Trends ss2010: shine on!

Putting on an extra sparkle won’t hurt next summer. It’s become obvious that shiny sequins and sparkling details are no longer exclusively used for special events like New Year’s Eve. You can put on a sparkling outfit any day of the week.

Past fashion season the sequins were carefully introduced, yet this season they’re all over the place. Many fashion designers (Oscar de la Renta, Dior, Issa, Lanvin) used sequins and other shiny little details like studs or beads all over their clothing. They made the designs look super expensive and the models looked like princesses or movie stars.

The shiny details mostly came in silver, gold or bronze. Vivienne Tam, Pucci, Blugirl, Ungaro, Matthew Williamson and Asish made theirs in all kinds of colors and patterns. For example Asish had his colored sequins placed in the shape of Mona Lisa and at Ungaro they were heartshaped.

Elie Saab presented a showstopping evening gown sequined from the bottom to the top. Burberry showed us a glittery coat with sparkles looking as sharp as glass. At Aquilano Rimondi we could see several shiny outfits that had sparkling flowers in different shapes and sizes in gold and silver.

Making those items must have taken hours and hours of crafting. So next July when it’s steaming hot outside we will all be walking around with heavy, stiff, fragile, unwashable but oh so glamorous outfits. Shine on you crazy sequin!

Tess van Daelen

Trends ss2010: the overall opinion

They might seem quite unflattering and we usually think of them as most suitable for gardening or working on the field, but overalls are becoming more and more fashionable.

Ralph Lauren and Jean Paul Gaultier designed a few comfortable and stylish ones for spring. Of course they gave them their own twist.

Some of Ralph Lauren’s overall had stains and tears and some were made out of shiny satin.

JPG added his iconic cone-bra. There were overalls with and without sleeves. Most were made out of denim, yet Roberto Cavalli made one out of a transparent airy fabric and Hannah MacGibbon introduced a leather one for Chloé.

We have to admit those overalls do look very wearable and they combine perfectly with almost anything (t-shirts, blouses, tops). They might become a huge hit.  What’s your overall-opinion?

Tess van Daelen

Backstage atmosphere ss2010

We will have our backstage-material online soon. It’s always a pleasure to flip through those images, because the give a totally different view of the collections, models and sometimes designers. We’ll be back with more asap!

Trends ss2010: fantastic plastic

How can you protect yourself from the rain and still look sexy?

Zac Posen, Sonia Rykiel, Frankie Morello, D Squared and others gave us the answer: you just wear a transparent plastic raincoat. In this way you’re still showing the great outfit you’re wearing underneath and your silhouette stays visible too.

For next spring transparent plastic was used by several different designers. Isn’t it typical that at least four designers came up with a see-through raincoat, independently of each other? At all four shows these raincoats also popped up out of nowhere and didn’t really connect to the rest of the clothes in the collections.
But the raincoat wasn’t the only transparent plastic item; there were bags and shoes as well, for example at Prada. D Squared and Charles Anastase both had transparent bags too.

Michael Kors used the plastic for his bathing suits and bracelets. Out of everything we saw the most fantastic plastic was made by Frankie Morello. He came up with a chique Chanel-looking plastic jacket, which had collar and cuffs made out of fabric.

Tess van Daelen

Trends ss2010: streetwise

Most women love to dress up like classic, elegant ladies when they go out. Therefore international topdesigners create the most luxurious clothes made of expensive fabrics like silk, satin, chiffon and lace. But what do you wear on any given day when you haven’t planned anything special? Exactly, you mix and match your clothes into your best streetstyle.

We found out Marc Jacobs was all about the young streetmix for next summerseason, as well for Louis Vuitton as for his own brand. His LV models showed short skirts with jackets made in every possible shape and print.

The girls in the Marc Jacobs show wore a mix of many wearable items. This resulted in strange combinations (girls wearing their underwear on top of their clothing?!).

Balenciaga, G-Star and D Squared presented some easy-going, funky outfits for streetwise girls too. The designers often added a bag to make the outfit look more like streetwear. We can actually picture some girls working these streetmix-outfits on their day off in the city.

