Monday 31 March 2014

Fur-Free Designers: The Fashion Moguls With A Heart

No matter how many animal welfare campaigns are shoved under front row noses, the fur debate is still strictly off limits for many designers.

Considered the foie gras of fashion, it's made quite a stealthy return since the mid 80s right to the heart of high end fashion and the high street! It seems not even a naked Naomi Campbell PETA ad can stop the passion for pelts.

Figures released by the International Fur Federation show that the fur trade is far from winding down and is worth more than $40 billion (£24 billion). Yikes.

"It's easy to get caught up in the emotions that the business can generate, but the truth is that the fur trade is an economic cornerstone in Europe and beyond," IFF CEO Mark Oaten told The Telegraph. Try telling that to the billions of rabbits, minks, dogs and cats suffering for our vanity.

Whilst the fur industry continues to boom, particularly in China, it's good to know there's a few fashionistas with a conscience for cruelty-free couture out there.

Get bookmarking the designers that have pledged to keep away from the furry stuff for good. Amen!

Fur-Free Designers: The Fashion Moguls With A Heart

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All Saints

After shocking footage emerged of bunnies being live plucked in Chinese factories for their fur, All Saints decided to boycott all its Angora stock earlier this year. They have since revealed they have no plans to work with it in any future lines.

H&M

All hail H&M. They've got a product policy to be reckoned with including a total ban on Angora and a zero tolerance on fur all together. And that's not all. Exotic animal skins, shell products, down from live plucked birds - they're all no-goes for H&M. What a hero.

ASOS

Against animal testing? Check. Cool with Angora? No way. Aside from being a treasure trove of fashion must-haves, ASOS firmly believes that cruelty to animals has no place in its online store. They refuse to use real fur or pelts in products. This includes Karakul lambskin pelts from aborted or newborn lambs.

Vivienne Westwood

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Vivienne Westwood

Where would British fashion be without Vivienne Westwood? After speaking with PETA back in 2007 she said no more to fur and her line became officially animal-friendly. She even had PETA donate her last eight rabbit-fur handbags to a wildlife sanctuary to comfort orphaned animals. Must blink away tears. Kudos to Vivs, the woman has a buzz cut - she's as fur-free as they come.

Marks & Spencer

Marks and Spencer followed ASOS's lead and decided to pull Angora products from its shelves late last year. They also operate a strict no fur policy and this includes farmed fur such as fox, mink, chinchilla and sable. Indian cow hide and live plucked feather and down does not comply with their business principles either. Now that's how it's done.

Calvin Klein

Half naked Kellan Lutz campaigns is not all Calvin Klein's good at, turns out he's pretty clued up in the faux fur department too. After PETA met with him to watch a film of animals being killed to make furs, he vowed to end all fur licensing agreements in 1994 after 17 years in the business. See, it's never too late to go without fuzz.

Stella McCartney

McCartney told Vogue: "I think my designs have shown that animals don't need to suffer for fashion. I don't understand the need for fur; the use of real fur is just repulsive and I think there are plenty of ways you can make a coat or a bag look great without it." Hear, hear Stella!

Stella McCartney

Topshop, Miss Selfridge, Dorothy Perkins

You don't have to be a regular Arcadia fan to know that Sir Philip Green is seriously anti-fur. He has it in writing that they are committed to being fur-free through the international consumers for a fur free society program. He runs a tight ship that Sir Philip. Working with the RSPCA, the brand has also started to track the sourcing of other animal products.

Ralph Lauren

in 2006 called time on his runway haute couture hide. Once again after meeting with PETA and being made aware of the harrowing footage of grisly fur farms in China, he signed his name on the dotted line and decided to pull all fur from the shelves. He also went the extra mile and donated 1,200 of his fall 2006 fur-trimmed coats to charities in developing nations.

COS

COS, the go-to destination for all things stylish, has been against fur from its inception, paving the way for fur free fashion right from the beginning. It's signed up to the Fur Free Retailer Program to further support the concept. Massive brownie points from us.

