In Fashion, the Beauty (and Challenge) of Looking Back

THE ARCHIVES OF BALENCIAGA, the 100-year-old fashion house, are held in a raw concrete warehouse space in Paris. There are 6,000 items in total — sculptural silk ball gowns and cocoon-shaped coats and a tobacco-brown chenille-embroidered lace coat once owned by Wallis, Duchess of Windsor — all shrouded in calico garment bags. Especially delicate pieces are wrapped in acid-free tissue paper to protect against dust and moths and are laid to rest in cardboard boxes referred to in the business as ‘‘coffins.’’ Balenciaga’s haute couture maison, formerly located on the Avenue George V, was a chapel dedicated to the worship of fashion as art; here, in its cavernous catalog of designs past, the atmosphere is of a crypt — or even a shrine.

When I visited the archive in the spring of 2017, the debut fall 2016 collection of Balenciaga’s latest artistic director, Demna Gvasalia, had just arrived. The conservation team, led by archive manager Gaspard de Massé, was unfolding the clothes while wearing white cotton gloves. (Acids from human skin erode the textiles.) These contemporary pieces, whose likenesses had barely departed store racks, are treated with as much reverence as a one-off couture gown by Cristóbal Balenciaga himself, who founded the house in 1917. In this space, these humble garments are transmogrified ­— from contemporary clothing to preserved specimens. The archive team discusses how to stabilize specific pieces: for instance, by running threads from waist to hem to support dresses with unusually curved skirts, which threaten to buckle and distort if they’re not held in place. Those that can be laid flat, are — in one coffin, billows of tissue cosset one of Gvasalia’s evening dresses, a silver strapless style in a sequin-embroidered fabric created by the Swiss textile company Jakob Schlaepfer. Matching boots are stored in another room devoted to modern accessories. The Sisyphean task of the conservation team is to ensure Balenciaga’s clothing — past, present and future — survives, even as time conspires against it.

PARIS IS A CITY where history has always been hallowed — perhaps more so than the present — and where the oldest (and many of the largest) fashion empires are based. Rituals like Balenciaga’s are undertaken by fashion brands across the world, but the archives of Parisian houses are especially sacrosanct. Some are stored in actual museums — Lanvin’s archives reside at the Palais Galliera, the fashion museum formally known as the Musée de la mode de la Ville de Paris. Others seem to be: Off the Avenue Montaigne, in the archive of Christian Dior, a handful of dresses dating back to 1947 (Dior’s debut) are displayed in temperature-controlled vitrines, exhibiting the label’s heritage.

In an industry whose catalyst is relentless novelty and perpetual newness, this zealous reverence for bygone fashions seems incongruous. While these archives — cold and dark, with their shrouds and cardboard ‘‘coffins’’ — may resemble repositories for the dead, the pieces cataloged inside are anything but. Despite the near-religious fervor devoted to their preservation, past styles aren’t viewed by brands as relics, but rather as the foundation for future creations.

These days, the archive is the petri dish for designs of the future. History in the hands of these houses has become a valuable, marketable commodity to build upon, cultural capital that can’t be bought. This past winter, the fall 2017 collections in Paris were distinguished by each house’s attention to their native silhouettes, tropes and trademarks. Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello veiled breasts with a panel of gauze in a velvet dress that originated in an identical style in Yves Saint Laurent’s fall 1992 haute couture collection; Julien Dossena of Paco Rabanne used that label’s still-futuristic-looking metal mesh alongside chain-linked constructions directly drawn from 1967 designs; and Maria Grazia Chiuri riffed on Christian Dior’s penchant for navy blue, offering another iteration of the label’s signature curvaceous suit jacket. (It was named Bar in 1947, and still is today.) Finally, Demna Gvasalia’s Balenciaga women’s wear show made the ultimate statement — he rejected the contemporary entirely and closed with nine gowns that recreated looks, in their entirety, from ’30s and ’40s Balenciaga collections. Ghosts, resurrected.

It’s significant to note that the above designers are creating clothing under someone else’s name, for labels collectively dubbed ‘‘heritage brands.’’ Purchasing their goods as a consumer — or as a luxury-goods conglomerate — is to buy into their history. These houses don’t plea for recognition; they have already earned it. Familiarity, in fashion, breeds not contempt, but contentment. If customers are familiar with a name, they’re more likely to invest in it than in an obscure up-and-coming brand. Immediate recognition is the reason conglomerates overwhelmingly choose pre-existing fashion labels as vehicles for young talent instead of backing new ventures.

Karl Lagerfeld was arguably the first to revive an age-old, old-age designer label when he was appointed artistic director of Chanel in 1982. Lagerfeld produced styles that immediately read as Chanel, trading on classic components of Gabrielle Chanel’s repertoire: bouclé tweed suiting, pearls, chains, camellias. ‘‘There would be no Chanel without the history of Chanel. I don’t have to do it consciously, I do it unconsciously,’’ says Lagerfeld, via email. It’s an interesting turn of phrase; perhaps he means to say that he doesn’t have to try to be Chanel because Chanel’s style is so expansive — she invented an entire wardrobe, from the little black dress to the chain-strapped purse to the two-tone shoe. ‘‘There are lots of things people think are native to the house which are born since I’m here,” Lagerfeld says. ‘‘My job is to make believe. There is no other way for a fashion house to survive.’’

LAGERFELD’S WILDLY successful echoing of Chanel’s history has become the blueprint for labels across the world. Today, designers use archival styles to anchor their individual aesthetics to a brand’s past. You may not recognize Maria Grazia Chiuri’s name immediately, for instance, but you recognize the name and look of Dior in her designs for the house — the wasp-waisted Bar jacket, the wide-spread skirts. The same goes for Paco Rabanne: Julien Dossena is a designer name that resonates mostly among industry insiders, but everyone remembers the house’s chain-mail dresses from ‘‘Barbarella’’ — ‘‘or Jane Birkin, or Françoise Hardy,’’ adds Dossena. All of them, and in turn Paco Rabanne itself, have become synonymous with ’60s Space Age style. In a crowded and confused modern marketplace, immediate recognition — Coco! Bar! Barbarella! — is as good as gold.

From a business perspective, this approach makes sense. But it raises larger creative and cultural questions: namely, who owns history? Does a designer operating under a label founded by another have license to resurrect its forebear’s history for inspiration? It often results in little that is truly, genuinely new. But maybe, right now, we’re not craving something new, but something honest. Some labels will reissue designs with minimal changes, if any — Chanel, for instance, offers multiple versions of the 2.55, the quilted, chain-strapped bag originally designed by Gabrielle Chanel in 1955. Perhaps this is a reflection of a global appetite for vintage, for an authenticity that we believe can only be found in the past.

But maybe backward-glancing isn’t a product of the ideological or philosophical ramifications of our time — a quest for the genuine article — but rather a more practical matter of supply and demand, a need for speed. Fashion designers typically produce four collections a season (bolstered by multiple interim commercial collections), some designing for two or more different labels. (Gvasalia has Vetements, Lagerfeld his namesake line and the co-creative director role at Fendi.) Cribbing from an existing style sheet is an easy fix for an industry demanding ever more from its designers, a practice that’s been employed with increasing frequency since the early 1990s, when journalists began to freely throw around the term ‘‘revival’’ to describe various designers’ close recreations of vintage styles. In the same period, the market for vintage clothing exploded — another example of that thirst for authenticity and, perhaps, a rebellion against fashion’s built-in obsolescence.

But what are the ethics of referencing existing clothing so closely, even if the same label is stitched on the inside? The revival styles we are seeing now are often line-for-line recreations, not mere interpretations. It's largely accepted that a fashion house can freely reference its own past; the name gives designers license, and the physical archives give them access to templates from which to work. ‘‘If you want to know a brand, you have to know the history,’’ Dior’s Chiuri says. ‘‘I really decided immediately, when I arrived here a year ago, that it is like I am a curator for [Dior’s] heritage. And on the other side, I try to give my point of view.’’

