All posts tagged: fashion week

Sex Was Back on the Runway at Paris Fashion Week—Just Not the Way You Think

Sex Was Back on the Runway at Paris Fashion Week—Just Not the Way You Think

Published by Sam Flores

Earlier this year in January, the year 2016 was trending amongst Millennials on social media. Thirty-somethings started posting throwbacks to that era: pre-MAGA (ish), pre-Covid-19 pandemic, and pre-AI. Back then, the most we could readily do to alter our appearance online was to put on those flower crown or dog face filters on Snapchat. Today, our many social media feeds—Instagram, TikTok, X, Threads, Twitch, and more—are inundated with chatter around looksmaxxing and with images of uncanny valley AI models. We see a fleeting viral trend followed by another, become acquainted with a new “main character” seemingly every week, and sandwiched in between find clips depicting devastation in foreign countries, sometimes by hand or with the assistance of the United States. The content we consume and its sources are more varied and expansive than ever before, but it all becomes flattened when squeezed into the same quick-hit, horizontal-scroll format. But not in 2016, at least not in the way many Millennials often choose to remember it. Paris Fashion Week wrapped on Tuesday, putting a bow on …

Paris Fashion Week Eschews a World at War

Paris Fashion Week Eschews a World at War

Published by Sam Flores

This season he was all about lace, sometimes as-is or covered in silicone—a blouse, a pencil skirt, a mini dress. Plus, a black suit and a fur jacket (sometimes over the former, at times flying solo with a pair of stilettos). It was striking and convincing. Aspirational, even, when placed against the backdrop of the shimmering Eiffel Tower at night. Vaccarello knows sexy, his Saint Laurent woman is the kind that lives and breathes it, and employs it to her advantage. There was an air of fetish emanating from this collection, a sense of danger. One can appreciate Vaccarello’s focus at a time in fashion in which most designers put everything but the kitchen sink on the runway, simply to see what sticks. If only his silhouette wasn’t so reliant on thinness on the runway, too. If Saint Laurent spoke to the decadent side of desire, of the way in which fashion, and the wealthy, close their gilded gates in times of communal distress. Then Chemena Kamali of Chloé, who was once Vaccarello’s deputy at …

Introducing Julian Klausner, the Rising Star Behind Dries Van Noten

Introducing Julian Klausner, the Rising Star Behind Dries Van Noten

Published by Sam Flores

The year 2025 was an inflection point in contemporary fashion. More than 20 leading labels, including Chanel, Bottega Veneta, and Valentino, welcomed new creative leads. It was an industry-wide reaction to a slowdown in luxury spending and the welcoming of an, in some cases overdue, season of change. Some of those designers were familiar names, like Jonathan Anderson, who went to Dior from Loewe, or Demna, who left Balenciaga for Gucci (a phenomenon sardonically referred to in the industry as “musical chairs”). Then there was Julian Klausner, who was promoted to creative director at Dries Van Noten in December of 2024. Klausner, 34, who had spent close to six years as the brand’s head of womenswear, was virtually unknown. His appointment came at a delicate time for the cult label that Van Noten, a venerated Belgian designer famously known for being part of the much mythologized “Antwerp Six,” founded in 1986. The designer announced his retirement at 65 in March of 2024, sending an industry-wide shockwave. A glorious career was ending, as was an era …

London Fashion Week 2026: The key trends to know

London Fashion Week 2026: The key trends to know

Published by Sam Flores

Elsewhere, American designer Conner Ives, a favourite of London high society and It girls, offered his own version of luxed-up jeans; model and writer Tish Weinstock opened the Claridge’s show in an ankle-length, pale yellow silk and fur-trimmed kimono-style coat with gold-embellished jeans, while another model paired similar denim, with a hole at the left knee, with a smart, heron-embroidered, sharp-shouldered jacket and fur-trimmed Jimmy Choo heels. It’s smart-casual, Chatsworth House style. Source link

“ICE Out” Pins Are All Over New York Fashion Week and the Red Carpets—What’s Next?

“ICE Out” Pins Are All Over New York Fashion Week and the Red Carpets—What’s Next?

Published by Sam Flores

In the past, the industry has engaged with politics primarily with a message to register to vote—a somewhat tepid initiative that waves a bipartisan white flag in order to not alienate potential consumers. This season, despite the fact that it’s a midterm election year, saw the majority of the industry avoid any political discourse, with few exceptions. Hillary Taymour of Collina Strada, Henry Zankov, Christian Cowan, Patricio Campillo, Rachel Scott of Diotima and Proenza Schouler, and Rio Uribe are among the designers who wore the pins at their runway shows. Scott and Uribe also addressed the political landscape both as part of their collections and while speaking with reporters. “If you have a platform of any form, you need to be saying something about what’s happening,” Scott said after her Diotima show on Sunday, “especially in fashion, which operates in the realm of culture.” These pins are, by design, “an entry point into other things,” says Jess Morales Rocketto, the director of Maremoto, an organization and fund dedicated to amplifying Latino storytelling, who created the …

‘Clueless’ -inspired app Alta partners with brand Public School to start integrating styling tools into websites

