Johanna Senyk sought to celebrate strong women with her fall collection for Wanda Nylon — right down to the silver cheerleader’s pom-pom strips knitted into some of her designs.
Senyk’s designs certainly made a powerful statement as she contrasted volumes: Her pants were either cocoon-shaped or severely flared, while her outsize statement outerwear was definitely not for wallflowers, with cinched waists, extreme — either very high or very low — necklines and lots of Lurex and vinyl, giving the collection a Seventies disco geek meets futuristic cool kid vibe.
A giant houndstooth pattern featured on suits, a cape and a bra top, while jumpsuits and pinafore dresses with contrasting stitching had a more nonchalant ease, paired in some looks with big polo neck sweaters to exaggerate the gauche appeal.
The designer — winner of the 2016 ANDAM prize — contrasted her synthetic fabrics with natural cowhide and sheepskin, including on a bold fur coat in a bright sunflower hue. Indeed, although there was plenty of black, white and unbleached denim, she also sent out an array of looks in primary reds and yellows and a bright turquoise, combining them, for example, on a knit dress with a shabby-chic appeal.

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Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant didn’t do a show for fall, but stood in front of a large-scale video screen to at Courrèges headquarters deliver a speech about the collection as it was projected behind them. It felt a lot like a Mac commercial. “We are 27. We are born with the Internet and social media in our blood — it’s like breathing,” Vaillant said. “We live with screens, liking and swiping. It’s second nature. At the same time, we think the greatest luxury of all is to be in the same room, all physically here and to speak together in reality.”
The designers disclosed their plan to focus on four of their “strength” categories — jackets, miniskirts, knits and the architectural dress — and three core values — optimism, smart design and dialogue. They asked friends and models to choose one piece from the collection and style it any way, with their own clothes, which was what was displayed on the video. Seeing a purple laminated apron minidress worn over a vintage T-shirt and beat-up Chuck Taylors; a lemon-yellow cropped classic Courrèges Mod jacket with exaggerated sleeves with a casual T-shirt and ostrich-skin pants and black butch boots, and a

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Sarah Jessica Parker is giving the bag business a second look.
The actress, designer, book publisher and producer has launched a new line named The Seven Essentials — to be sold at Bloomingdale’s and through Amazon Fashion.
Introduced under the umbrella of her SJP collection, the collection will be priced from $395 to $695.
The label introduced bags in early 2014, but this new offering has a revised manufacturing concept — with product made in the U.S. On Tuesday, the label celebrated its third year in business.
Parker said, “Our seven essential silhouettes incorporate quality, function and necessity in their own ways. And much like our shoes, they are timeless. Made for all women and all occasions.
“We were able to source some incredibly beautiful, supple Italian leathers in a few of our signature colors like Poppy and Candy, a cohesive touch we were very pleased with. And we are very proud to say that each and every handbag is made in America, a non-negotiable for us from the start.”
Included in the lineup are two shoulder-bag styles, as well as a tote, hobo, oversize clutch, backpack and minaudière design. Each of the seven styles is offered in up to five colorways, including hot pink, black, gray, red

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PARIS — It’s been a busy start to the year for Officine Générale’s Pierre Mahéo since presenting his men’s collection in January, with the creation in just four weeks of a women’s line due to be presented in a Paris showroom March 4.
“It’s a small miracle, but sometimes when you want something, you make it happen,” said the founder and creative director of the Paris-based label, who expects over the next two years that women’s wear sales will become double that of his men’s wear business, which launched in 2013.
The collection will sit in the same affordable luxury positioning as his men’s line, he said, with a focus on timeless classics in high-quality fabrications using premium fabrics sourced from Britain, Japan and Italy.
“The women’s market is much bigger than men’s, which is still a growing market, but there is a niche for high-quality product at decent price points,” said Mahéo, who added that he had received requests from a number of retailers carrying his men’s line to add women’s. While he declined to disclose figures, sources estimate the brand generated total sales of $3.3 million in 2015.
Mahéo said the fall women’s collection, which features about 80 pieces, borrows from his men’s line in terms

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Fall’s hot color was impossible to miss at Fendi’s ultrachic fall show, where Karl Lagerfeld and Silvia Venturini Fendi styled every exit with over-the-knee red boots, including these fiery ensembles captured backstage. Red also spilled over into Milan’s lively streetscapes.

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OLFACTORY EXPERIENCE: Somerset House plans to put fragrance at the fore with an exhibition aimed at exploring contemporary cult perfumes. “Perfume: A Sensory Journey Through Contemporary Scent,” is promising a “multisensory” experience that will allow visitors to discover unconventional scents developed over the last 20 years — and the stories of the perfumers behind them.
The focus will be on 10 perfumes, ranging from Antoine Les Sécretions Magnifiques for État Libre D’Orange, to Geza Schoen’s Molecule 01 for Escentric Molecules and Purple Rain by Daniela Andrier for Prada Olfactories. What binds the perfumes is their defiance of convention associated with gender or good taste. The perfumers, most of whom work independently and haven’t had any formal training, have been looking for unusual ingredients to create scents that often shock the senses. Sécrétions Magnifiques evokes the essence of sweat, blood and saliva, among others.

A photo by Laziz Hamani. 
Courtesy photo

Other scents chosen by Somerset House’s senior curator Claire Catterall include El Cosmico, created in 2015 by the Brooklyn-based perfumer David Seth Moltz to re-create the sensory experience of the camping ground in the Texan town of Marfa. Charcoal is also part of the selection. A fragrance by Lyn Harris, who founded Perfumer H, evokes memories

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UPTOWN GOES DOWNTOWN: Hermès will make another big Los Angeles splash on March 9 with its “Dwntwnmen” event, a celebration of artistic collaborations inspired by the City of Angels. The company will contruct an entire “world of Hermès” on Downtown L.A.’s Spring Street, in an empty lot adjacent to the train tracks and inside a 60,000-square-foot warehouse.
Hosted by Hermès president Axel Dumas and Hermès North America president and chief executive officer Robert Chavez, the event will take its several hundred guests on “a journey through the spring-summer 2017 collections for men.” That means a full-on outdoor runway show, natch, which will feature several new pieces just for the event, modeled by a crew of Paris catwalkers and also local “real” people (albeit extremely handsome ones), from chefs to surfers to skateboarders.
However, the runway show is only part of the draw. In the vein of the Louis Vuitton “Series 5” exhibit in Los Angeles a few years ago, Dwntwnmen will feature an immersive, multiroom, multisensory experience that conveys how the product and the collection were created. One such room will be dedicated to the house’s iconic silk foulard, imagined as record covers, which guests can select to play different types of

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Phoebe Neuman

Hanging out with the Lane Bryant dream team.

Here’s what happened at Anthony Vaccarello‘s latest show for Saint Laurent.