fashionologie

Fashion in 50 Seconds 04/02/10 Jeremy Scott Styles Beth Ditto, Gia Coppola Films Zac Posen

coutorture — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 06:31:56 PDT

“Why did they hire me to be a designer, and then want me working on acid-washed jeans and things with rhinestones?”-Lars Nilsson on his unceremonious exit from Gianfranco Ferre.

Leonor Scherrer, the daughter of the French couturier Jean-Louis Scherrer, is building a fashion line, called Leonor Funeral Couture, to outfit the bereaved.

Gia Coppola filmed the video for Zac Posen's Target line, which will launch online later this month.

Matthew Williamson's New York Meatpacking District store gets the Gossip Girl treatment.

Jeremy Scott styles Beth Ditto in his spring 2010 Pebbles Flintstone collection for Paper magazine.

Oscar de la Renta's Comments on Michelle Obama Ruffle Feathers

fashionologie — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:54:26 PDT

>> Last week, Oscar de la Renta drew a lot of heat for his frustrated comments on Michelle Obama's decision to champion small fashion houses, wearing Thakoon and Jason Wu over Donna Karan or Ralph Lauren:

American fashion right now is struggling. I think I understand what [Obama and her advisers] are doing, but I don’t think that is the right message at this particular point . . . I don’t object to the fact that Mrs. Obama is wearing J.Crew to whatever because the diversity of America is what makes this country great. But there are a lot of great designers out there. I think it’s wrong to go in one direction only.

He got particularly pointed about Obama's choice of an Alaia cardigan to meet Queen Elizabeth: “You don’t go to Buckingham Palace in a sweater.”

Needless to say, fashion community feathers were ruffled - Paper's Mickey Boardman blogged a piece requesting de la Renta to "hush": "It's beneath de la Renta's dignity as an elder statesman of American Fashion to consistently complain and criticize a First Lady who has done so much for American fashion."

But Oscar's sticking to his guns »

Fashion In 50 Seconds 11/11/08

coutorture — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 05:32:58 PST

A record number of shoppers will do their holiday shopping online, causes range from the inanity of black Friday, to gas prices, to an overall growing confidence in e-commerce methods. The numbers, as reported by consultancy Deloitte, should be up to 71 percent with apparel reaching the second most popular gift giving category.

Speaking of Black Friday, H&M's New York and San Francisco flagships will be open 24 hours on the biggest shopping day of the year. H&M attributes their decision to the success of last year, when the New York store held around the clock hours.

(Speaking of the success of H&M, Rei Kawakubo drew a three-day wait this week when her collection for the mass retailer opened in the Harajuku district of Japan)

In other news...Michael Kors took his contemporary shoe business in house, Harold's (not Harrods), the high-end Dallas based retailer, filed Chapter 11 and a 24 hour Paper pop-up (say that three times as fast) in Los Angeles hosted in-demand vendors such as Rodarte and Jeremy Scott--no news on whether they sold everything but they did have a 1400 dollar sale at 4am during the event.

Franca Sozzani's Marriage, Elle Macpherson's Birthday, and Dolce & Gabbana's New Roles

fashionologie — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 15:51:00 PDT

>> Get caught up on all of those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

Did Vogue Italia Editor-in-Chief Franca Sozzani get marred and not tell anyone about it? The magazine's website posted a scan from the Ugandan newspaper Red Pepper, which pictures Sozzani sitting next to oil magnate Charles Mbire. The paper referred to Sozzani as Mbire's wife, but Sozzani said the newspaper had bad intel. "The marital status I prefer is being single," she said. [Vogue Italia]
Supermodel Elle Macpherson turned 48 today - and she still looks better than most people do at 24. [The Fab Life]
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have landed cameo roles in director Woody Allen's new film To Rome With Love, which debuts April 20. Penelope Cruz - the film's lead actress - will wear pieces from the duo's Spring 2012 collection in the film. [The Cut]
André Leon Talley has been off the airwaves since leaving the judging panel of America's Next Top Model, but soon he'll be back. In a new Bravo reality series - currently titled Fashion Stories of NYC - Tally will supervise competing teams of "emerging designers striving to build a business in New York City, which remains the heart of the fashion industry." [Fashionista]
Vogue UK Editor Alexandra Shulman has written her first book. Her new novel, Can We Still Be Friends, is about three pals who went to college together in the '80s, and afterward have to deal with what the real world does to their lives and their relationships with one another. [Fashion Etc.]

