Sunday 30 September 2012

'43 Paintings ...' by Roberto Cavalli Spring/Summer 2013

 


"43 paintings ... my creations to celebrate feminine sensuality". - Roberto Cavalli

You might expect Roberto Cavalli’s spring show to be a full-on cavalcade of animal print and sexy dresses with not much room for nuancing such alien fashion forces as the new covering up and big trousers. Yet, surprise: for perhaps two-thirds of the show, Cavalli showed his acquaintance with such potentially antisexy ideas as long tunics over trousers; the importance of having shirttails cover the rear; the new, stiffly wide-cut sleeve; and the mannish trouser.










As difficult as it may be for a hard-core maximalist to adapt to minimalist times, he set about it with a good grace, offering, at the beginning, serene (for him) layerings of embroidered white transparencies involving crystal, chiffon, and lace. What he showed underneath them was one in the eye for followers of the “clean Céline” school leather jeans slashed into horizontal strips or cut into an intricately flowery filigree of skin-revealing frayed lace. Say what you like, but those were bravura demonstrations of Cavalli house capabilities.

'The Roberto Cavalli Spring/Summer 2013 collection is inspired by the poetic decorations of the Art Nouveau period. Nature and its elements become graphic symbols that Roberto Cavalli transforms into prints which frame the body. The prints are designed entirely by hand and are punctuated with lace details, furrowed by high slits, and enriched by leather cut-outs.

The animal print backgrounds are superimposed with stylized elements of plant life. Layers of mousseline create a fluid silhouette which slides on the body. Precious metallic and glass embroideries dissolve at the bottom of the dresses, and alternate with lace that is cut and reconstructed, or leather that is sewed, incised, and decorated with appliqués.


The dresses in silk knit, lie close to the body and are illuminated by crystal embroidery. Pants in lightest mousseline allow the leg to show through. The colors range from total white to total black, passing through blush, lime and apricot.


On the runway the new Cavalli twin-set is composed of the gown and the Hera bag in matching prints. Like the mythological goddess protector of femininity, the new Hera bag guards the secrets, desires and seduction of the person who wears it. Made of printed leather or black python, and created in two sizes.


The limited edition Hedera sunglasses are created with the most sophisticated gold craftsmanship. The refined and sinuous lines, the precious materials and the floral detailing uncover the exotic charisma of Art Nouveau style decorations.' - The House of Roberto Cavalli

Moving on, past several beaded dresses, the collection dealt out fluid silk trousers and shirts in tendrilly, vaguely art nouveau prints. The most convincing house hybridization of mannish and hyperfeminine came when a lingerie-lace-trimmed silk camisole, vaguely anchored to the body with rouleau straps, was married with a loose pair of pants and some kind of chiffon panel that floated out at the back.








But what of the Cavalli house penchant for animal print? It was, naturally, impossible to repress, though more as an insinuation than a roar. The knowing way he used a single jacket and skirt suit matched with a bag in the same print was especially clever. That’s a spring trend that registers as in the “rather advanced” class.

As for evening? The Cavalli solution for the red carpet is unapologetic, unreconstructed sexiness all sheer beading and cutouts. Some of it might ring bells with anyone who’s seen Riccardo Tisci’s demi-naked beaded couture dresses recently, but there you go: When it gets down to thinking about how to display as much of a hot female body as possible, you can always trust an Italian.











































Selections by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories 

Photo Credits/Source: © VOGUE
Runway: Photography by © Marcus Tondo/GoRunway
Details: Photography by © Gianni Pucci/GoRunway



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Saturday 29 September 2012

PFW | DIOR Spring/Summer 2013 by Raf Simons


 



The austere elegance that was a hallmark of Raf Simons’s haute couture debut at the House of Dior, shown in Paris this July, could be sensed even before the first outfit from his first ready-to-wear for the House made its appearance. The audience was contained in a set clearly of Simons’ devising, with white-walled “rooms” with window openings that were veiled by drifts of very pale pastel organza curtaining. It was clean, refreshing, and had a certain modern poetry to it.

Enjoy the DIOR Spring/Summer 2013 fashion show at the end of this post! LoL, Andrea







































































Against this backdrop, Simons opened with a quartet of refined pantsuits the jackets’ full, bell-shaped peplum referencing the famous ensemble that Dior designed for his debut collection in spring 1947, and dubbed “Bar.” That fullness accentuated the lean pant. Flamboyance was contained to a satin organza scarf tied with a flourish at the neck, in Dior’s fetish tones of black, lipstick red, and rose pink.

The Bar jacket then appeared reworked as short little belling-skirted coatdresses in black or white or gray, their volume sometimes increased by the deft insertion of godets of sunray pleats, one of those Dior technical flourishes that Simons talked about backstage when he enthused about the excitement of being let loose with the legacy, and archives of the House. (Simons seems to have been drawn not only to the Bar silhouette, but also to Christian Dior’s emphatic A- and H-line collections).












He also played with the idea of the elaborate evening shorts that have swept the runways this season. There were asymmetric handkerchief point dresses worn over little black shorts, which the designer also paired with iconic Dior balldresses, with their seductively swathed necklines (now reimagined in iridescent nylons) abbreviating the ballooning skirts so that they revealed the little tailored black shorts worn underneath the effect owed a debt to Lacroix’s eighties puffballs. That iridescence was reflected in gleaming multihued metallic heels and in Pat McGrath’s exceptional makeup, with brilliant colored Cleopatra eye shadow, contoured and defined with a torrent of multicolored crystals.

Simons had an intriguing take on the season’s Op Art stripes and color blocking too, using those shiny colored synthetics to veil bandbox striped satin, or loosely folding or chopping up the stripes to create short dresses with a gentle A-line flare and an eye-popping presence. But there were longer line silhouettes as well, including some remarkable pencil-skirted evening dresses veiled with A-line tulle overdresses with embroidery down the front to create a mysterious play of shadow and trompe l’oeil. Intriguingly beautiful, too, were a brace of short pink or orange layered chiffon dresses with embroideries like the markings of a butterfly wing or an abstract artwork perhaps, and a cluster of three-dimension beaded embroideries like underwater sea urchins, weighting the peplum of one of those short Bar coatdresses.












The show closed with some New Age balldresses above-the-ankle ball skirts of hand-painted rose designs with a fifties motif, gleaming with a top layer of shining nylon, but sobered up with black turtleneck tops. It was fascinating to see Simons’s continued evolution at the House, this time around with more time to study and refine the codes established by Dior himself, and he rose quietly and elegantly to the challenge of reinterpreting Dior’s bravura signatures, such as those dramatic seasonal changes of “line,” the refinement and sophistication of technique (some of them Victorian revivals), and the lavish fabrications and embellishments in a way that remains potent and enticing for a twenty-first-century woman.






























Selections by ANDRA JANKE Finest Accessories

Photo Credit/Source: © VOGUE
Runway: Photography by © Yannis Vlamos/GoRunway
Details: Photography by © Alessandro Viero/GoRunway
Candids: Photography by © Kevin Tachman



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