Style Bubble

Tulle Shells

It's a week of following up, catching up and hunting down as I dip in and out of some of the fantastic menswear collections on show at LC:M, head down to the colleges to see more graduates as well as sniffing out leads for Paris before I head over there the haute couture shows.  Like I said last week when I posted about Shao-Yen Chen, it's nice to see some continuity when talking up young designers.  It's not an ideal situation to bound about a name and then not hear a peep about them forevermore.  When I was rounding up the upward motions of the high street back in January, I mentioned that ASOS would be collaborating with Central Saint Martins BA class of 2012 graduate Molly Goddard, who I singled out last year.  Now the fruits of that union are nearly upon us and it's a pretty and concise lovefest of all the things that I can't resist - sheer, delicate, layer-friendly and best of all, a unique collaboration that goes against the norm.  

I believe this is the first time ASOS have collaborated with an undergraduate designer and one that isn't schilling her own mainline anywhere else.  "It's strange that nobody knows who I am and I'm not in a position to sell clothes any other way, and so to have things that people can buy, is really exciting," said Goddard.  That first part may not be true as Goddard's collection from the last CSM BA show was such a memorable stunner - a wonderful homage to dreamy ideals of childhood attire and to the physical act of handcraft.  It's no wonder that it impressed ASOS.  "Molly's BA collection was not only accomplished but incredibly beautiful," said Emma Fox, womenswear fashion director of ASOS.  "The carefully constructed pieces are the work of an exceptional talent and we are honoured to be working with her on this special collaboration."  Looking at the three dresses Goddard has designed for ASOS, they contain some essence of her BA collection - namely the tulle outer dress and volume-creating gatherings at the waist.  The underlayer of hand crochet has now become three easy-to-wear slip dresses made up of a machine embroidery into a traditional lace pattern.  Combined together they're the sort of dresses that are begging to be taken out of their pretty-pretty fem-fem context.  You definitely get an urge to go to the supermarket, ride the 43 bus or walk into an old man's pub wearing one of these ballooning fluoro pink tulle dress just for the sheer hell of it.  Goddard seems to have a similar idea.  "They could be worn during the daytime and then you might end up at a weird party accidentally."  

Essentially though you have two dresses in one that come together in harmony but can also be taken apart for other layering adventures.  Combined together they're beautiful just as they are but I like bang for my buck and I personally think the tulle outerdresses are magnificent as they are, acting like shells to layer away as you please.  They're daring you to up the contrast levels to counteract the femininity and childish whimsicality of the material and shape.  Jeans, trainers, sportswear and rubbish t-shirts would be my chosen weapons of down-dressing all that tulle.  Or you could just go all out and run with the heightened frou-frou fantasy of all that tulle and pair up with other similar garments which collectively conjure up a mixture of My Little Pony, rave fairy costumes and Bubble's wardrobe from Ab Fab.  

Molly Goddard for ASOS Salon dresses worn with Miista holographic brogues

Molly Goddard for ASOS tulle dress worn with Lucky Chouette sailor top, Dries van Noten embroidered denim skirt, Karen Walker sunglasses, Joe Duke x Beach in the East denim jacket, Nike trainers

Molly Goddard for ASOS tulle dress worn with Simone Rocha lace skirt, Sorcha O'Raghallaigh embroidered top, vintage slip dress, Comme des Garcons Tricot collar, John Rocha black tinsel headband, Him & Her neon headband, Meadham Kirchhoff x Pollini shoes 

There's an one more sleeveless tulle dress style in a lighter shade of pink, which I didn't photograph so here are the official lookbook images.  The collab will hit ASOS.com on 24th June (next Monday) and prices will range from £120 to £150.  I'm looking forward to some resemblance of a summer where I get to gather up these giant skirts of tulle to ride the bus, do my supermarket shop and maybe wind up in a park somewhere drinking cider.  Anyone else along for the ride?

