If the mountain won't come to...

After getting a few media editors excited about the possibility of Marc Jacobs making an appearance at the opening of his flagship store on Canton Road last night, nobody was more disappointed than me and my friend AV. Yes, us two who were responsible for starting the rumor in the first place. The story we made up was so elaborate even I was convinced. Ha! 

So you can imagine our faces when we were finally told that Marc was safe in NYC, chilling in the hood...

'Hu-whaaaaaaat? We got out of the house for this? No Marc Jacobs?!?!??!?!' 

 Apparently he hates flying. Oh well, looks like we'd have to go to NYC instead.

ADR the GREAT

An apartment just for her clothes and accessories! And what does ADR say to her outfits after wearing them?

'Ciao, never again'

Watch the promotional video for ADR's perfume, The Scent of Anna Dello Russo, where she dances in her apartment accompanied by Kanye's Runaway, wearing a gown designed by Peter Dundas and corset by Roberto Cavalli.

Anna does Asia

Shot by Steven Meisel and styled by none other than Grace Coddington for US Vogue's December 2010 issue, the fashion shoot is supposed to be a modern take on a portrait Cecil Beaton shot for Vogue in 1948.
With the statement 'A new crop of models from China, Japan, and South Korea is redefining traditional concepts of beauty', it features 8 top Asian models of today: Du Juan, Liu Wen, Bonnie Chen, Lily Zhi, Hyoni Kang, So Young Kang, Lee Hyun Yi and Tao Okamoto.

As the fashion story is outside Vogue's 'norm', it has, of course, caused controversy. Yawn.

excerpt from the Telegraph UK:

"Traditional concepts of beauty where, exactly?' asks Disgrasian on The Huffington Post, 'because there are plenty of places in the world where, traditionally speaking, Asian women have long been considered beautiful. Like in, um, Asia, for example?"

Criticism has been fuelled by a feeling that Vogue lumped all the girls into one shoot together rather than giving any of them the importance they suggest in their own editorial, in the form of a bigger story, or even a cover.

"I do sincerely hope that American Vogue will continue to use Asian models, and that this is not some 'flash in the pan trend" comments JP on Models.com. "After all, American Vogue has never featured an Asian model on its cover, and I can't remember the last time I saw a single Asian girl story in the magazine."

Another disgruntled reader whose username is SS concurs: "What a joke. TWO pages? Why isn't there a full-on editorial or a cover?"

Whether or not Anna is intending to feature more Asians in Vogue in the next forseeable future is anybody's guess. In the meantime, stop fucking complaining and just admire these Asian beauties. Fashion is F-I-C-K-L-E and you should all know that by now. In the words of that old wise sage Heidi Klum, 'In fashion, one day you're IN, and the next day you're OUT'

 The Cecil Beaton original featuring models wearing Charles James gowns

Vogue, 1948

Pandemonium [pan-duh-moh-nee-uhm], n. 1. a place of anarchy. 2. wild confusion, commotion, chaos.

The poet John Milton coined Pandemonium as 'the capital of hell' in his poem Paradise Lost. I guess you could say that the 3 major H&M stores in HK were exactly that today- the capital of hell.

My fellow fashion bloggers and I watched from our 'ringside seats' as men and women decimated the Lanvin pour H&M section this morning. There were people tripping over tulle dresses, fighting over embellished t-shirts and buying shoes that were 5 times bigger than their shoe-size! There were people just grabbing stuff off the shelves without even really looking at them...and this made us all wonder.... are they genuine Lanvin lovers? Or just garden variety eBay hawkers?!??!?! 

Oh, well at least there were no stabbings!

I'd never seen anything like it. It was a fashion equivalent of supermarket sweep! A lady asked me if I was going to queue up, and to borrow the words of my friend Johannes, I  replied 'bitch, please....'

In a way, I appreciate collaborations such as this because it gives us a chance to purchase a bit of couture we can't afford otherwise...but at the same time, I would rather save up and buy something that wasn't mass- produced. There'll be a lot of cat-fights come December, the official party season. Can you imagine walking into the annual company Christmas party wearing the same dress as your colleague? Oh, the shame.

from this...

...to this

 ...and everything else in between...

But is he bringing sexy back?

After a six year hiatus, Tom Ford re-emerges with a small and exclusive womenswear collection that evokes his YSL, rather than his more famous Gucci, past. Chic rather than super sexed-up.

A lot has changed over the years, now preferring discretion over excess, Tom Ford debuted his collection 2 months ago in New York in the presence of only 100 guests with Terry Richardson being the only photographer hired to take photos. The photos will be unveiled together with a film of the show, on Tom's website in December. The collection itself won't be available in his stores until early next year. So why the discretion?

“I do not understand everyone’s need to see everything online the day after a show, I don’t think it ultimately serves the customer, which is the whole point of my business—not to serve journalists or the fashion system. To put something out that’s going to be in a store in six months, and to see it on a starlet, ranked in US magazine next week? My customer doesn’t want to wear the same thing she saw on a starlet!” (quote from US Vogue)

Amen.

Bombastisch!

Peep Karl Lagerfeld's Inca -inspired, limited- edition, jewelry collection for Atelier Swarovski F/W 2010- 2011 which was unveiled in KaDeWe in Berlin at the beginning of the month.

Off to The Dome we went

My friends and I attended DFS's 50th Anniversary Party which was held inside a specially built Dome at the old Kai Tak airport on Saturday night alongside a well-dressed crowd including Wyclef Jean and Wyman Wong (who, by the way, was wearing KTZ and a fab pair of Love/Hate-esque gold chain sunglasses which he gladly took off and handed over to me to play with!)

The event wasn't short of drama, starting with Wyclef scaling part of the dome's interior frame to jumpstart the crowd- a douchebag wrote about this later on her blog saying that she and her friend were the ONLY people dancing. Hmmmm, wonder if she and her friend had been dancing in the toilet cubicles because it was rocking where we were standing- or should I say dancing! The po-pos turned up not long after to try and shut the party down, but to no avail! Outside, there were intoxicated ladies tripping over their Louboutins and intoxicated men having imaginary fisticuffs. And then there was me crawling on the floor, dragging my vintage merchandise, looking for champagne....mon dieu...exactly how a party of this scale should be!

The evening ended early- by professional party-goer standards, but it was a great evening nevertheless sending revellers out into the night singing 'fugee la la la..'

photos courtesy of: Avey Cortes and PRQ 

Lanvin for H&M

And HERE it is, the highly anticipated collection by Lanvin for H&M in a film directed by Mike Figgis.

The collection will be unveiled worldwide on the 23rd of November.  Get ready, I'm sure fans will start camping outside the main H&M store in Central a few days early!

Womenswear 

 

Menswear

(images from Vogue UK)