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четверг, 14 апреля 2016 г.
#CNILux: Juun.J — Futuristic And Gender-Fluid Menswear - Vogue
In advance of the Second Condé Nast International Conference in Seoul, Suzy interviews the South Korean fashion phenomenon Juun.J
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Azzedine Alaïa On Fashion’s Current Turbulence - Vogue
"It's a strange period," said as we spoke, before and after his show, about the recent upheavals in the fashion world.
Like so many people in Paris, Azzedine's interest was not what Anthony Vaccarello would do as newly appointed designer at Saint Laurent, but what will happen to the outgoing designer, the fiercely fastidious, Los Angeles-based Hedi Slimane.
"I want to see what Hedi is going to do," Alaïa said. "I would be very surprised if he went back to Dior [where Slimane was menswear designer from 2000-2007]. But I wouldn't be surprised if he goes to Chanel. He's friends again with Karl after they fell out, and it would not be stupid for him to come back to Karl — at Chanel. He could start with menswear and then take over the ready-to-wear and then he might take over completely..."
Azzedine's gentle voice faded away. Being only six years younger than Karl, 82, both must feel intimations of mortality — or at least a realisation that such intense work cannot go on forever.
I asked Alaïa, 40 years a designer, what he thinks has changed. "It's a strange time," he replied. "A stylist like Hedi could start his own house under his own name — he has earned a fortune. But he wants the security of being at an existing house. He's only been two or three years at Saint Laurent and they have invested a lot. Now someone else will come in and want to change it all again."
Azzedine is emblematic of "slow fashion". Over these four decades he has created clothes with his own hands, shaping them like the sculpture that he once studied. Knits make up around 60 per cent of the collection and this season they were animated by geometric effects in vivid African colours. "But not North Africa — south of the Maghreb," he said, referring to Sub-Saharan Africa, rather than the Tunisia in which he grew up.
These dresses, shaped to an A-line silhouette with low arm-holes and swirls of vivid blue and ginger, were a fine example of Alaïa's way of subtly changing his distinctive look. There was more movement for the body, as opposed to his once-signature "King of Cling" dresses, and the geometric lines — straight or curvy - brought both boldness and freedom.
"I don't say, 'I prefer this or that' — not at all," Alaïa said. "I have an idea and I work on it."
His new thoughts, fast and furious this season, included long skirts, breaking open in movement to prove that they were, in fact, culottes; and a cape, shaped like a bell, with shoulders softened by kangaroo fur. A leather coat, loose from its rounded shoulders and generously cut, had just the faintest whisper of Vetements' style, if it had not been for the elegant tailoring of the butter-soft leather that defined the garment as extreme luxury.
I feasted my eyes on coats that were elegantly tailored, slightly raised and with a bow at the back halfway down the spine. All these "grown up" clothes were shown with little boots, 1960s style, studded with silver hardware.
"Why would I want to deliver them immediately? For what reason?" asked Azzedine, squashing completely my tentative enquiries about the current "see now, buy now" concept. This Alaïa show was nearly a month after the end of the international fashion season and could, theoretically, have been offered at the start of winter selling. But I know that speed is anathema to this designer. He designs and creates every single outfit himself, and shows it when he, not the store, is ready.
I was so inspired by the virtuoso display of tactile patterns, that I asked Alaïa how they were made. "I start with a drawing from Kris," he said, referring to Kris Ruhs, the artist and partner of Carla Sozzani, whose 10 Corso Como concept store in Milan has been a fervent supporter. That was long before brand Azzedine Alaïa was bought by luxury group Richemont and given a glamorous boutique just off the Avenue Montaigne and the so-called "Golden Triangle" in Paris.
"Azzedine works from his own work; the continuity is why I like it," said Carla Sozzani, defining for me the importance of design stability.
The jacquards that were the backbone of this show were inspired and designed by Alaïa in Paris, worked on over the computer, and made in Italy, where the intensely patterned and molded jacquard is created. Until I had the pieces in my hands, I did not realise the intensity of the Azzedine Alaïa work. For example, a black lace dress was made by piecing together ink blue and black, while slithers of woven silk covered delicate parts of the body like passing shadows.
The collection included more than 70 pieces, with twice as many backstage, the designer said. He designs each and every piece himself, as it has been since those heady days in the 1980s when statuesque singer Grace Jones carried him on stage and he invented the concept of the "super model" from Naomi Campbell to Stephanie Seymour.