Tess van Daelen

Trends ss2010: slim silhouettes

Although models usually  have a slim silhouette already, for ss2010 a few designers made their models look even taller and thinner than they normally are.

At Missoni’s fashion show the clothes with maximum lengths accentuated the models’ slim figures. The girls were wrapped in lots of layers as well. They wore long cardigans on top of long dresses, that only left a small part of their legs uncovered. The fact that Angela Missoni mostly used one shade per outfit added  the feeling of the girls looking slimmer than ever.

Besides Missoni, many other brands had long slim pieces in their collections. Etro, Calvin Klein, Blumarine, Roberto Cavalli, Alberta Ferretti and Oscar de la Renta showed some great examples. Most of these were long feminine dresses, made of ultra-light and airy fabrics to make the outfit look less stiff.

Flowers or sequins were the finishing touch on many of these silhouette-accentuating outfits.

Tess van Daelen

Trends ss2010: Eyecatching sportswear

Next spring will be great fun for the sporty types. A number of brands introduced some remarkable sportswear. Eyecatching were the pieces Asish showed during London Fashion Week. Most of the sportswear he came up with was sequined from the bottom to the top. What a great way to distract your opponents at the footballfield! The sequins formed the image of a football and that of Mona Lisa. The Nike slogan ‘Just do it’ also appeared  in sequins. At the fashion show for Hermès the runway was changed into a tenniscourt. The models wore classic sportswear in blue or red with white lines. Those lines seemed to be the new element in sportswear since Marc Jacobs, Bottega Veneta and Lacoste used them too. Alexander Wang showed some great (‘timeless’, as he calls it himself) sportswear. His grey sweater with brown suede shoulders looked refreshing. Most designers completed their looks with a sporty headband or a cap. Playing sports was never this much fun! (Tess van Daelen)

Rodarte Catwalk Fashion Show SS10

The Rodarte-girls have created their own world. An imaginary world that’s ferocious rather than precious, not to mention very influential. And with its gothic character, it’s particularly in tune with the moment.
This collection, which married primitivism to futurism, was one of Rodarte’s most fully realized. The silhouettes were familiar, the  construction of the garments represented the apotheosis of the techniques—in knitwear, printing, draping —that the Mulleavy-sisters have been refining season after season. They aged, painted, burned, shredded, sandpapered, and otherwise destroyed all of the materials—including grungy scraps of plaid, plastic, cheesecloth, wool cobweb, crystals, macramé, leather, and more—until they bore only traces of what they had been originally.
The idea that someone could “be scarred and still beautiful” was the collection’s leitmotif. The designers made up their own story about a woman burned alive and  who is transformed into a California condor. Forced to survive in a war-torn landscape, she pieces together her attire from rags that only serve to expose her wounds.

Zac Posen Catwalk Fashion Show SS10

Zac Posen’s collection looked youtful and a fun to wear. The designer seemed to be inspired by the late seventies New York woman and the clothes had the attitude of a partygoing good-time girl.  Posen pushed a color story and did so with colorblocking for day:  chalky pink, yellow and purple on structured dresses, some with cutouts at the waist, and see-through raincoats worn over Pop Art geometric prints. That Mod-ish flavor and kitsch factor was quite charming, but some will not be easy to sell. Posen’s prints were beautiful, the bold florals were custom designed by NYC artist Rosson Crow. Posen put them on kicky pleated skirts and sexy cocktail dresses draped and cut to show skin at the shoulders and back.

Y-3 Catwalk Fashion Show SS10

At the end of the Y-3 show a net dropped from the ceiling and Yohji Yamamoto—accompanied by Zinedine Zidane, one of the world’s most famous soccer players—came out to take a shot at a goal.  Does that mean Yamamoto is a football fanatic? Not exactly. What inspired Yamamoto’s World Cup-themed collection was something more poetic: the movement of the net after a goal. Netting was integrated into the collection with lots of airy (and body-exposing) pieces. These worked best when worn under tailored separates, like pants and jackets. The combination of structure and flow, as in a blazer over a long dress, or the draped jersey tunics and stiffer cotton pants, was effective.

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