Posts for June 11th 2008
Michael Kors, Coco Rocha Uncover Fashion's Nasty Habits at CFDA Health Event
>> At last night's CFDA-hosted "Beauty of Health" discussion, Michael Kors, Coco Rocha, and casting agent James Scully all stepped up to the plate to address the waning weights of models.
Kors threw in a designer's perspective, suggesting that his peers should "stay away from child-size clothes unless [they're] designing for children," and pointing out that when designers offer such small sample sizes and celebrities starve themselves to fit into them, their super-skinny aesthetic has a far-reaching impact on the general female population. He also advised agents to only send the most suitable girls to castings: “Sending a girl when there's little chance of her being booked throws a 16-year-old into a tizzy. The odds of a girl being booked for my show and Rick Owens’s are slim.”
Next up to the podium was Coco Rocha, who just like Natalia Vodianova and Ali Michael before her, admitted that the job comes with some very unhealthy habits. Two years ago, she weighed 108 pounds (at 5'10"), and yet people were stilling telling her "you need to lose more weight. The look this year is anorexic. We don't want you to be anorexic, we just want you to look it." Even crazier, an agent once advised her to throw up after meals.
Eventually, she submitted to the pressure. "Last season I took diuretic pills. Once I took so many on an empty stomach that I was doubled over for hours. That's the last time I ever did something so terrible to my body." She asked designers to provide healthier food at their shows — "No one wants to be caught with that photo 'Model Eats Cake'" — and to make their fit models, and therefore their sample sizes, bigger — models are humiliated when zippers won't zip up at castings.
Finally, casting agent James Scully advised insiders to consider the weight of their words. "Let's stop treating models like greyhounds we plan to shoot after a race. We have to remember we are dealing with real people who have real feelings."
Francisco Costa, Georgina Chapman, Keren Craig, Donna Karan, Richard Chai, Marcus Wainwright, David Neville, Derek Lam, Doo-Ri Chung, Diane von Furstenberg, Phillip Lim, and Anna Wintour, plus several other Vogue editors, were all in attendance at the event — which leaves quite a few American designers unaccounted for. But as Michael Kors pointed out, designers aren't the only people responsible. "The next one we need to do is about skinny people who work in fashion: editors, buyers, stylists. That’s called ‘Why Does This Sample Fit Me?”
*images: source
Fashion In 50 Seconds 6/11/08
WWD writes on Topshop's opening in Soho. The article revealed that clothing prices will not be adjusted according to the exchange rate and that expansion strategies do not include shopping mall locations. Instead, Sir Phillip Green intends to launch brick and mortar locations at a brisk pace, recession or not. Our favorite New York shopping site, Racked, however, recently articulated their skepticism for an October opening date of the first U.S. flagship.
YSL will be the next pop up venture at London's Dover Street Market, following in the footsteps of Chanel in the Edition 24 space. Located on the third floor of the building, the pop up will feature a collection of travel-inspired pieces and, most notably, a small collection of limited edition YSL pieces with a Yves Saint Lauent/Dover Street Market label. We're pretty sure that's the single greatest collaboration and yet, we're guessing Spring & Clifton for Urban Outfitters will get more attention.
Donna Karan held a private trunk show for her Resort collection and, apparently, in just an hour and half, sold $350,000 in clothing. The Resort collection, heavy on pinks and nudes, was ulta-feminine and well-received by editors. Also, Karan rode her bike to the showing and took a car home which impresses us more than anything.
Coutorture Community's Morning Must Reads 6/11
While on a shopping trip with her boyfriend, See Pretty Things finds the perfect man bag for the Summer.
The Fashion Bomb styles outfits based on a few of her favorite things.
A reader asks The Beauty Brains a horrifying question: can you get UV damage from your computer?
PR Couture features a story on a new email management system making waves in the public relations industry.
No Good For Me falls in love with designer Nicole Bridger, whose eco friendly designs are far from crunchy.
