Trends ss2010: take a bow

Bows seemed to be the finishing touch on many spring/summer outfits. They came in both extra small and very large variations.

The bows were often placed around the neck,  the waist or at the shoulders of an outfit. Blugirl, Luella Barteley and Moschino had many bows in their collections. The bows on Valentino’s dresses were perfection.

To complete a certain look designers often put some extra bows in the models’ hair (Erin Featherson, Luella Bartley) and even on their shoes (Kinder Aguggini). At the Louis Vuitton show small bows were placed on top of the big afros the models wore.
Marc Jacobs used colorful headbands with bows that vaguely resembled the bunny ears he designed for Louis Vuitton last year.

Bows came in silk, cotton, lace and disco-shiny material. There were well-formed stiffed bows and ribbons tied like a bow. Some of the bows looked as if they had just been torn off a birthday present.

Bows formed the perfect detail on many outfits. They gave it just a little bit extra and made several looks more elegant and feminine.

Tess van Daelen

Au revoir Christian !

This week, a French court approved a restructuring plan for bankrupt label Christian Lacroix that will reduce the house to a licensing operation. Only about a dozen of the roughly 100 employees will keep their jobs. The label’s problems culminated with the parties that expressed interest in buying the label but failed to produce financial guarantees in time to rescue it.

Experts say Lacroix focused too much on haute couture collections. Successful labels use couture nowadays as marketing efforts. No label sells enough couture clothes to justify it. Lacroix was notoriously insistent on maintaining its high-end approach to clothing. Under LVMH’s ownership, Lacroix made lower-priced Canal and Jeans lines. When the Falic group bought the label in 2005, they were quick to do away with those. Lacroix was happy because he didn’t want to be bothered with the more affordable things. But still, where were the Lacroix sunglasses? Perfumes? “It” bags? Sales of items like those account for the bulk of profits for luxury labels. Lacroix’s C’est La Vie fragrance never even took off. Fragrances are powerful profit drivers, but we shouldn’t forget fashion’s other highly potent force: divas. Look at Lady Gaga. She’s in Vogue, she was the first non-model to wear Alexander McQueen’s spring 2010 Alien shoes, and she was the highlight of New York Fashion Week and plenty of other things.
There should have been a diva out there for Lacroix to dress.

For me Lacroix was the beginning of my career as a journalist in fashion. I still remember my first fashionshow ever, Christian Haute Couture spring 1989 in hotel Intercontinental in Paris. It was breathtaking. Powerful, colorful, and very French joie de vivre. But times changed, as did women, fashion and the business.

So for old times sake: some highlights of past collections.

Jetty Ferwerda

Groupielove #1

Balmain is the hottest label in town. For spring  Christophe Decarnin brought out another whammy of a no-brainer blockbuster: disco cavewoman goes to the front. His army of sizzling, sleek-limbed supergirls strode out with huge-shouldered, metal-epauletted military tailcoats. Their T-shirts were tattered; bullet belts were slung around artfully “destroyed,” stained, and holed jeans or, yet more sensationally, minute, hypersexed, raggedy suede and leather loincloths (the term “skirt” hardly covers it). No wonder the models had fun, these clothes were made to suit their bodies. Daria Werbowy was exclusively booked to do the show.

Trends ss2010: endless variations

Since a white blouse is one of the most popular basic items, we spotted a lot of these in almost each summer collection. They appeared in three main versions: blouses that looked like jackets, tight waisted blouses and loose-fitting men’s shirts.

New details that were added to these blouses were rolled up sleeves, puff sleeves and collars decorated with ruffles and extra layers. Although designer Gianfranco Ferré has always been honoured for his multiple variations of the white blouse, I’ll bet he couldn’t come up with all the versions we saw for summer 2010.

The models wore their feminine blouses with ruffles and puff sleeves mostly in their pants or skirts (Moschino, Sophia Kokosalaki, Derek Lam, Max Mara), so the waist was accentuated. On the other hand, there were blouses that showed no bodyshape at all at the Junya Watanabe, Cacharel and Chloé fashion show.

There were a few outstanding white blouses. Stella McCartney designed an ultra-long, loose version. At the LoveSexMoney show there was a white blouse with an extremely big collar made of several layers of airy fabric. The white blouses at Girbaud looked like straightjackets. The best white blouse was shown by Aquilano & Rimondi. They made a super feminine white blouse with puff sleeves, large ruffles and ribbons… so classy.

Tess van Daelen

Trends ss2010: into the wild

We’ve seen the animal prints  for quite some time in fashion. Especially the leopard print was a major success in the past. This season we still saw some leopards at Giambattista Valli, Blugirl, Dolce & Gabbana and Paul Smith. Yet if you take a good look, you can see that the leopard print is diminishing and the reptiles are taking over.

Alexander McQueen’s collection was all about reptiles. Models dressed in colorful snake and python prints strutted down the runway. This had everything to do with the story behind this show, which was about the future ecological meltdown of the world and reptile-like creatures replacing mankind.

We also spotted light snake prints in the Pucci fashion show as well. They appeared at some short jackets. Kinder Aggugini used the snake prints in unrealistic light blue and pink. At the Iceberg fashion show the snakes were deep blue.