I thought about the current turmoil in the fashion industry. The news had not even broken at that point about the Qatari owners of Valentino bidding for Balmain. That brand has been dramatically transformed by designer Olivier Rousteing, via Instagram, from the signature "Jolie Madame" ("Pretty Woman") style to sex-pot glamour.
Maybe a completely new aesthetic is required for all these houses, Dior included, that are searching for designers. The truth is, you can follow the codes of an existing brand, but you cannot be a leader unless you design from your heart and soul for yourself, as John Galliano did at Dior and Hedi Slimane at Saint Laurent.
Azzedine Alaïa's dedication is not only awe-inspiring, it melds imagination and continuity. Long may he reign!
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A Suzy Exclusive: Pharrell Williams Samples The Seabed - Vogue
Overhead swings a shark — padded like a goofy children's toy. Below is a line-up of men and women's denim outfits, and even a giant tepee, also made of denim. And for decoration at this G-Star RAW glass building there are artworks made from plastic detritus found on the ocean floor.
"It was a really awesome opportunity that, in my eyes, seemingly fell out of the sky, because I get to be creative and also use denim as a medium to make a statement and pay homage to where we live,'' says Pharrell Williams, who has come to Amsterdam to underline his commitment — personal as well as financial — to G-Star RAW.
Although the size of the share owned by the music entrepreneur has not been disclosed, Pharrell calls himself Head of Imagination and "co-owner" of the brand with Dutch CEO Jos Van Tilburg, who founded the company in the Netherlands in 1989. "It seemed like the only thing that makes sense — being co-owner not only gives me the room and 'de-restriction' to make big propositions, but I see G-Star as equals, as peers," Pharrell explained. "We all share the same desire: to make meaningful things. Right now, society is invoked to do things because they look good aesthetically and are pleasing. But history has demonstrated over and over again that the things that last are those that have a purpose."
The fruit of the music mogul's green thoughts is offered in a line-up of hooded mannequins beside the tepee where we are speaking. Pharrell is wearing a pale blue denim boiler suit — in contrast the outfits on display were ink blue, mud brown, camouflage olive with disruptive patterns, and a good deal of black for menswear, even if it was lightened by white shoes and a white T-shirt with "RAW'' printed across the waist.
On a tour of the building, my eyes were opened to the brand's different fabric treatments, from simple RAW denim (as opposed to water-guzzling stonewashed versions) to a complex re-cycling of ocean plastic. G-Star also uses a 3-D jeans-shaping technique, launched in 2009, with an arc silhouette that shapes the legs on the inner and outer seams.
Jos Van Tilburg, who rarely discusses the company's aims or products, made a rare statement about what G-Star stands for. ''For the planet and as a person, I believe it's our job to be responsible for the world," he said. "Responsibility is about people. We produce our products in low-labour countries, so it is also in our chain of responsibility to look after the social standards of how they work, how they are paid and whether overtime is controlled. Van Tilburg went on to explain his commitment to bringing factories in low-labour-cost countries up to international standards, improving a denim industry "that is not the cleanest industry in the world" and using recycled and "nettle" cotton for RAW, the latter made from the plant with green leaves that sting.
G-Star RAW's backstory describes a company that is as transparent as its headquarters, a glass airplane-hangar of a building designed in 2013 by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas so that all the workers can see each other. Since the manufacturing takes place elsewhere, the tour was frustratingly lacking in the yarn-to-product process I would like to have seen. But there were many inspiring moments, such as a visit to the company archive, where 35,000 vintage sporting and military garments were hung, together with accessories stacked on shelves in clear plastic boxes. ''We start in the archive not by copying, but by taking inspiration and making new stuff out of it," said Ruud de Bruin, Head of Menswear. He described the company's creation process as "developing a deep understanding of the past in order to create the future". I looked at a rail of zippered bomber jackets in every conceivable colour and pattern, as well as military camouflage, utility and extreme-weather clothing.
Other sections of the archive were devoted to accessories or to sporty and casual clothes from the 1970s. Pharrell joined the walk through the different floor levels, where we were shown a new addition of a purse attached to women's jeans at the front of the waist — just the fashionable thing for keeping valuables safe at music festivals. Thecla Schaeffer, Chief Marketing Officer, pointed to a G-Star RAW activist T-shirt that proclaimed in large black letters: "WTF ARE YOU DOING TO MY OCEANS?"
