Best Dressed Of The Week - 21/4/2011

THREE Victoria's Secret models star in this week's Best Dressed list: May Andersen, Alessandra Ambrosio and Selita Ebanks. While May was working a classy tone-on-tone look for lunch in New York, Selita was doing the opposite wearing the colour blocking trend in Las Vegas; and Alessandra Ambrosio was working a different look altogether - a Rebecca Taylor sun dress at Coachella.

SEE THE WEEK'S BEST DRESSED PEOPLE

Also at Coachella was Kate Bosworth, who wore Topshop and Current/Elliot, and Camilla Belle, who was in Ralph Lauren - see all the Coachella looks here.

Elsewhere, Dame Helen Mirren and Russell Brand both chose Dolce & Gabbana for the London premiere of their film, Arthur; while Robert Pattinson was in Gucci and Reese Witherspoon wore a Jason Wu dress for the red carpet outing of Water for Elephants in New York.

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YMI Fall 2011 Runway Show

YMI is in the midst of growing from a jeans label to a lifestyle brand, and on April 3, the Los Angeles–based juniors fashion brand gave an update on its fashion progress with a runway show of its Fall 2011 collection at Exchange L.A. in downtown Los Angeles.

YMI’s 45-look show was divided into three parts: animal prints, jeans and glam rock. The animal-print segment featured tank tops and T-shirts with leopard prints, as well as faux-fur outerwear bearing giraffe prints. Outerwear silhouettes featured hoodie-like coats. Another look was a dress with metal studs and sequins intended to look like animal markings.

YMI started in 2000 with a denim focus, and for much of the show, YMI displayed what was next for its jeans looks. They included anklet jeans with 27-inch and 29-inch inseams. There were trouser-style jeans, many with a dark wash, and the microflare, which is something of a mix between stillpopular skinny jeans and flared jeans, which are forecast to be the popular denim body of 2011 and beyond. From calf down, the microflare is fitted like a skinny jean. But from waist to calf, the jean has the looser body of a flare jean. Tops displayed in this segment featured a bandeau style.

With the David Bowie tune “Suffragette City” blaring in the background, the show’s glam rock segment was intended to evoke the sizzle of the glam rock scene of the early 1970s. With YMI’s treatment of this fashion look, it showed tops and jeans bearing sequins, studs, lace and leather jackets as well as T-shirts with rock ’n’ roll graphics such as two glossed-over lips.

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Street style at Paris Fashion Week

What are the fashion pack wearing to the Paris Fashion Week shows?

Layering is key when walking between shows - this fashion show-goer mixes textures for warmth with leather over fur over a cotton shirt.

The fruit trend shows no signs of stopping - this fashionista comes over all Anna Dello Russo with a crystal-embellished slice of melon on her
hairb


Gone are the days when socks or tights and open-toe shoes were a fashion faux pas - these colour-pop platforms brighten up some black opaques.and.

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Nashville Fashion Week

Step back New York, Milan, London, and Paris - there’s a new fashion week in town: Nashville.  I know what you’re thinking, how could a relatively small town known for honky tonks and country music boast an amazing fashion week?  Well, we pulled it off and had a fabulous week which included fashion powerhouses like Christian Siriano and Kelly Cutrone!

Here were my top five highlights of the week:
1) Christian Siriano
Flowing gowns, perfect fabric, and over-the-top pieces encompassed Siriano’s collection.  The silhouettes and use of texture were absolutely breath-taking!

2) Kelly Cutrone Workshop
Seeing Kelly Cutrone speak was so inspiring and frankly, she was the opposite of how she comes across on television.  I found her to be compassionate, real, and extremely kind.  She spoke about her life and what it takes to make it in the fashion industry and also came to most of the fashion shows throughout the week! 

3) T. Rains by Traver Rains
Feathers, fur, and lots of bare legs flowed down the runway at the spectacular T. Rains show.  This was by far the most provocative and fun collection of the whole week!

4) White Rabbit
Local designer Shea Steele wowed crowds with her beautiful collection.  I was completely in love with her pieces and found it to be the most wearable collection of the week – you better believe I’ll be hopping over to her store Local Honey to pick up some these perfectly chic pieces.

5) Steven Oo
Steven Oo’s collection was filled with amazing knitwear and beautiful neutrals.  Seeing this collection made we want cozy up in a gorgeous piece of knit wear and go conquer the fashion world!

Read More at http://www.vogue.in/content/nashville-fashion-week

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Acne Designs

Jonny Johansson sent a mixed message with today's show of Acne Studio’s womenswear. "Nothing retro, no references," he said of the clothes, after a presentation that had taken place in Apartment 1A, Princess Margaret's old digs at Kensington Palace, about as retro a location as the Establishment allows. Photographs of old-school glamour-puss Margaret by then-husband Lord Snowdon covered the walls, and the distant thumping was surely the sound of her flipping in her grave as a parade of serious teens filed by in Acne's casually diffident clothing. You could imagine the old girl snarling, "Damn hippies." That was, after all, partly the reaction Johansson was courting.

Asked to define what was "Swedish" about the clothes, the designer answered, "Spiritual, natural… hippie." The question of identity was a valid one, because it is actually quite hard to discern just what makes Acne distinctive—and yet it's a wardrobe staple for an impressive number of stylish women. Here, they would have latched onto the languor of a lo-o-o-ong red sweater over a floor-length tube. If they fancied layering up in blue, there was a navy knit over a floating chiffon shirt and leggings. If they wanted something up-to-the minute, there was a look that echoed the vintage bathing suit-cum-playsuit that is popping up all over for Spring.

Anyone looking for a harder edge—or maybe a flavor of Acne's former collaboration with Lanvin—could settle on the silver python-print shift with the big zipper that Alber Elbaz loves so much. There was tough glamour in leathers studded with freshwater black pearls. And there was an interesting backstory in other skins that had been embossed with Samoan motifs by a new collaborator, a female tattoo artist. And maybe that all adds up to a brand of distinction.

Read More at http://www.vogue.in/

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3.1 Phillip Lim Designs

"Is that part of the skirt?"

"Well, it's a dress here, and the apron goes on top. So it's, like, is it one piece? Two pieces? Three pieces? The apron really abstracts the negative space and changes the silhouette."

That's a brief excerpt from a preview conversation last week with Phillip Lim, in which he explained his puzzle-piece concept: Backless, side-less, and bottomless garments all somehow came together to form a full look. It was certainly an ambitious gambit, not easy to pull off, but it made for one of the best and most refined 3.1 collections to date.

The most important thing Lim did right was to not stray from the very familiar ground of clean sportswear, and to keep the palette neutral. He also developed his idea of spatial abstraction by playing with sheers, resulting in some of the best experiments with the trend we've seen this week. The backs of leather-paillette-covered T-shirts were done in see-through organza; nude tulle shifts were embroidered with five varieties of black lace; and the trench was given a chic new spin in translucent organza, edged in black and covered in little bobbing threads.

There was definitely a greater sense of luxury, particularly in the beautiful silk menswear tailoring. (Perhaps those looks betrayed his admiration for the tailoring on last season's Paris runways. Or perhaps we're seeing the influence of Nancy Rohde, the stylist and Dries Van Noten consultant who worked on the collection and was Lim's first-ever show stylist.) Another thing Lim has going for him, of course, is that he will always offer the nicer price, and that should propel the bags and shoes that debuted here today into the retail stratosphere.

 

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