiration from the Oedipus complex. It was his mother's eyes that were superimposed on every statue.
—Tim Blanks
At times, the lineup had a slight nineties vibe to it, which Posen described as "Americana gone to the dark side." Sweaters came with slashed sleeves, and there was a burgundy velvet tank dress worthy of Alicia Silverstone circa Clueless. Z Spoke's noteworthy accessories, including matte leather satchels with tough, tonal hardware and a silver fox clutch, were fresh finishing touches that won't break the bank.
—Brittany Adams
With statement-making prints like that, Colangelo was smart to keep silhouettes clean and simple. The minimal streak extended to a pair of faux fur coats that were as streamlined as they were shaggy. Those look like they could be a hit with the fashion crowd, too.
—Nicole Phelps
—Nicole Phelps
—Brittany Adams
Cacharel regularly sells alongside happening, contemporary Parisian lines like Isabel Marant and Carven. But if the label is aiming to siphon off some of that cool clientele, Liu and Sun are going to need to up the edginess factor with more pieces like the slim jersey pants with pleated side pockets and the peach fuzz-colored leather minidress here.
—Brittany Adams
—Matthew Schneier
But it was Marie Antoinette role-playing in her little farm on the grounds of Versailles who provided the collection's ambience. The first model seemed to arrive in the salons of the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild on a breath of cool country air. Sprigged flower prints covered almost everything. An antique fabric alchemy transformed taffeta into equally antique-looking blurred floral chaîne. The sense of precious old artisanship was also evident in the swirling bouilloné decoration. The volumes were diaphanous, bucolic, like the cloud of point d'esprit scattered with organza lace cutouts. The designers sought a "deep lightness." It was beautifully exemplified in dresses with up to five layers of lace and organza.
Examined up close in the atelier, the workmanship defied comprehension. The stitching was so fine it was invisible. It signaled the heart-stopping delicacy that distinguished the collection. But there was a real resilience, too. Hence the use of cotton amidst the lace, organza, and filigree, as in a coat with tone-on-tone embroidery that felt embossed. Hence also the flat shoes, which loaned their own kind of grace to the purity of an ivory coat dress decorated with tiny spirals (Piccioli compared them to stucco). A chaîne skirt had deep, useful pockets. Smocking was a rustic detail. There was a casual quality that made the clothes ultimately feel more modern than their long-sleeved, high-necked, and lace-gloved propriety would at first suggest.
Chiuri pointed out that she and Picciolo come from an accessories background, where they learned to tell a big story with a small object. That skill is now writ large in the collections they are designing at Valentino. Today's story was their most exquisite yet.
—Tim Blanks
Simoens, a cinema buff, traded in last season's Nosferatu inspiration for a film of a more recent vintage, Gaspard Noé's Tokyo-set piece Enter the Void. But despite the decades separating the movies, the two collections were consistent, with slim silhouettes and graphic embellishments dominating both. If the mosaic-like tiles on a long strapless dress and a structured short-sleeve jacket didn't quite evoke the "entirely new take on contemporary Japan" that the show notes augured, there was promise in Simeons' vibrantly color-blocked mousseline dresses. And it was likewise refreshing to see a designer using embroidery—in this case nail-head studs on black crepe—in a forward-looking way.
As for Ditto, we can see her rocking one of Simoens' fitted cocktail dresses. Their organza wings will come in handy for stage-diving.
—Nicole Phelps
Of course, there's a simpler explanation. Utter the words "Hitchcock blonde" and visions of immaculate tailoring and precise elegance spring to mind. And that's just what Gaytten was after with his dressy looks pulled together with head scarves and gloves. The hip-shaped jacket with a pleated neckline belted over a pencil skirt was typical. Trompe l'oeil scarf detailing added some old Hollywood swank to a coat that was already glamorous in crocodile jacquard.
