Textil-móda.
Melissa & Campana mesh-jelly bag and shoes designed by Fernando and Humberto Campana.
From Street Smart to Fashion Forward
By ELLEN TIEN
Published: March 27, 2005
The Brazilian brothers Fernando and Humberto Campana are internationally known for their
home furnishings, elaborately made with found materials—fabric and rope remnants, scraps
of wood, even stuffed toys—and inspired by Rio's street life and carnival culture. Brazil's
largest shoemaker, Grendha, invited the designers to offer a take on the beloved jelly, a shoe
invented in Brazil in the 80's and its most popular footwear. The result is the Melissa &
Campana line of vinyl random-mesh jellies, with shoes in two styles (high and low) and a
matching handbag. "There are no boundaries between art, fashion and design," the Campanas
said via e-mail. "In a certain way, furniture is also made to accommodate the body, only on a
different scale." The recyclable haut-jellies ($80 and $120) and bag ($80) come in black,
white and five bright colors and can be ordered from the shop at the Wolfsonian museum in
Miami Beach: 1001 Washington Avenue, (305) 535-2680.
www.melissausa.com.
The Swimsuit Designer
Lisa Curran's upbringing, in an Italian-American household in the beach town of
Cape May, N.J., influenced her in two important ways, she said. She cherishes her
family's values and she is obsessed with swimsuits. "I was brought up very
traditionally: I served my dad coffee every day," Ms. Curran, 34, said. "I really believe
that women should be women."
During her 20's she worked as a buyer at Barneys New York and in 2000 began
designing bikinis that exude what she calls old-world femininity, with vintage-looking
flower and candy prints, and accents like ruffles and gold rings. (They can be found
at stores like Saks and Searle.) At the beach Ms. Curran adds shimmery coverups
and head scarves, and the rest of her wardrobe is just as feminine and retro-glam.
Here, she wears a lace-trimmed camisole ($90 at Calypso) with a Missoni cardigan
and pleated denim skirt ($345 and $349 at Saks Fifth Avenue), and gold Robert
Clergerie sandals ($435 at Barneys).
As a buyer "I was trained to find the one-of-a-kind pieces," she said. "I like designers
who put a lot of effort into the details." That approach is important when shopping for
a swimsuit, she added. Other pointers? "Work with a good salesperson, try on as
many suits as you can and don't go up too many sizes just to get more coverage-the
fabric will bag and won't look right. And remember, if you feel confident, you'll look
great."
Swimsuit designer Lisa Curran.
From Kimono Silk, New Silhouettes
As cashmere mufflers give way to lighter spring wraps, silk scarves are cropping up
under coats and blazers and even as a way to accessorize men's tuxedos. To give
spring scarves a little traditional beauty, Carol Schneider makes them with vintage
silk kimonos, and to make the look modern she gives them an austere unfringed
silhouette.
Ms. Schneider, a book publicist by day, also makes tissue holders from kimono silk
($15). Not shown are her silk tote bags or her dresses for toddlers ($55), which she
fashions from vintage prints and grain sacks.
Silk scarves and tissue holders by Carol Schneider.
www.carolschneiderdesigns.com
Popping Up With the Crocuses
When little girls step out in their proverbial Sunday best this spring, many will be
wearing dresses from Tocca Bambini, Tocca's new collection for girls 2 to 8 years
old. The dresses are made in fabrics like polished cotton, some with eyelets or
seersucker stripes, in bright colors and prints and simple shapes. Add a dash of
rickrack, floral embroidery or a piqué appliqué and the effect is almost irresistible.
The dresses are $91 to $143 at Space Kiddets in New York, (212) 420-9878, which
plans to stock Tocca Bambini's diminutive swim line ($80 to $110) for summer.
The Paris 6
Illustsration by Enlightenment @ Pocko People
From left, Marc Jacobs, Nicolas Ghesquiere of Balenciaga, Phoebe Philo of Chloé, Stefano Pilati of Yves
Saint Laurent, Olivier Theyskens of Rochas and Alber Elbaz of Lanvin.
