May 2012
3 posts
9 tags
Experiments in the 2nd Dimension at Comme des...
Comme des Garçons, AW12.
For her Autumn-Winter 2012 collection for Comme des Garçons, Rei Kawakubo presented a very flat collection that called into question the very nature of the way we view fashion. As a comment on the way that we generally view collections as endless catwalk thumbnail images the garments were made out of very thick felt, giving the appearance of paperdolls playing dress-up,...
8 tags
The Silhouette behind the Embellishment at Chanel
Chanel, AW12.
With so many looks, garments, different fabrics and embellishments involved in a Chanel show, it often takes a second look to fully digest the entire collection. As a fashion behemoth, a Chanel collection is normally made up of many mini collections and stories under the one umbrella concept, catering to many different versions of the “Chanel” customer.
With the...
8 tags
Futuristic Workwear at Balenciaga
Balenciaga, AW12.
Nicholas Ghesquiere has a knack for making his job at Balenciaga look easier than it actually is. After all, it is one thing to moodboard up an innovative concept and sketch up exciting silhouettes every season, and something else all together to make sure that all the tiny details, combinations of fabric and ideas look resolved and polished by the time the garments hit the...
March 2012
1 post
8 tags
Ornate Detailing at Balmain
Balmain, AW12, Paris.
To create an opulent collection in his second season at the head of Balmain, Olivier Rousteing drew on an array of techniques to create multi layered fabrics with an intense level of detailing. Leather was used as embossed and laser cut panels layered over velvet, or quilted with lines of stitching. Velvet was used as an under cloth, or heavily embossed for fitted...
February 2012
1 post
9 tags
Controlled Textures at Alexander Wang
Alexander Wang, AW12.
On first impression Alexanders Wang’s recent Autumn- Winter 2012 collection was all about textures - matt vs. shiny, coated vs. uncoated, bubbled vs. smooth. The subtext however was far more interesting and by reading further into the use of all these textures there was a sense that the collection was actually much more about control.
Whether it was in the fluid...
January 2012
3 posts
7 tags
Pocket Detailing at Prada Menswear
Prada, Menswear, AW12.
It was against the background of the homogenous men’s suit, that Miuccia Prada worked touches of individualism in her recent show for Autumn-Winter 2012. The looks were comprised of carefully layered garments that were given personality by small arrangements of pocket detailing. These adornments included long brooch pins with sporting and hunting emblems, flowers,...
10 tags
Wedding Cliches at Comme des Garcons
Comme des Garçons, SS12.
Rei Kawakubo and the team at Comme des Garçons were able to tread a careful line in the exploration of female wedding gowns for the Spring-Summer 2012 collection. They gave us all the right clues to know that this collection was all about bridal wear with silk satin in whites, off whites and creams layered with fine lacework, beading and even some faux floral...
9 tags
Painterly Details at Rodarte
Rodarte, SS12.
The Spring-Summer 2012 collection from Rodarte centered around the colours and textures that Vincent van Gogh used to great effect in his oil paintings. The tones were at times as vibrant as van Gogh’s depiction of sunflowers, while in other garments the tones were muted and murky as in Starry Night Over the Rhone (1888).
Much of the surface texture of the collection...
November 2011
3 posts
10 tags
Raglan Details at Proenza Schouler
Proenza Schouler, SS12.
Sleeve shapes and panelling are a subtle yet directional way that designers are controlling the feel of their collections. The raglan sleeve in particular has enjoyed a renaissance over the past few seasons as both a reference to the couture and the athletic. Raglan variations have been visible on broad kimono style sleeves as well as on raglan sleeve styles that cut in...
10 tags
Disciplined Monochrome at Gareth Pugh
Gareth Pugh, SS12.
The Spring-Summer 2012 collection by Gareth Pugh built in an interesting way, especially through the disciplined black and white pieces. While there are basic forms and silhouettes that are being continually remoulded by Pugh season after season, the treatment of the shapes is always very different on a structural level. So much of what creates the interest as the collection...