Old-school screen glamour is a Galliano staple. Here, it was evoked with liberal use of gold lamé, guipure lace, and the bias-cut gowns that are the label's signature item. A polka-dot devoré was particularly striking. Once again, Gaytten proved that he's the one true keeper of the Galliano flame, but you can't help wondering what he's got up his own sleeve.
—Tim Blanks
—Nicole Phelps
Still, the results were resolutely urban. Doma confessed to growing up a Helmut Lang fan (he's Croatian but lived in southern Germany, close to the Austrian border), and he clearly absorbed the design star's modernist tendencies. The big takeaway here was Doma's strong yet soft tailoring.
—Nicole Phelps
Yet, unlikely as the union may seem, Gaultier managed to turn his couture presentation into both a celebratory send-off for Winehouse and a colorful addition to his gallery of beautiful oddities. That polo shirt was sexed up and alchemized into a back-buttoning dress with a G where the Fred Perry logo would be. Amy's tiny waist and penchant for pencil skirts shaped the silhouette, with a lot of help from London's corsetry wizard, Mr. Pearl (in fact, the show was as much about him as it was Winehouse). And the singer's brazen, devil-may-carelessness goosed the color palette (Karlie Kloss, camping and vamping in a huge green taffeta trench, followed on the heels of a guipure lace column in lurid orange). There was also a dishabille edge, with necklines draping asymmetrically, jackets slipping off shoulders, and bosoms bursting ripely forth.
Excess ultimately overwhelmed Winehouse, so it was true to her spirit that it had the same effect here—and there. Vinyl leggings will no longer be mentioned in polite company. But the couture spirit of JPG managed to assert itself with pieces like the pinstripe suit jacket that fell away into a shawl on one side, or a languidly decadent satin peignoir over jet-beaded pants, or a corset-backed gray silk parka that flipped open to reveal a lining of pink sequins.
At the finale, the models paraded in veils. Mourners? Brides? Handmaidens of Amy? Four guys performed doo-wop versions of Winehouse's songs throughout. They looked just like the Dap-Kings, who backed her on Back to Black. Really, all that was missing was the woman herself. So sad.
—Tim Blanks
Our stylist friend neglected to mention one thing in her explanation of Saab's success: lightness. Despite all the handwork, these dresses—with the exception of an uncharacteristically heavy wedding gown—appeared almost weightless. That's gotta count for something when you could be walking away from the Oscars with a statuette.
—Nicole Phelps
The collection was in a lower key than some of Giornetti's recent hits, which walked a fine line between less and more. (Take his houndstooth collection for Fall, which kept silhouettes classic while exploding the print to cartoon scale—Anna Dello Russo, who knows something about cartoon scale herself, was a fan.) You wouldn't expect to see ADR in the more pragmatic pieces on display here, to say nothing of the kitten heels. But there was a kicky, sixties-inflected charm to the pleated skirtsuits, sweater sets, and capes, especially as enlivened by helpings of velvet and python. (One twinset featured python-laced argyle—good girl gone slithery.) And the exotic-skin portfolios and hard-shell makeup cases look like reason enough to take any show on the road.
—Matthew Schneier
Given that thunder-stealing moment, you might imagine that the collection would be slightly back-seated, but it was almost as if Armani had anticipated the competition, because he rolled out his most persuasive couture outing to date. It helped that his theme was metamorphosis, with particular emphasis on the snake, whose powers of persuasion are legendarily recorded in best-selling novels like the Bible. The snake sheds skin, the butterfly emerges from a chrysalis—both natural processes influenced the silhouettes of the collection. The skirts, for one thing, which were deeply folded like a pod. Or the evening pieces, where a sequined bodice slithered out of a swag of silk.
Maybe Armani had been looking at the serpentine photos of Guido Mocafico, because the color palette starred the same absinthe-bright, disconcerting green of Mocafico's snakes, just as the prints had the same coiled intensity and the shiny fabrics duplicated the soft sheen of snakeskin. The mesh laid over jackets and skirts looked like reptile scales, the crocodile was obviously the real thing.