LATE last February, over lunch in a Paris restaurant, Stefano Pilati, the new designer
at Yves Saint Laurent, offered a surprising motive for putting modern-thinking women
in tulip skirts and high-necked polka-dot blouses, things that had struck critics as
repressively feminine. "My aim was to say, 'We're a fashion elite here,' " Mr. Pilati
said. And he is determined to lead. "We should. We're supposed to."
You don't have to be a fan of the reality show "Project Runway" to appreciate that
fashion has become more and more populist. This is the age, after all, of the
adolescent designer, the celebrity designer, the hip-hop designer, and the claimants
have been as varied as Sean Combs and Esteban Cortazar, who was 18 when he
held his first show.
And though fashion, like politics, is still an insider's game, with its own addicts and
agenda-setting editors, nothing, it seems, can compete with the authentic judgment
of bloggers and Web viewers. Ask yourself: How elitist can fashion be when the 20
most popular fall 2005 collections on Style.com received a total of 22 million hits in 12
days?
Nevertheless, by the end of the fall shows in March, Mr. Pilati's assertion had been
borne out. On the strength of an exceptional series of Paris collections, a new elite
had emerged, and with it a sense that every choice these designers made, every
proportion and fabric chosen or rejected, represented a superior judgment. They
were acting like designers, not stylists or vintage-shop pickers. Retailers, starved for
direction, saw the shows as a breakthrough. In New York, despite an influx of new
talent, only Marc Jacobs had the power to influence the industry, whether an editor at
Condé Nast or the owner of an illicit handbag palace on Canal Street. Milan had
Miuccia Prada. In Paris there were six.
Insiders may debate who belongs in this elite class, but they don't dispute the
authority of Mr. Pilati, Olivier Theyskens at Rochas, Nicolas Ghesquiere at
Balenciaga, Alber Elbaz at Lanvin, Phoebe Philo at Chloé and Mr. Jacobs, who
designs his own line and another for Louis Vuitton.
Even fashion industry analysts, who tend to be skeptical of the pronouncements of
editors, acknowledge the influence of these designers, whose average age is 35.
David Wolfe, the creative director of Doneger Group, which forecasts trends for
stores like Nordstrom and Wal-Mart, compares it to that of the Antwerp Six, a group
that included Dries van Noten and Martin Margiela, in the early 90's. "They feel the
pulse of their times the same way the Belgians did," he said. "And they have the
same problem. Everybody feeds off them, except now there's an expectation that
your company has to be as big as General Motors. Or Tom Ford."
Is it the air, the Gallic water, les girls? What unites these six designers, only one of
whom can claim French birth, and why now? The answer, as simple as it sounds, is
fashion.
For several years now, the business has followed a different set of imperatives:
fashion as lifestyle, fashion as art, fashion as a spree of casual Fridays. Twenty or 30
years ago, when the Japanese avant-garde designers arrived in Paris, and before
that, when Yves Saint Laurent and Kenzo were telling everyone how to dress - well,
back then it was only fashion as fashion.
Gradually, though, it wasn't cool to be a dictator. And anyway, designers didn't have
time. They had empires of licenses to manage, yachts to squeegee. By the time Ms.
Prada and Mr. Ford exploded, in the mid-1990's, nobody except a few couturiers at
the top knew about hidden seams and hand-frayed edges. And if one may say so,
the whole picture of dress had degenerated to a logo bag and a pierced navel.
Nowadays people are dressing better. It's as if the entire industry has been squeezed
upward. As Mr. Wolfe put it, "Even the bottom feeders of the fashion food chain have
Champagne tastes." Everyone wants to look posh.
Like most mainstream trends this one started with an extreme gesture, a squawk (the
sound of editors' mouths popping open) at the beginning of the fashion grapevine.
You can almost pinpoint the moment: Paris, March 2003, when Mr. Theyskens, a
Belgian designer then just 26, showed a weird humpback dress in French lace. Weird
or not, it telegraphed a message to the rest of the industry: clothes would involve
more form, and more savoir-faire.
Stefano Pilati shifted attention to the waist for an ultrafeminine look.
