Stylee Fridays: Grace Coddington and Her Catwalk Cats
- story Chioma Nnadi
It’s been one month, three weeks and two days since we went to see The September Issue, but our crush on creative director Grace Coddington shows no signs of abating. Aside from being the most amazing fashion stylist the world has ever seen, Coddington is a dedicated cat lady—she has been known to sneak kittens into her fashion stories (dyed-purple!!), and we’re pretty sure if she had her way there would be an annual issue dedicated to her four-legged friends on the Vogue editorial calendar. Alongside her partner Didier Malige, she has been nuturing a giant cat family for the past 20 years in the West Village. And her book The Catwalk Cats is Coddington’s illustrated love letter to the pack. Told through the eyes of Puff, the handsome red-headed Tabby in the bunch, the book is divided into four chapters and four seasons, starting with the birth of Bart, a drop dead gorgeous Blue Persian cat, and traces front-row antics, Met Ball outfits and frollickings with the likes of Karl Lagerfeld and Rei Kawakubo. Coddington does all of the drawings, and you can literally chart her own real-life adventures—parts of the spring chapter are scribbled on Ritz Paris note paper (covering the shows perhaps?) among other hotels in far lung locales. Hands down the sweetest moments in this tale: Maligne’s gallery of feline at home pictures, including snaps of Grace feeding Bart his first breakast.
The Mishka X New Era Collection is Thoroughly Warm
- story Chioma Nnadi
There are a few silhouettes in the new crop of Mishka X New Era caps and all of these toppers have been designed with style and Siberian wind chill factors in mind. There’s the MiG Aviator (a sturdy Soviet Air Force staple, with traditional fuzzy earflaps), the Gein Hunter cap (a quilted Elmer Fudd fave), both of which are tried and true body heat conservers. Even the breezy boy racer-inspired Cyrillic gets a winter update in melton wool.
Lessons in French Dressing From Bérangère Claire
- story Chioma Nnadi
Last week, a member of the style department who shall remain nameless showed up dressed as a French lady to a Halloween party hosted by two Parisians. Needless to say, in a roomful of bona fide French folks, the irony was not hitting. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what keeps us running back to designer Bérangère Claire every season, but it definitely has something to do with that deceptively simple je ne sais quoi of French dressing. She manages to reinvent the classics, adding sweet exchange student staples to the line—an easy plaid mini here, a crisp white button-down there—with every season. And her fall 2009 lookbook of crazily nonchalant French kids is enough to inspire some of us to practice our best French face and re-up for next year.
Reality Studio Designs Clothes For Ancient Igloos
- story Chioma Nnadi
Set in the eastern arctic wilderness about 1000 years ago, Inuit movie Atanarjuat the Fast Runner is said to be a work of icy supernatural wonder. Reality Studio, women’s wear line out of Berlin, based its entire fall collection on the action thriller, and the clothes—huge hooded coats and tons of cozy draped wool over gorgeous wintry prints—are enough to make us update our Netflix queue immediately. In the meantime, we’re working on a fashion legend of our very own, a tale that involves a super-powered canoe and an epic journey across the seas to the Henrik Vibskov store in Copenhagen, where choice pieces from the collection just went on sale.
The Uniform Project Trailer
- story Chioma Nnadi
The Uniform Project Trailer from The Uniform Project on Vimeo.
Sheena Mathieken is just over halfway through The Uniform Project, a 365-day sartorial challenge that involves wearing and endlessly re-styling the same little black dress. We actually bumped into Mathieken a couple of weeks ago and can attest that she’s still going strong, working her accessories (although the summer, she admits, was a little rough) and raising plenty of money for charity while she’s at it. She recently posted a short film about the project on her website, and there’s even a special Uniform Project accessories soireé coming up later this week to celebrate the six month mark. Details after the jump.
