Christian Dior Couture Catwalk Fashion Show FW2011

John Galliano kicked of the haute couture fashion week with a ‘flowerful’ collection. His creations were based on the most exotic flowers. They had outstanding shapes (resembling the shapes of famous flowers) and gorgeous colors (yellow, purple, cobalt blue, turquoise and red).

To stress the floral theme large flowers were the backdrop of this couture show. Plus, the model’s heads were packed in colorful plastic, like bouquets.

Galliano came up with his designs after studying real flowers for hours and hours. He for instance watched the light change on a tulip, which resulted in some stunning shades and a few amazing degrade effects.

Galliano paid attention to every details of his couture gowns. The ruffles, the feathers, the pleats and the lovely volume of his dresses were all close to perfection.

On the night of the next big gala event, Blake Lively, Jessica Alba, and Lou Doillon, who attended the show, will be fighting over these smoking hot couture creations.

Jan Taminiau Couture Catwalk Fashion Show FW2011

Next week we will have to miss him at the Amsterdam Fashion Week. But this week Jan Taminiau gave his audience in Paris a good look at his great couture collection.

His latest work seemed to be an homage to and a reflection of couture. No mass fashion but craftsmanship and attention and love for qualitative goods are the things Jan Taminiau sees in his future.

And with this theme Jan gives his view on the future, the past and the now. Therefore the collection was all about reflection. Jan played with classical silhouettes, accessories and poses and made them modern again. His silhouettes were tall, small and slender and gave the models a certain status.

His creations didn’t have a lot of color. They were made out of grey, light pink and nudes. They were never boring though; Jan embellished them with small sparkles. Sometimes only on the upper body, sometimes all over the fabric.

Like we see in fashion right now the shoulders of most of the outfits were highlighted. Yet instead of the sharp, pointy shoulders we now see in stores, Jan designed round shoulders in more of a couture style.

All looks were finished by large hats out of which slim ponytails appeared. They made the looks feel heroic.

Too bad Jan Taminiau doesn’t show in Amsterdam this season, his collection looked stunning.

The most Gaga-worthy outfits for SS2010

There’s no doubt Lady Gaga’s success has something to do with the way she dresses. From day one she has looked out of the ordinary with her structured creations, body-exposing outfits and crazy headgear. She has been wearing those extreme designer outfits no one dares to wear in public and therefore she’s always in the news…

We’ve seen Lady Gaga in Armani prive, Gareth Pugh, Jeremy Scott, Chanel and Hussein Chalayan to name a few. The pop-diva has also worn some Viktor & Rolf creations before. The Dutch designers even got to make an outfit for Gaga’s video Telephone. But apart from all those designs, we think there are many more looks that would get Lady Gaga’s approval.

Out of all the spring/summer fashion shows we selected the most Gaga-worthy outfits. Those pieces mostly have crazy shapes, they show a lot of skin and several times they go with an eye-catching headpiece.

We selected multiple black body-revealing dresses with cut-outs, wholes and tears all over them (Asish, Byblos, Julian Macdonald, Mark Fast).

We picked out over the top hats from Aguggini (large with zebra-print), Jean Paul Gaultier (blue with Napoleon shape), Givenchy (shape of a lamp shade) and Watanabe (strange kind of turban).

We chose for two designs with accentuated shoulders. At Ilincic the shoulders were huge and made out of feathers, at Todd Lynn they resembled shark fins.

The opted for the Giles dress because of the big spiders and we picked Julian Macdonald’s dress because of the scales. Alexander McQueen’s outfits need no explanation; Gaga has already worn one of those (incl. the crazy shoes) in her video Bad Romance and we think Gaga would actually love to wear all of his designs.

Unfortunately Gaga’s on-and-off boyfriend Matthew Williamson didn’t design anything kinky that that would suit her. Yet we think there’s more than enough to choose from for the 23-year old singer. And if she doesn’t find the right outfit, she can always ask a designer to make one for her. Cause designers understand that Lady Gaga wearing one of your outfits is good publicity and they’ll do anything to make that happen.

