I'm working through the weekend (when am I NOT?) so posting will be sporadic but I am leaving you with a link that should take a good hour or so to browse through should you feel inspired. First up, I don't use Flickr enough as a source of inspiration because a) it sucks me in so badly that climbing out from a Flickr vortex is a hardship in itself and b) sometimes I just don't know where to begin if random search terms yields nothing. Milla emailed me regarding her brand new label Mechant Bébé (naughty baby...) and after a bit of Google digging, it turns out Milla from Taiwan has a wonderful personal style, lovingly documented on her Flickr account (if you don't know what the Chinese characters mean, just do random clicking as you'll yield good style porn in most of her sets...). For a start, it feeeeels personal as opposed to indoctrinated and yes, I suppose I see some of my own tangents of style in her's which always helps. She also has a blog which has most of those pics too...
So that's the browsing for ya. Next up, her label. I'm glad to finally be getting a nice group of names of independent labels from South East Asia... I'm not sure if it's do with the fact that I'm slow on the uptake or that there has been an influx of labels in the past two years. The even better thing is they're all doing quite different things and so we have Mechant Bébé, a label which will launch collections in project-form - i.e. not regularly.
For the first collection, 'Virgin Rebirth', we have all those things that are still making my heart beat a bit faster - pastel colours, sheer pieces, mix up of textiles and a romantic spirit that is reined in by some form of shape/structure in the designs. These are then added to some hazy yellow-tinged lookbook images and an intention that of course references all those things that infiltrate the brain of so many Lula-ites (Virgin Suicides, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Lolita). If I'm sounding a tad jaded, I'm going to check myself for that. There is nothing wrong with any of that...
What I did question slightly were the prices as all pieces are available via an e-shop with dresses topping at about USD750. Going back to Milla with this question and reading her manifesto again, as a starting project, all pieces are handmade by her and she has specifically chosen extremely expensive fabrics as there are only one or two pieces of everything. I begin the understand the prices a little bit more when you remove the yellow haziness and look at the up-close shots of the construction, evident especially in the panelled dresses which mix mesh, vintage lace and tie-dye florals. A beautiful yet selfish beginning to a label perhaps. That said, I'm interested to see what this naughty baby will come up with next...
