Lovely Bones:Lara’s landed a Christmas Vogue. She looks awfully ladylike in pastel pink tulle on the cover of British Vogue. {Models}
Viva Versace: Guy Trebay sits down with Donatella for a rather sad story in today’s Times. They discuss her past, including Gianni, her friends’ intervention and her stint in rehab, as well as the possible future of Versace. {NY Times}
Well-Heeled: Lara Bohinc, the Brit behind a line of stellar knot jewelry, is launching shoes. She finds the process loads easier than designing bags and jewels. {VogueUK}
Holy Cuteness: I (Abby) need to be revived after overloading on adorable thanks to this street style blog for kiddos. One of the post titles is “Andre Leon Smalley” (dying!!!) and there is one wicked Tina Turner costume from Halloween. This is most definitely one of my new favorite things. {Planet Awesome Kid} via {Refinery29}
On Saturday morning I read that Georgia Jagger was the new face of Versace.
Then I dressed up as a nevernude and drank too much tequila so I’m just remembering now what I meant to report Monday morning.
The Imaginary Socialite tucked the tidbit into the bottom of a roundup:
“Georgia Jagger for Versace?! Bestill our fashion hearts; this is amazing.”
We’re not sure there’s a right way and a wrong way to become a super famous awesome model, but landing a solid denim campaign (Hudson), followed by a Vogue cover (UK), a cosmetic contract (Rimmel) and then graduating to a major house (Versace), seems damn perfect.
The weather has us in enough of a crap mood already without having to read news of more layoffs in our world all morning.
Condé Nast’s never-ending month of news we’d rather not hear seems to be drawing from to a close, but it’s not totally over yet. Just yesterday FWD reported that longtime W features director James Reginato had left the magazine with more soon to follow.
Teen Vogue lost a bunch of people on the business side (while editorial was spared) and Details had to let go both its executive editor and its fashion director, Michael Macko. We’ve heard from many over at 4 Times Square that a culture of fear has taken over, and we can certainly understand why. It’s all just a major bummer, even if it is necessary to keep the business going.
So last night, Versace and the Whitney threw a very fancy party. There was a dinner where people like Donatella (of course), Shakira, Gerard Butler, and other patrons of the arts got together upstairs at the museum.
There was also a downstairs party where they all made their way afterward. I got the chance to see the beginnings of this charity endeavor with Donatella back in July, and it was so nice to see the children’s art displayed on actual handbags that will be sold to raise money for the Starlight Children’s Foundation and the One Foundation.
Not for nothing, they created a graffiti wall where everyone could draw and have fun. So of course someone went for “balloon boy” and started sketching a CNN screen grab of America’s latest reality travesty. Oy, America. But that’s a discussion for another blog on another day…
And of course, the usual fashion crowd was out in full effect—Alexa, Leigh, Peter, Hana, Fabiola, Alexandra, Amanda—but there was really only one star in the room—Chuck Close.
The fashion world’s been waiting for ages to get a glimpse of Christopher Kane’s Versus collection for Versace.
Last season, the duo teased us with a peek at killer shoes and bags, as black and studded and sexy as expected. But this Sunday, he and the boss lady finally revealed the whole thing during a presentation in Milan.
In the video, he talks to The Guardian’s Jo Jones about the process, the importance of Donatella, and why he steers clear of too much color (to showcase his almost manic attention to detail). A few of the dresses actually bear a striking resemblance to Kane’s Topshop collection, with their lace panelling and detached sleeves and of course all of them sort of scream sex.
In which we catch those of you, and those of us, who spent the weekend outside, away from a computer or on a phone-cation, up on the fashion Twitterverse.
1. “I don’t get it,” from @jess_stam. She’s new to the world of tweets, give her a warm welcome!
2. “A Lanvin ‘snow sprite’ cashmere elf hat. It kind of makes me feel like skipping,” from @bunnybisous who appears to have been stranded uptown in the rain.
