Thakoon, AW11. It was a nice touch at Thakoon’s AW11 collection to balance out the time intensive tailoring and beautifully draped silhouettes with the simplicity of streetwear closures such as zips, drawstrings and press studs.
14 Feb 2011
Libertine, AW11. Altering a manufactured fabric is one of the most straight forward ways to create designs that are uniquely your own. Whether the fabric is embroidered, laser cut, digitally printed, embellished, dyed, painted or frayed you can take a fabric and make sure that it is unique to your...
11 Feb 2011
Grain lines are a generally unnoticed aspect of the garment, that is until they are either used in the wrong way and cause a fit problem or used in interesting ways to mould the fabric to the body. Sometimes they can also be used to turn a print onto a...
10 Feb 2011
Céline, SS11, Paris. Fashion, as we know, is always evolving in cycles. Sometimes we want clothes fitted, sometimes we want them loose, dark colours will often follow light colours and extensive embellishment can sometimes be followed by cleaner design lines.
09 Feb 2011
Designer Akira Isogawa in his studio, image from NLA. Whenever you see photographs of designers in their studios you are bound to see rolls of fabric, scissors, pins, sketches… and often these curious looking racks of brown cardboard (to the right of the image above). These are the designers patterns,...
08 Feb 2011
Coco Chanel. Sometimes we see photographs of famous designers doing what they were so well known for and it’s nice to understand on a technical level why these images are so iconic.
07 Feb 2011
Gareth Pugh, SS09, Paris. While quilting sounds like a homely technique akin to patch-working or needlepoint it can actually be used to create architectural structure or add new dimension to flat fabrics.
02 Feb 2011
Givenchy, SS11. On a first look through Givenchy’s recent couture collection the most striking elements are the details in the appliqué and the controlled use of vibrant colour and it is only on closer inspection that you can notice the zips used in the collection. Or especially the unusual placement...
01 Feb 2011
Céline, PF11, Paris. The vibrant colour blocking that was a theme of the Spring Summer 2011 collections has spilled over into some interesting pattern combinations and contrast facings at Celine and Walter Van Beirendonck, and in a more subdued way at Dries Van Noten. Tailoring becomes uncharacteristically playful when these...
31 Jan 2011
Armani Prive, SS11. Sometimes in the fashion industry zips are used as a feature of a garment (especially when it comes to sportswear) but in the world of sleek futuristic couture nobody wants to know how you got into your garment. At the recent Georgio Armani Prive collection the openings...
30 Jan 2011
Lanvin, Menswear, AW11. The closure of a garment can sometimes be the all important final touch that will fulfil a fashion designer’s vision. In the case of Lanvin’s recent menswear collection, the streamlined tailoring was sometimes finished with magnetic closures enabling the design team to do away with buttons as...
