Manolo’s Moment

The Manolo moment has been in full effect these past few months, with the master designer’s signature pointy-toe pumps capturing editors and buyers alike. But Blahnik is no slave to trends and passing moments, and in recognition of that fact, he’ll receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at Footwear News‘ 25th annual FN Achievement Awards in New York tonight. Friend Carolina Herrera will present Blahnik with his award at the Museum of Modern Art. He takes the evening’s highest honor, but Blahnik is by no means the only winner tonight. Below, all of the 2011 FNAA honorees, including Nicholas Kirkwood, Burak Uyan, Rachel Zoe, Brian Atwood, and more.

Designer of the Year: Nicholas Kirkwood
Launches of the Year: Brian Atwood for B Brian Atwood; Rachel Zoe
Vivian Infantino Award for Emerging Talent: Burak Uyan

Company of the Year: Steve Madden
Retailer of the Year: Mindy Grossman, CEO, for HSN
Independent Retailer of the Year: Ron White
Brands of the Year: Vince Camuto; Angel Martinez and Connie Rishwain for Ugg Australia
Marketer of the Year: Adidas

Icon Award for Social Impact: Kenneth Cole
Lifetime Achievement Award: Manolo Blahnik
Hall of Fame: Patricia Field; Jim and Larry Tarica of Jimlar Corp.

Photo: Dave M. Bennett / Getty Images

Recessionista Zip It!

Another baaaaaad creation from the online site Oohboutique.com!

I love this Zipper bracelet because with all those spikes and studs and chains out there, it’s nice to have something else to layer or stack.

Accessorize your LBD or leather jacket with this cool bracelet in either gold or silver. Mix the two or style with all those other cuffs or even your summer studded ethnic bracelets. You won’t break the bank at $15 a piece.

PRODUCT DETAILS
A stylized version of the humble closure, without which, we would be all buttoned up.
- 2 5?8 diameter
- Gold or Silver plated
- Nickel/Lead Safe

Purchase information: Buy it here.

At Long Last Dior’s New Designer, Raf Simons

According to the New York Times, the long-vacant (well, semi-vacant) head job at Dior has been filled: by former Jil Sander creative director Raf Simons. (”Semi-vacant” because since the departure of John Galliano last March, Dior’s collections have been designed by his longtime studio head, Bill Gaytten, who also designs Galliano’s namesake collection; Gaytten’s future at Dior is not known.) Simons had been mentioned many times over the past months as a leading candidate for the job, but until recently was ensconced at Jil Sander. His dramatic departure from the house, announced three days before his triumphant final collection, may have paved the way to the new role. “The first time I heard about the Dior position,” Simons told the Times‘ Cathy Horyn, “I thought, ‘This feels right.’ ” Many will no doubt agree—including, perhaps, Galliano himself. According to Horyn’s sources, the former Dior designer expressed admiration for Simons’ Fall ‘12 Jil Sander show.

Photo: Courtesy Photo

Recessionista Arm Candy

The colors are sick — Kanye West prefers the hot pink version — and the watch actually has amazing features. It’s truly a forever timepiece. Grab an armload!

J-adore! I remember this fabulous Casio watch when it was unaffordable on my $17,000 a year salary. Now it’s totally attainable at $79.

Purchase info: Buy it here.

Meet The CFDA Incubator Class Of 2014

Photos, above: Courtesy Photos

a. a. Antonio Azzuolo
This marks designer Antonio Azzuolo’s second time in an Incubator program. After graduating from Ryerson University, the Montreal national took part in the Canadian version. “There are programs like the Incubator all overthe world and I forever wondered why the States didn’t have one,” he says. Following the program, he lived in Paris for ten years, where he honed his capabilities at labels like Kenzo and Hermès. Now, with his own menswear label, the designer is heavily focused on the concept of duality. “Being a twin [sibling], I have always had appearances of feminity and masculinity in my work,” the designer says. For Spring ‘12, whatsoever, expect to see opposing French and Japanese cultural influences at activity.

Ari Dein
“I’ve been decorating my space in the Incubator for about six months immediately,” lingerie designer Arielle Shapiro tells us. “In my idea, that is.” Now that it’s a reality, however, she has an old mirror, an old yellow Chippendale preside, and a vintage suitcase on hand to fill what will chance her home-away-from-home. For Shapiro, her environment have always played a crucial character in her design process. Most recently, her innerwear and swimwear Invisible Cities collection was influenced by a trip to Rome. Eventually, Shapiro’s hoping to parlay that interest in architecture and internal design by amplifying her sprouting brand into a full lifestyle collection to embody “more swim and ready-to-wear, bedding, and home.”

Burkman Bros
You might recognize the Burkman Bros name thanks to Kanye West, who wore Doug and Ben Burkman’s woven bracelets at Coachella this year. From rappers to rugged males, their fortuitous menswear line has since found a steady stream of fanatics. For Spring 2012, the globetrotting brothers were feeling Hawaiian after a junket to the isles. “We learned how to surf and found a lot of inspiration in the Hawaiian culture, particularly in narrative to how we like to use prints and color,” says Doug. As for the Incubator, Ben says, “Working in a proper office space should be interesting…To have that divide between work and our home should be fine.”

