Beth Ditto has become the latest in a long line up of very alternative fashion collaborators to sign up as a design-partner on a range with MAC cosmetics.
Following on from tie-ups with Miss Piggy, Cindy Sherman and Daphne Guinness – among many others – the cosmetics giant has signed up The Gossip singer to work on a range that will be available globally in June of this year.
The deal was revealed last night as Ditto attended the Gala Sidaction Diner de la Mode in Paris, after being spotted at Haute Couture Fashion week, where she watched Jean Paul Gaultier’s show pay tribute to another iconic modern singer, with his Amy Winehouse inspired looks.
Very little has been revealed about Ditto’s range yet but MAC’s collabs tend to form mood-driven capsule collections across categories. Expect glitter, sparkle and confidence.
Alongside Ditto at the Sidaction dinner was a stellar line up including Catherine Deneuve, Diane Kruger, Dita Von Teese, Christian Louboutin, Juliette Binoche, Grace Jones, Anna Della Russo and Vanessa Paradis who was appearing without Johnny Depp.
Sidaction is an AIDS charity dedicated to raising funds and awareness, a mission close to the MAC agenda as MAC has its own AIDS Fund, which last night announced a donation of €190,000 to Sidaction.
www.maccosmetics.com
www.macaidsfund.org
The slim limbed legs and wide shouldered silhouettes says “Jacko”; the nerdy glasses say geek. But if you were quizzed on the male street “uniform”, a combo of leather jacket, denim and plaid shirt could very possibly feature in your answer. And that’s interesting because it establishes a sort of core male look for off-duty styles, which is replicated here without one iota of staleness, predictability or banality. What does that prove? Well, for starters it’s not always what you wear as much as how you wear it. But moreover it proves that accessories are crucial. One pair of thick black frames, a low slung T-shirt, tousled fringe and studded oxfords later and you have a whole new look.
The tragic 27 club’s newest member was always inspirational, and Amy Winehouse’s fashion bearing extends, it seems, beyond her Fred Perry collab into the world of haute couture with Jean Paul Gaultier – always a sucker for an outsider or rebel – entwining the singer’s trademark Mod Diner chic into his Paris collection. Boobs, beehives and boy-styling were the order of the day as the singer’s tight pencil skirts and polo combos were twisted into sequins and silks. Meanwhile, jackets slipped off of shoulders and crescents of brassiere peeked over tops as the Camden queen became an unexpected couture inspiration. Unexpected but apposite, her vampish vintage reverberating with JPG’s own considered recklessness.
Christian Louboutin will celebrate his brand’s 20th anniversary next month, and for part of the celebrations he will unveil five design concepts by Parson’s grads, that will premier in Bergdorf Goodman.
The five designs – four dresses and one jacket, presented as mood boards plus illustrations and fabric concepts – were created by alumni from Parson’s New School of Design who won a competition to create pieces based on styles within the new Christian Louboutin 20th Anniversary Capsule Collection. The winners, say Louboutin, “took an element, or a unique detail [from the original] and created something completely different. The translation was not literal, that is one of the things I really liked about these designs because that is how I also approach my work.”
The winning designers were Isaias Arias, Joanna Baker, Vivian Graf and Hyeyoung Kim who all graduated in 2010 and Manuela Di Prima from 2011’s class.
Di Prima’s sketch is of a one shouldered, full skirted dress in black and gray with subtle hints of Louboutin’s lipstick red sole for highlights. Other winning alums said their inspirations came from a Vogue Mexico cover, Rome’s ancient Coliseum, and a love of knitwear.
Bergdorf Goodman will unveil the designs on January 31, when it launches the Capsule Collection. They will remain on show until February 8.
www.christianlouboutin.com
www.bergdorfgoodman.com
www.newschool.edu
Those aren’t scutes and scales you’re looking at. OK, from a distance it may look like a snake skin sculpture of a suit, but up close it is in fact actually something even sleeker, and altogether more modern. This is mesh construction gone luxe. This is sports, future style. It’s space age, industrial tipped, born in a lab couture. This is what Sci Fi would look like if it starred Carrie Bradshaw. It’s netting from the next millennium. Sure, the twisted, curving peplum and skirt are reminiscent of he classic look of a traditional couture suit but that body skimming jacket and hard, plasticized rubbery textile, with all the connotations of fetish and fantasy attached to it have to be more modern. Besides do you really expect the future to abandon the past? What looks good on a body now still will in a hundred years’ time. But Armani Prive is not going to wait that long…Oh, and by the way if it was the gloves that caught your eye then you were seeing scales. Turns out mesh and snake goes well.
The V&A’s renovated Fashion Gallery is set to re-open with a show devoted to British ballgowns. The London museum is showcasing 80 spectacular dresses created by Brit designers over the past six decades in a show called Ballgowns: British Glamour since 1950.
As well as examining the history of the garment, charting its use at debutante balls, state occasions and opening nights up to their flashbulb drawing red carpet appearances, the exhibition will display landmark gowns and their most famous wearers. Among them will be show stoppers worn by the likes of Kate Moss, Daphne Guinness and Elizabeth Hurley.
A generous dose of regal lustre will be lavished on the show with Royal gowns displayed, including a Norman Hartnell gown designed for the Queen Mother and Princess Diana’s ‘Elvis Dress’, created by Catherine Walker.
