Spring 2014 Fashion Week: Victoria Beckham, Fausto Puglisi, Vivienne Westwood Red Label, and Chris Kane.

Previously on Spring 2014: Ralph Lauren, Theyskens' Theory, Duro Olowu and Tom Ford.

Fausto Puglisi
I love it when designers attempt to describe their new collection in one simple soundbite. It's Stonehenge meets The Hamptons! It's Hollywood meets Star Wars! It's Kraftwerk meets The Craft! Fausto Puglisi attempted to jazz up his first catwalk show by labeling it with the deliciously meaningless publicity soundbite of "Carolina Herrera meets Axl Rose". Thank you, thank you! These clothes are definitely just like a cross between an aging, unwashed douche-rocker, and a super-feminine couture gown designer. What a great description. (In that they are relatively normal-looking skirts and dresses, with a slight leatherwork element. NAILED IT.)

All images via Style.com.

You may be shocked to learn that Fausto Puglisi is a man. He also seems to be somewhat unfamiliar with the concept of breasts. Like for example, this "harness bra" (LOL) may have been manufactured by Tuscan saddlemakers, but that doesn't mean it's very well-designed as an item of boob-regalia. Don't get me wrong! It looks pretty cool, in a bondage/punk kinda way. But there are some things that are just so uncomfortable-looking that, even as a fashion nerd, I have to take a step back and say, "Steady on, pal." First of all, only a tiny fraction of the female population are flat-chested enough for this whole harness bra idea to be a remotely plausible life choice. Secondly, why would you put a tight leather buckle strap directly over your nipples? I guess it would be slightly better if worn over a shirt, but I'm pretty sure that would be the socks-and-sandles of the bra world, and therefore kind of a faux pas.

Threeasfour, Fall 2013: The 13th sign of the zodiac.

Thirteen outfits long, this collection was based on the signs of the Zodiac. Technically Ophiucus, the so-called thirteenth Zodiac sign, is actually a Zodiac constellation and therefore not directly connected to the exacting and fact-based science that is astrology, but whatevs. The combination of mysticism and stargazing made for an intriguing mix, resulting in some excellent sci-fi priestess outfits: one for each sign.

pics from Style.com

Sadly I couldn't work out which was which. The first was Ophiucus, but where did it go from there? Perhaps there's someone out there with some more astrology expertise who can help me out. But I don't think the designs are very literal. There certainly wasn't any single outfit out there that reminded me specifically of a bull, a ram, or a pair of twins.

A Youtube guide to New York Fashion Week.

Thanks to the snow storm that buried New York this weekend, watching Fashion Week from the comfort of your laptop is suddenly seeming a lot more appealing than being among the models and movie stars who have to freeze their extremities on the red carpet.

Not every Mercedes-Benz FashionWeek show is available online (this season, anyway), but there are still many to watch each day, including such big names as Vera Wang and Oscar de la Renta. If you don’t have time in your schedule for livestream viewings, we already have a few recommendations from the first couple of days of shows...

(READ MORE)

Fall 2013 Menswear: Dior Homme and the Illuminati.

This show was very important to me for two reasons:

1. Ferociously minimalist suits. 
2. Fucken ILLUMINATI, YOU GUYS:

Ferociously minimalist suits are a major area of interest to me. From what I've seen so far, the extremely pared-down, knife-smooth suit is a main fixture this season -- and before you point out that at least 50% of Menswear Fashion Week is always grey suits: yes. I know. I'm aware that this distinction isn't necessarily important to everyone, but I tend to home in on every infinitesimal alteration made to the overal generic suit pattern. And as for the whole Illuminati thing: read on.

Couture Fashion Week 2013: Chanel, Dior, and Ulyana Sergeenko

Click here for previous Chanel posts. 

Chanel's Mary Queen Of Scots collection last season was fantastic, so I can only assume that Karl Lagerfeld used up his yearly quota of awesome on that one. Bearing in mind that this is a Couture show, one would think that it would be better than Pre-Fall. Not so. Instead, the theme (Weimar Germany... something...?) was unclear at best, and totally absent at worst As a kind of psychological palate-cleanser, I'm going to start this post with the ugliest outfit of the show, just so we can get it over with and move on to better things:

This looks like someone put a bunch of lei garlands in a blender, spackled them all over a tube dress, and accessorised it with an apron jacket worn by a Midwestern housewife in the 1980s. Karl Lagerfeld, what were you thinking?