IN TRUTH, it’s a delicate balance. Ironically, the strength of a house’s archive (and its worth) can only be measured by the merits of its contemporary designer. Chiuri uses the term ‘‘curator,’’ a word many designers invoke to describe the somewhat uneasy relationship between present and past in their work. Part of their role, at these kinds of brands, is to provide a new point of view on a well-established aesthetic — to reinvent (or at least modernize) the wheel. Designers are tasked with getting the press and consumers excited about something they might have seen many times before.

But does looking back satisfy a designer’s artistic urge to create something new? ‘‘If you think too much about Mr. Saint Laurent, I think the weight is very heavy and you cannot do anything,’’ Anthony Vaccarello says. ‘‘It’s too ‘homage,’ too old.’’ Vaccarello’s approach has been to collage elements from different Saint Laurent looks — his redux of that 1992 dress, for instance, collided the bodice with a miniskirt in the style Saint Laurent showed in the 1960s, rather than copying the full-length original. He remixes, instead of creating faithful reproductions. ‘‘It’s normal for me to live with a huge history because I was born in Rome,’’ Chiuri says. ‘‘I love the archives, I love history, I love memory, but I’m not nostalgic. I want to use that now.’’ Her collections do in fact reference particular Dior styles — her fall 2017 couture collection alluded to specific Dior dresses from every year between the founding of the house in 1947 and 1957, the year Christian Dior died. At its best, archival reference like Chiuri’s intrinsically connects the new with the old, weaving a seamless story that can constantly evolve.

This isn’t necessarily the case for all French heritage houses; the Balmain label, established in 1945, has been revived with only spurious connection to the historical style of founder Pierre Balmain, a lesser-known contemporary of Christian Dior. His look was conservative and decorative — the latter, perhaps, the only link to its contemporary incarnation helmed by Olivier Rousteing, whose trademark is his love of elaborate embellishment. Louis Vuitton had no background in clothing prior to the appointment of Marc Jacobs as its artistic director in 1997; as inspiration for his garments, Nicolas Ghesquière references Vuitton’s past as a luggage-maker — an idea the house will celebrate with an exhibition next month in N.Y.C. dedicated to its heritage — as well as the label’s excellence in leather goods and its abstract notions of functionality.

Respect for history is important, but when respect becomes reverence, it can prove paralyzing. To chart fashion’s major shifts over the past century is to observe creators at odds with the past. The rejection of pre-existing styles is almost a prerequisite for creating something new and noteworthy. Even Dior’s 1947 debut, a collection firmly based in nostalgic notions of femininity rife with Victorian silhouettes and techniques, represented a break with the fashion that had immediately preceded it: the wartime style of short skirts and squared shoulders. Forever after, it came to be known as the New Look. The same is true of Gabrielle Chanel’s little black dress in the 1920s and the anarchic, aggressive styles of punk. They were all new, back then.

But those were moments that reset aesthetics, notions of luxury and beauty ideals. These happenings are few and far between, and it’s unreasonable to imagine that fashion will throw up many more. Nevertheless, history should not (and cannot) be abandoned. It can act as a Trojan horse, a disguise for radical upheavals, for fresh revolutions. Old tags can hide new tricks — or new looks, to borrow the parlance of Maison Dior. Take Demna Gvasalia: He described his fall Balenciaga collection as an ‘‘homage,’’ but he also likened it to a rite of passage. ‘‘I need to prove that I can come into a house and not just start blatantly building my story without knowing them,’’ he says, ‘‘them,’’ meaning the archives. ‘‘I know that Cristóbal would probably roll his eyes at many of the things I do, but I feel the freedom now to do my own story.’’

Fashion Month, Demystified

Fashion Month — the four-week period twice a year when top designers debut their latest collections in New York, London, Milan and Paris — brings out a horde of photographers intent on capturing interesting clothes, both on the runways in the shows and on the sidewalks outside of them.

But when this season’s shows officially begin on Thursday, the last thing New York Times editors will be thinking about is their own attire. “I think a lot of editors learned a long time ago that comfortable footwear is really key during Fashion Month,” said Isabel Wilkinson, the digital director of T: The New York Times Style Magazine. “Most seasoned editors I see stick very diligently to that mantra.”

Fashion teams from T and The New York Times Styles desk will attend more than 300 runway shows, presentations, parties and store openings in the four fashion capitals. Preparations began months ago for coverage of everything from highly anticipated collections from the likes of Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren to celebrity-packed parties like Rihanna’s Diamond Ball, which takes place the last night of New York Fashion Week.

New York Fashion Week began in 1943 as a way for designers to share their new collections with the fashion media and retailers. It has since become part of a monthlong global circuit each September and February that attracts influencers, celebrities, brands, professional party people and lots of social media. The goal of Times editors is to speak authoritatively to the fashion community while recording a larger view of culture across print, web, video, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

“We cover fashion this intensely because it’s about the evolution of social statuses and gender roles; it’s so bound up with celebrity and race,” said Choire Sicha, the editor of Styles. “We are obsessed with fashion and we cover it rigorously. Not just because it’s an enormous, important business and because clothes are cool, but because it shows where we’re going as a society.”

Vanessa Friedman, the fashion director of The New York Times, will personally attend approximately 150 shows in New York and Europe. She has been covering Fashion Week for nearly 20 years, and tends to wear the same several dresses, stay at the same hotels and consume the same diet of coffee, candy, bread, the occasional green juice — and Champagne.

But routine allows for focus. “When I’m actually sitting in a show, I am thinking, first, ‘What is this designer actually saying about female identity now?’ ” Ms. Friedman said. “Is it a good idea? If it is not a good idea, why is it not a good idea? And how does that relate to the context of the brand? Does it make sense in the continuation of their heritage and their history? Where they have gone before? And what else is going on in the general fashion scene? Is it part of a trend? If it is part of a trend, what is the trend, and why is it important?”

Reporters typically log 12-hour days, explained Matthew Schneier, a Styles reporter — not counting the parties.

“There’s an unwritten law of Fashion Week that any two shows scheduled back-to-back must be at the farthest possible distance from each other and be scheduled at a time to maximize traffic getting between them,” Mr. Schneier said. “So, a good portion of time is spent in the back of a car, a cab or on the subway, trying to make sense of what you’ve just seen and get down enough sponsor-provided bottled water, protein bars and bodega trail mix to constitute a meal.”

Beyond the runway, the story continues inside the extravagant, invite-only afterparties, explained Denny Lee, a Styles editor. “A lot of them feel like they are P.R.-driven, but there are some that are absolutely lots of fun,” Mr. Lee said. “People just sort of want to let their hair down and have a good time, and you have this professional partying class that comes into New York City and just keeps things going.”

Styles and T work closely to coordinate coverage, and put out a joint newsletter, Open Thread. For Fashion Month, T’s coverage will center on showcasing beautiful images from the events, continually updated on its site, providing readers a way to shop for runway looks, and offering a peek into the world of the creators, Ms. Wilkinson explained.

“We like to do features around the little-known things about creative people — the little moments that aren’t captured, like someone’s strange obsession or weird collection or an unseen room, and giving a fresh perspective on creative people,” she said.

For Ms. Friedman, Fashion Month is like a global tour of modern art galleries.

“Often times you see things that are boring, or derivative, or overly conceptual,” she said. “But when you see something that is really great, that makes you think about your subject in a different way; you forget about everything else and get really excited. That happens each season, and you don’t know when it is going to happen — and that’s what makes it worthwhile.”

From Hangover Armour To ‘Seduction Uniforms’: The Only Five Outfits You’ll Ever Need

Torch your wardrobe: a study by Oxfam has found that women only wear five outfits. Yes, mercifully, it seems that everyone has adopted a carousel method to dressing: at least a third of our wardrobes are defunct, while the same pair of jeans, four T-shirts and three jumpers are rolled out without ceremony, ad infinitum. Seven in 10 of us invariably wear the same dress for every special occasion.

Certainly, there is an element of laziness to this approach; obviously, few can afford to replace their whole wardrobe at the flutter of an invitation. But it is also canny, for there are only really five outfits that you need to proceed through life untroubled. Together they form a capsule wardrobe of sorts, although instead of being choreographed according to shape and hue, as outlined in gilded lifestyle magazines, yours is, of course, themed by routine emotional triggers. Here are the only five outfits you really need:

The ‘seeing an ex’ Outfit

Do not affect that you are above this, no matter how “amicable” the split. You’ll want to look unshowy yet untouchable; best to aim for something in the area of “Scandinavian architect”. Ideally, your outfit should be comfortable, but more importantly it must not require regular repositioning to obscure a greying bra strap.

