11 posts tagged "Savile Row"
On Our Radar: GLASS
When it comes to swimwear for gents, there’s a new kid on the beach, repping a hip breed of shoreline swagger: New York City’s GLASS. “I kept thinking, What would both Gianni Agnelli and Jean-Michel Basquiat wear [to the pool]?” founder John Glass told Style.com. The designer, who grew up between New York, Martha’s Vineyard, and London whilst studying history and, as of late, working in branding at Tom Ford, is a man of varied interests. While in the U.K., he hung out with a Savile Row crew—even tagging along on trips to tweed mills in Scotland, obsessively educating himself on tailoring along the way. “I started the line because I felt that swimwear is like a blank canvas, allowing for creativity and originality across one product,” says Glass. His swimsuits are a departure from the formal three-piece looks of his past, but the designer’s wares boast a wide scope of studied, albeit quirky, prints, like a lo-fi Crayon Paisley and an Egyptian-funky Hieroglyphic Stripe. “Wear them anywhere you want to be happy,” suggests Glass. “From a sailboat in the Mediterranean to a hot day in NYC.” Glass debuted his line only last month, but he’s already planning for next season—keep your eyes peeled for potential pop-ups at Art Basel in Miami and Rio’s Carnival.
GLASS’s new trunks are available, starting today, on Moda Operandi.
From Savile Row To A Label Of Her Own—Just Don’t Look For Her Name On It
“I wanted it to be about the clothes, not my name in lights,” explains designer Paula Gerbase of her young line, named, somewhat obscurely, 1205. “1205 is just the day I was born, but more importantly, it’s four numbers that you can read in any language—you’re not wearing a person’s name on your back.”
Gerbase spent five years as head designer at Savile Row tailor Kilgour before launching her own line, an experience that put her in the thick of the real production of clothes. “I was always drawn to structure in terms of how I look at things,” she says. “I found my home when I arrived on Savile Row.” Her razor-sharp men’s and womenswear betrays her Savile Row leanings, as well as her obsession for keeping close to the hands making her clothes. “I wanted to know the guy who’s putting the buttons on and the one that does the sleeves, and the quality control girls always bantering,” she laughs. “I come in, they make me some terrible tea and we just have a chat.”
For her fourth collection, for Spring 2013, the London-based Central Saint Martins grad looked at Brazilian architecture and Marcel Gautherot’s collection of photographs documenting the construction of the Brazilian capital, Building Brasilia. Her favored contrast of sharpness and softness is exemplified in a photo of a uniformed construction worker leaning up against a building—and just as much in the 1205 clothes, which mix classic materials and newer ones, like a gray wool skirt given a slight crunch thanks to nylon yarn mixed in. A suede-looking jacket is not actually suede, but Alcantara, an interiors fabric—”You can drop coffee on it and then just wipe it clean!” Gerbase crows. That’s about as modern as traditional-seeming garments get. And if the clothes are upending tradition, the clients are following suit. “I’ve had men buying skirts to wear as kilts,” the designer says, “and I’ve had women wearing full-on men’s suits.”
1205 is available at LN-CC in London, ln-cc.com, as well as Beams, Isetan, Land of Tomorrow, and United Arrows in Japan. For more information, visit 1205.eu.
Brazil, By Way Of Britain
Raf Simons and Hedi Slimane’s new jobs sparked a flurry of conjecture about the impact on women’s fashion of designers who’d made their rep in menswear. And it’s not likely to die down any time soon because there are plenty more men’s designers waiting to cross over. Like Alexander Lewis, who trained as a pattern cutter on Savile Row (he worked at E. Tautz before going solo) but has chosen to launch his own business with a Resort collection for women. His name scarcely broadcasts Brazil, but that is, in fact, his family background, and his first collection is inspired by his girlfriends who may live in London or New York but who maintain a Brazilian nonchalance about the way they dress. “They mix the city, the beach and something from their boyfriends,” Lewis explains. That might mean a skirt with shirt-tails, or a swingy little crochet top that could go with shorts or a bikini, or an item Lewis calls a beach coat (though it’s a little luxe to expose to sand and salt water). Brazil makes its presence felt in some of the designer’s techniques, particularly that crochet, and a silk woven inspired by the way that straw is woven in Brazilian furniture. But there’s nothing geographical about Lewis’s pragmatism. “I know exactly what I wanted to do,” he says. “I decided to focus on pre-collections for the first few seasons, because they’re a little more commercial, and I don’t have to do a show. And also, I see what I do as situational, rather than seasonal.” The situation being, in his case, both his family’s beach house in Bahia, and his own stomping ground in London. Bold to try and bring the two together.
Versace Announces Its Couture Runway Show, Diego Della Valle’s Speedy New Train, And More…
Donatella Versace has announced July 1 as the date for the Atelier Versace runway show after making a quiet return to the Paris Couture calendar last season with a small presentation. This time around, the label will have two shows at the Ritz Paris—the location of Gianni Versace’s last runway show in 1997. [WWD]
An Abercrombie & Fitch on Savile Row? Not if the staffers at The Chap magazine can help it. The Chap employees dressed up in three-piece suits and staged a demonstration against Abercombie to express their discontent with the retailer for opening on the famed bespoke tailoring street. [Styleite]
Tod’s chief Diego Della Valle unveiled his new high-speed train service, the NTV Italo, this past weekend in Italy. The train, developed with Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo, will run through nine cities and includes all the works, such as seats made of Poltrona Frau hides, gourmet Eataly delicacies, and a cinema coach. [WWD]
Victoria Beckham is lending her support to young designer Christopher Raeburn. Though she is known to step out in her own designs, Beckham recently bought one of Raeburn’s waterproof jackets and “tweeted a picture of herself in Beijing standing next to one of Raeburn’s inflatable squirrel installations,” according to British Vogue. [Vogue U.K.]
More Details Emerge On London’s Menswear Week
After cramming a city’s worth of menswear offerings into a single MAN Day for the last few seasons, London is planning to give its standout men’s offerings a bit more room to breathe. The first men’s-only London fashion collections (technically three days, rather than a few weeks) will take place June 15 to 17, with opening programs including a launch event hosted by Prince Charles. In addition to the young London designers who have been showing on MAN DAY—like J.W. Anderson, James Long, Topman, Lou Dalton, and Christopher Shannon—the new opportunity has lured several U.K. brands back to their home turf, including Pringle of Scotland and Nicole Farhi, who have been showing in Milan, and Dunhill. E. Tautz, Hardy Amies, and Richard James will show ready-to-wear collections on Savile Row, and Richard Nicoll (pictured) will debut a menswear collection. The full schedule is now available at www.londoncollections.co.uk.