7 posts tagged "Cynthia Rowley"
The 411: Cynthia Rowley
Designer Cynthia Rowley has been charming the fashion community with her signature brand of offbeat feminine clothing since 1988. After her first collection was purchased while she was still a student at the Art Institute of Chicago, Rowley moved to New York and officially entered the biz she is still a crucial part of today. Along the way she has amassed accolades aplenty (a CFDA Perry Ellis Award for new fashion talent in 1994, a Legend of Fashion award from her alma mater this year) and successfully extended her creative reach far beyond clothes. Her eponymous line now includes menswear, accessories, and fragrance, and she was a pioneer in the collaboration department—she launched her Swell line of home goods with Target way back in 2003 and is responsible for the first set of designer Band-Aid bandages, not to mention a pretty adorable Tweezerman motif. More recently, though, Rowley—an avowed art lover—co-founded Exhibition A, an innovative retail Web site that makes owning a work of art an attainable reality for the masses. In anticipation of her presentation on Thursday September 13, we asked the longtime New Yorker to share some of her health and beauty musts in the city that never sleeps, even though her routine is decidedly low-maintenance. According to the designer, “I barely ever have time for anything except a pedi!”
The Convenient Colorist: Personal Best
“Me! I don’t have time for the salon so I love a good at-home color treatment like Clairol’s Perfect 10.”
Available at drugstores.
The Water Workout: Swimming
“I swim every morning before work. I’m very lucky to have a pool at my house in the city. Weekends are a sport extravaganza with surfing, waterskiing, tennis, and bike riding among my regular activities.”
The BYOP: Deborah Lippmann
“I just pop into local spots but I always, always bring my own polish. Right now I’m loving Deborah Lippmann’s Wicked Game.”
Available at www.beauty.com.
The Daily Must-Have: Fish Oil
“Nature Made Fish Oil every day. It’s good for the mind and body.”
For more information, visit www.naturemade.com.
Cynthia Rowley X Tweezerman; J. Lo Makes The Cut; And More…
After successful designer collaborations with Agatha Ruiz de la Prada and Betsey Johnson, cult-favorite tool brand Tweezerman has teamed up with Cynthia Rowley on exclusively patterned nail files and slant tweezers that will launch next month. [WWD]
J. Lo has gone short. The American Idol judge has chopped off her long locks in favor of a shorter, texturized lob. [Us]
Attention, cult of Comme: Rei Kawakubo’s well-loved brand is set to add another brutally original fragrance to its main line of perfumes. Amazingreen boasts vegetal notes and will reportedly include mineral notes like traces of flint and gunpowder. Never a dull moment over there. [Basenotes]
Three years after the WHO classified indoor tanning beds as known carcinogens on par with asbestos and arsenic, college-age youths still don’t get it. 59 percent of 20-year-olds surveyed agreed with statements like “everything causes cancer these days” as a reason why they won’t give up concentrated UV exposure. [U.S. New & World Report]
The Barrette: It’s Ba-aaack
Not so long ago, we lived for barrettes. In seventh grade, it was plastic baby clips in the mold of ducks, birds, and other similarly infantile shapes, and then it was barrettes of the multicolored, mini-sized Goody variety, which have since been discontinued and which we buy in bulk should we happen upon them at an outdated pharmacy. So, you can understand why we’re quite pleased to see the youthful hair accessory having a major moment for Spring. We’ve already mentioned the chunky plastic pieces Cynthia Rowley whipped up for her show this weekend and the plain silver metal bars hair stylist Odile Gilbert used to create a sleek, graphic silhouette at Prabal Gurung. And it just keeps getting better! Orlando Pita and his crack team of coif masters assembled barrettes covered in actual hair to hold and seamlessly blend into models’ own tresses at Carolina Herrera on Monday, mimicking the silhouette of fluid, belted Korean robes. Then yesterday, Peter Gray strung up bejewled golden charms onto bobby pins and inserted them into big, soft, Seventies-era coifs at Badgley Mischka before a rousing Rodarte show where Gilbert was called on yet again to insert ten different barrettes the Mulleavy sisters made with their own hands into sixties-style, rough-dried, easy, California-girl hair. It was cute, it was classic, and it looked amazing with their gold dresses, which we definitely wouldn’t have appreciated back in middle school, but would love to slip into now. Some things change, some stay the same.
“Something A Little Bit Twiggy” Shows Up Backstage At Cynthia Rowley
The seventies may have swept the Fall shows, but there seems to be a sixties vibe afoot backstage for Spring. It was present in the blunt eyeliner Tom Pecheux did at Peter Som, and in the middle-parted down ‘dos Orlando Pita and Frédéric Fekkai’s Didier Malige whipped up at Derek Lam and Victoria Beckham, respectively. But it had perhaps its strongest showing at Cynthia Rowley, where face painter Val Garland was seeing “Carnaby Street, Mary Quant, something a little bit Twiggy” in the clothes, and adjusted her makeup look accordingly. What that meant first and foremost was lots of lashes. Rather than insert falsies along the lower lash line to build thickness and intensity, Garland gave us this handy little tip: In between what she estimated was about 12 layers of mascara, she brushed through translucent powder while the pigment was still wet to act as a thickening agent. “It’s an old drag queen trick,” she revealed before swiping a layer of Vaseline across the lids and smudging MAC’s new-for-Spring Kissable Lipstick in Strut Your Stuff around the edges of models’ pouts “so it looks like they’ve just been pecked” (this “post-snogging” technique was also employed by Lucia Pieroni at Philosophy). The hair was decidedly more modern, with gray extensions courtesy of Wella’s Aura Friedman, woven into side-slung coiled twists, recalling Spring’s silver hair trend. Let it be known, Rowley made those chunky colored barrettes pictured above herself, displaying a knack for hair accessory as well as silky shirtdress design. One can only hope that those too are included amongst her in-store offerings come March.
At Cynthia Rowley, Seventies Punk With Sophistication
We called it on day one of fashion week, and the evidence is mounting in our favor. Colored hair streaks will remain popular through the Fall, and if hair colorist Eva Scrivo has anything to say about it, they’ll be adopted by even the classiest of ladies. There was no Manic Panic or Streekers to be found backstage at Cynthia Rowley yesterday; instead, Scrivo had come armed with mounds of crimped hair extensions in varying shades of peach, teal, navy, amethyst, and cassis. “I used the straight additives from Wella Professionals Koleston Perfect Special Mix,” Scrivo explained, pointing out that permanent, rich jewel-tone colors make the whole idea of streaks more whimsical and feminine, less punk. “Women are experimenting more, and you don’t have to do a head full of extensions to make an impact,” she said. To wit, Scrivo added her strands sparingly, attaching them to models’ heads with a double-phase adhesive before Alain Pichon for the Antonio Prieto Salon used a combination of curling iron and crimping iron to create non-uniform waves in a low ponytail. It’s unclear if the look will be adopted by the Upper East Side lunching set, but the soft, vibrant updo certainly seems to have a wide-reaching appeal.