But the other message of the couture show was man-made—a shrugged-off casualness, jackets on shoulders, hair tousled (maybe too much so). The strong contrast made for a strong show. And if Jessica Chastain believes in lucky charms, we know what she'll be wearing come Oscar night.
—Tim Blanks
—Brittany Adams
So far, the clothes hold up to her résumé. There was a smart fur coat with puffed sleeves that unzipped at the shoulders so you can trade them for simpler ribbed knit ones. Clever in a different way was a short-sleeve sweater with a demure trompe l'oeil collar that turned to reveal a scooped-out bare back.
But Azzaro's raison d'être is dresses, and what was promising about today's presentation was the diversity of Castello Branco's offering, from long fourreau dresses with subtle, unexpected asymmetries to shorter cocktail numbers in jersey. The latter had knit waists that functioned like corsets but, the designer promised, were a hell of a lot more comfortable.
—Nicole Phelps
"Urban winter" is for the woman who shops year-round. In June (when pre-fall delivers), a bare dress in a lively batik print is an easy sell. "Country winter" is destined for colder climes, like Eastern Europe, Russia, the northern part of the U.S., places where a faux astrakhan coat could come in handy. The casual third part of the collection consists of jersey basics, although there's nothing exactly basic about a stretchy draped dress that clings in all the right places. Last, but certainly not least, came the masculine/feminine tailoring that Hash is known for. Pantsuits had an unstructured ease (see the ribbed knit lapels of a jacket and the cross-over waistline of slouched-on pants), while an evening jumpsuit—a perennial for Hash—had the sharp lines of a smoking.
—Nicole Phelps
His ten-piece Couture lineup was divided into three rooms. The first was devoted to crocodile, and what the Givenchy atelier has done to the precious skin is positively jaw-dropping. For a long, clingy dress, the scales on the hide were individually cut and numbered, then bleached, dyed, and resewn one by one in order onto a tulle body stocking. It took 350 hours to make. The artisans who worked on a cropped and fitted jacket (with the same star motif as the designer used in his menswear show) perhaps didn't log as many hours, but the payoff was just as impressive.
Tisci said his two inspirations this season were the 1927 Fritz Lang movie Metropolis and the theme music from a more obscure Russian film, 1924's Aelita: Queen of Mars (add that one to your Netflix queue, pronto). You could see their influence most clearly in the Art Deco embellishments on the dresses in the crystal room. The designer also pointed out the parallels between Lang's high-city/low-city film and his own bejeweled gowns worn over workmen's tank tops. In fact, the tanks weren't as proletarian as all that, coming as they did in a cashmere blend.
The standout in the black and white room was a white silk T-shirt tucked into a black silk cady skirt that unzipped almost all the way up to the right hip, the white sequin lining only flashing when the model walked by. In a week of ball gowns as wide as they are high and beads by the bushel, it takes a special maturity to exercise that kind of restraint, but in its own subtle way, it showcased the same kind of bravado as did the models' nose rings and doorknocker-size hoops. This is a designer with confidence to spare.
—Nicole Phelps
Hardly. The vision presented by the Chanel show was streamlined, upbeat, and forward-looking, quite the contrast with the decadent-Raj, drowned-world, and scorched-earth scenarios that Lagerfeld arranged around his most recent collections. Today's guests took their seats in a simulacrum of a commercial space shuttle flight that, during the course of the show, left the Earth's atmosphere and headed for space. Toward the finale, the Earth actually passed overhead, across the clear dome that allowed passengers a view of the starry sky outside.