NB: it will not matter what you wear if you spend the evening scanning the room to locate said ex.

The Wedding/Funeral Multitasker

Granted, the crossover here is difficult to execute, unless you have spent many years cultivating the arch eccentricity of Fi in Four Weddings and a Funeral: faultlessly, unfailingly shrouded in black. Typically, weddings call for froth and fancy, whereas funerals are rightfully sterner.

However, there is a sliver where the Venn overlaps, and deft dressers execute it effortlessly. Keep necklines high and hemlines long – you do not want to be trying to tug your dress down while throwing the confetti. Dark florals suggest both wedding bouquets and funeral wreaths. You are multitasking.

The Office Hangover Outfit

Your whole body is draped in a sheen of perspiration. In your dreams, you are in a cocoon or lying entirely naked on a cool bathroom floor. But, on hungover days, your outfit is your armour: to put the office off your scent, you must wear something “directional”, something that employs “clean lines”. Also, crucially, deodorant. Above all, it must also permit stomach space for the stodgy succour of a lunchtime McDonald’s. Red lipstick, the brighter the better, can distract from your red face.

The Seduction Uniform

Contrary to the pervasive imagery of popular culture, this isn’t a red or black dress. Outfits intended to seduce rarely do. But, in this health-conscious, clean-eating age, your best seduction outfit is, obviously, your gym kit. It is also perfect for channelling Beyoncé at a moment’s notice. You might be tempted to don Liz Hurley’s Versace safety-pin dress to impress, but leggings and a sports bra can have much the same effect, just with more structural support. Can also be worn to the gym.

The ‘smart casual’ Outfit

Aha! You have been invited to a “business lunch” or “engagement barbecue”. That’ll be your smart casual look then. Don’t worry – in centuries to come, archaeologists will still struggle to interpret this most loathed of modern dresscodes. For now, best to just stick on a jumpsuit and hope for the best.

Jeremy Scott Is The Man Fashion Loves To Hate

Fashion Week is a circus, and no one relishes the big top more than Jeremy Scott.

The designer’s February runway show had fashionistas sweltering in an 80-degree room as they waited for attendee Kylie Jenner to appear, 45 minutes late and with TV crew in tow. Gate-crashers stole seats, relegating top editors from Elle and Teen Vogue to watching a live stream of the presentation in a screening room. Model Gigi Hadid stormed the runway in velvet bell-bottoms emblazoned with the face of Jesus; Anna Cleveland sashayed in a gaudy, Vegas-era Elvis cape.

The industry Web site Fashionista.com called the event a “s – – tshow,” while other critics scoffed at the C-listers, such as Sofia Richie, mugging in the front row. But for Scott, that embrace of chaos, celebrity and kitsch is the whole point.

“I’ve always been inspired by pop culture,” the 42-year-old designer told The Post. “I’ve always been very democratic about my view of fashion and iconography.” As for his haters?
“I would say that they’re stuffy and they could go to another show.”

They do so at their own peril. This Fashion Week marks the 20th anniversary of Scott’s namesake brand — his show on Friday will be a retrospective of his career — and, love him or hate him, his postmodern, cartoon aesthetic is everywhere.

It’s on TV, with Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus strutting in his eye-popping designs at the MTV Video Music Awards. It’s on newsstands, where reality stars are on the cover of Vogue. It’s even on the Paris runway, with revered labels such as Vetements and Gucci splattering images from “Titanic” or Disney cartoons onto their clothes.

“It is completely generational,” said Beth Dincuff Charleston, an industry vet who teaches fashion history at Parsons, adding that older fashion fans tend to find Scott’s garish designs off-putting. “He puts a lot of ideas together in a way that the 21-and-under set can really identify with.” She said that when she asks her undergraduate students who their favorite designer is, the name she hears most is Scott’s. “He’s becoming more and more impactful.”

Scott isn’t surprised. “Many times my taste in something that wasn’t accepted at first has ended up becoming more mainstream,” he said. “That’s another note I would say to those people who don’t get [me].”

SCOTT was born outside of Kansas City, Mo., far from the fashion world. But when the self-proclaimed “Midwest farm boy” discovered Details magazine in high school, he became obsessed with ’80s bad-boy designers Jean Paul Gaultier, Martin Margiela and Franco Moschino. After studying design at the Pratt Institute in Clinton Hill, he high-tailed it to Paris, with dreams of interning for Gaultier himself.

“Everyone was like, ‘You don’t know anyone, you don’t have any money, you don’t speak the language,’ ” he said. “There were all [people saying] no, no, no, no, no, but I . . . said yes.”

It was tough: Scott couldn’t get an internship. He was so broke that, in between bouts of couch-surfing, he slept on the Metro. But he fell in with the nightclub crowd and, in 1997, put on his own fashion show using scraps from a medical-supply store.

That collection — featuring hospital gowns with geometric pleats and bandages with heels attached for shoes — attracted a French TV crew. Suddenly, at 22, Scott was the toast of Paris fashion.

Mario Testino photographed his clothes. Isabella Blow, the stylist and magazine editor responsible for discovering Alexander McQueen, became a mentor. Karl Lagerfeld told Le Monde that Scott was the only designer who could succeed him at Chanel. In a few years, Scott was creating clothes for performers such as Madonna and Bjork.

“It was like a fairy tale,” Scott said. “It was . . . superflattering, and, at the same time, a little overwhelming.”

But he had his first fall from grace when, barely a year later, he debuted his fourth collection — an all-gold homage to the most opulent fashions of the 1980s. Vogue called it “destined to sink.”

“That was one of the hardest things to endure,” said Scott. “These were the same people that had said such beautiful things about me five minutes before, and now they’re saying heinous things. I took it very personally.”

Yet by the time he left Paris, in 2001, he was back en vogue — at least among the downtown demimonde, which adored his irreverence. Scott had inched toward an unabashedly pop style, inspired by the garish glitz of game-show hostess Vanna White. Scott settled in Los Angeles, so he could be closer to his growing celeb clientele.

“People thought I was crazy,” Scott said. This was more than a decade before Tom Ford moved to the West Coast and made it a fashion capital. “But Hollywood dictates so much of what we think of as fashion — the way people emulate things worn by celebrities on the red carpet or just getting coffee.”

Scott made his New York Fashion Week debut in 2002 with a show that combined ’80s shoulder-pad hauteur with the space-age kitsch of “The Jetsons.” New York was newly cool in fashion — Alexander McQueen had shown there in 2000 — but Scott helped take it over the top.

He invited reality stars like Paris Hilton to sit front row, creating a media riot. One 2003 presentation at Jeffrey Deitch’s Soho gallery — which featured scantily clad models in elaborate tableaux, such as a dominatrix in a barnyard surrounded by live animals — rankled the fashion press. The Condé Nast Web site Style.com refused to cover his shows for seven years after that.

“It was art,” Deitch told The Post of the scandalous show, explaining that Scott was taking pop-art tropes and expanding on them. “This was something different. He was maybe a little ahead of his time.”

After a sojourn to Paris Fashion Week, and a stopover in London, Scott returned to NYC in 2010, refreshed and with a sharper point of view, conjuring up the gonzo, Cartoon Network-on-acid sensibility that imbues his clothes today. Among his inspirations: Bart Simpson, SpongeBob and the McDonald’s arches, all of which have been emblazoned on his namesake designs or those created for Moschino, for which he became creative director in 2011.

“I think when he started to immerse himself in playing with those recognizable logos, it was a good way for him to [make] his message clearer,” said Parsons’ Charleston.

Katy Perry became a muse. A$AP Rocky sported his kicks, which Scott did for Adidas in an early high-fashion/sneaker collab. Miley Cyrus debuted a plastic jewelry line at his show. He was, now, a celebrity himself.

But some in the industry chafed at his vulgarity. What’s more, he was hit with lawsuits. In 2013, skateboard artist Jimbo Phillips sued Scott for copyright infringement. This was followed shortly with a suit by graffiti artist Rime, who said that the designer had taken elements from one of his Detroit murals for a dress Katy Perry wore to the Met Gala in 2015. (Scott settled in both cases.)

