New Designer Fashion

Archive for the ‘New Fashion’ Category

Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left. View full post on Runway Feed

Francisco Costa has swapped Spring’s see-through slipdresses and delicate lingerie for sturdier stuff. Wool felt, to be precise. His pre-fall collection seemed to be an exercise in making the somewhat rigid and certainly thick material sensuous. It sounds like an impossible challenge, but Costa made a success of it, and it comes down to a single element: the hourglass silhouette.

Designers up and down Manhattan have been talking about the waist this week, and Costa made it the focal point of his show. Coats, dresses, and the jackets of skirtsuits (there wasn’t a pair of pants to be seen) came cinched with belts, or their backs were decorated with long, curving parallel seams. Pleats on full, A-line skirts echoed those seams and kept the hourglass idea going. There’s something pleasingly perverse about a bustier dress in second-skin charcoal-colored wool felt, or a leather and wool bustier over a cashmere crewneck—they’re just so unexpected. Felted wool coats were less of a surprise, but they displayed the same exacting attention to cut and fit. The collection’s colors—a brown that was almost black, khaki, putty, and apricot—further served to accentuate Costa’s trademark precision.
—Nicole Phelps View full post on Runway Feed

Jenni Kayne does pajamas season after season. Based on the abundance of matching silk sets we saw during Resort, it looks as though the rest of fashion has caught up with her comfy aesthetic. “Pajama dressing always had a place in my collections,” she said. “For pre-fall, I dressed it up with schoolboy accents and luxe fur pieces.” For day, there were relaxed tartan suiting separates that would mix nicely with one of her cozy knits in a vintage quilting pattern. After-hours, Kayne’s no-frills customer can dress up the look by keeping the pullover on and adding a trumpet-flare maxi skirt cut from cerulean-colored silk. To top it all off: a classic DB trench—in British khaki or crisp denim—with an optional extra lining and fox fur collar, plus the designer’s ever-present and ever-chic d’Orsay flats, which she updated this time around in embossed croc leather. Kayne’s proven formula for insouciant elegance continues to work well.
—Brittany Adams View full post on Runway Feed

“It’s a continuation of Spring,” Carolina Herrera said of her pre-fall collection. “I think we have to change the name.”

With no-nonsense practicality, Herrera showed a collection that ranged from warm-weather dresses (for May, when the line hits stores) to tweedy, fur-sleeved coats for cooler temperatures. The twisting and draping motifs from her Spring show reappeared, but the autumnal palette of reds, browns, wheats, and cobalt blue was pure Fall.

Hererra knows her loyal customers look to her for smart dresses, coats, and tailored pieces, and she didn’t disappoint. But she’s lately started rubbing shoulders with a younger clientele, too. Nicki Minaj sat front-row at her Spring show; she designed a gown for Bella Swan’s twilit wedding; and you might have seen a version of one silk faille evening piece here on none other than Lady Gaga. (Gaga and Herrera, two names you’d never before think to link in a sentence.) Maybe they’ve inspired her to amp up the drama, with bow-bedecked gowns, or lighten the mood with puppy prints. (Their inspiration: her miniature poodle, Gaspar.)

Still, the finest pieces were often the simplest, like a Deco-ish shift whose pattern appeared to be print but was actually a fine layering of tulle and lace. Whoever else she may be channeling, Herrera has long been her own best influence. She showed a trompe l’oeil one-piece look of lace-inset white top and billowing organza skirt—an evening-ready nod to her own famous uniform.
—Matthew Schneier View full post on Runway Feed

Tze Goh is something of an anomaly among the young London designers. In a city where people tend to make their fashion reputation with a bang, this Central Saint Martins grad has a habit for quietness. The mood of Goh’s latest collection, his fourth, is one of Zen-like contemplativeness. Mainly what he’s been contemplating is construction and ways of using fine detail in the make of his clothes to feminize and sculpture-ize traditional menswear pieces. The resulting clothes are so clean and so minimal, they threaten not to make an impression. But they do reward scrutiny.

Goh has developed an interesting signature in dense, bonded materials—his use of them gives even a casual garment like a piqué polo a substantiality as well as a quality of aloofness. Elsewhere, the gazar in the collars of his crisp white button-down and shirtdress makes for a nice, sharpening detail; ditto the waist-less cut of his mannish shorts and trousers. And Goh’s collarless jackets and A-line shifts are so well made, it seems churlish to point out that they’re a little boring. It takes a lot of confidence for a young designer to risk boredom in pursuit of subtlety; Goh is to be congratulated on his nerve. But his previous collections have shown a bit more flair in terms of color and silhouette; they were quiet yet forceful. At any rate, Goh is one to watch.
—Maya Singer View full post on Runway Feed

There are lots of ways to be a diffusion line. MM6, the lower-priced companion to Maison Martin Margiela, exists in a curiously fetishistic relationship to the premium line. Witness, this season, the introduction of MM6 T-shirts that feature photographs of the Maison Martin Margiela flagship store in Paris, the street it’s on, and its “open for business” sign. There’s almost a family romance in that—the younger sibling staring up, with adoring eyes, at her older brother, trying to steal his impossibly cool tricks.