3. “Got sandwiched between Vogue’s Sally Singer and Anna Wintour to my left and Michael Roberts and Suzy Menkes to the right,” from @bryanboy at Dolce & Gabbana. A better view of their reactions, here. Sally looks amused; Hamish looks dangerous.
4. “Is it possible to have fashion sensory overload? Tell me no. I have 10 more days and another city to go,” from @mrjoezee. Yes, yes there is sir.
5. “Spotted on the front row at Versace…..Janet Jackson,” from @dazedmagazine. She sure pops up in the strangest places.
Liskula Cohen’s modeled for Versace and Armani and landed international Vogue covers, but recently she’s made less fashionable headlines.
Last year, a doorman smashed her over the head with a vodka bottle and this year she’s sued Google to reveal the identity of an especially cruel blogger. The both tragic and anonymous person used Google’s blogger.com platform to unleash constant rants about the blond’s imagined sexual habits, but argued in court that the words were, “non-actionable opinion and/or hyperbole.”
Many thought Cohen wouldn’t win - after all half of the internet is anonymous - but today a judge ruled that Google must identify the blogger, which means Cohen can officially take that person to court. And where would that court case lead? The anonymous blogger’s lawyer put it best: “The floodgates would be opened if you tried to regulate these very broad, common insults and invective on the Internet. You can be really, really mean to people — you just can’t lie about a set of facts that are provable as lies, and that you knew or recklessly disregarded the truth of.”
Funny Face: Can someone who know something about beauty tell us how to get that perfectly red-rimmed eye without looking diseased? Thanks. {TheMoment}
Already Wins: Andre Leon Talley helped Marisa Tomei decide on a “lemongrass” Madame Gres toga-like dress for next week’s Met Ball. This will be in our top five. {VogueDaily}
And He’s Back: Christoper Kane’s doing Topshop again - this time bigger and better with shoes and bags added to the range. Guess that explains his New York presence earlier this month. {Grazia}
“After another successful, sexy show, Donatella Versace hosted an intimate dinner at La Bolognese restaurant, but we hear her favorite spot in Milan is the restaurant San Marco. It is so tiny that you have to use the restroom next door—now, that is exclusive!” - Vogue’s Filipa Fino, on the glamorous heights of exclusivity, in the magazine’s blog (even though they won’t call it that).
“Our regular client was not queuing on January 3 - 4 in Milan or Rome but was on the slopes in St Moritz or on a boat in the Caribbean. We want to offer a real luxury and not to open our doors to the consumption of young girls who can put the designer handbag of their dreams on their arm with less than 300 Euros. We are not interested in that.” - Giancarlo Di Risio, Versace’s CEO, to Il Sole 24 Ore via Vogue UK.
Most people know Té Casan because of Natalie Portman’s venture into vegan shoes. Well, Natalie will now have to leave the vegan thing up to Stella because Té Casan just folded.
Luckily, for those die-hard fans, Bluefly still has a pretty good selection in stock, but as far as the store’s concerned, it’s closed, and the website says they’re updating (code for: we’re done).
We’re kind of sad about this because Té Casan was actually a really cool concept. The company plucked seven unknown designers who had previous experience at major design houses - think McQueen, Versace, Westwood - and had them design a new shoe every week. Not only were the shoes well-designed, they were well-priced, and limited edition (only 74 of each style were made), so you could stand out in affordable heels. Sadly, this is now over.
Here’s to hoping somebody else picks up the very smart idea at a different point in time.
A new designer wasn’t enough for Rochas, they needed a new nose, too.
They’ve plucked Jean-Michel Duriez from P&G’s Jean Patou, to work on the development of new fragrances under the Rochas label. Even though P&G shut down the fashion side of Rochas in 2006 after no one actually bought Theysken’s dresses, they held on to the name until this October when they licensed everything out to Gibo who appointed Marco Zanini, formerly of Versace and a failed Halston tenure, to head up the new ready-to-wear division. But P&G hired Duriez on their own, not under the Gibo umbrella, despite the fact that they obviously want almost nothing to do with the fashion side of the label.