I asked Pharrell, who turns 43 on Tuesday, to explain what makes him ''Happy'' beyond his role as co-owner of G-Star. Does his immersion in the music business give him insight into big changes in the digital era? ''There's something happening in the music industry, like the 'spring uprisings' and upheavals that are happening all over the world," Pharrell said. "It's almost like The Big Short [the 2015 movie]. The big crash - that's what's happening right now in the music industry. It's happening because the industry has been hung up on a dinosaur, prehistoric mentality. The average kid doesn't want a CD because you have to carry it. Why should you own something that's available on a digital medium? You don't own it at the end of the day - it's stored on a phone or on someone else's site." "This is the generation that doesn't want to own anything," Pharrell continued. "They say: 'I don't want a car — I can Uber'; or, 'I don't want to commit to this big meal - I want tapas'. But the guys who are running the business, they're 'old school' and think that everything has to be tactile in a physical way. Hugs are great, but we know that there's a lot of virtual love in the world."
I found Pharrell's rumination on the music world so interesting that you can read them in their entirety in my next post. Yet the situation for jeans seems different to that of music. These denim pieces often carry a great deal of nostalgia, of personal emotion and memory, which is why people are unwilling to throw them away, even when they are worn and torn. Personalised jeans have been part of the fashion world since at least the hippie and hand-weave era of the 1970s. I was fascinated when Pieter Kool, Head of 3D Design, explained the influence that high-tech already has on the denim sector, while it has barely penetrated high fashion.
Jos Van Tilburg told me how he clicked with Pharrell over the "Raw for the Oceans" collaboration and how it became a "Eureka!" moment. ''I feel that we are so much on the same frequency — he's in the music business and we are in the fashion business, and the thinking is that those are forbidden combinations that traditionally don't belong with each other. This was intriguing to Pharrell and me. I have paired up with other people before, like industrial designer Marc Newson, more than 10 years ago," he said.
"It was not an overnight decision with Pharrell — you have to know each other a little bit," he continued, "so we had a little flirt with 'Raw for the Oceans', which is a good cause. Now it's getting to true love and this is very good for the brand. Pushing the boundaries. How do we integrate it? It's like this denim tepee — I've got an idea!' We have these 'Eureka!' moments that are very exciting."
For all the progress the company is making with the G-Star Raw collaboration, with its 6,000 points of sale in 70 countries and new stores like the one opening on New York's Madison Avenue in May, I wondered whether it's possible to spread the environmental word and make buyers and consumers more mindful, especially about something as basic as a pair of jeans.
''Pharrell is famous, and if he talks about using plastic from the ocean, so many more people listen than when I tell them," Van Tilburg said. "This is where we find each other and I can make the project happen. But I believe that the whole world is changing. I feel that consumers are more and more interested in this message and that, at the end of the day, we are all changing our minds and will buy more responsibly.''
Let's hope that the G-Star Raw collaboration will indeed improve the world, one pair of jeans and one clean ocean at a time.
Instagram @SuzyMenkesVogue
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Pharrell Shifts Music’s Tempo - Vogue
In an exclusive interview with Suzy Menkes, the music and fashion mogul champions best practice – and urges all industry leaders to follow
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Эволюция белья на выставке Undressed в Музее Виктории и Алберта - Vogue
16 апреля там откроется грандиозная ретроспектива истории исподнего, какой еще не видел лОНДОН
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Цвета солнечной Флориды в коллекции весенних лаков Essie - Vogue
| Креативный директор Essie Ребекка Минкофф говорит, что если есть рай на земле, то это точно Флорида. Именно туда она уезжает в поисках тихих жарких ночей, морского воздуха, тропической экзотики и уморотворения. Залитому солнцем Palm Beach и посвящена коллекция Lounge Lover, в которую вошли шесть цветов с характерными названиями в духе «летний роман» и «все включено». |
| Оттенки отлично сочетаются между собой, что позволит решиться на экспериментвы. Попробуйте создать многослойный рисунок или столь актуальные этим летом графичные узоры на ногтях. В сочетании с загаром пастельные оттенки будут смотреться особенно интересно. Приобрести Lounge Lover уже можно в корнерах Essie по цене 460 рублей. |
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