Houston Industry Leaders Ready to Launch Fashion Week

Houston Chronicle

Project Runway winner Chloe Dao will show her spring 

collection at Fashion Houston 2010 in October

 

 

A contingent of creative-minded types thinks the Bayou City deserves — and needs - its own fashion week. So on the heels of September's big spring shows in New York, they're staging one.

Fashion Houston 2010 will be presented by Audi Oct. 11-15, with runway shows at the Wortham Theater Center Oct. 12-14 bookended by parties and other events.

Project Runway winner Chloe Dao, Cesar Galindo and David Peck (a talented designer who recently moved here from New York) are among the locally based A-listers who will show their spring collections.

Also committed to show, according to Fashion Houston president Jared Lang and organizer Neal Hamil, are Project Runway's Christian Siriano, red carpet favorite Marc Bouwer, the Milan-based luxury menswear label Kiton and Lauren Bush.

Hamil said more names will be added to the roster once they're confirmed. Page Parkes Models is lining up the bodies who will show off the fashions, including mature Texas supermodel Diane DeWitt, America's Top Model winner CariDee English and Models of the Runway's Kalyn Hemphill.

Lynn Wyatt - who looked chic at Wednesday's news conference in a slim gray Giorgio Armani pantsuit and a ruffled Chanel blouse with a Mariquita Masterson brooch as a bow tie - will open up her closet for a special exhibit featuring 12 pieces from her haute couture collection.

Another fashion icon, Eileen Ford, will visit to receive a lifetime achievement award.

Lang said three charities will benefit from some of the events: Houston Community College, Dress for Success and Legacy Community Services.

He expects ticket prices for the runway shows to range from about $35 to $175; they'll go on sale once show details are complete.

Designer Michael Kors Honored for Classic, Common-Sense Style

The Detroit Free Press

Twenty-nine years IS a lifetime in fashion, yet Michael Kors' enduring youthfulness makes his two lifetime achievement awards this month seem a little surreal.

At 50, Kors is still the guy who bounces down the runway with a bona fide grin. He's the one who calls his mom his muse, the one who likes to do red carpets, the one who gabs it up with customers at trunk shows.

Most of all, he's the guy who still loves what he's doing, and he has no intention of calling it a "lifetime."

"In another 30 years, I don't know what they'll call it," he says, "a second lifetime achievement?"

Kors first sold his signature uptown look to Bergdorf Goodman while he was dressing windows. Now the Long Island, N.Y., native keeps company with socialites and stars, and became a celebrity himself on "Project Runway" with Heidi Klum and Nina Garcia.

His clothes aren't fussy, and he values function, so the pea coats, slinky cocktail frocks, wide-leg trousers and cozy cashmere also work for those without boldface names. (Kors has a second, less expensive line called Michael Michael Kors; and the designer recently opened a stand-alone boutique at Twelve Oaks Mall in Novi.)

He favors the color camel, offset by crisp white and jet black. And, in Kors' world, anyone and everyone wears aviator sunglasses.

Kors has created a wardrobe that implies an appreciation for crisp classics. It's "luxurious but low-key and laidback," he says.

He has drawn inspiration from Italy's Amalfi Coast, Palm Beach, Calif., the Alps, the Greek islands, Hawaii and St. Bart's.

But there are still other places to explore. "I am doing a huge Australia trip at the end of the year. I'm going to Morocco. ... I've never been to Shanghai, and I'd like to go to Peru," he says.

Fashion designers need to be students of different places and cultures if they're going to stay relevant and hit the right trends, he adds.

"If you're a modern designer and involved in dressing people for real life, not costumes, the simple truth is fashion is about the zeitgeist. It's about what's right for the moment, so the designers have to be plugged in and aware of what's going on," Kors says. "You have to be aware of what's going on in art, politics, the theater -- it might be the way a girl tucked her shirt in."

 

Kors knows what he doesn't want to see more of: no more crazy clunky heels paired with microminis and no more rompers. They're both part of the overwrought style that came with the 2000s that seem dated now, he says.

"I am very happy that we're getting out of what I think has been a decade of too much excess. People felt like they've gorged themselves on fettucini alfredo, and now they're looking for something beautifully prepared and simple -- a fresh tomato and mozzarella, a great steak."

