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Batlak & Selvig – Spring/Summer 2011

Norwegian design duo Admir Batlak and Charlie Selvig revealed their spring/summer collection in Oslo on the 18th of August during Oslo Fashion Week. Instead of showing the collection at the main Oslo Fashion Week venue, they showed the collection at the contemporary art venue Galleri Riis – as usual.

Batlak & Selvig - Spring/Summer 2011

Instead of having a regular fashion show with models walking down the catwalk, they opted for a fashion presentation. The guests were escorted into the venue in small groups. Inside the gallery the collection was displayed on mannequins. The atmosphere was more that of a vernissage than a fashion show. No models and no celebrities on the front row to steal the limelight – all focus was on the clothes. Blurring the line between fashion and art is not something which is new to the duo, as made evident by their previous work – for instance their Mondrian-inspired collection of cocktail dress a couple of years back.

Batlak & Selvig - Spring/Summer 2011

The collection consisted of classic 60’s style dresses. Simple and clean silhouettes and above-the-knee hemlines.

Batlak & Selvig - Spring/Summer 2011

Admir earned his graduate degree in Fashion Design from the Istituto Artistico dell’Abbigliamento Marangoni in Milan, while Charlie did her degree at Central Saint Martins in London. As students they did their internships at Proenza Schouler and Hussein Chalayan, and have since also worked as design consultants for Dolce & Gabanna and guest lecturers at the National College of Art in Oslo. Along with Kristian Aadnevik, Peter Dundas and Siv Støldal, the duo are undoubtedly amongst the most interesting contemporary Norwegian designers today.

Batlak & Selvig - Spring/Summer 2011

Photo sources: Stella Pictures

Tags: Batlak & Selvig, Galleri Riis

Hope – Spring/Summer 2011

Hope unveiled their Spring/Summer 2011 collection during Stockholm Fashion Week on the 18th of August. The colours this season are olive, black, white and camel. I especially like their use of leather in the collection. Keywords for the collection: Functional, simplistic, versatile basics.

Hope - Spring/Summer 2011

Also make sure to check out Bryanboy’s post about the show with a video of the final walkthrough.

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Photo source: Stureplan.se

Tags: Hope, Stockholm Fashion Week

Whyred – Spring/Summer 2011

Whyred showed their collection for the 2011 spring/summer season at Liljevalchs Konsthall on the 17th of August, during Stockholm Fashion Week. For this collection, the design team has experimented with lots of different fabric finishes – fabrics with oily, metallic and matte finishes. Fabrics include silks, cupro and viscose. The silhouettes are slim and the colour palette is mostly different shades of grey and white with blue and brown accents.

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Tags: Stockholm Fashion Week, whyred

Peter Jensen – Spring/Summer 2011

Peter Jensen - Spring/Summer 2011

Peter Jensen - Resort 2011

Photosource: Copenhagenfashionweek.com

Tags: Copenhagen Fashion Week, Peter Jensen

Filippa K – Spring/Summer 2011

Fashion week season is well under the way in Scandinavia. Last week Copenhagen played host to the first of the Scandinavian fashion weeks, next up was Stockholm Fashion Week which started on Monday and ended yesterday, and right now Oslo is hosting its fashion week with its last show scheduled for tomorrow night. A lot of collections have been showed at these three fashion weeks, and we’ve decided to highlight a few of our favourites. We will post these reviews in the coming days.

Filippa K - Spring/Summer 2011

The collection we have decided to review first is from the Swedish clothing label Filippa K. The label was founded in 1993 by Swedish designer Filippa Knutson. Over the years Filippa K has become synonymous with simple, sophisticated silhouettes and minimalistic design – a Scandinavian Calvin Klein. Next season’s collection is no different. Simple, plain and wearable basics.

Filippa K - Spring/Summer 2011

The materials used are soft silks, cashmere, jersey and relaxed cottons. While last season’s palette was dominated by muted grays with accents of pastel pink and turquoise, this season’s colour palette is white, light grey and beige with warm orange, yellow and brown accents. The 90’s seems to be the biggest inspiration behind this collection, as indicated both by the colour palette, the silhouettes and design details such as the cargo style pockets on the trousers. The result is a simple and clean look, perfect staple pieces for the spring/summer 2011 wardrobe.

Photo source: Mathias Nordgren/Stureplan.se

Tags: Filippa K, Stockholm Fashion Week

Fashion Windows: Oslo August 2010

I’ve been having some real difficulties lately taking pictures of the fashion windows here in Oslo. Maybe it’s the light, maybe it’s the camera, maybe the photographer is incompetent or perhaps it’s a combination of all three. The window glasses are reflecting a lot of light so it’s difficult to take good pictures. Today’s been really cloudy though so I thought I’d use the opportunity to take a few snaps in my lunch break.

Louis Vuitton in Oslo, August 2010

Spools of golden lace in the windows at Louis Vuitton. The reels double as a table for the merchandise. The golden lace has also been used to embroider “Maison fondée en 1854″ on the back wall of the display chambre. I love the reels, but I feel more could have been done with the display . I’m all for keeping things simple, but I would have loved to see more merchandise on display and perhaps stuff which isn’t monogram (since they have that in the other windows too).

