Fendi in China

Holding a runway show on the Great Wall of China takes some doing. That is unless you’re Karl Lagerfeld and people quiver at the mere mention of your name. The communist didn’t stand a chance. Michel Gaubert at Vogue.Fr shows in photos exactly how Lagerfeld manages to pull the Fendi show off with nary a hitch. The last photo shows how looonnnggg the runway was. A show on a literal runway with two planes, a show on the great wall of China, we’re guessing that Lagerfeld’s next show will be in Antartica, rest assured, people will come. See the photos here.

Paris Backstage

One of the fashion weeks we’ve really been meaning to get to but have somehow inexplicably avoided has been Paris. You would think we would have gone, if only to be window shoppers. New York, London, Singapore, Amsterdam, Berlin, yup we’ve all been there. Paris no way Jose. Maybe next season. Anyway, I was checking out some of the backstage photos on Hint and they’re really making me want to get my passport in order. Take a look.

Montreal FW

We’re very excited about what’s going on 500 miles north of New York City. It could be because our publisher is a Montrealphile or it could just be because the designers are actually good. The video on the site is pretty interesting because the fashions are very similar to what was shown in New York. The intent behind what I am saying is that the shows seem very polished. We may have to fly out to Montreal for the next showing.

On the web: Montreal Fashion Week

Xterity - The Big Picture

We don’t swoon for many gowns, but we’re swooning for this one. It is effing breathtaking. From Xterity’s London Fashion Week Spring 2008 collection. (see the full gallery at here)

photography Anne-Marie Michel

Ghesquiere Explains it All

I’m not sure if readers remember a kids TV show from the early nineties entitled Clarissa Explains it All on the Nickelodeon network, I’m going to assume that you don’t. It was a somewhat obscure show starring then unknown child actress Melissa Joan Hart. In it, she would break the fourth wall and explain to the audience watching what goes on in a typical teenager’s life. Somehow I felt it necessary to mention that because that’s what Nicolas Ghesquiere did with his Spring 2008 collection. He broke the fourth wall of fashion design in a way, unlike what most designers have done for the Spring 2008 season. Let’s start with the colors and work our way down. There was nothing like it during any of the four fashion weeks. A vibrant mashup of floral prints permeated throughout the collection, while stiff structurally fit shoulders gave each dress a distinct look. The collection made the models appear as if they were colorful toy soldiers right down to the hips that naturally took the shape of a bell.

Ghesquiere took fashion’s fourth wall and ran a bulldozer right through it. He simply acknowledged the decadence of Spring for what it was: flowers, colors, prints and let us all in on the secret. The hips, colors and pocketbooks don’t (and won’t) lie, it was a winner.

What others are saying about the collection:

Cathy Horyn of the New York Times writes:

No, Mr. Ghesquiere’s flower power feels emotionally stronger, more charged. If the fields of pansies, hydrangeas and peonies on the sleek surface of the couture silks lift your heart, it’s not because they are beautiful, though they are. It’s because we sense in them the extreme willfulness of the designer. How many designers would have the temerity to use something as bourgeois as a flower print, and then build an entire collection around it?

Well, the answer is both Mr. Ghesquiere and Cristobal Balenciaga.

Sarah Mower of Style.com writes:

But would this be wearable? What a silly question. If Ghesquière’s extreme embroidered “robot” leggings can sell out for squillions of dollars apiece, and last season’s jodhpurs, blazers, scarves, and ikat prints can fuel a global industry of knockoffs, what has he left to prove? By the time you read this, the flower-printing mills of the world will have been activated overnight.