As for the rest: Zara, Chanel, Gucci, Harrods shame on you. You're lucky we don't have a pot of red paint to hand.

Wednesday 26 March 2014

The rebirth of Italian fashion

There is a photograph of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton gazing out over the river Arno in Florence. He wears a black suit, a flash of white shirt; she wears white, her handbag black. She rests it proprietorially on the river wall. They, and the shot, are beautifully composed. The couple could be on set, though they are not. This is Dolce Vita-era Italy, when Hollywood camped out in Rome and Florence, and the paparazzi had no difficulty finding Audrey Hepburn. She was always in a shoe shop. Actors hopped around Italy on a new kind of Grand Tour, less focused on art and architecture, more on the boutiques and ateliers of Gucci, Roberto Cappucci and so on.

There is even a shot of the shoemaker Salvatore Ferragamo posing with his vast collection of wooden lasts, each marked in thick black ink with its owner's name, scalps of famous feet. Rita Hayworth, Sophia Loren, Greta Garbo – very flat arches – the Duchess of Windsor. No doubt it was for this atmosphere of glamorous leisure and studied carefreeness that the makers of Mad Men in 2009 sent Don and Betty Draper to 1963 Rome, in order to see how she would behave when let loose from her uptight shift dresses and put in a Pucci-style maxidress. (She left him.)

Fashion show in Sala Bianca Pitti Palace, Florence, 1955.

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But now, in fashion terms, Italy is mid-depression. While London is known for producing young design talent, Milan knocks out red-carpet dresses and wearable separates. Its old guard is just that, as jaded as the names on perfume bottles. Giorgio Armani is 79. Roberto Cavalli is 73. Dolce and Gabbana first showed 30 years ago. Miuccia Prada may be the exception, but she is 64 and shows her Miu Miu collection in Paris, not Milan. In January, as proof of this identity crisis, the chamber of Italian fashion appointed its first CEO, Jane Reeve, who is English.

The textile conservation studio in the basement of the Victoria and Albert museum in London, where outfits are currently being prepared for exhibition, is a room of fashion ghosts. Mannequins stand in blank drifts, their clothes shrouded in clouds of white wrapping. As the conservationist lifts each sheath, one bright outfit after another emerges from its paper cocoon. A Pucci two-piece in psychedelic citrus print (1965). A Valentino couture dress (2013/14) in gold lace, interspersed with silk panels featuring armour-plated rhinoceroses. Obviously, there's a Roberto Cavalli leopard-print number (2007). These clothes are not shy. "A lot of them are quite over the top," the conservator says diplomatically.

Yet while Cavalli has a reputation for outlandishly sexy clothes, the look is often predictable: what could be less surprisingly brash than a leopardprint dress? The fact is that when Italians opt for outrageousness, they often do so in a way that fits rather than discomfits expectations. Witness Nancy Dell'Olio or Silvio Berlusconi. Even Italy's new prime minister, Matteo Renzi, has been lampooned for his extravagantly informal dress – but his trademark is a leather jacket, one of the most conventional signifiers of rebellion. So often in Italian dress, flamboyance is just a different kind of conformism.

Salvatore Ferragamo

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Many of those great shots of old Hollywood in Italy were taken by the late Giuliano Pacinotti, and belong to the Foto Locchi archive in Florence. There they are overseen by curator Erika Ghilardi, who stands tall in a pair of 4in heels and swooping-hemmed knitwear, clicking through photographs of Greta Garbo, Wallis Simpson, Henry Fonda, Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart and Maria Callas. Ghilardi seems well placed to explain what distinguishes Italian glamour from other kinds. "It used to be in fashion to say 'glamour'. 'Italian glamour'," she says again. She frowns. "For me it's a bit of the past. Something that was modern in the past."

And this is Italy's problem. What really distinguishes Italian style, Ghilardi says, is a desire to "unite colours, unite fabrics", to pull all the elements of a look together into a model of coherence. Shirt collars sit pointedly over quality knitwear. Watches glint from beneath expensive shirt sleeves. Trousers break precisely on leather uppers. Shiny shoes and gleaming sunglasses suggest a top-to-toe lucidity. It is a composure that Gianluca Vialli imported to Britain when he signed to Chelsea in 1996, his bald head the perfect metaphor for his highly polished look.