More pictures from Louis Vuitton, Hermès and Hugo Boss after the jump

» Read the full post

Tags: Hermès, Hugo Boss, Louis Vuitton

The September Covers 2010 – Part 1

It’s that time of the year again. Last week the September issues of some of the world’s leading fashion magazines hit the newsstands. The September issue is usually the thickest issue of the year. Since the recession the magazines might perhaps not be the door stoppers they used to be just a few years ago (the September issue of US Vogue in 2007 for instance had 840 pages), but the issues still have a decent amount of pages.

I’ve always been fascinated by how the magazines present the most important issue of the year and have to admit that I do judge the magazine by the cover. For this post I’ve taken a look at the covers of some of the leading British fashion magazines. I will try to do more reviews in a couple of weeks when the French, Italian, American and other international editions of these magazines have launched their September issues.

First magazine up in this review of the September covers is British Vogue, which features Kate Moss on the cover. Kate Phelan has done the styling and the photographer is Patrick Demarchelier. The fact that British Vogue has used Kate on the cover doesn’t really come as a surprise. This is Kate’s 30th British Vogue cover and it’s the 6th time she’s on the cover of their September issue. The issue weighs in at 380 pages. What I really like about the cover is that for once Vogue is going for a full body shot.

Kate Moss on cover of British Vogue, September 2010

More covers from Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, i-D and Vanity Fair after the jump.

» Read the full post

Tags: Cedric Buchet, Emily Blunt, Gisele Bündchen, kate moss, Kate Phelan, Lady Gaga, Matthias Vriens-McGrath, Naomi Campbell, nick knight, Nicola Formichetti, Patrick Demarchelier, Sophia Neophitou-Apostolou

Channeling Charlie

I really love it when stylists make pop culture references in their fashion shoots. It can be a subtle nod to a famous photograph or maybe a full-on remake of an iconic vintage ad. For instance, I really loved this picture of Charlie’s angel Cameron Diaz in the August issue of Harper’s Bazaar (US edition). In the photo, Diaz isn’t channeling Natalie Cook, her character in the Charlie’s Angels movies, but another famous Charlie girl from the 70’s – one of the girls from the iconic “Charlie by Revlon” ads.

Cameron Diaz in a silk crêpe jumpsuit from Chloé

The stylist behind this photograph is Rachel Zoe and the photographer is Terry Richardson. I haven’t seen any new Charlie ads for years, but in the Autumn/Winter 2010-edition of Elle Collections, Revlon has a double spread where they’re running a couple of their vintage ones from the 70’s.

Charlie ads in the a/w 2010 issue of Elle Collections

For more vintage Charlie by Revlon ads, read The Scented Salamander’s excellent post on gender roles and how women are portrayed in these ads compared to ads for other fragrances.

Photo sources: harpesbazaar.com and Elle Collections A/W 2010

Tags: Cameron Diaz, Charlie, Chloe, Rachel Zoe, Terry Richardson

The first 100 posts

Pictures from some of the posts from the past year

Last summer Qing and I met up in London. We had been classmates in university many years ago, but hadn’t seen each other for the past five years. As we were catching up and reminiscing about the old days, we started talking about fashion blogs and how we both wanted to write one. An idea was born and we registered the blog.

Fast forward 12 months and we have reached a milestone, this post is our 100th post! 12 months have passed since we wrote our first entry, but our writing didn’t really take off before December. We still have a long way to go before we’re where we would like to be, but in the past few months especially we’re slowly starting to get there. As I am writing this we have just reached 31,000 hits. Maybe not a high number compared to many other fashion blogs, but still.

Since our first few posts last year, we have added quite a few new regular features we will work on from now on, these include:

• “I love you back” – A lot of fashion blogs, street style ones in particular, always show the front of an outfit. In this feature we show you the “backside” of fashion.
• “Outfits” – like a lot of other fashion bloggers, we like to dress up too. And occasionally we show off our outfits.
• “What’s in your bag?” – The one where we put unsuspecting victims on the spot, grab their bags and go through the contents.
• “Fashion Windows” – A series of posts documenting the fashion windows, displays and visual merchandising of different fashion stores around the world.
• Fashionology – A series for the true fashion geeks, it will have posts about fashion theory and fashion history.

In addition to this we will of course continue to post about other things as well – fashion weeks, different fashion campaigns, models, designers, collections, praises of things we love and rants about things that we don’t.

Cover clash of the titans

Ever gone to a party only to discover that someone else there is wearing the exact same outfit as you? Something of those sorts has happened in the world of fashion glossies recently.

A few days ago The Guardian wrote about how the August editions of arch rivals British Vogue and Elle UK both feature variations of “the same dress” from Miu Miu (it’s not actually the same, just two very similar styles from the same collection). To make matters worse, “the same dress” was also featured on the cover of the July* edition of W magazine.

Several bloggers and newspapers have picked up the story. Today, however, I stumbled upon this blog entry on Stylebrity and guess what dress is featured on the August cover of Elle Sweden…

The August cover of Swedish Elle, featuring Mona Johannesson, photographed by Jimmy Backius

*I think the article in the Guardian says the August issue of W, but it’s actually the July issue.

Photo source: tFS and Fashionising

Tags: ELLE, Eva Mendes, Freja Beha Erichsen, Lily Allen, Mona Johannesson, Vogue, W