Other animals were spotted at Julian MacDonald, who designed a few fish dresses full of silver scales. Vivienne Tam showed a collection full of fantastic dresses that all had the print of a large butterfly on them. The colors of those butterflies worked beautifully.

Hopefully designers will continue getting their inspiration from nature. Nature has some extra reserves of great colors and patterns to create beautiful clothes with.

Tess van Daelen

Trends ss2010: pastel perfection

When it comes to color,  next season will be very tame. There’s the nude trend and there will be lots of black & white. Yet there’s a third trend that we need to discuss colorwise: pastels.

The trend fits perfectly with the overall vibe we’re getting for spring/summer, in which everything seems very romantic and feminine. Yellow, purple, blue, pink, green, orange: all these colors came in a pastel version in any kind of material.

When comparing all collections we can consider Donatella Versace as the queen of the pastels. Her Barbiedoll models wore tight sexy pastel outfits. She even had a few printed pastels. The color in this case added to the Barbie doll feeling.

Michael Kors used some elegant blue, purple and green pastels for his feminine outfits. Other brands that made the pastel look work are Burberry, Matthew Williamson, Tommy Hilfiger, Mila Schon, Blumarine and of course our very own Viktor & Rolf. V&R’s multiple layered designs mainly were a combination of black and pastels.

If you want to go for that summery, romantic and feminine touch, add a little pastel.

Tess van Daelen

Trends ss2010: bathing in luxury

Of course when the spring/summercollections are presented, bathingsuits are shown. Several designers came up with some splendid beachwear. The only comment we have on these gorgeous bathing suits… they often looked too delicate to swim in. So it might be better to use them to lounge about and stroll on the beach.
The collection of Emporio Armani had a lot of beachwear. Unfortunately this was mostly black and wasn’t all that exciting.

Pucci did have several elegant beach items in its collection; some bathing suits in shades of nude and an ocean-blue version with a matching jacket.

Gucci showed us a nice grey-colored version decorated with studs.

We saw a muscular Naomi Campbell in a black & white, animalistic, one-shouldered bathing suit at  Issa. It was one of the few shows for next spring where we could see the British topmodel.

Together with the bathing suits some designers (Etro, Pucci, Issa) created airy colorful tops. Those tops are great to wear at the beach especially over a fabulous bathing suit or bikini.

Tess van Daelen

Esquire’s Best Dressed Man 2009

The winner of the Esquire Best Dressed Man Award 2009 is guitar player Dennis van Leeuwen.

The international jury chose Dennis because of his very own style and because his clothes stress his personality. Yet shortly after Dennis came on stage it became clear that he was not the only one responsible for his good looks. When he accepted his award he immediately gave all the credits for his clothing style to his wife Karen.  ‘Karen always tells me what to wear and gives me great advice.’

There were six nominees for the Esquire award, all with their very own style. One of them, Chris Zegers, told us he loves to wear second hand clothing. Another one, Theo Hiddema, always has his clothes handmade in a boutique in Belgium.

A third nominee, Waylon, admitted he always wears a jacket to finish every outfit.

Tess van Daelen

Trends ss2010: fashionably exposed

Together with the nudes there’s a a lot of semi-nudity for next summer-season too.

Many designers worked with sheer and airy fabrics. Through these light fabrics the models’ skins were visible most of the time. At Giambattista Valli, YSL, Michael Kors, Sonia Rykiel and House of Holland the models’ breasts could clearly be seen through their designs.

Almost every piece of clothing came by in a transparent version. Roberto Cavalli even designed a few see-through pants. Valentino’s shiny, ruffled and transparent materials were made into super sexy party dresses. And Donnatella Versace created a few sheer evening gowns in pastel shades.

The sheer fabrics were often layered or draped. Viktor & Rolf used multiple transparent layers, becoming non-transparent by this application. Riccardo Tisci beautifully draped his sheer fabrics for Givenchy.

Apart from the delicate ultra-thin fabrics we could see some body-exposing nettings (Jil Sander, Sonia Rykiel, Just Cavalli) as well.

So, for next season don’t be afraid to show some skin. And if you are, just follow the example of Viktor & Rolf and wear lots of layers.

Tess van Daelen

For sale soon: Peter Stigter on the wall

One more day to go before Peter Stigter will launch his latest charity-project: Peter Stigter aan de Muur. Fashion- and photography lovers can buy limited edition large format photo’s via the website www.peterstigteraandemuur.nl. The sizes of the prints, made in collaboration with Canon,  will be 100 x150 cm. or  70 x 100 cm.. They will be accompanied by a certificate of originality.

The photo’s will be wrapped in a special cloth developed by TextielLab in Tilburg and send in a tube designed for Peter Stigter aan de muur.  Prices start at € 750,-.

A small selection of photo’s are exposed and for sale at photogallery Fashionmania by Rollan Didier in Amsterdam opening friday the 13th of november
Peter Stigter aan de muur @ Fashionmania by Rollan Didier
2e Laurierdwarsstraat 64
1016 RC Amsterdam

13/11 – 20/12 2009
Openinghours: thursday – sunday.
thu & fr: 16.00 – 19.00 uur
sa & su: 14.00 – 19.00 uur
www.peterstigteraandemuur.nl

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