This was Avril Lavignes in Harper’s Bazaar a year or so ago. She was touting a more feminine/womanly look. In the Harper’s spread she was in Gucci, Manolo and other non-teeny bopper attire. She stated:

I’m starting to feel more feminine. I’m getting into hair and makeup and image. That’s the best part of being a girl.

Fast forward to the release of her new album (4/26), The Best Damn Thing, and we have the new, new Avril Lavigne this time she’s feminine but, maybe possibly less womanly. Though I won’t hold a grudge or call her out for not being true to her word, I definitely have to wonder what her stylists were thinking when they put her in tube socks, heels and fishnets. Did they forget what she told Harper’s? Was she supposed to be girly or was she womanly?

On his Fall 2007 collection for Balenciaga, Nicolas Ghesquière says:

“It’s a big mix—a street mix, with symbols and colors that are very multicultural. It’s like in your room, on campus. It’s about how girls become themselves.”

After Fashionologie posted several quotes from The New Yorker’s profile of Karl Lagerfeld I said to myself, ok, let me read this article. Scroll down the first page and saw that there were 9 more pages of this verbose stream of Lagerfeldisms, conciousness and exaplanations. I read the whole thing, this, in and of itself is not the accomplishment, I’ll quote Fashionologie right now and then explain why I read the opus, she writes:

“Karl Lagerfeld may be ridiculous, and he may even be a bit twisted, but he is absolutely a journalist’s dream. You don’t even have to milk the good quotes out of him, they just flow out of his mouth, make the story for the writer.”

Why does she say this? Here’s an excerpt of quotes from the article:

“I’m not a social person,”…“Not that I’m not at ease. I’m pretty good, but it bores me. Not the people, but the whole thing. What for? It’s not very productive. I only want to do what I have to do: fashion, photography, books. And that’s all.” …
“I have a direct line, but I don’t even remember the number,” he says. “I have cell phones, but I don’t use them. Personally, it is nearly impossible to reach me.”

My explanation on why I read the whole thing? The man’s a genius and it’s quite fun simply staring.
The full article (and you may not be able to read this in one sitting), is located here.

It’s not the first time i’ve heard of stampedes and women beating each other up to have a piece of Stella McCartney’s line, but this is getting ridiculous. From an AFP article this morning on her launch in Australia:

“Someone just ripped a jacket out of my hands,” shopper Lori Herbert told the Daily Telegraph, which quoted another woman as saying she feared for her safety during the rush as a clothes rack was rammed into her side.

There is no moral story behind this, but I’ll get philosophical for a second. I’ve actually gone to stores on launch day of a must have product (for example Viktor and Rolf at H&M) and have fought (with as little violence as possible) with the patrons for a piece or two; but the whole elbowing, sideswiping, pulling items out of another customer’s hand or arm is a bit much. It has come to be accepted as the nature of shopping for items that are wanted by the masses. What got to me this time as opposed to other instances of the all out brawl is that I’m coming to think that maybe, just maybe, stores WANT this mayhem. They may even ::gasp:: encourage it. It generates great PR for both the store and the designer. This is neglecting the fact that someone may actually get hurt.

The answer has always been something along the lines of “we didn’t anticipate such strong demand for the designer.”

Hello?

It’s Stella McCartney at Target, it’s not like she hasn’t debuted a lower priced line at a retailer before with similar results. There’s got to be a better way.

::slowly gets down… and walks away from soapbox::

From Lera at Fashion Addict Diary:

as much as we love fashion week, it’s been really hard finding runway looks that haven’t been already duplicated by Zara, H&M or Forever 21.

Amen sister. Amen.