5 posts tagged "Michelle Ochs"
Can’t Beat the Real Thing
Despite last night’s spontaneous blizzard, designers and fashion fixtures headed to Finale NYC to fête the launch of eBay and the CFDA’s 2013 You Can’t Fake Fashion tote collection. Marking the pair’s third collaborative effort to fight counterfeits and support authentic design, the new range features 90 one-of-a-kind canvas tote bags that have been customized by designers like Prabal Gurung (above, center), Pamela Love, Band of Outsiders’ Scott Sternberg (above, right), and Rodarte’s Kate and Laura Mulleavy (above, left). The designer-embellished bags are available for purchase via eBay auction through March 25 for a starting price of $100. The initiative is also offering a new standard tote for a “buy it now” price of $50. Proceeds will go toward combating fakes.
“As artists, we work so hard to create something, and then it gets knocked off,” said Rebecca Minkoff. “This is a great platform to ensure authenticity.” Carly Cushnie of Cushnie et Ochs concurs, and suggested that there’s security in knowing her and her design partner Michelle Ochs’ work is protected. “The CFDA has a voice that brings everyone together to preserve design integrity,” she said.
In addition to the likes of CFDA CEO Steven Kolb, Jeffrey Costello, Robert Tagliapietra, and Rebecca Taylor, Ruffian’s Brian Wolk and Claude Morais turned up to rally for the cause. And, according to Morais, they have a particularly special relationship with eBay. “We’re always using the site as a reference point. Right now it’s all about the 1920s and the hunt for the perfect embroidered dress.” We’re sensing a Jazz Age vibe for the team’s Spring ’14.
Cushnie Et Ochs’ NYFW Diary
In the leadup to New York fashion week, designers go through hundreds of behind-the-scenes preparations to arrive at the completed show. This NYFW, we’ve sweet-talked a few of them into giving us an exclusive peek behind the curtain as they cast, score, style, and ready their presentations. First up: Carly Cushnie and Michelle Ochs of Cushnie et Ochs.
“Inspiration images, a lot of which were from Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In.”
“Posing for quick pre-fashion week photo op.”
“A preview of what will be on the runway—metallic stretch leather!”
Cushnie Et Ochs Et Oh Land
The Danish chanteuse Oh Land—a.k.a. Nanna Oland Fabricius—has attracted a fashionable following, wooing designers like M Missoni, which chose her as a face of the label, with her sunny electro-pop. For her upcoming tour, she went further than borrowing clothes. She collaborated with Carly Cushnie and Michelle Ochs of Cushnie et Ochs on a series of tour dresses.
“Oh Land [first] borrowed a dress from our Fall ’11 collection to perform on the Craig Ferguson show,” Cushnie tells Style.com. “Then we met her for the first time after her show at the Bowery Ballroom in September—where she was wearing the dress again,” Ochs adds. From there, the three decided to coordinate on a series of tour pieces, based on the fringed dress the singer had taken such a liking to.
“The fringe moved so well onstage while she was performing,” Cushnie explains. “It’s a total rock star dress and she made it come to life, so we made four additional dresses all with fringe.” “We just wanted to make sure she would have fun performing in it,” Ochs says. New Yorkers can verify that particular detail when Oh Land and her dresses return to New York stages on December 11.
A New Class Toasts Its Fashion Week Benefactor
You might expect otherwise from a winery, but there are no booze-goggles at Ecco Domani: The California-based vintner has a long history of clear-eyed perceptiveness about young fashion talent. Its Fashion Foundation awards have been supporting emerging designers with much needed grant money for years, and many of the industry’s now established names—Derek Lam, Alexander Wang, and Proenza Schouler among them—have benefited from its largesse.
This year’s crop of winners (for womenswear, Bibhu Mohapatra, Mandy Coon, Marcia Patmos, and Maayan Zilberman and Nikki Dekker for their line The Lake & Stars; for menswear, Kyle Fitzgibbons for Native Son; for accessories, Pamela Love; and for sustainable design, Tara St. James for Study NY) was on hand to celebrate last night, along with alumni like Lam, Erin Fetherston, John Patrick, Carly Cushnie and Michelle Ochs, and editors and style setters like Julie Gilhart and Sally Singer. One of last year’s winners, Prabal Gurung, presented Bibhu Mohapatra (above, with Lam) with his award. (“His love and my love for Bollywood has cemented our friendship,” the Nepal-born Gurung, who worked for the Indian designer Manish Arora after graduating from New Delhi’s National Institute of Fashion, confided.)
“It has really pumped me with such a rush,” Mohapatra said of his latest accolade. “This award not only gave me confidence, but it also gave me some extra funding to make my product that much better.”
Pressed for advice to the young designers, Gurung modestly demurred. “I am still in the process of rising,” he said, “and I don’t think I am in the position of giving advice to anyone. What I can say is be true to yourself and trust your instincts because you have to just believe in yourself.”
You May Be Ready For These Jellies
“This is the only way to have a party,” Erin Wasson announced last night, looking breezy in cream linen overalls at Milk Studios’ penthouse patio on the Hudson. Behind her, the sky had turned tangerine and yachts slid by on the purple water while Leigh Lezark and the MisShapes manned the DJ booth. “What better way to spend the evening than watching the sunset with a cocktail?”
Guests like Dree Hemingway, Cory Kennedy, Brian Wolk and Claude Morais of Ruffian, Carly Cushnie, and Michelle Ochs seemed to agree. Their host, the Brazilian plastic-sandal maker Melissa, was celebrating its new collaboration with Jean Paul Gaultier, who designed a rubbery stiletto, but he’s only the latest of many. A retrospective of 30 years of collaborative jelly footwear from guest designers past and present lined a few display vitrines. (Beyoncé, if you ever condescend to wear flats, you may like Thierry Mugler’s gold, genie-ish slip-on from the early eighties.) Nearby, a film by Lola Schnabel played against a studio scrim, and a piece by tattooer-turned-art-star Scott Campbell—a sheet of dollar bills, perforated by a heart—hung on a wall. It fluttered in the river breeze and Campbell, too, admired the view. “Every party should be like this,” he said. “They’ve spoiled us.”
Inside was the art, but outside was the action, where revelers sipped Champagne and cachaça cocktails. (The bravest accepted shots from circulating waiters.) Co-host Lorenzo Martone (with Hemingway, left), another successful Brazilian export, surveyed the crowd. “I guess I have really good friends,” he said. “It just makes sense to me—they are a summer brand and they haven’t had a party. I said, we need to have a party.” Irrefutable logic.