19 posts tagged "Rei Kawakubo"
Phoebe English’s Dover Street Galaxy
From the Keith Haring installation to a giant Barbie display to entire worlds created by Tim Walker, Gilbert & George, Chanel, and Lanvin, the windows of Rei Kawakubo’s London concept boutique Dover Street Market (which is slotted to open in New York later this year) have become somewhat of an institution. So when the storefront is lent to a young designer, it’s a veritable rite of passage. Earlier this year, rising star Simone Rocha built an Irish wilderness behind Dover Street’s glass facade. And today, Phoebe English—a 27-year old Central Saint Martins graduate who won the coveted L’Oréal Professional award upon her graduation in 2011—takes the stage, mounting her first project for the shop. “They were my first stockist,” said English, who’s now been selling at Dover Street for four seasons. “We’ve been working on this for a long time. And it’s been very challenging because it’s such a different thing than putting together a collection.”
English has a penchant for combining unexpected materials in her wares—synthetic hair and strips of rubber, for example. So naturally, her installation, a giant, ethereal icy-blue orb that combines shreds of fabric and glass beads from her Spring ’13 collection (above, left), follows suit. “It’s a bit of a play on contradiction. I liked that the solidity of the sphere contrasted against the irregular textiles and beads,” she explained, noting that her sculpture had an intergalactic inspiration (“I quite like planets and stars,” she giggled). As for why she decided to forgo a clothing-based display, English offered, “I felt that it would be too literal. Dover Street is such a creative garment-based space already, and it felt right to push my creative thought in a new direction.” English’s windows will be on view through May 29, and her Spring ’13 collection is available now at Dover Street Market’s London boutique.
Chic In The Twenty-First Century
Around the Style.com offices and among most fashion circles, being described as “chic” might be the ultimate compliment. But what does the term really mean these days? As part of the Met’s ongoing “Good Taste/Bad Taste: The Evolution of Contemporary Chic” discussion series, 16-year-old blogger Tavi Gevinson (pictured, left) and 90-year-old style icon Iris Apfel (pictured, right) took a stab at defining it in their own terms yesterday afternoon. The word itself was used sparsely during the hour-long conversation, which was moderated by New York writer Judith Thurman. Instead the teen wunderkind blogger and the self-described “geriatric starlet” approached the concept by offering their thoughts on personal style, fashion as performance art, and fashion’s evolving concept of beauty.
Step number one to becoming fashion’s latest pop star: “It’s important not to give a damn about what anyone else thinks,” offered Apfel. “Personal style is something you have to evolve for yourself, and trying to find out who you are is like putting yourself on a psychiatric couch.” And sometimes, as Gevinson pointed out, fashion is about creating a persona because you don’t always want to be yourself. “It’s true, good fashion is good performance art,” said Apfel. And oftentimes, those characters they assume aren’t about being aesthetically pleasing. “Sometimes, I don’t care about being attractive,” said Gevinson, referring to the Rei Kawakubo or the Alexander McQueen school of fashion, where the unconventional silhouettes aren’t often intended to make their wearers look beautiful in the standard sense of the word. To that point, Apfel disagreed: “The first object is that it’s practical. I see no sense to pay a fortune and end up looming like a freak,” she said. “Having bumps all over is not the loveliest look. I can look ugly on my own and it won’t cost me a penny.”
Both of them, with perhaps equally quirky styles of dressing, were eager to discuss alternative beauty and defining it for oneself. “I was probably the oldest living broad that was allowed to be the face of a cosmetic company [with MAC]. I think things are changing and there is an undercover revolution that will break out pretty soon,” said Apfel. “Why be stopped because of number?” At that, the audience showed its approval with a big round of applause. Although the two speakers have decades separating them, it was certainly a cry that Gevinson could understand from the opposite end of the age spectrum. At 16, she hasn’t let her young age stop her from catching the attention of some fashion’s highest powers. “Iris has been the subject of many exhibition and you are a little young for a retrospective just yet, but it appears you are certainly on your way,” said Thurman. “If you were asked to do a Costume Institute exhibit, what would it be?” Gevinson’s response: “I am a big fan of the blog Advanced Style and I would like to do something celebrating getting older—women are so upset about that these days.” For her part, Apfel was ready to sign on the dotted line. Is 90 the new 20?
The 2012 CFDA Award Winners
Check back tomorrow to watch our complete live coverage. Photos from throughout the night, here.
WOMENSWEAR DESIGNER OF THE YEAR
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen for The Row
MENSWEAR DESIGNER OF THE YEAR
Billy Reid
ACCESSORY DESIGNER OF THE YEAR
Reed Krakoff
SWAROVSKI AWARD FOR WOMENSWEAR
Joseph Altuzarra (pictured)
SWAROVSKI AWARD FOR MENSWEAR
Phillip Lim
SWAROVSKI AWARD FOR ACCESSORY DESIGN
Tabitha Simmons
GEOFFREY BEENE LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Tommy Hilfiger
INTERNATIONAL AWARD
Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons
MEDIA AWARD
Scott Schuman and Garance Doré
FOUNDERS AWARD
Andrew Rosen
FASHION ICON AWARD
Johnny Depp
On Our Radar: Westward Leaning
In this week’s Rei Kawakubo tribute on Style.com, Taylor Tomasi Hill wears lots of covetable Comme pieces, but she’s also sporting a pair of neon orange reflective shades from Westward Leaning that might be catching your fancy. We’ve had our eyes on (or behind, rather) these sunglasses since the San Francisco-based label launched in March, and more recently, Style.com’s market director, Marina Larroude, featured a pair of the unisex mirrored lenses in her Techno Beach story. Now they’re giving us more to love—they have just unveiled the neon style with white frames ($165). And you can feel good buying them because this is a brand with vision; for every pair sold, Westward Leaning donates to $10 to the specific charity associated with each style.
Comme D’Habitude
For the 12 fashion obsessives I met and photographed for Style.com’s tribute to Rei Kawakubo, this year’s CFDA International Award honoree, wearing Comme des Garçons is a badge of honor and a signal of membership in what amounts to a secret society. (It is also, for many of them, an everyday occurrence. Business comme d’habitude, you could say—as usual.) Kawakubo is one of fashion’s most sphinxlike practitioners: no interviews, no inspirations, no chummy glad-handing backstage after the show. What’s fascinating about Comme is that it is its own only explanation, however you choose to wear it—whether perfectly in line with convention or, for some, at war with it. Each person profiled managed to make Comme their own, which, as far as I’m concerned, is an incredible litmus test for any label. It’s also a reminder that—though this is a tired cliché—fashion can be, and often is, art. It’s a sentiment I heard over and over again while discussing CDG with its devotees, like Carolyn Wade (pictured), the Birmingham-based art collector who likes her Comme as shocking as possible. If that occasionally raises eyebrows, as with her famous Spring ’97 “bumps” look, it has also endeared her to other artists. Wade wore the look we photographed her in at a benefit in New York years ago when she ran into the late, great artist Robert Rauschenberg, who assumed from her outfit that she was a dancer with Merce Cunningham. (Cunningham had costumed his dancers in the same dresses.) When she ran into Rauschenberg at a second benefit at the Guggenheim the following week, she happened to be wearing it again. “I said, if I’d known I’d see you twice in the same week, I would have worn a different dress,” she told me with a laugh. “He said, go in the bathroom, turn that on the wrong side, and you’ll have a different dress.” She didn’t take him up on the suggestion, but I persuaded her to give it a try. The result is at left. Inside out or right side in, it’s an original. If you ask me—and I suspect any of our 12 subjects—they’d tell you that’s what makes it Comme, too.