Dave Hogan/Getty ImagesAdele accepts her Best British Female Award from Kylie Minogue.

Dave Hogan/Getty ImagesAdele attends the 2012 Brit Awards.

On Tuesday, the Brit Awards, England’s version of the Grammys, fell near the end of London Fashion Week, and the first winner of the night, for best solo female artist, went to (no surprise) Adele.

She accepted the award in a black dress with a sheer top that had been designed by Burberry, and said — rather puzzlingly — to the person giving her the award, Kylie Minogue, “I feel like a drag queen next to you.”

Still, she looked great, and the only question of the night was not how many more awards she would win, but how many times she would change outfits. At the Grammys last week, she appeared in three different dresses, including one by Burberry and one by Armani.

Source: blogs.nytimes.com

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Stuart Emmrich/The New York Times.Fashion hopefuls at Somerset House.

Never is the grim drabness of New York Fashion Week — from the corporate, auto-show-like setting of Lincoln Center to the drafty, soul-deadening showrooms along barren stretches of the Hudson River waterfront — more apparent than when you come to London Fashion Week for a few days.

True, the star power isn’t as great. You won’t find many actresses here shopping for an Oscar dress or millionaire rap stars establishing their fashion cred. (The biggest celebrity news of the week: a singer named Pixie Lott stormed out of the Mulberry show because she had to sit in the second row, and not in the first, along with two of the “Downton Abbey” girls. “Not Pixie Geldof,” a British friend helpfully explained when I expressed some bewilderment. “The other one.”)

Regis Colin/NowFashion.com.Burberry Prorsum, fall 2012.

But the pleasure of these shows comes largely from London itself. There is the Thames-side setting of one of the central venues, Old Billingsgate Market, where you can spend the 30 minutes before the show begins watching boats churn their way past the Tower of London, rather than staring at yet another set of blank concrete walls, slowly losing your mind. And there’s the spectacular tent set up in Kensington Gardens for the Burberry show, complete with artificial rain, and the historic, gorgeous Somerset House, where dozens of fashion hopefuls gather each day, desperate for a glance of Anna Wintour.

On Tuesday, having gotten the time of the Meadham Kirchhoff show wrong, I showed up two hours early. No problem. It gave me time to wander the streets of the East End, down charming paths called Pudding Lane and Cheapside, and where the mix of 21st- and 17th-century architecture is exhilarating.

Stuart Emmrich/The New York TimesSt. Dunstan Garden

At one point, I stumbled onto a tiny garden, surrounded by four stone walls but no roof. A plaque informed me that it was the remains of a Christopher Wren church built in 1697 and called St. Dunstan. It was a beautiful, contemplative space, and for the next half hour, I sat there in blissful solitude, happily waiting for the next show to begin.

It sure beat the Starbucks across from Lincoln Center.

If you’re attending London Fashion Week, we want to see your street style photos. Send them to us, here.

Source: blogs.nytimes.com

In London, More to See Than Just Clothes is a post from: DM Art Studio

“Why me?” shouted the photographer, laden down with his equipment, as he was evicted from a crowded elevator by a security guard moments before the Jonathan Saunders show was scheduled to begin here in London on Sunday evening.

Told he had brought the weight limit of the elevator over its recommended level and would have to wait for another, he pointed at another photographer who was allowed to stay, and wailed again, “Why me?”

Why indeed.

There is always a show going on at the fashion weeks in New York, London, Paris and Milan, and the one guarantee is that you’ll have plenty of time to watch it. I’m not talking about the display of the collections themselves — that blur of fabric, technique and glamour that goes by in about seven or eight minutes. I’m talking about the endless time spent waiting, usually a half an hour or more, before the show actually begins, and you Lget to watch the preening, the positioning and the star-gazing that goes on in the audience, all the while wondering why you can’t get cellphone service.

The one thing you can count on is that, no matter how late you are to a show, you are never too late for it to begin.

Until, of course, you are.

Earlier that day, my London cabbie — a tribe usually famous for knowing every nook and cranny of the city — got lost on the way to the Thomas Tait show in the East End. We arrived about 20 minutes late, only to find that the show had actually begun without us, and we were locked outside.

