LuxuryEQ

The Fall Fashion Trend Reports are in!

Feminine yet strong shapes, warm colours, longer hemlines and incredibly well-tailored suits and coats dominate the new season. Prints are more luxurious than ever, overcoats are oversized, and military style has a more regal undertone.

Another great thing about the fall fashion – lots of elegant dresses!  Little black dresses are always in, but now we see the resurgence of the Little Red Dress (LRD) and Little White Dress (LWD).

How fun!  

Amid the air-brushed perfection of fashion advertising, a backlash is under way: one of “real” women, unretouched images and online customer reviews.This new movement even has a name: “flawsome” - it’s about a desire for more human brands and greater transparency. In the current consumer climate of decreasing trust in business, it’s proving to be a winning strategy.

Dove was one of the pioneers of the “real” movement with its first “real women” advertisement campaign in 2004. Several cosmetic companies have followed in Dove’s footsteps celebrating individuality, diversity and natural beauty.

Read more: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/47feba8e-eaf7-11e1-afbb-00144feab49a.html#axzz24sszMtX7

Let’s hope that the fashion world will soon fully embrace this trend, celebrating the natural female form in all its “flawsomeness”!

Sportswear label Speedo has teamed up with sustainable fashion brand From Somwhere to create the "Unity" dress, a one-off ballgown made from the surplus fabric of Speedo's Fastskin Super Elite Swimsuit.

The dress marks the latest collaboration between Speedo and From Somewhere - the two labels teamed up back in 2011 at London Fashion Week's Esthetica to launch a collection of dresses created from off-cuts and surplus stock of Speedo swimsuits.

Speedo teamed up with From Somewhere in the development of this truly unique piece of 'upcycled' fashion using the different colours of the sponsored international swim teams that reflect the vibrancy and excitement of swimming.

As part of its seven-year partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund, Gucci has created a new line of country-specific handbags, accessories and T-shirts for which 25% of the proceeds go to UNICEF’s “Schools for Asia” initiative. The initiative gives disadvantaged children in Asia-Pacific access to quality education.

Gucci’s previous efforts with UNICEF include participation in its Gifts That Give Back program with a $250,000 donation and a specially-designed bag.

Kudos Gucci! Hopefully, more luxury brands will follow suit in giving back.

Read more: http://www.luxurydaily.com/gucci-extends-unicef-support-in-accessories-collection/

Looking For Some Manolos? You Can Now Shop Carrie Bradshaw's Closet.

The Coveteur, the site that takes you inside the closets of internationally influential cultural forecasters, has now opened up the closet of Carrie Bradshaw, the fashion icon from the HBO series. Like all of the Coveteur's inside peeks, outfits are explained and itemized with Carrie's signature quirk, but this time, the ensembles are actually shoppable.

Read more: http://www.refinery29.com/carrie-bradshaw-closet-coveteur

Shop Carrie’s style: http://thecoveteur.com/Carrie_Bradshaw

This is an interesting development in the world of fashion, television and online shopping, as it combines several trends that have been dominating the fashion scene (i.e. fashion blogging, TV/celebrity influence on fashion, ASOS etc).

ONE DREAM BY BOSUNG KIM FOR VOGUE KOREA JUNE 2012.

Photographed by Bosung Kim for VOGUE Korea, model Ji Hye Park is captured in a series of daydreams floating across the blue sea. She imagines a life traveling the world, a life at sea and that special day when she is able to wear that perfect white dress. Detailed set design along with alluring styling surely captured our attention and made us reminisce with some of our own daydreams.

Source: http://trendland.com/one-dream-by-bosung-kim-for-vogue-korea-june-2012/

Lanvin has cast real people — and not models — between the ages of 18 and 80 for its Fall/Winter 2012-13 campaign. 

"I wanted to see people from different age groups, body shapes and personalities wearing Lanvin," Alber Elbaz was quoted. "That is what Lanvin is all about and represents - we don't only do clothes for 20-year-old girls. I love to see mature women wearing Lanvin as well. I love wrinkles, I love grey hair."

Photographed by Steven Meisel and with creative direction by House + Holme's Ronnie Newhouse and Stephen Wolstenholme, the advertisements show a diverse array of individuals - from waiters to milliners.

For autumn/winter 2012-13 the mood is centred on "reality". "It's all about individuals with individuality," added Elbaz.

DKNY & FEED have joined forces to help fight global hunger through a capsule collection of accessories for Fall 2012.

In keeping with FEED’s mission to create good products that help FEED the world, DKNY & FEED have teamed up to design a Diaper Bag, City Survival Tote and City Survival Packable Rain Boots. Each item features a number representing the exact donation made through the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) with the purchase of that product.