Don't mistake Kors for being anything less than a showman, though, when it comes to his catwalk. Twice a year he lives out his Broadway fantasy, creating a lively runway show that gets a further boost from a front row that has included Blake Lively, Bette Midler, Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jessica Simpson, Ellen Pompeo, Debra Messing and Eva Longoria.

He brought Gwyneth Paltrow as his date to the Council of Fashion Designers of America ceremony when he received the lifetime tribute from his peers. His second prize came from the Fragrance Foundation.

"Michael is a very warm person, very open and positive. He is great to be around," Paltrow wrote in an e-mail. "He is a compassionate person and not totally self-focused, which is rare for such a successful designer."

She adds: "His clothes are eminently wearable in a classic American way, never over the top or so constructed that you can't move your body or breathe, which is something I value highly."

The era of celebrity has changed fashion, Kors says, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Actresses, rock stars, supermodels -- and the first lady, for that matter -- can all serve as a divining rod for the broader fashion public, steering them toward flattering styles.

Still, he wishes a few more would try something new. "It would be nice to see ... a magazine cover with an actress in real clothes," Kors says.

Plus-Size Revelation: Bigger Women Have Cash, Too

NY Times

 

Corseted into a size 18 white denim dress, wearing heels that made her about 6-foot-2, Gwen DeVoe, a former model and fashion-show producer, stepped onto a runway in Manhattan this week and made a pitch to retailers for the plus-size woman.

Those stores that don’t carry bigger sizes? “Shame on you, baby, shame on you,” Ms. DeVoe said. “Every curvy girl that has a dollar is willing to spend that dollar.”

So retailers are realizing.

That same day, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 28 percent of the adult population was obese last year, the highest percentage yet. Almost two-thirds of American women are either overweight or obese, according to the most recent CDC figures.

As doctors and public health officials encourage Americans to slim down, the fashion industry is embracing Americans as they are. Both mass-market stores like Forever 21 and Target and expensive designers like Elie Tahari are deciding the fattening of America is a big business opportunity, and are reinvigorating a market that had faltered during the recession.

The standard clothing that most stores have focused on in recent years fits fewer and fewer people. And as retailers search for ways to invigorate sales, plus size is one of the few categories where there is growth. The plus-size market increased 1.4 percent while overall women’s apparel declined 0.8 percent in the 12 months leading up to April 2010 versus the same period a year earlier, the most recent figures available, according to NPD Group, a market research firm.

“It just makes business sense,” said Ms. DeVoe, who founded “Full-Figured Fashion Week” last year to press mainstream retailers to embrace bigger sizes. “I’ve been told several times that no one fantasizes about being a plus-size woman, and that’s probably true, but the fact remains that you have to work with what you have.”

That is not always so easy for retailers venturing into the world of larger shoppers. Some bigger women do not like to try on clothes in the same fitting rooms as smaller women. Plus-size stocks take up valuable storage space, and not everyone is big in the same way, meaning stores cannot count on, say, a size 16 dress fitting most 180-pound women — one might have a larger torso, another big thighs and another wider hips.

“There are variations not only in the frame, but if you’re looking at larger women, you’re also looking at the way fat deposits are arranged around the body,” said Susan Ashdown, a professor at Cornell who studies body shape and clothing fit by creating a three-dimensional scan of a person’s almost-nude body.

Plus-size clothes, which now generally begin at size 14, have been around for at least 90 years, since a Lithuanian immigrant, Lena Bryant (her name was later misspelled as “Lane” on a business form), turned a maternity-wear business into a line for stout women in the 1920s. There have been several efforts to make plus-size clothes more available, but, as the name of the 1980s-era plus-size chain The Forgotten Woman suggested, larger women have usually been relegated to stand-alone boutiques stocked with shapeless purple caftans.

“One of the things that happens with plus-size women is, as a rule, they’re pretty under-served,” said Bill Bass, president of Sonsi, a social networking and retail site for heavier women. “The big companies forget about them or ignore them, or make them go online to buy their clothes since they won’t have them in stores.”

Although Americans have grown steadily heavier in the last decade, women’s plus-size clothing still makes up only 17 percent of the women’s apparel market today, according to NPD. There just is not much supply or variation in plus-size clothes for women to buy, said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD. And the big retailers have mostly stayed away.

