Posts Tagged ‘Alexander Wang’

The CFDA Awards – essentially, the Oscars of fashion – will take place at NY’s Lincoln Center on June 7th – and the nominees were announced late this week. The late great Alexander McQueen will get at Special Tribute Award, which will not leave a dry eye in the place, we’re sure – and all that well-done makeup – but here’s the rest of the list:

• Womenswear Designer of the Year: Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan, Alexander Wang (the looks below are by Jacobs, Karan and Wu for fall 2010
• Menswear Designer of the Year: Tom Ford (WHAT a year he’s having!), Michael Bastian and Rag & Bone
• Accessories Designer of the Year: Alexis Bittar, Marc Jacobs, Proenza Schouler (for those awesome briefcase handbags)
• International Award: Christopher Bailey from Burberry
• Eugenia Sheppard Journalism Award: Kim Hastreiter of Paper Magazine
• Eleanor Lambert Award: Tonne Goodman of Vogue
• Swarovski Award for Women: Joseph Altuzurra, Prabal Gurung, Jason Wu
• Swarovski Award for Men: Richard Chai, Patrick Ervell, Simon Spurr
• Lifetime Achievement Award: Michael Kors

With people – like myself, for instance – having attempted to fly out to NY today for the NY fall 2010 fashion shows starting tomorrow, Thursday Feb 11 – and getting curtailed by a giant blizzard – it’s clear that the fate of NY fashion week is quickly changing in so many ways. First of all, having shows in NY in February is like booking a convention in India in the summer. The weather is a giant deterrant. Up to the late 1990’s, NY fashion week took place in late October and in April – it followed London, Milan and Paris fashion weeks. And NY designers had the advantage then of being able to look to new European trends to influence them. Along came Austrian designer Helmut Lang to move to NY and relocate his business there. He decided he wanted to show BEFORE the Europeans, and so all the NY designers followed – and NY fashion week moved to early September – when it’s often still ninety degrees – and February – when it’s often twenty degrees or colder. Brrrrrr. Here are some other developments:

Major designers Calvin Klein and Marc Jacobs announced this week that they’ll be streaming their upcoming runway shows live on the Internet, making exclusive invites to the Bryant Park tents practically moot. In fact, Marc Jacobs was even quoted today as saying he’s “over the whole celebrity thing.” What happened, did his wranglers get lazy this year? Traditionally, his show was more stacked with celebs than any other show. More likely, what’s true is that celebs don’t want to be in NY in February. “Celebs won’t like it,” says an industry insider. “It’s completely transforming the aura around Fashion Week. The event serves as a sort of hierarchy of New York City fashion, and those who get invited to shows are considered worthy of seeing the collections before they hit the stores.” Then it was announced yesterday that both Rodarte and Alexander Wang will be streaming their shows online as well. (These images are from Alexander Wang’s stark) pre fall collection.) These are two very hip design houses – the fact that they are going “mass” speaks of a large trend. And what’s with the new trend? Most sources say that it’s all about the cash: More viewers means more followers, which will translate into more money. With retail suffering the way it is, designers have got to get the word – and the image – out there. Fashion Week online makes these designers universal, which is a huge benefit to their lines. Not only that, there are less fancy paper invites – most invites are done via email these days. And many editors miss collecting those lovely expensive invites – but it’s all nostalgia now. No one wants to spend that kind of money anymore.
What’s funny is that people like Anna Wintour and Marc Jacobs are the ones who have made fashion so famous – and now that it’s not so exclusive anymore, they’re the ones crying the blues! And of course, this is the last season at Bryant Park, which is becoming nostalgia too. The move to the Upper West Side and Lincoln Center makes fashion more – well, Upper West Side – which means, parents and babies. It’s not the favored neighborhood of fashionistas. Still, snow or no, New York Fashion week is expected to bring over $200 million in visitor spending to the city. And that’s a lot of flakes, no matter how you shovel them. – Merle Ginsberg