“That mindset of taking the McDonald’s logo and infusing it with the M for Moschino, or using corporate imagery in your designs, that’s fine. But it’s different when you’re using imagery from another artist,” said Charleston. (Scott had permission to use the SpongeBob and Bart Simpson characters, but a representative for the designer said his use of McDonald’s imagery was an “homage” that used a similar, “not direct” logo and therefore did not require approval.)

“For a moment there . . . I did question what Jeremy Scott’s role in the fashion industry is,” said Julie Zerbo, a legal consultant and founder of the Web site the Fashion Law. “But novelty is not what is driving demand for fashion. Demna [Gvasalia of the label Vetements] and Gucci are heavily referential for others’ work. [Copying] is less harmful to one’s reputation. And I assume the young people who are buying [Scott’s] iPhone cases and Barbie-inspired collections don’t necessarily care.”

They don’t. Scott’s pop vision of fashion has now become the norm. Balenciaga has a $2,100 bag that pays homage to IKEA’s blue tote; Gucci sells coats embroidered with Donald Duck.

“He’s a rule-breaker, which is good for fashion,” said influential publicist Kelly Cutrone. “Fashion can be super boring and elitist — there’s only so much you can do with a spaghetti strap, bias-cut satin gown.”

And while several designers, such as Altuzarra and Thom Browne, are fleeing New York Fashion Week for Paris — or skipping the runway entirely, as Narciso Rodriguez is — Scott has remained its stalwart: eager to deliver the sparkle, headlines and drama that the week once regularly promised.

“He still gets all the big models,” said fashion photographer Shawn Brackbill, who added that even though some glossy magazines don’t consider Scott’s shows “elevated” enough to warrant coverage, the presentations still draw a raucous, passionate crowd. “I think it’s a testament to him. Whether it’s just that the shows are fun or just different from everything else, people want to be a part of it.”

Technology Is Eating Fashion

BANGKOK, Thailand — If you think you run a fashion business, you’re wrong. A technology business with a fashion focus? Sure. Anything else and you may as well wave the white flag, because the rules of the rag trade are changing. You’re either leading that change, or you’re a sitting duck ready to be picked off by a sharp-shooting tech juggernaut.

Since Amazon first started peddling books online, Jeff Bezos never once saw his company as a retailer. “Amazon is a technology company. We just happen to do retail,” said Amazon CTO Wagner Vogels in 2011. With this mentality it’s no surprise Amazon has been able to conquer retail category after retail category, solving long-old supply-chain inefficiencies using technology as the not-so-secret weapon.

From product development to distribution, nothing about the fashion supply-chain is agile. It’s impossible for traditional fashion businesses to respond to real-time demand; it takes too long to get ideas to market. Even Zara, the masters of supply-chain efficiency, can only bring a product to market in 10-15 days. In our hyper-connected digital world, a lot can change in 15 minutes let alone 15 days.

The supply-chain also fails with personalisation. Products must be designed to appeal to markets broad enough to justify producing at scale, sacrificing individualisation for unit economics. Then there’s the fit issue. Standard sizes statistically fit less than 20 percent of the total addressable population. Too many consumers fall between the cracks of standard sizing bell-curves.

These shortcomings are being aggressively addressed by tech companies. Amazon for one has been mining its retail data and spinning up private labels to exploit product gaps discovered in the apparel market. In April 2017 the company was granted a patent for an on-demand apparel manufacturing system that creates custom clothing to the fit and specifications of individual customers. This means Amazon can not only eliminate inventory, but can respond almost instantly to market trends, and sell their products to the entire population.

Los Angeles-based Fame and Partners is another pioneer in the on-demand apparel supply chain. Like Amazon, the online womenswear label has developed a proprietary factory floor system with their manufacturing partner near Shanghai. CEO Nyree Corby says Fame and Partners use a modular design approach, allowing them to create new styles tied to their pattern and factory floor systems, which in turn maximises design flexibility, fit, and manufacturability. Corby says the rise of direct to consumer labels “translates to a larger proportion of brands now taking inventory risk than their business models previously allowed for.” She adds that reduced barriers for new fashion labels going to market “is driving fragmentation of trends and contributing to the general retail malaise.”

As consumers and their expectations digitally evolve, so too must the companies that clothe them. It’s not viable for fashion companies to design products for market segments when tech companies can design products for specific individuals. It’s not viable for fashion companies to spend weeks or months bringing products to market if tech-companies can do the same in seconds.

Technologies like data mining, machine learning, pattern bootstrapping, and product virtualisation are the tools of the new game. Tools that are already bolstering the arsenal of tech retailers like San Francisco-based Stitch Fix. They use artificial intelligence to analyse and predict purchasing behaviour, and formulate new product designs based on what components of style are popular at the time. Their AI-design technology sorts through trillions of design and fabric variants to generate products that have a statistically-high chance of retail success.

Human designers cannot compete with AI-designers when it comes to synthesising complex data from multiple sources. They also can’t compete with AI-designers to action their findings and assemble, render, and launch entirely new products in seconds. A consumer may soon be browsing an eCommerce site as an AI-designer watches and learns from their actions. The machine could design, render, and display new products to the consumer in real-time based on what it believes they want. The product could then be manufactured only after the consumer has purchased the product, eliminating inventory risk.

This supply chain revolution doesn’t only apply to mass-market fashion brands. Luxury brands cannot claim superiority when tech-driven mass-market players can guarantee a more personalised and better-fitting product.

Technology also shifts the creative process towards a more symmetric interaction between consumers and brands. With AI, brands have the scalability to use individual customers as the basis of inspiration for designs. H&M’s Ivyrevel have collaborated with Google to translate “a week of your life into a one-of-a-kind design.” Lifestyle data is collected through an Ivyrevel app, including tracking venues they visit and activities they do. The app learns “who you are, what you like to do, and where you like to go,” and then proposes a unique dress design for a specific occasion.

This might sound like novelty, however it’s just the beginning of a movement where technology begins to inform the creative process. To remain at the cutting-edge, luxury brands must learn to harness AI to pioneer new and meaningful experiences with consumers.

Fashion businesses need to start their transition into technology companies now. The sooner they start, the sooner they’ll cultivate the domain expertise required to remain competitive in the future. Firstly, digitise historical designs and build a rich database of products split into their individual variants. When properly organised, a human or AI designer can easily reference this library to assemble unique product without having to create anything from scratch.

Secondly, ditch standard-size grading and adopt parametric pattern grading. With parametric grading any product design can be made to fit any body type. It is getting easier and easier to capture customer body data, from taking 3D body scans on smartphones to predicting 50+ measurements from a few questions about fit. It’s only a matter of time before the mass market falls for bespoke fit, and you don’t want to be dependent on standard sizes when that time comes.

With parametric grading and bespoke fit comes the third recommendation: supplement your mass-produced inventory with on-demand production. You can quash sizing-related problems, eliminate unsold inventory headaches, and be responsive to consumer demand on a sale-by-sale basis. A low-barrier-of-entry approach would be to leverage pre-sales as a way to collect a critical mass of orders before producing custom products at scale.

Finally, start collecting and analysing all the data that you have, such as point-of-sale data, e-commerce analytics and metrics about your customers. Whatever you have, collect it. Your biggest competitive advantage is locked away in the data that flows through your business, day in day out. Build infrastructure around your data to analyse and take action on the findings. Your business’ survival depends on it.

Art of Fashion Co-chairs Relish The Experience

RANCHO SANTA FE — Maggie Bobileff and Denise Hug were already great friends before embarking as co-chairs of The Country Friends’ Art of Fashion 2017 Runway Show and Luncheon. However, they admit working on this grand Sept. 14 event at the Inn of Rancho Santa Fe gave them even a better opportunity to learn more about one another.

For Hug, she admires Bobileff’s tenacity and go-getter attitude.

“When Maggie wants to go after something, she puts everything into it,” Hug said. “She’s such a hard worker, and this shows in her boutiques.”

While Hug describes Bobileff as having an impeccable work ethic, another trait which equally stands out is her compassion.