Anyway, because we still think of Theyskens when we think of Rochas, there’s really no aesthetic indication of what’s to come on the perfume front - we’ll have a better idea once we see Marco Zanini’s first collection come February.
Which, by the way, we expect to be major. After all, if P&G’s refocusing all this money and energy into the very company they shuttered, they must have come up with some great ideas over these past two years, right?
When we think of Spring, we don’t usually think black and white. But given the Spring 09 collections, this might be about to change. An overwhelming amount of designers showed black and white outfits and many had entire shows based on the shades. The graphic above is just the short list. We swear. We had to leave out Dries Van Noten, Balenciaga, Prada, Versace, Christopher Kane, Rag & Bone, Rock & Republic, YSL, Stella McCartney, Giambattista Valli, Cynthia Rowley, Band of Outsider, Philip Lim.. And we have a feeling the list could go on..
On a side note, this black and white thing could be well used as a background to some neon pieces you might have purchased for Spring 08, no?
— HAYLEY PHELAN
*editor’s note: the dress in the top row, labeled Sonia Rykiel, was actually designed by Michael Kors for Sonia Rykiel.
We’ve been discussing the idea of men wearing short shorts (think above the knee, mid-thigh or shorter in length) all summer now and we’re still at arms.
Britt and Hayley both think hemlines shouldn’t creep too high, but just above the knee is ok. I’m all for them as long as the shorts aren’t too tight, and if the wearer has great legs worthy of being exposed. (Natalie thinks the higher the better, especially if you’re a soccer player, but she’s just gross like that.)
On the Spring ‘08 runways, everyone from Dsquared to Bottega Veneta featured thigh grazing lengths that quickly took to the streets. We’ve seen them paired with everything from tiny tank tops and Converse to button down shirts with boat shoes.
We love a guy that can take a risk and show some serious leg, but not with the possibility of indecent exposure (whatever, Natalie).
So guys, would you wear short shorts? And to the girls - should they?
It seems like every time we hear about a designer collaborating on a building, it’s going to be in Dubai.
So we were a little surprised this morning when we read that Donatella Versace was designing the interior renovation of the Clock Tower building at 5 Madison Avenue, including 55 apartments (and one enormous penthouse), and a spa which is expected to total around $1 billion.
This is especially interesting since everyone’s expecting the cost of real estate in Manhattan to eventually go the way of the rest of the country, so clearly Versace and co. don’t expect that to happen any time soon.
The project should be done in about two years - expect leather carpets and solid gold tubs.
The collection, which doesn’t include a single tie, is supposed to represent, “a relaxed man who doesn’t need to flex muscles to show he has power”, which is a neat summary of what people are hoping for with Obama. But we can’t really picture the senator wearing the outfit at left.
The idea of a muse has taken quite a turn. First BryanBoy for Marc, us for AP, and Obama for Versace. Next up, McCain trousers for The Row?
It’s always fun to see footage of a model from when she was just first getting to be known, so here’s a fun clip of Daria at the Fall 2005 shows.
Her voice is a little deeper than you might expect and we had no idea she was such giggly gal pals with Carmen Kass, but we love the shots from the Versace show, after Donatella got out of rehab and started designing clothes that made people use words like “electrifying” and “beautiful as hell”.
But the best part’s the little factoids that pop up in the corner of the video - they remind us of Fashion Trance, our favorite late-night tv show from back when the Style Channel was actually good.
That rumor we spread about Mark Fast doing a line for Topshop? It's true. And it's in last week's Sunday Telegraph magazine which means it was true before we even said anything and we've had it in our lap since... Read More
Meet Blue Logan, if you haven't already. A couple of years ago a friend dragged the soft-spoken Brit to a show at London Fashion Week, Aquascutum he thinks, and he started to draw the models as they walked down the... Read More
Lovely Bones: Lara’s landed a Christmas Vogue. She looks awfully ladylike in pastel pink tulle on the cover of British Vogue. {Models}
