UK lifestyle brand Ted Baker hailed another “good year of progress”, driven by the strength and appeal of its brand and despite what it called on-going external challenges.
UK clothing retailer Next Plc has booked its first fall in annual profits in eight years and issued a caution on the year ahead amid the threat of price inflation and a shift away from spend on clothing.
Product authentication business Applied DNA Sciences (APDN) has unveiled a new supply chain platform to help certify the authenticity and origin of textile, apparel and footwear items.
The newly launched brand D-Vec, which is designed by a team, is Japanese fishing gear-maker Daiwa’s attempt to merge fashion with functional clothes intended for fishing and other sporting pursuits. Its inaugural show was staged on one of Harajuku’s best-known back streets, in front of the recently opened D-Vec store.
The show featured a total of nine looks for men and women. High-tech fabrics designed to resist wind and rain, as well as lightweight mesh, soft jersey and waterproof Gore-Tex were used to create hooded jackets, shift dresses, waders and voluminous skirts. The clothes themselves leaned more toward function than fashion, but bright colors such as yellow, aqua and red, as well as an abstract print with a metallic sheen gave them a certain freshness not normally associated with outdoor wear.
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Tomohiro Ozawa is a notoriously reticent designer, never showing his face or sticking around to speak with journalists after his shows, so where he draws inspiration from is anyone’s guess. But this season, his models looked like they were fresh out of an ultraluxurious ski resort, dressed in outfits that would be perfectly suited to relaxing in front of a fireplace, shopping in town, dining out, or hitting the slopes.
Ozawa employed nearly every type of rich texture imaginable. Fur lined the inside of denim jackets, trimmed pockets and collars of puffer coats, and was draped over a leather motorcycle jacket as a stole. There were velvet suits, shearling vests, satin jackets embroidered with traditional Japanese motifs, and cozy cable knits. The warm textures and deep shades of brown, red, green and gray were the epitome of fall dressing.
The label is predominantly a men’s brand, but it also offers women’s wear. This season, Ozawa turned out skinny leather pants, wool capes and paisley shift dresses for women, as well as more feminine versions of many of the men’s pieces.
While Ozawa’s collection was cohesive, well made and expertly tailored, it was also far too extensive. It would have been more memorable and less
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Jason Wu skipped the runway for his Boss women’s collection this season, showing the lineup a month after New York Fashion Week in the showroom. The reasoning was that Boss opted to direct its runway resources into a men’s show this season. Without the catwalk, the collection felt more low-key but was still stocked with strong pieces. Wu’s key messages were soft tailoring, fluid shapes and an emphasis on sweater dressing and blown out checks.
“Last spring was much about knocking the stuffing out of the suiting,” he said. “It’s about making it more approachable and much less office-y.”
To that end, he successfully worked the brand’s signature tailoring in lightly constructed, almost pajamalike jackets, showing black-and-white checks on a pair of wide-leg statement pants and a chic, deconstructed tailored dress.
There was a sporty side, too, with polished quilted puffers, and pants and knit tops in orange and blue trimmed in athletic stripes. There were day-to-evening looks in a checked camisole dress and skirts cut with sensual movement, and also some beautiful straight-up evening dresses cut with lean architectural bodices and soft, pleated chiffon skirts cut for raw texture.
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With her first solo runway show, Akiko Aoki solidified her status as one of Tokyo’s up-and-coming designers to watch. She presented her own definition of feminine dressing, which was both soft and edgy, created by breaking down elements of classic garments and then recombining them in intriguing ways. In some ways it was reminiscent of Chitose Abe’s work at Sacai, but it still had its own unique flavor.
Aoki deconstructed trenchcoats in neon pink and classic Glen plaid, reimagining them as crop tops and floor-length skirts with belts tied at the waist and slits up each leg. Many of her looks featured different textured fabrics in the same color, such as an emerald green satin slipdress worn over pleated chiffon bell-bottoms. She also riffed on striped men’s wear-inspired shirts, turning them into baby-doll dresses, blouses and aprons with bustier tops.
The designer turned out coats in black-and-white houndstooth and baby blue wool. Her design managed to look both classic and entirely new, with scalloped lapels, a gathered and belted waist, and puff sleeves with dropped shoulder seams.
Conservative but sexy, quirky but wearable, and girly but grown-up, Aoki’s collection captured the contradictions of modern Tokyo women.
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In his sixth season since being tapped to revamp the storied Hanae Mori house with the Manuscrit line, Yu Amatsu is still struggling to find the right balance between paying tribute to the past and appealing to a new, younger customer. While his fall collection included looks that fit both bills, the contrast between old and new was often too great, causing a disconnect and lack of cohesion at times.
Rather than designing around a particular inspiration, Amatsu went with a theme of combining different elements, such as colors and textures, this season. He used muted, smokey hues of camel, green, gray and brown on belted coats, ruffled tops and shift dresses. A photographic print of flower petals contrasted with black mesh on a long-sleeved frock, while a leopard print was splashed across the bottom of a puff-sleeved top and the front of dresses in two shades of gray.
A series of dresses in dusty rose satin missed the mark and ended up looking grandmotherly with their dated shapes and textures. But Amatsu saved his strongest work for last: beautiful, asymmetric dresses that used wood as a fabric. On one, black fabric cut away from the front to reveal a mosaic of
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THE SUM OF ITS PARTS: Less is more comfortable: That seems to sum up the design accomplishment of Marc Newson, who was tapped by Nike to interpret its Air VaporMax style. His lightweight moccasin design is constructed with 10 parts, whereas the original Air Max was created with 37 different components.
“I learned an enormous amount about taking fairly traditional materials — yarns and old-fashioned materials — and giving them a three dimensionality. Which is a pretty modern use of old materials in a contemporary way,” the industrial designer told a small crowd gathered at the Nike 1948 store in London this week.
British professional cyclist Mark Cavendish, who has a special interest in design and performance technology and is an early adopter of skin suits and aero helmets, joined Newson in conversation.
The NikeLab Air VaporMax x Marc Newson style, priced at $275, drops on March 26 – a day the activewear giant has dubbed “Air Max Day.”
Newson and Cavendish spoke about design and collaborations. Australian-born, London-based Newson was initially trained as a jeweler and his work spans from footwear and furniture to luggage and teakettles. He began working with Nike in 2000 on the Zvezdochka, a limited-edition style inspired by astronaut suits worn at the Russian Space Institute in 1961.
“I took this as
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Scandinavian countries are known to take the lead in terms of promoting its multidisciplinary designers on the international stage, so it’s fitting that the Design Museum Helsinki and the Finnish Association of Designers Ornamo have launched an exhibition for the centenary of Finnish independence.
More than 1,000 designers and supporters turned up Thursday night in Helsinki to examine how design is challenging the present and shaping the future, according to Päivi Balomenos, the museum’s public relations and communications director. For the first time, six different rooms were set up for the “Enter and Encounter” exhibition, which is meant to have a forward-thinking spin about design and society. The themes are Techno Pastoral, Global Finn, Ecologies, Post-Industrial Crafts, Urban and Soft Systems. The work of Irene Kostas, the designer behind the ONAR clothing label, and Elina Määttänen, who has her own signature collection, are among the show’s 45 resources. There is also a maternity package to help new mothers in underdeveloped places be equipped for child care.
“Compared to the Finnish design history, the idea of design used to be very much product-based and now it has totally changed. It can actually be all kinds of things,” Balomenos said. “For example, in this
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