Newsweek Responds to Choice Words From Karl Lagerfeld

fashionologie — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 10:20:24 PDT

>> Karl Lagerfeld didn't pull any punches when asked how he felt about a recent Newsweek column suggesting he was "overrated" and spread too thin.

A reporter asked Lagerfeld during a press conference in Tokyo on Friday about his reaction to the Robin Givhan article in Newsweek this January. Lagerfeld downplayed the credibility of the story by calling the publication that printed it a dying news source.

"First of all, Tina Brown's magazine is not doing well at all . . . She is dying," he said. "I'm sorry for Tina Brown, who was such a success at Vanity Fair, to go down with a sh*tty little paper like this. I'm sorry."

In response, Newsweek released a statement to Fashionista which runs through empirical evidence to the contrary, claiming that the magazine is thriving under Brown's leadership.

"In the past year since Tina Brown took over as editor in chief of Newsweek, newsstand sales have increased 30 percent year on year, advertising pages have seen a 27 percent increase for the first quarter of 2012, we have over 2.2 million people engaged in our social media communities and perhaps the most telling indicator of the renewed vitality of Newsweek, subscription renewals, in a consistent state of decline since 2005, rose by 3% last year."

Whether or not those figures will change Lagerfeld's mind about the story is debatable.

Sienna Miller's Pregnancy Is Confirmed, Olivier Theyskens's Hair Is Trendy, and Rachel Zoe "Dies" For Love

Christina Perez — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:28:19 PST

>> All the details and more - here, in our daily news roundup.

Rachel Zoe turns vampire - complete with fangs and paper-pale skin - for the latest issue of Love Magazine. "We're literally dying!" her team tweeted about the shoot. [Grazia]

Sienna Miller is definitely pregnant with boyfriend Tom Sturridge. Her sister, Savannah, confirmed the rumors today, saying, "She is doing really well and we are all really happy about it, Tom is an amazing guy." Sienna, 30, and Sturridge, 26, have been dating for over a year. [Vogue UK]

Though she says Mary-Kate and Ashley don't style her, Elizabeth Olsen does seem to wear a lot of clothing from the line they named after her. This month, Lizzie sports a striped Elizabeth & James top on the cover of Asos Magazine. [FabSugar]

Halle Berry is launching a shoe line called 5th Avenue. The collection features flat sandals and wedge espadrilles and hits stores in Europe this March. [Huffington Post]

And in men's beauty news: Apparently, the hip hairstyle for guys right now is a man bun. Olivier Theyskens wears one, as do quite a few long-haired men in Williamsburg, Bushwick, and other "arty" neighborhoods. [The New York Times]

Behind-the-Scenes Snaps (and a Short Film!) From the Upcoming Supermodel-Filled Duran Duran Music Video Shoot

fashionologie — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 07:00:51 PDT

>> Five of the original supermodels - Naomi Campbell, Helena Christensen, Yasmin Le Bon, Cindy Crawford, and Eva Herzigova - teamed up with Duran Duran in June to shoot the music video for the band's upcoming single, "Girl Panic!" . . . and the December 2011 issue of Harper's Bazaar UK has a first look.

As Duran Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes explained of the project, "Harper's had approached us about collaborating with the magazine on something really special when the new album came out. I’d had this crazy idea for a video for the song 'Girl Panic!', that looked fantastic on paper, but that I thought in reality would be impossible to pull off. The idea was to re-create a day in the life of the band, with five of the world’s greatest supermodels playing all of us. Lucy [Yeomans, editor of Harper's Bazaar UK] loved the idea of doing a cover shoot within the video itself - and so it all began."

On the cover, the five supers wear black Dolce & Gabbana corsets - designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana were also on set for the shoot - and then inside, transform into Duran Duran band members, with Campbell playing lead singer Simon Le Bon.

