Chanel Couture Show

This week was Couture Week in Paris. Couture is a dying art. In order to be considered couture everything must be hand made. I watched a TV mini-series about the making of Chanel's couture line and Karl Lagerfeld, the head designer, commissioned an elderly lady to hand-make lace for each of his dresses. The lace was beautiful and intricate and she was the last in a long line of lace makers. For this reason haute couture is beyond expensive. Almost $100,000 per dress is a good estimate. Not everyone can afford this obviously, but I hope someone is always able to so I can see the over the top designs Karl and other couture designers like John Galliano cook up. It's wearable art.

For this post I chose what I think are the highlights of the Chanel Haute Couture show:

The theme of the show was iridescent colors. Pastels mostly. It produced a lovely effect. The pink long dress would be a refreshing change to the normal mermaid dresses that you see on the red carpet these days. Lets hope some ingenue like Cate Blanchett picks it up and wears it to a premiere.

Paris Fashion Week Fall 2010 for Men

This week all the best fashion houses in Paris will be showing their Menswear collections. The Milan shows were the previous week, which included shows from Prada, Gucci, and Versace. The big show today in Paris is Louis Vuittion. Marc Jacobs, the head designer of the label, drew inspiration from Vienna's Wiener Werkstatte movement, according to WWD.com.

This brings up two questions: What is this movement and does the collection show this inspiration?

According to artsmia.org Wiener Werskatte is German for Vienna Workshop. This was a period when craftsmen worked together to make fashionable household goods. The key phrases about this period are " Simplified shapes, geometric patterns, and minimal decoration" which all characterized the products. This is what we have to look for in Jacobs' collection.

Indeed there is a minimalist air to the collection. It consists of pieces that are almost exclusively of browns and blacks. The shape of the coats aren't extravagant, but simple. And there are hints of geometric patterns throughout the clothes.

This collection also reflects the times that we are living in. People are turning to the practical and that's most certainly what this collection is. One could also make the claim that the color scheme is a statement on these troubled economic times when it is hard for major luxury brands, like LV, to stay afloat.

Pictures from WWD.com

Fashion Ads S/S 2010

There's nothing more exciting for me than when the new fashion ads come out for the season.

The Louis Vuitton Ads featuring Lara Stone are very Alice in Wonderland inspired. This theme really goes with the clothes which are very whimsical.

The Chanel Ads are gorgeous. They are very Spanish inspired. They were shot in the lovely city of Buenos Aires. The Ads have a very antique feel and are very dramatic.

My favorite so far is the lovely art inspired Bottega Veneta Ads

And so it begins....

That is a rather ominous title for my first post, but it's very true. The future of magazines is on the internet, as much as I dislike it, and people have become quite famous through their blogs. I suppose I should begin by saying that my dream job is to work for Vogue or Marie Claire. Right now I'm trying to accomplish this goal by studying Journalism at a small liberal arts college that no one has ever heard of. This hasn't discouraged me from dreaming about studying further in NYC.

This blog is practice for me. I will do little feature posts from time to time talking about what inspires me most about fashion. I'll try also to post my opinion about the latest fashion news from WWD.

Well I hope if anyone ever reads this they'll like it!