Doo.Ri

Summer is almost officially over (we know, sad) and that means that New York fashion week is right around the bend. Like three-weeks-from-now-around-t

Vogue Italia EIC Franca Sozzani has snatched the title of UN Goodwill Ambassador. She'll be working with industry insiders to promote sustainable development and much more. {Telegraph} World-renowned milliner Stephen Jones will be fabricating fascinators for Raf Simons' Dior Haute Couture premiere. Jones called the collection "exciting, beautiful and new," but wouldn't say much more than that. {Vogue UK} At last year's Webby awards, Anna Wintour told us that "sometimes geeks can be chic," and the rise of fashion-forward online games only reinforces her statement. {WWD} Mary Katrantzou, reigning queen of jaw-droppingly beautiful digital prints, won't, or rather can't, show pre-fall or resort collections because her intricate patterns take too long to produce (hint: four days to make a single print). {Vogue UK}

Is designers leaving their namesake labels a new trend? Just a couple of months after Simon Spurr announced his departure from six year old label Simon Spurr, WWD is reporting that Doo-Ri Chung has decided to leave Doo.Ri, the clothing company she founded in 2001. Like Spurr's move, Chung's is difficult to understand. WWD offers zero details on why Chung left or what she plans to do next and, by all accounts, the label had a pretty good couple of years. She dressed Michelle Obama for a state dinner honoring South Korea (Chung is Korean-American) and designed a high-profile Macy's capsule collections--two projects that boosted the designer's name recognition significantly.

Baggy leather pants. It is as dubious as it sounds. New York had its fair share of these voluminous trousers, and it wasn't long before they began

Can't get enough of our fashion week coverage? We checked out Cushnie et Ochs' Fall runway, where their typical body con style went a little bit dark

Lana Del Rey may have been playing on the sound system during Doo.Ri’s Fall 2012 show but that was about the only nod to anything that could be descried as "trendy." And that's a good thing because like all of Doo.Ri's collections the focus was on the designer's masterful draping and fit rather than the season's "it" styles. Backstage at her Fall 2012 show, Chung offered a helpful analogy. “Doo.Ri is like Butoh,” the designer said, referring to the avant-garde Japanese modern dance style. “It’s based on these really slow movements. There is just such a poetic way that these dancers gesture, and I aim to do the same thing with fabric.”

You might not be too familiar with New York-based designer Doo-ri Chung. Despite her serious fashion cred (her first job out of Parsons was working in Geoffrey Beene's sample room with Alber Elbaz) and being able count First Lady Michelle Obama as a client, she still considers herself a "very small, very young" niche designer without a ton of name recognition. But that should change come February 15, when her capsule collection for Macy's contemporary fashion department 'Impulse' hits 185 stores and goes up on line. Chung is the latest in an impressive list of designers to design capsule collectons for the mass retailer--a list that includes names like Karl Lagerfeld, Giambattista Valli and Matthew Williamson (to name a few). We got a chance to chat with Chung yesterday as she previewed her collection--a wearable mix of Chung's signature draped jersey pieces priced between $39 and $159--at hot Hell's Kitchen resto Danji. In these collab-happy times (in the last few months alone we've seen Versace for H&M, Jason Wu for Target, and Missoni for Target work shoppers into a frenzy) Chung was still hesitant about doing a collaboration.

more There was lots to love on the red carpet last week. We're especially fond of the jackets--Kirsten Dunst's sunny Stella, Elizabeth Olsen all-whit

We love the Built by Wendy book of patterns, Sew U - But we also know not every style junkie is also a budding Doo.Ri. If the process of choosing and

We've spotted something gorgeous on the fashion front lately: Necklaces so wide and high on the neck, they look like part of the outfit. At the Whit

We were about to write a post called "Why We Don't Care About The Gap's New Designers," and then we changed our minds. Here's the deal: The Gap anno