7 posts tagged "Araks"
The Innerwear Comes Out
For the past few seasons, lingerie designer Araks Yeramyan has brought on the likes of Richard Chai, Gia Coppola, Sally Singer, and Julie Gilhart to help shoot her lookbook. For the third installment, she handed out disposable cameras to yet another group of friends and supporters, including actress Michelle Williams, Alexa Chung, Tenzin Wild, Tracy Feith, and Creatures of the Wind’s Shane Gabier and Chris Peters.
“I make a wish list every season. I start with friends, or friends of friends, then add people I don’t know, but who I feel are in some way connected with the brand,” the designer explains of the process. “Some people I have no idea how to get to, but we try anyway—it’s fun.” Williams, however, was no shot in the dark. The Oscar-nominated actress has been a longtime Araks customer and, as Yeramyan admits, “She was the first person I placed on the list for this book.”
As fate would have it, Williams photographed her portion of the project at the Park Hyatt Tokyo—the same hotel that Lost in Translation was filmed at, in which star Scarlett Johansson wears Araks underthings. Here, Style.com has an exclusive first look at the final shot from Williams before it is officially unveiled along with the rest of the images at a private party in New York Wednesday night.
Araks, With A Little Help From Her Friends
Giving up creative control is tough for any designer, but for her lookbooks, designer Araks Yeramyan of Araks hands off the reins. For the second season in a row, Yeramyan has commissioned friends and well-wishers of her brand to shoot her wares however they want. She sent a small group of collaborators—including Richard Chai, filmmaker Gia Coppola, and model Coco Young—each a camera and two sets of her feminine lingerie. (The results are varied. Chai shot a curly-haired model leaping in midair; Coppola shot hers lounging on a furry shag rug.) “We get the pictures back and don’t alter them before sending to print,” the designer told Style.com. “So you really just have to hope for the best.” To up the ante this time around, Yeramyan included people who weren’t necessarily within her immediate circle of friends. “I always have to push myself a little further,” she explained. “I went on instinct. Some of the contributors didn’t really have the same aesthetic as me, but I still admire their creative point of view.”
Lingerie Photographer For A Day?
Well, If You Insist…
Araks lingerie already has plenty of famous fans, Sarah Jessica Parker and Scarlett Johansson (who wore Araks in Lost in Translation) among them. But for her latest look book, designer Araks Yeramyan enlisted a few famous collaborators, too. “The thought of shooting a look book with makeup and hair, that kind of irked me,” she admitted last night at a dinner to celebrate the finished product. “I wanted to find someone who’s not a photographer to shoot.” Yeramyan ended up reaching out to a group of friends, fans, and supporters, including Julie Gilhart (until recently, the fashion director of Barneys), T‘s Sally Singer, menswear designer Robert Geller, The Last Magazine‘s Magnus Berger, and stylist Heathermary Jackson. “People who understood the brand enough that I could give them no direction and they would get it,” she said.
The result ranges from intimate tableaux (Geller shot his designer/showroom owner wife, Ana Lerario, in bed) to staged still-life scenes (Gilhart’s pics, above, of Araks lingerie on walls and fences). And though she’s pleased with the results, letting go of creative control wasn’t easy. “Oh my God, I was so nervous,” Yeramyan said. “I couldn’t fail people! What if they came back with a bad photo, what am I going to tell them?” Luckily enough, no one did. To celebrate that achievement, Gilhart hosted a dinner at The Smile, with Singer, Berger, and Geller (just off the plane from Brazil, where he and Lerario christened their baby daughter) all in attendance.
We had to wonder: Did her long experience in lingerie design (she began her company in 2000) give Yermyan a sixth sense about people’s undergarments—X-ray vision, if you will? “I can’t tell what people are wearing,” she admitted with a laugh. “But I can tell what size they are—I don’t know why lingerie stores have to measure, you can just look and tell. And you can tell if they’re wearing the right type of bra or not.”
Dare we ask? “Mostly they’re not.”
Araks Does E-Commerce
I’m almost ashamed to admit this, but despite working at Style.com and spending long days and many nights in front of my computer, I don’t love online shopping. I prefer the up-close experience of my favorite stores—Zero + Maria Cornejo, Aloha Rag, and No.6. How, say, a jodhpur jumpsuit in Sim jersey with grosgrain straps and ori pockets feels and fits are just as important as how it looks, and those qualities are sometimes difficult to capture on a Web site. Underwear is a different story. I like what I like and what I like is Araks’ simple, delicate cotton lingerie. So I’m pretty thrilled that designer Araks Yeramyan opened an online shop this week at www.shop.araks.com. “It’s like having a store,” Yeramyan told me. “I’ll be able to see where things are going, what’s selling well, and quickly respond.” She better stock up on her Antonia bralette, because I’m planning to buy in bulk.
Fourteen Days And Counting
The invites have started pouring in, but one in particular so far has stood out: It’s a tiny letter-pressed card wrapped in lo-fi brown wax paper with our name and address hand-typed on—get this—a manual typewriter, from Araks. We were so charmed we called up to ask how long it took to do all of them. Two interns spent 15 hours at the task, it turns out. Here’s one of them hard at work. The collection itself, we learned, takes pointers from the work of Rachel Feinstein Currin and pics of street style faves like Giovanna Battaglia and Vika Gazinskaya.