London Calling
Photo: Tommy Ton
It’s not only our editors who’ve jetted off to London to take in the international scene—our roving eye on the street, Tommy Ton, made his way to the U.K., too. Tommy’s filed his first street-style dispatch, and though the taxi license plates may be different over there, the studded heels, statement necklaces, camel coats, and wooden platforms are much the same. Click here to check out the latest in off-the-runway looks, and check back in for more from London, Milan, and Paris.
Death Becomes Her
With his Spring ‘09 menswear collection, Alexander McQueen helped kick-start a trend for skulls and skeletons. (Ed Hardy and Christian Audigier kept skulls top of mind for those tracking a different fashion demographic.) And then, as with all gluts, it seemed that the moment had passed—we’d seen just one memento mori too many. Who needed to be reminded, after all?
But it looks like we called it too early. Bones are back, baby—and not just on scrawny models. (Hold the jokes and the harangues, please.) At the Couture shows, Riccardo Tisci was thinking of “a romantic way to see death”—hence the bone-shaped zipper pulls, the skeletal jewelry, a tiny skull nestled in the back of a satin jacket (left; check out our slideshow for a closer look). Jean Paul Gaultier was on the same page. He spoke of a bare-bones approach to couture, and then,Cheap Crystal Rock, the final look: Dita Von Teese in a barely-there corset resembling nothing so much as a glittering ribcage. For a gala of ghouls, you could pair it with Dsquared²’s spinal-column heels from Fall ‘10—or, for a little more coverage, one of the skull instarsia knits from Lucien Pellat-Finet, whom you might call the elder statesman of the trend. He’s been playing with skulls for more than a decade.
At her Paris men’s shows, Rei Kawakubo dedicated nearly her entire collection for Comme des Garçons to the theme. Skull-laden lads (with heads painted to suggest the craniums beneath) wore suits, shirts, shoes, and even dresses printed with the motif. And from the arena of pop—literally—Lady Gaga had her finger on the (undead) pulse last night for her first-ever show at Madison Square Garden. She donned a bone-fingered glove during one of her many costume changes.
Skeletons—back into the closet? Click here for our slideshow of bony looks.
—Matthew Schneier
Photo: Courtesy of Givenchy
BBC News - Michael Palin says he would consider returning to comedy
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Michael Palin told BBC Radio 5 live that he missed certain aspects of writing comedy and may consider going back into that field.
The Monty Python star was speaking to Richard Bacon from the BBC Worldwide Showcase in Liverpool where hundreds of producers from around the world seek out the works of British stars.
Michael Palin was promoting his latest series,wholesale Billabong, Brazil, that is still in production.
To hear other 5 live interviews, please visit the best bits page.
The Many Hands Behind One Scarf
French-born, Tokyo-based designer Julien David shows a full ready-to-wear collection during the Paris week, but his business began with the printed silk twill scarves that are still a major part of every one of his collections. (For his first runway show, he even used them to disguise the models’ faces.) David is a fabric obsessive to rate with the best of them,Discount Frankie Morello, developing his own textiles with a mill in Ichinomiya, and accordingly the journey from silkworm to store shelf is a fascinating one. It’s that process that David and Philip Andelman (better known in some corners as the newlywed husband of Sarah from Colette) document in a new short film, debuting exclusively on Style.com. “We wanted to make a movie documenting the process and the different steps involved in the printing of our scarves,” David says. “We went to Yamagata and Kanagawa prefecture in Japan to shoot the movie during three days to try to film all the people who have been working on our scarves for the past four years.” (They’re spliced with footage of skateboarding moves, whose circular motions both inspired the designer’s work and mimic the printers’ motions.) It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes a prefecture to print your foulard.
—Matthew Schneier