True to the design aesthetic of FEED, created by co-founder and Chief FEED-er Lauren Bush Lauren, the collection is utilitarian, featuring washed canvases, nylon and grommets. DKNY adds a spark of NYC edge.

Joana Avillez, a cartoonist from New York, collaborated with Refinery 29 to illustrate the most iconic and influential fashion personalities.

Joana illustrated each fashion icon to a T, and her little side notes for each fashion personality made the drawings that much more powerful!

Master of sequins and witty slogans, Markus Lupfer has got together with the charity Trees for Cities to design a special limited edition T-shirt to help raise awareness for its annual Tree-Athlon fundraiser.

The T-shirt is made from 100 per cent organic cotton with a 90 per cent reduced CO2 footprint. It will be given out to those who put on their running shoes and participate in the 5km run or will be available to buy for £15 on the day. All profits will go directly towards Trees for Cities, helping to continue its work of improving our urban environments and educating the community.

For further information and to take part in the race, visit www.treesforcities.org

The Peter Som Resort 2013 collection takes inspiration from the nomadic deserts and exotic Moroccan motifs. With an emphasis on structure, the series is outfitted with cinched waists, patterned pants and striking sun dresses.

The ladylike aesthetics combined with impeccable tailoring make the collection functional, beautiful and flattering. The pieces offer great fit for the 4 most common female body shapes – Rectangle, Pear, Apple and Hourglass.   

Read more on dressing the 4 body shapes: http://tmblr.co/Z-EKnwKOenqX

Franck Sorbier, the Parisian designer, used just two designs and stunning visual effects to narrate a medieval French fairytale at his haute couture fall/winter 2012-2013 fashion show in Paris last week. Using only two dresses and hi-tech lighting and projections, he sought to retell a popular 17th century French literary fairytale, Donkeyskin by Charles Perrault.  

The collection is a technicolor wonder. Using the same pure white gown to showcase multiple designs, Sorbier has rigged a lighting device that changes the look of the gown at the flip of a button. The innovative show marks a new change in incorporating technology into fashion with this stunning high-tech gown.

The industry’s A-listers gathered last night in Paris to see Raf Simons debut his first haute couture collection for Christian Dior. 

Forget the It bag, the It bike is here! As the Tour de France began yesterday, it is increasingly clear that the accessory you really need to be up to speed fashion-wise is a bike – or to be specific, a city bike: a non-competitive, often vintage-inspired, elegant form of self-transport. 

And why is the bike so trendy?

It’s a combination of the urban push that has seen cities increase the number of bike lanes, institute cycle share systems, and otherwise facilitate riding; the general eco-conversation; and fashion’s continuous drive to boost market share by extending its reach into other areas where design is possible in search of the opportunity to penetrate every area of a consumer’s life.

We love it because it’s a fantastic way to stay in shape and save the environment while making a fashion statement!

The '70s style of David Bowie and the paintings of Gustav Klimt inspired the form-fitting, metallic-patterned Alexander McQueen Resort 2013 collection. After a few seasons of showing little other than intensely detailed dresses and gowns, Sarah Burton said she "wanted to bring everything back to the body." She accomplished that by pairing generously lapeled, torso-hugging blazers with lean, boot-cut trousers and by cinching those menswear-inspired looks with wide belts.

Many of the dresses got the same belted treatment but featured fabrics and treatments — like an art deco metallic jacquard or intricate gold embroidery — that helped serve as a feminine response to the collection's more masculine pieces.

Vintage fashion has been the “It” of fashion in the past decade. A vintage fashion piece usually speaks of the era in which it was produced, of a certain quality, standard, fashion, design and aesthetic. The beauty of vintage is that it combines history, rarity and design, and goes perfectly with the concept of sustainable luxury.

Strictly speaking, vintage fashion is clothing and accessories that are at least 25 years old. But given the tumultuous fashion landscape of recent seasons, with the loss of great talents like Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen and the musical chairs of designers moving from house to house, some believe that age is no longer the only criteria for what defines vintage fashion.

But how are vintage products priced? It turns out the answer is part art, part science.

Read more: http://www.businessoffashion.com/2012/06/the-art-and-science-of-valuing-vintage.html

If you're looking for an online luxury vintage shopping destination, visit http://www.atelier-mayer.com/

Six weeks ago Marks & Spencer launched the Shwopping recycling initiative - embracing the idea of giving something when you buy something. The "buy one, give one back" campaign collaborates with Oxfam in a bid to change the shopping behaviour of consumers once and for all. 

The results have been pretty impressive so far - with half a million used and unwanted items having already been shwopped (which works out at the equivalent of eight items a minute). 

In a bid to reach the million mark, this weekend customers are being encouraged to shwop some more with a special money off event from June 21 to 24. Customers will receive a £5 money-off voucher when they spend £35 more on fashion in-store.