18 posts tagged "Cara Delevingne"
Before Chanel Cruise, A Catch-Up With Coco
The Karl caravan has arrived in Singapore. Lagerfeld and forty-seven models are set up at the city’s famous Raffles Hotel, the gorgeous nineteenth-century English-colonial hotel, with enough hardworking dressers, stylists, and global PR reps attending them to put you in mind of a postcolonial Downton Abbey. Today, they’ll put on Chanel’s Cruise show. But last night, it was a party for a prelude: a pair of short films, screened alfresco in the hotel courtyard, beside which Maugham and Hemingway sat in the Long Bar, sipping Singapore Slings.
Leave it to Lagerfeld to make not one, but two films. The preview and the movie: They just go together, he explained. So Women Only featured a raft of his favorite girls—Kati, Cara, Lindsey, Lina, Xiao Wen, Soo Joo, et al., all clad in Chanel Pre-Fall—piling into a movie theater for the debut of a new film. Then the film within the film: Naturally, it’s a little number by Lagerfeld. Once Upon a Time… takes us back a century, to the opening of Gabrielle Chanel’s shop in the French resort town of Deauville. It opens with a scene of two servant girls impugning the name of Chanel. “Who is Gabrielle Chanel?” they wonder as they wander past her shop. “I don’t know, but she has no taste.”
But he who laughs last laughs best. Business starts out slow for Coco Chanel (Keira Knightley, absent from this Singaporean affair, on her honeymoon) and her partner/confidante Aunt Adrienne (Clotilde Hesme), but the crème de la crème of Riviera society eventually come swishing through her door. That Chanel girl, the consensus eventually runs, she’s really got something.
So does her latter-day inheritor, Karl Lagerfeld. “I did everything,” Lagerfeld said after the applause had died down. “I designed the set, I made the costumes, I made the characters, I made the dialogue. I make everything—otherwise, I’m not interested. I could never work with somebody who makes the dialogue, because I want them to talk the way I’m thinking.” He built a town from scratch—the whole thing was shot at a Paris film studio—and assembled a cast of thousands. (Well, 160 extras, at least; but as Hesme laughed, “I think the budget is much larger than the film I did before.”) And he bravely tossed the book out and shot without a script, calling out lines just before takes and encouraging his actresses to improvise. A task like that separates the wheat from the chaff. And who knows, some stars may have been born. Lagerfeld saved special mention for Ashleigh Good, who played the Swedish actress Jacqueline Forzane, and he wasn’t the only one. “Keira was impressed by Ashleigh,” he said gravely. As for others—well, the catwalk is a fine consolation.
Lagerfeld is as new to filmmaking as many of his actresses, but Karl’s gals—out in force tonight to celebrate—were full of praise for their fledgling director. “It was great fun—it was a giant playground,” said Stella Tennant, fresh into town from the Met Gala, who played Lady de Grey, Oscar Wilde’s patroness. “He’s very fresh,” added Caroline de Maigret, who played the towering Russian ballerina Ida Rubinstein. (Lagerfeld made her even more towering by dismissing all but the shortest extras for her scene.) “He’s very enthusiastic, excited. He’s laughing, ‘Ah, brilliant, brilliant!’
“He gets excited by everything he doesn’t know,” she declared, stubbing out her cigarette—usually a hot-button issue in law-abiding Singapore, but Karl’s night, Karl’s rules. “That’s his power. That’s what drives him, the unknown.”
Plastic Fantastic: Melissa + Karl Lagerfeld
Earlier this month, Karl Lagerfeld revealed his capsule range for accessible Brazilian “jelly” shoe brand, Melissa, via a campaign starring Cara Delevingne. The Lagerfeld-lensed images, which depict Ms. Delevingne as a leather-clad bondage dominatrix, stirred up the requisite buzz. And last night, at the label’s Soho boutique, the wares made their much-anticipated New York debut. Featuring a range of pointy plastic flats and sparkly ice-cream-cone-heeled pumps, all of which are fruit scented, the collection boasted a subversive, but almost silly sex appeal. Naturally, this was only enhanced by Lagerfeld’s snaps, which were displayed at yesterday’s fête. “The shoes are amazing, and they smell so good,” offered Delevingne. “In one of the photos, I’m drinking Champagne out of them, so I got to know them pretty well.”