Cost is one issue. Plus-size clothes are more difficult, and expensive, to make than more traditional sizes. Material can be the largest portion of a garment’s cost — up to about 60 percent — and larger sizes require not only more of it, but sometimes different production processes.

“Its not just about how much fabric is required,” said Deepa Neary, a retail consultant at A.T. Kearney, a consulting firm. “You’re actually using wider bolts of fabric, and that sometimes requires special machinery to produce the garments. You often don’t get to pass that on to the consumer, so your margins are not as high as the regular-size clothing.”

And with limited floor space, retailers say it’s hard to display, say, blouses from size 0 to 24. So the plus market “unfortunately gets treated like an exile,” said Kathy Bradley-Riley, senior vice president for merchandising at the trend forecasting firm Doneger Group.

Given those difficulties, some companies have pulled back on plus-size offerings. Old Navy and Ann Taylor stopped selling plus sizes in stores in the last few years, and now sell them only online. Liz Claiborne, which still sells some plus-size clothing, shut down its plus-size line Elisabeth, along with Sigrid Olsen, which carried larger sizes. It sold Ellen Tracy, which also had a plus-size offering. But given the strong sales in the sector more recently, and women becoming ever more overweight, some companies are giving the plus-size market a second look.

The chain Forever 21, which is based in California, introduced Faith 21, its larger-size line, last year. Though sales were much stronger than the company expected, that did not mean it had mastered the category. “We have been working through the kinks even now,” said Linda Chang, Forever 21’s director of marketing. “It doesn’t come as easily as maybe the smaller clothing would.”

Last summer, Target began carrying a line called Pure Energy that translated young, trendy clothes to larger sizes, adding to its more mature plus-size offerings.

“We definitely view this category as a growth opportunity,” said a Target spokeswoman, Katie Heinze. After testing Pure Energy in some stores, Target decided to carry it in all 1,740 outlets.

Elie Tahari, the high-end designer, began selling a plus-size line this year, and at Full-Figured Fashion Week, more than 25 other designers showed their plus-size clothes to an audience of retail buyers and plus-size women.

Backstage before a runway show on Wednesday night, it looked like a sorority house before a formal: shoes everywhere, makeup stacked on tables, the smell of hairspray and baby powder, and women lounging about in silk robes.

On stage, Ms. DeVoe emphasized that plus-size women were ready to buy clothes.

As the crowd whooped, Ms. DeVoe shouted, “My pockets are fat!”

Bottega's Fashion Fusion

NY Times

MILAN — To say that the menswear season has opened here with a mixed bag is to suggest the best and the worst of the offerings. On one side is an intelligent meld of fabrics and styles, as collections blend formal and casual with purposeful modernity.

On the other hand, the summer 2011 season seems as up-and-down as Italy’s soaking summer weather: heavy leather, more outerwear than beach clothes and an uncertain direction.

A tactile treat of textures and a zigzag puzzle of tailoring made Bottega Veneta’s show on Sunday a beacon of excellence. The fashion fusion served up by the designer Tomas Maier was appetizing because this was a show that mixed things up — beautifully.

That meld included a color palette that embraced, but never forced, spring green, naval blue and rust red. But the shades also played off the range of fabrics, the rough/smooth of perforated suede with wispy silk or just the subtle tonalities of a white silk jacket with ultra-fine cord jeans.

Everything was about mix that matched: Saddle bags piped in two shades of blue, two-tone boots or sandals worn with soft, boxy suits. And these were all unforced, wearable clothes.

Instead of including formal evening styles, Mr. Maier showed swimwear, a category in which he excels. Briefs alternated with shorts as fresh beach silhouettes. The designer called this a show about “performance and possibility.” His own performance was stellar.

With the suicide of Alexander Lee McQueen still an open wound among his admirers and collaborators in the fashion world, was it a wise move for the Gucci group to hold a mini presentation of the Alexander McQueen label to prove that the show should and must go on?

“I didn’t sleep well last night — I understood how Lee must have felt,” said Sarah Burton, the designer’s long-time right hand, who presented well-cut, wearable clothes steeped in the English heritage that Mr. McQueen twisted so perversely.

