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Levi Palmer and his partner Matthew Harding made their name with their play on the classic shirt, tweaking it every season — often with asymmetric hems — while other times playing with proportions and or reinventing it into various guises such as dresses or outerwear.
This season, the men rethought their strategy and sought to understand their customer profile, studying who ordered directly from the brand’s e-shop. “Our woman is a very comfortable woman,” Palmer said. “They want comfort and style, and things they can live in from 7 in the morning to midnight because they live busy lives and are constantly on the go.”
Palmer and Harding took that as a starting point for their fall collection and sent out a lineup featuring wide trousers cut high on the waist paired with wedged mules and high-collared shirts.
“It’s about how to get the most movement in a trouser — sometimes it looks like a skirt and then you move and it has a surprise to it,” Palmer said of the cut.
The humble shirt continued to be subverted: elongated into wraparound versions with handkerchief hems; cut with asymmetrical necklines to reveal one shoulder; or manipulated into a trenchcoat with twisted fastenings. Shirts also came

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Sharon Wauchob examined the elements of femininity for fall.
“I have different levels of inspiration,” she said. “I have a lot photographic books that I’ve collected over the years from Paris and I rediscovered them. It’s the whole idea of movement and the female body. That feeling of fragility, that is why there is a lot of the heavier, protective tailoring.”
Wauchob juxtaposed masculine references with feminine elements and worked in luxe details such as tassels and feathers to her well-constructed collection of suiting, dresses, outerwear and separates.
She wrapped silk satin around the waistband of black slouchy pants and paired this with a pink silk blazer that was adorned with delicate handmade and hand-knotted tassel fringes. Other notions of masculinity were present in a trenchcoat, where she mixed fine wools with soft tailoring wools.
More feminine pieces came in the form of dramatic floaty dresses which were worn under a trench coat. She hand-dyed silk chiffon and created a soft ombré in hues of apricot and soft green as seen on a flowy floor-grazing dress. The designer also incorporated elements of lingerie and fashioned a strapless dress with a lace bustier top. She then cut pieces of lace in the shape of petals

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Birds do it, bees do it — even educated fleas do it: Now Christopher Kane has done a whole collection about it, complete with black leather and colorful lace, cage dresses, silky slips and slashed fabrics.
Before the show, Kane said sex was just part of human behavior, “and for me it’s fascinating if done in a very beautiful, provocative and sensual way. My clothes are there to empower women. It’s always about empowerment for me and about that beautiful, almost Hollywood glamour.”
Kane has long explored sex in his collections, along with science, the natural world and outer space. While he may have built the collection around the controversial theme, it was more about the idea than the act, a meditation on the power of clothing, plus a few erotic illustrations from “The Joy of Sex” and “More Joy of Sex” on marabou-trimmed dresses and tops.
Admittedly, there are not many women out there who could brave the tight, lipstick-red lace dress that barely covered the essentials, or the sheer plastic skirt with a furry trim. Otherwise it was mostly PG-13.
There were shiny leather tabard dresses adorned with lace bibs and high collars, gray woolen coats with slashes down the arms, black dresses

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For its fall presentation, the team at MM6 took over a pub in central London and covered it entirely in silver foil. Models stood on foiled kegs and were dressed all in silver in various textures, from coated denim and leather to tinsel, shearling and sequins.
MM6 reworked the brand’s staples, including five-pocket jeans, the turtleneck, the duffle coat and the slipdress by adding textures or changing their proportions. Men’s vests were shrunken and wrapped tightly around the torso, while duffer coats were meticulously quilted. And as a nod to the Queen of England, one look riffed on her famous Balmoral attire — a head scarf and her green coat — reinterpreted as a foiled head-wrap resembling an emergency blanket and a silver coat with slightly elongated sleeves.
In the spirit of the label, familiar items were given new purpose — a motorcycle helmet was used as a bag and disco balls, which were dangling from the ceiling, were the inspiration for this season’s new boot. MM6’s classic ankle boot was reinterpreted with a spool heel and covered in mirrored tiles.

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MORALIOGLU’S MAKEUP: Nars unveiled its first collaboration with Erdem during London Fashion Week at the designer’s fall 2018 show held at the Tate Britain on Monday. The range will be available for purchase on April 15 in the U.K.
“It was really interesting to explore my aesthetic in collaboration with Nars and see how far we could push different elements through color and product,” said Erdem. “It was fascinating to develop new pigments and palettes as well as the cosmetics themselves.”
Inspired by strange flowers, the collection has been in the making for a long time, according to the brand’s spokeswoman, who noted Erdem’s penchant for makeup. The designer has been hands-on in the process and his involvement led the brand to launch items it has never produced before, such as a lip powder palette.
The 13-piece Erdem for Nars Strange Flowers collection consists of products for the cheeks, eyes and lips and comes in floral packaging. The price range is 15 pounds for blotting papers to 35 pounds for lip or eye shadow palettes. The range will be sold in Selfridges on April 15 and nationwide May 1.
Nars has been crafting the beauty looks for the designer’s shows since 2013.