We wish we could tell you for sure that Alexander Wang is coming to L.A. for a spring 2010 trunk show tomorrow. But we’re just not sure. What we DO know is this: Opening Ceremony at 452 N. LaCienega and its owners Humberto Leon and Carol Lim are having a trunk show, Tuesday January 12, from noon to six, of the new Alexander Wang eyewear by Linda Farrow. The Linda Farrow eyewear company also does the amazing eyewear for Dries van Noten, Matthew Williamson, Sophia Kokosalaki, Veronique Branquino, Luella Bartley and British designer Charles Anastase. Alex Wang’s name is on the invite, and we wouldn’t be surprised if he turned up in L.A. on Golden Globe week – it just makes sense he’d want to party with movie and tv stars. But the invite does NOT state he will absolutely be there. So we’re going to pop over and find out! We’ll let you know if we score an interview, and what we think of the new eyewear, which will no doubt be supercool.

As we inch toward the new year – and the new decade – Fashionrules thought it was a good moment to look into our future fashion crystal Christmas ball, and talk about the fall 2010 collections. We won’t be seeing them in New York until mid February 2010, and in Europe in late Feb and early March – but looking at some of the pre-fall collections from N.Y., you can get a good educated guess what the actual fall trends will be. One of the NY’s most influential designers these days is Alexander Wang – who had upgraded street style to the designer level. He’s like a new Rick Owens or an American Ann Demuelemeester. For fall, he did a lot in black – as he always does – but he changed up the legging look to more of a skinny straight pant, that he places under long white silky shirts and a black leather peplum corset.

Mazdack Rassi is the visionary founder and director of the Milk photography studio in the Meatpacking district of Manhattan, which kicked off the whole new retail capital’s revitalization. He bought the now-photo studio’s building on West 15th Street, off the Westside Highway, in January of 1996. It was a corporate headquarters for Saks Fifth Avenue, which housed 1100 employees there. The neighborhood at that time was simply a place for butchers to buy meat, for truckers, and for trannies to go to Jackie 60, a famous after hours downtown club. There was also one lone cafe – Florent, which recently shut its infamous doors.Florent was open all night – so all manner of Manhattan club crawler could be found there at 3:00 am, sipping coffee, nibbling on fries, in full on glitter and thigh high boots, makeup melting into their meatballs sandwiches. That was breakfast for them.
Now Milk Studios in New York houses the fabulous high fashion store Jeffrey – and after Jeffrey, came boutiques from McQueen, Moschino, Scoop, DVF, and restaurants like Pastis. Now the downtown Standard Hotel is only a block away, and the Highline Park is without a doubt the grooviest spot in Manhattan. This September, Milk Studios housed its own fashion week with MAC Cosmetics, for the first time, with amazing designers showing there like Gwen Stefani for LAMB, Temperley, Alexander Wang, and newcomer Kimberly Ovitz (and L.A. local). MAC has always been involved with Bryant Park and sponsored many shows at the tents, so this was a real jumping off point for them – and for Milk.
Last spring, Milk Studios in LA opened its doors at Cahuenga and Melrose, in a building once housed by Technicolor – so it’s full of old Hollywood lore. It opened with a bang, of course, with a party for the Melrose Place opening of Chloe – and has since housed events for Vanity Fair and Teen Vogue. It houses shoots with famous faces and photographers every day, and is expanding into all kinds of new media arenas as we speak.
Fashionrules sat down with Milk founder and director Mazdack Rassi – and learned that Milk has a LOT more going on than even the amazing things we see on the surface. There’s a casting division, a film division – and a lot more to come.

FASHIONRULES: Who was your first tenant in the Manhattan Meatpacking Milk? Didn’t people think you were crazy to open that far west? There was nothing in that neighborhood!

MAZDACK RASSI: 1996 was the year that some NY fashion shows started showing at Pier 59, so people were looking for alternative sites to the tents and Bryant Park. Keith Batista from the NY fashion pr firm KCD – who work with Marc Jacobs, Anna Sui and Zac Posen – came down to check out the building. I was 26 years old. He said, “I have a big designer who would be interested in moving his fashion show here,” but he wouldn’t tell me who! He asked me to leave a hole in the plans. And that’s when we became the show space for Calvin Klein for about seven years. I was fixing up the building for tenants.