Menswear Fashion Week, Fall 2013: Agi & Sam, Astrid Anders, and Craig Green

All three of the following labels appeared in this year's MAN show, an initiative partly funded by Topman to help up-and-coming British menswear designers. I hadn't heard of any of them until today, but I expect at least one of them will make it big in the next couple of years. Perhaps I'm overthinking things, but it seemed to me like each of these three labels represented one of the tenets of Topman's success as an affordable fashion mainstay: Agi & Sam as the dapper traditionalists, Astrid Anderson for larger-than-life street style, and Craig Green representing the cutting-edge trend junkies.

Agi & Sam
Agi Mdumulla and Sam Cotton's ideal client is, apparently, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. 

pics from Style.com

Their muse this season is Alexander George Thynn, seventh Marquess of Bath, which at first made me go "oh no" because shows inspired by British aristocrats are invariably dull and/or baffling. But then I googled Alexander George Thynn, and wow:

source

TOTALLY VALID CHOICE OF STYLE ICON. I'm now kind of disappointed the show doesn't look more like him, because he's clearly an incredible role model if you want to look like a walking stained-glass window and/or cartoon magician.

Pre-Fall 2013: DSquared, Badgley Mischka, Carolina Herrera, and Prabal Gurung

Previously: Ports 1961, Pringle of Scotland, Vera Wang, and more. 

I probably complain way too much about the aesthetic mid-season lookbooks. You know, they way the photoshoots are often just a series of sullen-looking teenagers standing in a glaring white refrigerator unit while wearing a minidress. WELL. DSquared's lookbook is not so. The clothes themselves are not exactly groundbreaking, but they are stylish as hell. And better yet, the model and her poses are full of personality.

"Make a comment about my socks and sandals. I dare you."

Rick Owens, Spring 2013.

Rick Owens is a maximum expert in the field of draping people in 37 yards of fabric that look like either dust sheets or blackout curtains. Conversely, he's also pretty damn good at tailoring, albeit the sort of tailoring required to make the shoulderpads fit really well on things that look like a High Priestess costume in an episode of Star Trek. Given this combination of gothy apocalypse drapery and Needs More Gold alien royalty-wear, it's probably not all that surprising that I kinda love him.

pics from Style.com

This season's show opened with the simplest outfits in the collection, a selection of shapeless shifts that will be surely an A+ choice next time you decide to dress up as a Sexy Coffee-Filter for Halloween. Not being massively psyched about beige shift-dresses at the best of times these outfits didn't really grab me, but thankfully things warmed up pretty quickly after that.

A "take your mind off the election" fashion special: Part 2.

Link to Part 1: Thierry Mugler and Viktor & Rolf.

Can I tag this with "apocalypse fashion"? Sure, why not; I do what I want. These clothes may not fulfill my strict requirements of looking like they were dragged from the dismal rubble of a dystopian cityscape and/or desert, but I think the spirit is definitely there.

This season's Yohji Yamamoto was rather grimmer than usual, full of frayed edges and the black, draped fabrics of mourning clothes. While Yamamoto has a history of dressing his models like bag-ladies (his term, not mine), this season had a more graceful look to it -- even though there were still a lot of rough fabrics and scruffy hemlines on show. The only acknowledgement of the Spring season was the amount of skin on show, but thanks to the models' aggressive demeanour and the chilly colour palette, it didn't seem like a very warm or cheerful Spring.

Spring fashion, 2013: A take-your-mind-off-the-election special edition.

Obviously the appreciation of beautiful things is a universal pleasure, but today's posts (yes, posts, plural!) are specifically a gift to everyone out there who is currently stressing out over the US election results. I'm not even American, and I still feel tense about it. So as a balm to everyone's nerves as we try to ignore the grim horrors of a 24-hour news cycle with nothing to report on until tomorrow, here are some pretty things to look at:

For a label that's managed to bridge the divide between Ready-To-Wear accessibility and fidelity to its own design history, look no further than Thierry Mugler. Four seasons on from Nicola Formichetti's introduction as the label's new creative direction, Mugler are still coming up with fresh designs that run the gamut from Lady Gaga-influenced PVC dresses to some comparatively sedate (but still fashion-forward) business attire.

