*** Official S/S 2013 Runway Thread ***

[KingJulien]

Am I the only one that thinks that's like, really bad?

 

[Urthwhyte]

I liked #2, though it doesn't really seem like anything new, or something I'd expect to see in a SS collection.

 

[Zeemon]

if i remember correctly siki im didn't look like one of these run-of-the-mill goth-ninja/ pseudo artisanal brands before

 

[A Fellow Linguist]

http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/simons-starts-triumphantly-at-dior/?hp

NY Times piece on Raf's first couture collection. A couple of pics, but not much to go by. It looks nice, but I don't really know about couture, so I can't comment.

 

[snowmanxl]



I thought it was just me with Sruli Recht. I actually like the 'impression' I get when I see his stuff but it always looks like it was cut to fit on an alien. I guess this is true avant garde . That Russian Orthodox looking guy looks badass though.
hoozah, that guy was drawing spirographs while the show was going on. I think it is this guy who is damn amazing. The collection is called circumsolar so I guess it tied in...somehow...

so amazingly good. thanks for that link. I really like simple but big pieces of art for some reason

 

[KingJulien]

http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/simons-starts-triumphantly-at-dior/?hp
NY Times piece on Raf's first couture collection. A couple of pics, but not much to go by. It looks nice, but I don't really know about couture, so I can't comment.

I don't know enough about it to gauge whether it's good or not either, though it looks cool (though pretty derivative going on those three pics), but it kinda makes me sad that he seems to be focusing on this stuff and putting no effort into his main line.

 

[Tirailleur1]

http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/simons-starts-triumphantly-at-dior/?hp
NY Times piece on Raf's first couture collection. A couple of pics, but not much to go by. It looks nice, but I don't really know about couture, so I can't comment.

The collection was disspointing.
Sure it had all the details you expect from a couture line, but I really believe that Dior and Raf are not made for each other. I hope he proves me wrong in time

 

[sipang]

Raf was aight

​

I don't know **** about HC but I gather this recalls original Dior stuff, baby steps I guess... I'd take Jil F/W 2012 over this though, HC or not.



[VIDEO][/VIDEO]

 

[worakl]

Those girls are so skinny.

I know it's sort of a "yeah, we know." but when one doesn't follow womens fashion that closely you sort of forget it. It's almost painful to see a few of them.

 

[Urthwhyte]

Nothing like the 90s. On the whole models are just really small people, height excluded.

 

[hendrix]



There was a profile in the New Yorker about him, here - 

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

Tomas Maier, the head designer of the Italian fashion label Bottega Veneta, is one of those people who wants to erase every fault in their range of sight. Maier, who grew up in the Black Forest in Germany, is fifty-three, and he has the aspect of a hipster monk. At Bottega Veneta, Maier designs men’s and women’s ready-to-wear clothing, along with housewares, furniture, watches, porcelain, and jewelry. But it is his leather accessories—bags, shoes, wallets—that are the label’s signature, and its best-selling items. At certain moments, Maier recalls characters in the novels of Kingsley Amis, those finely tuned instruments of outrage who find catharsis in cataloguing all the human failures around them. His goal as a designer is to strip away all unnecessary parts until a dress or a shirt or a bag has been reduced to its functional essence. When Maier took over Bottega Veneta, in June, 2001, the fashion world was ruled by bling-laden excess, symbolized by the phenomenon of the It Bag. Maier’s first act upon taking over at Bottega Veneta was to design a bag that looked, in the context of the times, like a rebuke: a woven leather sack with two handles. With no logos, no hardware, no adornments, the bag, which Maier called a Cabat, has since become one of the label’s top-selling items. Maier has increased Bottega Veneta’s sales eight hundred per cent in the past nine years, bringing the company out of near-bankruptcy. His strenuous refusal to overmarket the bag is itself a kind of marketing—the type that appeals to a customer who disdains the easy status recognition that comes from a conspicuous label.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/03/110103fa_fact_colapinto#ixzz1zU7nUHRj

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

Sounds like many of the bags are really understated on the outside, but he does things like put fur or satin on the inside so you touch it every time you reach in, even though no one else can ever see it.  And yeah, it's stupid expensive, but I don't think it's actually worse than JS.

the type that appeals to a customer who disdains the easy status recognition that comes from a conspicuous label

...I bet customers love to read that about themselves.
I've read that exact paragraph about every freaking designer I became interested in ever since joining SF.
We're all so ******* tasteful shunning the excess of the (20s/50s/80s/2000s/celebrities/Appreciation).

I mean, the article may be true, maybe he is a restrained minimalist designer (lets ignore the fact that he works for a very large, well known luxury accesories company owned by Gucci), but it just reads so wanky to me.

Minimalism is nice and all but can we please stop lauding it over other design identities?

 

[Parker]

I didn't like Raf's weird die-cut shorts. who wears matching jacket and shorts? with black socks and dress shoes, too, yikes. I know I'm totally not the target market, but I also think those cartoon prints are just fugly. Are they some kind of reflection or commentary on a new cultural trend? manga? dubstep? ;-)

The like the Bottega suits from this fall. I tried one of the ss12 suits at their store in SF. Agree that price (~2.5K) might be one of the aversions to the brand though.

 

[teenagelightning]



Spoiler

[VIDEO][/VIDEO]

imagine a montage of every pivotal moment that lead Raf Simons from channeling the fire of youth to being "like, really into lampshades right now, man"

 

[KingJulien]

I didn't like Raf's weird die-cut shorts. who wears matching jacket and shorts?

with black socks and dress shoes, too, yikes. I know I'm totally not the target market, but I also think those cartoon prints are just fugly. Are they some kind of reflection or commentary on a new cultural trend? manga? dubstep? ;-)
The like the Bottega suits from this fall. I tried one of the ss12 suits at their store in SF. Agree that price (~2.5K) might be one of the aversions to the brand though.

...I bet customers love to read that about themselves.
I've read that exact paragraph about every freaking designer I became interested in ever since joining SF.
We're all so ******* tasteful shunning the excess of the (20s/50s/80s/2000s/celebrities/Appreciation).
I mean, the article may be true, maybe he is a restrained minimalist designer (lets ignore the fact that he works for a very large, well known luxury accesories company owned by Gucci), but it just reads so wanky to me.
Minimalism is nice and all but can we please stop lauding it over other design identities?

Well, the readers of that magazine aren't particularly fashion literate. The New Yorker isn't vogue. But it's also talking about his entire career, and when he inherited the brand in 2001 or so, the bags the label was pumping out were akin to those LV bags with the logo plastered everywhere.

 

[pickpackpockpuck]

I read that New Yorker piece on Maier a while back and I remember having more respect for him and the brand afterward. They're very serious about keeping alive that heritage of Italian craftsmanship and they seem very exacting about the quality of their stuff. Part of the reason it's so expensive. But Maier has apparently done a great job of turning the brand around, and a big piece of that is their turn away from excessive branding to less conspicuous luxury. It's not minimalist in the design sense, just in its branding when compared with other luxury products.