She has a theory. "Socially, Italian culture has its roots in the 30s. The grandmothers were paranoid about how you looked when you crossed the front door. Rich or poor, it was always a question of decorum. Personal decorum. It doesn't mean elegance. It means being decent. These were the fascist ideals. When you are told things like that so many times, it changes the mentality."

Ghilardi is right that everyday style in Italy is codified in a way that expresses an ideal of coherence and conservativism. There is a systematic appropriateness at play, which extends to other walks of life, too (try asking an Italian waiter for parmesan with seafood pasta). But can this really be a relic of fascism, and aren't people dressing in a more liberated way now?

"We still have a bit of a way to go with that," she says.

At the Ferragamo museum in the historic centre of Florence, where styles worn by Marilyn Monroe are displayed alongside the Vara favoured by Margaret Thatcher, the museum's director, Stefania Ricci, agrees that this sense of regulation dictates Italian style. Her crisp cuffs are flicked back with a luxuriant flourish. "It is true we try to combine everything systematically," she says. As a young woman, she worked at the Musée de la Mode in Paris. "The other girls wore hats. They used to buy things on the street and combine them. They were very elegant. I was so surprised that the young people who worked in that museum had great personality in fashion. In Italy, we wear more of a uniform."

Style as an expression of obedience has been one of the dominant modes of dressing in Italy for centuries. Ricci's words are directly descended from Baldassare Castiglione's The Book Of The Courtier (1528). "I would not know how to lay down any hard and fast rules about dress," one character says, "save that one should adapt oneself to the custom of the majority." The majority, of course, is a powerful absentee in Italian politics, where there have been 61 governments since 1945. It is not hard to see why the appearance of cohesion is woven into people's wardrobes.

Italy's first commercial fashion show was itself a kind of mini-Risorgimento. Held in Florence in 1950, it was the brainwave of Giovanni Battista Giorgini, who exported Italian goods to US department stores. Within two years, he was hosting shows in the Sala Bianca of Palazzo Pitti, home to the Medicis, in the heart of Renaissance Florence; a Renaissance portrait featured on the cover of all his invitations. Decades before the "Made in Italy" slogan powered the country's ready-to-wear revolution in the 70s and 80s, Giorgini was promoting the same nationalistic ideal of stylish heritage and crafts expertise.

Why did it matter so much to him? Giorgini's grandson, Neri Fadigati, has been sifting through the Sala Bianca paperwork, cataloguing it for the state archive. "He was really in love with this country," Fadigati says. "His ancestors had participated in the unification of Italy. In the 1800s they all volunteered to fight."

Outside in Piazza della Signoria, everything seems to be edged like Fadagatti's pocket square, the crenellations, turrets and windows outlining buildings in a neat frill. Just then another sound adds itself to the chatter of the square. A brass band? It's getting closer. A chain of men, in red, yellow and blue knickerbockers and tunics with castellated shoulders is marching. A primary-coloured ribbon tramping the cobbles to the tune of doleful trumpets. It is certainly a look – probably more at the Pucci than the MaxMara end of the wearable spectrum. What's the occasion? "It's the anniversary of Michelangelo's death," a policeman says.

Jane Reeve, the Englishwoman at the helm of the chamber of Italian fashion, hasn't heard of Giorgini. But she has the same task of convincing the fashion press, buyers and shoppers that it still matters. At Milan fashion week, she beamed giant adverts on to the department store Rinascente (literal translation: being reborn).

Italian designers have helped to define every decade since the end of the second world war, from the abstract prints of Pucci in the 50s through the structural wonders of Roberto Capucci in the 50s and 60s, Missoni's crazy zigzags in the 70s to Armani's unstructured suits in the 80s, and the knockout glamour of Versace and Tom Ford's Gucci in the 90s. That, of course, was also the decade in which the brilliant waywardness of Prada emerged (nothing more subversive, in leather-loving Italy, than a rucksack made of nylon). But what now?

