Antoni & Alison

For Antoni & Alison's collection, I don't have much to say--the pictures seem to speak for themselves.

Antoni & Alison showed a ton of super-chic, somewhat cartoony dresses. Elle.com included them in the "anime" trend round-up, which seemed about right. The dresses were done in all sorts of bright colors and fantastic prints, and basically looked like they would be a riot to wear. (Why can i never find anything like this at the fabric store?)



The styling also added to the cartoony effect. The models' make-up looked like it was inspired by some of the more extreme make-up I've seen in photos of girls on the streets of Tokyo.



And the shoes were simply fantastic. You would feel like a superhero wearing these.



They also had some normal, non-patterned dresses that were quite pretty, but less exciting. (Perhaps this was simply to prove they could do it.)

Hussein Chalayan

On the other end of the spectrum, there was the nearly universally acclaimed collection of Hussein Chalayan. His collection was truly forward-looking. When other designers try to avoid references to the past, they often simply turn to a different set of cliches. (For instance, I thought Balenciaga's collection looked like what ever designer for ages has imagined the future would be like... robotic, synthetic, clean lines, etc.) Chalayan managed to bring something original to the table, even if you don't consider the gimmicky but fabulously cool shape-shifting clothes.

The traditional clothes he showed were fresh-looking and simply gorgeous. The lightweight materials were perfect for spring, and the shapes are a nice variation on the babydoll dresses that are everywhere. And the colors are so beautiful! I especially like the dress on the model in the back of the second photo.



This dress would make you the prettiest girl at any party.



Maybe this is a concession to traditional, cliched "futurism." At least this dress is really beautiful regardless.



Somehow he can even make normal clothes a million times better.



Of course, his shape-shifting clothes were awesome. Still photos don't do them justice at all--watch the video below. My favorite part was the shifting neckline around 0:45.

Emanuel Ungaro

For my first most inspirational collection, I've picked one that I thought was unfairly panned.

From the Guardian:

Peter Dundas at Emmanuel Ungaro had what may well have been the worst show of the month but at least it proved useful in reminding people how bad ankle boots, an unfortunate trend this season, look with sequinned mini-dresses.

They misspelled "Emanuel" but we'll let that slide.

I don't deny that some of the stuff he showed was downright awful. As the collection as a whole goes, it was rather hit or miss. But the looks that did work were original and fun and much better than most of the boring stuff other designers were showing. And that's the reason he makes my top dozen-or-so list.

First, I loved the palette he used for the beginning and end of the show that used hightly saturated colors, especially blues and purples.



While the two outfits below were definitely unwearable, I did like how he put mismatching patterns into really interesting combinations. The first one here is held together nicely by his use of complementary colors, and the second with three analogous colors.



I thought this polka-dot dress was just super cute.



Although some of the 80s stuff he did was awful (as mentioned above), a few elements he brought back really worked. The first dress has a fabulous 80s silhouette and print but somehow looks current. The second and third dresses bring back some 80s excess with the sequins but still are wearable because they're in normal, understated shapes. I would love to own the orchid (?) dress.

Fashion Week Wrap-Up

Hi everyone,
As you might imagine I've been pretty busy lately with law school but I should be getting some new content up soon... Other blogs have done a good job of summarizing all the important shows, so I'm going to take a more idiosyncratic approach. In the next couple weeks I'll be posting about the dozen or so shows I found most inspirational, chosen solely by what caught my eye at style.com and elle.com. (I'm trying to liberate all the photos just hanging out in my "My Pictures" folder.) Enjoy!

multiplying like rabbits

it seems that while i was abroad the street-style website population exploded. i won't list them all here because facehunter already has an excellent round-up. visit the site and check out the links in his sidebar.

one fantastic new page i want to highlight is stockholm streetstyle. it appears that it began in july (i say appears because i can't read the swedish faq). i've decided, based on this and hel looks, another of my favorite street style sites, that nordic people are just too cool. this new stockholm site is also ridiculously high-volume--often several posts per day.

here are some of my favorite outfits from the site's two-month history:

shoulder embellishments--good idea or bad?

i saw several instances of shoulder/upper sleeve embellishments when i was looking over the fall runways again. i'm still deciding whether this is cool and interesting, or a bad throwback to 80s shoulder pads.

chanel










pringle










sinha-stanic










from the sartorialist (at louis vuitton show in paris)

my favorite dress shape for fall

i just can't seem to get into the drab, unflattering layering that was all over the runways for this season. perhaps some of the voluminous shapes could be fun, but for the moment count me as a skeptic.

one shape i did see that i liked a lot was a mod dress that seemed to be everywhere--short and a bit boxy with long sleeves. it seems like a reasonably practical choice in cold weather if you wear tights and maybe boots. i saw many of them worn with gloves and they looked very chic, plus they work well with all this season's belts. best of all, they could work in warmer weather too with bare legs!

here are some examples:

costume national










giambattisti valli










giambattisti valli










rochas










temperley










i also saw dresses like this in the collections of antoni & allison, caroline herrera, miu mu, naum, oligo tissew, paco rabanne, sari gueron, stella mccartney, trovata, and versace, but i didn't want to upload all the photos and look too obsessive... check out style.com (and in some cases vogue.co.uk) to see more.

i picked up a cheap fun dress like this in june at goodwill (before i even knew i wanted one so much!), but i'm going to keep my eye out for another in a solid color and a nicer fabric.