Hair & Make-up suggestions for the Oscars

When going to the Oscars not only your dress has to look stunning. Your hair, as well as your make-up, has to be mind-blowing. Your overall look just need to be special and different from any other party or award show.

Thus, just letting your hair hang loose is not an option. It has to look like you put some effort into it. You’d have to pin it up, let it braid or let it curl.

The all-time favorite hairstyle at the Oscars seems to be a classical pinned up style. Perhaps finished with a nice hair accessory and eye-catching earrings. Yet while braids have got very popular last year we might see some of that at the Oscars as well.

At the haute couture shows in Paris the hair and make-up looked dramatically over the top. Big, old-fashioned hairstyles were presented and some of the make-up felt a bit drag queenish. Yet trends at fashion shows always get extremily magnified. So it’s good to get some inspiration from it and turn it into your own style.

Just always keep in mind that the Oscars deserve an ultra special look.

Haute Couture 2010: Oscar Potentials

With the 82^nd edition of the Academy Awards just one month away, we thought it was about time to have a dress-room talk….

A lot has to be arranged before a famous actress wears a designer gown to the Oscars. Stylists first have to order several dresses. Those have to fit or else be altered. Then the search starts for the right shoes and accessories. Finally, the whole look has to be approved and if a celebrity decides it just isn’t the right dress, there needs to be time to find another one. So one month is not that long of a period.

The Haute Couture collections shown in Paris had a lot of potential dresses for the Oscars. While watching the shows we could already vision Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz and Angelina Jolie in the beautiful gowns that were presented.

At the Armani Prive show three dresses seemed ready to battle for the Oscars. The best one was a strapless black dress with a small part of the dress covering one shoulder.

The Chanel collection had quite a few dresses that just belong at the Oscar-show. Lagerfeld’s gorgeous silver and pastel combinations with exquisite embroideries are sure to look swell on almost any Hollywood star. And the yellow pastel strapless gown with the classical silver adornment needs to be shown on the red carpet, if you ask us.

For Dior, John Galliano created a lot of voluptuous white gowns. Last year white was a huge hit at the Ocars. But maybe this year it’s time for a little more color. Dior’s deep red gown with pastel colored top and back might just be the real thing for Oscar nominee Sandra Bullock.

At the Jean Paul Gaultier show one blue and silver dress had some nice elements. Yet it could be a bit over the top for the red carpet. The rest of JPG’s dresses didn’t seem very appropriate for the Oscars either. JPG had used many different themes in his collection, so his dresses were a bit too playful.

Elie Saab’s mind-blowing dresses on the other hand simply earn a spot on the red carpet.  Their washed out colors, chiffon frills and sparkling silver beading just looked so graceful, feminine and seriously chic. A minty green Elie Saab dress stood for perfection.

The Valentino collection had many youthful color combinations and therefore not a lot of Valentino gowns looked appropriate for the Oscars. Still we think the red and bright yellow gowns might stand a good chance on the big night.

The closer we get to the Oscars, the more exciting it will become. Which dresses will celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe get a hold of? And which stars will pull off a fifties dress, like Penelope Cruz did last year? Will there be any huge fashion flunks? What color trend will we see this year? And which of our Oscar Potentials will we meet on the red carpet on 7 March.

One thing’s for sure: all A-listers want the best-looking, most lengthening, figure-narrowing gown on the planet, so the competition is on!

Armani Privé Haute Couture Catwalk Fashion Show ss2010

It was obvious that Giorgio Armani’s haute couturecollection was all about the moon. It was in the colors – from midnight blue to moon-white – in the buttons and closures, in the rounded silhouette, in the curvy cutting and in the embroideries made to look like craters of the moon. For evening there were sparkling silver beading at dresses, pale metallic pinks and greens and many shiny sequins.

Surely there are some designs we will see again during the Oscar Awards. Especially the long, figure-narrowing dresses in black with white or cream.

Christian Dior Haute Couture Catwalk Fashion Show ss2010

Elegant amazones walked the small runway at the first floor of the Christian Dior store in Paris. Kylie Minogue was sitting front row, as was Dita von Teese and Tavi, the 13 year old fashionblogger from Chicago.