"Italy is an incubator for lots of new designers," Reeve says. "We just have to move the cloud of these big [brand names] a bit to the side, and all these young designers will come out as well."

For years, like so many Italian industries, fashion has operated as something of a gerontocracy. When designers do retire from their eponymous houses, the creative direction often passes down through the family, as at Missoni or Versace. There are exceptions. Reeve cites Frida Giannini, the young designer at Gucci, and Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, Valentino's designers. Ermenigeldo Zegna has announced a scholarship for young people. Giorgio Armani has offered free use of his catwalk venue to young designers such as Stella Jean, 34, whose brilliant graphic prints have acquired sufficient mainstream appeal in the UK to have topped Grazia's Chart of Lust and to be sold by Matches. An outfit by Jean is in the V&A exhibition.

Stella Jean AW14

How has Jean managed to break through? "You have to bring something unique," she says. "For me it's my background." She was born in Rome to an Italian father and Haitian mother. "When I was a teenager, I found it very hard. In Italy we are not used to the multicultural family. As a child, nobody believed me when I said I was Italian. You can't understand what you are or where you can be." Growing up, she mixed her father's clothes with her mother's. "I tried to show that if different cultures can communicate in styling, the same cultures can communicate in real life. One of Mr Armani's suggestions was to keep my DNA pure."

Jean combines her eyecatching prints with mannish tailoring. The combination is a brilliant disaggregation of classic Italian style, a rearrangement of elements into a wholly new look.

Perhaps this is the way forward. Italy's new prime minister, too, is loosening conventional codes. Matteo Renzi has been lampooned for spurning ties and for his casual leather jacket, though he says he is simply doing his bit for the country's leather industry.

"Italian style is changing from a very strict tradition," Jean says. "We are a bit in the world now."

And yet, Jean likes to show her printed skirts and trousers with T-shirts featuring posters for films from the days when Burton and Taylor were strolling around Florence and Rome, or retro shots of Sophia Loren. Just like Ferragamo and Gucci before her, she is still selling the ideal of Hollywood on the Tiber.

In support of this idea, Jean says that we should look past her eye-catching prints, that her work is really about the tailoring. "That's what I keep," she says, "the style from 50s and 60s Italy." Her mannish shirts are made of high-quality heavy cotton, in line with the Italian preference for natural materials. Put one on and you will find that the cuffs and collar – so integral to the conformist look that Ghilardi describes – are substantive, as luxuriantly heavy as if fine chains had been tucked into their seams. Carefully, respectfully, Jean has sewn into her shirts the weight of tradition.

Sunday 23 March 2014

Cara Delevingne: Turning down jobs & cat-walk selfies

Cara Delevingne turns down 70 per cent of the work she's offered.

The model-of-the-moment is signed to Storm Model Management and co-founder Sarah Doukas has discussed what working with her is like.

Delevingne walked several shows during the recent Fashion Week season, has created a capsule collection for Mulberry and appears in many campaigns.

However, Doukas is determined not to let her become over saturated and explained many of the offers made to her are dismissed.

"We spend our lives saying no," she told students at Conde Nast College.

Storm is also the work home of Kate Moss, who was discovered by Doukas.

Model-of-the-moment, Cara Delevingne. Photo / Getty Images

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The two models recently caused excitement when it was confirmed they had teamed up for a Burberry campaign. While both are hugely successful, Doukas explained there are plenty of differences between them.

"For Cara it just comes naturally to use social media and it's just part of the way she lives," she said. "I mean the other day she took a selfie on the catwalk. Nobody else from another generation, perhaps Kate's, would even consider doing that."

The model booker also dished out some advice to those hoping to make it in the industry. She insists confidence is the most important thing, so if someone thinks they have what it takes they need to really push for it.

"Just go for it and walk through the door!" she said. "A good agency will be able to tell from even a Facebook profile or a phone photo if you have the potential - expensive portfolios are never necessary."

