Chitose Abe does what she does and she does it incredibly well. The colors, the patterns, the references change from season to season, but the template remains the same — hybrid dressing. She makes it look easy. She makes it wearable. Keeping it current is a matter of her impeccable taste and exacting eye.
For spring, she cast her gaze on crisp white cottons, tuxedo shirts, fisherman jackets, fluorescent colors, trenchcoat khaki, denim, madras, polo shirts and painterly collages. That’s a lot of ground to cover and material to blend without making a mess. Abe has pared down from her earlier collections. The volumes are more controlled, the number of garments fused together limited so a woman can break out a piece and work it into her wardrobe without fear of looking like a clown.
To list off all the looks in the spring lineup would be exhausting. The whites were worn with white. Trenches were fused with denim jackets. Polos merged into the painterly. It all made sense, if it didn’t warrant much in terms of critical assessment. It is what it is. It’s very good. How will it advance? It very well might not.

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MILAN — Michael Kors’ chairman and chief executive officer John Idol’s Italian week reached a peak when last Saturday, his daughter Alexandra tied the knot at the luxury Villa d’Este hotel in Cernobbio, on Lake Como.
After signing the deal that saw Michael Kors Holdings adding Versace to its stable of brands for $2.1 billion and renaming itself Capri Holdings, the executive was seen celebrating his daughter’s marriage, joined by fellow fashion personalities.
Designers Michael Kors and Tommy Hilfiger, as well as Macy’s former chairman and ceo Terry Lundgren, Joel Horowitz and tycoon Silas Chou were among the guests in attendance.
Hilfiger posted an image portraying the group of guests on his personal Instagram account, captioning it: “The fashion rat pack.”

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COTTON GETS A BOOST: Cotton might be seen by many as the humblest of fabrics, but Supima succeeded in elevating the material with its Supima Design Lab event in Paris Sunday evening.
Held at the Hôtel de Talleyrand, the event showcased designs created by winners of the Hyères International Festival of Fashion and Photography, others made by more established designers, and looks from laureates of the organization’s U.S. program. These were presented in a series of opulent salons overlooking the Place de la Concorde after guests had worked their way past a cascade of cotton flowers and up the staircase through an artistic installation representing cotton transformation.
“You all have truly worked magic with the fabrics we have given you and we are very grateful,” said Supima vice president of marketing and promotions Buxton Midyette, addressing the designers among the crowd that had gathered at what is set to become an annual event.
“As a designer coming from India, we use cotton the most; cotton is a staple textile,” said Rahul Mishra, one of the designers involved. “When a baby is born, you drape him in cotton, last thing, you have cotton fabric which [shrouds] bodies, so for me, cotton is pure, natural,

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LOS ANGELES — It started with a job to shoot for Junk Food Clothing’s fall 2018 look book that landed model and photographer Gabbriette Bechtel a limited-edition capsule with the local T-shirt brand.
Junk Food tapped the multihyphenate creative, who has modeled for Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty line and had her work appear in V magazine and vogue.com, for the nine-piece capsule. The collection is to be celebrated on Thursday ahead of its Oct. 8 launch on Junk Food’s online shop as well as Tees + Jeans, the experiential retail space on Abbot Kinney it opened in partnership with Levi’s.
The collection consists of bodysuits, print tops and accessories bearing a cheetah print, some of Bechtel’s photography used as graphics on T-shirts and even a few of her tattoos embroidered as overlays on some of the pieces.
“I pretty much live in T-shirts and sweaters and pullovers, just cozy things I can wear every day,” Bechtel said of the starting point for the capsule’s direction. “The inspiration is pulled from my own closet. I collect vintage and so I used favorite pieces from my closet like cheetah. I look for rare cheetah pieces when I go shopping so we re-created that.…We also drew

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GREEN SHOOTS: Sustainable luxury brand Maiyet has been rethinking the rules of retail and plans to offer a new perspective with a concept known as the Maiyet Collective, in London’s Mayfair.
The space, opening later this week, will bring together sustainable labels across fashion, homeware and beauty, though no Maiyet-branded products will be among the offering. It will be housed within the Conduit, a private members’ club in Mayfair whose aim is to unite entrepreneurs, investors and creatives spearheading social change, and will only open for three days a month, so customers can sign up online and book an appointment to visit the space.
The aim is to put the focus on curation and intimacy: “The Maiyet Collective is as much about immersive experience and storytelling as it is about collaboration and community. By opening for just three days, we can focus on providing an intensive retail experience and a sense of theater condensed into a limited few days that customers will not want to miss,” said Paul van Zyl, the collective’s founder.
While it remains open, the space aims to become a hub for educational events such as workshops, exhibitions, talks and screenings.
It will feature 50 brands — primarily from the U.K.

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PARIS-BOUND: Los Angeles-based designer August Getty will stage his debut August Getty Atelier couture presentation in Paris in January. The self-taught eveningwear designer, who began showing his ready-to-wear in New York in 2014, will present his made-to-measure collection at the Ritz on Jan. 22 and 23. His old Hollywood-inspired custom designs are worn by celebrities including Miley Cyrus, Cher, Katy Perry and Kim Kardashian.

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