9 posts tagged "Ming Xi"
High Society
“Have you heard about The Society?” It’s a question that’s been making the rounds in model-watcher circles for what seems like a year, and now The Society is no longer a secret. After a soft launch during New York fashion week, Elite Paris’ New York outpost—not to be mistaken with the nonaligned Elite New York—officially debuted its Web site yesterday with an impressive roster of established faces, including Lindsey Wixson, Sigrid Agren, Cora Emmanuel, Mackenzie Drazan, and Ming Xi, as well as noteworthy newcomers such as Marine Deleeuw, Josephine Le Tutour, and Manuela Frey. The agency will also represent musicians, including Grace Jones, Oh Land, and Lily Rose Cooper (a.k.a. Lily Allen). “We’ve had the opportunity to be super-selective with the girls we take on rather than being so volume oriented,” a representative told Style.com. “Elite understands the value of investing in a gorgeous face.”
The Society hits the ground running with a huge history and network already in place, which contains the Elite Model Look competition—the largest source of new models in the world. The polished Web site, which was designed by Ezra Petronio and features Santiago & Mauricio-lensed animations of each girl in a grid format (kind of like a glam version of Hollywood Squares, no?), sets the tone for one of The Society’s goals, which is “to promote original editorial content and do interesting projects that converge fashion and art,” a representative said. “It’s a bit different from the standard approach,” which is exactly what the New York modeling industry needs right now. Based on initial impressions, The Society is poised to become a major force.
Ming Xi in 3-D
Nick Knight—famed photographer, founder of SHOWstudio, and all-around digital fashion maverick—has always been ahead of the curve. So no one expected his Spring ’13 campaign for Chinese luxury retailer Lane Crawford to be a traditional photo spread. This season, Knight teamed up with stylist Katy England and enlisted model Ming Xi to star in digital images and films, which he created with 3-D scanning. “Three-D is a step toward the future of our visual language, which was why I started SHOWstudio,” Knight told Style.com. Knight has been fascinated with this particular method of image making (it’s also used for video games) for fifteen years and has, in the past, done 3-D scans of Lady Gaga, Kate Moss, and Naomi Campbell. The ads—which will appear online, in outdoor media, and in print this month—make Ming Xi look like some kind of fantastic high-fashion android. Watch her strut her digital stuff in Alexander McQueen (above) and Givenchy (below), exclusively on Style.com.
Upside Down with Kenzo
Kenzo creative directors Carol Lim and Humberto Leon have once again teamed up with artist Jean-Paul Goude (yes, the same Jean-Paul Goude who created that iconic eighties image of Grace Jones) for their Spring ’13 campaign. And the result is modern-day Jungle Jap at its finest. Wearing the season’s Technicolor animal prints, Models Ming Xi and Jester are flipped upside down, their legs creating geometric X shapes against the Kenzo logo. Take a peek at Kenzo’s punchy Spring ads (above) and watch Mr. Goude in action in the debut of Kenzo’s behind-the-scenes film (below).
Campaign Crawford
Lane Crawford, one of the top shopping destinations in the Far East, has a history of tapping top Asian models for its ads, and this season is no different. This time around, the retailer brought on Ming Xi, Xiao Wen Ju, and Wang Xiao to star in its Fall campaign, shot by Nick Knight. Edward Enninful styled the girls wearing the latest designer pieces from Alexander McQueen, Lanvin, Celine, Stella McCartney, Yves Saint Laurent, and more.
“The concept revolves around the idea of three tribes: Hard Leather, Tribal Street Wear, and Geometrics,” Enninful tells Style.com. “I wanted to play with masculine and feminine, androgyny is always a theme that works, and an exaggerated sense of color and proportion always creates exciting imagery.” Here, Style.com has an exclusive first look at the ad images and the accompanying campaign film.
Exclusive: Pre-Fall Prabal
After winning a large chunk of change from the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, Prabal Gurung decided it only seemed natural to launch a pre-fall collection.
“You have to do all four seasons at this point,” he says of his first pre-fall collection, debuting exclusively here on Style.com in this video made during his lookbook shoot with photographer Dan Martensen, who has worked with the likes of i-D, The New York Times, and The Last Magazine. “It’s a huge opportunity to introduce new categories and more sportswear pieces—it’s an incredibly important season.”
Here, Gurung’s girls Alana Zimmer, Hanne Gaby Odiele, Kate King, and Ming Xi (all have walked in his shows) model his latest efforts. “With this collection, I developed a particular print that I had taken a picture of. I had this printmaker in London that I was working with and it looks like a kaleidoscope,” Gurung tells Style.com, in between meticulously pintucking Zimmer’s dress and picking out the perfect pair of Linda Farrow shades with his longtime stylist, Tiina Laakkonen, as Rihanna blasts from the stereo in the background. “We worked to develop the image more and more and more. I didn’t want it to have the same floral idea of my Spring collection—if you look, it’s pretty from afar, but up close, it’s a little hard.” The kaleidoscope print appears throughout the collection, on featherweight T-shirts (his first), Lurex and cashmere jacquard knits, and multiple silk wool or silk georgette pieces in rich green and jet black.
A pre-fall collection isn’t the only new addition to his growing list of accomplishments—Gurung has been hard at work with his new duties as chief designer for ICB, a label that hasn’t been sold in the States for nearly a decade. “The design integrity, aesthetic, and what I believe in will be the same,” he says of his vision for the new ICB collection. “Obviously I come from the American couture background, but there’s also a side of me that lives in the East Village, you know? It will reflect that a little bit more, but not in an obvious East Village way; this will have more grit.”