WOMENSWEAR SS2016: Bailamos!

The ruffled off shoulder top is without a doubt the fashion piece most worn by fashion professionals. Just have a glance at your Instagram and you know what’s up. A top that perfectly fits in with the bigger latina style trend of this summer. Ruffles and volants all over. In the mix with sexy legs, cropped tops and long lengths. The colors of choice? Shades of red, pink and orange; colors that communicate passion. ‘Cause that’s what a Latina is all about. She speaks from the heart when she dresses up in that red skirt en white Tee (Blugirl). When she rocks that bright orange bodycon dress (Balmain) it’s pure passion. Latina bonita. A sexy open heel, flower in the hair and she’s out for night. Duele El Corazon by Enrique on repeat, bailamos!

Lanvin Catwalk Fashion Show Paris Menswear SS2017

Please enjoy the pictures for now, our review will follow shortly.

Streetfashion Paris Menswear SS2017, Day 4

What are they wearing during the international fashion weeks? A Raf Simons jacket, that vintage YSL or their latest Comme des Garcons suit? During the fashion weeks we refresh our streetwear posts regularly. We don’t judge, we’re not the fashion-police, we just enjoy fashion and your own personal style. Next stop: Paris Menswear Fashion Week.

Bill Cunningham, streetfashion-photographer

Bill Cunningham, the New York (street)fashion-photographer died yesterday at the age of 87. He turned fashion photography into his own branch of cultural anthropology on the streets of New York. For years he chronicled the ever-changing social scene for The New York Times on what people wore — stylishly, flamboyantly or just plain sensibly. Cunningham had been hospitalized recently after having a stroke.

You could not miss Bill Cunningham easily on the streets of the fashion-cities. He was easy to spot, riding his bicycle, his body draped in his utilitarian blue French worker’s jacket, khaki pants and black sneakers and with his 35-millimeter camera slung around his neck.
Nothing escaped him: not the fanny packs, not the Birkin bags, not the gingham shirts, not the fluorescent biker shorts. Cunningham worked nearly 40 years for The New York Times.

At the Pierre hotel on the East Side of Manhattan, he pointed his camera at tweed-wearing blue-blood New Yorkers with names like Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. Downtown, by the piers, he clicked away at crop-top-wearing Voguers. Up in Harlem, he jumped off his bicycle for B-boys in low-slung jeans. In the process, he turned into something of a celebrity himself.

In 2008, Mr. Cunningham went to Paris, where the French government honored him with the Legion of Honor.
In 2010, a documentary, “Bill Cunningham New York,” premiered at the Museum of Modern Art to glowing reviews.
Yet Mr. Cunningham told nearly anyone who asked about it that the attendant publicity was a total hassle, a reason for strangers to approach and bother him. He wanted to find subjects, not be the subject. He wanted to observe, rather than be observed.

He didn’t go to the movies. He didn’t own a television. He ate breakfast nearly every day at the Stage Star Deli on West 55th Street, where a cup of coffee and a sausage, egg and cheese could be had, until very recently, for under $3. He lived until 2010 in a studio above Carnegie Hall amid rows and rows of file cabinets, where he kept all of his negatives. He slept on a single-size cot, showered in a shared bathroom and, when he was asked why he spent years ripping up checks from magazines like Details (which he helped Annie Flanders launch in 1982), he said: “Money’s the cheapest thing. Liberty and freedom is the most expensive.”
We all will miss him. He was an example for us streetfashion-photographers: patient, friendly, with a good and loving eye for the subject.

Dior Homme Catwalk Fashion Show Paris Menswear SS2017

The models zoomed through Dior Homme’s suspended roller-coaster set so swiftly that one would think they were on skateboards. Just when one thought athletic influences were running out of breath, Dior Homme gave them a second wind: from the stripes running over the sleeves of two-button jackets to the tracksuit chevrons painted with a roller onto suit and coat sleeves.
Designer Kris Van Assche also blended in references to punk, Goth and New Wave. Pants had utility pockets, D-rings or side stripes and assumed various guises: from skinny jeans to wide raver styles.