“Maggie is always one of the first people to volunteer if you need help or if you’re in a jam,” Hug said. “She’s always there for you.”

For Bobileff, no one can find a sweeter person in town than Hug.

“I have always admired Denise,” Bobileff said. “She is such a charming person. And I learned that she is an excellent chairwoman.”

Instinctively, Bobileff knew Hug had the co-chairing skills. All it took was a little arm twisting to get her to agree to it. Bobileff approached the topic slowly and carefully the first time.

“I said, ‘No,’” said Hug, smiling.

Hug was accustomed to helping behind the scenes. Every year, she and her husband Bertrand host the Art of Fashion Patron Party at their fine dining restaurant, Mille Fleurs.

“She asked me again, and I said, ‘Maggie, no,’” said Hug, smiling even more.

Bobileff would not give up. Hug had worked for charities in the past, and Bobileff knew a co-chair position would be perfect.

So, she asked again.

“She finally coerced me, and I said all right,” Hug quipped. “We were walking the dogs one morning, and I said, “OK, let’s do it.’”

Now, Hug can’t imagine doing anything else. Co-chairing is an incredible honor and will leave an indelible imprint.  

The ladies agree that their partnership is relaxed. And above all, they enjoy working together. Bobileff shared that their tastes in aesthetics are quite similar, or they complement one another.

“I really think that this is why it has been so easy work together,” Bobileff said.

Being able to help The County Friends raise funds from this highly anticipated annual event to help support more than 35 local charities means everything to Bobileff and Hug. They are also quick to point out that their Art of Fashion 2017 committee is a dedicated and talented group.

Their generous sponsors also play a valuable role in the success of the event.

Hug admitted that she and Bobileff were also looking forward to having their good friend, Jenny Craig, be the Art of Fashion honoree.

For those attending the Art of Fashion for the very first time, Bobileff hopes they take the time out to learn about The Country Friends and what they do. According to Bobileff, The Country Friends is a charity with little overhead and mostly operated by volunteers.

“Raising money for a charity like this means that dollars go to where those needs are,” Bobileff said.

The Country Friends annual membership of $60 also goes to help fund the charities it supports. Its consignment shop in Rancho Santa Fe is another way it raises money.

“The Art of Fashion is a special tradition which has gone on for years,” Hug said. “There is such enthusiasm with everybody wanting to come to this show and with the knowledge that it supports all these charities.”

People Are "begging" for Plus-size Fashion

Retail's woes are well documented, but there's one corner of the market that's doing well: plus-size fashion. According to the NDP Group, a market analyst, the plus-size market grew by 6 percent in 2016, twice that of clothing retail overall. The folks at the front of plus-size fashion aren't the design houses you're used to hearing about, but smaller startups like Premme, founded by designers and social media icons Gabi Gregg and Nicolette Mason.

Ashley C. Ford, from Refinery29, wrote about plus-size fashion for New York Magazine. Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal spoke with Ford about her reporting and where the fashion industry might be headed next. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.

Kai Ryssdal: Where did women of larger sizes shop for fashion before?

Ashley C. Ford: Mostly Lane Bryant. And beforehand, there were just a lot of tricks, and tips, and there was a lot of making your own clothes, and there was a lot of, "Here's how to buy things in straight sizes that are oversized, and make them fit your body." Or, you know, things like that. It was a lot of internet sharing, and community sharing — how to adorn our bodies in a way that truly allowed us to feel as beautiful as we are.

Ryssdal: You mentioned internet sharing. You went into a brick-and-mortar retailer, and I can't remember which one it was. You didn't see your sizes there. And you went to the salesperson, and you said, "Where can I find stuff?" And they said online, and you went online. And it was a cornucopia, really, of stuff for you to wear.

Ford: Yes. Absolutely. That is something that you see with a lot of brick-and-mortar stores for some reason that I can't entirely explain, and these places don't really market the fact that they actually do carry sizes larger than a 10 or a 12 or a 14. And so, people just don't know to go there. They have no idea unless they happen upon it. You know, it's still most likely to happen online versus in the store.

Ryssdal: But you know, it's interesting you mentioned marketing. And in this piece that you wrote, there's some old Lane Bryant ads which are unbelievable. "Stout women dressed fashionably, look slender." And then, "Calling all chubbies," another woman, a full-size woman in a dress. And then you scroll down, and there's a Lane Bryant ad just owning it. Modern day, out there, saying listen. In fact, here's the tagline: "This body is made to be uncovered." It's remarkable, the change.

Ford: It absolutely is. And that change has really been driven by the community. As women have learned to love themselves, and to understand that every healthy body is not a straight size, we've pushed this market. And I love seeing that ad from Lane Bryant. I love that it ended up being part of the piece, because it is a great representation of how far we've come. And there's so much further to go.

Ryssdal: Here comes the nuts-and-bolts question: retail has been struggling, as I'm sure you know.

Ford: Absolutely.

Ryssdal: Does this emphasis on plus-size fashions and the profit it can bring, does it last, do you think?

Ford: I think it does last, and I think it lasts because the market is clearly starving for it. And on top of that, the market right now is really being driven by teen voices. You know, like, I'm 30. So it's like, you know, I could be saying this, and then, you know, 30 years it could be like, who cares? That generation is gone. You know, whatever. But the truth of the matter is, people who are much, much younger than me are begging for these options — are less begging than demanding these options. I think offering options is never a bad thing, especially to a community who is ready and willing to give you their money.

Indian and Bhutanese fashion to be a key theme at the Mountain Echoes Literary Festival 2017

The eighth edition of the Mountain Echoes Festival this year will see fashion as one of its key themes. Designers from across Bhutan and India will come together to curate collections which intersperse their nation’s textile heritage with contemporary fashion, with an aim to build a common thread between the countries and their shared culture.

Some of the names include Bhutanese designers Chandrika Tamang and Chimmi Choden, and Indian designer duo Abraham and Thakore.

A specially-curated fashion show will see models walk the ramp wearing exquisite weaves designed by Chimmi Choden’s CHIMMI House of Design. The home-grown brand gives the artistic heritage of Bhutan’s weaving culture a modern twist, preserves the country’s unique craft and builds upon it to create contemporary designs.

Fashion designer Chandrika Tamang will also present an exclusive line of outfits from her eco-friendly label CDK. Inspired by Bhutan’s stunning natural surroundings, CDK’s designs combine traditional patterns and weaving methods to create fun, fashionable yet 100% eco-friendly apparels.

Designer duo Abraham & Thakore, will exhibit their contemporary designs and present their interpretation of traditional Indian textiles at the specially curated fashion show. The collection will focus on designs created by the two for the 2016 Rajasthan Heritage Week, jointly organized by Khadi Board, Government of Rajasthan and Prasad Bidapa Associates. Made using hand-spun khadi fabric, the striking clothes reflect an aesthetic inspired by the country’s strong tradition of using earthy fabrics. The collection gives khadi a modern spin and encourages its use as a central fabric for modern designs.

The festival will also see eminent names such as Malika Kashyap, founder of digital publication & creative agency Border & Fall that focuses on India’s craft and Prasad Bidapa, one of India’s leading fashion consultants, join the designers for a session on the global evolution of textiles and design traditions.

The festival will also host a unique exhibition, titled ‘Handmade in Rajasthan’, curated by Prasad Bidapa that will celebrate the indigenous craft forms that give Rajasthan its distinctive identity. The exhibition will present a 360-degree view of Rajasthani textiles and a unique perspective of the designs that have been developed in the state by the local weavers, artisans and craftsmen.

Elaborating on the fashion element of the festival, designer Chandrika Tamang stated that Bhutan and India’s design traditions were closely linked.
“Our shared history has inspired designers across both nations and my collection will be a mix of traditional Bhutanese designs, created using an amalgamation of both Indian and Bhutanese fabrics,” she said.

Designer Chimmi Choden stated that the tradition of weaving was an inherent part of the Bhutanese culture. “For the festival, CHIMMI House of Design has created a collection inspired by traditional textiles, enhanced by timeless silhouettes, straight lines and bold colours. We hope our collection will inspire visitors to the festival to study, understand and appreciate Bhutan’s rich culture and traditions, using fashion as a medium,” she said.

