49 posts tagged "Gareth Pugh"
Claude Montana, Fashion Radical, Resurfaces
It’s been nearly two decades since the fashion world has caught a glimpse of Claude Montana. But the reclusive designer showed up and lingered last night at Didier Ludot’s cocktail party in the Palais Royal, where the vintage guru is now displaying his private stash of Montana pieces. The idea to showcase Montana came naturally, Ludot noted. “He lives in the neighborhood so I see him every day, and it occurred to me that it would be an interesting switch from what I usually show—the Dior, Balenciaga, and Schiaparelli.” Montana’s recasting of sporty pieces in hyper-luxury materials was revolutionary at the time, he added, recalling a purple mink tracksuit from one show. Among Ludot’s treasures: a one-off absinthe and mustard-colored mink coat Montana designed for his late wife Wallis, a be-gloved and be-feathered black bodysuit, and a short, Lesage-embroidered couture dress from his controversial stint at Lanvin in the early nineties, a piece that Ludot scored only last Friday.
Montana, who recently published a retrospective of his career, recalled the agony of designing that couture dress: “The studio director didn’t understand what I wanted, so there was lots of back and forth,” he said. “There are so many memories in these windows, it’s touching.” Ludot concluded, “I think of Montana’s place in fashion as a bit like what Hervé Van der Straeten is to design now—extremely refined but also modern.” As to potential Montana heirs among fashion’s current crop, Ludot said, “I’m keeping an eye on Alexandre Vauthier and Maxime Simoens because they have the sensibility and they can do couture. And I saw something by Gareth Pugh the other day and I thought, ‘That could have been Montana.’ “
The Full Brazilian: Melissa X Pedro Lourenço
In terms of collaborations, Brazilian shoe company Melissa has roped in some of the industry’s finest, from Vivienne Westwood to Gareth Pugh. Now, add one more name to the list: fellow Brazilian designer Pedro Lourenço. Of the design behind the two styles he created, Lourenço tells Style.com, “I like women in heels, but I like it when they feel light and seductive without being aggressive.” He adds, “I wanted to see a fusion of skin and plastic—I like the juicy look of plastic in combination with nude skin.” Here, Style.com has an exclusive first look at the shoes, the Melissa No. 1 + Pedro Lourenço heel ($175, in stores in November) and the Melissa Divine + Pedro Lourenço ballet flat ($90, in stores in July), which is available in several different colors including red, black, and blue. Up next for Lourenço—a sunglass collection. Until then, stay tuned.
‘Trique’s Treat; A Rebel Yell; Collecting: “An Incurable Illness”; And More…
Fashion’s newest viral video hero is Patrick Pope—a.k.a. P’Trique—who lambasts fashionese in his popular “Shit Fashion Girls Say” series. He’s already got high-profile sponsorship, thanks to Maybelline, but a Met ball ticket apparently still eludes him. What would he wear if he found a last-minute invite? “An amalgamation of harnesses, cutouts, and metallics…with the theme of, like, an underwater Chanel-y sea bride. Like if Ariel was alive today and friends with Karl, but more nouveau.” [WWD]
Early Morning Rebel took London by storm last fashion week, playing several shows and parties and earning a fan base that includes Zandra Rhodes and designer Francesca Marotta. They’re in talks to return to London fashion week next season, but in the meantime, the L.A.-based band plays a free show tonight at New York’s Soho House. [EMR]
Levi’s is taking on the Champs-Élysees, with a 7,000-square-foot flagship store set to open at the end of this week. The all-American denim brand is no stranger to France—Levi’s has 22 stores in Paris alone. [WWD]
“Collecting is a wonderful illness,” says auctioneer Simon de Pury during an on-film conversation with style icon and cultural patron Daphne Guinness about “connoisseurship and collecting,” in a two-part video series that debuts on Nowness today. But would-be buyers beware, warns de Pury: “It’s incurable.” [Nowness]
Kanye West keeps on mining the fashion world for talent. His latest collaborator is Ruth Hogben, who created a promo video for “Lost in the World,” his latest single. Hogben knows something about over-the-top styling: She’s worked frequently with Gareth Pugh. [Telegraph]
Pugh En Pointe
Ask Gareth Pugh to design a tutu, and don’t expect him to churn out anything resembling a classic, pink tulle skirted number. That’s exactly why choreographer Wayne McGregor selected the designer (who took ballet lessons as a child) to create costumes for his new ballet Carbon Life, opening at London’s Royal Opera House tomorrow. Pugh tells the Telegraph, “Wayne’s […] only thing was to say that he never works with point shoes and tutus. He really wanted to see what my version of those things would be.” According to Pugh, the ballet follows the company “from the naïveté of when they’re born, through their relationships, to what they become. I wanted [to convey] that in the costumes, so everybody starts naked, then evolves.” Here, a glimpse of the jagged-edged, black ensemble the designer made for the ballet. And reportedly, those pointe shoes aren’t as confining as they might appear—the designer says the dancers “haven’t had any problems” with the costumes.
A Night At The (Fashion) Pictures
As creative director of her family’s business, Selfridges’ Alannah Weston has turned the massive department store on London’s Oxford Street into her private fiefdom of fun with a series of large-scale events that have brought together artists, filmmakers, musicians, and designers in the name of underscoring the store’s retail vision. Wednesday night saw one of the smartest, artiest events yet, to mark the opening of the Women’s Designer Galleries. Curator Emma Reeves commissioned a set of short films to interpret seven of the collections carried in the new space. The single criterion? A strong female character at the heart of each film. For Ann Demeulemeester, for instance, Michael Pitt filmed his fiancée, Jamie Bochert, as a wraithlike figure moving through the desert (top), like a contemporary version of Isabelle Eberhardt, the 19th-century French traveler who inspired the designer’s collection. For Comme des Garçons, Katerina Jebb filmed concert pianist Madeleine Malraux, the widow of cultural nabob André Malraux, still playing at the age of 90.
Ruth Hogben made a typically brilliant piece of film for Gareth Pugh (above), a hectic slice of Cabaret-style decadence. She also created a sepulchral German-expressionist short for Rick Owens: harsh angles, shadowy reveals, eldritch textures, and an opera soundtrack. Her grasp of atmospheric moviemaking is so acute it came as a surprise to hear Hogben admit that all she wants to do is take still pictures. I swear everybody’s going to be reading real books again in a few years.
Speaking of atmosphere, set designer Simon Costin has made Mars out of molehills, and here he turned the derelict Selfridges’ hotel into an outlying branch of the Overlook, with curtained-off spaces intended to obliquely echo the building’s former use. There were “rooms” with oversize sofas, long dining tables, cracked vanity tables, and huge beds, with the movies projected on the ceiling above them. That was how we got to see an edit of the film Christopher Doyle had made, but not used, as the backdrop for Dries Van Noten’s show for Fall 2005. (Technical issues pulled it at the last minute.) Doyle was the man whose camerawork made In the Mood for Love into the swoonsville date movie of the millennium. A perfect match for Dries’s own romantic leanings. It was kinda nice watching it lying down, too.
Funny, only one of the films—the McQueen one—really featured recognizable clothes. The others were all projections, figurative and literal, like Delfine Balfort’s erotic equine dance for A.F. Vandevorst. You can see them all on Selfridges’ Web site, but you’ve got till March 26 to experience them in person. More fun that way.