Gareth Pugh, Spring 2013 Ready-To-Wear.

It's important to remember that no matter how obscure your demographic, the world of fashion will have something tailored specifically to fit you. Gareth Pugh primarily designs for the alien robot market, a small but apparently significant group that's managed to keep him in business for several years. It's so hard to find clothes that flatter one's chitinous exoskeleton, you know?

This show was considerably more relaxed than anything else I've seen by Gareth Pugh. It definitely qualifies as Ready To Wear, but is that really what one wants from this particular designer? I miss the metallic robot outfits and the black-and-white pierrot gowns. And quite apart from that, Pugh just doesn't seem to be all that good at more conservative designs like these. By the previous standards of his own work this show was surprisingly wearable, but not necessarily very interesting.

Haider Ackermann, Spring 2013.

Haider Ackermann is my fave and Tilda Swinton's fave, which means two things: 1) that he's been judged to be Objectively Awesome by a panel of experts, and 2) that Tilda Swinton and I are destined to be BFFs.

Ackermann tends to stick very closely to his tried-and-tested design themes, but I'm of the opinion that that's A-OK because no one else is doing what he's doing. I'd divide this particular collection into three sections: pajama-style outfits that closely resemble his other recent work, tailored suits, and translucent, floaty gowns that represent an interesting step away from his usual fare.

Chanel, Spring 2013: At least there's no iceberg this time?

Click here for previous posts on Chanel.

What's the theme of this season's show? You know there must be one, because Karl Lagerfeld is in charge. This time last year it was an Under The Sea theme featuring Florence Welch emerging from a conch shell, but this one is a little more obscure. I'm going to let you mull it over a bit and then reveal the truth after the cut, so for now just take a gander at this outfit and try to divine its ~hidden meaning~.

pics from Style.com

Of all the challenges one has to face in order to reach the Fashionista's Stone, Lagerfeld's would surely be the Snape-style brain-teaser that relies too heavily on metaphor. Actually, the idea of Lagerfeld as Fashion Snape is worryingly believable... 

Alexander McQueen, Spring 2013.

It's almost expected at this point for Alexander McQueen to be one of the most critically acclaimed shows of Fashion Week, but this season's collection was so good that I dove off a waterfall like Pocahontes and then spontaneously sprouted wings on the way down. While most of Spring season is taken up by catwalk shows that showcase too many trenchcoats and not enough imagination, McQueen (currently headed up by Sarah Burton, McQueen's protege) breezed in with 32 stunning outfits themed around bees and beehives.

The show opened with a series of suits in black and gold, bearing the recurring motif of honeycomb patterns and accompanied by stylised beekeeper hats. The silhouette was familiar: rigid bodices and nipped-in waists, with the angular peplums McQueen have been using for several seasons now. "Wasp waist" is already a well-known term, but some of these suit jackets reminded me more of the iridescent shells of a beetle.

Spring 2013 Fashion Week: Erdem and Vivienne Westwood Red Label

Vivienne Westwood Red Label
The beauty of Vivienne Westwood is that she can start off with literally any theme and still have the resulting show turn out like a giant "fuck you". With this season's Red Label collection she went for a ladylike mid-20th-century aesthetic, using boxy woollen suits and 1950s cocktail dresses as a jumping-off point.

The styling helped a lot to temper the relatively conservative nature of this collection, with models stepping out onto the catwalk wearing Crayola-hued facepaint and Stepford-parody hairstyles. This wasn't my favourite Westwood collection, perhaps because for once she didn't seem to be designing for her own personal wardrobe. I often find that Westwood is at her best -- or at least, at her most Westwood, which is pretty much the same thing -- when she's courting outright ugliness, rather than this watered-down throwback to the period when she was mocking the fashions of the British aristocracy.

New York Fashion Week, spring 2013: Proenza Schouler, Ralph Lauren, and more.

Proenza Schouler
The close-up shots from this show are far, far more interesting than the overall effect of each individual outfit. The silhouettes were boxy but chic, as I'd expect from any season of Proenza Schouler, but this kind of unique design detail is one of those moments where you can really understand why these clothes are so stupidly expensive. (Something that I don't alway believe when it comes to -- totally random example here, guys -- Calvin Klein's neverending supply of knee-length white dresses.)

Spring 2013 at NYC Fashion Week: Duckie Brown, Zac Posen, Gary Graham, and more.

