35 posts tagged "Humberto Leon"
Opening Ceremony Takes On London
It looks like there will be more than one opening ceremony at the upcoming London Olympics. Today, WWD reports that New York-based retailer Opening Ceremony is temporarily setting up shop at 31-31 King Street just before the 2012 Olympics get under way. The 3,000-square-foot pop-up shop, housing O.C.’s ready-to-wear line and collections from Olympia Le-Tan to Maison Michel, a debut Adidas x Opening Ceremony collection, and exclusive Olympic pieces from the likes of Proenza Schouler, Pamela Love, and Chloë Sevigny, will be followed by the brand’s first shop in Europe, opening in the fall (also reportedly on King Street).
“In the last ten years since we first opened our doors on Howard Street in New York, Opening Ceremony has expanded to Los Angeles and Tokyo, but we have had our hearts set on London since the beginning. Covent Garden is an historic, global shopping destination and we’re looking forward to what Opening Ceremony will add to its exciting future,” O.C. founders Humberto Leon and Carol Lim (pictured) say. Also on the horizon: a Topshop “sport-inspired” collection, due to launch in July.
Rocks Solid: Humberto Leon And Carol Lim’s Postcard From Thailand
Opening Ceremony founders and Kenzo designers Humberto Leon and Carol Lim recouped from fashion week(s) as well as anyone we know—with a vacation to an experimental film festival in Thailand, co-curated by Tilda Swinton and attended by the likes of Swinton, Ryan McGinley, Chloë Sevigny, Waris Ahluwalia, and Haider Ackermann. Below, they sent back a few photos from their time in paradise.
Carol and I were ready for a tropical adventure after Paris fashion week. We had been invited to the debut of Film on the Rocks Yao Noi, an experimental film festival co-curated by Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Tilda Swinton along with a fun group of artists and friends like Ryan McGinley, Chloê Sevigny, and Tom Sachs. Chomwan and Nat, the organizers of the event, didn’t let us down with the immersive, fun (and educational!) program that they put together with the curators. The experience of watching a range of films at different venues in and around the Six Senses eco-resort on Yao Noi was an unbelievable journey. We never thought we’d be going to a film premiere on a floating raft in the middle of the ocean! Apart from Ole Scheeren’s jaw-dropping temporary cinema, we traveled to the jungle to see a one-time-only performance by Rirkrit Tiravanija and Arto Lindsay, went snorkeling where Leonardo DiCaprio filmed The Beach, and ate a lot of amazing Thai food! Continue Reading “Rocks Solid: Humberto Leon And Carol Lim’s Postcard From Thailand” »
On Our Radar: Kenzo Accessories
The appointment of Humberto Leon and Carol Lim as creative directors of Kenzo shook up Paris—and, incidentally, gave us one of Spring ’12′s most energetic shows. But now that the dust has settled and the collection is making its way around the world on its whistlestop press tour, it’s the product, not its designers, that’s garnering attention and accolades. At an appointment yesterday, I had the chance to get up close and personal with the Spring collection, which is big on couture-inspired volume, reversible garments, and trompe l’oeil prints (parrots made out of shells!). But it’s the duo’s accessories that stuck with me in particular—especially given their reasonable price point. (When they hit Barneys next year, they’ll be sold in Co-Op.) Lim and Leon made good use of off-kilter materials like rubber tubing, plasticized raffia, and string mesh, creating foulard-tail baseball caps with exaggerated bills, mesh-covered boaters, mini backpacks, and bucket bags in pop colors. If they skew a little to the young and the shameless (to say nothing of the restless), I’d say that’s exactly the point. There’s brawn behind the buzz.
Opening Ceremony, On The Road Again
The inspiration for their Spring 2012 Opening Ceremony collections, Humberto Leon and Carol Lim said yesterday at a preview breakfast, was music festivals, the kind that kids across America packed themselves into vans and traveled days to get to for epochal moments. (Leon revealed that He’d Been There™ for the first Lollapalooza, back in 1990.) The styles adopted for fests, the designers said, tended to be piecemeal and eclectic: random things begged, borrowed, or stolen, maybe something nabbed from a local souvenir shop along the way. (The tourist-y kitty cat T-shirt was morphed here into something sweet and twee: a group of cutout kitty babydoll dresses and a sheer top printed with cat’s eyes. It looked, if such a thing is possible, like an upscaled take on the poster for Broadway’s Cats.) The main objective, according to Leon: “Everything has to be packable.”
That was certainly true of a giant, wide-brimmed sun hat (available in that same cat print, among others) that folded up onto itself to fit into a tiny cloth purse. And it was true of raffia hats, cotton sweaters, and the biggest Japanese denim offering O.C. has yet proposed. That’s not to say there weren’t expensive treatments here, too, like the hand-done embroidery on day dresses or the hand-stitched leopard panels that tufted up on a mustard-colored sweatshirt and skirt.
Eclectic was the right word for the collection, which veered about as widely as your average three-day fest. Not a bad thing. And much of it did look throw-and-go, just as the duo had suggested. You can imagine they appreciate that as much as any of their customers. The newly appointed creative directors of Kenzo are now spending every other week in Paris, where they’ve just shown their first women’s collection, and are gearing up for their first men’s presentation in January.
Bienvenidos, Buenos Aires
Opening Ceremony spent the past year immersed in French culture, working with labels like Jean Paul Gaultier, Agnès B., and Repetto (in between eating Ladurée macarons and celebrating Bastille Day with the French heritage label Saint James). This week, O.C.’s Humberto Leon and Carol Lim announced that it’s time to continue globetrotting, and they have landed on Argentina as this year’s country of focus for their stores.
“There’s some really great, interesting younger designers there,” Leon, who made his first trip to Argentina with Lim about five months ago, tells Style.com. “You will see some of these designers, but we also focused on the local artisans and culture—we found incredible felt hats made in the mountains and leather cowhide bags.” (Speaking of cows: “You cannot get enough of the steak,” Leon says of the country’s non-fashion attractions. “It’s incredible.”)
After more than 60 studio visits, the duo settled on a select group of designers and brands, including Ale Sly, Chicco Ruiz, Yanina Solnicki of El Camarin, Paula Selby Avallaneda, María Pryor, and classic Argentinian brands like Felix and Alpargatas—a 125-year-old textile company. In their usual manner, they worked with the labels to create custom colors, fabrics, and styles, available in O.C. stores in September.
For Alpargatas’ U.S. debut, the O.C. team created a series of specialty shoes, including “cool, two-toned canvas” shoes in high- and low-top styles. “The goal is to have Argentinians walk into our store and see these brands and get excited because they are authentic,” Leon explains.
To kick off their South American year, Leon and Lim have planned a carnival market at the Ace Hotel for Fashion’s Night Out, where the festivities will include street vendors, dancers outfitted by Alexander Wang, Proenza Schouler, Suno, and O.C., customizable Havianas, and more.