There are tons of blog where you can get your Project Runway fix. The internet is littered with them and the carcasses of the ones that died in season 1. It’s a bit of an obsession at this point for some. I dread watching it and outside of my first review, I doubt I would ever make it a part of my normal viewing habits. I’m ashamed to say I have viewing habits at all. Never the less, I am here playing Monday morning quarterback on a show that is as vapid and empty as a room filled with aspiring models.

Why did Carmen Lose

Carmen lost not because she was particularly awful. Most of what was designed this show was extremely forgettable. Even the winner’s design was badly bland. Wide stripes with skinny stripes? The show was about diminishing returns and the judges ended up picking the best of the worst.

Carmen lost because she designed nothing. What’s worse than designing nothing though is that nothing got really bad really fast. Did she really expect legendary running back Tiki Barber to come out in what was “supposed” to be a shirt? The zipper on the pant was ridiculously high, the jacket/sportscoat/thing made absolutely no sense except to cover the shirt that was never there. It was amateur hour at it’s finest. I took some sewing classes and I was very bad at it, on my best day I could have put together what Carmen created for this show. That’s saying a lot considering I once stitched together a shirt asymmetrical sleeves that ended up being 8 inches in difference. That’s also considering that Carmen has got be a thousand times better than I ever was.

How Carmen could have Won

Let’s say we could press the rewind button and start from scratch. With a $150 budget, Carmen could have purchased enough fabric to put a pair of dark pants, a dark t-shirt and the simplest sports coat money could buy. This is Monday morning quarterback and my job is very easy because I don’t have the pressure of being on a TV show, wanting to not lose, being given 12 or so hours to create something from scratch and facing Michael Kors at the end of the show. Even without the sports coat a long sleeve dark t-shirt would have helped the cause. Were you Carmen, what would you have done differently?

You don’t read Vogue, Elle, Instyle for the wonderfully deep fashion articles. You read them to see the ads. At least that’s what we’re thinking the editors believe. So it comes as no surprise that we would have our favorites. There was no scientific guess work here, we trolled through our stacks of magazines started scanning a handful of pages and finally picked the ones that we really wanted to highlight.

One thing to note: all of the ads were from print magazines. Few fashion publications online featured ads that we could literally feature in this blog section and perhaps next year maybe January we’ll delve deeper into the subject on magazine side of things. Special mentions include designer ads on Zoozoom.com, the Uniqlo ads on Hint, and the work done on showstudio.com that eventually went into print. You have to wonder why fashion ads are not as gorgeous online as they are on print. It’s not that the media doesn’t exist and the format can have movement, texture and color you would never get in a print ad. Hopefully that changes within the next year or so.

For the time being here are some of our favorite print ads this year:

The Picasso-esque Nordstrom ads were a hit this fall season.

If Louis Vuitton did one thing right this year, it was to place Scarlet J in it’s ads. Lucky for the company it always does more than 10 things right in a year:

Calvin Klein pushes the envelope every season, this season he put the envelope down and went fedex. The lines and silhouette in his fall ads were simply gorgeous, black, white and shades of gray never looked so good:

Doing the best Tim Burton impression possible, Vera Wang took the ads for Kohl in a surreal direction:

Juicy Couture went packing and showed every accessory possible, on top of a car. How can you go wrong?

Jimmy Choo went to the airport and brought back Heather Marks. This is a Papierdoll office favorite:

The ad that wasn’t became the talk of early 2007, if only it were real:

So with Tiffany going all RIAA on us and taking Ebay to court, I wondered exactly where this is going and what’s the main point behind the lawsuit. Everyone (read everyone) knows that if you want to buy fake anything that closely resembles the real (insert designer here), the best place to go is eBay. I ventured on to eBay earlier this year (sometime in late February) and found that items from Marc Jacobs Fall 2007 collection were up for sale. The seller was someone in China who stated that they were a former production assistant at Marc Jacobs. With suspension of disbelief firmly not in-effect on this one, I sent the seller a random question on why he/she/it were willing to sell a dress not yet in production for such a low price (around $250). Surely the person could have sold it for a lot more. I received no response. I’m guessing it was more of a do you want to buy this or not type of seller.

The point is I applaud Tiffany, while at the same time wondering why they are so late to the party. LVMH has been on a piracy tear for as long as I can remember, first in the real world and then online. If it’s Louis Vuitton (or not, as it were), it can be had on eBay with a 90% discount. The products are usually shipped straight from China and in some cases are hard to discern from the real ones. eBay has not exactly been dormant in the fight against counterfeit items as it does state in it’s terms of service that selling stolen goods, counterfeit items and/or pirated items is against the rules. The issue is whether they’ve done enough to stop the practice. Finding counterfeit goods is not exactly the hardest thing in the world. Take a look at the page below, can you spot the fakes?

The end result of Tiffany and Co’s fight with eBay may be monumental on certain levels. If they do win, other manufacturers / designers / companies will be watching and readying their own lawsuits. eBay may end up spending a lot of money tightening controls to ensure that counterfeit items are either non-existent in the marketplace or are extremely hard to find.

Over the holiday week and weekend, photographer Anne-Marie Michel posted photos from the Kulture 2 Couture show on our international blog iPapier. One of the primary reasons behind the importance of this show is how it highlights the black designer. There have been several stories stemming from recent fashion weeks about the lack of diversity on the runway and behind the scenes. One of the more in-depth articles that looks at this absence was highlighted several weeks back on this blog and in the New York Times.

I won’t speak in platitudes or share high minded reasons as to why a show like this is necessary. I will say that this show magnifies why diversity in fashion is important. A lot of what was shown would not have even been on the radar if this event did not exist. While multiple publications (online and in print) and blogs miss that next great designer who happens to be in the minority (pick one), this show says “look here, they truly exist…and they’re good!” To go a step further, these designers are not simply “so and so… the black designer” doomed to a typecast existence. They become “the designer that is a master at using (insert fabric/method/cut here)”.

So as I gingerly step off my soapbox, I’ll point you in the direction of our Kulture 2 Couture coverage in London at the V&A on iPapier.

You won’t ever understand the allure of indie fashions until you buy and wear something distinct, fabulous and hard to find. Then and only then will you get why indie fashion rules the roost. Recently we talked (briefly) with the founders of Smashing Darling.com and realized they are on to something. As an example, their recent look book contained a handful of designers that were new to me yet known by others at Papierdoll and vice versa. What’s the allure behind featuring items from Lara Miller (pictured above and below), Pinar Eris, Laura Dawson and Papusza Couture? To the world outside of our little circle they are largely unknown, but they will be. And you would have had the foresight to know them first.

The folks at Smashing Darling must have done their homework. In many instances indie designers are “indie” for a reason. Some are not yet polished, or have the finish that one would want. The designers featured at the Smashing Darling are a bit different in that regard. The pieces sold are hand picked by the owners and website reflect the fashion sense of the owners. How can you sell something that you don’t believe in? They don’t. Everything they sell reflects their aesthetic to varying degrees. We’ll be interviewing them on Papierdoll soon. Until that time, take a look at their website here.