Trench coats, cut at an angle, jackets with pleated backs and apron fronts, military pants and a dash of decadence in a Chinese robe and exotic slippers all touched on the brand’s imagery. But the original designer’s meld of the raw and the refined was inevitably missing.

Thinking of last season’s extraordinary menswear — Art Nouveau printed suits disappearing into a matching backdrop — was to be reminded that Mr. McQueen was not only deeply creative but an exceptional showman. His skills cannot be replicated. But the essence of his collections can be kept alive.

At Burberry Prorsum, the designer Christopher Bailey is expert at reinterpreting the archives. This season he found some fresh territory: motorbike riders, with their use of spiked studs on black leather vests.

Motocross leather pants ran down narrow legs until they reached either black Birkenstock-style sandals or shoes that morphed at the toes into rubber boots.

The heritage biker idea seemed forced. But given the rain washing the streets of the city, perhaps Mr. Bailey was smart to put front and center what Burberry does best: trenchcoats. The coats looked so shrunken and boyish that they would hardly fit members of the young Brit bands who were invited to sit front row. But here the hardware, as belts and straps, worked well with the theme and seemed authentic to Burberry.

It was unfortunate for Donatella Versace that the new Versace menswear designer Martyn Ball, 34, offered a rockabilly style similar to Bottega Veneta’s show of last season.

The inspiration was Bruce Weber images from the 1980s of Gianni Versace’s work — especially eye-popping black-and-white geometric patterns.

“I wanted it graphic, with optical prints,” said the late designer’s sister, referring to Mr. Ball’s choice of patterns, which were accentuated by a 3-D architectural backdrop.

The new suit cut was deliberately youthful, with its snug, short jacket and skinny pants, while the sportier jackets had inserts of dangling fringe. Reintroducing color meant a pale green shirt, perhaps with inserts of open-work.

The Versace brand is in a delicate position, as it tries to tempt a new generation while still serving the faithful followers. This collection looked like a half-way house.

At Calvin Klein, the designer Italo Zucchelli said: “I’m always inspired by the urban element of street style.”

Really? Who are the downtown New Yorkers who will wear a cut-off, midriff-revealing cape jacket with none of the Superman panache of the Caped Crusader? Will peppermint green jackets and matching shorts be walking the city’s High Line? And who will take a shine to suits that glimmer like asphalt on a wet road?

With this collection, Mr. Zuchelli, who has been doing a fine job at Calvin Klein, had a misstep. His fabric research seemed to be taken to extremes. Or perhaps the stiff, shimmering materials were, as the repeated soundtrack told us, “A Walk on the Wild Side.”

Sometimes the show eased into simplicity, as with graphic patterns inserted vertically on one side of a sporty outfit. But it seems a pity that the designer would abandon the spirit of “Mr. Clean” — especially as the minimalism that defines the Calvin Klein look would be so right for now.

Gianfranco Ferré is yet another house trying to build a modern identity from its late founder’s heritage. But why would Tommaso Aquilano and Roberto Rimondi ignore Mr. Ferré’s architectural precision and bring to the runway the cliché of the artist – all floppy hats, baggy smocks and a poetic attitude?

The clothes were often appealing in the softness of a wrapped-shirt, the subtlety of an ochre jacket with ginger pants and the chic of a briefcase tucked like a clutch under the arm. But fancy brocade pants and liquid silk jackets neither had the linear style of Mr. Ferré nor a push for youthful modernity.

Giorgio Armani seems to have had a youthquake experience in his collaboration with Lady Gaga on the sex-and-storm-troopers video shot by Steven Klein. For the Emporio Armani show Sunday, the designer focused on heavy metal, not least as chains hitting bared chests and an all-black introduction to what the designer backstage called his “hard man.”

With eyelets perforating shirts and pants, biceps heaving under airy jackets and a print that looked like the earth cracking open, this was a startling new vision of the septuagenarian designer, who showed his humorous side, although some many not find black military uniforms so funny.

Milan: Fashion Week in the Futbol Hub

New Zealand Herald

 

Allow me to state the obvious. I'm more likely to get excited by a good fashion show than an All Blacks victory. More interested in a well-tailored suit than a perfectly executed field goal. More intrigued by the career of a model than that of our greatest sports-stars.

