Miu Miu's Biker Bag

This quilted nappa leather bag from Miu Miu plays with zips and color contrasts in homage to Easy Rider and top-of-the-range Italian leathercraft. With silver screen support from the likes of Marlon Brando and Peter Fonda in Easy Rider, Olivia Newton John seducing John Travolta in Grease, and even Brigitte Bardot on her Harley Davidson, the leather biker jacket has become one of those iconic wardrobe pieces that gives the wearer instant charisma. An indisputable classic, it is synonymous with the spirit of rebellion, and has been given a makeover this season by Miu Miu, who have used it as inspiration for a Biker Bag.

Source:Vogue

Boucheron Displays Jewels in Tokyo

The Bouquet d' Ailes necklace
Photo By Yukie Miyazaki

CAFE' SOCIETY: Parisian jeweler Boucheron is exhibiting its High Jewelry line to the general public for the first time at a temporary café set up in Tokyo's Roppongi Hills shopping complex. The exhibition officially opened on Saturday and will run through May 26.

Panel Discusses Luxury Travel at Louis Vuitton Men's Studio in SoHo

Kim Jones, Giorgio Moroder, Daniela Federici and Mark Connolly at Louis Vuitton.

Photo By Billy Farrell/BFAnyc.com

“The important thing is to see, to look, the people you meet,” Moroder, who hails from South Tyrol, Italy, said. “I try to eat spaghetti everywhere in the world. “I like to fly first class, stay in a five-star hotel and have good sushi,” he added. TRAVEL ADVISORY: Those in search of a lively traveling companion should consider Giorgio Moroder, the prolific music producer behind many hits, including much of Donna Summer’s career. On Thursday, Moroder discussed his travel preferences with Louis Vuitton men’s studio and style director Kim Jones and photographer Daniela Federici at Vuitton’s Greene Street boutique. If Jones and Federici stressed the importance of adventurous and spiritual journeys, Moroder prefers a decidedly more materialistic approach in his travels.

Source:WWD

Alexander McQueen RTW Fall 2013

Alexander McQueen RTW Fall 2013

Sarah Burton decided early on to forgo a full-scale show in favor of an intimate presentation due to the recent birth of her twins. She showed in an ornate salon of the Opéra Comique, her high-shine, modernist cube seating in serene contrast to the room’s froufrou murals and gilding. As for her theme, Burton is either prescient or fashion’s fastest worker, as who didn’t connect her theme, the sartorial trappings of “the high church,” to the papal conclave? Her show notes referenced “from communion gowns to cardinals’ robes.” (And with good reason. Have you ever noticed the laces on view during a procession of the cardinals? Amazing.) In five pairs of related looks, she presented a lavish feast in which pristine communicants in exquisite organdy lace gave way to sensual Swiss Guards and a twosome whose pearl-encrusted, cutaway habits suggested they were sent to the nunnery to atone for their sexual sins, (said atonement a work in progress, from the looks of things). She finished with a white-and-gold homage to the Virgin Queen, which referenced both Elizabeth I and various religious iconography.

Burton’s tiny grouping awed with its beauty and the craft on display. It also whetted the appetite for what commercial glories the showroom may hold. Almost at the end of a seemingly endless season, countless other designers could take a lesson.

Source:WWD

Chanel RTW Fall 2013

The living legend of Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel continues to grow, ever fascinating and in constant motion. We can’t keep up. We see it in the obvious global reach of the brand and in smaller, unexpected manifestations: in Loïc Prigent’s “Karl Lagerfeld se dessine,” currently running on the Arte station here, in which the designer tells his life story (or “parts of it,” he said during a preview) by doing on-the-spot illustrations at the filmmaker’s request; in the gaggle of Chanel-clad ladies — young, old, celebrity and merely rich — who on Tuesday morning exited the Meurice en route to the show like a tribe of transfixed pilgrims; in the most frenetic show entrance in Paris. And on the vast steps of the Grand Palais, there’s ample room for frenzy.

