Dior guys get tough – Iconic clubs feted

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PARIS, June 26, (Agencies): Actor Robert Pattinson took center stage at Dior Homme’s menswear show in Paris that celebrated the styles of Britain’s iconic retro club, The Haçienda — against a theatrical fairground backdrop that had celebrity attendees gawping. Kenzo, too, paid homage to legendary retro clubs in a show dedicated to the flamboyant styles once worn at New York music venues.

Here are some of the highlights of the spring-summer 2017 collections.

Robert Pattinson

Pattinson, who has successfully moved in a more mature direction since starring in the hit “Twilight” franchise that grossed over $3 billion worldwide, is now a veritable asset in the serious, high-fashion industry.

The film star, who rocked a black Dior Homme suit with a funky asymmetrical cross motif to myriad camera flashes, was chosen as the face of the Dior Homme fall-winter season this year, after being featured as the face of the house’s fragrance since 2012.

His former co-star Kristen Stewart, meanwhile, has been treading a similar path in both cinema and fashion, and features as a face of Dior’s rival house Chanel.

Dior Homme

Designer Kriss Van Assche explored the daring-styles of the attendees of the iconic Manchester club Haçienda, known in ’80s Britain for its role in the rise of rave and acid house music.

The show’s decor, myriad swirling black metal bars speckled with lightbulbs, added a surreal, almost eerie, air to the collection — channeling the kinesis of an imagined fairground, and perhaps even the atrium lights of the Haçienda club itself.

It made for a fresh and impressive spring collection.

“I am interested in a synthesis of generations and filtering subcultures through my own lens to tell a new story,” Van Assche explained.

Van Assche pushed the envelope on his obligatory plays on the suit, Dior Homme’s forte and signature that’s sometimes a designer’s creative cage.

Suits rebelliously broke free from their traditional shapes — a way to “warp perceptions of formality,” according to the program notes.

Balmain

Kenzo’s workaholic creative directors Carol Lim and Humberto Leon presented two-collections-for-the-price-of-one for spring-summer and rolled both the menswear and the women’s “resort” styles together on the runway. Balmain did the same on Saturday.

Merging collections is becoming increasingly popular among houses, with some expressing concern at the frenetic pace of the modern fashion industry.

Cruise or resort collections — mid-season shows — were originally conceived to target wealthy women who travel on cruise ships in winter.

Nowadays, they’re used as a lucrative means of re-stimulating fashions in the mid-season lull.

Also:

BOGOTA:  Miguel Caballero’s designs are not just chic, they could save your life.

But his creations come at a price. A bulletproof men’s suit can cost between $6,000 and $8,000 and a blazer up to $3,500.

The Colombian fashion designer, who makes lightweight, bulletproof clothing for dignitaries including the King of Jordan, says he has a ‘survivors club’ of 20 customers who owe their lives to wearing his garments.

“My greatest satisfaction is not earning business, it’s saving lives,” Caballero, who founded the company bearing his name 21 years ago, told Reuters following a fashion show on Friday with models strutting down the runway as at any other.

Caballero counts prime ministers and presidents in Latin America and further afield among his clients and typically makes his clothing, for both men and women, to order.

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