10 posts tagged "Juan Carlos Obando"
LACMA Fuses Fashion and Art
After the success of its debut Wear LACMA range last fall—which featured designs by Gregory Parkinson and Libertine’s Johnson Hartig—the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is set to launch round two of the project. This time around, Juan Carlos Obando, NewbarK’s Maryam and Marjan Malakpour, and L’Oeil du Vert Fragrances’ Haley van Oosten have created limited-edition designs inspired by the museum’s permanent collection.
NewbarK’s designers were drawn to Félix Edouard Vallotton’s La Manifestation (1893) because of his use of black and white. “Black-and-white is my personal favorite, and a signature to NewbarK designs,” Malakpour told Style.com. The duo (whose Wear LACMA pouches are pictured, above) was also influenced by the exoticism and primitivism in Henri-Charles Guérard’s Monkey’s Hand (1888).
Obando, an L.A. native, pulled inspiration from Willem Danielsz van Tetrode’s sculpture Mercury for his bold bronze and gold jewelry, while van Oosten was moved by Antonio Montauti’s bronze relief The Triumph of Neptune and Europa. The perfumer created an exclusive new botanical fragrance, TONAE, which, of course, comes in a bronze bottle. “TONAE celebrates our yearning to be transported by divinity—as immortalized by Montauti’s Neptune conducting a swirl of coupling sea nymphs,” van Oosten said.
Wear LACMA is available, starting tomorrow, at LACMA and online at thelacmastore.org
Designers Take a Chance on Pants for Evening
With gala season kicking off in earnest this week, we’ve been contemplating alternatives to predictable strapless cocktail frocks and princess gowns. Don’t get us wrong: We’ve got nothing against a nice dress, but the elegantly tailored evening trousers we saw in the Fall collections look so much more modern. Alexander Wang featured sharp slacks on his New York runway and at his Balenciaga debut, and we noticed similar styles at Narciso Rodriguez and The Row. Draped camisole and bustier tops accompanied by long trains that float behind slim pants have been in the air since Haider Ackermann’s Spring ’11 show. Raf Simons nailed that look at his first Haute Couture presentation for Christian Dior last July, and we’ve witnessed its popularity rise with designers like Jason Wu, Mary Katrantzou, Juan Carlos Obando, and Vera Wang in the months since.
CLICK FOR A SLIDESHOW of our favorite evening pants.
Deer In The Spotlights
Long regarded as the go-to shopping destination for a certain discerning set of Angelenos, Des Kohan ‘s namesake store holds a reliable, oft exclusive stock of merchandise from designers local (Juan Carlos Obando) and abroad (Alaïa). But it’s that energy of exclusives that has kept Kohan’s shop on the map despite its off-the-beaten-path location on South Cloverdale Avenue. The shop owner’s latest endeavor, debuting today, is DEER, a 20-piece accessory collection conceived alongside L.A.-based jewelry designer Annie Costello Brown. “We couldn’t find pieces that we wanted in our wardrobe, so we wanted to create something that wasn’t about following trends but about setting standards for style,” Kohan tells Style.com of the collection ($125 to $798). Composed of uniquely paired mixed metals and media to convey a “raw, earthy look,” DEER relies on a multitude of styling options that have, in turn, elevated each piece’s functionality. “We used the materials in a new way and brought the multifaceted styling element to it,” Costello explained of the colored leather, shells, vintage brass beads, and chains she sources from around the world, then designs and assembles in Los Angeles.
In a true partnership, Kohan offers personal styling to complete the looks that Costello Brown accessorizes. “Because we’re just one store, we’re able to create editorial pieces (ranging from a mixed-metal draped trio necklace to a snake belt) instead of trying to please the masses.” It’s an ongoing—and unbridled—partnership that is set to produce new designs on a monthly basis.
DEER is now available at Des Kohan, 671 South Cloverdale Ave., L.A., (323) 857-0200.
Exclusive: The Do-Good Fashions From Project Paz’s Gala and Benefit
Using hand-sewn Mexican fabrics supplied by Museo Textil De Oaxaca, the designers behind 12 different lines, including Eddie Borgo, Wes Gordon, Thakoon, and Michael Bastian, have each created limited-edition pieces for tonight’s Project Paz gala and silent auction in New York, which will raise money to promote peace in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. “It was important to me to get involved because the level of violence that occurs in Cuidad Juárez is truly inhuman,” Peter Som tells Style.com. Of the design assignment, Som says, “There weren’t any guidelines —the fabric was a beautiful canvas for me to create with.” What he made was a dress using fabric from the town of Pinotepa de Don Luis, with touches of his spring rose print.
Of his design, Phillip Lim says, “I think all too often society is very dismissive of technique and artisanal history —they take what they want and discard things very quickly —so I wanted this piece to respect tradition. I tried to do this by having the biker jacket embrace the Rebozo —it almost has it in its arms.” Here, Style.com has the exclusive first look at the designs, photographed by Ruven Afanador. The pieces are available during and after the event on L-Atitude.
China Chow’s Wearable Art
“Fashion and art don’t always converge, but when they do, it’s fantastic,” says China Chow, the host and judge of Bravo’s series Work of Art (think Project Runway for visual artists). For Chow, the two worlds have always been intrinsically linked. She grew up in the eighties hanging around the likes of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, who were friends with her parents: restaurateur and art collector Michael Chow and the late style icon Tina Chow. These days, Chow continues to blend her two passions on Work of Art, which premieres its second season tonight.
As an avid fashion enthusiast, Chow is very particular when it comes to what she wears on the show and styles herself throughout the series. She chose 18 of the 22 looks filmed this season by reportedly mining the Style.com archives and her own closet (she brought in a vintage Alaïa skirt and Comme des Garçons trousers, among other pieces). Chow gave Style.com an exclusive sneak peak of a few of her season two outfits, including the one she will wear tonight: a hand-dyed and ruched minidress from Juan Carlos Obando’s Spring 2010 collection (above).
Episode 4, Stella McCartney Resort 2011
“What attracted me to this dress was the architectural detail in the back. I call it my ‘jet pack dress’ because while I was wearing it, I kept jumping in the air like a rocket about to launch.” Continue Reading “China Chow’s Wearable Art” »