Resort 2013: Versace, Louis Vuitton, and the undead return of Juicy Couture.

Francesco Scognamiglio

Today's topic is: funsies! Which is the kind of vocabulary that regularly comes to mind when I'm writing about Resort Season. Most of the collections in this post were dominated by silliness and bright colours, ie the main themes of Resort collections the world over -- at least, when they're not dominated by bland, saleably on-trend basics.

Marni
There's a lot of '70s-inspired designs floating around at the moment, much of them kinda fugly because, let's face it: The '70s. For example, there's certainly something to be said for the growing popularity of outfits that combine layers of skirts and/or mid-length trousers with an overskirt, but not when the fabric is rigid and coloured to match the furniture in Starsky & Hutch. Fashion borrows from itself continuously in a series of 25-year loops, as each old trend gradually transforms from "so old" to "charmingly vintage". The thing about "charmingly vintage", however, is that we get to retroactively edit out the non-hideous trends so only the good stuff survives. The whole point of recycling retro styles is that you get to weed out the stuff that looks like this:

Louis Vuitton
More '70s mid-length trousers, but this time they seem to be going for a Barbie Goes Backpacking kind of look.

Honestly though, this whole collection was a major disappointment for me, mainly because last season's Louis Vuitton looked like this:

Norma Kamali
This collection was inspired by the Olympics, which means that Norma Kamali is my auto-enemy. (Barely an exaggeration.) Seriously, the only good thing the Olympics have inspired so far is this Horrible Histories song. Bias aside, this collection wasn't too bad, successfully avoiding most of the traps of sports-inspired fashion. One thing I would criticise is that although I quite like the dress pictured below, it's a bad idea to use shiny fabrics in clothes that you're explicitly marketing as "affordable". I suspect that most of these clothes look kinda cheap in real life.

NO. This looks like an air stewardess costume from a 1960s-themed advert for those flights rich people hire to go into the upper atmosphere and experience zero-gravity. If your outfit unironically resembles tinfoil Space Fashion from a vintage TV series, Do Not Pass Go.

Skaist-Taylor
I was totes baffled by the hideousness of this photoshoot until I found out that Skaist-Taylor are the people behind Juicy Couture, at which point everything became clear. I mean, why not pair your party-girl frock with a fake fur stole that looks like it was made from furniture coverings, and then pose in front of a vomit/spilled-makeup combo background? Literally no one who buys these clothes is ever going to see the lookbook anyway.

You just know that anyone who buys this suit is going to wear it with that exact same styling. Women's suits are often modeled with no shirt or bra on underneath (because who wants to look at pictures of women where all their flesh is covered??) but then worn "normally" in real life, but I suspect that the Juicy Couture crowd will take this lookbook's advice to heart and pair their pink tuxedoes with silver platform shoes and a pout.

Ter et Bantine
I feel like I have whiplash from switching straight from Skaist-Taylor to the calm and stylish lines of Ter et Bantine. Snobbery-whiplash, that is. Chances are, these two types of outfit will be marketed at exactly the same economic bracket, except the women wearing Skaist-Taylor will be rich because they're reality TV stars while the women wearing Ter et Bantine will be interning at their father's publishing company. Women wearing Skaist-Taylor put their party photos on Facebook; women wearing Ter et Bantine have text-free Tumblr accounts where they reblog The Sartorialist and whimsical photos of coffee paraphernalia.

Thom Browne
Thom Browne is dedicated to designing clothes that look objectively ridiculous, particularly menswear. The deicsion to attempt a marketable Resort collection, therefore, was kind of baffling. While some outfits were entertainingly silly (see below for borderline Willy Wonka cosplay), most were disappointingly bland and adhered to the kind of preppy tameness that I'd expect from... well, anyone but Thom Browne. I mean, for a guy whose last menswear collection combined gimp masks, belly shirts and pastel-checked trouser suits, this show was distinctly unimpressive.