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THE BEAT GOES ON: K-Swiss continues its quest to have its brand appeal to a new generation of sneaker fans with the help of DNCE.
The Los Angeles footwear firm said it had linked with the music group, fronted by Joe Jonas, last summer in a bid to boost the brand’s image among Millennials and Generation Z consumers, while riding the wave of retro Nineties nostalgia. Jonas is joined in the band by Cole Whittle, JinJoo Lee and Jack Lawless, all of whom appear in the K-Swiss advertising.
The campaign continues Thursday with the launch of the company’s Donovan Quest Pack shoe style, which is being sold exclusively through retailer Journeys.
The campaign around the style features DNCE and includes tour footage playing at Journeys stores nationally. The shoe for men and women retails for $74.99 with juniors and kids $59.99 and $49.99, respectively.
For K-Swiss, the company’s work with DNCE is being done in tandem with retailers such as Journeys, and in other cases Footaction or Shoe Palace to help build brand awareness.
Patrick Buchanan, K-Swiss Global Brands global marketing director said at the time of the DNCE deal the point is to work with retailers that already have ties with the new generation

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LONDON — The Arab Fashion Council is starting to lay the foundations for the development of a sustainable infrastructure across the Arab world, with a strategic partnership with the British Fashion Council and the debut of the first Arab Fashion Week in Riyadh.
The nonprofit organization, which represents 22 countries across the Arab world and has recently set up a regional office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is aiming to use the event as a platform to support local talent, as well as international names looking to enter the Arab market.
“The history and trajectory of the BFC goes hand in hand with what we are trying to achieve: nurturing young talent and adopting an international vision,” said Princess Noura Bint Faisal Al Saud, the organization’s honorary president.
In turn, the AFC will work toward providing opportunities for London-based designers to tap into the Arab market.
Jacob Abrian, the founder and chief executive officer of the AFC, pointed to the fact that their efforts are aligned with the government’s broader vision to diversify the economy of Saudi Arabia and create opportunities for its increasingly young generation — 70 percent of the population being under 30. “Most Arab countries are looking to diversify; Abu Dhabi, for example, announced that

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For Presidents’ Day, we offer a primer on the aircraft that the present and past POTUS have flown.

The latest tweets and updates from Southern California athletes competing in the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Los Alamitos’s housing market looked struggling in the fourth quarter: Prices flat as sales fell.

CoreLogic statistics for the October-to-December period compared with the same period a year earlier, show these five trends for Los Alamitos’s homebuying …

1. 53 homes sold in the latest period vs. 56 a year earlier.

2. That’s a one-year sales decline of 5.4 percent vs. a countywide homebuying loss of 1.3 percent.

3. Median selling price in the latest period of $890,000, same as 12 months earlier.

4. Flat pricing compares to the countywide median at $698,000, up 5.7 percent in a year.

5. The Los Alamitos 90720 median ranks No. 18 priciest out of 83 Orange County ZIPs vs. No. 13 a year earlier.

See full-year 2017 CoreLogic results …
Beach ZIPs | North O.C. | South O.C. | Mid-county
From 2017’s fourth quarter, eight countywide trends to ponder:

1. At the neighborhood level, prices were up in 66 of 83 Orange County ZIP codes compared to the previous year.

2. Sales rose in 38 of 83 Orange County ZIPs.

3. Builder sales were 1,544 — up 4.2 percent from a year earlier. Median selling price was $869,000 — up 0.2 percent from a year earlier.

4. In the cheapest third of the county’s market — the 27 least expensive ZIPs, median of $622,500 and below — 2,540 homes sold. That’s down 0.9 percent compared to a year earlier.

5. In the 27 priciest ZIPs — median of $789,050 and higher — 3,236 homes sold. That’s down 0.2 percent.

6. In the 11 Orange County ZIPs with medians above $1 million, sales totaled 720 homes, down 1.9 percent in a year. There were 10 seven-figure ZIPs a year earlier.

7. In the county’s 16 beach-close ZIPs, 1,484 homes sold in the latest period, down 0.6 percent vs. a year earlier.

8. As for relative bargains, there were six ZIPs with medians under $500,000 with total sales of 440 homes. a year earlier, 14 ZIPs had medians under $500,000 with 1,039 sales, or a drop of 58 percent in a year.

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