John Galliano took a picture of couturier Charles James as his inspiration for the ss2010 haute couture-collection. And it was a sensory overload as usual. This time Galliano’s researchtrip went to the Metropolitan Museum where the gowns of Charles James caught his eye. There he saw a  picture of the designer – who influenced Monsieur Dior to come up with the New Look – with an image of women riding sidesaddle in the backround. The result is a collection full of riding skirts with nip-waisted jackets, frothy cocktail dresses and satin ballgowns. Colors went from black, white an red to purple, orange, green and pastelshades.

The refined elegance, the strong women and the longer skirts and accent at the waist will influence a whole new silhouette for the coming seasons.

Come back of Thimister

Josephus Thimister (47), from Dutch origins and an promising talent of the Belgian school in the late nineties –  made a come back last sunday with a self financed haute couture collection.

Bloodshed and militairia were the two themes he wove into his haute couturecollection for fall 2010. Thimister took his inspiration from a photograph of Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich, Emperor Nicholas II’s murdered 13-year-old son, who was routinely dressed in uniform as a boy. The result was a collection men’s and womenswear mixing romanticism (in red, white, army-green) with a raw-edged minimalism: tank tops and jodhpurs splattered with fake-blood, officer’s jackets, narrow dresses, army cats and jumpsuits. Thimister told style.com he’d used resonances from World War I because “what happened then was the start of modernism: war, sorrow, destruction we’re still dealing with now. And the lack of creativity and spirituality”.

Do you want to know more about Thimister? Read this interview at style.com: www.style.com/stylefile/2009/12/josephus-thimister-has-nothing-to-lose/

Au revoir Christian !

This week, a French court approved a restructuring plan for bankrupt label Christian Lacroix that will reduce the house to a licensing operation. Only about a dozen of the roughly 100 employees will keep their jobs. The label’s problems culminated with the parties that expressed interest in buying the label but failed to produce financial guarantees in time to rescue it.

Experts say Lacroix focused too much on haute couture collections. Successful labels use couture nowadays as marketing efforts. No label sells enough couture clothes to justify it. Lacroix was notoriously insistent on maintaining its high-end approach to clothing. Under LVMH’s ownership, Lacroix made lower-priced Canal and Jeans lines. When the Falic group bought the label in 2005, they were quick to do away with those. Lacroix was happy because he didn’t want to be bothered with the more affordable things. But still, where were the Lacroix sunglasses? Perfumes? “It” bags? Sales of items like those account for the bulk of profits for luxury labels. Lacroix’s C’est La Vie fragrance never even took off. Fragrances are powerful profit drivers, but we shouldn’t forget fashion’s other highly potent force: divas. Look at Lady Gaga. She’s in Vogue, she was the first non-model to wear Alexander McQueen’s spring 2010 Alien shoes, and she was the highlight of New York Fashion Week and plenty of other things.
There should have been a diva out there for Lacroix to dress.

For me Lacroix was the beginning of my career as a journalist in fashion. I still remember my first fashionshow ever, Christian Haute Couture spring 1989 in hotel Intercontinental in Paris. It was breathtaking. Powerful, colorful, and very French joie de vivre. But times changed, as did women, fashion and the business.

So for old times sake: some highlights of past collections.

Jetty Ferwerda

Christian Lacroix Haute Couture Catwalk Fashion Show FW09

It was an haute coutureshow full of emotion, a collection produced on a shoestring and only made possible by the collective will and donated time and skills of the seamstresses, embroiderers, jewelers, milliners and shoemakers loyal to Christian Lacroix. Only the models were paid, €50 each according to French law, but they ended up in tears too. Lacroix didn’t cry, he said he wants to continue, maybe in a different way, with a smaller atelier. Het just cares about the women who do the job for him. The collection was sober and restraint, only in black and midnight blue and concentrated on shape and wearability. In al its purity it showed Lacroix’ craftsmanship. As the designer came out to lead he bride in the finale, the whole audience stood up to honour him. Bravo!

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