Atmospherics in the Head

I'm not one to base a post on celebrity endorsements.  I actually don't think I've ever really posted a picture on the blog that does the whole "Isn't this brand great because xxx wore it..." thing.  Björk however is one particular exception.  Especially when she picks out a Royal College of Art graduate, two weeks after the college show and wear her pieces on the Biophilia tour (something she's familiar with as she chose to wear Soren Bach's headpieces when he presented his final year collection at the RCA).  Let's put aside cynical attitudes about the relationship between a performer, his/her stylist and the hordes of young designers wanting to dress said performer - it IS an achievement to emerge from college and have such an instant surge of publicity and therefore I thought I'd single out Maiko Takeda's collection as one of the key graduates this year.  Takeda's ethereal collection of headpieces, visors and body armour entitled "Atmospheric Reentry" was one of the visual wows of this year's Royal College of Art fashion show, making broadsheet picture round-ups for its sheer aesthetic power.  Not to take away anything from the other graduates, who I'll be rounding up later in a separate post, but Takeda's position as the one womenswear graduate who specialised in millinery meant that she was able to leave a memorable calling card in everyone's minds.  

Bjork performing at Hollywood Bowl wearing Maiko Takeda

Bjork performing at Bonnaroo Festival

I remember Takeda's work from her BA jewellery collection at Central Saint Martins, based on the idea of shadows as jewellery.  Takeda took that idea of turning the intangible into a physical of adorning oneself again when she embarked on her MA at the Royal College of Art.  From the very beginning, she was fixated with creating a swirl of cloud or smoke around the head, inspired by Phillip Glass' opera Einstein on the Beach, but found it difficult to find the right materials to do so.  After trials of using different plastics and mounting them on to knitted bases and fabrics, she settled on turning humble acetate sheets into light reflecting shards.  She'd load up her inkjet printer at home with acetate sheets overnight to print out gradiated ombre coloured sheets and then cut them up in to the required shapes, playing with proportions and colours.  The result is a precisely fine-tuned collection of visible auras, which waft around the head in spherical form, as a visor, or around the upper body in in a mind-bending cloud or a balaclava/shrug hybrid where a knitwear base collaboration with Nicola Jones, allows Takeda's work to crossover into garments.  Metal supports, plastic hair grips, and the actual ring construction of holding all the shards together are almost cleverly invisible because Takeda invades your senses with a sort of magical Northern Lights-esque colour movement and light reflecting shape shifting as the delicate acetate pieces bounce up and down on the head or on the body.  It's no wonder Takeda got Björk's patronage.  Takeda whilst keen on setting up her own thing, isn't necessarily setttled on millinery as her discipline as she seems to have an affinity with unusual materials in general, which could see her go in several different directions.  For now though, her head-bound atmospherics should be marvelled at.  If you're lucky enough to be going to a Björk gig over the next few months, it's likely you'll be able to do so in person there.

Pretty Rêve

I've had nothing but postcode gamble on my mind lately as I restart my search for casa Lau slash Salter.  Pushed out of E5/E8/E9, I'm now venturing further out towards E17/E10/E11, lands beyond my comfort zone of familiarity but apparently bursting with "up-and-coming" vibes and "bags of potential", to use some odious phrases of estate agents.  Once you start imagining ridiculous notions such as ""Fifteen years ago I could have afforded to buy x/y/z with this amount of money...", it becomes an even more of a slippery slope.  Thoughts of this painful lottery game struck me again when I was speaking to the French-Cambodian sisters Val and Vanda Heng-Vong, who opened up their store Aimé in Notting Hill fifteen years ago, when it was still not quite the chi-chi, yummy-mummy, uber-chic cosseted haven that it is today.  Now they've turned their attentions to the semi-established Redchurch Street to open their second Aimé store, bringing a selection that complements the street's tasteful wares of A.P.C. clothing, Sunspel tees, Aesop products and on the foodie front, fresh pasta from Burro e Salvia.  I say semi-established only because there's still persistent rumours about the likes of Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren and Prada sniffing around the Redchurch Street area for a spot, which would obviously notch up to the status of "retail destination", to use more estate agents speak.  It's a painful game to play if you start thinking "Fifteen years ago I could have afforded to buy x/y/z with this amount of money..."  

