Continuing to evolve his refined vision of American sportswear, Resort found Adam Lippes in a relaxed mood influenced by French visual artist Willy Daro’s decorative objets, which fuse together natural metals and stones. That inspiration was reflected in the collection’s emphasis on organic shapes, particularly evident in easy pieces such as paper-bag-waisted trousers, fluid silk slip or wrap dresses, and soft double-knit merino ponchos. Daro’s works also gave rise to the graphic foliage print found on Lippes’ boxy, thigh-grazing shift, which would look terrific with a pair of flats. Keeping in mind the season’s early November delivery window, Lippes was sure to offer plenty of transitional outerwear to take his customer into the colder months. Highlights included an unconstructed topper cut from ivory wool, backed in duchesse, as well as “monastic,” robe-like coats (in either boudoir-ready satin or luxe, brushed cashmere) with open slits along the sides that imparted a dynamic movement. Elsewhere, Lippes continued to elevate denim—a relatively new category that has met with retail success—in the form of boxy chambray tunics and indigo wrap skirts, which communicated an easy elegance that wasn’t too fussy.
—Brittany Adams
Runway Feed

Top 10 male idols with the best body proportions
Episode 13 of Mnet's Super Idol Chart Show hosted by Super Junior's Ryeowook and BEAST's Dongwoon lists ten idols who have the most ideal body proportions; statistics and explanations included! The list was determined by the calculation of 1534 …
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The Enduring Promise of a Thinner You
Candace had just had her photo and measurements taken by Dr. David E. Halpern, a plastic surgeon from Tampa, Fla., who offers the device in his practice. Now he gave her the Strawberry … The aesthetic medical industry has its own name for the …
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There was a tender typewritten note from Nicolas Ghesquière on every seat at his first show for Louis Vuitton this morning. “Today is a new day. A big day…Words cannot express exactly how I am feeling at this moment…Above all, immense joy.” Emotions were high in the crowd, too. Few designers are as beloved, respected, or copied as Ghesquière is, and he’s been off the scene and badly missed since his departure from Balenciaga a year and a half ago. Only Raf Simons’ debut at Dior was as breathlessly anticipated as Ghesquière’s at Vuitton. They’re the jewels in Bernard Arnault’s LVMH crown, and Arnault was in the front row today, seated alongside Princess Charlene of Monaco and other lights from the worlds of film (Catherine Deneuve), art (Cindy Sherman), and fashion. Jean Paul Gaultier, for whom Ghesquière worked early on, turned up, as curious as the rest of us to see what the new LV, after fourteen years of Marc Jacobs at the helm, would look like.

As the metal blinds of the Cour Carree show space opened to bright sun, Freja Beha Erichsen emerged in a black leather snap-front coat with a wide caramel-colored collar, carrying the new Petite Malle bag, a miniature LV trunk at her fingertips. The coat’s flared A-line cut and abbreviated thigh-high hem was the show’s predominant silhouette, but if that shape cued a 1960s vibe, the workmanship was 21st-century state of the art. “The knowledge of the team is extraordinary, the best of the world,” Ghesquière said afterward, clearly delighted to be back at the red-hot center of things. You won’t find a more luxurious coat than the black crocodile shown here, despite its industrial zip front, or a jacket as well made as the one he patchworked in different colored leathers.

Naturally, there were a lot of skins, a lot of suede, a lot of leather, and naturally Ghesquière used them in innovative ways. A pair of cool evening looks had molded leather bodices and knit skirts aswirl with hand-cut feathers. Elsewhere, the designer’s famous flair for experimentation was somewhat scaled back. (That mostly holds true for the bags as well, save for a double-handled style that in fact came with just one handle.) “I will not say it was effortless, but it was a much more natural and easy process,” he went on. “I listened to the girls in the studio a lot, the women around me, what they want, what they need.” That came across in an outfit like the checked three-button blazer accompanied by glossy leather jeans and a red cardigan with a frilly white collar underneath, and in another that consisted of a white turtleneck, a trim black jacket, and a skirt in wool and crinkly leather, the new LV suit. And in a third that was as straightforward as a ski sweater and a belted A-line mini can be. Skirts and dresses were squarely the focus, yet fans of Ghesquière’s life-changing trousers could take heart at the sight of a high-waisted style into which he tucked a khaki jacket. In any case, there will be plenty of seasons for pants. This was a great beginning, understated but not without power, for Ghesquière and the new Louis Vuitton.
—Nicole Phelps
Runway Feed

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Miuccia Prada started her personal revolutionary role in the fashion industry with one simple item: a black nylon rucksack. She took the banal, the ordinary, the everyday and made it desirable, luxurious, and special. She started to design and define what luxury could be by the appropriation of the normal. What she presented at Miu Miu today was a continuation of that task. A task and a collection that was so enjoyably witty, subversive, and skewed that it reached new heights of the “avant-bland.”