It’s an interesting experience to watch — or not watch — a fashion show from behind closed doors. It all feels familiar. The pounding music that accompanies the models walking down the runway, the rhythmic applause that you know signals the finale, the whoops and hollers that you know mean that the designer has made a brief appearance, and with it the sheepish wave and the relieved smile that let the audience know they can now race out of their seats and make their way to the next show across town.

Since I had missed the show, I chatted with Thomas Tait backstage for a bit, while an assistant showed me pieces from the collection. The young designer seemed happy with the reaction — and it had sounded genuinely appreciative — but expressed frustration that he was still finding it hard to crack the United States market, and, in fact, had yet to find a single New York store to carry his line.

“It’s very difficult,” he said, explaining that, as a small designer, he was producing clothes that many of the American buyers found too expensive for their customer. But, he added, he was beginning to see glimmers of interest from a few more stores, and from a few of the key editors, and hoped that more of them would eventually find their way to his showroom, suggesting that not many had made the trek this time.

And, in fact, though I spotted my colleague from T, Sally Singer, coming out of the show, I saw none of the other major editors or retail executives I had become accustomed to seeing over the course of the fashion weeks in New York and Paris.

Joel Ryan/Associated PressAnna Wintour before the Jonathan Saunders show during London Fashion Week.

A few hours later, however, the front row at Jonathan Saunders was filled with the usual heavy hitters: Anna Wintour and the Vogue contingent, Glenda Bailey from Harper’s Bazaar, Lynn Yeager from New York Magazine, plus some key retailers.

Panicked over having missed the Tait show, I had made it to Saunders right on time. Of course that meant I had about 30 minutes to cool my heels until the first model came out.

I spent most of that time chatting with Suzy Menkes of the IHT, who was telling me about the Stella McCartney dinner the night before. It sounded like fun, with a star-studded crowd and a magician doing party tricks.

But while that gathering of the fashion elite was taking place, I was stuck in a late-night queue at Heathrow, behind about 300 people waiting to go through customs. There were only three officials there to handle the crowd — government cutbacks as part of the David Cameron austerity budget I assume — and it took me nearly two hours to get my passport stamped, and I didn’t exit the airport until nearly 11 p.m. There would be no Stella McCartney dinner, nor even time to make last orders at a pub. (“Why me?” I felt like shouting. “Why me?”)

Joel Ryan/Associated PressA models and the London skyline during the Jonathan Saunders show. 

At one point Suzy and I looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows, with their sweeping view of the East End, and with the setting sun glancing off the shimmering surface of the building known as the Gherkin.

“It’s very beautiful, isn’t it,” she said. It was indeed. We sat there in silence, just looking at the view.

And then the show started. Finally.

Source: blogs.nytimes.com

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Valerio Mezzanotti/NowFashion.comRalph Lauren, fall 2012.

The theme song from “Downton Abbey” set the tone for where Ralph Lauren was going this morning.

Valerio Mezzanotti/NowFashion.comRalph Lauren.

The look wasn’t exactly dowager countess, or anything like the scene in which the family reacts to Lady Sybil’s harem pants, but you got a hunting-in-the-moors feeling from Mr. Lauren’s glen plaids, tweeds, argyle stockings and cloche hats. There was also a bit of “The Great Gatsby” thrown in for good measure, and then the soundtrack switched to the strings of “Eleanor Rigby,” and things got just a touch mod. The all-gray glen plaid checks on double-breasted coats and suits were offset by the pop of colorful mittens and scarves, in pink, purple or red.

This season, Mr. Lauren also got into character, taking his bow in a gray suit and tie.

Source: blogs.nytimes.com

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Valerio Mezzanotti/NowFashion.comBrood, fall 2012.

Brood, a new label started by Serkan Sarier in 2010, showed his fourth collection within the confines of Fashion Week this season, rather than waiting until everyone’s back from Paris, as he has in the past. He was ready for the challenge.

Mr. Sarier, a former assistant to designers like Emanuel Ungaro and Olivier Theyskens, favors a look that combines elements from couture and sport, meaning his evening dresses and jackets, sold at Barneys New York, are usually trimmed with a lot of hardware, drawstrings and zippers so they can be put together and worn in several different ways.

Valerio Mezzanotti/NowFashion.comBrood.

