by Alex R. Travers Veronica Miele Beard and Veronica Swanson Beard, sisters-in-law and founders of Veronica Beard, have an unrushed knack for wardrobe development. What may bore the consumer—the placement of a dart, a fabric’s malleability—excites the Beards. Of all their collections I’ve seen, this one felt the most confident, using basic pieces—shifts, a trench, …
by Alex R. Travers These days, a Christian Dior collection is hard to figure. Not whether it’s good or not. All of us have been watching Raf Simons’ Dior with eager eyes, and we can get that right. What’s difficult to pin down is the target audience. Really, I suppose, it doesn’t matter all that …
by Alex R. Travers This year marks the 30th anniversary of Sandro Paris, now a fashion fixture in New York, so it was the perfect moment for mother-and-son designers Evelyne and Ilan Chetrite to celebrate the vibrancy of the 1980s, the decade when the brand came to life. For fall, they added pizzazz to Sandro’s …
by Alex R. Travers Whether you’re familiar with the garments of the 1930s or not, the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s latest exhibition, “Elegance in an Age of Crisis: Fashions of the 1930s,” acts as a revelation. The exhibit is a celebration of craftsmanship—with the clothes, clearly, but also with a space that …
by Alex R. Travers Poor Gilles Mendel. I’ve seen New York climatically suffer during Fashion Week before, but it felt as if no one was at his J. Mendel show today. Pity since it was one of the label’s best. From beginning to end, it had a fresh energy, defined by the designer’s enthusiasm to …
by Alex R. Travers For Diesel Black Gold’s Fall 2014 collection, Andreas Melbostad mined ideas from the mythic world of space. “It was part research on authentic astronaut suits and part investigation into designs that were influenced by science fiction,” he said. You could see that sci-fi influence as soon Julia Nobis strutted down the …
by Alex R. Travers Before the Fall 2014 fashion season started in New York, Lincoln Center, the official venue of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, was under fire. “We’re in a creative industry that’s supposed to be reinventing things,” said the designer Cynthia Rowley. “So why do they send a girl walking down a runway over and …