Looking For Margiela in His New Book
- story Chioma Nnadi
When the new Maison Martin Margiela book showed up on our desk last week, we weren’t surprised that the cover was plain ol’ white-on-white. Margiela has been fashion’s most famous phantom for over 20 years now, and the last place he’s going to leave clues for his identity is on the cover. Just like his clothes, nothing about the book is straightforward—he eschews the traditional foreword format, sprinkling black and white photocopied letters and essays in-between the pages instead. There’s a handwritten letter from Jean Paul Gaultier who talks about the time day he hired Margiela as his assistant, and another from French Vogue EIC, Carin Roitfeld who attaches an adorable pic of her and stylist Emmauelle Alt lounging backstage at a Margiela show in 1992 to her note. All the seminal MMM moments are in there too, like the crazy pointed-shoulder trend he kicked started in 2007, or the supersized jeans from his “life-size” fall 2000 collection, where everything is blow up by 150% to 600% from the original dimensions. For conceptual eye candy value, there’s even a page of mugshots featuring rugged Margiela male models past and present—we’re putting our money on the blond bearded dude (bottom row, fourth picture in from the left) being the real Margiela.
Stylee Fridays: Albert Hammond Jr on Style and His New Suits
- story Chioma Nnadi
- photo Guy Eppel
Albert Hammond Jr launched his line of suits for Confederacy earlier this month, a collection the fashion press had been eagerly anticipating for months, and something we’d been quietly hoping he’d do for much, much longer. There are few men that can run the sartorial gamut of suiting quite like Hammond, and with everything from epaulettes on hunter-green suits to stunningly spiffy three-pieces in the line, it all looks and feels just like him. Alongside stylist and Confederacy store owner Ilaria Urbinati, Hammond put everything together from start to finish, and when he spoke to us via phone from his parents’ house in California, he was already percolating new ideas for round two. Read the full Q&A after the jump.
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posted on Oct 30, 2009 in Homepage Top Spotlight, STYLE INTERVIEWS, STYLEE FRIDAYS tags Albert Hammond Jr, Confederacy
James Brown vs Ali in No Mas’ Rumblevision
- story Chioma Nnadi
It’s been 35 years since George Foreman and Muhammad Ali met on Zairian soil for their “Rumble in the Jungle”—or as some would have it—the Fight of the Century. NYC-based clothiers No Mas are celebrating the anniversary of Ali’s victory with Rumblevision, a series of animated shorts in which artists like David Rathman pick and mix pivotal rumble moments (the rope-a-dope, the press conference, the epic TOK) in bluesy watercolor. Illustrator James Blagden on the other hand, goes off on a pretty amazing and fantastical tangent for his short, staging an entirely re-imagined rumble where James Brown goes toe to toe with Ali in a puff-sleeved, flared-leg onesie. It’s really more of a soul-powered dance-off than a real fight, and kind of like what Celebrity Death Match, might look like if you crossed it with America’s Best Dance Crew.
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posted on Oct 30, 2009 in STYLE VIDEO tags David Rathman, James Blagden, James Brown, Muhammad Ali, No Mas
Edun x Jo Ratcliffe for War Child
- story Chioma Nnadi
It’s been a bit of a wild thing week for us, starting with Beast Mark and now rounding out with Edun’s T-shirt and T-dress series with artist Jo Ratcliffe. The white-on-black images are pretty terrifying and amazing, and what’s more, a percentage of the proceeds go towards the charity War Child. The limited series is available here starting today, for one-month only.
Duckie Brown and Odin Release New Images of Edward
- story Chioma Nnadi
We’ve been following updates on Edward, the highly anticipated Duckie Brown/Odin Collaboration for months now, and a about a fortnight ago were treated to two lookbook images on WWD. New pictures are trickling in thick and fast of the collection which is said to be 17 pieces deep and all comfortably under a $500 price point. Edward will be in all Odin locations on November first, and the waxed cotton jacket and double-breasted charcoal number are the sharpest, most elegant antidote we can imagine to a Halloween night of Jabba the Hutt costumes and Pee-wee Herman impersonators.
