Behnaz Sarafpour for Target Go International Collection
August 22, 2006
I haven’t even checked out the new Paul and Joe collection for Target, but I’m already excited about Target’s upcoming designer collaboration. I haven’t seen much of Behnaz’s clothes on the runway, but I liked her collaboration with Earnest Sewn and even though these pictures are pretty teeny, here Target collection looks delicious.
My favorite looks:
pics from target.com
What I Would Wear Today 08/22
August 22, 2006
day: Helmut Lang Fall 2004
evening: Bruno Pieters Fall 2005
Changing Sex
day: Ann Demeulemeester Spring 2006
evening: Cloack Fall 2005
pics from firstview.com
Who Will Sweep Up at The Spring/Summer 07 Shows?
August 22, 2006
..it’s that time of year again…
My Top Picks
-Anna Mariya Urajevskaya (01). Having already scooped up covers for Vogue Italia and Russian Harpers Bazaar and landing the FW 06 Blumarine campaign with Hilary Rhoda, Anna Mariya is on a roll. She debuted on the runway at Prada’s FW 06 show, where she opened. Compared to Sasha Pivovarova, whose stocks skyrocketed after starring in both Prada’s SS 06 and FW 06 compaigns, Anna-Mariya’s look is more soft and “accessible” but definitely haute. Keep your eye on this girl.
-Du Juan (07). A former ballet dancer and Chinese beauty queen, Du Juan’s soft, yet intriguing, chameleon-like look proves she can carry both commercial and high fashion campaigns (she’s currently starring in FW 06 ads for Yves Saint Laurent, Louis Vuitton and Roberto Cavalli as well as a in a campaign for mass-market clothing brand, The Gap). This September Du will surely strut down on a runway near you.
-Suzanne Diaz (08). Young American Suzanne Diaz’s cool, earthy, yet intellectual look has scored her several blue-chip bookings, including a photo spread with Steven Meisel in Vogue Italia. With her dazzling bone structure and rare prescense, designers from Manchester to Milan are probably lining up to have Suzanne walk in their show.
-Tayla Collins (09). A classic beauty evocative of a young Jean Harlow, New York Model Management’s It Girl, Tayla Collins is poised to pop up on all the major designers runways this fall. After being plucked from her small Georgia town to star in the Jil Sander FW 06 campaign, Tayla has jumped to number #22 on the MODELS.COM Top 50 Female Models list and secured her place as one of Meisel’s new favorites. Her career is heating up, but Tayla is managing to stay effortlessly cool.
-Darla Baker (02). At an elegant 5 foot 9 and a half inch stature, Portland, Oregon-born Darla Baker is bound to become fashion’s darling (haha, yes, I could not resist putting that in). Darla made her rounds during the Spring 2006 Haute Couture and has appearedd recently in magazines such as Numero and Nylon. Described as kind and mature by those who know her, expect to see this timeless beauty on multiple catwalks sometime soon.
-Eva Helene Skarvig (05). Heralded as “another treat from Denmark”, 17 year old Eva Helene has a unique look that’s getting plently of attention from designers all around the globe. Since participating in the Ford Supermodel of the World competition in 2005, she has appeared on the cover Eurowoman, a popular Danish magazine, as well as Dazed & Confused, Vogue UK and Teen Vogue. Fall fashion show casting directors are bound to fall victim to Eva Helene’s cute charm.
-Johanna Jonsson (15). Things are looking sweet for 14 year old Swede, Johanna Jonsson. Since popping up onto the scene at Chloe’s FW 06 show, Johanna has made quite a splash. She walked at Chanel’s Fall Couture, quite a feat considering this was her first show season. She’s super cute right now, but in a few years she’ll be a stunner, so watch out for Johanna Jonsson.
*Coco Rocha is going to have a great season but I think she’s gross so she’s not on my list.
You’ve Got Mayle?
August 20, 2006
It’s something I really can’t comment on,’ Jane Mayle tells me in her earthy, transatlantic drawl over tea at the Wolseley in London.
Fashionista’s favourite: Jane Mayle
Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that the softly spoken woman pouring Earl Grey opposite me is the talk of the fashion world, rumoured to be one of the handful of names being considered to head the French fashion house of Chloé (others include Roland Mouret and Luella Bartley).
