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!”
For an artist, the world of fashion can seem more like a business than a world of creative fashion design. Aspiring fashion designers need to understand that this is all necessary. Business is the life blood of fashion and the fashion itself is only the soul. Fashion simply wouldn't be able to see mass production if it were any other way. So you may be a 'creative' but as a fashion designer you must develop a passion for not only design but manufacturing challenges, the excitement of marketing and overcoming competition.
In the professional world of fashion, you'll spend less than 10 percent of your time designing your collections and the rest of the time working out money management issues, and executing marketing strategies. These are the only things that will give life to your creative work and allow you to survive as a fashion designer so your garment designs will hit the store shelves and not just remain the beautiful figments of your creative imagination.
You want to become well acquainted with the business aspect of fashion. Don't even think of starting out on you own. Work for any designer, design house or clothing manufacturer first so you can become well versed in how the fashion industry works on a daily basis and carefully climb up the ladder from there. Study how other fashion designers made their way to the top. Most of the biggest name designers worked under other designers for years before they started their own labels. They often worked for more than one fashion designer or fashion house. Having different positions and seeing different ways of how business was handled, they gained hands on knowledge, experience, confidence and acquired indispensable assets of credibility and reputation at the same time.
So if you're getting into fashion design you've got to plan on being a lifer if you're going to one day own your own line. Here is a list of characteristics you need to either have already or acquire as you go along in order to become a successful fashion designer:
- A hard edge against negative feedback and rejection. - You need a very competitive spirit. - You need the ability to be organized and be able to function under extreme stress of dealing with difficult people, multiple deadlines and responsibilities. - You need to love or learn to love the marketing, negotiating and networking game in the world of fashion. - And you need the willingness to keep your mind open to learning new things as a fashion designer.
'How To Get Into The Fashion And Beauty Industry The Online Way With A Low Budget' is our special website dedicated to providing access to the best resources and information on the internet to all aspiring, student and currently employed, entry level fashion designers and makeup artists.
In the months to come we will soon be including an online 'Do It Yourself' Fashion Course lens, a detailed outline of the instruction manuals and books you should read and activities you need to do, along with the online learning resources (both free and for a fee) that you can utilize to teach yourself everything you need to know to become a fashion designer.
“I am pleased to announce that the Armani Group has made a firm commitment to abolish the use of animal fur in its collections,” the designer (81) said in a statement.
“Technological progress made over the years allows us to have valid alternatives at our disaposition that render the use of cruel practices unnecessary as regards animals.”
He continued by saying the luxury group, which includes the brands Giorgio Armani, Armani Prive, AJ Armani Jeans and Emporio Armani, would dedicate their efforts to “protecting and caring for the environment and animals”.
The move comes after years of lobbying from animal rights organisations like the Fur Free Alliance and the Humane Society International.
Claire Bass, executive director of the Humane Society, said: ”Armani is the first word in luxury fashion, and so it is hugely significant for the global fashion industry that Armani has pledged to remove animal fur from all his new collections going forward.
“Those designers such as Prada, Fendi and Michael Kors who continue to put animal suffering on the catwalk are looking increasingly isolated, with this move by Armani probably the most powerful message yet that killing animals for their fur is never fashionable.”
Check out five other fashion-forward designers who pledged to go fur-free:
1. Stella McCartney
The lifelong vegetarian and daughter of Paul and Linda McCartney has been committed to cruelty-free designs since beginning her career, and has remained firm in using only faux furs and synthetic leathers in her products. She’s pulled it off with such success that people will eagerly fork over €700 for a pair of synthetic leather shoes – so long as they’re Elyse platform oxfords, the It shoes the fashion world are obsessing over.
2. Calvin Klein
In the early 90s, there was a significant shift in the industry as fashionistas began to shun furs. PETA enlisted top models including Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington for a striking campaign declaring: “We’d rather go naked than wear fur.” At the same time, popular high-end designers began to publicly announce they would stop using furs, including beloved US label Calvin Klein in 1994 – the same year they were subject to protests from PETA.
3. Vivienne Westwood
The renowned British designer is credited with pioneering punk fashion, and also decided to drop fur after a meeting with PETA in 2007. She donated the last of her furry products - eight rabbit-fur handbags - to a wildlife sanctuary to comfort orphaned baby animals
4. Ralph Lauren: The all-American brand decided to go fur-free in 2006, after meeting with representatives from PETA. The company said in a statement: “We feel that the time is right to take this action.” To support their new policy, Ralph Lauren also donated 1,200 items of clothing containing fur to charities in developing countries.
5. Tommy Hilfiger
As well as banning fur in 2007, the American designer is committed to creating cruelty-free colognes. Hilfiger is also known for his philanthropy outside the fashion industry, and often donates to the conservation charity Elephant Family, which protects elephants and their natural habitat in Asia.
Model and body-positive activist, Ashley Graham, has revealed the difficulty she encountered in finding a dress to wear for this year’s Oscars ceremony.
Speaking to host Giuliana Rancic during an interview for E!'s Live From the Red Carpet on Sunday, she spoke candidly about the struggles of finding a dress to fit her.
