Our couture week coverage continues with a behind the scenes look at the Alexis Mabille show.
TWIN BACKSTAGE: ALEXIS MABILLE
TWIN BACKSTAGE: ON AURA TOUT VU
With Haute Couture Fashion Week well underway, Twin called upon photographer Masao Yufu to document what happened backstage at the On Aura Tout Vu show in Paris.
Paul Smith, Mr. Porter & Mercian
Last night Twin headed to the Paul Smith Beak Street store to celebrate the launch of the 531 Cycling Collection, hosted by Toby Bateman and Sir Paul Smith himself. As well as the collection itself, we were introduced to a bespoke, limited edition Mercian steel-framed bike created in collaboration with Mr. Porter.
Watch the video below to see Sir Paul Smith talking about his love of cycling and the making of the limited edition Mercian bike.
Opening Ceremony X Thierry Boutemy
Thierry Boutemy, the renowned French florist, is the latest person to collaborate with the Opening Ceremony brand. Creating a summer collection of ready to wear, accessories and fragrance, OC and Boutemy created photographs of smashed, broken and decayed floral designs which would become the focal point of the range. These vivid images were then printed onto the ready-to-wear items as well as shoes in collaboration with Manolo Blahnik, Classic Slip-On Vans, hats with New Era, and socks with Tabio.
Geranium 30 is the end result of Opening Ceremony and Thierry Boutemy’s collaboration with Le Labo. The limited edition frangrance was hand-formulated by perfumer Barnebé Fillion and is a balance of flowers and spices, leaving you feeling as though you’ve woken up in a wild, over-grown garden.
“We’ve been following Thierry’s work for some time now and have been in awe of his incredible talent, especially the lavishly designed arrangements in Marie Antoinette. There’s no one who captures the essence and spirit of flowers as Thierry does, and we are excited to be partnering with him for his first fashion collection.” – Humberto Leon
The Opening Ceremony and Thierry Boutemy collection is available exclusively at Opening Ceremony stores and online at openingceremony.us
Menswear SS15 Illustrated by Clym Evernden
Clym Evernden is an award winning artist, one that Twin met when he captured the attendees at our latest release party (read the interview). Here, the Central Saint Martins graduate and Colin Barnes Illustration Award winner turns his attention to the menswear SS15 season, illustrating the shows in his signature inky style of drawing.
Burberry Prorsum
Christopher Shannon
Louis Vuitton
Raf Simons
Y – 3
Prada
Public School NYC
Craig Green
JW Anderson
Work-Shop
Work-Shop is a designer superstore curated in collaboration with creative magazine Oh Comely. The pop-up’s purpose is to encourage people to learn more about hand made processes; to introduce to the public a variety of exciting and sometimes undiscovered independent brands, giving us a more soulful lifestyle alternative to the many mass produced items currently available on the high street. Founder Michelle Oh, a jewellery designer with her own eponymous brand, temporarily moved her studio into the shop and not only can you find her creations displayed in the store, but you can take part in jewellery DIY classes to make your own. You’ll also find designer talks hosted by the people behind the brands involved, such as Draw In Light, London Tea Club, Elizabeth Dunn, Espergaerde, Project 104 Swimwear, Wickhams Concern plus more. Full brand list available here.
Twin‘s Fashion Director Celestine Cooney visited the boutique for one of the Work-Shop classes and designed her own ring (below). To find out more and to take part, head to facebook.com/work.shop.
Work-Shop is located at 6 Newburgh Street, London W1F 7RT until 1st August.
La Perla AW14 Video
To capture their AW14 collection and to celebrate their 60 years, La Perla called upon Mert & Marcus to shoot behind the scenes. With creative direction from Fabien Baron, the video features top models Maria Carla Boscono, Liu Wen and Daria Strokous, who offer us an intimate insight into their feelings on being protagonists in a global international campaign, as well as their thoughts on the importance of feeling empowered in lingerie.