Versace
The faux-masculine slouching, bright colour scheme, Joan Jett hair and spike heels all added up to something that looked like a cross between a K-pop photoshoot and a makeup ad. This isn't something I'd expect from a label this famous but I can't deny that it's fun, even though the collection does seem to skew a lot younger than I'd expect from Versace.

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A Beginner's Guide to Resort Season: Marc Jacobs, Calvin Klein, Lanvin, and more.

I know most of you guys are here for the superheroes, but I gotta be what I gotta be, and sometimes that means posting about mediocre high-end fashion. Right now we're in the middle of Resort/Cruise season which, as you may have noticed from the name, is an imaginary season. In the world of Game Of Thrones, seasons take years to change, meaning that the characters get years to practise the best way to portentiously say "Winter. Is. Coming." In Fashion Land, Resort/Cruise season is the time between Spring and Summer when you swan around various luxury locations while wearing £3000 sunglasses and doing things that are way, way classier than watching Game Of Thrones. The purpose of Resort/Cruise season is to sell designer clothes to these rich people so they have something new to wear on their yacht. This year's Chanel show was pretty good, but by and large the attitude of most major fashion houses to Resort/Cruise season seems to be: "Someone's gonna buy this shit, so let's just print out some bikinis and knee-length skirts and go to the bar, YOLO."

Chris Benz. (All photos from Style.com.)

One of the A+ things about Resort season is the hilariously lacklustre photoshoots. Even during Couture season some designers choose to exhibit using photoshoots instead of live shows, but usually that's either for aesthetic reasons or because they can't afford decent placement at Fashion Week. During Resort season, however, pretty much everyone whose name isn't Lagerfeld exhibits solely via lookbooks. And those lookbooks, as you may be able to tell from the above photo, can be kind of... dodgy. For one thing, the monochrome photo of palm trees looks like something you'd see hanging up in a coffee shop, and it's held up by bullclips. Secondly, the lighting is edging dangerously close to "we shot this in my garage". 

Burberry Prorsum
Believe it or not, the idea of a blank backdrop used to be a weird concept (you can read a bit more about that and post-war fashion photographer Irving Penn here). Sometimes it can make the models look washed out and dull, but for brands like Burberry it's fine because the clothes are mostly in neutral tones.

So, yeah, did I give you enough warning yet that there's going to be a bunch of super-bland shit in this post? Because: BEHOLD.

This gown baffles me because a) there is literally no one in the world who has the correct body shape and boob-volume to correctly fit into this and make it look good, and b) Burberry is a really commercial brand so I really... don't know what they were thinking...?? Resort season mysteries.

Just Cavalli
It's the colour of a really gross-tasting soda drink, it's partially leopard-print, and it comes with a matching lime-green Justin Bieber hat. Teenagers of America, it's your duty to wear this outfit to prom!

Zero + Maria Cornejo
Despite the ~highly imaginative~ usage of backing boards, I give this outfit a grudging B+ because it doesn't look like a half-hearted Resort season attempt at summer fun, and it hits all the things about the irritating "1920s trend" that most mainstream designers miss. Instead of being a period-drama pastiche or Baz Luhrmann ripoff, it takes the drop-waist/long-beaded-necklace details and puts them together in an outfit that looks modern and interesting without being outrageous.

Calvin Klein
This suit may look dull to the untrained eye, but by Calvin Klein standards it's a Lady Gaga stage costume. Calvin Klein hates colours and patterns and loves to design hundreds and hundreds of outfits that essentially amount to beige bedsheets. Unfortunately CK streams a lot of their catwalk shows online, meaning that I've probably wasted/spent at least half an hour of my life heckling at my laptop screen as 37 blank-faced nymphs stride along a pale grey runway in near-identical pale grey smocks. So you can probably understand why this outfit made me fall off my horse.

That being said, there was still a whole bunch of CK outfits that looked like black or white curtains and would only ever look good on Gwyneth Paltrow. But this! Is progress!

DKNY
"LOL" -- direct quote from DKNY head designers after they "finished" "work" on this.  