FASHIONRULES: What kind of shape was Milk in at that point?

MAZDACK ROSSI: There were no windows on the sixth floor! I promised them floor to ceiling windows – and they trusted us. Eventually, the whole company of KCD moved into the building. Our first photography booking came in 1998, and it was Patrick Demarchelier.

FASHIONRULES: There was another photo studio nearby – Industria.

MR: Yes, but all the other photo studios were opened by photographers. Industria is owned by Fabrizio Ferre. Milk opened with a hotel management philosophy. We thought of it as a hotel. We hired people from the Cornell hotel management program. We didn’t hire ex-models to run the front desk. We were very private, and service oriented. Other studios wouldn’t install computers in the studio rooms. They would charge for computers to be brought in! We did it our own way.

FASHIONRULES: What else set Milk apart?

MR: We had tons of events. We were young and crazy and had a lot of parties. We did it for ourselves as much as for the clients! We owned the building! There was nothing like us then. But we couldn’t do other fashion shows because we were exclusive to Calvin. We didn’t even have a name when he booked his first show with us. His first show was very raw. The only thing it said about the building was “450 W. 15th St.” Calvin really made Milk what it was. For his next show, we just put “Milk Studios” on the invite – and 1100 editors had to find out WHAT “Milk” was! It was very shrewd.

FASHIONRULES: Why “Milk”? Are you a dairy enthusiast? Are you an ice cream fanatic? Milkshakes?

MR: Nothing like that. I chose the word “Milk” because of how the word looks – it’s a beautiful word. There’s no reason or meaning behind it other than that. It’s also very neutral. Our design – our logo – is very neutral too. Base Design from Brussels created it. They created the brand with me. I looked in Wallpaper Magazine and that’s how I found my ad agency, our architects – Richardson Sadeki. (In L.A., our architecture film is Gensler – who built a lot of Dubai, and did the CAA building in Century City.) Richardson also did our gallery space in NY.

FR: So why open in Los Angeles? New York Milk has so much going on.

MR: Four years ago, we began to realize that Milk needed to attach us to celebrities and celebrity culture. The history of fashion photography is all based around models. But in the last decade, it’s become more about celebrities. We had to put a bigger emphasis on celebs. Once we opened here, celebs like David Bowie, Britney Spears, and 50 Cent asked to be shot here. We offer concierge services like the Four Seasons. We have private VIP areas. Right away, we started doing Louis Vuitton campaigns, Versace, Prada. Celebrities today ARE the new models in fashion. Did you know it costs $150,000 to book the biggest model in the world for a campaign – and $300,000 for the biggest celebrity?

FR: But celebs didn’t do ad campaigns in America for a very long time – it was considered gauche!

MR: It’s true. They would do ad campaigns and commercials in Japan and Italy, but not here. There are actresses making more money on commercials and ads than on movies now! Celebrities bring instant fame to a brand. Cameron, Charlize – these stars were all models, and are easy to shoot. We made a bet when we started to develop Milk LA – that L.A. is now the biggest modelling agency in the world! We used to call IMG or Ford to book campaigns – now we call William Morris. Now we’re using LA stylists, hair and makeup people, and LA talent in those areas have become world class because of all the shoots and commercials that shoot here. And world class talent, like Serge Normant, is coming to LA to do shoots. We invested 16 million dollars in this neighborhood in Hollywood.

FR: Why this Hollywood area? You could have gone to Culver City or Santa Monica or downtown.

MR: I saw spaces in Culver City – to me, it was like Arizona. I wanted to be in Hollywood. These soundstages here have history. Santa Monica was too far away, and downtown was too NY to me. We met with the Mayor – and he wanted us to be in Hollywood. We’re helping to rejuvenate this whole neighborhood. Howard Hughes built this structure in the 20’s. In 1947, it housed Technicolor. The Boys and Girls Clubs of America are near here – we want to teach them photography. We want to give back to the community, to grow with it.