8 tags
Incredible Feathered Headpieces at Junya Watanabe
Junya Watanabe, SS12.
The Japanese designers seem to have a way of conjuring up new fantasy headwear each season and pairing it with delicate models and deadpan facial expressions. This season was no exception with Junya Watanabe displaying feather hair sculptures with flashes of unusual tones and hues to offset the floral repeats that embellished the garments. The use of the colours within the...
October 2011
4 posts
9 tags
Grown-up Subcultures at Danielle Scutt
Danielle Scutt, SS12.
There was an interesting mix of high end / lo-fi street references in the recent Danielle Scutt collection for Spring-Summer 2012. On the one hand there was a certain youthful quality to the vibrant polka dots and disjointed checks and on the other hand this was balanced out by the more conservative monochrome tailoring. It felt very wearable and very street, from the...
12 tags
Effortless Lace and Embroidery at Valentino
Valentino, SS12.
There are some designers who can take an idea or a technique that has been used time and time again, and can bring their own freshness to them to use the techniques in new and beautiful ways. Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli, as the creative directors at Valentino, are finding ever more intricate ways to work with lace, and lace-like effects to build ethereal collections.
...
10 tags
Smocking Techniques at Miu Miu
Miu Miu, SS12.
In the past few seasons there have been some great examples of designers taking fairly old-fashioned and dated techniques and using them in the context of more contemporary collections. In the recent Spring-Summer 2012 collection for Miu Miu Miuccia Prada has reworked the smocking technique on cotton and satin dresses and capes and even extended the technique into the...
10 tags
Retro Modernism at Jil Sander
Jil Sander, SS12.
There is a discipline that has crept into the most influential womenswear collections over the last couple of seasons that breathes of minimal, understated elegance and is built on a foundation of retro silhouettes.
Raf Simons, in his collections at Jil Sander, has been instrumental in experimenting with what will work for intellectual women today, in mining the old dress...
September 2011
5 posts
12 tags
Laser Cut Silver Leather at Giles
Giles, SS12.
Lasercutting fabrics and leather is a clever technique that can be used to create lace-like effects out of more solid base cloths. The effect of laser cutting fabric completely changes the drape of the fabric, in the same way that a fabric with a wider looser weave is more fluid, so too is lasercut fabric effected in a similar way.
In the images above and below from the Giles...
8 tags
Clever Kitsch at Prada
Prada, SS12.
Miuccia Prada has a knack for combining disparate elements to create collections that are filled with a playful variety of textures, techniques and colours. While the overall mood of a Prada collection can come across as naive and whimsical, the approach to the design of the collection is obviously anything but flippant.
With references to 1950s car culture, the collection could...
8 tags
Lanvin for Kids
Lanvin, Kidswear, Pre SS12.
Hidden at the back of the images of the Lanvin Pre-Collection for Spring-Summer 2012, are a bunch of gorgeous kids playing dress-up in Lanvin finery. The fun thing about these images is how natural the kids look, a little wild eyed and scruffy as though they’ve been rummaging in a dress-up box, and not coiffed to within an inch of their lives. It’s ironic...
7 tags
Contrasting Silhouettes at Pam Hogg
Pam Hogg, AW11.
The Autumn-Winter 2011 collection by Pam Hogg had a darkly whimsical quality to it, combining disparate elements to create catwalk characters. On the one hand there were dresses, coats and panelled bodysuits out of black leather with buckles and belts fastening the garments closed across the body. Then the bodysuits appeared again but this time in multicoloured woodgrain prints...
10 tags
Missoni Knitwear Techniques
Missoni, AW11.
There are some catwalk shows that are almost blinding in the designers use of colours, textures, patterns and layers of garments. Missoni is definitely one such show which can become almost overwhelming in the sheer magnitude of pieces and individual ideas that are on display.