However today I chose the soccer over the sartorial. And witnessing that 1-1 draw in a bar filled with the most aggressive Italian supporters in Milan trumped any fashion show.

There's nothing like leaving your home country to multiply your patriotism rates to new heights. GO THE KIWIS!

Now, back to the matter at hand.

First up was Emporio Armani where inside, paparazzi were crowded down one end of the catwalk flashing furiously. Never one to miss a celebrity spotting, I ran over, camera at the ready, only to discover some Italian man I'd never seen before. Can't win them all.

I've often wondered how Giorgio Armani manages to keep his guests entertained for the duration of his shows whilst presenting 60-plus looks (the typical show has about 30).

Multiple models on the catwalk, that's how. Within 10 seconds of it starting, eight strapping lads were strutting it in full-leather outfits.

The Emporio man was on a techno Matrix trip this season, with leather pants, gothic sleeveless shirts, Neo-esque sunglasses and even a few onesy swimsuits.

Stalwart Armani fan Lady Gaga appeared in the finale - though not in the flesh - projected onto the back wall singing her latest smash hit Alejandro. The floodgates opened and out poured 20 models in the same leather army uniforms as her dancers in the video.

Over at Gianfranco Ferre, a lovely PR lady by the name of Valentina ushered me into the building with welcoming arms despite my lack of formal invitation.

A major difference between shows in our parts of the world and these markedly larger affairs is the designers' choice of venue. Many hold their shows in their own complexes, in special rooms designed for that purpose alone. It's easy to forget we're dealing with multi-national corporations here.

Gianfranco Ferre's is an enormous white marble space with geometric shapes inset in the floor. During the show Talking Heads' rock anthem Psycho Killer blared from the speakers, but the clothing was all Brideshead Revisited.

Foppish linen suits in creams, beige hopsack pants with oversized white crushed-linen shirts and floaty trench coats. The other influence appeared to be Southern gents - ticker stripes showed up on everything from linen suits to silk pyjamas and many outfits were worn with oversized felt hats. Perfect attire to spend a lazy day floating on down the river - Thames or Mississippi, you decide.

Speaking of large bodies of water, the sky outside Vivienne Westwood appeared to be dropping a few of them. The previous show had ended early and we had a lovely 25 minute wait in the chilly rain (Milan's summer is feeling oddly cooler than an Auckland winter).

We did have some fascinating visual entertainment, a number of camo-clad soldiers, semi-automatic rifles pointed firmly at the ground. Inside the venue, a stack of 80s television sets sat near the entrance, a solitary skateboarder tick-tacked his way along the catwalk and each seat came with a Swiss Army flask - to eliminate plastic wastage, according to the label.

There was no shortage of patterns, colours or textures in the collection - chalk stripes clashed with box checks, tartans with mud and paint splattered denim, knee high soccer socks with all manners of wigs.

Westwood's message was clear: get dressed in the dark, then, before you leave the house, throw on another loud garment (or ten).

That done, it was time to go watch some soccer. (I took the rest of the day off to celebrate the draw.)

700-Hour Silent Opera Reaches Finale at MoMA

NY Times

At 5 p.m. Monday one of the longest pieces of performance art on record, and certainly the one with the largest audience, comes to an end. Since her retrospective opened at the Museum of Modern Art on March 14, the artist Marina Abramovic has been sitting, six days a week, seven hours a day in a plain chair, under bright klieg lights, in MoMA’s towering atrium. When she leaves that chair Monday for the last time, she will have clocked 700 hours of sitting.

During that time her routine seldom varied. Every day she took her place just before the museum doors opened and left it after they closed. Her wardrobe was consistent: a sort of concert gown with a long train, in one of three colors (red, blue and white).

Always her hair, in a braided plait, was pulled forward over her left shoulder. Always her skin was an odd pasty white, as if the blood had drained away. Her pose rarely changed: her body slightly bent forward, she stared silently and intently straight ahead.

There was one variable, a big one: her audience.

Visitors to the museum were invited, first come first served, to sit in a chair facing her and silently return her gaze. The chair has rarely, if ever, been empty. Close to 1,400 people have occupied it, some for only a minute or two, a few for an entire day.