With the ground floor and mezzanine devoted to the show, it is split into two sections. The ground floor shows gowns from 1950 to the 2000s from the museum’s permanent collection, styled to resemble the preparation and full swing of a grand country house ball. Alongside the gowns will be bags, gloves and shoes, with video and photography widening the context. On the mezzanine of the Fashion Gallery are contemporary interpretations of the gown arranged as though for a red carpet, with statement making versions – like Atsuko Kudo’s lace print latex version – proving the style’s evolving relevance.
Among the designers whose works fill the ranks at the show are Hardy Amies, Bill Gibb, Bellville Sassoon, Ossie Clark, Stella McCartney, Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen and Gareth Pugh, Giles, Erdem and Jenny Packham.
The show opens on May 19 and runs until January 6, 2013
www.vam.ac.uk
There was a touch of the biker to Versace’s gold-hemmed and stiff shouldered heroines in Paris. Though, of course, it was much, much more sophisticated than that and the skin-tight but molded, armor-esque constructions of the jacket and hot pants, plus the articulated knees on the boots recalled the perfect proportions of proto sci fi Metropolis and a horde of paperback illustrations ever since. Fembots, then? Donatella said it was more about warriors than robots, but either way there was a glamazon confidence ingrained in all of them that was softened nonetheless by the minimal dove gray and ornate Rococo embellishments.
Men’s fashion is to get its own mini-fashion-week in London for the first time this June. The three day event called LONDON COLLECTIONS: MEN (LCM), will run from June 15 to 17, just days before the Milan, and ensuing Paris, men’s fashion weeks, making it the first stop on the calendar. It even sits before trade show Pitti Uomo, the traditional opener for the men’s buying season, which kicks off in Florence on June 19.
It will feature a roster of emerging designers and established names delivering a mix of catwalks, salons and installations. Topman and Newgen Men will support the event just as they do for the Menswear Day, currently menswear’s only outlet at the end of LFW. Designers already committed to LCM include young Turks like James Long and Christopher Shannon, iconic Brit designers Margaret Howell and Aitor Throup and established heritage retail brands including Aquascutum, Richard James and Topman.
Harold Tillman, who has extended his tenure as chairman of the British Fashion Council to extend through 2012, said: “[it] will not only be a showcase for brands and designers but will form a cross cultural programme creating a festival for menswear in what will be a truly exciting year for the UK.”
The event will be steered by a group of industry heavyweights called the Fashion 2012 Menswear Committee, which will be headed up by Dylan Jones. He said the event will help underline London’s cultural weight in its Olympic year: “Whether you’re involved in sport, fashion, media, retail, entertainment or tech, or indeed any industry, London is the place to be in 2012”.
Joining Dylan’s committee are Christopher Bailey, Tom Ford, David Furnish, Simon Fuller and Topman’s Gordon Richardson along with journalists Tim Blanks and Jo Levin, and retail heads including Marigay McKee of Harrods, David Walker Smith of Selfridges and Jeremy Langmead of etailer Mr Porter, which is partnering the event.
Swelling the designer line up are: Christopher Raeburn, E.Tautz, Fashion East, Gieves & Hawkes, J.W. Anderson, Lou Dalton, Martine Rose, Matthew Miller, Oliver Spencer, Rake and SIBLING. More will be announced on Menswear Day at LFW, on February 22, with London fans wondering whether Christopher Bailey’s place on the committee will mean Burberry Prorsum gets a menswear specific show.
www.londoncollections.co.uk
Prada is launching a 24-hour museum tomorrow. Designed by the Milan artist Francesco Vezzoli in collaboration with Rem Koolhaas’ think tank AMO, it will be open for just one day starting with an invite-only dinner party at 8.30 tomorrow evening and closing at the same time on January 25 after a day open to the public. In between, during the night hours, the space will transform into an exclusive nightclub.
Based in the Palais D’Iéna in Paris, the museum will be split into three sections comprising Vezzoli’s concept of different museum spaces: historic, contemporary and forgotten.
Across these areas Vezzoli has created and curated a non-existent museum centring on his tribute to femininity, which will consist of remade and reinterpreted classical sculptures that reference the modern day divas the artist calls his icons, turned into sculptures and placed on marble pedestals.
At the top of the stairs in the epicentre of the building, is a centrepiece sculpture of a female with the features of a mysterious goddess. And in the central space will be a large metal cage made from grills and neon lights that will enclose some of Vezzoli’s work. Conceived as a cross-disciplinary exhibition, there will be theatre, film and sculpture all on show. The event itself is described as a collective rite that “mixes visitors, red carpet, the Oedipus complex and night visions”, and sounds as though it hovers somewhere between terror and beauty. With that in mind expect a who’s who of Paris’s fashion glitterati to attend this baroque festival.
www.24hoursmuseum.com
www.prada.com
Hollywood has only got a handful of plots that it truly trusts. But one of those revolves around the super spy. Be he a rogue agent or deeply undercover operative, he has something that men want to emulate and women just want. Milan toed that line this week with its own remix of the secret agent and he is a sharply – but conservatively – dressed luxury lover. In head to toe slate, his urban camo is designed to make him blend into his surroundings. But hang on. Isn’t that sweater cashmere? Is that bag crocodile? Are those sunglasses really a camera? Well maybe not the last one. But as with any super spy it’s all about the details. Look closely and you’ll see there’s so much more to this outfit.
