Stylee Fridays: Agentur V Fall 09 Preview—Our Fantasy Shopping List
- story THE FADER
When Agentur V comes to town for their fall preview it always ends up being a bit of a fantasy shopping trip—we invariably end up prancing around the showroom in fall ‘09 samples, mentally adding up all the online euros we’ll be burning through, or figuring out just how to sneak them out the door when no one is looking. The list of European designers the agency represents reads like our very own fantasy league of independent designers, with collections from Danes like Wood Wood and Henrik Vibsov, and Swedes like Minimarket and Carin Wester. For organization’s sake, we’ll start off with the new highly wearable classics like slouchy pants from Wood Wood much like the pair that Pauline, pictured right, is wearing. Few designers know how to cut a casual trouser better than Wood Wood, so it’s unsurprising that pants are the brand’s best sellers. Her Minimarket boots (which you might remember from a recent Staff Affections post) are a Scandinavian favorite too. They’ve been gently reinventing the wedge bootie for the past three seasons and the newest ones have a chelsea boot-style elasticated panel. It doesn’t hurt that the boots come in seasonally appropriate russet, a shade the color of fallen leaves. The washed leather button-down by Wood Wood is the best hybrid jacket/shirt we’ve ever worn—and we admit, the piece we wanted to smuggle out the most. As for sartorial flights of fancy, there were plenty of those to go around too, like the red, white and blue Vibsov union suit and jailbird onesies for men. Arielle de Pinto’s fully fledged facemask is probably a smidge too far past crazy for everyday wear and Bernhard Willhelm’s spacey summer-of-love redux sunnies are perched on just the right side of wild.
Stylee Fridays: Agentur V Comes to Town
- story THE FADER
When it comes to stuff that we love from Europe, all roads tend to lead back to Agentur V, a Berlin-based showroom that houses some of our favorite labels. Obviously we were pretty excited to find out that the agency was going on a world tour of sorts and that our town happened to be right up there on the schedule this week. Pauline from Agentur V (that’s her in purple dress) walked us through a bunch of new collections from the likes of Henrik Vibskov (the eternally talented Dane), Wood Wood (if you haven’t peeped the FADER TV spot from fashion week then you should) and Carin Wester, the Swedish designer we profiled many moons ago who is still cranking out some amazing clothing (that’s her gorgeous cropped knitted sweater after the jump).
The accessories though were some of the things we had most fun with in our ritual game of showroom dress-up. A striking red bowler by Mini Market as well as gorgeous men’s footwear from Vibskov in intense blues and greens (primary colors on the horizon for next spring?). Delicate and beautiful were the fine metal masks that Canadian Arielle de Pinto has designed for spring, a kind of more elegantly mysterious Pied Piper (R Kelly we see you!). Of course, Henrik Vibskov’s collections are always an unkillable one-stop shop—besides the shoes his homage to old school Coogi and grinning Cheshire Cat tee made our list of favorites, pieces that both the boys and the girls will probably cat fight over when the spring clothes hit stores next year.