‘Clueless’ -inspired app Alta partners with brand Public School to start integrating styling tools into websites

Published by skeptic

Much has changed for Jenny Wang, the founder who’s bringing “Clueless” fashion tech to life.  Last year, her company, Alta, raised $11 million in a round led by Menlo Ventures to let users create digital closets and try on their clothes with their own virtual avatars. It’s a tech once seen only in movies, most notably in “Clueless,” where Cher styles and plans her outfits using computer technology. Alta is similar to that, allowing users to plan and style outfits using the latest AI innovations. A slew of big names participated in Atla’s round last year, including models Jasmine Tookes and Karlie Kloss, Anthropic’s VC arm Anthology Fund, and Rent the Runway cofounder Jenny Fleiss.  TechCrunch caught up with Wang during New York Fashion Week to talk about how the company has expanded since that round. For starters, the product is officially in the app store; Time and Vogue named it one of the best innovations of last year, and Wang said more than 100 million outfits have been generated on the platform since its …

Laura Kim Toasts to Lunar New Year With Her Monse Partner Fernando García and a Mah-Jong Cake

Laura Kim Toasts to Lunar New Year With Her Monse Partner Fernando García and a Mah-Jong Cake

Published by Sam Flores

On Wednesday night, fashion designer Laura Kim invited her nearest and dearest over to her Lower East Side apartment for her version of a Lunar New Year celebration. There were a few deviations from ancient traditions—Kim’s dinner, which she prepared herself, came with custom cocktails incorporating cognac from Maison Martell and a guest list that combined over 4 million Instagram followers. Kim, wearing a fuzzy pink sweater and studded jeans, was joined by Fernando García, her design partner at Monse and, until recently, Oscar de la Renta, influencer and restaurateur Ezra J. William, Max Mara’s SVP of marketing and communications Judgie Graham, Felicia Quaning, and socialite and model Nicky Hilton Rothschild. They all took off their fashionable shoes and put on slippers that Kim laid out in her entryway as they entered her home. García and Kim with the mah-jong dessert from Empire Cakes. Lauren Cowart Rothschild recently relocated to London with her husband and three children, but she was back in town for a slew of New York Fashion Week commitments. She was traveling …

It’s a Great Time for Menswear, Especially for Women

It’s a Great Time for Menswear, Especially for Women

Published by Sam Flores

The best look from Men’s Fashion Week in Milan and Paris was seen on a woman. On Monday, the actor Anya Taylor-Joy wore a Poiret-inspired coat from the Jonathan Anderson–designed Dior men’s show to Anderson’s debut Dior couture show. The coat, which had been shown on the runway just a few days before, was sumptuous, with jewel-colored textiles and a cocoon shape hearkening back to the early 20th century, plus winter-appropriate enormous fur cuffs. I want the coat more than anything I’ve ever wanted from a women’s Dior collection. I hope it comes as no shock that gender is fluid—despite what the state and federal governments might decree—and that the way we all dress is too. And yet we still have men’s fashion weeks and women’s fashion weeks because that’s how clothes are largely merchandised in stores, although I wonder how long that will last. Still, I thought I would go to the men’s shows late this January and play by the rules, but still break them: by keeping an eye on clothes that women …

Athina Onassis’s Return to Couture Evokes Jackie’s Elegance

Athina Onassis’s Return to Couture Evokes Jackie’s Elegance

Published by Sam Flores

Jackie and Athina are said to have never met. A great style icon of the twentieth century, Jackie married her second husband in 1968. When Aristotle died in 1975, he left his daughter Christina as his only heir, after his son Alexander died in a 1973 plane crash. When Christina died in 1988, Athina, her then-three-year-old girl, grew up with her father’s family, far from the flashes and from Greece, the country of the Onassis family. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Aristotle Onassis in 1970. Tom Wargacki She has sought to preserve that distance. A lover of horses, it has always been easier to see Onassis at a competition or in the saddle. To see her in the front row again, one must go back to a 2015 Giorgio Armani show. Álvaro de Miranda Neto, Athina Onassis, and Giorgio Armani in 2015. Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty Images Source link

How Willy Chavarria Became as Popular as He Is Subversive

How Willy Chavarria Became as Popular as He Is Subversive

Published by Sam Flores

This is the new name of the game for labels like Chavarria’s, to find a corporate partner eager for some “community” brownie points to foot the bill. He worked with Tinder for his first show in Paris and his ties with Adidas have become closer. He’s had a fruitful partnership with the sportswear behemoth since 2024 (if not with the misstep of mimicking a pair of huaraches, the traditional leather sandals made by Indigenous artisans in Mexico, for which the designer apologized), and is also now acting as a consultant, working on its inline collections in addition to his cobranded collaboration. He’s also teamed up with Grindr for this show. “I’m really happy to partner with them because, first of all, I’m here to support anything gay,” he says with a laugh. “Grindr is used for sex, for a hookup, but they have this interesting perspective on how they celebrate a very elevated perspective of gay culture.” The work with these corporate sponsors has become a business of itself for Chavarria. He launched Creative Services, …