Lanvin
I love this bathing suit because it just looks so ferociously uncomfortable. Nothing says "relaxing beachwear" like an angry-looking model wearing a bathing costume that looks like it may well be 100% rigid (and attempting to cut off all circulation to her vag), armed with 5-inch perspex heels and a leather shoulderbag.

BEDSHEET.

I feel like I've dissed Lanvin kind of unfairly here because these three photos aren't indicative of the whole show (which was rather stylish, if not particularly remarkable to me personally), but this microwavable tinfoil suit is just the shiznit. I hope someone wears this with the black bathing costume on underneath and uses it to go to the beach on Mars.

Organic by John Patrick.
"My junk feels great in this outfit," thought the John Patrick model, too distracted to button his fucking jacket properly.

Diesel Black Gold
I like this for realsies because it's so Blade Runner.

VPL
This model's name is Hannelore Knut. So: perfect model choice, really, for a lookbook that is so uncharacteristically focused around power rather than passivity.  There's always an unfortunate quantity of crappy, sports-themed fashion during an Olympics year, but this is sports-themed fashion done well. It doesn't look like workout gear but it does look strong and practical and simple, and has a few hints of "sporty" colours without going all-out Adidas.

Hannelore Knut can totally work it, am I right? Some models couldn't carry off low-heeled boots and dresses made from wetsuit material, but this whole photoshoot was like a gallery of badassery.

Marc Jacobs
This is an unexpected departure for Marc Jacobs, who is usually far closer to the the chic, vampy end of the Ladylike scale than the floral, Frida Kahlo/Miuccia Prada end. That being said, the sheer exuberant colours of this collection sucked me in, and I found myself really enjoying how summery and weird-looking it managed to be without ending up in Zooey Deschanel hipster quirk territory.

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Snow White & The Huntsman: The prince doesn't get the girl; the girl gets the kingdom.

Previously: Snow White & The Huntsman: How to tell a fairy story.

Thanks to last week's new releases, my Charlize Theron viewing history is now all the way up to three films total. (The first was Aeon Flux, which, yeah, ask me about that sometime. It's the worst.) I won't be posting a review of Prometheus until it's been out for a little longer, but the one thing I will say is that if you're planning on seeing it, you should read this (non-spoilery) warning first. Following the advice therein will, I think, improve your Prometheus experience.

I was very excited about Snow White & The Huntsman because the marketing was so gosh-darned appealing (surprisingly so, considering the content and audience) and I am of the opinion that Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron should be the next Bogart and Bacall. Unfortunately, SWATH was nowhere near as good as I expected, dragging on longer than it should have done and including several completely superfluous characters. In some respects it succeeded (ie, visual effects and Awesome Ladies, both of which featured prominently in the trailer) but the end result was an action movie that could've done with more action, and a drama that needed tighter drama.

This movie may not have been very good but KRISTEN STEWART IS STILL MY KHALEESI.

I'm inclined to be biased in favour of SWATH because it's so clearly Bechdel-approved. It's a story about women and the problems they face because of the way women are socialised to think about their own power and beauty. The hero and the villain are both women, and neither of them resemble Kate Beaton's Strong Female Characters or the kind of emotionless kickboxing androids that appear in so many other genre movies. The prince doesn't get the girl; the girl gets the kingdom. 2012 has been a fantastic year for female-led sci-fi/fantasy movies, and my only serious issue with the feminist themes in SWATH is the way Ravenna's relationship with beauty and power was portrayed. While too much explanation will inevitably ruin any story that hinges on "magic", the complete lack of a coherent explanation regarding Ravenna and Snow White's various intangible powers meant that their ultimate standoff packed far less of a punch than it should have done. It's not often that I complain about there being not enough exposition in a blockbuster movie, but this was such an easily-solved problem that a minute or so of flashback montage might well have sorted it out.

screencap from here.