Since launching over thirty years ago, Melissa has worked with some pretty impressive collaborators—Jean Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood, and Jason Wu among them. On hand to discuss the latest joint effort was Melissa’s US CEO, Michele Levy, who noted that Lagerfeld “wanted to capture who we are.” (However, the photo shoot, she affirmed, was “Karl’s touch.”) “We are a Brazilian brand, although we’re in 71 countries, and he wanted to embrace that spirit.” One pair of pumps shown in the colors of the country’s flag was particularly patriotic. Continue Reading “Plastic Fantastic: Melissa + Karl Lagerfeld” »
Rebel With a Cause
Between today’s launch of the AllSaints installation, Biker Project: Series 1 and Jay-Z singing about the brand in Justin Timberlake’s record-breaking song “Suit and Tie,” AllSaints creative director Wil Beedle could barely contain his excitement. “The biker jacket is an iconic silhouette for us, and it sums up our DNA, which is a little rock ‘n’ roll, but a thorough commitment to exquisite craftsmanship and design,” Beedle told Style.com. In an effort to convey its “slightly disruptive yet nimble” core, the London-based brand stripped its Covent Garden shop “back to its industrial bones,” making it the ideal location to exhibit fifty meticulously constructed biker jackets (some of which even include tattoo ink). The label also created a corresponding film that, debuting exclusively below, details the making of its signature leather toppers.Having previously collaborated with Tinie Tempah, Thenewno2, and Kings of Leon (just to name a few), AllSaints has some pretty legit rock ‘n’ roll ties. The label took its rebel status one step further with last year’s launch of the Basement Sessions—a series of weekly performances and interviews with musical heavyweights like Fatboy Slim, Gary Numan, and Kelis, that streamed on its Web site. And, of course, having the likes of Kristen Stewart, Cara Delevingne, Russell Brand, and Lourdes Leon as die-hard fans helps with the street cred.The Biker Project will eventually go on a road trip, with the jackets being auctioned off for a yet-to-be-named charity. And it seems like the brand is ramping up for a little adventure, too. “Our Los Angeles store opens in April—that will make fifteen stateside shops, alongside our Bloomingdale’s concessions,” Beedle says. “Our fans in America have shown a humbling amount of support. Americans can definitely relate to London’s rock ‘n’ roll rebellion vibe.” Watch out, L.A.—here comes trouble.
Modelizing Milan
Milan is notoriously regarded as a difficult city for new models. But it’s not hard to see why big-name labels like Versace and Gucci prefer to cast established catwalkers like Joan Smalls, Karlie Kloss, and Karmen Pedaru: Veterans simply know how to carry sexy clothes. That said, many of the rookies we’ve had our eyes on since the beginning of the season have proven that they can strut toe-to-toe with the big girls. Chiharu Okunugi, Sam Rollinson, Sasha Luss, and Katya Riabinkina, in particular, seem to be at the top of most casting directors’ lists this season. We’re also going to add Manuela Frey, a Spring ’13 Saint Laurent exclusive who opened Calvin Klein in New York and did turns at Dolce & Gabbana, Bottega Veneta, and Emilio Pucci in Italy. She’s kept up the momentum so far in Paris, with appearances at Dries Van Noten, Rochas, and Damir Doma.
Perhaps the best way to evaluate Milan’s crop of newcomers is to compare two of the week’s most hyped shows: Prada, which is cast by Ashley Brokaw, and Jil Sander, which is cast by Maida & Rami. Both are characteristically chock-full of unknowns, but there was more of an overlap than usual this season. Girls who walked both include past Balenciaga exclusives Juliane Gruner and Kirstin Kragh Liljegren (who actually opened Balenciaga last season). At Prada, they were sandwiched in between well-known faces such as Mariacarla Boscono, Liisa Winkler, Adriana Lima, Kirsten Owen, Jessica Stam, Iselin Steiro, and Esther de Jong (easily one of our favorite casts thus far), as well as a few more novices like Maartje Verhoef (above, left), Elise Smidt, and Jessa Brown, who also did Sander. As we move into the Paris shows, we’ll have our eyes peeled for these girls and a few others, including Amanda Murphy (above, right), who bookended Prada after opening Proenza Schouler, and then followed that up with appearances at Dries Van Noten and H&M today.
Speaking of, H&M turned out a cast of heavy hitters (you can chalk that up to a mega-budget and George Cortina’s styling), including Arizona Muse, Cara Delevingne, Daphne Groeneveld, Delfine Bafort, Edita Vilkeviciute, Isabeli Fontana, Joan Smalls, and closer Malgosia Bela.
Cara TM
In the last few weeks, we’ve seen Cara Delevingne strut down runways and cough up chocolates. We’ve even learned that she can sing. But this weekend, London’s Sunday Times reported that the twenty-year-old model is on her way to becoming a biz wiz, too. Delevingne recently registered her own company, Cara & Co., and also trademarked her name—both to stop companies from using it for various product lines (from perfume to umbrellas) and so she can capitalize on it as a marketing tool. Accept no imitations.