Olivier Theyskens used extreme shapes and luxe fabrics to change people's eye.
Alber Elbaz revived French chic with dressmaker details.
Marc Jacobs asserted the power of postmodernism in fashion.
Nicolas Ghesquiere redefined cool by creating a strong silhouette.
Phoebe Philo added high style and modern romance to eclectic dressing.
And Mr. Theyskens wasn't alone. "They're the most daring group of designers we've
seen in a long while," said Julie Gilhart, the fashion director of Barneys New York.
"Alber dared to be pretty, and with clothes that a lot of women can wear. Olivier
changed the way we look at luxury, by focusing on extreme proportions and beautiful
craft. It's now bye-bye, bling. Nicolas has influenced the street. Look at his cargo
pants. People were, like, 'Baggy pants in pink and green - what?' But those pants and
their copies made stores millions of dollars."
WHAT unites these designers is that they are using details and craft, often involving
old modes of construction, to make an original statement. Ronnie Cooke Newhouse,
an influential art director whose clients include Lanvin, says there is a dual advantage
in using couture effects like draping. It makes the clothes harder to copy, and it
distances them that much further from superficial, Star magazine type of fashion. "If a
dress has volume, it's because Alber found a real dressmaking solution," Ms.
Newhouse said. And he is thinking how to do it in a light, modern way. "It's about
both form and function," Mr. Elbaz said.
Yet each designer has a highly individual look. There is no mistaking Ms. Philo's
loose, romantic dresses for Mr. Theyskens's icy towers of ruffles, or Mr. Pilati's
clerical references for Mr. Ghesquiere's starved-to-near-perfection silhouette. "It's not
like Nouvelle Vague in the movies in the 60's," said Mr. Ghesquiere, who was born in
France. "We're all different."
Mr. Pilati, a former assistant to Mr. Ford, is the least known of the group, but before
fashion magazine editors could recover from the shock last fall of seeing tulip skirts,
other designers had adapted his waist-defining look for the next season. Bergdorf
Goodman is eager to introduce him to customers. "I'll offer him anything - lunch, a
cocktail party, the windows," Robert Burke, the store's fashion director, said.
Although one can point to designers who have achieved empire without a loss of
prestige among insiders - Karl Lagerfeld and Ms. Prada for sure - and to others who
have remained influential through innovation, like Rei Kawakubo and Azzedine Alaïa,
members of the new group have come to the fore because their influence has
derived from clothes. Not marketing campaigns, accessories or chatty celebrities, but
clothes. This represents an ideological break from the late 90's, and the business
model of Mr. Ford and Gucci.
"I don't want a career that's like another designer's," said Mr. Ghesquiere, who took
over Balenciaga in 1997. "I think I can say we have idols but no models to follow. You
have to define your own model."
Not everyone has always understood him; he was fired after his first collection, but
then the buzz started, and he was rehired. And though his Princess Leia look of the
late 90's set off a wave of imitations, as did his anti-luxe bags with studded straps,
Mr. Ghesquiere has stubbornly avoided being predictable, even conventionally pretty.
(One may recall the media bashing that Jennifer Connelly received when she wore a
drab beige gown of his to the Oscars.) Still, his below-the-radar approach is paying
off. Balenciaga, which is part of Gucci Group, expects to be profitable within 18
months.
Making money is still a problem for most of these brands, and the media attention
they receive, while deserved, can overstate the true picture. "Selling 50 pieces at
Barneys is fine, but it's not a business," Ralph Toledano, the chief executive of Chloé,
said, adding that a problem for small houses like Rochas and Lanvin is that they rely
too heavily on the creativity of their designers. "From a company point of view, that's
totally unhealthy," Mr. Toledano said. You also need managers who can take a
creative idea and turn it into a string of products.
In another sense, though, Mr. Theyskens, who showed his first Rochas collection in
2003, was probably smart to position the line at a superhigh level, with dresses that
can cost $5,000. With luxury brands pushing from the top and mass merchants from
the bottom, it's tough to have a business in the middle. Mr. Wolfe said there is little
future in lower-priced diffusion lines because of how easily they are knocked off.
