Fabienne Chapot Catwalk Fashion Show SS2018

Move over avocado, it’s time for the papaya to shine and take over as it-veggie! That is, if you leave it up to Fabienne Chapot and her design team. For SS2018 they decided it was all about papaya’s. An exotic story starting as soon as the guests received their papaya-themed invite. On Wednesday night the story unfolded at a show venue completely turned into a sixties style garden party. An entrance covered in papaya print and rainbow colored stairs sure got everyone in the mood for some cocktails, watermelon and jelly pudding. And as all guests took their seats a little later it really actually felt as if we were witnessing a Beverly Hills hotel scene from 1957 and we could almost feel the Hollywood heat (so those papaya printed fans on our seats came in handy).

Fashion wise the collection was everything you’d want a summer collection to be. Colorful, effortless and super feminine. Loose blouses, maxi dresses, wide pants and cropped jackets in the mix. Soft and silk fabrics were embroidered with papaya shaped beads, palm leaves, citrus shapes, lobsters and exotic flowers. Signature items which were even featured on the matching jacquard loafers. Silhouettes were flowy and sexy yet sophisticated, a uncovered shoulder here, a bare back there. Colorful high heels, statement bags (in the shape of tropical fish or shelves), bold sunnies and crazy hairdos topped it all off.

And as we headed back home we thought about that SS2018 Fabienne Chapot girl that got in her car, headed West and gazed outside. It might have been rainy in Amsterdam, but we imagined ourselves out on the warm open road at sundown, driving 60 miles per hour with all four windows down, feeling the wind in our hair and the Hollywood heat on our skin.

Individuals Catwalk Fashion Show SS2018

Please enjoy the pictures for now, our review will follow shortly.

The Kingpins Show New York SS2018

For the past two days New York was the homebase of The Kingpins Show, an invitation-only, boutique denim sourcing show featuring a highly-edited selection of vendors. We were there to capture the event and the atmosphere. International denim heads, countless denim variations, a colorful art project and an outdoor after party that felt more like a summer festival; this was Kingpins NYC SS2018.

Stella McCartney Catwalk Fashion Show Paris Womenswear FW2017

Stella McCartney made a demonstrative statement on womanpower yesterday with her fall-show by drawing from two very different sartorial motifs, along the way imbuing the clothes with a newfound daring. McCartney approaches her work as a creative problem-solver, delivering wardrobe solutions for real women. So the juxtaposed bravado of equestrian-inspired tailoring and pointy-bra constructions startled. McCartney’s update, both under sweaters and in actual constructions, put the focus clearly on the breasts in a manner atypical today. The message was loud and clear: Women are sexual beings free to express their sexuality as they wish. They are also powerful, opinionated and strong.
Many of those women love great clothes, an essential fact of which McCartney never lost sight. She served them up with impressive tailoring, whether a great, loose-fitting coat or comfortably curvy coatdress in a natty British check. On a softer note: languid onesies with those bra constructions. McCartney went more casual with tomboyish paper bag overalls and a sweater sporting her animal motif du jour, a glorious pictorial of “A Horse Frightened by a Lion,” by the 18th-century painter George Stubbs.

Céline Catwalk Fashion Show Paris Womenswear FW2017

Phoebe Philo presented confident, distinctive women with a taste for classic luxury in her runway-show for Celine. That luxury looked advanced and individualized with a quirky cut, proportion, color or print. There was a sense of cosmopolitan practicality and versatility. Like the girl in the brown trench, crinkled as if it had been folded in a suitcase and worn with a leather hood tied around the neck, pants and galoshlike pointy leather boots. The woman in the black-and-blond fur coat over a casual navy V-neck sweater, aqua blue T-shirt and pants that zipped down over white heels, carrying a large, plain black canvas tote, like a reusable shopping bag, could have been trying to look like she wasn’t trying to look chic at the grocery store. A model — in a modernist Josephine dress, draped and gathered at the hem over lace tights and gold shoes — might have been headed to date night. Those carrying big fluffy blankets with their tuxedo tailoring and exotic prints, suggested travel, as did the model in a lightweight white trench done in a map print. We’ll definitely find parts of this collection back in mainstreet collections.

