It happens in your life like your Bat Mitzvah or your First Communion, sooner or later you cross your path with the Fitzgeralds and it’s never the same.

I was 17 and on my first rebellious stage when I first saw the movie with Robert Redford and subsequently read the book. Although my rebellion manifested in such a demure fashion that [I believe it] mostly remained confined within the parnthesys of my own ears, I had an epiphany: in one of my previous lives I had been Daisy.

Glamour, Paris, pearls, short bobbed hair, women smoking cigarettes, long days never ending before the sun rises, champagne and yachts.

Coco Chanel, the iconic rebellious of the decade, wearing trousers and cardigans made of men’s underwear fabrics, the dropped waistline and just a lot of pearls.

Blouses and bold wallpaper prints, beads, sheerness, silks, sleeveless evening gowns.

The New York Jazz Age of Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, les Folies Bergere and Greta Garbo. Paris and the Ritz Bar, Le Lido and its underground marble pool. 

The novel is about living in the realm of possibilities, on the fine line of fragile and magnificent illusions. I read this about the book:

… Fitzgerald’s characters, each as fabulous as Babe Ruth, [are] rendered with the fragmentary touches of a Cézanne watercolour.” The comparison is perfect: Fitzgerald uses bright shocks of colour and vivid juxtapositions to create impressions, not facts. Gatsby’s greatness is measured by the intensity of his dreams, which provide him a “satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality”… 

No matter what the critics are saying, what Miuccia with director Bez Luhrmann and costume designer Catherine Martin wanted to do was to make Daisy the ‘most beautiful and rich woman on earth’. 

Could that be why I really think I was Daisy in one of my previous lives?

P.S. I haven’t watched the 3D movie and I am posting pictures of the one I am familiar with.

Paris Fashion Week is heating up and the next few days we will attend the fireworks of this long season.

A blazoned slew of  talented designers on their first collections as creative directors for historical fashion houses, the runways have wiped our eyes off with gorgeousness.

Live streams and Instagram give us a pretty good idea of what it looks like sitting on first row. 

velvet Mary Janes with tweed hot pants or an intricately embroidered cardinal red dress with pointy flats, seen at Dolce & Gabbana, show my point: elegant and graceful flats.

an opening look with flat riding boots like Marni says it all

crown + brocade + flat oxford wingtips set the mood for a bad Lanvin girl

Prada docet: mean punk booties + fur jacket and crocodile bag 

The Olsen girls are the first ones to wear the collection which could be summed up as effortless chic, or as they described it “easy without being easy”

Prada

Miuccia at the highest of her performances? Was there any hint in the man collection of this collection (as we insinuated here). ‘Rich and poor’, contrasts, a lot of Miuccia in the air, ‘raw’ fabrics with unexpected inserts of gilded embroideries and fur . Fashion and cinema, could it be the influence of designing the costumes for Gatsby that rolled out in her collection as well? Tim Blanks said: “If fashion is […] emotion, she pinned it to the wall[…].” Mystery, old fashioned ’40s glamour, noir disheveled heroines.

Fendi

The triumph of the fur by Karl and it can only be glorious. Croc jackets, girls on Mohawks, color-block inlays of mink, fur textured leather, cashmere reversible to mink. Fur everything.

BONUS: Galitzine by Sergio Zambon just for the one element; the mastery of plush pajama palazzo. WARNING: what an incredibly wrong selection of models. 

Bottega Veneta

A sharp veer from the most acclaimed flowery collection of last year, but thoughtfully done with intellect, details and workmanship (if you worked with him you have that word impressed in your DNA of vocabulary). 

Jil Sander.

She’s back. if there’s a definition of minimalist, Jil should be  in the dictionary.  I am love the movie and I am really in love with the femininity that doesn’t have to scream with excess, but works with sober luxury. she’s the Milan Kundera of fashion when she sends down the runway a bearable lightness of the heavy fabric. she’s the greatest at using luxe yet heavy materials and making them look as light and feminine as chiffon while playing with proportions. Jil Sander is the anticamera

For Marni, Dolce & Gabbana and Armani just stay tuned 

Prada has launched Il Palazzo  an iPad-only app that takes you on a virtual tour of a villa thanks to, no less than, visual effect specialist James Lima. 