Opening Ceremony For Pride
In celebration of LGBT Pride Month, Opening Ceremony has got together with with manga-inspired brand MASSIVE as well as the iconic manga artist Jiraiya, to launch a capsule collection, MASSIVE for Opening Ceremony. The line features Jiraiya’s original male pin-up art sublimation printed on tees, muscle shirts, rugby shorts and a beach towel.
The capsule collection is available now from OC stores and online at openingceremony.us.
To find out about Pride in London or to get involved, head to prideinlondon.org
Kalifornia
Having grown up in southern California, Humberto and Carol’s LA heritage is intregal to the new direction of KENZO. Fusing street chic Parisian style with laid back west coast cool, they created the house’s new timeless handbag, Kalifornia, that blends KENZO’s French atelier craftsmanship with Humberto and Carol’s pacific coast nonchalance. Taking inspiration from the California tribes of beachcombers, bikers, and skaters, the lux bag has a deconstructed design and two “K“ zips on either side that double as pockets, in a nod to the biker style.
Kalifornia comes in four different styles; Gommato, Broken Floor, Mountain Print and Fluorescent, all with their own quirks and colourways.
The Kalifornia will be available from September 2014 from KENZO stores and online at kenzo.com.
Twin Picks: Summer Coats
When the SS14 collections walked their way down the catwalks in September, there was one key item that was much more present than in seasons past – the summer coat. Many styles were noted, but those that came out on top were lightweight, long and slightly oversized. When usually a mac is all you need, it’s time to invest in some more outerwear that should take you all the way until autumn. Here, Twin picks out our favourite coats of the season, and with the sales having already begun, you might find a bargin or two.
Marni Duster Coat in Grey, $ 1,280.00 $ 768.00, marni.com & Silver Long Weave Coat by Boutique, £190, topshop.com
Charlie May Sleeveless Duster Coat, £350, farfetch.com & Lela Coat, £50, monki.com
LS&CO. FOR PRIDE MONTH
In 1982, Levi Strauss & Co became one of the first brands to support the battle against the AIDS crisis and they were the first Fortune 500 company to grant domestic partnership health benefits — a practice now followed by many corporations and public agencies. In 2013, they also joined the broad coalition of marriage equality supporters urging the U.S. Supreme Court to recognize the fundamental right of all Americans to marry.
Having been a supporter of equality for people of all sexual orientations for many decades, this year they are taking that support in store, creating a line of Pride-themed T-shirts, tanks and baseball caps. “Equality is not something we just wear; it’s woven into the fabrics of our principles,” the company says. Rolling out into select stores in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Washington, D.C., the profits will be going to Pride organizations in those areas.
To find out about Pride in London or to get involved, head to prideinlondon.org
Versus Versace x Superga
This summer seems to be the summer of footwear collaborations. The trainer variety of course. Pharrell for Adidas was big news and then we heard that Vans had produced a line inspired by Star Wars, but the latest is somehow even cooler. Superga have collaborated with Versus Versace to bring us the perfect mixture of luxury and comfort. Using the Versus Versace AW14 motif, the Italian brands have come together to create a special edition Superga 2750 model.
The kicks will be available online in Europe from June 20th and worldwide in Versus Versace and Superga stores from June 29th.
The Liten Series
This season, cult favourite’s Larsson & Jennings have decided to create a line of watches especially for us girls. The Liten Series looks back at previous collections, picking out the true hero styles and has recreated them in a 33mm casing, as apposed to the signature 40mm style the Anglo-Swedish brand is known for. Each timepiece from the capsule collection has its own character. The Liten | Black is made from black brass and Italian calf leather; the Liten | Bernadotte is a vibrant number, with pink and blue striped straps that were inspired by The House of Bernadotte, the Royal House of Sweden and the gold plated Liten | Gold is taken from the highly sucessful Chain Metal collection. So for those of you with dainty wrists, or if your style lends itself to the more subtle things in life, this one’s for you.