But whether Mayle likes it or not, that’s the gossip doing the rounds. When jobs like this come up the many bitches and back-stabbers with which the fashion world is richly blessed have a field day. But on this occasion they have little to say about the British-born, New York-based designer, except that her creative skill is pretty perfectly suited to the role.
Certainly she excels in the kind of beautiful tailoring, ‘vintage’ prints, fine hand-knits and feminine dresses that helped resurrect the Chloé brand under Stella McCartney and then Phoebe Philo.
Among the cool A-listers habitually photographed in Mayle designs are Kirsten Dunst, Sophia Coppola, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman.
And Anna Wintour, the editor of American Vogue, has taken a personal interest in her label’s fortunes. In London, too, she has a cult following. But Mayle has kept a deliberately low profile, something that only enhances her appeal, of course.
Jane Mayle has that quirky elegance that instantly marks her as a creature of the fashion world. She’s just shy of 6ft and has the elongated bird-like physique of a model (which she used to be) and tousled rock-chicky hair.
And she’s anything but a brash New Yorker. She is the daughter of Peter Mayle, the author of A Year In Provence, but was uprooted from Richmond in London and deposited in Florida at the age of ten (she is now 35) when her mother and stepfather moved to Orlando.
At 17 she escaped to New York and started modelling before taking a place reading English literature at Columbia. Aside from a brief stint at American Harper’s Bazaar and then at Tocca, the label of neat candy-coloured dresses, she had, she says, ‘absolutely no background in fashion’.
‘I had no degree in it, no idea how to sketch or make a pattern. I had no interest in fashion history.
‘I didn’t – I don’t – research archives.’ In the summer of 1997, armed with this alarming lack of knowledge and huge doses of youthful conceit, she and her then boyfriend, Chris Jarvis, a model, decided to open a shop, based – egotistically enough – ‘on our lives as a couple’.
‘We felt we had a really beautiful life together,’ she says with a smirk.
Mayle designed the women’s clothes, Chris the menswear. The shop, called Phare, needed to be as cool as they were. ‘It had to be on this particular block on Elizabeth Street in SoHo,’ she says.
As luck would have it, a unit was available. Luck, in fact, played a significant part in the early days. Jarvis secured a Cartier fragrance campaign, ‘just after we had put the down-payment on everything: shop, fabrics, the lot’.
Shortly before the opening in April 1998 Mayle bumped into Gloria Wong, her former boss at Harper’s Bazaar. Impressed by Mayle’s enthusiasm, Wong wrote a piece that created a buzz for their launch.
‘We’d skewed everything around the opening but, being very green and clueless, we hadn’t thought how we were going to get stuff made while working in the shop all day. So we opened and three weeks later we’d sold out. We closed again.’
Rather than attracting ridicule, it served as a PR coup.
The New York Times and Vogue featured items. Demand was overwhelming. ‘We didn’t do it on purpose. We had no idea,’ Mayle says earnestly. ‘We thought our stock would last three months.’
Within the year they were back on their feet and wholesaling States-wide from Bergdorf Goodman in New York to Fred Segal in Los Angeles.
‘We did it all the wrong way round. Most people start with wholesale and eventually get around to a shop,’ she says. At the end of the year Jarvis made a dramatic announcement: he had decided to leave.
Apparently, Jane Mayle isn’t the type of person to let a crater-sized hole like this get in her way. She paid him off and relaunched in 1999 as Mayle, singlehandedly taking on the task that had already been a challenge for two of them.
Rather than let the lateness of her collection become a shortcoming, she made this haphazard and publicity-shy approach her trademark. ‘The collection has never been ready in time for a fashion show,’ she says.
‘People assume I’m being secretive. They say, “Don’t tell me you had a fashion show this season. I suppose it was so desperately downtown that I wasn’t invited and I don’t even know it’s happened.” But it was never meant to be exclusive like that. I was just never ready on time.’
In London her collection has been hard to get hold of – there’s a waiting-list at the Cross in Holland Park. The shop first heard of Mayle six years ago when Liv Tyler strode in wearing a pair of Mayle jeans.
She said, “You have to stock this label, it’s perfect for you,”‘ says Sara Lauchlan, the sales manager. ‘Mayle’s strength is that she’s not slavish about trends. Her dresses have real “Where did you get that?” appeal. She also designs her own prints, which makes her a rarity. It puts her ahead of the curve.’
