After a couple of sticky seasons of realignment under its new chief executive, Paolo Riva, the house of Diane von Furstenberg presented its first collection under the new creative leadership of the Scottish-born designer Jonathan Saunders this weekend. Diane’s new man, who arrived at the forty-year-old design house founded by von Furstenberg in May of this year, didn’t stage a show, choosing instead to host a series of one-to-one presentations in which to suggest a new look at the house. It looked good: here was a fluid collection of highly wearable dresses, separates and jackets in juxtaposing print styles and colours, alongside a small but core collection of accessories.
Fans of Saunders’ clothes (the designer closed his eponymously-named London based design house last September) will well recognise his hand here: the house’s wrap dress had been recut on the bias and fabricated in bold graphic colour ways (a classic Saunders statement) and the wide printed trousers in fluttering kimono silk prints, bold striped separates and statement silky asymmetric dresses were reassuringly familiar. But the new accents were subtly done: his vision remains true to von Furstenberg’s extremely womanly brand of feminism.
“I wanted to revisit the brand values of DVF,” said the designer of his initial interaction with the fabled label. “I wanted to capture the brand’s effortlessness, colour, and print in an imaginative way.” It makes for an exciting proposition.
For Riva, who is in the process of repositioning the brand as a house of “aspirational luxury”, rethinking its pricing architecture and re-examining and editing the product lines, Saunders’ appointment has been vital in helping change the customer’s perception of DVF. Put simply, Saunders brings with him a design integrity and the lustre of fashionability which has, arguably, been a little lacking at the house in recent years. This collection felt more relevant and — crucially — cooler. Riva picked up a handbag, primary green, with a canvas lining, simple strap and no visible branding. It will retail for around $700, slap in the middle of the market. Was it enough to seduce a new customer? It certainly made an interesting proposition.
The collection presented this fashion week will arrive in stores from February and while most of it was on display at the presentation certain pieces were held back. Riva is yet to fully embrace the ready-to-buy structure that has seduced New York fashion of late. But the new boys are keeping back a few surprises.
ATLANTA — The 24th annual Jeffrey Fashion Cares gave Atlanta’s fashion patrons a look at fall collections from designers such as Saint Laurent Paris, Balenciaga, Brandon Maxwell, Vetements, Manolo Blahnik, Gucci, Lanvin and Céline, while raising thousands of dollars and awareness for the Atlanta AIDS Fund and Susan B. Komen Greater Atlanta.
Held for the second year in a row at the upscale Phipps Plaza in a white curtained-off space not far from the Jeffrey Atlanta boutique, the sold-out event sought to raise as much or more charity dollars as last year, which was $700,000. Guests including included Rigby & Peller chief executive officer Ginny Gerard and Sarah-Elizabeth Reed, wife of Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed, socialized before moving to their seats. An auction for trips and jewelry raised $71,000, not counting donations ranging from $100 to $5,000 sought afterward. A weeklong trip to the South African Thulani Game reserve ended up going to two competing bidders for $15,000 each.
Jeffrey Kalinsky, who started the event in 1992, tried to pass on as much of the money as possible to the charities without putting it into the reception or fashion show. Phipps Plaza, he said, donated $50,000 to them, and the food and open bar were donated. Most of the fashion comes from his stores.
Event chairs Lila Hertz, Louise Sams and Jeffrey McQuithy mixed with guests before joining Kalinsky onstage to welcome everyone and encourage donations. The fashion show included cashmere, leather, glossy brocades and liquid silks with fall colors based on a monochromatic palette with color blocks, and colors focused on lemon yellow, royal blue and shades of red. Other trends were a street style, highlighted by designers Vetements and Marques’ Almeida, with key elements of oversizing seen in parkas, bomber jackets, furs and shearlings.
Brands Kalinsky added this year included Marques’ Almeida and Brandon Maxwell, who has been styling Lady Gaga. He is most impressed with Maxwell. “His looks are among my favorites in the show tonight,” Kalinsky said. “He had his first show in New York a year ago, and I said, ‘This is the real deal.’”
Next year, Jeffrey Fashion Cares celebrates another milestone — the 25th anniversary. Kalinsky has, of course, been focusing on year 24, but said he’d like to make the reception bigger and more important next year. Recalling 2012, when the charity event celebrated its 20th year and surprised everyone with a flash-mob dance, Kalinsky said he’d love another “fabulous flash mob.”
For anyone who wasn’t on Instagram and didn’t watch the extravaganza unfold in real time, the Italian fashion editor, creative director, and street-style star Giovanna Battaglia married Swedish real-estate developer Oscar Engelbert in an over-the-top celebration in Capri, Italy, this June. (Go down the rabbit hole: #gioandoscar.) There was a sunset ceremony—the bride, who grew up in Milan and has worked for such brands as Dolce & Gabbana and Carolina Herrera, wore an Alexander McQueen wedding dress with a 12-and-a-half-foot train—followed the next day by an all-night rager on a barge floating just beyond the island’s legendary Blue Grotto.
When the hangovers wore off, many wondered where the couple, famed for their fabulousness in the social swirls of New York and Paris, would swap their dancing shoes for bedroom slippers. Turns out the newlyweds had a trick up their sleeve: this elegant apartment in an 1800s building on Stockholm’s Djurgården island, where Oscar was raised. What’s the one word Giovanna uses to describe time there? “Quiet!”
In renovating the three-bedroom, four-bath flat, the couple was sensitive to the structure’s 19th-century roots. It was “a restrained, modern restoration,” Oscar says. “The home is 100 percent a reflection of what we like and what we collect. Every single piece has its history of where and when we bought it.”
The duo did not use an architect or designer, instead relying on Oscar’s visual savvy—he founded Oscar Properties in 2004 and has constructed modernist buildings around the world with such architects as Rem Koolhaas and Bjarke Ingels—and Giovanna’s personal style, heretofore mostly expressed in the fashion arena. Giovanna, a contributing fashion editor at W and a senior fashion editor for Japanese Vogue, explains, “All the knowledge I have came in handy, but you have to be more careful since you can’t pin a chair to make it look good the way you can with a skirt for a photo shoot.”
By their own admission, Oscar’s design approach is cleaner and more subdued, while Giovanna usually subscribes to the more-is-more ethos. “It’s been interesting to look at the evolution of my own aesthetic since I met Oscar,” Giovanna says. “I used to think Oscar’s taste was too cold or too minimal, but I got caught up in his enthusiasm and passion, and now I really like it.”
At the same time, Oscar has learned to appreciate Giovanna’s penchant for color, notably in the sunroom they call the veranda. “I wanted natural colors, and then Gio came home with velvets from Rubelli. It was out of my comfort zone, but when it sank in I loved the idea. Now it’s one of my favorite parts of the house.” He laughs as he says that his friends—many of whom teased the couple that collaborating on their house was a bad idea—are just as surprised by the results as he is. “Miraculously, we ended up agreeing on everything!”
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