Is there enough air in the room for both editors???

Yesterday in between couture shows, Anna Wintour, Carine Roitfeld, and Hamish Bowles sat down with French industry minister Christian Estrosi for a half hour meeting Wintour requested. She told Estrosi that France doesn’t do enough to support fashion and encouraged more support for young designers.

“She’s right,” Estrosi admitted during a press conference afterwards — for which Wintour wasn’t present. “Everyone knows the role Anna plays in making New York a great fashion capital. My objective was to benefit from her experience.”

Estrosi has plans for a state-owned bank to offer financing for fashion start-ups, with more details to come by the end of March; the state will act as loan guarantor. “I want Paris to remain the world’s capital of fashion. Today, we need people to share the risks.”

He also pledged to Wintour that he will relax the country’s 35-hour work week for fashion house employees who need to work twice that amount in the weeks leading up to the fashion shows.  And a master’s degree to help French students compete with peers who attend schools like Central St. Martins is being developed.

http://www.fashionologie.com/Anna-Wintour-Urges-France-Better-Support-Fashion-7180141#read-more

Beauty is relative….

There Is Hope for a Non-Skanky Spring

The New York Times, a paper that is often months or years late in identifying trends on the streets, reports mannish looks are in for ladies and frilly pastel stuff is out. Women prefer the “model off-duty” look of filmy oversize T-shirts, worn jeans, and strong biker jackets or boyfriend blazers to pink floral dresses. But duh, you knew that. This has been the preferred look for years, thank you, Times. But maybe this story — late as it may be — offers renewed hope in womankind.

Although it’s not even January, the fashion industry has moved on to spring. February spring fashion issues come out soon, heralding all the new styles that are supposed to catch on. For spring, it’s a lot of panty bottoms and feminine ruffles and bras we’re supposed to wear as tops. You know, conventional femininity of yore, skank gear, whatever you want to call it. But maybe all that stuff won’t take.

Fashion magazines hardly ever show women what they want to wear. Androgynous looks never replaced the damsels in distress frolicking through the forest in some frilly ballgown or other, or the hookers (for all intents and purposes) lounging on a white pleather couch in thigh-high boots and ass-cheek exposing dresses. So this spring they may give us overt femininity — ruffles, pastels, corsets — but they’ll probably continue to be out of touch. If women really do prefer the covered-up looks of Carine Roitfeld and Agyness Deyn, maybe we won’t see so many prancing around in negligees instead of dresses when the weather warms up. (Say what you will about Deyn’s wacky garb, but the girl keeps it covered.) The Times quotes plenty of women who still like their mannish stuff, so why would they relinquish it for 2010?

Think about it: What’s the goal of most women when getting dressed? To look like they didn’t try, even though they did and always do. A girl who walks out the door with her boobs pushed up to her chin in high-waisted diaper shorts with perfectly curled ringlets and fuchsia eyeliner looks like she tried. Carine Roitfeld never has an air of such desperation.

Read more: There Is Hope for a Non-Skanky Spring — The Cut http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2009/12/there_is_hope_for_a_non-skanky.html#ixzz0asqUVWR3

also:  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/fashion/24APPEAL.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&ref=fashion

God save the Queen

Loic Prigent’s Habillees Videos Capture Anna Wintour Implying that Carine Roitfeld Should Better Support Young French Designers

During the Spring 2010 season, Loic Prigent, director of documentariesMarc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton, Signe Chanel, and The Day Before, and French TV personality Mademoiselle Agnes teamed up to film Habillees, chronicling the search for the next French design talent. The Sundance Channel uploaded the sixHabillees webisodes this week, and the hour’s worth of content features everyone from John Galliano taking his runway bow to Karl Lagerfeld waltzing to Nicholas Ghesquiere saying of his work: “Wearing Balenciaga is a choice. These clothes aren’t easy to wear. They’re not meant to be easy to wear.”

When Pierre Berge, former partner of Yves Saint Laurent and president of ANDAM, which annually bestows 160,000 euros to designers under 40 seeking to expand their businesses in France — most recently awarded were Giles Deacon for 2009 and Gareth Pugh for 2008 — was asked by Mademoiselle Agnes who the next big French talent is, he replied: “No one.”

But perhaps best of all are the scenes with Anna Wintour, who is shown exiting the Rochas show flanked by two bodyguards, one who brusquely nudges a woman out of the way.  Just after, as Anna descends a set of stairs, the other bodyguard turns a flashlight on her feet so she can walk without fear of tripping in her heels.  Later, Agnes catches up with Anna before the Balmain show to ask her how important she thinks it is to support young designers. Notice the subtle dig at Carine Roitfeld in Anna’s response:

I think it’s totally important for all of us in the American fashion industry to support the young designers, and I think that’s why New York’s become such a vibrant fashion center, because people go there not only to see the Donna Karans of the world but a whole new generation. I’m just so sorry that there isn’t something like that in Paris that’s similar. I think that they should look for the younger generation here [in Paris] as well. Not only New York but London really supports their young talent; Franca Sozzani at Italian Vogue supports the young Italian designers, and I think when France is so known for its fashion industry — for them not to be reaching out to help younger people today is really a shame. [Agnes: "And there's space in your pages for them."] There’s space in everybody’s pages.

Plan B

Olivier Zahm, the man who recently described his trademark look as “a disguise” — “five or six years ago, I decided to wear this kind of outfit and behave as if I were a celebrity. It’s not out of narcissism. It’s for the magazine. For an independent magazine to exist, I had to incarnate it personally” — has been busy with projects other than Purple Fashion lately.  He and art director Alex Wiederin have been working together “on Carine Roitfeld’s book” — no further details given, and he’s also “art directed and designed” the first issue of 31 Rue Cambon, a Chanel magazine — which seems to be in a similar vein as Yves Saint Laurent’s Manifesto — to be distributed worldwide in Chanel stores. Featured, of course, are Chanel favorites like Lara Stone, Baptiste Giabiconi, and Freja Beha Erichsen.

http://www.fashionologie.com/6263333

 

To die for…..

Paris Chic.

One thing that makes me love Carine Roitfeld is because she openly says that she reinvented herself.

She worked with Tom and Mario  and develop her own personal style.

She is young without been vulgar and sophisticated without been snob…..