Photo courtesy SAIC
Tomorrow (Saturday October 27) at 6:00 pm Isabel & Ruben Toledo, the legendary husband-wife duo, will be in Chicago to kick off the SAIC Fashion Resource Center’s 25 year anniversary celebration with a speech on fashion and design. I’ll be there (obviously) and you should come too! The Toledos are renowned innovators in the fields of not just fashion but also design, illustration, and art. The event is at 111 South Michigan, making it easy to get to from the suburbs and all areas of the city.
To buy tickets ($25, only $10 with student ID), click here.
After three whirlwind fashion weeks in a row I made the conscious decision to scale things down this year and treat my trip to New York like a vacation. I know what you’re thinking: what the hell is she thinking? Fashion weeks are supposed to be madness! If 2011 was the year my fashion blog blew up, then 2012 was time for me to focus on *real* life. I graduated from DePaul with a Master of Science in Management (go me!) and began a real career as an advertising copywriter, which was actually my only goal for 2012. So you know what? I was tired. I needed a vacation. And so I took one!
Karlie Kloss
Rag & Bone was one of two shows I attended this year, along with MM6 Maison Martin Margiela. Both fit into the schedule I planned with family & friends and are two of the brands I wear the most. I wear one of my 6 pairs of Rag & Bone jeans nearly every day and wore my Margiela sneakers religiously for the past year. I really wanted to cover presentations for designers I not only adore, but ones that fit into my life in a very real way. Plus, I’d rather go to no shows at all than shitty ones and feel obligated to throw the photos up on my blog. I learned that lesson…
Rag & Bone is a heavyweight show, and the scene didn’t disappoint. An ice cream truck on a patio? Why not. Anna Wintour striding through the venue, magically parting the front-row crowd like the Red Sea with nothing more than her presence. Oh, and that guy I saw running around who looked like Thom Yorke was actually Thom-fucking-Yorke. I mean, of course it was. But I literally couldn’t believe my eyes, so it wasn’t until the music came on – and I realized it was Radiohead playing – that it was him. He DJed the show using prerecorded tracks for his friends, designers Marcus Wainwright and David Neville. I’ve been listening to Radiohead religiously since early high school so this was truly a fashion show I’ll never forget.
Enough of me blathering on – to the clothes!
This green knit dress with an Alaia-style silhouette was undoubtedly the standout piece of the collection. If the engineer striped dress below was a more literal interpretation of the designer’s inspiration – the Paris-Dakar rally – then this dress was the concept rendered abstract. Cut in a deep, techno green (not a gimmicky fluorescent, colors which frankly feel tired after several years), the streamlined, body-hugging silhouette and swinging hem elicited a feeling of speed and motion.
Although this dress is more literal than Rag & Bone tends to design, it illustrates precisely the saleability of Neville & Wainwright’s brand. Straddling the demands of the magazine editors with the buyers on the sales floor is not an easy task, and Rag & Bone nails it. No matter how obscure the reference, Rag & Bone collections are wearable. And at the end of the day, what fashion brand can survive with clothes that don’t sell?
Below, the same dress was shown in honeysuckle pink:
Crackled leather doused in the same acid green color of the knit dress above, this swoon-worthy piece is continuing the trend of oversized motorcycle jackets with a boxy silhouette. Last year, I purposely bought my Allsaints leather jacket 2 sizes too big because I liked the way it looked better than close fit of my own size. This might just be runway styling and the jacket produced for stores might be closer to a true fit, but that’s the beauty of a versatile piece. Wear it how you want!
A desert-themed collection wouldn’t be complete without some tan, now would it?
What is it precisely about Suno’s designs that I find so captivating? I’ve pondered this question long and hard since initially falling in love with the line’s Kenyan cloth minidresses. Originally, it was because I understood the references; my mom and I took a safari through Kenya’s Masai Mara wildlife reserve near the Serengeti before finishing up our vacation with a 3 day stay at the Peponi hotel on Lamu Island. This was back in 2009 before I’d ever heard of Suno, so imagine my surprise when in Elle a few months ago I read that Suno designer Erin Beatty traced a nearly identical trip through East Africa!
Suno celebrates life. What a trite statement, but it’s true. The explosive use of color and print points to an exuberant embrace of the fractal-like energy of life, at a time when much of fashion celebrates austerity (Celine of past seasons), bondage (Alexander McQueen), or sexual objectification (Gucci et al). What about clothes for having fun! For living! In all honesty, I’m surprised that New Yorkers have embraced such a, for lack of a better word, happy line. Suno has swept through American fashion like a breath of fresh air, awakening the cynics’ hearts and convincing the normally black-clad city dwellers that yes, it’s OK to wear color in the concrete jungle. And prints. Lots of them while you’re at it, and don’t forget to mix them.
Tonight was a tour de force through Suno creators Erin Beatty and Max Osterweis’ minds. Wildly colorful but more balanced, structured, and nuanced than in years past. The two have certainly found their stride. Yes, the designs ranged wildly from color-blocked angular pantsuits that reminded me of ’90s motifs to a 3D bejeweled dress and skirt that looked like the shapes of children dancing. And who could forget the knit of the man and woman holding hands, the two genders joined in unity. A perceptable thread of world peace pervaded the atmosphere, which even featured a few garments with nature lithographs; perhaps a not-so-subtle-reference to the tree of life? The folksy sweater adds to the evidence, as does the fact that humans evolved out of Kenya’s Rift Valley. Given the violent bloodshed of recent years in Kenya, the spiritual heart and production center of the line, this might have been an attempt to celebrate the joyous human soul in a time of darkness.