The best way to truly understand the forethought and consideration that went into the Autumn-Winter...
August 2011
16 posts
7 tags
Classic Couture Glamour at Giambattista Valli
The debut couture collection by Giambattista Valli for Autumn Winter 2011 was filled with couture’s greatest hits, from graphic black and white colour schemes in sculpted and embellished dresses to sweeping gowns in scarlet chiffon. An added reference to the work that goes behind the scenes of a couture collection was the use of a white work coat in 3 of the looks - used once folded down...
13 tags
Button Extensions and Lacing at YSL Menswear
Yves Saint Laurent, Menswear, SS12.
The images above and below from the Spring-Summer 2012 Menswear show from the team at Yves Saint Laurent, are an elegant example of how to use fastenings as a functional and decorative menswear element. The use of button extensions on collars both enhanced the collar shape to make it more unusual and could also be used to create a high collar by buttoning to...
9 tags
The Last Masterpieces of Alexander McQueen
Alexander McQueen, AW10.
For many who knew or worked with Alexander McQueen, or for those many people who admired the work of Alexander McQueen, the pieces from his final collection must carry with them an incredible sense of sadness and devastation. Not only because they were the final pieces that he was working on up until his death, but also because they are so exquisite. In many ways the...
9 tags
Smudged Up Make Up
Vivienne Westwood Red Label, AW11 and Bas Kosters, AW11.
The smudged up make-up used in the Autumn-Winter 2011 collections by Vivienne Westwood and Bas Kosters had a painterly, impressionistic quality that used vibrant smudges of colours to contort the models features. It was almost as though someone had attacked the models faces with a box of oil pastels, or as though a pack of kids had gotten...
7 tags
Variations on a Blue Shirt by Gaia
Gaia, SS12, Copenhagen.
While the deconstruction of the white shirt had become a perennial fashion favourite, it is the blue shirt that Gaia has used as a focal garment for her Spring Summer 2012 collection. The shirt shapes and oversized gowns provide a soft and serene backdrop for soft mid-tone prints and knitwear with a naive charm. There are some nice individual features of the shirt that...
8 tags
Quilting, Beading and Embroidery by Maria Parsons
Maria Parsons, MA Graduate Collection 2011.
The leap from concept to realised design can be one of the most difficult for student designers. Some students try to make entire labour intensive collections by themselves, and can feel frustrated that they do not have the specialist expertise, or the time, required to complete the work as they had envisioned. For others the learning curve is in how...
7 tags
Humble Luxury at Bouchra Jarrar
Bouchra Jarrar, Couture, AW11.
Often people think of couture as being the more extreme end of fashion, a designers playground where limitless budgets fund highly skilled artisans to create fantasy fashion. The line between the presentation of couture and ready to wear has become increasingly blurred over the years as ready-to-wear shows can often be incredibly dramatic and salon style couture...
8 tags
Head to Toe Accessories by Miu Miu
Miu Miu, RST12.
The resort collections were not just about the clothes themselves, they were also a chance for the labels to show off their accessories through a still image / lookbook format. While the accessories can pass by in a blur on the catwalk, the still photos allow time to get the models gloved hands and bejewelled wrists into just the right position. One label that wasn’t...
10 tags
Leatherwork and Pleating at Anne Sofie Madsen
Anne Sofie Madsen, SS12.
A lot of designers find inspiration in a hard vs soft, sheer vs opaque dialogue but often this can create construction problems as the weights of the contrasting materials fight against each other. The images above and below show some interesting experiments with materials such as leather applied to a fine mesh base, from The Spring-Summer 2012 Collection by Anne Sofie...
11 tags
Exquisite Details at Jean Paul Gaultier Couture
Jean Paul Gaultier, Couture, AW11.
There are some designers who create clothes that have a great sense of movement, often through the sheer volume of fabric used in the garment or the amount of space between the body and the garment, or even through the lightness of the fabric that enhances the movements of the models.