Released from the 20th June, the collection is available to pre-order now from larssonandjennings.com
CUBIC ODDITIES
Nathalie Trad is an accessories designer with a clan of celebrity fans. Karolina Kurkova and Sienna Miller both love her futuristic aesthetic and one of her styles was recently spotted on designer Mary Katranzou at the Met Gala in New York. Having studied at the prestigious ESMOD International in Paris, then at Parsons The New School for Design in New York, Nathalie’s crendentials are more than just international. Before starting up her own label in Dubai, she worked under the mentorship of Proenza Schouler in the accessories department. “I worked on every aspect of the creation of the accessories collections for shoes, handbags and jewellery. From the research stages, to the birth of a concept, the drawing and designing stages, to the production stages,” states Nathalie. “It was such a hands on experience that provided me with the building blocks to start my own accessories line.”
Her highly-anticipated third collection offers us a world of cubic oddities. With a range of shell clutches that are inspired by today’s complex urban landscapes, Nathalie gives us a decadent version of minimalism that will add elegance to any ensemble. You can find her designs at Avenue32.com, JOSEPH in London, Farfetch.com and Fivestory NYC.
Linda Farrow Sample Sale
This week, the eyewear specialist Linda Farrow will be having a sunglasses sample sale from the 5th-7th June. With styles avaiable from collaborations such as The Row, Matthew Williamson, 3.1 Philip Lim, Dries Van Noten and more, it’s not one to miss. And if you happen to be a student, you can get an extra 20% off, so don’t forget your NUS or student card.
The sale will be open from 11am-7pm on Thursday and Friday, and 11am-5pm on Saturday.
Linda Farrow Sample Sale at 51 Calthorpe Street, London, WC1X 0HH
Free Range
East London’s Truman Brewery is currently showcasing the UK’s largest graduate art, design & fashion show, Free Range. 2014 is the initatives fourteenth edition, spanning seven weeks, a hundred courses and 3000 students, all exhibiting their hard work. It is the perfect place to see what the young creatives and future trend-makers are up to, a place to feel inspired and also marvel at their craftsmanship. With work being shown across five disciplines, design, fashion, photography, Art, interiors and architecture, the sheer scale puts Free Range on the map as one international art fair not to be missed.
The exhibitions are free and open to the public until 14th July.
Fashion Sunday
On Sunday 1st June, East London’s Oval Space will become home to a new kind of monthly fashion market. Fashion Sunday’s aim is to bring together some of the most exciting emerging and established designers London has to offer. It gives consumers the chance to shop direct from the brand, which means you can enjoy up to 20% off the current season price, larger discounts on past seasons as well as find one off samples. Each month you will find a differerent selection of designers setting up shop (the initial focus is on womenswear) and all have been handpicked by the curators. Fashion Sunday will also be giving away a stall each month to a start up of their choice – this time the lucky designer is Luke Brooks. You can expect to find a rich exploration of London’s diverse scene, including names such as Draw in Light, Auria, Paper LDN, Emma Shipley, Larissa Hadjio, Yolke, Estefania Cortes Harker, Kult Domini, Henriette Lofstrom, Hanger Inc and Hellespont.
Not only can you settle your design needs but you will also find a great place to relax and enjoy the view of Hackney’s skyline. With Pop Up Barbados serving up Bajan treats on the terrace, Blackbox offering a unique ‘coffee spritzer’ and Shake Rattle Stir mixing up colourful cocktails in the main room, there’s plenty to experience.
“There’s a real appetite for independent, homegrown fashion and this new platform means we can share these designers’ work with more people,” says Tiffany Alwis, joint owner and curator of Fashion Sunday. “Working with them and other likeminded local partners across food, music, and the arts, once a month we showcase a unique edit of just some of the great stuff this city has to offer.”