It's also funny to think that when Val and Vanda first started Aimé, they were buying in labels that feel like such well-established staples in London's fashion landscape today - labels like A.P.C., with its burgeoning network of stores, and more significantly Isabel Marant, which back then was still a small boutique label and now is about to enter into a new level of frenzy with their upcoming collaboration with H&M.  Big isn't the goal for Aimé though as they have retained the intimate vibe of their Notting Hill store at their new Shoreditch outpost.  

Val and Vanda clearly are still on the hunt for the "new" as I discovered the label Ever Rêve at their Shoreditch Aimé store.  Ever Rêve is designed by Michelle Urvall Nyren, who's originally from Sweden and studied textile garment design at Steneby, Gothenburg University of Arts and Craft and worked as a freelance illustrator for Amelia's Magazine and Cellardoor Magazine.  Their S/S 13 collection seen here is the fruits of Nyren's labour and obsession with the intricate and delicate methods of silk painting on crepe de chine as well as techniques of batik and silk screen printing.  They're beautifully depicted in their "Process" video which you can see below.  The S/S 13 collection centres around a wistful and poetic story.  I'm not going to lie.  The narrative does make me cringe somewhat, furling up into a gut-reaction against such tweeness.  

The rose petals have a baby-skin like colour. Covered in silk. Their fragrance and the bees humming hammer on the head. It is a pleasant escape and she tries to ignore her mother’s voice. You’re such a dreamer. Why live in your own head, when you have so much potential?

The clothes though justify the written tale.  The strokes of subtle watercolour prints and resist-ink geometric patterns are beautiful.  The narrative, the lookbook images and even the name Ever Rêve forms one big bundle of indulgence, for dreamer girls to think about waft around in fields, blowing dandelion seeds and doing stuff that Lizzy Caplan does so well in my favourite fashion film of the year.  Thankfully, it's not all dreams, petals and soft-focus sunlight.  Ever Rêve's A/W 13-4 collection is a bit more meaty.  For now though, you can waft away either through Aimé, who is their exclusive UK stockist or through Ever Rêve's online shop.  

Stalking Shao

>> Right now there's a thick of graduate show type posts coming up with round-ups of both RCA and Central Saint Martins students to feed the imagination, but it also helps to look back and remember some of the breakout graduates from a few years back and catch up with what they're doing right now.  Remember Shao Yen Chen, from Central Saint Martins MA class of 2010?  If you don't recall the name, you'll definitely have seen the fluffy clouds of carefully shaved nylon strands, built up in to dramatic volumes and featured in numerous editorials.  Images of that collection have lingered on in the brain because the pieces were so singularly beautiful.

Since then, Chen, whilst still based in London has built up his business as a fledgling designer in his native Taipei in Taiwan.  A quick glimpse at Chen's A/W 13-4 collection entitled "Stalker" and it's clear that he's followed an up and down path of textural clash-mash since his breakout MA collection, toning down the volume and the drama but experimenting with more of a variety of fabrics.  Inspired by the black and white films of Buñuel, Dali, and Cocteau, Chen collages together a deliberately disjointed collage of velvet, faux fur, printed leathers and denim, deliberately pitting lux vs. trash in an interesting way.  Juicy Couture pink velvet as I've dubbed it, is revived into Chen's loose interpretation of a comfy track suit, appliqued with a third eye, underscoring the surrealist theme.  On the textural front, the sharp edges of mirrored leather and lazier cut-out tortoise shell pattern contrast with the soft frayed edges of denim and padded velvet.  Chen also updates the dramatic action of flinging a fur stole around in a haughty fashion by dropping in his own faux fur stoles, contrasted with ripped denim jeans or slubby sweat pants.  It's an aesthetic swerve towards something the leagues of off-kilter designers that are increasingly making sense, precisely because their choices are conventionally odd.  Chen proved he could do ethereal and beautiful.  Now it's his time to mix it up, get it wrong and then get it right again.