Coats and jackets were mostly loose and at times bulky, yet appealingly so, particularly A-shapes that had both structure and swing over skirts that followed a similar line. Dropped-torso dresses combined fabrics in horizontal blocks of three; long coats were cut away in front. As for those textures, Lagerfeld favored unapologetically winter-weight fabrics. These were always substantial and sometimes conversational — such as a remarkable black-and-white tweed covered completely in woolly 3-D flowers.

Yet there was nothing gentle about this single winter garden, or anything else in Lagerfeld’s lineup. These clothes worked the sturdy side of allure, and only a handful of evening pieces interrupted their face-the-elements bravado. Lagerfeld even gave his girls an aggressive edge with hardware-enhanced boots and gloves. Global domination is a tough pursuit. Karl wants his brigade armed and ready to flaunt Chanel’s mantle of chic.

Source:WWD

Fashion East RTW Fall 2013

Claire Barrow RTW Fall 2013

Claire Barrow RTW Fall 2013

There were three very different ideas of femininity on the catwalk in collections from Claire Barrow, Ryan Lo and Ashley Williams. Claire Barrow, making a return to the Fashion East runway, began with a moody reflection on life’s mundanities. Using lamp shades as hats and watering cans and bowling balls for handbags, she worked in brown corduroy for coats embroidered with white birds. Full-skirted dresses came in black velvet, khaki velvet devoré and a white veiled bridal option. It was jolie laide and a bit awkward, but that was the point.

Ryan Lo RTW Fall 2013

Ryan Lo RTW Fall 2013

Source: WWD

Mark Fast RTW Fall 2013

The Canadian designer, known for his intricate, cobweb-like knitwear creations showed only nine looks for fall 2013. If the one cape — long, fitted and all done with dripping silky fringes — was a convincing alternative to fur for a night out, a couple of big, graphic shawls wrapped around the models’ shoulders didn’t looked as distinctive.

The Mark Fast woman seems to be in something of a funk, or rather it is the designer himself—the collection is called Through the Darkness, after all. Apparently, the designer decided to use this ill mood and create some beautiful garments in the process. A tight, black, shaggy mohair maxi dress opened the proceedings but was given something of a monastic feel with the addition of a black knitted headpiece—this was a motif that was repeated throughout. In short, it is hard to be seen as a simple sexpot in a knitted coif—even with the addition of some remarkable stocking shoes by the footwear designer Eelko Moorer.

In fact, the coif appeared to be a nod to the costume designer and art director Eiko Ishioka, who died last year and was one of the inspirations for the show. Among her credits were the Oscar-winning costumes for Bram Stoker's Dracula and the production design of Mishima, as well as the extraordinary costumes in that profoundly odd Jennifer Lopez vehicle The Cell. As Fast said at the end of his show, "I had drama going on in my life, and this was reflected in the drama in the clothes. These were dark times, but I wanted to find the beauty in that and show emotion through texture. It was a different way of working for me." And it succeeded.

Vivienne Westwood Red Label RTW Fall 2013

"At one point I was quite contemptuous of punks left over from the movement. I thought punk folded because of a lack of ideas, and I wanted to carry on learning. It wasn't enough to go jumping around and spitting. And then, earlier this year, I was talking to some of the young male models at the men's show, and they had that punk mentality: Don't trust governments ever. I think that is punk. And they were interested in what they wore; it really means something. It's nice to know that mentality still exists in a new generation. I am now really proud of it" - Westwood said.

Catherine Deneuve in the Sixties and Seventies was the inspiration behind Vivienne Westwood’s collection of familiar, ladylike dresses and suits. It began with a group of coats — a belted prune and teal striped version, one in a camel and teal zebra stripe, and one in plain teal with an oversize rounded collar — and continued with Westwood’s signature draped creations in plaid, leather, wool and a Seventies floral print. It was all undeniably Westwood but occasionally felt a bit safe for a woman who is known for being fearless.