Mayle describes her style as having ‘Parisian propriety’ with a heady dash of ‘British irreverence’. ‘It’s never about one time period or one sensibility from head to toe,’ she explains.
Rather than copying a jacket from, say, the 1890s she’ll make it into a dress. ‘I don’t use a vintage item as is; I recast it.’
Despite her obvious talent and simmering success, Mayle is still reluctant to accept her lot. ‘I still don’t feel I have the right to call myself a fashion designer,’ she says. She feels she designs for women who are ‘not very fashion’ either.
Her closest friends are a mixture of artists and musicians, ‘women who have things on their mind other than just looking great in an outfit. They’re too busy to wonder what is going on in the fashion world.’
Mayle, too, tries to keep a healthy distance from planet fashion, and is currently dating a documentary photographer who lives in Britain.
Perhaps influenced by her father, she has always loved literature – favourites are William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Don DeLillo and Lermontov.
Fresh out of university she had wanted to write. ‘My father still thinks I should,’ she says. Does she also share her father’s other loves, such as gastronomy?
‘The gas company recently wrote to ask if I wanted the gas cut off because I never use it,’ she replies. ‘I can’t cook – at all. I’m more likely to eat sushi than boeuf bourguignon. What I’ve inherited from him is not necessarily the love of rich French food, but how to take the good things in life and not deny yourself.’
Her father invested in her company, but only, she says, ‘a small amount when it was clear that the business was not simply a whim of mine but a going concern. He is a businessman after all!
‘He’s always been amused that fashion is what I chose to go in to. He’s coming to terms with the fact that this is not just something that I’ll only be doing for only a year or two. He’s seen that it’s a viable business. He’s always offering advice.’
Does she take it? She fudges the answer by talking about advice in general. Anna Wintour’s intervention, for example, is behind seismic changes . ‘She said to me, “No one’s ever done this successfully without a partner.”‘
So Mayle now has a business partner, Ria Browne. ‘It will definitely help us do things on time. All the problems aren’t just mine any more.’ Is the company profitable? ‘It is now that Ria’s here!’ She is in the process of moving from the old office adjoining her Elizabeth Street shop to a swish new place uptown.
It means she won’t be able to grab a coffee with Maggie Gyllenhaal when she pops in, ‘but it also promises a more structured life. I will have my weekends back.’
It’s all part of the bold step towards expansion. From the autumn Mayle will be available in London from Browns on South Molton Street, and Mimi in Chelsea, as well as being on net-a-porter.com; there’s talk of shops in Los Angeles and Paris; and – shock – she no longer rules out a fashion show.
‘I used to say, no, no, no. Now I’m definitely not ruling it out.’
Then Mayle says something that I can only interpret as a hint. ‘I’m not very good at having bosses,’ she says, apropos of nothing.
Is it a clue about Chloé? Does it mean her fans can breathe easy? She allows herself a little smile. ‘I can’t comment,’ she says again. ‘Even off the record.’
from telegraph.co.uk />
Hmmm… well, I had no idea Luella Bartley is even being considered for Chloé…not a good choice IMO. I’ve never been impressed with Bartley’s designs and I think she would be a poor choice for the house.
Now that I’m on the subject of Chloé, I honestly feel rather mixed about their Fall/ Winter 2006 show. While the clothes were kind of “frumpy”, something was kind of refreshing about it on account of Chloé’s usual hyper-feminine aesthetic. Still, I don’t know if I saw someone who wasn’t a model wearing a look from the show if I’d think, “Oh wow, good for her, she looks interesting,” or “Yikes, she might as well be wearing a potato sack.” Hopefully the upcoming Spring/Summer 2007 show will help me decide what I think.
I haven’t seen much of Mayle’s work. I know she’s know for feminine designs that have a witty, irreverant quality to them and indie it girls such as Kirsten Dunst and Liv Tyler like her clothes, but that’s about all I know. If she were to head Chloé, she could make more of a name for herself in the fashion world and continue to make Chloé the go-to brand for starlets like Kate Bosworth. Again, I don’t know much about Mayle, but I’d definitely be interested in seeing what she has to offer.
Sophia Kokosalaki for LaRedoute
August 20, 2006
Ermm… I’ll be needing this skirt right now…