Indian designers David Abraham and Rakesh Thakore stated that handloom fashion was one of the threads that tied Bhutan and India. “For decades, we have advocated the ethereal beauty of traditional weaves & fabrics and integrated traditional techniques into mainstream Indian fashion,” they said.

Fashion stylist and consultant Prasad Bidapa stated that the festival will also present a carefully curated segment of beautiful clothes which are handmade in Rajasthan.

“From the finesse of the kota doria sari to the robust hand-woven khadi we call our fabric of freedom; from the exquisite precision of our hand-blocked printing to the finesse of our embroidery, this collection is an emphatic tribute to the spinners, weavers, dyers, printers and embellishers of the beautiful state of Rajasthan,” he said.

The Mountain Echoes literary festival is an initiative of the India-Bhutan Foundation, in association with India’s leading literary consultancy, Siyahi. The festival will be held from August 25th-27th with an inaugural ceremony on the 24th August in Thimphu, Bhutan.

Vancouver’s Very First Indigenous Fashion Week Honours Heritage, Identity, Expression

VANCOUVER – Vancouver’s first-ever Indigenous Fashion Week opens this week at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, and is a long overdue of expression of where past and present Indigenous experiences collaborate with fashion, community, and modern ceremony.

The four-night event features some of the incredible Indigenous designers that go largely overlooked and ignored in Canada, and serves to breakthrough and transform conceptions of Indigenous identity through clothing. The faces of Indigenous design are varied, and similar in that one bead at a time, they spell out their names and stories from behind the sewing machine.

“I think what will surprise people is how they incorporate modern materials with traditional sources like fur, leather, beads and bone,” says Joleen Mitton, who is one of the organizers behind the project.

After working in the fashion industry in Canada and overseas for several years — and experiencing first-hand the appropriation of sacred Indigenous designs committed by fashion giants like H&M and Urban Outfitters — Mitton returned to her roots with the intention of building something that would re-claim, unify, and empower.

“Appropriation in the fashion industry only sees the surface, turns it into a commodity and claims that this is something to exploit,” says Mitton. What gets buried, then, is the interconnectedness of culture and clothing, and what gets silenced are the stories that have been woven and made to pass spiritual meaning down through generations. “Indigenous art is gifted from person to person, from family to family and clan to clan — it symbolizes deep relationship and sacred ceremony.”

Restoring these relationships will take more than one fashion week, which is why Mitton has plans for this to become an annual event. But in its first year, already 98% of the models at are First Nations, Métis, and Inuit, and many of the event’s helping hands are Indigenous youth coming out of the foster care system. “The young women and men we work with, to mentor them in performance and creative production, it changes everything about their concept of themselves as belonging, as needed and wanted, as capable and as future leaders,” Mitton says.

Storytelling not only gives a voice to the sometimes very painful, marginalized personal experiences of Indigenous peoples in Canada, but is also an integral part of expressing and keeping Indigenous cultures themselves intact. To pair this with fashion is a powerful thing, says Mitton.

Each night is set to reflect different aspects of the Indigenous experience, including Coast Salish design, urban-Indigenous streetwear, and a Red Dress Event to honour the many missing and murdered Indigenous women. Closing night is called All My Relations, and is a cutting-edge, fantastical tribute to the power of ancestry, family, and grass-root mobilization within Indigenous communities.

“Every piece tells a story,” Mitton says. “It’s a continent of stories. We’re walking with meaning, walking with identity, heritage, family, spirit, and truth visible for all to see. Presenting ourselves with confidence and connection is almost contrary to our current anonymity.”

Fashion and history on display at Wentworth Home

ROLLINSFORD — A new summer exhibit at the Col. Paul Wentworth home provides a look at the way fashion has changed through the ages, from the 1800s through the 1900s.

Called “Fashionable Folks,” the exhibit centers on women and their fashion. Julia Roberts, President of the Board of Director for the historic home, said she finds it a fascinating look at a time that saw women through to their first efforts at declaring their independence and claiming their place in the world.

There are about 40 garments on display, everything from underwear to the various dress styles and shoes, depicting how they have changed over the years. The big message is how they became less restrictive as women became more active in their lives.

“Most of the clothing came from a family in the area who apparently never threw anything away, and we are thrilled for that,” said Roberts. “Through them, we were able to put together a pretty good representation.”

Even in the 1800s, Yankee frugality is easily seen in the repurposing of clothing.

“Women would choose to remake expensive fabrics,” said Roberts. “What was once a gown could become a petticoat. Trim from fancy bodices was saved and reused. Gowns were remade into something more fashionable for the times.”

Even underwear changed. Roberts said at first the underwear was intended to help shape whatever silhouette was popular at the time.

“They didn’t really wear panties,” said Roberts. “They had so many overcoats that it would have been impossible to pull anything down. Underwear was basically two legs attached to a waistband, open in the center so they could just squat. It was much later that they were sewn closed.”

When crinolines — hooped petticoats worn to make a long skirt stand out — became popular in the 1800s, so did hoop cages for skirts and bustles.

“The question most people ask is — how did they sit down,” said Roberts. “In reality, most of them were made to be collapsible. You couldn’t just stand all the time. Still, what we would do to be in fashion is pretty much anything.”

Giant puffy sleeves, big hooped skirts and corsets, all designed to make the waist look smaller, began to fade in popularity when women started showing an interest in sports, and when they began working during the war in unconventional jobs.

“It was during WWI times when women began to say, forget the corsets,” said Roberts. “They were starting to feel their freedom. They got the vote and they felt their worth.”

Hopeful Upstarts Kick Off Men’s Fashion Week in New York

There is a fledgling 19-year-old Nigerian-born designer who boasts of a nascent cult following in Japan; a Sudanese immigrant model discovered at his prom in Albany; a gay African-American Army veteran who pitched his spring 2018 men’s wear collection toward lightening the country’s mood.

A variety of ways present themselves of looking at New York Men’s Day, the opener of New York Fashion Week: Men’s. You can see it as the continuation of a seemingly unending loop of clothes going around in circles two months a year in cities like London, Milan or Paris. You can consider it a valiant, and possibly futile, effort on the part of the Council of Fashion Designers of America to reclaim its rightful place for American fashion on a global stage. You can view it as a commercial hodgepodge in search of a unifying tent-pole concept. Or you can think of it as another excuse for the click-baiting Instagram loons to break out the pink bunny slippers and harem pants.

Another possibility exists, however, and it is a hopeful one. No less in fashion than in other ostensibly more serious fields, people confused and alarmed by the current state of politics are resisting a new world order that looks to shut them out.

Designers have stories to tell about an America whose hijacked narrative they would like to reclaim. Even fashion design can do that, lest anyone forget.

Consider Taofeek Abijako, a young American of Nigerian ancestry who, though just out of high school, staged a startlingly sophisticated show of street wear inspired by post-colonial African clothing, the kind that might have been worn by the fashion-conscious young Malians featured in the classic studio portraits shot by Malike Sidibe or Seydou Keita in the 1960s.

“I’m interested in the way the natives adopted European styles and made them their own,” said Mr. Abijako, whose label is called Head of State. He quickly added, “I can say natives because I’m African.”

On a group of models cast on New York streets (or, in the case of the young Sudanese model Mohamed Ali Ibrahim, discovered by the designer at a prom) and with the kind of looks often excluded from mainstream fashion, Mr. Abijako showed 10 separate outfits that included oversize jackets, trousers and shorts and in colors that hewed to a limited palette of primary colors.

What made them interesting was the slightly off-kilter shape of trousers tailored close to the leg but then belted to look as though borrowed from an older brother or else the boxiness of zippered jackets that appeared to have been pulled from the bottom of a prop trunk.

The odd fits were intentional, the designer explained: “I like that aesthetic you see in the Sidibe portraits, where you know he put the sitters in clothes he had around the studio.”

If those natty clothes were occasionally ill fitting, the poses struck by Sidibe’s subjects, bright gazes fixed on a new African future, were prideful enough to bring anything they wore to life.

Julian Woodhouse, a former Army lieutenant who started the label Wood House, was one of the designers who returned to New York Men’s Day on Monday. “I called the collection Field Day, because I was feeling so heavy about political shifts,” Mr. Woodhouse said. “I wanted to show something shiny in a world of confusion.”

