Raf Simons Blooms at Dior Haute Couture

Just when you think you can safely bet on Raf Simons, he throws a fringed and beaded wrench into the mix. Case in point: Monday's Fall 2014 Haute Couture collection in Paris. Where only months prior, the Belgian designer sent spectacularly pretty and feminine silk dresses and pants down a garden path runway, this round he showcased a decidedly more forward perspective, influenced by the seemingly infinite iterations of the modern woman. Perhaps Simons found time to read de Beauvoir in his scant free time.

There was a tiered dresses in red silk that conjured the image of a twirling matador; and an off-white and striped dress with a hemline like a Mexican tablecloth. Collarbones were often decorated with tubular necklaces that seem to reference sub-Saharan designs, while cloaks and kimonos morphed into outwear.

 

                  


Only six months ago, Raf Simons' genius bloomed at Dior's 2014 spring Haute Couture presentation, a benchmark in the designer's prolific inaugural year at the storied Parisian house. Crops of svelte models, their hair doused and slick like petals after heavy summer rain, maneuvered their ways down a white runway edged with shrubbery, flowering with looks that evoked the unfurling of exotic fauna. Simons' designs honored the legacy of Dior and the innovation of silhouette that has made the name eponymous with tempered elegance.

Calvin Klein Collection Men's S14 Runway Show

Monday morning saw the manifestation of Calvin Klein's Creative Director Italo Zucchelli's interpretation of the modern man in summer. Presented in the company's European headquarters in Milan, his Spring 2014 collection was awash in hues of blue, which he translated to athletic standards as mesh and panelled letterman jackets, sleeveless vests, and monochrome silhouettes. The latter wavered somewhere between internal medicine-chic and Bal Harbour uniform--for years, my physician grandfather wore the same powder blue jacket and matching pants with a smart polyester polo.

You might interpret the look as updated suiting. Integral then, would be the tee or sweatshirt (supplanting the need for a fussy oxford), which Zucchelli provided with Rene Magritte-like prints of hot desert skies punctuated by dark black rectangles or blocked-in clouds. These were the standouts.

 

The stiff oxfords with shiny buttons that conjured up images of wayward urban cowboys and hippy sandals or matching creeper brogues (sometimes in a redundant baby blue) didn't feel as necessary.

Reverie With SUNO

SUNO, a young New York-based brand that is the brainchild of designers Max Osterweis and Erin Beatty, was recently honored at this year's CFDA fashion awards, and for good reason. Their looks often invoke characters at home in alpine vistas and on honey-colored African prairies and international cosmos. You're more likely to find ample cuts, exquisite prints and intricate embroidery than a simple black sheath on their lively runways.  

In the past, I've always thought of them as more hippy than haute (then again, they've only been around since 2008, so it's not like I have too much to go on), but their resort collection for 2014 had me turning my head so fast I practically got whiplash. I blame this look in particular: 

 

Some past covetable looks:

 

 

Yet another reason to love and respect SUNO: Their wares are made by artisans in Kenya. Following post-election violence there in 2008, Max (a longtime visitor whose mother owned a business in the Sub-Saharan country) worked to establish the brand as a way to encourage both local talent and economic growth. Since then, the SUNO duo has set up fair-trade workshops in places like India and Peru.

 

All collages are the work of Francesca Soroka.

First pic background: Franz Kline

Second pic background: Yuko Someya

CFDA Royalty

Last week, fashion's most well-respected designers and the insiders who support and wear them huddled under the slanted roofs of the Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall for this year's CFDA Fashion Awards. It poured outside, but inside fringe and silk columns the color of spring bouquets blossomed on attendees who paraded on a real world runway all their own.

The big winners this year were:

Womenswear Designer of the Year: Proenza Schouler's Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez

Menswear Designer of the Year: Thom Browne

Accessories Designer of the Year: Phillip Lim

 

 

Let's take a short stroll through Proenza Schouler's history with this post. And let's start at the very beginning: The name Proenza Schouler is actually a mash-up of the designers' mothers' maiden names (though they admit it's one of their biggest regrets). But such decisions can be rushed when Barneys is knocking at your door with a request. In 2002, Parsons students Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez sold their entire senior thesis to Barneys New York. Since then, the duo has earned high acclaim for their modern takes on femininity--always edgy, expertly chic, and bold. They're quintessentially New York, if you ask me. Their women are unafraid of mixing influences and require a certain armor when dressing which just so happens to kill every time.

 

 

 

All collages are the work of Francesca Soroka

 

Dior Cruise 2014

Raf Simons debuted his Dior 2014 cruise collection in the perfect setting last week: amidst the ever-glamorous Cannes Film Festival. He sent models down a Monte Carlo runway in looks that would have been been well received on red carpets--and a few bloomer-bearing ensembles that might make sense on the bow of a yacht alone.

Since Simons took the reigns of the storied house last year, I've been surprised by his inventiveness and nonchalant risk-tasking. (This season, it looked as though a few ladies hastened to pull their zippers after fleeing some midnight swim by moonlight.) I like to think his deviations from the spectacularly modern and pulled-together prove that we (our perspectives, tastes & experiences) are ever-evolving.

 



 

*All collages are the work of Francesca Soroka.

Paintings here are the work of Anne Harper.

vintage crop

Last night I was updating my online portfolio and came across an ancient article I wrote for Encore magazine back in 2007, as a senior in college. How strange to read something printed so long ago; how lovely to remember the research done in a light-flooded kitchen overlooking the sound.





Chasing of The Cool

There's a reason I clamor to Lanvin. Alber Elbaz is a genius with silk--he turns it into diaphanous clouds, twisting it with the effortlessness of the wind. His women are polished and eternally French, regardless of their heritage.

Seems since we saw him last, Elbaz has spent less time in an arrondissement populated by well-behaved, well-heeled women, and more time in the company of the young, wild, and free. His collection for Fall 2013 had grit, it had humor (often black), and cool. It even had oxfords--the dopey, oblong sort we're more used to seeing at the end of the show on Mr. Elbaz's feet. But this round, it was the models who donned them, while the designer took the runway for his bow in (le gasp!) neon trainers.



 

Black & white background image: Julie Steiner,
Mark Rothko's "White Center" (1950)
Lanvin model images: W magazine
All collages the work of Francesca Soroka

Dior Moment

There were the requisite LBDs done to perfection and exaggerated silhouettes that nipped at the waist and nodded to the brand's history, but this season's Dior collection for Spring and Summer did more than meet expectations.

Raf Simons embraced the 2013 season with fabrics, lines, and color combinations that were decidedly twenty-first century. His dresses seemed laser-cut, the colors glossed with iridescent space dust. Whereas other designers may have cowed to the brand's history, Simons made it his own. And in the midst of a fashion moment that seems to teeter between two extremes--the ugly chic of the '70s or pared-down Minimalism--Simon's did neither. He embraced 2013--the first year to break The Jetsons barrier that is, after all, just about to be our present.



 photos: WhoWhatWear

Marni + H&M + Sophia Coppola

Surely, by now you've heard and done your mental shopping for Marni's upcoming collection at H&M, debuting Thursday. I've never been a sucker for high/low collaborations in the past (regardless of how much I love Lanvin, I know Lanvin by way of H&M will be something completely other), but I have to admit I'm a bit enthusiastic about this one. Mostly for the jewelry and the conical hat.