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Tuesday 18 March 2014

Get rid of dark circles with these yoga asanas

Even with good skin and great make-up, a woman can look tired and fatigued due to dark circles. Thought to be caused due to stress, lack of sleep and in some cases due to constant ill health, dark circles are also known to form due to lack of oxygen and blood flow to the face. That is why Ayurveda and yoga practitioners believe that by increasing the blood flow to one’s face it can help resolve the problem. So instead of trying various chemical and cosmetic methods to get rid of them, here is an all natural way to zap those dark circles away.

Hastapadasana

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Hastapadotasana: Also known as the standing forward bend pose, this asana is the first one you should perform in this series. Hastapadotasna stretches out the muscles of almost all parts of the body, invigorates the nervous system, resolves digestive disorders and helps increase the blood flow to your face. It is also know to help tone the muscles of the abdomen and relieve any stomach disorders.

Steps to do this pose: Stand straight with your legs shoulder width apart. Now, stretch both your hands forward and upwards, making sure you feel a stretch up your spine. Now start bending slowly until your palms are touching the floor and your head touches your knees. For most people touching their hands to the floor might be difficult, so don’t fret, keep trying till you start feeling comfortable. Once in this position, breathe normally and hold the asana for as long as you are comfortable.

Tip: Avoid doing this pose if you suffer from spondylitis, high blood pressure or heart disease.

After you have performed hastapadotasana, you can perform the other asanas in this series. Do not do the other poses before you do this asana.

Viparitakarani

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Viparitakarani: Also known as the legs-up-the-wall pose, is great when it comes to beating dark circles. It not only increases the blood flow to your head and face but is also beneficial in stretching out the back, relieving lower back pain and calming the mind. One of this aasana’s greatest benefits is that it helps relieve cramps in the back and leg and calms the mind. According to Ayurveda lack of sleep and stress are the number one cause for dark circles and this asana targets exactly those areas.

Steps to do the asana: Lie down flat on the floor, near a wall. Now, raise your legs such that they are rested comfortably along the wall and the base of your back is touching the wall. Stretch your arms out on either side of your body and relax. You may choose to raise your chin towards the ceiling, but do not stress your neck while doing this pose. Close your eyes and breathe in deep allowing yourself to relax. Hold this pose for as long as you are comfortable.

Tip: Avoid doing this pose if you are menstruating, have serious eye disorders like glaucoma or suffer from high blood pressure.

SHAMBHAVIMUDRA

Sambhavi mudra: Is a form of yoga practice that helps awaken the ajna chakra. Although it is called a mudra, this is a form of meditation that is meant to awaken the most important chakra in our body. Apart from that this mudra helps calm the mind, stretch the muscles around the eyes and relaxes those present between the eyebrows.

Steps to do this pose: Sit comfortably in a calm corner of your house and place your palms on your thighs. Make sure your palms are facing upwards so that there is an equal distribution of energy. Now turn both your eyeballs so that you are literally trying to look at the centre of your eyebrows. Breathe normally and hold this pose for five to six counts. To intensify the mudra you can choose to hum ‘Om’. This is not religious in any way but is based on scientific evidence that the word ‘Om’, when chanted produces a type of vibration throughout the body, that is very beneficial to massage the nervous system and activate the chakras. To stop doing the mudra, close your eyes and slowly bring your eyes back to their normal position. Keep your eyes closed for a short while and then slowly open them.

Surya Namaskar: Surya Namaskar has a deep effect in detoxifying the organs through copious oxygenation and has a deeper relaxing effect. It is a series of 12 physical postures. These alternating backward and forward bending postures flex and stretch the spinal column giving a profound stretch to the whole body. You can find out how to do the asanas correctly in our post about surya namaskar.

Thursday 13 March 2014

Introducing the Australian Fashion Chamber

The industry body has been announced.

Vogue Australia’s editor-in-chief Edwina McCann, who championed the initiative, will preside as the first chairperson of the Australian Fashion Chamber (AFC). The body’s other founding members are Malcolm Carfrae, executive vice president, communications, Calvin Klein; Anthony Kendal, communications director; Melissa Grace, fashion communications manager, Woolmark, and Kara Hurry, marketing, Gap and Brooks Brothers, Oroton Group.