“Trying to find a dress for the Oscars, a girl my size — these girls this size.
“I mean it has been a whole job in itself. So I am happy tonight with my outfit.”
The 28-year-old model made history earlier this month when she became the second curve model to ever grace the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
But this isn’t the first time she has spearheaded such a change, last year she became one of the first ever curve models to feature in an advert in the magazine.
Currently signed to IMG models, Graham is a US size 12/UK size 16 model, designer and activist.
The Nebraska-born model is a vocal proponent of the Plus is Equal Campaign - the organisation which campaigns for the size 14-34 women who constitute 67 per cent of the American female population to be fairly represented in the media and fashion industry.
Graham, who has appeared in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour and Latina, has been vocal about the fact she rejects the ‘plus size’ label.
“When it comes to the word 'plus-size', I've been called a plus-size model for the past sixteen years,“ the activist said to Shape.
“I hear it, sometimes I say it - it's a slip of the tongue. But at the end of the day, it's a label. You can say, 'Yes it's a negative thing' or 'maybe it's not a negative thing'...but why would we want to be labelled something?
"Why do we want to be put in a different category than all the other types of models? No one says 'skinny model', so am I wrong for not wanting a label? I don't think so.”
New York kicks off the global womenswear calendar for autumn/winter 2016, and its fashion week started on 10 February, but with what? A glut of shows proposing disparate messages, an overwhelming mêlée that, hopefully, will settle down once we lurch back across the Atlantic and begin to unpick everything. But perhaps it won’t. New York’s mishmash of shows reflects the industry right now: confused and confusing.
Over the past few weeks a number of designers have announced changes to their selling and showing schedules. Tom Ford dropped out of New York’s calendar: he will now show in September as his winter styles become available to purchase in store. Conversely, the Proenza Schouler label, headed by Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough, will release eight styles immediately after their show on February. And in September, Tommy Hilfiger will release a collection called TommyxGigi, with model Jelena Noura “Gigi” Hadid, which will be available immediately. “It’s like releasing an album,” Hilfiger told the Business of Fashion website, shortly before the fashion week began, featuring shows by Rihanna and Kanye West.
I wonder if it is presumed that the semiotics of “buy-it-now” and “straight-from-the-catwalk” will shift clothes? Because consumers aren’t the ones decrying the fashion system as “broken:” it’s the luxury behemoths, because they aren’t selling enough; because profits aren’t constantly going up. Maybe the name is no longer enough to generate the desire? Or at least it isn’t creating the kind of lasting desire that translates the catwalk hard-sell into clothing sales six months later. The natural solution is to truncate the gap, or remove it entirely. And if that doesn’t work ... who knows?
But back to New York, and different names hitched to the bandwagon of selling clothes: Rihanna and Kanye West. I wasn’t in town for either of their shows – West’s an 18,000-seater Madison Square Garden spectacular, the former a more intimate, conventionally “fashionable” affair for a few hundred seated guests. But did you really need to see either of them up close and in the flesh (or rather fabric)? Both are spectacles orchestrated and choreographed, like no other fashion show, for legions of fans and not the invited. That’s the way fashion shows have been skewing for a while, with the advent of the live stream and a global audience, but it took a showman such as West to snip the “fashion” away artfully, like an extraneous sleeve or a few over-long inches of hem, and leave us with just a “show”.
That is also a dig at West’s clothes, which were neither fashion nor especially fashioned, comprised as they mostly were of holey knits, frayed sweatshirting and tugged-up-too-high semi-sheer tights. This is the third fashion show by Kanye West under the label “Yeezy”, and it is virtually indistinguishable from its predecessors, except this one had Naomi Campbell padding down the catwalk in a moth-eaten full-length mink, as if she’d gone rogue from an early 1990s George Michael video.
The early Nineties were a period when fashion slipped into the doldrums. Global recession and the Gulf War stunted luxury clothing purchases and ideas stagnated. Designers began to ransack the 20th century for retrograde clothing styles tinged with nostalgia that may entice people to buy. The supermodels emerged as a distraction – or, perhaps, as amplification of fashion’s removal from everyday life, unreal bodies on which to parade the unreal clothes of Thierry Mugler and Jean Paul Gaultier, geared to spectacle and to shifting millions of litres of perfume (neither designer produces ready-to-wear clothing any more, thanks to the money they made from their respective bestselling scents).
Perhaps the advent of celebrity designers – West and Rihanna most recently, but also Victoria Beckham, who shows tomorrow, and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen of The Row – serves a similar function? Namely to create a selling-point for the clothes other than their actual design, a point of discussion. The Row and, arguably, Beckham, have transcended their celebrity to become designers in their own right. But still there’s a fervid curiosity not about their garments or their ideas, but about them as individuals. About their names.
And it’s the name, as Barthes said, that creates desire – at least, to click on a web link and look, if not necessarily to buy the clothes. Some designers don’t even get that.
Former beauty queen Rosanna Davison has been busy breaking the internet with an array of bikini photos on her annual trek to Mauritius and we've tracked down the secret to her super toned physique - pilates.