FR: Weren’t you nervous investing so much money in LA after the economic downtown?

MR: Milk has always grown in uncertain times. When the economy turns around, we’ll be ready. We brought the first retail to the Meatpacking district in 1998 – Jeffrey. Michael Flutie, who was a famous agent for models, called me up then and introduced me to Jeffrey Kalinsky. He saw the space we had facing Fourteenth St. and said, “this is it.” On August 2, 1998, he said, “I will pen in February of 1999.” We rented to hi for 24 dollars for square foot – for 12,000 square feet. Yes, the neighborhood was very funky – even a bit dangerous at night – but Jeffrey said, “My clients will pull up in Rolls Royces and step over the meat to get to the store.” And they did. He eventually sold his business to Nordstrom – for about thirty million dollars. Pastis opened soon after that. Now we know it’s a real neighborhood because Apple opened a store two years ago at Fourteenth and Ninth. Now the rents have gone up.

FR: And what’s next for that neighborhood, after the Highline Park opened there and the new Standard Hotel?

MR: We had a big party for Alexander Wang in the car wash right next to the river during fashion week. It was crazy. We produced it. But we’re going to knock down the car wash – we own it – and we’ll put more high end retail there.

FR: And tell us about your casting agency that’s all in-house – it’s not about hiring freelancers.

MR: Right. It’s called House. We cast nine shows for NY fashion week. And we now cast 40 or 50 commercials a month in New York. We’re probably the biggest casting agency in NY now. We have casting directors on staff, we don’t just hire them for specific projects. And we have a division of directors who make videos and commercials called Legs. We got hired by Diesel, the New York Times Magazine, Diet Coke. We even got nominated for an Emmy for new media. We did this short film called “I Want to Be Your Dog,” and it’s part of the Pompidou Film Festival. We made it in three days!

FR: Tell me about the extraordinary project that Legs did with Temperley for NY Fashion Week.

MR: Legs created a zoetrope for Temperley. We’ve done a number of NY shows for the last five years – Proenza Schouler, Doo.Ri – and a lot of them have been presentations. We’ve been pushing designers to do short films and installations – it’s so creative. We want them to be artists in new media. With Temperley, we shot models in her spring 2010 collection doing certain moves over and over – then we printed the images on this spinning zoetrope, which projects them onto a wall.
(Wikipedia describes a Zoetrope as: a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures. The term zoetrope is from the Greek words zoe, “life” and trope, “turn”. It may be taken to mean “wheel of life” or “living wheel”. It consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. Beneath the slits on the inner surface of the cylinder is a band which has either individual frames from a video/film or images from a set of sequenced drawings or photographs.” You can see the Temperley zoetrope from their spring 2010 collection by clicking on www.temperleylondon.com – then clicking on “collections,” “spring 2010,” and then “film.”)

MR: It spins and projects and plays with circus imagery – it made a big impression! We want to take all the photographers we work with an make them into directors! We have our own studios and the equipment, so it’s a natural progression.

MG: So how did the whole Milk Mac fashion week NY happen this fall? How did it come together? You had such major designers!

MR: I was with Jon Demsey, who runs Estee Lauder and who oversaw MAC for years, and still oversees the brand. He told me MAC was pulling out of the Bryant Park tents. This was sixty days before NY fashion week began in September. I said to Jon, “If you give me half the budget you spent at the tents, I will do something very creative at Milk. He said, YES. They ended up spending more than they did at the tents! We announced MAC and Milk Fashion Week, created a logo, and in 48 hours, we had our roster: Gareth Pugh, Alice Temperley, Proenza, Alex Wang – they were the headliners. We had LAMB, Preen and Erin Featherston. Band of Outsiders. In the end, we had 30 designers and we had to turn down some big names. Both MAC and Milk are grassroots companies.

FR: And Kimberly Ovitz from LA did very well. She got good press.