Prada frequently returns to normality; she often revels in it. This is not to say that she just presents something desultorily and day-to-day, then shoves it on a catwalk—that’s not fashion, after all. Instead she designs, re-contextualizes, and skews. Prada makes you think as well as laugh, and above all she infects you with a desire for quilted nylon from the bottom of your heart. And that’s because, well, she has a desire for quilted nylon from the bottom of her heart. “Everybody thought I was crazy with this, with the amount of times we tried getting this right,” the designer said of the key fabric of the collection. “I worked for one month on the right windbreaker that was not puffy-puffy. The perfect windbreaker—I had to get it right.”

“I am fixated on the notion of no useless design,” Prada continued. “Ideas are a different thing. But when things are overdone from nothing, I can’t stand it; it had to be more real, more wearable, less pretentious. What is normal, what is real, is what is important. In Paris you go slightly more grand, but this time I went, ‘Who cares?'”

Who cares, indeed. Prada covered the entire Palais d’Iéna in clear plastic, from floor to columns, echoing that Prada code of the clear plastic mac that made a familiar appearance in the collection and was added to by skirts, tops, and boots. The rest of the venue was covered in rough scaffolding; again utilitarian—you sat on it. A mini version of the supportive metal scaffolding poles was formed as heels for shoes. Above all, the designer presented a new kind of Miu Miu girl, one more stripped down and utilitarian than ever before. This was a girl that would not be out of place in the north of England, wearing a ski jacket and a school uniform, eating crisps at a bus stop in 1986, like a Rita or a Sue from an Alan Clarke film. Re-contextualized in this highest of fashion settings, she was aggressively normal, avant-bland, normcore.

Yet as the show progressed, she became more and more extravagant. As Tori Amos’ version of “Enjoy the Silence” was replaced by a dance mix of Depeche Mode’s original, the girl exploded into quilted brocades that looked to have Lurex running through them, her home knits revealing delicate underwear underneath. Intricate metal appliqués appeared on plastics—the silhouettes were similar, but the fashion came to the fore. Yet you were still left with the lingering impression of the start: the quilted nylons, the windbreakers, and the everyday. “Normality is weird,” said Mrs. Prada. And in fashion, that is undoubtedly true.
—Jo-Ann Furniss
Runway Feed

The Hermès show was staged in the Palais Brongniart. It was once the stock exchange, which made it an appropriate location for a presentation from a label whose name is a global byword for luxury. It also made the atmosphere all the more striking: There wasn’t a moment of ostentation, just dark velvet curtains with a twenty-foot drop, a sense of shadowy mystery, and Echo & the Bunnymen on the soundtrack. Stealth wealth, indeed.

Christophe Lemaire wouldn’t want it any other way. The woman he envisions for Hermès is remarkably consistent with the creature that populates his own collections: She’s a little bit mysterious, a little bit exotic, and fiercely independent. After the show tonight, Lemaire mentioned the Russian steppes, the ancient East-West trading route known as the Silk Road, and Persian carpets as reference points. It was easy to see the carpets in his dense, rich prints, and a Mongolian horsewoman might recognize some of the designer’s proportions. The coat in shaggy goat was as wild as the wind.

Lemaire said he’d been musing on all the characters a woman could be. But it wasn’t really those ethnic personae who carried the show. His notions of a strong, graceful, urban style were more persuasive. He tipped his cap to trends—lush knitwear, oversize
coats—but the slightly exaggerated proportions of his jackets and pants once again seemed more of a reference to Martin Margiela’s tenure at Hermès, and were just as elegantly slouchy, especially in an ivory tux with an extravagant shawl collar, or a coat-dress, also in ivory, that was closed with a single button.

About that stealth wealth: Lemaire offered a tunic in paper-light chiffon crocodile, pinned at the back, casually falling open from a single closure at the back of the neck. Such ease, combined with the utter luxury of the material, defines Hermès. In fact, with Véronique Nichanian as creative director for the men’s collection and Lemaire in charge of womenswear, the company now puts forth an idiosyncratic but completely convincing statement about luxury dressing in the twenty-first century.
—Tim Blanks
Runway Feed