Seeking to inject a jolt of humor into a grim news cycle, he put models like Daje Barbour in colored shower-curtain mackintoshes or voluminous cargo shorts worn with suspenders left hanging or else overalls with pegged ankles and bibs cut low for efficiency of escape. There were also ball caps emblazoned with the slogan “Make Menswear Great Again.”

“We all need some humor right now,” Mr. Woodhouse said.

It is either that or yank the covers over your head, said David Hart, another of the designers featured at the morning presentation held at Dune Studios in the financial district.

“I’m kind of staying in my own world and my own bubble,” Mr. Hart said. Titled Tourism in Cuba, the collection’s design was undertaken before the Trump administration reversed President Barack Obama’s decision to ease restrictions on travel to that country. “I was planning to go with some friends,” he said, “and now I can’t.”

Hence he summoned an image of Cuban fashion as it might have appeared in the Batista years — one that, while at odds with the neon bling characteristic of contemporary Havana style, looked a good deal fresher than some of the literary hokum left behind by that island’s immortal literary expat, Papa Hemingway.

The hues of Mr. Hart’s smartly cut suits of linen or cotton woven by the storied Albini Group in Italy — styled with rolled cuffs and billowing pocket squares — shirt jackets fashioned after guayaberas and high-waisted pleated trousers were a riff on the candy-color ’50s Chevrolets still seen tootling along the Malecon. What gave the David Hart collection an edge was the subtlety of the designer’s tonal color selections — palest banana; faded ocher; mint green; Necco-wafer pink.

It is his ability to refresh a weary design trope like Cuban tropicalia that, one imagines, might recommend Mr. Hart to one of those great American brands now casting about for a design talent to steer a course back toward profitability and relevance.

Camille Styles Shares Her Summer Party Secrets

WHEN I HEARD THAT TEXAS TASTEMAKER CAMILLE STYLES was heading to Houston to throw a summer-ready shindig with the help of Target, I was all in. The event-planner-turned-lifestyle-guru’s site is all about #partygoals, so I knew it would be an amazing event. True to form, I sampled cones full of fresh fruit in patriotic colors and star-shaped bites of grilled cheese, geeked out over the twee ice-cream-shaped strung lights and watched the parade of kiddos get airbrushed tattoos of summer foods before sitting down with Styles to get her thoughts on how anyone can throw an easy, Instagram-ready party without breaking the bank.

Tell me about how this collaboration with Target came together?

It’s been such a wonderful partnership. For one, I’ve been a Target shopper all my life. I love Target. For me its the perfect merging of style and accessibility, which is something that my brand is always trying to do, to make style something that everyone has access to. To me that’s what Target really is all about.

The other thing is I have two kids, and especially as a mom I’m so busy. To be able to get a great outfit for Phoebe and myself, all of our party supplies, food and drinks for the party, stop and get a lipstick, just to get everything I need in one place is huge.

For me the partnership has been such a dream because it just feels so organic. I love to be able to incorporate all of the new collections into the parties we’re designing—so far on the site we’ve done a spring Easter brunch using all Target’s spring home collections, which was really beautiful and kind of girly, and then we just did our backyard barbecue that was really festive and fun and gave me so many great ideas for the Fourth of July barbecue I’m about to hold at my house.

What’s the aisle at Target that you can’t resist every time you pop in?

I have so much Threshold in my own home, so for me I can’t walk down the aisle of the Threshold collection without finding something new that I didn’t know I needed, whether it’s serving pieces or throw pillows or outdoor rugs. This summer I’m really loving the Poptimism collection that Target just launched, too. It’s full of outdoor entertaining must-haves and you’ll see so many of them at this party, from all the cute, festive disposable festive plates and serve ware to the string lights that are all kinds of fun motifs. For the party today we’ve taken some of these iconic summer symbols of the Poptimism collection that Target’s designers created and blown them up into these huge backdrops around the party.

What I love about your parties on the site is that they always seem really fun, not like you’re working hard.

I refuse to be away from the party in the kitchen. I want to be having fun with my guests. So one thing that Target and myself are trying to do is really inspire people with how easy and affordable it can be to throw a great party. I think so many people are intimidated by the idea of hosting in their home because they think it’s going to be tons of work or really expensive or both and it absolutely doesn’t have to be.

At the backyard barbecue, we used all disposable dishes, which in the Poptimism collection adds such a fun element. I think people used to think they were sacrificing style if they went with disposables, but when you have this well-designed collection and these cute prints it actually becomes one of the cutest parts of the party. And then the best part is you can just throw it away at the end.

What are some of your go-to recipes to impress guests without feeling that stress and pressure of trying to cook while everyone else is relaxing?

With my background, a lot of what I learned was tips and tricks for planning a menu that can be prepared well in advance of guests arriving, so at the last minute you’re not standing over the stove. In the summertime I love grilling everything. It’s such an easy way to not even turn on the oven and heat up the kitchen, clean up is a breeze because you’re just serving everyone off the grill, and it’s fun and delicious.

For the barbecue we did chicken and veggie fajitas, which is definitely a summertime staple around our house. But we grill pizzas, we grill fish tacos. And then we just serve it at the table. For me that’s one of the things that makes summer entertaining a snap. People shouldn’t feel like it requires weeks and weeks of planning to have people over for a casual, spontaneous get-together, but you can still add in a few cute, well-designed pieces to make it feel like a party.

I am a huge fan in the summer, of either family-style service or putting the food right in the middle of the table on big, beautiful serving pieces—and then that becomes a décor element as well. Beautiful food is one of the best centerpieces, I think. Or setting up a great buffet, which is what I’m doing for the Fourth. Just being able to set up the food in a pretty way and let people serve themselves ... It makes things really casual and fun.

What’s a party element that most people overlook?

I would say lighting. I think that lighting at an outdoor party in the summertime is the easiest, most inexpensive way to make it feel so magical. Whether it’s stringing up some beautiful string lights or placing a couple great lanterns, votive candles. It doesn’t take a lot of effort but it really transforms a backyard space.

And the big question: How do you plan a party where both the kids and the adults will be entertained?

I’ve learned so much since I had Phoebe a few years ago! I used to never give it a second thought but it really is true that when you have families over you want some kind of activity to keep the kids busy and having fun so the adults can actually have a conversation. I love lawn games in the summer ... over here we have this fun cornhole game, and Target has some really fun lawn games, like badminton. We also threw a bunch of hula hoops in the yard, which is very little effort but it kept the kids entertained for hours. Even throwing some beach balls out in the yard, getting a little creative.

How do you come up with a fun theme for your events?

I think it’s just finding something simple. For the backyard barbecue we used the watermelon motif from the Poptimism plates as our launching pad so I think it’s rally fun to get inspired by summer fruit. You can also choose something that’s an activity at the party, like our snow cone stand. It’s such a fun theme that you can repeat as a motif throughout. We just bought a snow cone machine from Target, the Cuisinart, it’s bright red, you can make homemade syrups, everyone can choose their favorite flavors, the adults can spike them with alcohol. It’s a really fun summer activity for kids and adults.

Ebonee Davis and Brandice Daniel Come Together For a Powerful Discussion About Fashion Diversity

Model Ebonee Davis and Harlem's Fashion Row founder Brandice Daniel are leading the charge for a more diverse fashion industry. And yesterday (July 1), both women stopped by the 2017 ESSENCE Festival Beauty & Style stage to discuss exactly how they've overcome specific challenges in their respective careers.

Davis, who was recently featured in the Pantene Gold Series campaign, spoke out about the trouble she had getting signed as a Black model and the “Eurocentric beauty standards” that are glorified by the fashion industry.

“I was straightening my hair because they said that I couldn’t wear natural hair,” said Davis. “I was wearing weaves because they said that was the standard of beauty that I had to subscribe to -the Eurocentric standard. Ultimately, telling me that the way I was born isn’t beautiful and it isn’t good enough.”

The struggle for representation isn’t just with models, but designers as well. Brandice Daniel, wants to give Black designers a space to be seen.

