6 posts tagged "MaxMara"
Will You Trade In Your Snakeskin For Crocodile?
Python has been the defending champion in the exotics department for the past year or so, but the Fall runways revealed a fierce contender: crocodile. And this season, the scaly stuff wasn’t just relegated to accessories. Giambattista Valli and Fendi‘s Silvia Venturini Fendi whipped the skin into a cocoon-shaped topper and a luxe shift dress, respectively. Others showed it as a pattern instead. The team at MaxMara, for example, paired an embossed leather pencil skirt, cross-body satchel, and military cap with a devore knit turtleneck, while Emilio Pucci‘s Peter Dundas embroidered a sheer black dress with sparkly reptile scales.
CLICK FOR A SLIDESHOW, and let us know how you’ll be rocking croc this season.
Katie Holmes, Face Of The Future
Women in Film, a nonprofit group dedicated, as its press materials explain, to helping women achieve their highest potential within the global entertainment, communication, and media industries, has named Katie Holmes its 2011 Women In Film Max Mara Face of the Future. At the risk of dating ourselves, we’ll admit to loving Holmes as Joey on Dawson’s Creek well over a decade ago, so what’s an A-lister like her doing getting an award like this? Holmes, in fact, has a very bright future, to hear her tell it. The actress and better half to Tom Cruise is in Milan to attend today’s MaxMara show (the Italian label sponsors the award); Style.com sat down with her between shows yesterday to talk film and fashion. In a suite at the Principe Hotel, she rattled off no less than half a dozen projects. There’s the Kennedy series in which she stars as Jackie, launching in April; Guillermo del Toro’s Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, coming in August; an Adam Sandler movie due out at Thanksgiving; and, don’t forget, she had a movie with Al Pacino at Sundance last month. “Do you say it until you’re on stage? I’m also setting up a play on Broadway,” she told us.
Holmes had nothing but positives to say about portraying Jackie, including wearing a Giorgio Armani-made version of the First Lady’s famous pink suit, but the Great White Way holds plenty of appeal, too. “You get there at 7 p.m. and you leave at 10:30, and the next morning you’re in Central Park pushing the swings.” What comes after her second stab at Broadway? (Her first was All My Sons with Dianne Wiest and John Lithgow.) “I’d like to do a period piece because I’ve never done that,” Holmes began. “I’d like to do more comedy; I grew up watching and I still love Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn. I also love Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet, women who find a bit of humor in what they’re going through, who feel like they could be your friend. Renée Zellweger, she’s another one who you go, ‘Oh, I like this person, I’ll go on that journey with her.’ ” As for her current journey, Holmes had this to say about MaxMara’s Highlands-influenced show: “I loved it, especially the full pants with the high slide slits that looked like a skirt, and the coats, of course.”
MaxMara Takes L.A., By Day And By Night
MaxMara had its eye on the red carpet for last night’s Crystal Lucy Awards, where the brand presented Zoe Saldana with its Face of the Future Award, but the festivities began long before the sun set: On Tuesday afternoon, the label treated a few key L.A. ladies to a chic lunch benefiting the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Katherine Ross, gallerist Karyn Lovegrove, and MaxMara’s Nicola Gerber Maramotti hosted guests like Rachel Griffiths, Lisa Love, and Shiva Rose (all in MaxMara or Sportmax, of course) to an outdoor feast of striped bass and panna cotta at Lovegrove’s stunning Hancock Park estate; shut your eyes and you could believe you were in the Italian countryside. At least one guest soon would be—”We’re getting ready to go to Tuscany in two weeks, and hopefully I’ll be in Paris for couture,” reported Rosetta Getty (pictured, left, with Griffiths)—but when you call L.A. home, you don’t need to go far for fun in the sun. “After living here for four and a half years, I’m really enjoying all that Los Angeles has to offer,” said Ross, whose husband, Michael Govan, is LACMA’s popular director.
Utility vs. Fantasy: Which Side Are You On?
Call it optimism or call it escapism, but Spring 2010 is the season of the ruffled party dress: usually short, often chiffon, and almost always nude (we refer to both the color and the prevalence of sheer fabrics). Marc Jacobs—who else?—kicked the trend into high gear with his parade of ballet nymphs in New York. The frill lasted all through London, Milan, and Paris, taking in along the way Christopher Kane, Fendi, and Jacobs’ former protégé Peter Copping at Nina Ricci. But toward the end of Paris, a counterinsurgency. At Celine, Phoebe Philo cleared the collective palate with a collection that she herself described as “a kind of contemporary minimalism.” Hannah MacGibbon was of a similar mind-set at Philo’s former stomping ground Chloé, and, thinking about it, the groundswell of “utility chic” could be traced back via Junya Watanabe‘s pantsuits to MaxMara‘s back-to-what-we-do-best styles to…well, didn’t Marc put those plain little raincoats over his ruffles? (And was it just coincidence that the patron saint of contemporary minimalism, Jil Sander, chose this moment to re-emerge with her +J line for Uniqlo?) So, suddenly, two camps: one that flirts with frivolousness but that also has the potential to create romance and desire, the other practical but possibly in danger of coming across as too plain. Click for a slideshow, then tell us, which side are you on, and perhaps more pertinently, which approach will make you open your wallet?
Heat-Seeking in Milan, By Day and Night
In concert with the influx of fashion-loving foreigners, September is Milan’s happening retail season. The biggest store news comes from the new D&G revamp in Corso Venezia 7 (pictured above), and Trussardi 1911′s new “concept” lifestyle store at Piazza della Scala 5, where comfortable chairs and reading material are part of the shopping experience. There’s also MaxMara’s sleek new mega-store at Corso Vittorio Emanuele, which carries all its various lines and some serious pieces for the home. The company teamed up with the Milanese design guru Rossana Orlandi to offer a very original collection that is both retro (there are things by Gio Ponti) as well as items from new up-and-comers like Maarten Baas.
Just down the road is Rinascente which continues to transform under the eye of department store maestro Stefano Radice. The rehauled homewares department in the basement is now called the Design Supermarket. While there, be sure to venture beyond the subterranean to the topmost floor to take in some of the best views in Milan. There you’ll find a terrace bar that looks onto the Gothic spirals of Milan’s Duomo. If you’re there on the evening of September 25, you will find a coterie of bona fide supes. Eva, Naomi, and Claudia will be there to launch D&G’s new fragrance Anthology.
Then, when the shopping day is done, the trendy set can join the spillover in front of the bars Blanco or Straf. And finally, for those who can last late into the notte, join DJ Natasha Slater’s crowd at the appropriately named Punks Wear Prada this Friday, at Tunnel. The party gets going around midnight.