While Rosanna (30) credits clean eating (she’s been a vegan for the last number of years) and regular exercise for her figure, it's her type of workout that is doing the trick.
The nutritional therapist visits Pilates Plus Dublin in Dun Laoghaire several times a week and owner Emma Forsyth said her 55-minute classes, using Pro-Former machines, focus on core muscles and resistance training, which she says are crucial for fitness in women in particular.
“Rosanna looks after her diet, we all know she eats very clean and she works really hard in class,” Emma told Independent Style.
“She has done pilates for years and started coming to the studio last year and felt and saw the difference – she’s stronger, more flexible and her abs look more phenomenal.”
Emma’s classes include the same physical effects of burpees and push ups and is also the workout of choice for many of the Victoria's Secret Angels.
“In our class, it’s about constant core engagement - you’re using it for the entire class, but there are specific sections that are core and ab heavy.
“The great thing about pilates is they work on flexibility as well are core strength. When you go to a smaller class, you get the proper attention. It works smaller muscles as well as bigger
muscle groups, so it’s not just about your quads or glutes.”
Emma emphasised her studio isn't just focused on appearances, but overall health. The e purpose of a class isn't to build a six pack to show off on Instagram, but is also believed to help joint pain and improve posture.
“Our system is not just based around aesthetics, but to build your core and ease back pain from sitting at your desk all day and from stress,” Emma said. “As soon as your shoulders start going forward, you can’t engage your core. I always tell my clients ‘Imagine there’s a string tied to your bellybutton, towards your spine and chest.
"It’s not fast, fast, fast – it’s very much about slow, controlled movements, it’s a constant engagement of your core and thinking about your muscles.
“Working your muscles to fatigue and forcing them to grow, but not bulk. You also burn loads of calories because there’s a cardio element to it and because it’s resistance training, you burn calories after class too.”
Emma said she has noticed a surge in business thanks to social media and is also working to dispel the myth that pilates and yoga are gentle exercises for an “easy” workout day.
“There are so many health benefits to it - resistance training helps stave off osteoporosis, for example,” she explained.
“A lot of women have this opinion that they can go for a walk or a run, but a run can do the opposite when it comes to your bone density. Do something – even if it’s weights, or something at home, it’s so much more important for women to do that.”
There is serious power in political gifting, as 31-year-old designer Sophie Hulme discovered, when Samantha Cameron chose one of her grey leather Albion totes for the First Lady of China, Peng Liyuan. “The response has been bonkers,” she says, laughing, in her studio office in north London, as she explains how being catapulted from the fashion pages to the news resulted in “all kinds of people coming out of the woodwork. It’s incredibly flattering that Samantha Cameron wanted something to represent British design and chose us. It’s an enormous compliment.”
Given Hulme’s pared-back, straightforward aesthetic, it’s easy to see why Cameron would have plumped for one of her pieces. They are pure understated charm – a little like Hulme herself. Hulme launched her line seven years ago, six months out of her fashion design BA at Kingston University. “I never aspired to go into fashion,” she says. “No one in my family had anything to do with it, and I didn’t have any friends in fashion. I never thought I’d be cool enough for all these terrifying fashion people.” She took her first collection to a trade show in Paris and was immediately snapped up by Selfridges. Everything since then, she says, has been done in a “common-sense way, and through trial and error”.
Having won the emerging talent accessories category at the 2012 British Fashion Awards, she now employs 32 people at her studio, a converted toy factory that started out as a flat share for her and three friends. She has since moved the friends out and employees in, as well as converting one side into a living space for herself and her architect boyfriend.
Hulme now has 400 stockists worldwide and, at the end of this month, will launch an online store (which will feature an exclusive capsule collection of grey bags with silver hardware for the first time). This month she opens her first pop-up retail space in Harrods, and next year she will expand into evening bags and jewellery, with shoes, clothing and a permanent store hopefully following on eventually.
Helen David, fashion director at Harrods, believes Hulme’s designs are “effortlessly cool, with no overbearing branding or logos, but are still easily recognisable because of the gold-plated brassware”. Harrods has seen “double-digit growth, which shows no sign of slowing down”, and sales of her charcoal grey bags have “soared in all styles in recent weeks”.
In the light of the four-figure pricetags on some designer bags, Hulme’s bags are relatively affordable (Liyuan’s cost £550). She is not a fan of the It-bag movement: “I was quite tired of the approach whereby the name became more important than the product, and I think that’s the opposite of what we’ve done. I don’t put a logo on any of the bags: I wanted to make beautiful things that were respected as a beautiful object, rather than an 'Oh, it’s the Such-and-Such bag by So-and-So’. Her quirky British wit does show through, though, with the fun character keyrings and pom-pom charms that are designed to hang off the bags. “There’s an element of not wanting to take things too seriously,” she adds. “It’s important to have those things that make you smile when you pick up your bag in the morning. There’s quite a lot of time spent when we’re designing the keyrings, and I say, 'Well, I think that’s hilarious, do you think someone else will?’”
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