Duckie Brown
Containing enough plaid and denim to clothe several platoons of stereotypical lumberjacks (or, more likely, rich hipsters), Duckie Brown's latest collection was not for me. Having very little patience for double-deniming in general and catwalk fashion "explorations" of the ubiquitous jeans/plaid combination in particular, my favourite looks from this show were the weirder ones such as strangely-tailored mess of wrinkles and ruffles, which would have looked more at home at a Yohji Yamamoto show. The most memorable trend of the collection was the plethora of long strips of leather looped around the models' torsos (shoulder belts?), a non-functional accessory that I highly doubt will catch on.

pics from Style.com

Gary Graham
My love of short, bloomer-like pantaloon trousers is partially responsible for my love of Gary Graham's latest effort, but even beyond that one appealing component this collection is an intriguing combination of floaty weirdness and more down-to-earth hippie styles. The colour scheme and styling are distinctly earthy and unglamourous, which only serves to highlight the numerous details that are clearly founded in high-end craft fashion and impracticality.

A Beginner's Guide to Resort Season: Marc Jacobs, Calvin Klein, Lanvin, and more.

I know most of you guys are here for the superheroes, but I gotta be what I gotta be, and sometimes that means posting about mediocre high-end fashion. Right now we're in the middle of Resort/Cruise season which, as you may have noticed from the name, is an imaginary season. In the world of Game Of Thrones, seasons take years to change, meaning that the characters get years to practise the best way to portentiously say "Winter. Is. Coming." In Fashion Land, Resort/Cruise season is the time between Spring and Summer when you swan around various luxury locations while wearing £3000 sunglasses and doing things that are way, way classier than watching Game Of Thrones. The purpose of Resort/Cruise season is to sell designer clothes to these rich people so they have something new to wear on their yacht. This year's Chanel show was pretty good, but by and large the attitude of most major fashion houses to Resort/Cruise season seems to be: "Someone's gonna buy this shit, so let's just print out some bikinis and knee-length skirts and go to the bar, YOLO."

Chris Benz. (All photos from Style.com.)

One of the A+ things about Resort season is the hilariously lacklustre photoshoots. Even during Couture season some designers choose to exhibit using photoshoots instead of live shows, but usually that's either for aesthetic reasons or because they can't afford decent placement at Fashion Week. During Resort season, however, pretty much everyone whose name isn't Lagerfeld exhibits solely via lookbooks. And those lookbooks, as you may be able to tell from the above photo, can be kind of... dodgy. For one thing, the monochrome photo of palm trees looks like something you'd see hanging up in a coffee shop, and it's held up by bullclips. Secondly, the lighting is edging dangerously close to "we shot this in my garage". 

Sheguang Hu, and why The Hunger Games' Capitol should've looked more like Beijing Fashion Week.

Beijing Fashion Week rarely makes it to mainstream American/British fashion magazines and blogs, and coverage outside of highlight galleries seems to be nigh-on impossible to find. Which is too bad, because if you enjoy truly out-there couture (which I do) then Beijing is streets ahead of Paris at the moment. Although designers like McQueen are still regularly turning out excellent couture shows, I've found that many of the major fashion houses on the London/Paris/Milan/NYC circuit have been noticeably lacklustre over the last few years.

photos from here.

Autumn/Winter 2012/13
Last month's Sheguang Hu show in Beijing was gothic and alarming, and filled with expressive and over-the-top millinary.

Fall 2012 shows: David Koma, MaxMara, Donna Karan, and Duro Olowu.

David Koma

Business casual by way of Blade Runner? That's what I got from the earlier looks in this collection, anyhow. Unfortunately I was dead wrong, because Koma claims one of his primary inspirations was the art of Thierry Poncelot who, first of all, has the awesome name of Poncelot, and secondly... well, google him. Thierry Poncelot's work is exclusively portraits of dogs wearing human clothing. Perhaps I'm just not smart enough to see how that intersects with the various themes exhibited in this collection, but I doubt it.

While not exactly peculiar-looking, this wasn't a very ready-to-wear RTW collection. The majority of the show was taken up with full-outfit looks that would look decidedly odd if broken down into separates and combined with clothes from other sources. On a more positive note, Koma's structure design was appealingly retro-futurist, with several of the outfits entering Space Race flight attendant territory thanks to fabric and colour choices.