It is one thing for garments to react to the movement of the body but quite...
7 tags
Carefully Constructed Shoulders at Armani Prive
Armani Prive, Couture, AW11.
It is commonplace for designers to develop altered silhouettes and construction techniques that carry throughout their collections. The good designers (and those with teams of skilled crafts people) have the ability to take that detail and blend it away, so that the viewer isn’t distracted by the subtle change in silhouette. This allows for the viewer to...
8 tags
Exquisite Details for Givenchy Couture
Givenchy, Couture, AW11.
The sheer time scales for developing ideas for Couture vs Ready to Wear garments is vastly different. Once a pattern has been finalised from toiles a finished salesman sample can be made relatively quickly for a ready to wear garment, and if necessary it can be recut with final pattern and construction changes, in different colourways or substituted fabrics.
For...
10 tags
Bearded Men
Bearded Male Models from the SS12 Menswear Collections of Yohji Yamamoto, Junya Watanabe, Umit Benan, Ann Demeulemeester and Piombo.
Often the menswear collections of the past few years have been modelled by svelte young boys who are so fresh faced that it looks as though they may not have even started shaving yet. In the more recent Menswear collections for Spring-Summer 2012 it seemed as...
7 tags
Patches at Junya Watanabe Man
Junya Watanabe Man, SS12.
Patches were the perfect complement to the many variations of overalls at the Spring-Summer 2012 show for Junya Watanabe Man. Both contrast fabrics and self-on-self patches were used to create layered designs focusing around pockets that then spread across the fronts and sides of shirts. It appeared that the patches were applied both on top of the fabric, and also from...
10 tags
Backdrop Variations
Piombo, Mens, SS12.
Although a simple white background can often be the safest way to showcase clothes without distraction, designers are increasingly experimenting with more colourful and detailed back drops that lend their garments more personality. For some collections, the back grounds really serve to give the collection a new context - it can create a story around the more simple...
6 tags
The Language of Gender
The fashion media has a way of sensationalising trends - everything with a scrap of colour has been dubbed “colour blocking” recently, and it only takes a couple of celebrity pictures before they start heralding the new must have bag, the new must have shoe that replaced the must have bag or of course the easy target of the “new” black. The energetic language that enthuses...
July 2011
18 posts
9 tags
Beautiful Buttons at Chanel Couture
Chanel, Couture, AW11.
Hidden amongst the boucles and tweeds at the Chanel couture collections were some incredible buttons that were as beautiful as brooches. There were also some trims that on closer inspection seemed to have been designed to directly mimic the look of chain, and this ran around the edges of cuffs, hems and collars. Of special note were also some dresses that were covered...
8 tags
Borre Akkersdijk: Reappropriating Industrial...
Knitting 3D Patterns, a documentary on the work of Borre Akkersdijk.
The way of the future for fashion is not simply through new designs but also in rethinking the industry including all aspects of how we use, wear, make, recycle, market and sell our clothes. One of the most fascinating areas of fashion design that requires hours of research and development is in the manufacture of garments,...
14 tags
Menswear Fastenings
Burberry Prorsum, Menswear, SS12.
Although buttons and zips are always used in abundance in the collections it was nice to see some variations of fastenings, particularly in the Menswear shows. The designers featured have used the fastenings to be a functional and aesthetically pleasing part of their designs, rather than be purely utilitarian and hidden away. At Burberry Prorsum this included...
12 tags
Delicate Details at Valentino Couture
Valentino, Couture, AW11.
There were some exquisite details used in the recent Valentino Couture collection for Autumn-Winter 2011. From fine plaited trims, to near invisible laces, and rows of tiny pearls that were handsewn into position. There was a real respect for the beauty of the fabrics in these garments that made intricate handwork and time consuming beading appear light and...
11 tags
Like Kids in the Couture Candy Shop at Christian...
Christian Dior, Couture, AW11.