“We’re spending 22 billion a year on apparel…but less than 1% of [black designers] are represented in department stores,” said Daniel, who began Harlem's Fashion Row in 2007. “That lit a fire under me.”

That flame grew into a organization that puts on packed out events and celebrates designers and celebrities that contribute to Black fashion.

“I want designers that put in the work.,” she continued. "Those who really have a different point of view and an amazing collection or aesthetic - I want them to be seen.”

Utilizing their platforms to make change, both ladies will continue to not only shine light on the fashion industry's diversity issues, but create opportunities for others as well.

“Who are our role models… if all of the successful Black women in my industry are being removed from the culture,” said Davis. “I have had the opportunity to amplify my message, amplify my voice. I want people to know is that no mater who are, no matter where you come from, not matter what you look like you’re beautiful.”

How to dress for the summer heat

We all look forward to summer, but let's face it, hot days can be a real pain when fashion is at stake. If you need some outfit inspiration that will keep you looking cool in the heat, check out our ideas.

1. Wear open-toed, flat shoes.

High heels can be a real pain the heat. You want to wear sturdy shoes that you won't slip out of and won't cause blisters

2. Bigger is (sometimes) better

Summer is the time of year we all want to whip out the short shorts, but remember that Bermuda shorts and flowy tops will give you the extra wiggle room to allow air to circulate

3. Don't be afraid of hats

Hats don't always seem like the most stylish accessory, but they will protect you from UV rays which will eventually keep you cooler

4. Opt for natural fibers

Natural fibers are more breathable than any synthetic material

5. Try lighter colored clothing

Black might be more slimming, but it also retains more heat. This summer, opt for white or lighter colored clothing

Fashion notes: Seek out summer power slides

I am the first to admit that my go-to shoes are trainers. But after wearing them throughout autumn, winter and spring, it may be time to trade in my clunky, sporty footwear for more feminine alternatives. The summer heat, after all, doesn’t favour thick socks and soles, and while the whole trainers-with-skirts combination has a nice tomboy appeal, there are far prettier ways to flaunt your feet.

There’s an upside. Slides have undergone a spectacular makeover since their mass-market entry two years ago. They debuted as sporty pool slides of an athletic nature. But the trend has heavily evolved since its early rubber Nike Benassi slipper offerings and now features far more interesting elements than mere logos. Case in point – my sister’s birthday gift to me was a pair of espadrille platform slides with embroidered, knotted bows in place of traditional sandal straps.

Though they’re multicoloured and have a bohemian, hemp-style sole, they’re actually incredibly versatile. Slides, given a bit of a lift with a platform, can be easily worn with jeans, culottes, skirts, tapered trousers or shorts. When they’re completely flat, with rubber soles and minimal detailing, they tend to evoke more of a casual, careless attitude and it becomes more difficult to pair them with garments other than sweatpants or leggings – unless they feature jazzy embellishments, such as Tory Burch’s rubber designs.

Almost every luxury brand has revisited the shoe silhouette of the slide this season, from Prada’s brightly coloured faux-fur versions to Fendi’s, which are topped with three-­dimensional floral appliqués. Embracing this trend takes hardly any effort – or much money for that matter. Take a trip to high-street stores such as Zara, ­Mango or ­Stradivarius, and you’re bound to leave with a few great summer slides.

Fashion Week’s Dirty Little Secret: Laundry

PARIS — Past the plush Napoleon III sofas, through a forest of orchids and under the keen eye of doormen in pillbox hats, a guest crept out of the Ritz Paris hotel on a mortifying mission.

The guest, dear reader, was me (while working on an article about the Ritz during fashion season some years ago), and this was not a walk of shame.

With a lumpy bag humped over my shoulder, I was headed to a coin-operated laundromat, surely the first guest at this storied establishment to take out his own washing.

I had my reasons.

Packing strategies take on an urgency when your occupation requires you to spend as much as a month at a time following the fashion caravan through some of the most beautiful and expensive cities in the world, as hundreds of retailers, journalists, stylists and photographers routinely do.

If you seek to make a daily fashion statement like Alex Badia, the style director of Women’s Wear Daily and an Instagram darling, you pack the way 19th-century swells did for the Grand Tour: with oversize suitcases and outfits arranged in advance.

“Fashion Week is like an expedition, an adventure, like mountain climbing,” Mr. Badia said at a Balenciaga show in the Bois de Boulogne.

From two immense North Face bags crammed with his outfits, Mr. Badia had selected on that torrid morning a Joseph coat, a Juun.J shirt, Bottega Veneta trousers and Yeezy sneakers, all in polar white.

“I really, really love clothes,” Mr. Badia added. “Though when I get home, I wear the same navy T-shirt for, like, a month.”

If your intention, however, is not to set shutters whirring but, rather, to stay presentable during the weeks crammed with runway shows and industry events, the system you develop is a matter of self-preservation and budget maintenance.

For Greg Kessler, a photographer who has spent 15 years documenting backstage life at men’s and women’s fashion shows in New York and Europe, clean laundry is key to survival. “We always rent an apartment in Paris, and the first thing we ask is if there’s a washer-dryer,” said Mr. Kessler, whose personal style might be characterized as that of a natty slacker.

“One problem is that, being from the United States, you never know if the setting is on the right cycle,” he added.

Calibrated on the metric system, temperatures on European washers can play tricks on the unaware. Run delicates through a wash cycle at 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) and you end up, as Ms. Kessler said, “with doll clothes.”

In most seasons, Nick Sullivan, the style director of Esquire, arrives in Milan on a Friday evening direct from the men’s wear shows in London, checks into his hotel and immediately tosses his dirty laundry on the floor.

“Then I stuff a bag,” he said, “and on the way to the first Saturday show, I get the driver to stop at Lavasecco di Santa Croce,” one of Milan’s wash-and-dry establishments. “You have to time it right, because if I miss the drop-off, the clothes aren’t ready” to be picked up in time for the next leg of a journey leading to Paris.

Typically, the risk pays off. Not only does having everything washed, pressed and folded at Mr. Sullivan’s preferred spot cost an employer-friendly 60 euros rather than the exorbitant €300 charged by a hotel, “everything comes back folded in cellophane and packaged like a 1950s Christmas present. Plus, I resent spending €300 to wash my smalls.”

These sensitive items and the jeans that no European hotel ever gets right — creases! — are why I creep through lobbies to my favorite laundromat here, a generically named (a sign above the door says “Laverie automatique”) 16-washer holdout wedged between a restaurant and a Martin Margiela boutique on a tiny square in the First Arrondissement.

A full load at this place costs €4.50, and dryer time is calculated in 10-minute increments, each costing a single euro. Since I prefer my jeans air-dried, I bypass this step and take my clothes back to my hotel room to be strung up from shower rods and towel racks and even, during this particular week, the chandelier until the place starts to look like a Neapolitan alley.

Some people would consider it sinful to squander an hour dully observing a wash-and-spin cycle when all around lie the splendors of the City of Lights. Yet a steady diet of fabulousness can leave one aching for mundane pleasures. And when business trips stretch to a month, it is essential, as Madeleine Weeks, the fashion editor of GQ, said, “to do your laundry, pick up Greek yogurt or buy some flowers, whatever you can to make you feel more normal.”

Carla Fendi, Former President Of Luxury Fashion Brand, Dies

Carla Fendi, onetime president of the eponymous fashion line, died in Rome on Monday at the age of 79, following a long illness, The Associated Press reports. The fashion house tweeted that her loss "deeply affects us all."

Italy's Culture Minister Dario Franchescini remembered her as "a cultivated and sensible woman who was a major patron of the arts," according to the AP.

Carla Fendi — along with her four sisters — helped propel their parents' humble leather and fur workshop to an internationally famous brand name.

It was 1925 when Adele and Edoardo Fendi opened their shop in Rome. In 1965 Carla and her sisters hired Karl Lagerfeld as a designer.

Under his direction, Fendi became perhaps the world's most famous furrier. Fendi also broke ground with its leather purses, especially the celebrated baguette bag.

Each sister continued to play a role in the company but it was Carla who served as Fendi's president and the company's public face until it was sold to the French luxury group LVHM in 1999, reports the AP. Carla served as honorary president until her death.

She was married to Candido Speroni.