Her look was unique; Karl Lagerfeld once called her a muse (above you can see a 2008 Chanel campaign inspired on her), he pushed for a 1 million dollar fee for a brief and very private fashion week concert for Fendi a couple of seasons back. Never mind the attributes of her voice an song writing. Lately Amy Winehouse makes the headlines for less compelling reasons than her voice or looks, that is until now. Rumour is out that Amy Winehouse might be doing a collection for Fred Perry. The match is perfect for that Brit-Mod look. But has her time as a fashion inspiration passed already?
“Paris” by Friendly Fires.
Directed by Chris Sweeney, who has collaborated with Stefano Pilati on the YSL film presentations.
The kalaidoscope effects look like snow flakes… and thes song is in the air this season.
The relationships between fashion and art, identity and consumerism has been a point of exploration for Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury. Her work has been exploring fashion branding and how it relates to the art world during the past two decades. Not lacking in humour, her pop works of art borrow from the worlds of fashion and design, transforming a common mushroom sculpture into a shiny object of desire. Fleury makes use of a variety of media, from painting, photography and sculpture to installation and video, to create her universe that parodies and celebrates the interrelationship between consumerism, identity, fashion and art.
Though profit margins are reducing pretty much everywhere on-line retailers like La Redoute in Europe or J.Crew in America can hope to do well through the holiday season. On Monday the UK spent 1 million pounds in one minute! Hopefully consumers will continue to get on-line.
One keeps hearing about how during the economic crisis even the wealthy are cutting down on their expenditures and how it is not chic to flaunt. Not that being chic has ever been about flaunting, au contraire…but that is a whole other subject.
I read recently the line “Conspicuous consumption is over and conscious consumption is starting,” on a WWD article. Well, I guess some companies have to go ahead with products they were probably working on for longer than a year, no matter what is going on.
For their 150th anniversary Boucheron, the French jewelry house, did a special commemorative phone with Vertu, the mobile company known for their luxury special edition mobiles. The ‘Vertu Boucheron 150′ made of ’solid gold’ took 1,000 hours to cut into shape, 700 hours to hand polish,and more than 500 hours to assemble according to the designer. The possible price will be $30,000 US dollars. I am curious about who would be interested on a gold commemorative phone at the moment, more over who would have the guts to be showing it off. I imagine someone saying: “Hey look what I got last week, a gold solid phone. Oh wait! You just lost how many million in the stock exchange?”
I like Boucheron but the timing of their anniversary phone it’s off track with the times.
Stephen Sprouse the Punk Glamour God credited with pioneering the 80’s decade revolutionary idea of mixing uptown sophistication in clothing with a downtown punk and pop sensibility is having a revival. Luis Vuitton will launch in 2009 a limited edition collection inspired from the initial 2001 collaboration.
Considering that Sprouse was well known for his wild style graffiti, and street influenced fashion, it seems very of the moment to have a resurgence of his work. Street wear and the 90s- when he became best known-are definitely in the air.
The collection comes out on January 9th 2009, just in time for his retrospective tittled Rock on Mars at the Dietch Gallery in New York and the publishing of The Stephen Sprouse book by Rizzoli.
Below a gallery of Stephen Sprouse.
Stephen Sprouse with his muse Debbie Harry
Sprouse 2001 graffiti collection for Louis Vuitton
New Luis Vuitton Special Edition Stephen Sprouse collection
On Friday we went to see the Spring/Summer 2010 denim collections.
My first impression when I arrived at the Docks (it is the place where the trade fair is, in the north of Paris) was that the place seemed not crowed at all.
But this event stills very pleasant thanks to the welcoming of the exhibitors, and the small area makes the place feel less commercial and more human.
Highlights for Spring Summer 2010:
The two biggest trends for this season are:
- light weight denim: It seems that weights are lighter and lighter! Tones of fabrics from 7.5Oz to 9Oz.
- Colored denim: a romantic and more pastel color range compared to last summer (see picture 1).
For 2009 the colors were bright, for 2010 they will be whitened. Colored denim are mainly piece dyed.
But don’t forget:
- Stripped denim: not only white stripes, but colored stripes as well. And in light weight denim of course.
- New constructions: herringbone, canvas, satin, fancy weaves especially for colored denim.
- Soft touch: especially obtained thanks to compact threads for a really nice hand:soft but still a bit rough.
- The return of the chambray.
- Over lay fabrics with the exposed underside (see picture2: the inside of the fabric is in contrasted color so when the top of the fabric is scratched the apparent threads from inside appear in a contrasted color, for example brown color like the picture).
- double face fabric: so if you turn up the bottom of your jeans appears a contrasted color, or a stripe from the inside.
- authentic spirit with the return of the open end denim, but in stone and heavy stone versions.
- bi-stretch still present.
- less grey and black denim.
- no more coated fabrics.
- less organic denim (or less visible).
- less beige over dyed fabrics.
- no more rinse aspect, the denim must be stone washed, with used and brushed aspect (see picture 3)
For sure collections for Spring Summer 2010 will be light and romantic!
The authority on color Pantone has declared the yellow Mimosa as the key color of next year. I suppose that with the economic downturn we will need to drink Mimosas to keep optimistic.
“In a time of economic uncertainty and political change, optimism is paramount and no other color expresses hope and reassurance more than yellow.”
Read the press release here. As one friend put it very comically: This color will surely soothe when the economy renders my job obsolete. Thanks, Pantone!
