Wednesday 31 October 2012

Flutter after Flutter of Lace | Nina Ricci Spring/Summer 2013




E L James has got a lot to answer for “Fifty Shades of Grey,” said Nina Ricci’s Peter Copping, laughing, after his highly eroticized and highly engaging spring show, which created a palpable frisson out of colliding his typical ladylike elegance with the provocative accoutrements of punk, fetishdom, and the contents of the local adults-only emporium. “It’s the other side of the Ricci woman,” Copping went on to say. “She has toughened up.” Well, in some ways, yes, but in others, she’s still the same gorgeous, womanly creature rejoicing in her femininity as she has always done; this is where all those rippling lingerie fabrics (flutter after flutter of lace, satin, chiffon, and mousseline) and boudoir colors (shell pink and oyster and pearl gray) and a decorously restrained mien come in. Yet elsewhere. . .

Enjoy my suggestions on LYST for your 'Nina Ricci Christmas Wish-List' at the end of this post. LoL, Andrea









Consider Copping’s opening look, for instance. A black suit that featured a jacket with a trio of chains at the small of the back, straining to close over a top of fishnet and suspender straps, worn with an überlean black pencil skirt. From then on, Copping turned his attention to the likes of tiiiiggght black pants, the reverse side faced with leather, gauzy, layered, glistening, and gleaming dresses, while others, more dense and opaque, had sheer peekaboo panels sliced in to allow for the flash of a garter belt from beneath, and draped skirts edged with zipper teeth, the better to add a little sexualized bite to the proceedings. And that’s before we get to the slipper satin skirts bound at the hips with metal studs, or draped with a sense of tautness and constraint, before unleashing the satin to let it sway back and forth. Or, for that matter, the harness made out of grosgrain ribbons that provided an arresting alternative to a necklace. Yet there were explorations too of the (nonsexual) subcultures, with hot-pink hippie-ish dresses, swishing with scarf fringing, and Prince of Wales tailoring, all strict and shapely, infused with punkdom, but not so much that it couldn’t go to the office.












Of course, Copping, a sensitive and nuanced designer, with a finely attuned antenna for how women want to look and dress, is simply responding to the fact that if you are a designer engaged in making clothes that draw (albeit often ironically or playfully) on traditional tropes of womanhood, you can’t examine femininity without also dealing with sexuality. It sounds obvious, but no woman alive and kicking today wants to surrender her sense of self to clothes that disempower her. Copping’s newly found penchant for the perverse never stooped to objectification, but kept women firmly in on the (chic) fun. And in turn, it showed how much confidence he now possesses in being able to delightfully twist and subvert the codes of Nina Ricci.










































Selections by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories

Photo Credit/Source: © VOGUE
Photography by © Monica Feudi/feudiguaineri.com/GoRunway


Andrea's LYST for Nina Ricci

 



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Wonderful Tie-Dye Minks by 'Miu Miu Spring/Summer 2013' 

Collection, Fashion Show and Review









Monday 29 October 2012

Miu Miu Spring/Summer 2013




"I wanted them to be very elegant, but in a way that contains all the opposites of elegance,” said Miuccia Prada of the looks in her tightly focused Miu Miu collection. Prada created a capsule wardrobe of classic fifties shapes like a full-cut, swinging clutch coat; a pencil skirt; and a sweater-girl brassiere top, accessorized with upsweep Mad Men secretarial eyeglasses and contrast-colored opera gloves, and warped them into something unexpected. Those tops, for instance, were deliberately cut to be ill fitting, and, as Prada added, “the rich fabrics destroyed with crushing, with tie-dye and the poor upgraded,” so that denim and plasticized vinyl, for instance, were transformed into tailored pieces with a whiff of mid-century haute couture to them, whilst duchess satin was pummeled to destroy its body, and bedazzling chunks of rhinestone were strung haphazardly on leather lariat necklaces or used to decorate the straps of a flat, biblical sandal, such as you might find on a Greek island holiday.










The bold prints, like exploding stars or glowing orbs, had the look of fifties abstract art (they were also replicated in sophisticated intarsia treatments of fox or mink), but then the whole show had the vibe of a Funny Face-era Left Bank existentialist jazz bar, with the low, smoky lighting, and the sound track that mixed the musical riff from Malcolm McLaren’s “Jazz In Paris” with Neneh Cherry’s seductive cover of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” The look was very Juliette Greco, too, from the hairdos, high-cut bangs and long hair, to the classic high-heeled winklepicker shoes. “Very Parisian,” said Prada, “but in a fake way, in a wrong way! But in the end I wanted them to be elegant,” she added, and, in that quirky discordance of which Prada is a master, think a rose pink mink paletot with a lipstick-red vinyl sheath dress, or a classic Queen Elizabeth II handbag constructed to crush as flat as an envelope they were.



































Selections by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories

Photo Credit/Source: © VOGUE
Runway: Photography by © Marcus Tondo/GoRunway
Details: Photography by © Gianni Pucci/GoRunway



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