Christian Cota
“The entire context ambition be favor working back to school,” says designer Christian Cota, who achieved the wealth of benefits that comes from being a part of the Incubator procedure afterward talking to some of his friends in the new crop. “Obviously, with Diane von Furstenberg for the CFDA premier, you have a tremendous aid system helping you out,” Cota, who has received several honorable accolades in the past few years, like Fashion Group International’s Rising Star Award and a CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund designation, says. “I’m at the point with my commerce where we are truly amplifying, and having their aid to do it namely key.” For Spring ‘12, see out because a strong showing of lustered signature Cota looks, like mingling architecture with softer linens, and a plethora of prints.

Emanuela Duca
“My work represents my life experience,” says jewelry designer Emanuela Duca. “The rowdy surfaces, it’s what comes from the Roman civilization, and the polished part, that’s my life in Manhattan.” Born and heaved in Rome, the New York transplant has administered to find a pretty balancing point among the two cultures in her work. Her structural collection of textural jewelry has a niche retail mall, selling in galleries around the world, but Duca, like Isaora designer Ricky Hendry, wants to expand her business to approach a wider clientele with the help of the Incubator program.

Isaora
“The whole being greater than the sum of the parts,” says Isaora designer Ricky Hendry. He is annotating the “alchemic equations” that serve as inspiration after his Spring 2012 men’s sportswear collection, but the same mind could be peerless applied to the Incubator program. Hendry, who previously conceptualized clothing for Theory, and his co-founder Marc Daniels, who has a strong backdrop in software and technology, reverberated similar cries we heard from the new Incubator crew. “It has been a successful two and a half years for us, especially this final season, but we are prepared to go out there and establish brand awareness and really grow our business with the help of the CFDA,” Hendry tells Style.com.

Number:Lab
“It really started as a T-shirt company,” says designer Luis Fernandez, who launched his label, Number:Lab, with his business partner Greg Lawrance in 2007. Since then, it has evolved into a casual-cool menswear line emphasized at technology and tailoring—two concepts driven by his background as a former architect and his amuse in athletic gear. An avid boxer (when not in the midst of prepping for fashion week), Fernandez explains, “Everything accustom in sports gear has a sense alternatively purpose and I calculate that’s genius—we absence to really merge that into our daily sportswear.” Come September, expect to discern that theme unfold once more with his “urban skateboarding” and “French Riviera chic” looks.

Reece Hudson
Handbag designer Reece Solomon of Reece Hudson didn’t waste anybody time production a label for herself amid New York vogue circles. In equitable a few years, Solomon made the bound from Parsons student and Proenza Schouler intern to Incubator resident. Needless to say, she and her partner, Max Stein, are eager to graduate to “a appropriate work space” to mate. Until then, Solomon is hard at work in her Nolita dormitory (likewise her current workspace) in arrangement for her first ever showing at Milk Studios next month. Of her Spring ‘12 collection, she says, “I have extra color ways than ever ahead, and I’m chronic to use lots of exotics skins and a few woven fabrics.”

Timo Weiland
Timo Weiland and chart partner Alan Eckstein are known for their youthful, slightly abnormal clothes. Turns out that designation fits the designers themselves, also. When they got the call call this week from the CFDA’s Lisa Smilor, Weiland says, “we were in a appointment and we started jumping up and down and yelling, but we couldn’t explain it to anybody because we had to reserve it a mysterious until Thursday. It’s a nice thing Waris [Ahluwalia] convinced us to apply for this.”

The Lake & Stars
Before Britney Spears—a client of The Lake & Stars takes to the stage in 1 of the label’s smoldering hot numbers, someone has to test things out premier. “Because of the nature of our accumulation, we hike approximately in our specimens,” says Nikki Dekker, who co-designs the lingerie line with Maayan Zilberman. “In the past, we have worked at family, merely as long aswe will be in the Incubator with explicit cup walls, that could be a problem, depending above who you speak to.” Lucky for them, the pajama-dressing trend doesn’t seem to be losing steam, and the 2 are hard at work adding pajama loungewear pieces to their signature accumulation, known for its care to the tiny details of lingerie like special buttons and trims. “We have been asking entire of our friends what to phone our pajama/loungewear chips for they are someone you would absence to wear out at night, no boring old pj’s, so we don’t want to phone them that,” Zilberman explains. Also, the 2 are joining to their offerings next month with a fashionable, still-under-wraps collaboration.

Today, the CFDA Incubator salutes its newest team of initiates: Antonio Azzuolo, Arielle Shapiro of Ari Dein, Doug and Ben Burkman of Burkman Bros, Christian Cota, Emanuela Duca, Rick Hendry and Marc Daniels of Isaora, Luis Fernandez of Number: Lab, Reece Solomon of Reece Hudson, Timo Weiland and Alan Eckstein of Timo Weiland, and Maayan Zilberman and Nikki Dekker of The Lake & Stars. The culling committee of industry governors, including Style.com’s administrative editor, Nicole Phelps, carefully picked this group of ten juvenile designers to follow in the footsteps of the inaugural dozen designers who hit off the program in February 2010. We have watched the careers of current all-stars in the Incubator, like Prabal Gurung and Bibhu Mohapatra, flourish during their short time in the “fashion frat,” and here, we check in with the newest pledge “class II” before they shake into 209 West 38th Street.

Photos, below:Neil Rasmus/ BFAnyc.com (Alan Eckstein and Timo Weiland); Tim Hines / The Lake & Stars (Maayan Zilberman and Nikki Dekker); David X. Prutting/ BFAnyc.com (Christian Cota); Courtesy Photos

—Kristin Studeman