Entry costs £3 and includes a complimentary copy of the bespoke Fashion Sunday newspaper.
Fashion Sunday at The Oval Space, 29-32 The Oval, E2 9DT
Twin Picks: Ashish X Topshop
One of our standout shows during February’s AW14 season was Ashish. It was at the colourful and glittery display, at the Topshop showspace at Tate Modern that we learned that a tenth collaboration was on its way. Well, today is that day. Ashish x Topshop SS14 has landed and it’s as tongue-in-cheek as we expected. Titled Beach Please!, the capsule collection features oversized t-shirts, fluoro swimsuits and bikinis, wrap dresses and skirts as well as LED footwear. “I love this collection, it’s perfect for the beach and for pool parties, and they have the best ones at the Paradise Hotel,” stated Ashish Gupta. “I hope it’s going to be as much fun to wear as it has been to design!” Here Twin picks our top four pieces from this fun-loving collaboration.
White LED Leather Sliders, £250, topshop.com & Fluro Orange Backless Swimsuit, £45, topshop.com
Censored Mesh Dress, £65, topshop.com & LED Light Up PVC Backpack, £250, topshop.com
Twin Meets Faustine Steinmetz
“It’s not about design, it’s all about the clothing,” states Faustine Steinmetz when we meet in her East London studio. In a large, light-filled room, surrounded by looms, her small team (which she calls artisans) and two adorable dogs, we sat down to talk about the current collection, her obsession with denim and old lady books.
Tell us a about your first fashion memories….
I grew up in Paris in a very fancy neighbourhood, in the 16th Arrondissement with my grandparents. That’s probably my first fashion memory; my grandmother with her very classic, beautiful outfits. A lot of Chanel and even if it wasn’t Chanel, it looked like Chanel. She would take me to Galeries Lafayette all the time to choose our clothes.
Did you always want a career in fashion?
No, I wanted to be an artist for a very long time but I did one painting and it didn’t work out – it was terrible. It was a black sheep and about how society is wrong or something quite ridiculous. Then I realised it was a bit too free for me. Art can be anything and I wasn’t comfortable with that. So I started cutting all my pairs of jeans, making my parents very mad. I looked terrible – I would make holes in the crutch of my jeans to make it into a jacket, I would take the pockets of the back of the jeans and make them into a bag that you put around your neck. I made a skateboard in denim also. I would always cut denim into other things until my parents said they wouldn’t buy me anymore jeans. For some reason denim was always my first choice.
What attracted you to denim?
It was since the beginning, it was always very natural. I think it comes from wanting to say something. Denim is this socially and culturally important piece – it’s the piece that everyone has in their cupboard no matter what.
You like your garments to talk about garments. Can you explain a little more about that?
When I made the tapestry jeans for SS14, it took us a month with ten people doing it. To me, it was a piece that talked about fashion in general, how this type of care would only be given to an evening gown. Just switching those codes makes you question the way you wear a garment and what are they for. For AW14 we hand wove with copper so that you can crunch it the way you like and they hold in place. It was all about making your clothes your own.
Tell us about AW14…
I’m trying to find what I want to say about fashion and what type of brand I want to be. I just really want to reproduce clothes that already exist because to me that’s the strongest. I’m not interested in fashion as such, its not about the silhouette, its about the actual piece. This collection was all about Issey Miyake Peats Please because I love this idea of a brand working with the same object over and over again but making it different every time and making these collectible pieces a bit like images that you collect, like the Spice Girl pictures you collected as a kid. It’s always about working with something that already exists and making a bit of a parody of it.
So it’s not about designing…
I’m trying not to, but at the end of the day I guess I’m a designer. It’s hard for me to resist doing a representation. So I will dye a fabric and it will come out as a beautiful accident – sometimes I will dip a fabric, by mistake, and it will create a beautiful gradient which I guess designing would be like, this is beautiful, lets do this but to me because it doesn’t have a meaning, even if it breaks your heart I have to cancel the idea. It’s all about the concept and what you have to say.