MR: I didn’t know who she was! I thought I was doing her a favor, putting her on the roster. When they were setting up. Anna Wintour wanted me to meet Kimberly. A man came over to me and said, “I’m Kimberly’s father.” He knew Anna Wintour – and I thought, how? Then I saw Martin Scorcese at the presentation, and Ron Perlman – and THEN he gave me his business card! It was only at that minute I realized WHO her father was! (Mike Ovitz, famed head of CAA and then Disney.)

FR: So what’s next after that amazing feat?

MR: We will have an LA gallery, and we have a new website coming in a month that’s very futuristic and gives you a portal into our world. We are our own network. The internet and television are merging. I’m always thinking – where will Milk be positioned when this merger happens? We’re creating a real media company. Our clients want content, and we’re producing it. That’s the five year plan for Milk.

FR: And what about LA Fashion Week? Could you conceivably take that over?

MR: The Mayor asked me if we wanted to get involved with LA Fashion Week, and what to do with it potentially. I think it has to grow organically, from the local designers. The art movement in LA is organic – just like in Berlin. LA needs Scarlett Johansson, Eva Mendes and Lindsay Lohan to get involved with LA Fashion Week. We need to get the foreign press to come here and be comfortable with being here. Now they come here, and everything’s spread out, an no one is helping out the foreign press. Let the LA designers figure out LA Fashion Week. It’s just crazy that the second largest city in America doesn’t have a great fashion week! Not only that, involve the design students. On the last day of NY fashion week this fall, we had 300 fashion students – from FIT, Parsons, SVA – come into the show space, and we had a panel with Suzy Menkes, Alex Wang, Umberto from Opening Ceremony, Jon Demsey from MAC, the Dean of Parsons, and Jack and Lazzaro from Proenza. We also gave two tickets to every show to Parsons students. We’re giving design students places to shoot lookbooks. The design students are the future.

 

We screwed up! And we’re cool enough to admit it! Sometimes, blogging happens so fast, and there’s so much information out there courtesy of our one true love – the internet! (creating a tech revolution that could end up changing the course of the Iranian elections), it’s easy to get adrenalized, and print the wrong thing – though we try awfully hard not to.

 

Yesterday, we wrote about the CFDA Awards in NYC, which were Monday night – we said Diane Kruger was wearing Alexander Wang, a very happening young NY designer, who won the Swarovski award for womenswear designer of the year. She was actually wearing another fabulous young designer, Jason Wu  - who has often dressed Michelle Obama, as we know, and who created her historic white Inaugural gown. Kruger, as it turns out, was Jason’s date to the CFDA’s as well, and he took a look from his fall collection (the grey with black cap sleeves), and made it short and a killer orange red for Diane to wear. Very cool way to summerize a fall look. Wu, by the way, was also nominated for the Swarovski award. We are so sorry we screwed up. We’re big fans of both designers, actually. And loving this orange and black dress. Loving that sleeve detail – it looks new and fresh.

The Council of Fashion Designers of America has announced that Marc Jacobs, Narciso Rodriguez and Kate & Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte are the 2009 big nominees for womenswear designer of the year. The awards ceremony will take place on June 15th on Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in N.Y.

It’s a big deal for these L.A. based sisters to be up there with the likes of Marc Jacobs and Narciso Rodriguez. But their Oscar gowns on Natalie Portman and Reese Witherspoon this year really put them on the map. And their talents just continue to grow; every Rodarte collection is more creative.

The menswear designer nominees are Michael Bastian, Scott Sternberg of Band of Outsiders, and Italo Zucchelli for Calvin Klein. Accessory nominees are Proenza Schouler, Vera Wang (whose jewelry is insane), and Marc Jacobs (apparently Julia Roberts wears an MJ handbag all throughout “Duplicity.”

Swarovski is the sponsor of the evening, and they give their own award to young American designers, which this year include Jason Wu, Thakoon, and Alexander Wang.