Be ready to take the journey to admire capsule collections and special edition pieces through the maze of mirrored walls, corridors and window draperies. The experience is mysterious, modern, tech and take the brand at the top in innovation technology.

Portrait, the man and women sunglasses collection, is currently featured and soon Bloom jewelry will follow (we are all for it).

Meanwhile, I am still dreaming of this suit, hair, make-up and how chic would be to be able to go to work in it …

Here what they say of the collection:

Ultrachic, Intelligent, Wearable, Modernity, Poetry, Nostalgia, Wonky, Brooding, Rebellious, Glamorous, Sinister, Sobriety, Android, Mesmerizing, Quirky, Out-Of-The-Box, Imperial

(Source: style.com)

WHAT’S HAPPENING.

In the past years, we have assisted to a rising of historical fashion houses that had been temporarily defunct under old patina. Madame Vionnet, to name a glorious one dear to the inner-circles, is being re-interpreted after shutting down over 60 years ago and is now on its route to the original haute-couture splendor thanks to  Matteo Marzotto and the 2            sisters. Some other “gold mine” cases of labels dug out of the ashes like the Phoenix are Givenchy with Tisci, Emilio Pucci with Peter Dundas, not to forget the unprecedented genius of Alber Elbaz for Lanvin. Faux-pas there are lots, but we don’t want to mention them here.  

The talk of the town, or as we ought to say now, the top trending fashion topic of the entire month are Miuccia Prada and Elsa Schiaparelli, their “Schiaparelli – Prada. Impossible Conversations” exhibit at the Costume Institute (along with the most glamorous event of the year, the Gala).

Schiaparelli’s Lobster dress re-interpreted by Prada

the Lobster’s close-up

SCHIAP.

So: who was Elsa Schiaparelli? Besides being Marisa Berenson’s grandmother, Schiap (her nickname) was a surreally modern sophisticated artist, artist not designer as she disputes in the curated video tour with Miuccia whether fashion is art or not. She created jewelry, objects of decoration and art and clothing in her atelier in Place Vendome.

Italian fashion mogul Diego Della Valle made his moves declaring a prêt-a-couturecomeback, for the few fortunate capable of affording some expensive and unique pieces.

• acquired archives and trademarks in 2006 
• following the same tactic he used with Roger Vivier and Ines de la Fressange, recently tapped Farida Khelfa as muse d’inspiration.
• the scoop is it will be exclusively sold in Place Vendome,
• no commercial ads nor wholesale, that is from the Southern Riviera we’ll have to go transatlantically.
• first official runway Paris March 2013
• only two runways per year and not the frantic tour de force of eight.

THE SUCCESSOR.

Diego Della Valle will announce the designer in September, meanwhile speculations flock. Stefano Tonchi (how did he even come out in the equation?) bids on John Galliano, Jenna Lyons confesses she would see Iris Apfel would be perfect as “full of life and attitude”. We only have left to wait until September to know who will let the brand express at its best. Meanwhile we can buy original Schiaparelli pieces on www.1stdibs.com and replicas on Moda Operandi and delight ourselves with the most sophisticated baubles and style.

(Source: wwd.com)

Renee divine in Emilio Pucci

Beyonce decadent Hollywood glam

Florence twirling her Alexander McQueen 

Amish Bowles wears couture on a working day and surely didn’t disappoint 

Valentino (turned 80 days before) was proud of SJP for choosing this taffeta gown. She could have gone Little House in the Prairie, but she went fantastically glam. 

Yours truly.

(Source: fashionologie.com)

the first to arrive and the number 1 

a detail of the embroidered stones of the lobster

Miuccia and her Milanese chicness of less is more

an im-peccable Grace in Prada

Linda Fargo in Naeem Khan: appropriate grandeur

Giovanna Battaglia & beau in a splendid one of a kind Dolce & Gabbana ensemble

Bianca Brandolini D’Adda: style is not water.

Lauren Santo Domingo in Oscar: that New York incomparable elegance 

Yours truly.

(Source: fashionologie.com)