The AFC was established to support the domestic fashion industry by nurturing talent and education, providing leadership and promoting local designers on an international scale.

“The AFC is a welcome addition to Australia’s fashion landscape that will help foster young talent and create sustainable, unique and inspiring businesses of which we will all be proud,” said McCann.

With successful models in the British Fashion Council and Council of the Fashion Designers of America, the idea was initially sparked by a conversation McCann had with US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who suggested she set up an Australian version.

Introducing the Australian Fashion Chamber

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The AFC’s full 20-person board will be announced next month. The current board members, including McCann, Carfrae, Kendal and Grace, are Alison Veness, editor of 10 Magazine, designer Nicky Zimmermann, Kellie Kush, editor of Harper’s Bazaar, Leanne Whitehouse, director of the Whitehouse Institute of Design and Nancy Pilcher.

Toni & Guy and AMP Capital have signed on as partners of the not-for-profit organisation, which is inclusive of designers, retailers, hair and make-up artists, photographers, art directors and graphic designers.

The AFC will work alongside IMG Fashion, Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival and the Textile Fashion Institute of Australia.

A seminar will be held on April 10 during Mercedes-Benz Australia Fashion Week to introduce the board members and reveal more about the body’s future initiatives.

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Monday 10 March 2014

Ten Looks, One Show: The Industry’s Top Stylists Honor the Albright Fashion Library

It’s been over ten years since Irene Albright first opened the doors to the Albright Fashion Library—the more than 15,000-dress-, 7,000 shoe-strong collection of contemporary couture, ready-to-wear, and accessories now housed in a massive 7,000-square-foot loft at 62 Cooper Square. “Irene was working with KCD and saw that people were running around chasing clothes, and she just decided to start buying [important pieces],” recalled the Library’s creative director, Patricia Black. “Eventually, people would come to her saying, ‘Oh, do you still have that sweater? Can I borrow it?’”

Today, after a decade functioning as a sort of dream closet for fashion insiders, the Library is feting its history, as well as the incredible individuals who have pulled from its continually evolving archive, with Albright Goes to School, an exhibition in partnership with the Fashion Institute of Technology and MAC Cosmetics that opens this evening at the Museum at FIT.

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“I wanted to celebrate Irene, the Library, the stylists—the people who were working on the inside—the shakers and tastemakers,” said Black. “Without them, we wouldn’t have what we have in terms of this colossal space just packed from floor to ceiling with clothes.”

The show—a first look debuts here—features individual looks that ten stylists (June Ambrose, Paul Cavaco, Catherine George, Tom Broecker, Freddie Leiba, Lori Goldstein, Kathryn Neale, Mary Alice Stephenson, Kate Young, and Patti Wilson) created using iconic wares from the Library. A Tom Ford goat hair jacket layers over a Comme des Garçons tank in Goldstien’s look; Balmain is mixed with Givenchy and the artist’s own choker and face mask in Leiba’s; and Patti Wilson utilizes a Lanvin body harness to sex up an otherwise high glamour Yves Saint Laurent and J.W. Anderson combo.

There’s a rich history to the institution, and Black, Museum at FIT director and chief curator Valerie Steele, and set designer Stefan Beckman were tasked with expressing that through a tight narrative. “There are some incredible stylists who pulled these outfits, but they each have their own different story,” related Beckman, who described the installation as a “gritty fire escape urban idea.”

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Steele added that the Museum’s interest in the exhibition stemmed, in part, from a desire to champion stylists. “People tend to think, Oh, designers make fashion. So it was important to be able to bring in stylists and show that they also have a really important role in putting looks together.”

