Weird but not too Weird at Marni

Perhaps taken apart this collection may not look very interesting on a rack in a store but I just can’t help but fall in love with Marni. Consuelo Castiglioni has a knack for colour and putting together a total look.

Sometimes the clothes are often so bare of zips and buttons and that they have that made at home look about them but the proportion, cut and quality suggest otherwise.

I just love the girl that Consuelo is dressing-herself presumably- because there’s that bit of Marni girl in me too, the girl that wants to dress in this sort of arty, weird-but-not-too-weird way. Oh and I’m a guy and I’m aware there’s Marni menswear but it’s never as charming as the womenswear.

A lot of serious critics of fashion won’t be looking too hard at Marni for the next big trend but whatever, Consuelo makes amazing clothes and pushes fashion in her own direction which is always refreshing.

Gianfranco Ferre & The Celine Effect

Which is which? You decide

Sportmax I Love You

I love Sportmax. It’s brands like these that have a break-down of every conceivable trend for a season packed into one show and it’s always beautifully made, the colours are gorgeous and the silhouette chic. Sportmax is never intellectual, it’s just straight up beautiful, must-have right now daywear.

So heres the break-down: Fur gloves, knee-high socks, oversized checks, military touches, leather skirts, reconstruction, tweed, chunky knits and ease. Unless I missed it, there was no velvet which is a good thing because so many designers have dabbled with it for fall and it’s been disastrous.

Lumpy Bumpy Curvy Prada

The high/low dichotomy of bourgeois/common that’s an ongoing theme to Prada’s work was ever present for fall. Beautiful printed silk skirts later reappeared in what looked like vinyl or patent leather only less shiny. My first thoughts when seeing this fabric was hooker so there’s that cheapness and playful contrast Prada is so fond of.

Prada appeared to be thinking about women and body shape, perhaps brought on by the recent commentary of the weight issue which was interesting. Firstly with the use of very unflattering cable knit sweaters and dresses. This was done for the socks too, adding bulk onto otherwise spindly Bambi-legged models. They had a stripe of fluffy cable knit down the front like whipped cream. Jackets were A-line and cut at the hip, widening the torso and double collars in fur and more cable knit added weight and sort of presented the model’s heads on a plate.

The casting of some ‘curvy’ models was rather silly really. I can imagine Mrs Prada tittering with her husband over how risqué it was to have a few Victoria’s Secret models dressed as ‘ladies’ in a slightly twisted Eliza Doolittle way. Afterall, they are the Barbies of the modelling industry.

To me this was more a reflection on how uptight she is. If she really wanted to shock then why not cast some playboy bunnies like Betsey Johnson did a few years ago? Doutzen Kroes and Lara Stone looked positively dumpy which is no small feat. But it wasn’t all a string of designer fat suits, there were some prim and trim 50’s dresses, neatly belted at the waist which put further contrast on the more experimental pieces in the show.

Maybe this was Mrs Prada’s way of showing the power of fashion and what it can do. A slight tweak here, a bulbous knit there et voilà!

Rough Around The Edges for Versace Fall

Above: Soooo trash right?

This was quite a weird collection for Versace. There was just something about it that wasn’t quite right and I can’t put my finger on it.

It lacked polish giving the clothes a raw element and a certain drape I’d expect to see at perhaps Rick Owens. There were some very spare looks, like 90’s grunge straight skirts but they were zippered at the thigh. The notion of splicing clothes-something done at Alexander Wang, Marc jacobs and Christopher Kane- added extra movement to jackets.

The pants were ugly with leather inserts and zips at the ankle and the finale of dresses were formulaic Versace sex on a stick.

Prada & that Lumpy Blue Sweater

"Stuff? Oh, okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet, and you select, I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that sweater is not just blue. It's not turquoise. It's not lapis. It's actually cerulean. And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002 Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent, wasn't it, who showed a selection of cerulean military jackets. And then cerulean quickly showed up in collections of eight different designers. It filtered down through the department stores, and then trickled down into some tragic Casual Corner where you undoubtedly fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and it's sort of comical how you think you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry, when in fact, you're wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room... from "a pile of stuff."-Miranda Priestly, The Devil Wears Prada

That's all