The "Girl Panic!" video, which was directed by Jonas Ackerlund - who also did Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" and "Telephone" music videos - is expected to be serialized virally online before premiering in whole later this year. See the first, below.

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Harper's Bazaar to Get a Creative Revamp

fashionologie — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:21:50 PDT

>> A decade into her career as editor of Harper's Bazaar, Glenda Bailey is ready to give the magazine a major creative refresh.

Bazaar - which was already headed for an increase in trim size, an upgrade in paper and cover stock, and a reduction in frequency from 11 to 10 issues per year - will also receive the design input of Robin Derrick of Spring Studios. Bailey hired Derrick, who was creative director of Vogue UK for 10 years until last June, to work with Bazaar's creative director Stephen Gan on what are expected to be big changes - that will be revealed in the magazine's March 2012 issue.

“After 10 years, it’s time to refresh - Stephen and I are looking forward to evolving Bazaar’s design for the next decade, and we are excited to be collaborating with Robin,” Bailey said.

Of all the major fashion magazines - Vogue, Elle, and W - Bazaar was the only one to suffer a drop in ad pages in the first six months of 2011. The trend continued in the third quarter of this year, with the magazine's ad pages falling 4.1 percent year over year.

Jenna Lyons, Husband Vincent Mazeau Rumored to Be Divorcing

fashionologie — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:12:49 PDT

>> Jenna Lyons, J.Crew president and creative director, 43, and her artist husband, Vincent Mazeau, 45, split this Summer and are in the midst of a divorce, the New York Post reports.

The couple, who have been married since 2002, are said to have reached a custody agreement over their 5-year-old son, Beckett, and are reportedly ironing out an agreement in which Mazeau may keep their Park Slope brownstone, which has been featured in numerous magazines.

In addition to the house, Mazeau is said to be asking for a sizable settlement, Page Six reports: "arguing that he gave up aggressively pursuing his career as an artist to stay at home and allow her to develop her successful career. But a friend of Lyons said she supported [Mazeau] as an artist, bought him a studio, and gave him a life where he didn’t have to work every day."

Lyons is rumored to have fallen in love with another woman who also works in the fashion business after the split, according to Page Six, although a J.Crew spokesperson told the paper: "We do not comment on our associates' private lives."

See All Four Covers From Max Pearmain and Ashley Heath's New Edition of Arena Homme Plus

fashionologie — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 10:44:21 PDT

>> With its new editorial team, the biannual Arena Homme Plus has become something of a brother publication to POP - they now share the same editorial director, Ashley Heath, and the magazine's new editor in chief, Max Pearmain, used to be acting menswear editor at POP.

Heath and Pearmain's first edition of Arena Homme Plus hits newsstands next Monday, April 11 in the UK (and Monday, April 18 for the rest of the world), boasting four different covers, one each playfully dubbed "Stephen," "Stevie," "Steve," or "Steven."

"The men's fashion magazine market has become so staid and predictable," Pearmain notes of his vision for the magazine. "It was actually more inspiring in many ways 15 years ago when there was just L'Uomo, Vogue Hommes, and Arena Homme Plus . . . We wanted to inject some surprise and some passion and some playfulness back into this world."

Pearmain himself styled New Order's Stephen Morris for the "Stephen" cover, artist Clunie Reid created scrawling artwork for the "Stevie" cover (left), David Sims photographed the "Steve" cover, and Steven Klein, of course, captured the "Steven" cover. The Klein version of the issue - or Homme+ PLUS as it has been christened - comes with 45 extra pages of more "hardcore" content. Some of it has already been posted online (NSFW) and will only be sold in selected independent retailers and online.

The move back to Arena Homme Plus is something of a coming home for Heath, who used to edit the magazine himself: "It's been fun to return. I really built that magazine on blood, sweat, and tears back in the day, so it was great that David Sims, Steven Klein, and others from the glory days returned and contributed such strong, strange work. There's this sense of travel, of art and design, of the way the world is changing . . . We changed the paper stocks a bit and did that 'special sections' thing I'm into recently. The magazine is still niche, but it will appeal to a broader cross-section of stylish men."

Alongside contributions from Sims and Klein, the new issue also features work by Wolfgang Tillmans, Collier Schorr, and Ari Marcopoulos.

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