The ten ensembles will be on display through March 31. The show marks the beginning of a greater collaboration between FIT and the Albright Fashion Library. “Irene is such an eclectic collector of everything from fashion to art to houses to people. So who knows what she’s going to start collecting next and where we’re going to take that,” suggested Black. “[But] I’m excited about the beginnings of seeing how we get to work and inspire the new generation of kids who dream of becoming the next designer, visual director, creative director, fashion editor, stylist, or costume designer. I’m hoping that we can lend a little bit of light to them in this moment.”

Thursday 6 March 2014

Faux and Fabulous

If you’ve ever fallen hard for a piece of high-fashion costume jewelry, chances are good that it has passed through Edgard Hamon. Founded in 1919, the atelier was the first to create belts for Chanel, and decades later, it was the first to thread strips of leather through metal chains.

Today, the Edgard Hamon archives scan like a who’s who of couture’s glory days: Yves Saint Laurent, Lanvin, Nina Ricci, Chanel, Givenchy, Thierry Mugler, Balenciaga, and Christian Lacroix have all called on Edgard Hamon at some point.

Which is why Lacroix, along with Elie Top, Paris Vogue jewelry editor Franceline Prat, and various other experts all gathered today at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. Their mission was to elect the winners of the two first-ever Edgard Hamon awards: the Edgard Hamon Prize for Costume Jewellery, which goes to a designer under 30 years old who has worked in fashion jewelry in France, and the 3,000-euro Edgard Hamon Future Hope Prize for Costume Jewellery, which goes to a student in his or her last year at a European school of fashion.

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The contestants were challenged to design pieces based on the work of a chosen architect, and tonight, Style can exclusively reveal the winners. Century Xie took the 15,000-euro Edgard Hamon Prize for Costume Jewellery, and Yao Yu won the Edgard Hamon Future Hope Prize for Costume Jewellery.

“We had a great time, they were incredibly creative,” said Lacroix of the selection process. “It was really beautiful. Many of them referenced Gaudí or Prouvé, for example. And many of them were influenced by Elie [Top].”

Top, the self-taught talent behind Lanvin’s fabulous baubles, replied that he was flattered to hear it. “Everyone’s always talking about bags and shoes, but costume jewelry really deserves attention. It’s so closely linked with fashion’s silhouettes, color, and what you want now—that’s the magic of it. There’s so much more to it than silver and gold.”

Xie’s line will be produced and displayed at Le Bon Marché; Edgard Hamon will produce three of Yu’s prototypes and she will receive an internship. The winners’ collections will be presented at an official ceremony at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs on July 4.

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Monday 3 March 2014

Oscars 2014: Our Take on All of Our Favorite Celebrity Fashion Trends

Torrential downpours threatened to flood the red carpet at the Oscars this year—certain planes flying in with designer cargo from Paris were even said to have been delayed due to adverse weather conditions—but that didn’t dampen the spirit of Hollywood glamour in the air at the Oscars. Amy Adams in Gucci Première and Jennifer Lawrence in Christian Dior channeled that feeling with peplum dresses that propelled an old-school notion of movie-star elegance a step forward, even if Lawrence did take a tumble for the second time running.

Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o had her Cinderella moment in a custom Prada dress that was nothing short of magical, and the cool hue that she described as Nairobi blue set the tone for the night; it was the warmest color for fellow nominees Sandra Bullock and Amy Adams too. On the other hand, Meryl Streep did make a strong case for monochrome with a stunning off-the-shoulder Lanvin look that was a refreshing antidote to the ubiquitous strapless neckline. Ditto for Penélope Cruz’s asymmetric Giambattista Valli Haute Couture dress.

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As far as unexpected winning moments go, both Olivia Wilde and Kerry Washington, in Valentino and Jason Wu respectively, showed that a baby bump can in fact be your best accessory. And Jennifer Lawrence made her exit as strong as her entrance with a draped back-to-front necklace.

If there was one accessory that everyone had their eye out for, though, it was Pharrell’s hat. The topper took a backseat on the red carpet this time around; nevertheless, the singer still made a splash with a Lanvin shorts suit. As far as fine tailoring goes, the award should go to mc Ellen DeGeneres—in a blue velvet Saint Laurent three-piece or all-white tux with matching box-fresh sneakers for the win.

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