Ravenna's belief that a woman's youthful beauty is a direct source of power means that she ends up sucking the land dry, bathing in milk while peasants starve and faceless medieval Stormtroopers serve up supermodel Lily Cole as a royal snack. Kristen Stewart's Snow White, on the other hand, shows no signs of knowing or caring what she looks like, and is the avatar of some kind of Aslan-like power that causes flowers to blossom as soon as she comes near. But if her inherent goodness (or divine Queenship, passed down from Mum?) is so strong that it charms the fairies from the trees and Princess Mononoke's forest-spirit from the water, how come there was no evidence of this in the cell she was locked inside those years? Was she unable to photosynthesise?

I couldn't help but compare this aspect of the film unfavourably to Stardust, a movie that, while different in tone, stars a similarly image-obsessed witch as the villain. Another place where SWATH fell down in comparison to Stardust was the cast of cameo characters, headed up by Bob Hoskins as a blind dwarf soothsayer. Hoskins had the unenviable role of saying things like, "She is... the one," in portentious tones while making it abundantly clear that he was only there for the paycheque. While the ghostly princes in Stardust provided witty comic relief, the dwarves in SWATH (all of them famous character-actors, and all utterly wasted in the roles they were given) were embarrassing and could just as well have been cut from the film entirely. Not to mention how uncomfortable it was to realise that eight average-sized actors had been hired to play dwarves, something that seems dangerously similar to racebending.

If this post seems overly negative, it's only because I had such high hopes for this film before I saw it. In fact there were many things that I did enjoy once I got past the clunky pacing and the inexplicable inclusion of terrible characters like Ravenna's ambiguously incest-y albino brother (ugh). Charlize Theron's intense/camp supervillain meltdowns were awesome, and I have a lot of admiration for Kristen Stewart's ability to work so well with what she was given. SWATH would have benefited hugely from a scene or two where Snow White either learns some more tangible skills or gives a Game Of Thrones-esque speech to her troops before battle, but Kristen Stewart still came across as an appealing and unusual hero. This film had many flaws, but casting wasn't one of them. I haven't seen Twilight, but I'm beginning to see why Stewart was chosen to be Bella Swan. I've heard that Bella is a character whose success hinges on the actor's ability to silently emote for five movies in a row while still retaining audience interest, and having seen Kristen Stewart's Snow White I'm inclined to believe that she can do it. I only wish that she'd been given more dialogue in this movie, for all that she managed to wring as much emotional truth from her running-and-fighting scenes as possible.

This was a Costume Movie. It's been out for less than a week and I've already had several people ask me if I'm going to review the costumes, but I honestly don't think there's much to say about them other than that they were stunning. The strongest aspect of SWATH was the visuals, from the supernatural forests to the hyper-real troll attack to the scene where a flock of ravens coalesce to form an oil-slick filthy Ravenna wearing a glistening raven-feather dress. For anyone with any interest in clothes, Ravenna's gowns are the standout costumes, and I suspect that the designer (Colleen Atwood) is a shoo-in for another Oscar nomination. Combining a Marie Antoinette-like opulence with spiky, venomous imagery, Ravenna's loosely medieval-inspired gowns are destined for fashion magazine photo spreads. This is the kind of costume design that works very well in a broad, "that looks awesome" sense because Ravenna's clothes are so obviously beautiful and intricately complex, even out of context. I don't mean to imply that this type of costume design is somehow less worthy than subtler, more character-specific costuming -- just that it's a good example of the kind of attention-grabbing work that gets nominated for awards year after year.

Detail shot of Ravenna's beetle-carapace dress.

All these ferociously uncomfortable-looking costumes fit well with Charlize's over-the-top, campy performance, and serve to highlight Ravenna's vanity and lack of care for the fate of the less fortunate. Thousands starve while Ravenna sits in her chambers wearing 30lbs of silk and reapplying her blood-of-virgins lipstick. I like to imagine that after she's drained a young woman of her life-force, her victim is then put to work in a sweatshop full of other young/old women sewing thousands of sequins and feathers onto Ravenna's next sartorial masterpiece. The white wedding dress she wears at the beginning of the film is almost "historical"-looking and comparatively soft in appearance, but once she becomes queen her own style takes over and it's sexy glam-rock Nazgul corsetry from there on in.

Fairytale by way of Gareth Pugh?