You put the name of the person who made the clothes in the label. Why is that so important to you?
I think they deserve it because they have spent so long making it. Someone has taken the care that would be part of the haute couture world into a pair of jeans. To me, that is what is strong about the brand. Not only eveningwear should be made with couture techniques. If you buy a piece of clothing that costs you more that £1000 it should be something you wear everyday, a bit more neutral and culturally, I think that jeans speaks to us more than dresses. You can’t go to the party two times in the same dress. This is a pair of jeans you can wear it over and over again. I think its important people know where its coming from. And they may not understand if they see a pair of jeans that’s really expensive in the shop, because anything can be made by a machine but someone has taken a week of their life to weave this for you. It’s all made traditionally. And also, those labels their inspired by the old couture labels, when they were still writing by hand the sizes, what has been done…
You studied in Paris then came to London to do your MA at Central Saint Martins. Is that where you got the idea for reproducing denim?
No actually, I’ve always worked around parodying other designers. Parodying sounds bad, but it’s about reproducing something someone has already done and show your version of that. In my MA I was working around Chanel and I was painting and sculpting Chanel bags and printing it onto the garments all made in plasticine. I made a little Chanel world in plasticine. That was really fun.
What was your BA graduate collection about in Paris?
That was very denim. I painted denim on denim, I painted denim on jersey, I knitted denim. It was more about drawing on clothes than actually making clothes. In France they teach you proper techniques, it’s our heritage so in our schools it’s a big point of focus. And my brain just can’t figure out those things, it was like geometry, but life size – it was a nightmare. So that’s why I started to work the material and that’s what lead me to be very textile orientated and to try to push the shape design to its minimum.
Tell me about the techniques you use…
I collect loads of old lady’s books. I love old lady craft, there’s this shop in Finsbury park that I love. Every time I see a technique that looks fun, I buy the book and then I go back to it. At the moment I am looking at rug making. That’s also how I learnt hand-weaving because you can find a lot of books, with different techniques.
What are your favourite techniques/materials?
I love sampling, going to the shop and looking at all the yarns around you. What stood out for me was the copper. Its 0.01, so you have to be very patient with it.
What has been your most intricate piece that took the longest to make?
Defiantly the tapestry jeans. I’d say about ten people and a month to make them. First I hand dye all the different yarns in different shades to create the different threads, like the orange thread of the jeans and the different tones. Already that was too much, I should have said stop. And then we had to print each part of the jeans on a canvas and all follow the same guidelines. I think it was about an hour a square centimetre.
We want to develop this new thing of creating artefacts that are not really made for selling, like an old couture piece. Our version of a capsule collection, or pre-collection. That Is really the way I see this brand – a little gathering of artisans together.
As demand grows, how do you plan to deal with orders if one piece can take up to a month?
We will adapt. AW14 for example, it’s still hand woven but its not hand dyed and there is no embroidery. My aim was to make something special with cutting some of the work. Although it will still take two days to weave a pair of jeans. I’m not scared of saying no and scared of being a small brand in the right places. I still think people should feel special when they wear the piece. I don’t want to be everywhere or collaborate with high-street people. I’m not scared of growing organically and slowly. I think next season will be about expanding the brand.
Faustine Steinmetz SS14 is available online from ln-cc.com. 
Adidas Originals Photo Print App
Customising your trainers is nothing new, although Adidas are soon to take the idea to the next level with their Photo Print App. Come August, when the app launches, you will be able to decorate your Adidas Originals ZX Flux trainer with any image you see fit. Centred around Instagram, the idea is that you can choose your favourite image from the social network and have it printed onto your kicks, but of course, the quality of the image will determine the quality of the finish. We’d love to see one of our latest SS14 editorials on some trainers, wouldn’t you?
PREVIOUS
Twitter
Tumblr
YouTube
Facebook
Instagram