Sitting with Ms. Abramovic has been the hot event of the spring art season. Celebrities — Bjork, Marisa Tomei, Isabella Rossellini, Lou Reed, Rufus Wainwright — did a stint. Young performance artists seized a moment in the limelight. One appeared in his own version of an Abramovic gown to propose marriage. Certain repeat sitters became mini-celebrities, though long-time waiters on line stared daggers at those who sat too long.

Thanks to the Internet many people saw all of this without being there. A daily live feed on MoMA’s Web site, moma.org, has had close to 800,000 hits. A Flickr site with head shots of every sitter has been accessed close to 600,000 times. Yet foot traffic has been heavy. By the museum’s estimate, half a million people have visited all or part of the Abramovic retrospective, “The Artist Is Present,” of which the atrium piece is a small part.

The rest of the show, installed on the museum’s sixth floor, is a problem. It is made up primarily of videos and photographs of the artist’s performances over nearly 40 years, beginning when she was a student in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where she was born in 1946.

Her solo work from the early 1970s was hair-raisingly nervy. She stabbed herself, took knockout drugs, played with fire. For one piece she stood silent in a gallery for six hours, having announced that visitors could do anything they wanted to her physically. At one point a man held a gun to her neck. Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t flinch.

In 1976 she started collaborating with the German artist Uwe Laysiepen, known as Ulay. Some of their performances were punishing athletic events, as they slammed their bodies together or into walls. Others were almost aggressively passive. For a piece called “Imponderabilia” they stood facing each other, nude, in a narrow doorway in a museum. Anyone wanting to go from one gallery to another had no choice but to squeeze awkwardly and intimately between them.

Ms. Abramovic restaged “Imponderabilia,” along with some other works, for the MoMA show using actors. And although the nudity caused a buzz, the restaging fell flat. Two elements that originally defined performance art as a medium, unpredictability and ephemerality, were missing. Without them you get misrepresented history and bad theater.

Evidently Ms. Abramovic doesn’t agree. In 2005, at the Guggenheim Museum, she restaged vintage performance pieces by other artists (Vito Acconci, Joseph Beuys) with herself in the leading roles. She recently established the Marina Abramovic Institute for Preservation of Performance Art, to be housed in upstate New York.

In the near future she will be collaborating with the director Robert Wilson on a stage work based on her life. By the sound of it, this project will mark her furthest departure yet from old-school performance art and into the realm of closely scripted theater. What it will have, however, is her charismatic personal presence, and that means a lot. That presence is probably the most important ingredient missing from the restagings. It is what makes the atrium performance compelling. For better and worse, it has carried Ms. Abramovic’s career.

One of her lifelong heroes is the opera singer Maria Callas, to whom she can bear a striking physical resemblance. Callas was a disciplined, risk-oriented musician, made vulnerable by a voice that began to disintegrate early. Increasingly, as she aged, every performance became an ordeal, an invitation to failure. Her willingness to face failure became the prevailing drama of her life. It was a drama of survival, and her fans had a part in it: she needed them to need her, so they did.

That’s that classic diva dynamic. And what we’re seeing in the MoMA atrium is basically a 700-hour silent opera. Ms. Abramovic, with her extravagant costume, her bent shoulders and her mournful gaze, is the prima donna. Visitors are cast as rapt audience, commenting chorus, supporting soloists. Unpredictability is in the air: Will she make it through the day? Will she faint from pain? Will she cancel at the last minute?

When I dropped by last week, one sitter, a repeater, sat across from Ms. Abramovic with his hands clasped to his chest, like a tenor about to burst into song or a worshiper transported in prayer. Perfect. That Ms. Abramovic will be collaborating with Mr. Wilson, a once-radical creator of epic experimental works and now best known for his ritualistic productions of Puccini and Wagner, is also perfect.

Of restagings I remain an unbeliever. Of Ms. Abramovic’s recent overblown solo pieces, seen in video in the sixth-floor installation, I’m not a fan. But the atrium performance works because she is simply, persistently, uncomfortably there. As of 5 p.m., she won’t be, though. The klieg lights will dim. The audience will move on. Something big will be gone, and being gone will be part of the bigness.