While Ravenna's gowns were beautiful examples of craftsmanship and design they were, in a way, the easy choice. The queen in Snow White has to look evil and sexy and rich, whereas Snow White herself is a far more difficult character to quantify. The dirty hand-me-down dress, though, looked great on Kristen Stewart, and handily transformed into a more practical tunic/leggings outfit with a bit of help from Thor's the Huntsman's knife. And her practical, flat-chested armour? Wonderful. I was actually disappointed when she finally reached her victorious coronation moment at the end and had to wear a Queen dress instead.

Kristen Stewart's Snow White and Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games are the only mainstream blockbuster heroines I can think of who really have no idea of personal vanity or prettiness, which is kind of marvellous. Now all we need to do is work on making more movies like this that don't implicitly demonise women who like to dress up and look pretty.

I have mixed feelings about the love-triangle situation. I find it refreshing to watch a movie like this and not feel that a romance subplot has been shoehorned in just for the sake of it, and I appreciated that the Huntsman didn't immediately abandon his drinking problem and the memory of his wife as soon as he began to have feelings for Snow White. However, the ending already seemed abrupt enough without some hint of a romantic resolution, especially since it might have balanced out the creepily non-participatory nature of Snow White's earlier kisses. Even though I suspect that those kisses were meant to be a cut-and-dried "true love's kiss" deal, I'd rather interpret them as being about trust. When Snow White first escapes, she wants to get to William because she has nowhere else to turn, and although she accepts the Huntsman's help she still keeps her cards close to the chest. Her trust in him grows organically, and is finally proven when he shows up by her side when her army attacks the castle. The reason why the Huntsman's kiss works while William's fails is because William's feelings for Snow White are mostly based on guilt and childhood obsession, whereas the Huntsman actually knows Snow White as an adult.

(Alternatively, the kisses were just coincidental and Snow White woke up of her own damn accord because the Force is strong with her.)

The Huntsman has the Aragorn-esque look of a man who smells really intensely terrible but is handsome enough to get away with it (because we can't smell him). When we first see him he's swilling ale and being pushed into a trough full of dirty water, and for the rest of the movie he marinades gently in his no-doubt old and sweaty leather jerkin. The men of SWATH are very obviously second-tier to Charlize Theron in terms of costume design, most of them clad in the kind of dirty faux-medieval fare one would expect. William is more of a traditional knight-in-shining-armour than the more lower-class Huntsman, but both of their costumes fall into the nonspecific medieval fantasy category.

photo from here.

A friend pointed out to me that the romance in SWATH reads a lot like the first volume in a Young Adult trilogy. Both of the guys have been introduced, but while they both seem to have sorted out their own feelings for the heroine by the end of the story, she's still barely aware that she's in the middle of a potential love triangle. The implication is that the Huntsman is the favoured suitor, but William is no less heroic or appealing, leaving options open for a possible sequel. And, you know, even though this film was far from the high-quality Game Of Thrones drama I was hoping for, I would watch a sequel. But not to find out whether Snow White is Team William or Team Huntsman, because I'm still firmly in Team Snow White.

Links

Photo gallery of Colleen Atwood's costumes for Snow White & The Huntsman.
HuffPo: 'Snow White and the Huntsman' Is A New Twist On An Old Tale.
Early concept art for Ravenna. 

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NYFW Fall 2012: Ralph Lauren, Alexander Wang, Badgley Mischka, Creatures of the Wind, and more.

Ralph Lauren

As someone on twitter put it, this is like looking into my brain. Ralph Lauren's Fall 2012 show was heavily influenced by pre-war British menswear, included multiple flavours of tweed, and was soundtracked by the Downton Abbey theme music. At least half the collection was made up of Edwardian/1920s trouser suits for ladies, about which I could not be happier.

catwalk pics from Style.com

This was one of those situations where objective criticism falls by the wayside. I love early 20th Century suits, especially on women; I love knee-length trousers; I love Downton Abbey and continue to masochistically watch it despite the fact that I spend most of each episode shouting obscenities at Julian Fellowes' soap-opera hack style of screenwriting. Yes, this is something of a pastiche collection, but I think it plays around enough with 1910s/20s style (plus being genderswitched) that it doesn't fall into the category of directly-copied period costume.