Balenciaga Catwalk Fashion Show Paris Womenswear FW2017

Demna Gvasalia, Balenciaga’s talented designer, is genuinely experimental and unafraid to realize and run with audacious ideas. In a short time, that approach has garnered him a great deal of attention and a reputation as perhaps the coolest designer on the planet right now.
Again, Gvasalia displayed that sense of bravado, his collection packed with twists, turns and grand gestures made with a deliberate street attitude. The collection was inspired by the house photo archives, where he found pictures with the poses of [Cristóbal] Balenciaga’s house models as they clutch fabric and strike couture attitudes.
Gvasalia delivered a raw take on haute motifs, opening the show with a bold coat-and-dress series. One side of each coat was pulled way over and fastened on the opposite shoulder – and this was not a styling tric but the actual cut – apparently to give the look of a swath of fabric thrown over a model’s shoulder. These shapes looked bold and fresh, with a wearability range from runway only to real-word chic.

Junya Watanabe Catwalk Fashion Show Paris Womenswear FW2017

Junya Watanabe likes the ounk-era and this time het drew inspiration from the source: London. His punks were dressed in electric yellow and red plaids that were patchworked with black leather, sequins, traditional tailoring fabrics, a host of floral and jacquard upholstery plus leopard prints done the classic way. Everything was collaged: amorphorous capes and dresses crafted from circles and pointy triangles, some fused with motor jackets, many worn over pleated kilts and layered with fishnet sleeves and tights.

Chloe Catwalk Fashion Show Paris Womenswear FW2017

Claire Waight Keller said good bye yesterday. She’s ending her six year tenure at Chloe with a last fall-collection. Her aim was to send with an optimistic collection that was also about escapism.
Waight Keller’s take on escapism is pragmatic and pristine, rendered via patterns — prints of opium poppies and a Wonderland mushroom motif.
One thing the designer definitely wanted to escape: a retrospective approach. To that end, she tempered her penchant for flou, along the way sacrificing the Chloé girl boho allure that she has worked so deftly in the past. In its place: little dresses cut short and straight in a late-Sixties vein. As for the tailoring, it looked strong. Let’s wait and see what she will bring next season – she will definitely be working at another fashionhouse.

Balmain Catwalk Fashion Show Paris Womenswear FW2017

Next fall the glamazons of Balmain will be dressed in raw pelts with a stitched-together feel. One of the models looked particularly fierce in a black dress assembled from crocodile skins, a tribal-looking metallic lip ring tracing a gleaming line across her mouth. Other options included a shearling sleeveless coat, or a tunic top pieced together from panels of glossy ponyskin. “It’s all about a return to the forces of nature. I wanted to create strong Amazons. Women’s power today is extremely important, and I think I reflect that with this collection. It’s very feminist,” Olivier Rousteing told WWD backstage.
The wealth of craftsmanship and materials on display was impressive. Rousteing is proud of the house’s historic ateliers, which turned out dresses and tunics in elaborate patchworks of crystal mesh, jacquard, leather appliqué, embroidery, velvet, fringe and metallic studs. This was craft of the highest level.
Rousteing diluted the impact of some dresses by adding panels depicting wolves, the wolf designsalso returned on T-shirts that anchored a boho rock star wardrobe of maxi cardigans, eyelet-studded leather and thigh-high boots.

Dries van Noten Catwalk Fashion Show Paris Womenswear FW2017

Dries van Noten’s show yesterday marked a milestone: it was his 100th collection inclusing women’s and men’s. And he took the opportunity to look back, but without being nostalgic. He chose to celebrate with the clothes and the women who have telegraphed their power from the beginning – literally generations of runway models. He opened with Kristina de Coninck, followed by a roll call of his favorite go-to girls from the Nineties on — Amber Valletta, Anne Catherine Lacroix, Carolyn Murphy, Alek Wek, Cecilia Chancellor, Élise Crombez, Erin O’Connor, Esther de Jong, Guinevere Van Seenus, Kirsten Owen, Liya Kebede and Nadja Auermann — who shared the runway with the familiar faces of today.

Van Noten dressed them to play up their strength, both as individuals and as a gender. And it did work, powerfully and easily. Van Noten crossed traditional masculine and feminine elements on his runway.
Van Noten’s other big message: prints – he’s a master of the genre. As part of looking back, he revived favorite patterns from his archive, overprinting them with additional motifs so that nothing is today as it was then.

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