For his show today, he added a lot: prints, which looked like repeating squares of cobalt marble; shadowed florals on diaphanous dresses, and a group of multilayered pieces made of gold-bonded knits. A halter dress had a skirt of soft pleats and zippers across the chest, while a jacket had drawstrings at the waist that, when drawn, gathered the fabric in a way that created a sort of natural peplum.

Mr. Sarier said that he had been looking at the work of two artists, the sculptor Lynn Chadwick and the more contemporary paintings of Glenn Brown. Their styles are vastly different.

“I tried to make a collection that merged these opposites into one idea,” he said.

Source: blogs.nytimes.com

Brood’s Converging Ideas is a post from: DM Art Studio

Strict combinations of black and white emerged on the runways this week as a cooling counterpoint to the riotously clashing colors and patterns surfacing in so many shows. In some collections, the positive/negative looks carried a whiff of the hard-edged early 1960s (think Emma Peel), while in others it conjured still-earlier times.

Designer’s reference points included the stark chiaroscuro of 1920s and ‘30s cinema, a style resurrected late last year in “The Artist,” whose imagery continues to exert an impact. Marc Jacobs dipped even farther back for inspiration, subtly conjuring the Edwardian era in a curvaceous black-and-white ensemble and outsize zebra hat that called to mind Cecil Beaton’s high camp costumes for “My Fair Lady.”

He captured a darker mood in his Marc by Marc Jacobs presentation, showing a trim black jumper, cream tone blouse and slickly visored “Night Porter” cap.

Others, like Derek Lam, Reed Krakoff, and Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCullough of Proenza Schouler, largely abandoned autumn’s conventional earth tones in favor of snowy hues cast into sharp relief by strategically placed black borders and trims. And a few designers seemed be trying to banish autumn outright, showing a series of black-and-white nomadic motifs that made the very notion of shifting seasons suddenly seem passé.

Source: blogs.nytimes.com

A Cooling Counterpoint is a post from: DM Art Studio

Valerio Mezzanotti/NowFashion.comProenza Schouler, fall 2012.

IT’S easy to identify the best moment of Fashion Week. In the blacked-out setting for the Calvin Klein show on Thursday, the actresses Emma Stone (in red) and Rooney. Mara (in black) took their front-row places next to Emmanuelle Alt and Franca Sozzani, the editors respectively of French Vogue and Italian Vogue. Ms. Alt’s usual game face for a show is either one of mild boredom or profound boredom. At Calvin, her expression was somewhere in between, and while most of the journalists in the room would have been eager to chat up Ms. Mara, Ms. Alt barely acknowledged her.

Things got stranger when Eric Wilson, of The New York Times, tried to speak to Ms. Mara after the show about the Oscars (a lot of people are interested in what she will wear) and got a brushoff. One of the most sought-after actresses is sitting at a press event, surrounded by sophisticated editors and writers, and she pulls a Garbo. Priceless.

Valerio Mezzanotti/NowFashion.comAltuzarra, fall 2012.

Identifying the best fall collections is a bit harder. I don’t have a single, hands-down favorite, though Ralph Lauren comes pretty close because the clothes were done with such polish. Also, for Mr. Lauren, there’s something of an inside-joke element to doing a show that makes reference to “Downton Abbey.” I also liked Marc Jacobs’s show — the set and swirling white runway conceived by the artist Rachel Feinstein — but his own expression seemed muffled by an excess of clothes. And this season I wasn’t struck by a blast of originality, though I thought Proenza Schouler and Altuzarra made bold statements about how to look next fall.

So, with those qualifiers, here are the collections and looks from New York that fed my eye.

Despite the overtones of Céline and Balenciaga in the Proenza show, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez make a persuasive case for an extreme proportion — a boxy jacket with wide-leg trousers — with a street attitude. Almost everything I thought looked relevant at Fashion Week had street credibility, no matter if the fabrics were specially created and probably costly. I loved the oversize shirts (essentially a big T-shirt) that Mr. Hernandez and Mr. McCollough did in lacquered lace with an exposed zipper at one side, so you could leave the top partly untucked. That shape could be developed in more accessible fabrics.

Joseph Altuzarra’s red-dot print trousers and blouses were unusual, and I liked the combination with sophisticated, tough coats and tight, over-the-knee black boots. The style reflected not only a mature sensibility but also one with European roots. Mr. Altuzarra brought something of his own to Fashion Week.