Ralph Lauren isn't one of those labels I get pre-emptively excited over, unlike Mary Katrantzou, Alexander McQueen, Haider Ackerman, or Gareth Pugh. However, I've come to realise that every season, Lauren turns out the largest number of "conventional" outfits that I unequivocably adore. None of what we're looking at today is a product of groundbreaking design experimentation, but instead is the result of years of detail-work and attention to the ultimate goal of creating perfect tailoring for extremely rich people who want to look stylish and adult without making a statement.

This collection ranged from more working-class inspired suits with cloth caps and brown tweeds, to the glossy aristocracy of top-hat-and-cane suits. Also noticeably present were some riffs on the early women's suits -- ie, pantaloon-like short trousers, brown lace-up shoes, cloche hats, and the ubiquitous grey-brown patterned jumpers.

This is where the modern touch comes in.

There was something about this three-piece suit that screamed Ralph Lauren, to me.

After a moment, I realised that it was the fabric, which reminded me of this Ralph Lauren Purple Label ad from (I think?) 2009. Am I concerned that this level of fashion pattern-recognition is eventually going to take over my brain and fill up all my memory space with clothing and costume knowledge to the detriment of everything else? (Answer: yes.)

The latter half of the collection concentrated on more traditionally feminine eveningwear, which to my eyes paled in comparison to the suits. Thankfully they didn't go particulalarly heavy-handed on the 1920s influence, presumably because the designers were aware of just how many Jazz Age gowns the fashion world has in store for us this year already.

Alice + Olivia
Retro-cheesy mod style? Yes please. I hope someone wears this on a red carpet at some point -- it's very eye-catching. 

Anna Sui

Alexander Wang
This season's focus was fabric, specifically laminated fabric and plastic fibres. Everything was waterproof, artificial, and vaccuum-sealed to within an inch of its life, although without the aid of Wang's design notes I don't know if I would have picked up on much of that. With a few exceptions, this collection was a bit of a miss with me. I couldn't really work out what his goal was, or his audience, especially since he seemed to have traded in his usual ultra-modern American comfort for rigid, armour-like jackets that looked like they'd behead the wearer if she tried to bend her neck.

I wish we could have seen more of the plastic mesh turtlenecks most of the models wore beneath their coats, because I think they might have been the most saleable item in the collection. Odd-looking and probably not all that comfortable against the skin -- they looked like they were made of unwoven, moulded plastic -- but undeniably Alexander Wang, and perfect for layering into an outfit for a hint of early-2000s cyber style.

The alien-like detail on this dress, continuing directly from sleeve to glove, was one of my favourite parts of this collection. A sterile and eye-catching look.

Badgley Mischka
Yet another Metropolis-inspired collection, hot on the heels of at least two during Couture Fashion Week last month. I give this one more credit, though, because instead of running directly into the 1920s they went more thematic, with dull-sheen greens and golds, and the wild hair of all silent-movie madwomen. Also, I have a soft-spot for anything that reminds me of the green/gold motifs of the costumes of the movie Thor.

Creatures of the Wind
This has got to be one of the most eclectic collections I've ever seen. At first I was intrigued, because the inspiration was supposedly the 17th Century Scottish mythological text, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies by Robert Kirk. In case anyone was in any doubt about how much of a nerd I am, at the age of 11 or 12 I had an obsession with fairy myth and legend that was so intense I got a reader's pass to a local university library so I could go to the archive and handle an original copy of this book, cementing forever my slightly unsettling fixation with white book-handling gloves.

It's unclear to me just what part The Secret Commonwealth... played in the creation of this show. There were certain elements of peasant-skirts and so on but in general it seemed like a randomly flung-together selection of Etsy-wear. I have no doubt that it would receive a high rating from Tavi Gevinson, but aside from that I'm rather puzzled by its lack of cohesive structure.

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