Exaggerating to make his point, he said, "Marc Jacobs's diffusion line is Wal-Mart."
Few designers of his generation have understood the consumer and her
impulsiveness better than Mr. Jacobs. It's a reason his look changes frequently, now
a riff on Thatcherite ruffles, now an ode to Japanese volumes. In the past women
stuck with the same two or three designers most of their lives. Now they simply want
what's new.
The young women who work in his Paris studio are a lesson to him in this respect.
"They're such shopaholics," he said. "They're into Lanvin, because it's new. This last
season the one thing they wanted was YSL." Mr. Jacobs laughed. "I said, 'What
happened to Alber?' "
YET while he has gained in prominence by working for Vuitton - its parent, LVMH
Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, owns one-third of Mr. Jacobs's company and has
helped it expand into accessories - his partner, Robert Duffy, points out proudly that
ready-to-wear is still the mainspring of the company, outselling shoes and bags. And
despite the popularity of its Mouse shoe (150 pairs sold each week), he and Mr.
Jacobs sensed the market was tapped out, at least for them. "We were, like, 'Stop
with the Mouse shoe,' " Mr. Duffy said wearily.
"It takes lots and lots of slow steps," Ms. Philo conceded, talking about the process
that has made Chloé one of the most imitated labels in the business. (Derek Lam is
one designer who ought to pay royalties this spring to both Chloé and Lanvin.)
Through the efforts of Mr. Toledano, the company is now set to add lingerie and
children's wear, and will open 30 new stores over the next three years, he said. Sales
for the most recent fiscal year increased 60 percent.
But as Ms. Philo said: "If the clothes don't look good, then you haven't got anything.
My focus is totally on the runway."
And in Paris or wherever talent presumes to be taken seriously, the runway never
lies.
Fashion for the Adult Teenager, Too
John Lei for The New York Times
The cheap chic of this Forever 21 store at 34th Street attracts people from all over the world, and of all ages.
THE other day I attended a ladies' lunch, which means I ate lunch while several other
women seated at the same table pretended to eat lunch. The nonlunchers waved
their empty forks around and decided I was wearing a spectacular pair of earrings;
each took her turn guessing their provenance.
"Tell me," one said, leaning close. "I'd guess Temple St. Clair Carr."
Another woman thought she had seen them at Barneys.
"They're Me&Ro," she said. "I saw them. They were $2,000."
The earrings, delicate golden threads bedizened with what look like tiny green gems,
are from Forever 21. And they cost $3.80. Less than the tip for the coat-check girl
after lunch. This news was greeted not with the elation of discovery but with a
disturbed silence. I swear I saw the words "Does Not Compute" scroll across one
woman's forehead.
For women of a certain age - that age being somewhere over 28 in this case - the
words "forever 21" are simply a phrase one utters to the plastic surgeon. But for
many others Forever 21 is another entry in the field of cheap-chic stores like H&M
and Mexx. The clothing is eye poppingly inexpensive - prices are even lower than at
H&M - and aimed at teenagers and bargain hunters.
Founded by a Korean businessman and his wife three years after they immigrated to
California in 1981, the chain now operates 200 stores in the United States. The first
in Manhattan, on 34th Street, opened in 2003, and the second, off Union Square,
opened last year.
If stores were Hilton sisters, H&M would be Nikki, and Forever 21 would be Paris.
Where H&M might have restrained cargo pants and khaki blazers along with
camisole tops, Forever 21 offers a dazzling array of silk chiffon halter tops, sequined
denim jeans and terry cloth hot pants.
On a recent visit a rack of shirts made of nylon string, and meant (I presume) to be
worn with a camisole, fluttered in the breeze from the store's open front door. Next to
them a rack of silk chiffon miniskirts (yes, silk) with sequined detail ($22.80 each)
competed with a row of Marc Jacobs-esque silver handbags ($15.80). Short cotton
skirts embroidered with tennis rackets ($12.80) didn't look as if they would ever be
worn for tennis.
These are the clothes of the adolescent in chrysalis phase: she needs a cool outfit,
and it shouldn't be too expensive. Her attention span is short, and her identity
fungible, so she must change often.