I loved collections where the notions of femininity and age-appropriateness were quite expansive. Among those designers whose clothes could relate to a lot of women and different body types were Narciso Rodriguez, Diane Von Furstenberg, L’Wren Scott (especially her long-sleeve dresses), Michael Kors, Derek Lam, Rodarte. Laura and Kate Mulleavy’s relaxed dresses and striped coats for Rodarte have the gall of being normal, and flattering on a woman of any age.

Source: blogs.nytimes.com

The Best of New York Fashion Week is a post from: DM Art Studio

Hiroko Masuike for The New York TimesBackstage at Calvin Klein, fall 2012.

The girl from “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” was at the show with the models whose hair looked like that of the girl from “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”

Did I just blow your mind? If not, the Calvin Klein collection probably will.

But first, the girl. Rooney Mara, the Oscar nominee whom all of fashion wants to dress, was there in a sleeveless black shift with a basket-weave detail at the neckline. She sat next to Emma Stone, in a red sleeveless shift and matching shoes. Last November, Ms. Mara introduced Calvin Klein himself at the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund dinner, so you might suspect the house is wooing her.

Stuart Emmrich/The New York TimesRooney Mara (in black dress) at the Calvin Klein show.

Had she made up her mind about what she was wearing to the Oscars, I asked her, as she got up from her seat. She shook her head, a response that could be interpreted either as “Why, no, but thank you for asking, kind sir,” or, “Buzz off, before I get all Lisbeth Sander on you.”

The Calvin Klein company sure seems to be trying. Some of the models wore their hair in severely shorn inky black bobs, kind of a tribute to their honored guest. The crew had spent two days painting every square inch of the show space black, perhaps to make her feel more at home. And Francisco Costa, the designer, personally showed Ms. Mara the collection backstage.

That said, these were probably not Oscar dresses. Mr. Costa showed many dresses and coats that stood away from the body, but there were also some slim looks in black leather and beads that are the closest thing to evening wear he has shown on a runway in some years. There were also coats and jackets held closed with thick silver belts, and a technical wool tweed fabric that looked like bouclé.

Lucas Jackson/Reuters; Kirsten Luce for The New York TimesDespite the Occupy Wall Street protesters antifashion stance, one was wearing a knit owl cap that looked almost identical to the ones that were in Anna Sui’s show last night.

In other news, the reported plans of Occupy Wall Street protesters to disrupt the show turned out to be vastly overstated. It was never really clear why they would target Calvin Klein in the first place, given that the majority of the company’s business, like underwear and T-shirts, is solidly aimed at the 99 percent.

A crowd of two protesters who arrived before the show had swelled to four by the time it was over. And despite their antifashion stance, one of them was wearing a knit owl cap that looked almost identical to the ones that were in Anna Sui’s show last night.

Source: blogs.nytimes.com

The Girl With the Front Row Seat is a post from: DM Art Studio

“That was uplifting!” said an editor leaving the Proenza Schouler show on Wednesday night in Chelsea.

Indeed.

The fall shows have needed a good, solid jolt, and Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez did that with a terrific collection that had a number of influences. Backstage, the designers said they were interested in the idea of protection — not just in the sense of covering up. “It’s also about escaping,” Mr. Hernandez said.

Most obviously woven leather skirts and boxy jackets suggested protection; the weaves, in combinations of red, cobalt and black, were quite dense, almost like an industrial mat. The skirts were short and worn a bit low on the waist, with a side slit. The textures were impressive — you really weren’t sure if the material was leather or vinyl — but the most striking aspect of the collection, I think, was the proportion.

The opening outfits consisted of boxy, asymmetrically closed jackets in a heavy white cotton pique worn over a white poplin mini dress or wide-leg trousers in the same heavy pique. Of course, that suggests protective gear but there was a stronger Japanese influence in the cut of the jackets. There were also some great-looking shirts — essentially, an oversized T-shirt — in lacquered fabrics, with a zipper down one side that was partially opened. These were shown with short skirts. Accessories included block-heel booties that repeated the lattice effect and stiff, knee-high black leather boots. There were also a number of flat clutches covered in what looked like fur.

Source: blogs.nytimes.com

Proenza Schouler: Force Field is a post from: DM Art Studio

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