89 posts tagged "Madonna"
Style At Your Fingertips
Aside from maybe a tiara, nothing heightens the glamour of a full-on evening look quite like a pair of gloves. Eye-catching gauntlets turned up on the Lanvin, Gucci, and Oscar de la Renta Fall runways. And at last week’s high-wattage Met Gala, divas from Madonna to Beyoncé to Paloma Faith covered up their digits with statement-making pairs of varying lengths. Kim Kardashian’s custom Givenchy number was the talk of the town, but what really piqued our interest was the gown’s built-in gloves, which prompted speculation that Kim was concealing an engagement ring (you know Kanye would go all out with a rock for his baby mama).
We predict we’ll be seeing more gloves at Cannes. Here, a show of hands.
Rebel Rebel
There were plenty of quasi-rebellious aesthetics at last night’s Met Ball, like bleached, black, and safety-pinned hair (from Anne Hathaway, Karlie Kloss, and Giovanna Battaglia, respectively), torn-fishnet looks (Miley Cyrus and Madonna), and dangerous hardware (Joan Smalls had a razor-blade earring, and ear cuffs and cage rings abounded). But as Anthony Vaccarello put it, “Punk is an attitude,”—that’s to say, starlets can wear all the ripped gowns and goth makeup they’d like, but if they don’t have that hard-edged “who cares” demeanor, they’re just another chick in a punk costume. While on the red carpet, we gave the Met Ball’s sartorial stars a chance to earn some cred and asked them about their most rebellious moments. Here’s what they said:
Greta Gerwig: “Last year at the Met Ball, I fell down an entire flight of stairs. I won’t do it this year. I’m trying to not drink as much. There’s something about well-behaved starlets that makes me just want to burn something.”
Kate Upton: “I don’t really know that I went through a rebellious phase. Maybe it was starting as a swimsuit model and going into high fashion.”
Joseph Altuzarra: “I used to wear one long, dangly earring. It was very ‘gay pirate.’”
Allison Williams: “When glitter was really big, I wasn’t allowed to wear it. But I’d steal it, put it in my backpack, and put it on, on the bus. Once, my mom surprised me at school and found me covered in glitter and was very angry. I also lied that my grandmother was dead once. She wasn’t. That was pretty rebellious.”
Jimmy Fallon: “I taped posters on my ceiling when my parents really didn’t want me to do that.”
Anja Rubik: “The most rebellious thing I’ve ever done is I snuck backstage [at a] Marilyn Manson [concert] many, many years ago. I was a huge fan of his. It was cool.”
Anthony Vaccarello: “The most rebellious thing I’ve ever done? That dress for last year’s Met Ball.”
Tom Ford: “I don’t drink anymore. I can’t tell you.”
Matthew James Thomas: “I did graffiti, lots of graffiti, when I was a kid. I had my own tag word that I used to use. I can’t tell you [what it is]. I’ll have the police knocking on my door.”
Jason Wu: “I dyed my hair every color when I was young.”
Mindy Kaling: “I’m a friendly person. The most punk thing about me is that I’m friendly, so I’m like, Oh, I guess that’s a subversion.”
When Supers Stalked Spring Street
This week’s New York magazine is the “Childhood in New York” issue, one close to my heart as someone who spent—and occasionally misspent—his childhood in the city. So did Zac Posen, who is among the natives who shared reminiscences with the mag of growing up downtown. New York then was a place where you could meet Polly Mellen at the Comme des Garçons store (still on Wooster Street!) just by admiring her shoes. It was also the days when Soho was good-old, bad-old Soho, where models lived and everyone else beelined. As Posen remembers it: “I would stare outside and watch all the supermodels living on Mercer and Greene Street and get a peek of Cindy Crawford or of Naomi Campbell. I remember when Madonna would go to the doctor, who was in the ground floor of my building. I mean, the street parted. She shut down Spring Street.”
Dita in 3-D
“I can get out of a lot of things, but this dress is not one of them,” said burlesque star Dita Von Teese of the gown she donned to last night’s party at the Ace Hotel. The dress in question was the first fully articulated 3-D printed garment, which was conceptualized by designer Michael Schmidt. And the party, which drew the likes of Debbie Harry, Bob Gruen, and Andrej Pejic, served to toast its unveiling. “I was interested in finding the middle ground between the world of mathematics and the world of ephemeral beauty,” Schmidt told Style.com. The L.A.-based designer, who has crafted looks for stars like Madonna, Cher, and Lady Gaga (the latter wore his glass-bubble costume on the cover of Rolling Stone in 2009), conceived Von Teese’s frock with Fibonacci’s Golden Ratio in mind.
With the help of computational designer and architect Francis Bitonti, Schmidt used 3-D software to realize his space-age gown (think cinched waist and steroidal shoulders). The dress began as a digital rendering, which was then engineered in powdered nylon by high-tech collaborator Shapeways. “As an architect, it’s all about dealing with facades, and this was just about making a curvy one,” mused Bitonti. The body-skimming dress featured an undulating mesh silhouette of three thousand articulated joints fashioned out of layered nylon powder. As if that weren’t complicated enough, it also boasted twelve thousand Swarovski black crystals, which were painstakingly placed by hand after printing. “It’s obviously very futuristic, but I tried to retain a level of old-world glamour that was befitting of Dita,” added Schmidt. Indeed, the Blade Runner-meets-Bettie Page ensemble was worthy of the millennial pinup. “It’s superlight,” Von Teese mused later that evening after slipping into a demure Roland Mouret shift. But was it comfortable? “The only uncomfortable part is that I needed to be very cautious about how I walked. I had to make sure my heels wouldn’t get stuck in the hem.” Even in the future, glamour’s got its obstacles.
Stockholm Fashion Week Comes To A Close
Throughout Stockholm fashion week, blogger Columbine Smille will report back on the best and brightest shows. To view our complete coverage click here.
Day 3:
The final day of Stockholm fashion week began with AltewaiSaome, a young label designed by Natalia Altewai and Randa Saome. For Fall, the pair was inspired by a trip to New York and showed a luxe take on streetwear. Featuring embellished dresses, emerald-green hooded silk jackets, and relaxed silhouettes, their wearable urban collection had an easy, sporty tone.
J.Lindeberg’s Fall ’13 (above) was all about traditional tailoring with a modern twist. Inspired by the Stockholm City Library, the men’s collection was filled with well-cut suits and coats, as well as a few splashes of color and playful prints. For women, the brand (which is sold in more than thirty-five countries worldwide) offered sophisticated separates in black, navy, and olive.
Over at Diana Orving, there were earth tones, metallics and flowerlike sheer organza appliqués. A few dresses were shown in a script print, which the designer wrote in her own hand, but the long lace dress paired with a transparent off-the-shoulder cardigan was the highlight of the show.
Tiger of Sweden—which some have come to call the Burberry Prorsum of Stockholm—closed fashion week with a standout show (a show that, it should be noted, included model Kirstin Liljegren, pictured above). Tweed coats and caps were mixed with color-blocked silky looks in black, deep purple, and neon. The outerwear, however, was the crowd favorite—a big fuzzy fur coat made front-rowers look twice.
Stockholm fashion week may be finished, but the Swedes still have two more local brands to look forward to: Acne Studios will be showing in Paris this season (they formerly showed in London), and Rodebjer has recently started presenting their collection in New York. Indeed, we’re excited to see what they’ll bring to the international fashion stage.
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