MM6 does fine by those tricks, as its many customers know. The brand’s latest collection comprises a mix of typically wearable workwear-inspired clothes, multifunctional, deconstructed pieces, and un-basic daywear. The standout items tend to be the seemingly simplest ones—a T-shirt dress in cloudy, hot pink parachute nylon; a fitted beige jumpsuit with a low V neckline and a slit through the back; a pair of slouchy, kimono-belted navy trousers; and a slinky, back-draped dress. You don’t have to be a Margiela freak to get the appeal of these garments. Elsewhere, the MM6 designers seem to struggle a bit with their multifunction mandate, though they’ve managed one clear success in a marbled leather jacket, cut like a denim one, with a zip-off portion that also works as a belt. Very cool, little sis.
—Maya Singer View full post on Runway Feed

Though it’s gone through several phases since its initial velour tracksuit heyday, Juicy Couture has never fully shaken its reputation for loungewear. But with a newly appointed chief creative officer, LeAnn Nealz, the brand is looking to up its fashion cred—and its first-ever seasonal presentation, held at an NYC mansion last night, suggested that it’s on the right track. “The collection feels fresh, young, updated, and most of all, modern,” Nealz said. The core tracksuit pieces were still on offer, but they were interspersed among casual sporty pieces that were easy but more stylish than before. Mini tennis skirts paired with sweatshirt tops looked like what young girls want to wear now. Nealz also made a play for the unstoppable striped-tee trend, with brightly colored versions ready to go head to head with any on the market.
—Marina Larroude View full post on Runway Feed

Coming off of a dress-driven Spring collection, George Sharp is switching things up at St. John and putting the focus back on jackets for Pre-Fall. Blazers were cut in every imaginable way. There was a take on the classic Le Smoking, a double-faced crepe style with a cardigan-like fit, and a slouchy number with dolman sleeves. For accompaniments, the jackets were paired with Audrey Hepburn-esque cropped cigarette pants or relaxed, pleated trousers.

Sharp played it safe with the color palette, using soft grays, celadon greens, black, and white—not a bright in sight here. Which isn’t to say it was boring. Buyers have reportedly been very keen on the stretchy knit cocktail dress with shoulder cutouts, as well as a long-sleeved gown with a sparkly pavé keyhole. It’s easy to imagine St. John spokesperson Kate Winslet working her killer curves in those “tight as you like it” looks. Ditto goes for the standout sequined maxi skirt with an iridescent “Aurora Borealis” effect, which should look cool paired with one of the label’s satin T-shirts.

—Brittany Adams View full post on Runway Feed

Biography can be more or less relevant to a designer. In the case of Calla designer Calla Haynes, it seems worthwhile pointing out a few things, especially for the sake of those not yet familiar with her two-year-old
label. Haynes hails from Toronto, Canada, home of famously nice people; she lives and works in Paris, birthplace of couture. The road from Toronto to Paris included stops at Rochas and Nina Ricci, where she worked under Olivier Theyskens, and stints as a print designer for various emerging brands. All of that background is more or less readable in Haynes’ Calla clothes, which are print-driven and friendly with a whiff of couture in the materials and construction.

This season, Haynes found her starting point in a serious material—a paper tweed in a bright coral and not quite fluorescent yellow, which she used both on its own, in casual pieces including a boyfriend jacket and kicky, pleated shorts, and as an accent in garments such as a tailored trenchcoat. Her digitized prints echoed the tweed’s texture without reproducing it exactly—witness the nubby look of a long, printed chiffon skirt and matching top or the marbling on the gray organza cocktail dress with black underskirt. Print is the strength of this collection. Though a pair of wide gray trousers looked great, in general Haynes’ solid-colored clothes didn’t stand out the way her printed pieces do. She’s also got a great eye for color, as witnessed by a cheerful minidress with contrasting panels of printed yellow and turquoise silk. The unavoidable word is cute. That’s not an insult; Haynes does well by her youthful silhouettes. But she clearly possesses the design vocabulary to articulate a richer, more distinctive point of view. These are early days for her brand; give her time.
—Maya Singer View full post on Runway Feed

There’s a mini-movement, down in Sydney, of designers making flirty clothes that are just a bit better and a whole lot smarter than they need to be. Brother and sister duo Camilla Freeman-Topper and Marc Freeman, of Camilla and Marc, are in its front rank. Their collections go down like candy, but they’re surprisingly fortifying. Their latest outing is a case in point. For every appealing yet unremarkable cocktail dress, there’s a standout piece like this season’s voluminous trousers. There are a few varieties of voluminous trouser here, in fact, all of them very good—from a tailored style with a wide-leg silhouette to a pair of slouchy pleated trousers that could dress up or down. Together with a top in the same print, a knife-pleated pair in mosaic-motif chiffon makes for a nice reinterpretation of the current pajama trend.

Other highlights include the tailored pieces in a bold, black-backed tropical floral, a deconstructed tuxedo jacket, and the body-hugging color-blocked minidresses intarsia-knit to look as though they’ve been cut open at the waist. Among the cocktail frocks, a Camilla and Marc stock-in-trade, the bustier-topped dresses with floating, chiffon skirts are winners, as are all the dresses in the aforementioned mosaic print. Camilla and Marc also does well with its outerwear. Given the season, the selection of outwear here is slight, but a squared-off jacket with an angled zip and leather insets will find lots of fans. Overall, this is a collection full of pieces women will love to wear.
—Maya Singer View full post on Runway Feed