The designer also gave military bombers and blouses fresh verve, adding chevrons here, a striped polo collar there. Sleek trench coats came with the sleeves hacked off, or sprouting a parka tail with drawstrings.

Dries van Noten Catwalk Fashion Show Menswear Paris SS2017

An imagined view from Kelmscott Manor – the country home of writer William Morris – on arts and crafts today was the theme of Dries van Notens SS2017 collection. That translated into romantic visuals based on photo prints of floral tapestry and tonal patchworks.

Belted trenchcoats and high-waisted full-length pants were familiar categories but still compelling ones. There was a whiff of soft military, too, as the prints gradually grew into camouflage patterns, as seen on cropped carrot pants and utility jackets.
Van Noten was at his best when he played with hybrid looks: Rendering tank tops as knitted sweaters minus the sleeves, or mixing panels of tapestry prints with metallic technical fabrics to produce sporty-cool jackets.

Givenchy Catwalk Fashion Show Paris Menswear SS2017

The Givenchy menswear collection for SS2017 was a parade of military parkas in greenback prints that approximated camouflage. But Riccardo Tisci was thinking of something else: Spirituality, seeing with your third eye”, he told WWD. “Money sometimes makes us forget that.”
Tisci rigged his models for some kind of journey, backpacks laden with blankets — or split into three laptop-sized pouches attached to a harness.
The pants, as loose and flowing as sweat pants and often licked with stripes, gave the collection an athletic aspect — as did the chunky, graphic hiking sneakers. While the checkerboard patterns skewed a bit close to Louis Vuitton’s Damier check, the reference was games.

Rick Owens Catwalk Fashion Show Paris Menswear SS2017

Rick Owens goes soft next spring. He carried over his big pants from last fall, also continuing with bloblike drapes and whorled volumes. Indeed, his opening looks in gauzy gray fabrics approximated the gargantuan folds of blubber of this season’s mascot — a walrus.
Yet there was something regal about the cone-shaped silhouettes and the elaborate, sashlike folds worked into T-shirts and tops.
As the show progressed, Owens capped his pyramid-shaped pants with tiny, taut bomber jackets and leather blousons that stopped at the ribcage.

Owens also added shiny embroideries with radiant lines, like depictions of the Sacred Heart, to loose black robes and sculpted tuxedo jackets. It’s a descriptor coming up more frequently as the Paris season picks up steam. Owens’ priestly take on black-tie was certainly divine.

Louis Vuitton Catwalk Fashion Show Paris Menswear SS2017

Imagine a young boy touring the savanna in Kenya and alighting upon the Massai people in their vivid red and blue clothing. It’s one of Kim Jones’ strongest and most treasured memories — and it inspired one of his first hit collections as men’s style director at Louis Vuitton five years ago.

For his brisk open-air spring show, the designer got savanna heat and blazing sun, which didn’t seem to phase front-row guests David Beckham or Victor Cruz, both dressed in long-sleeve sweaters, styles that appeared on the runway in shaggy mohair with springbok fur patterns.

The mohair styles looked cool over checkered pants licked with silver zips, among the punk accents that spiked the African theme. The collection had a youthful zing, interspersed with luxury marvels, including a “denim” jacket made of matte crocodile, a molded leather vest with a diagonal zip and a Perspex blanket trunk etched with a giraffe drawing by Dinos and Jake Chapman.

Balenciaga Catwalk Fashion Show Paris Menswear SS2017

It was Demna Gvasalia’s debut men’s collection for Balenciaga — and the brand’s first men’s show in its 99-year history. Not since Hedi Slimane’s rockers stormed down the runway some 15 years ago has anyone at a major house paraded a silhouette this severe: coats and suits with shoulders as wide as a fridge, immediately followed by the opposite: suffocating, shrunken styles on models with ironing-board physiques, most of them cast on Instagram.

Time will tell if the David Byrne look makes any sense to young generations weaned on droopy jeans and sloppy hoodies. While challenging, these Balenciaga clothes had such conviction behind them — and a peerless execution — that they commanded attention, and are bound to be influential.

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