But the collection was scarcely the futurist extravaganza that such a setup promised. The key point in the presentation was a new fashion attitude. It's the sort of lip service notion to which designers often tip their caps, but in Lagerfeld's case, he delivered. How? By elongating his proportion even lower than dropped waist to thigh-top, so that when the models walked with their hands tucked in slash pockets, they looked, the designer said, "like boys whose jeans are slipping off." The boy/girl thing is a Chanel staple, and Lagerfeld has found a contemporary exemplar in Alice Dellal, who today was placed in the peculiar position of watching dozens of women styled to look just like her parading past her front-row perch. Think of stretched-out necks and pushed-up sleeves on sweatshirts and you've got other key components of the silhouette.
The youthful slouchiness of the attitude was a counterpoint to the byzantine complexity of the techniques that created the clothes. "A lot of it isn't even fabric," Lagerfeld said. "It's embroidery." And if it wasn't that, it was cellophane. Or something else unlikely. And yet, there was a classic elegance about the result. The stretched-out neck was a portrait neckline, the pushed-up sleeves were a perfect bell. The long, lean length that ended just above the ankle was culture incarnate. And the cellophane shimmered like the finest silk.
—Tim Blanks
—Nicole Phelps
It'd be hard to go farther to the wrong side of the tracks. But good taste is a piety for which Anderson doesn't have much time. Debating it is part of his constant conversation. And it's given a tannic spark to his collections, this one included. His swingy A-line skirts and quilted suits are part schoolgirl, part hausfrau. They have a vintage twinge, but rendered in Op Art, they're clearly from no time and nowhere but Andersonland, a place as in thrall to its own off-kilter laws as Wonderland.
Back to that statement of intent: It'd be easy to get caught up in the word ugly. But the operative one here is play. All the more so because pre-fall substituted a breezier collection of snappy, Tesco-bright pieces, including plenty of the knits for which Anderson's become justly acclaimed, for some of the more complicated, architectural investigations he shows on the runway. Fun! And in a surely related bit, he's having a good time, too. "I'd do a collection every month if I had money to," he said.
—Matthew Schneier
The mood of urban utility was clearest in the emphasis on outerwear, with gabardine trenches, bonded duffels, parkas, and quilted jackets for men and women. Men also were offered smart tailoring. It came in gray jersey, a nod to Lacoste's sportswear heritage. Baptista was especially proud of everything Lacoste is doing with knits, not just in their ergonomic aspect but in small, sophisticated details, like the transparent piping that defined a white cashmere top.
—Tim Blanks
If that was A, B might be a strapless polka-dotted dress draped to one side and exploding into a puff of fabric at the shoulder (that would represent the Ungaro atelier where Valli once labored). After that, everything was coming up Valli. C might have stood for the hints of Chaos that nibbled at the collection. If you give perfection a bit of a shake, you make it memorable. Like the sheer polka-dotted dress whose embroidered flowers clustered around the shoulders and fell to a random scatter on the skirt. Or the linear black sequined gown that was clasped at the throat by a crumpled sheet of silver. (Luigi Scialanga's jewelry has always been an exquisite complement to Valli's clothes.) A sleeveless crocodile top had a waist that was cinched into a peplum flare over a white lace pencil skirt. The visible underwear was black. There was something Roman bourgeois but memorably twisted about such an idea.
Valli mentioned Ava Gardner to one guest who detected a hint of old Hollywood glamour in his eveningwear. The spitfire actress could undoubtedly have animated his strapless, wide-skirted billow of floral mousseline, but the columns of silk with draped shoulders were more evocative of the elegance of Adrian. At the same time, they pointed to Valli's own mastery of couture's ABCs.
—Tim Blanks
The rectangle dress—a simple swatch of crepe draped and stitched to a smaller back panel—has a modern allure that belies its decades-old origins. Same goes for Vionnet's trademark Grecian gathering and draping, which looked particularly fresh here on an evening top with an asymmetric train that trailed behind one leg of a pair of tapering pants.
Accessories and jewelry are also in these designers' purview. The twins put their sensible, chic stamp on shoes with substantial heels that are low enough to do some serious stomping around in. Smart.
—Nicole Phelps