Partly because of its tourist-heavy location, Forever 21 at 34th Street is a kind of
United Nations of fashion-conscious young women. In the space of 20 minutes I
heard Iranian, Spanish and Russian and detected several British accents. During the
noon hour two young Chinese women carrying satchels full of Falun Gong pamphlets
browsed the boy-short underpants ($4.80).
At the same time two young women were clearly preparing for an evening out. One of
them held a black key-ring halter ($15.80) to her chest and spoke a sentence in what
sounded like Russian that ended with two words in English: "Friday night."
Her friend picked up a diaphanous green silk shirt and, holding it up against her
friend's face, uttered a similar sentence, ending with the words "Saturday night."
Judging by her tone and the emphatic lift to her eyebrows, Saturday night date's was
definitely the more promising one.
ON that first visit I bought a short-sleeved hooded sweatshirt in navy blue, which
could have looked a bit too reminiscent of the Juan Epstein character on "Welcome
Back, Kotter," but it had been feminized with flowers and rhinestones and so looked
more Gwen Stefani than Sweathog. At $15.80, I expected it to fall apart after two
wash cycles, but it has retained its color and rhinestones. (I did wear it once before
washing it, and it turned my torso Smurf-blue, a problem that the washing machine
remedied.)
A gossamer-thin pink cotton T-shirt for $6.80 fared similarly well after three washings,
and has worn better than a similar shirt I bought at Calypso last summer for $80. For
my stepdaughter, who at 22 loses a handbag in a nightclub about once a week, I
bought a clutch purse in subtle gold perforated pleather for $9.80. At that price a
purse literally does become disposable, although this was such a good-looking,
simple bag I hoped it would survive a few weeks.
Upstairs, as a rapper sang on the store's soundtrack, I cruised the satin baseball
jackets embroidered with dragons for $54.80 (about the most expensive item in the
store) and faux tortoiseshell sunglasses for $4.80. The dressing rooms are spacious,
and teem with young women hustling armloads of clothes in and out and dashing
from room to room. The changing areas are not terribly placid, nor even terribly freshsmelling.
On my second visit the canvas drape shielding my 30-something body from the
crowd of teenage girls was pulled back by mistake at least twice. Sorry, they
mumbled. The drape closed. Then, giggles.
Listening to these girls, and sorting through the camisoles and bra-tops and clinging
skirts and sequined blue jeans - the throwaway clothes of the young - I was struck by
a chord of powerful nostalgia. When I was 21, my friends and I would prepare for an
evening out by picking up a $2 T-shirt at Canal Jeans, then sifting through the bins in
front of Alice Underground for $4 vintage skirts.
Tailored with brooches and safety pins, these outfits were designed to last through a
night of gallery-hopping (for the free wine) and nightclub dancing, and see us through
to a 5 a.m. breakfast of huevos rancheros at the Astor Place Diner.
Now Canal Jeans is closed, the diner is a Starbucks, and I am a grown-up whose
friends only pretend to eat lunch. I am probably not going to wear the Forever 21
paisley-print gauze top ($14.80) with the capris in aqua ($15.80) out to any lunches.
But I'll wear the earrings. They'll be my secret talisman, a memento of the throwaway
days of youth.
50 West 34th Street
(212) 564-2346.
Atmosphere Austin Powers meets the Gap. White modular furniture and sequined
walls.
Service Bare-bones. Cash register attendants, and lots of salespeople putting out
new clothes but unable to answer questions about availability in other sizes.
Key Looks Halter tops, cotton skirts, metallic handbags, inexpensive ethnic jewelry.
Prices $2.80 for a bracelet to $54.80 for a satin jacket. All prices end in 80, a
spokesman said, to give back "just that little bit more to the customer."
This year, judging by the streets of Paris and New York, the security blankets of many women are the black and
white designs of Karl Lagerfeld, the designer for Chanel. Mr. Lagerfeld will present his vision of the 21stcentury Chanel look tomorrow at the gala opening of the Chanel show at the Costume Institute at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art.