With all the excess that comes with a couture show, it would seem counter intuitive to suggest that the masters of the genre are able to exercise great restraint and discipline, but it was at the recent Christian Dior show (the first Couture show sans Galliano) that this need for focus became obvious.
If we’d been paying attention, the clue to the...
9 tags
Manipulating for Menswear: Shaun Samson
Shaun Samson, Central Saint Martins MA, AW10.
While the realm of menswear can often appear more limiting then womenswear, there are still so many experiments to be had by manipulating the fabrics and materials to create new textures. Shaun Samson is one menswear designer who is building his collections on techniques such as smocking, used to draw sections of the fabric together, and felting,...
11 tags
Fabrics and Textiles: Variations on Pinstripe
Comme des Garçons, Menswear, SS12.
The classic pinstripe has been appearing in a lot of collections of late and it makes for a good opportunity to see how different designers bring the pinstripe into their own context. Most often pinstripe is associated with suiting and tailored garments but even within this context there are so many variations that designers have to play with - lapel shapes,...
10 tags
Convertible Lapels at Umit Benan
Umit Benan, Menswear, SS12.
There was a certain nonchalance about the Spring-Summer 2012 collection from Umit Benan that gave the Cerruti-inspired suiting a relaxed and very wearable feel. The jacket shapes and pleated trousers were classic and retro in cut, and hung with the sort of oversized silhouette, that leaves the body room to move without appearing overly boxy or unflattering.
One of...
11 tags
Piping at Prada
Prada, RST12.
Among the many carefully chosen details from the Prada Resort 2012 collection, the collars, plackets and yokes were often defined with a piping trim. Piping is an excellent way to add definition to garment edges and seamlines as it forms a subtle 3D edge, perfect for small hints of contrast colours.
Piping is essentially made from a length of cord, usually cotton cord, encased...
10 tags
Sculptural, Stylised Silhouettes at Stephane...
Stephane Rolland, Couture, AW11.
Couture appears in it’s most traditional and romanticised form when the fabrics are luxurious, the fabric manipulations are intricate and elegant, and the overall silhouette appears as stylised as a well drawn fashion illustration. At the Stephane Rolland catwalk show for Autumn-Winter 2011, the couture pieces presented represented these 3 factors to...
13 tags
Tailoring Techniques Exposed at Margiela Couture
Maison Martin Margiela, Couture, AW11.
There is an incredible process involved in building the structure of a bespoke tailored jacket, and for the Autumn-Winter 2011 Couture collection from the Margiela team the structure was on display, sandwiched between layers of sheer fabrics and completely visible from the outside of the garment.
There are varying thicknesses of canvas that are used to...
11 tags
En Pointe Accessories at Jean Paul Gaultier
Jean Paul Gaultier, Couture, AW11.
Fashion has had a long love affair with the symbols of the ballet world throughout history, from tutu inspired dresses and ballet flat shoes, to colour palettes inspired by soft nudes, pinks and strong blacks.
For the Autumn-Winter 2011 Couture collection from Jean Paul Gaultier the ballet shoe was converted into a high heel - without the actual high heel...
13 tags
Velvet Covered Boning at the House of Worth
House of Worth, Couture, AW11.
Boning is a structural material most commonly used hidden away inside garments to form cage-like structures that support the body or the garment. It is a material often associated with corsetry, where boning is often inserted into channels in the fabric or enclosed under bias binding in strips that run vertically up and down the torso, moulding to the curves of...
11 tags
Philip Treacy's Version of Kanzashi for Armani
Armani Prive, Couture, AW11.
For Georgio Armani’s Couture collection for Autumn-Winter 2011, the garments and accessories were created to honour and celebrate the Japanese aesthetic. In terms of styling this included Philip Treacy’s very own versions of Kanzashi, the beautiful hair ornaments that have become such a symbol of Japanese Geisha beauty. In Philip Treacy’s...