A lifetime achievement award will be presented to Anna Sui, and even more interesting: the Board of Directors are presenting an award to First Lady Michelle Obama. No word on whether or not the First Lady will make an appearance at the CFDA Awards – she has yet to turn up at any NY fashion shows, or to even meet any of the desingers whose clothes she’s worn – but she might make an exception for this one. If she does, the New York fashion elite might even forget what they’re wearing for one evening – and be truly awed. And of course, if she DOES show up – whom will she wear?????? She’s worn Narciso, Jason Wu and Thakoon a few times – so maybe – Rodarte?

 

Alexander Wang was all set to be The Next Big Thing – when Michelle Obama wore Jason Wu’s gown, and every other young cool designer in NY took a sudden chilly back seat. But Wu’s clothes are a lot more ladylike than Wang’s, which are just plain COOL – and very appropriate for L.A. life. So cool, in fact, that Sarah Jessica Parker took in his show at Roseland, a throw back to the clubland of the eighties – something everyone’s nostalic for, these days. Wu’s clothes are sporty, spiffy, and very real – and real close to your skin.

 

OVERWHELMING TRENDS: Tight black stuff, tight black and white stuff. Cool off-the-shoulder suit jackets over long bike shorts. Boxy white motorcycle jacket over bike shorts. Supertight plaid herringbone suits. A white open work ripped torn dress – hot! Black tight minis – very Alaia. Okay, you can’t wear these clothes to work. But if you wear these clothes – you may never NEED to work!!!

 

COLORS: Black, white – excuse me, what else do you need?

 

FABRICS: Stretch techno jersey, leather, fuzzy fur, shiney plasticine. Everything worn with groovy boots. Cool girls don’t wear shoes.

 

BEAUTY TRENDS: Slicked back hair – are the hairdressers all on vacation this week? – copper cheeks, defined brows.

 

RELEVANCE TO HOLLYWOOD: There are no real evening pieces here per se – but every look in this collection could be worn in L.A. day or night, and look, as Paris Hilton might say (might?): HOT. Those black minis are killer. One might need a stylist just to get one on. And hell knows how you’d get it off. Jennifer Aniston, you want to be Angelina Jolie? Wear THIS!!!!!!!!!!

 

There are the CFDA Awards in the spring – the Council of American Fashion Designers Awards – and then there are the Vogue Fashion Fund CFDA Awards this Monday night in NY – and among thIs week’s nominees of great young design talent – Alexander Wang, Vena Cava, Richard Chai, Jason Wu – are two L.A. hometown talents: Juan Carlos Obando and Irene Neuwirth. The winner gets $200.00, which would obviously be a huge boon to anyone’s fashion business. Last year’s winner of the Vogue Fashion Fund Award was Rogan Gregory, and the award always brings press and prestige to the winner.

 

JC Obando, whose clothes are  sold at Des Kohan’s boutique on Cloverdale and Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, and who actually spends Thursdays at that store doing fittings and creating wedding gowns for couture clients – has been showing his collection in NY for the last few seasons. Right now, though, he’s Anna Wintour of Vogue’s darling – and the last L.A. designer to hold that position was Rick Owens – and we know what happened to HIM. JC tends to make similarly avant garde dresses in jersey that are known for intricate wrapping, draping, and amazing fits – but for spring 09, Obando did both gowns – and interesting cropped pants looks. He and Des Kohan are on their way to NY for the ceremony on Monday night November 17th, and of course, he whipped up Kohan a special couture gown that she will debut that night. “Of course, it leaves me half naked,” Kohan admitted. “So I had to get special underpinnings – and I hope it’s not that cold out!”

 

Irene Neuwirth is a jewelry designer who sells to Barneys and many other stores, and it best known for long strands of moonstones, opals, pink tourmalines, lapis – and her heavy drop earrings in remarkable stones and colors – have made her a star in the fine jewelry world. Her designs are all about shape and color, and she rarely works in diamonds – one of the few fine jewelers to build a whole career out of other stones.

 

We’re wishing our homey’s luck to bring home the gold – and it’s reassuring to know that L.A. design talent is being rewarded and recognized by the New York big whigs. – Merle Ginsberg