King of cool Alexander Wang took over a
Romanesque church in New York on Saturday to present a bondage-inspired
collection at the altar of high fashion with Kylie Jenner and her rap star
boyfriend front row.
The fashion pack braved one of Manhattan’s coldest nights in 20 years,
cloaking themselves in fur coats to fend off temperatures of minus 12
Celsius
(-11 Fahrenheit) that saw the city warn people to stay indoors.
Wang, the young superstar who defines downtown cool, surprised many by
renting out the waspish surroundings of St Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church on
Park Avenue for a collection as sexy and as edgy as ever.
Wang’s beloved black and white was prominent, broken up with wooly
orange,
dark purple, blue and baby doll pink. Legs were encased in two-tone opaque
and
see-through leggings with chunky boots.
At the end, Wang made a victory lap, long black hair flying as he ran
down
the catwalk past his adoring fans, dressed in black with the words “holy
smoke” written on each side of his chest.
His models wore bondage-style chokers with buckles, chunky silver
interlocking chain necklaces, tweed mini-skirt suits, angora-style fluffy
sweaters and the same luxuriant material made into beanie hats.
Coats and suiting had a white background with black leaf detail, almost a
dalmatian effect and casual jackets were fur-lined. There were studded
platform boots with cut-out heels and biker boots.
Femininity was provided in the form of delicately pleated leather
dresses
and a pink and black chessboard style crepe dress.
There were copious lashings of leather, including a beautifully pleated
pink skirt. Sweaters were adorned with the black silhouette of a pole dancer
and sea-through gauze blouses worn braless.
Emphasizing the increasing cross-over between fashion and music as
seen
earlier in the week by collections from Kanye West and Rihanna, Wang
premiered
during the show American producer Baauer’s new song “Temple,” featuring
South
Korean singer G-Dragon and British star M.I.A.
So says the notes accompanying Rebecca Minkoff’s spring/summer 2016
runway
collection — a season earlier than the rest of the style fest.
A pioneer in the realm of where fashion meets technology, she used her
digital reach to introduce shop-from-the-runway pieces in the catwalk
collection called #SEEBUYWEAR.
Twitter, Instagram and Periscope make images and video of the runway
instantly clickable across the planet, yet clothes are traditionally not
available to buy for another six months.
“By that time, customers were bored. And frankly, I couldn’t blame
them,”
wrote Minkoff. She defined her customer as the urban woman who lives life on
her own terms and can now buy on her own terms too.
The success for her new approach will be keenly watched, with designer
Tom
Ford and label Burberry to follow suit in September.
Lacoste, the DNA-fueled French sports brand which aims to define
contemporary, non-conformist chic, was inspired by the French national
skiing
team in the 1960s and the “retro-futuristic ski resort.”
“It’s a little bit the idea of skiing in the 1960s when Lacoste
dressed the
French team, it’s a little James Bond retro-futurism,” designer Felipe
Oliveira Baptista told AFP backstage.
Fun and quirky, there were 1980s video-game-inspired embroideries of
pixellated pine trees and skiers running the length of a poncho dress,
astronaut-like coats and velvet jersey leggings.
The neutral palette of steel, earth and wood was livened up with
splashs of
pink, red, mustard and burnt orange.
Lacoste clothes are easy to put on, easy to take off like a quilted
velvet
tracksuit skirt with elastic waistband, mittens that disappear into jacket
sleeves and scarves that harbor hoods within their folds.
The brand likened its quilted jackets and coats to being “just like a
duvet
cover under which you would crawl” and skirts to tents which can be “zipped
and unzipped at will.”
The brand is dressing the French Olympic team for Brazil 2016 and
Baptista
said he was impatient for the games to start.
“I think they are pretty chic and I am pretty proud,” he said. (AFP)