13 posts tagged "Liu Wen"
From the Catwalk to the Carpet: Models Take Over at Cannes
Every year, the crème de la crème of the film industry get glammed up to hobnob and vamp for the paparazzi at the Cannes Film Festival. While A-listers such as Jessica Chastain, Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Carey Mulligan, and Zoe Saldana have made an impressive showing thus far, they’ve arguably been eclipsed by the contingent of top-tier catwalkers who have flocked to the red carpets en masse. Yesterday, in particular, was a model-watcher’s paradise, with the likes of Joan Smalls, Petra Nemcova, Barbara Palvin, Chanel Iman, Jessica Hart, and Erin Heatherton posing for the cameras like the pros that they are. Milla Jovovich, Liya Kebede, and Doutzen Kroes were snapped multiple times earlier in the week, and Yasmin Warsame and Irina Lazareanu made some memorable cameos, too. Presumably, even more runway regulars will turn up at the amfAR blowout on Thursday—we’ve got it on authority that Liu Wen and Karolina Kurkova are already in town. Sorry, starlets. When it comes to posing and strutting in borrowed gowns, models simply do it best.
A Model Hideout
Question: Where do models go during NYFW when they’re not stomping the catwalk? Answer: Modellounge x Microsoft. When the shows come to town, fashion’s leading ladies have to zip around from one runway, casting, or fitting to the next. But for those odd momenta of downtime, Modellounge x Microsoft offers girls from the top ten agencies a place to relax and regroup. This season, more than 400 models—ranging from newcomers like Natasha Remarchuk and Leona “Binx” Walton to established girls like Arizona Muse, Joan Smalls, Karlie Kloss, and Liu Wen—stopped by Modellounge each day. In addition to offering snacks and free Wi-Fi (plus access to Surface tablets), the Union Square-based lounge hosted a bevy of events, like a panel discussion with casting director Jennifer Starr, a runway-walking class, and a talk with Coco Rocha about the importance of social media and self-branding. The veritable model haven even provided catwalkers with backup wardrobes; founder Bernard Smith (who also happens to be Joan Smalls’s long-term boyfriend) partnered up with Helmut Lang to create a Model Closet from which girls could borrow clothes for go-sees, street-style looks, and events. He described one afternoon when Ms. Rocha made a pit stop with actress Isabelle Fuhrman: “They were running late for a show, and Isabelle needed something chic to wear last-minute, so we let Coco style her with the clothes—the perks of having model friends.”
Wen DIYs For Rag & Bone
The latest top model to join Rag & Bone’s all-star list of DIY campaign girls (a group that includes Miranda Kerr, Carolyn Murphy, and Karolina Kurkova): Liu Wen. For the project, which originally began for Spring ’11 Rag & Bone/JEAN, they handed the supes a digital camera and some of its threads and let them photograph the campaign to their liking. For the newest round (which will later include Jourdan Dunn), Liu shot in Manhattan and Coney Island. “I loved all of the single pieces in the DIY shoot. The jeans and T-shirts I already wear on a regular basis, so it’s hard to choose one look,” she says. “You can mix and match depending on your own mood, whether you want your look of the day to be casual, cool, or even punk. My personal preference is adding a dash of the tomboy feeling.” Here, Style.com has the exclusive first look at the images.
Gap’s New Group
In the past, Gap has roped in top models ranging from Bar Refaeli to Caroline Trentini to Karmen Pedaru to Liu Wen to front its ad campaigns. But for Fall, the retailer took a different route, this time opting for a cast of up-and-coming musicians and dancers to be the faces of its “Shine” campaign.
In the images, the group, including Seth and Scott Avett from the Avett Brothers, San Francisco Ballet star Yuan Yuan Tan, and dancer Lil Buck (who just completed a project with Natalie Portman’s husband, Benjamin Millepied), sports the label’s Icon Redefined collection—read: updated Gap classics. “In the late eighties and early nineties, Gap is what all the cool girls were wearing,” singer-songwriter Nicki Bluhm, who is also in the campaign, told Style.com last night at an editor preview in New York. “Obviously, they still are.” Of the shoot, the modeling rookie added, “I’ve never modeled before and Yuan Yuan had her shoot just before mine. She was unbelievable, doing these insane high kicks and leaps across the room, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, what am I going to do that compares to this?’ ” Apparently, the jeans have a lot of stretch to them, but we don’t suggest trying Tan’s tricks at home. Here, get a first look at Tan and Bluhm in the newly unveiled shots.
Getting CFDA-Ready With Suno and Liu Wen
By the time you read this, Liu Wen may already be rushing off set with Inez and Vinoodh, slipping into the dress and shirt you see above, and racing toward Alice Tully Hall, where she’ll accompany Suno’s Erin Beatty and Max Osterweis—nominees for the Swarovski Award for womenswear—to the CFDA Awards. But on Friday afternoon, choosing the outfit for her first CFDAs with Beatty, things were a bit more relaxed.
Beatty and Suno stylist Brian Molloy were leafing through racks of Fall and brand-new Resort pieces, searching for the perfect look. A first try, a blush pink dress with a placed print from Resort had already been deemed too cute. A winner was in the offing: a graphic, leaf-printed dress with a flared skirt from Fall, cut in a nylon outerwear fabric. It was sweet, but with a harder edge. “There’s always a girliness to what we’re doing,” Beatty said. “The question is always, how do you temper that and turn it on its head? How do you take these different concepts that lead to your print and make them into something that feels cool and now for someone to actually want to put on their body? That’s the hardest part about designing in prints. People thing of it too graphically or too conceptually, and it’s important to maintain that, but I think, as a female, most important is that other girls want to wear it.” Continue Reading “Getting CFDA-Ready With Suno and Liu Wen” »