Lisa Dengler
Mc kenneth Licon
Steve Frous
Austin Levine
Hannnah P
We’ve already published upwards of 100 Spring ’18 menswear shows here at Vogue, but some of the best moments happen off the catwalk, don’t you think? To get a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes action and see up-close details of this week’s most inspiring collections, you won’t want to miss our backstage coverage here. Dan Roberts is on the ground in Paris to capture the most unforgettable pre-show moments—from the male models’ epic braids at Haider Ackermann to Dries Van Noten’s utility trenches and embroidered shirting. See his latest photos here, and check back this week for more of Roberts’s daily updates.
The German health shoe brand Birkenstock is a bit like kale. It’s neither glamorous, nor exotic--no asparagus, no quinoa--yet it makes people feel good, almost virtuous. Because they know it is good for them.
Last night in Paris this unbelievably venerable German footwear brand (it was founded in 1774) did something rather unexpected: It held what must have been a hugely expensive showcase and party in the temporary showspace of the Tuileries Gardens.
There was a purpose built pavilion, all pine walkways and soothing plant arrangements. There was a non-stop show of 40 models wearing 115 different Birkenstock styles.
Caroline Issa was swanning around Issa-ishly being photographed in one of them. There was lots and lots of healthy and delicious food (although no kale that I observed), lots of less healthy drink, plus picnic tables to consume it on. There was even a selection of Birkenstock’s successful line of cork-foundation, leather upholstered beds (who knew?) to contemplate a post Birkenstock-watching nap on.
So, like, what? Why was Birkenstock trying to stick its practically shod foot in the door of Paris Fashion Week? The company’s hale and hearty CEO Olivier Reichert answered thus: “We have been in the fashion industry for so many years already! Go around and ask every top photographer and stylist, they are all wearing Birkenstock…”
It’s true. Lots of people, whatever their job, wear Birkenstock. But was he trying to add a fashion patina to the brand?
“We are not going into the arena with the big fashion brands,” replied Reichert. “We are just trying to open a space for the people to relax and have a drink. We want to join the family, let them check our new collection. But we are not on the way to push the fashion more--we are ok where we are.”
Birkenstock currently produces 1,800 styles of footwear and is a huge and powerfully successful company. It doesn’t need the fashion world to thrive. Last night’s event however suggests that the kale of footwear has aspirations to a subtle repositioning: still healthy, still virtuous, but with a new undertone of luxuriousness too. More avocado.
Every year hundreds, if not thousands, of cookbooks are released. Beautifully bound, rarely do these tomes truly aim to teach. But now a new book in the tradition of The Joy of Cooking is doing exactly that. Covered on NPR and in The Atlantic, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat spells out Samin Nosrat's theory on the essential elements that every meal takes. Nosrat, a veteran of Chez Panisse, comes to the cookbook scene with her own sterling recommendation. Her former boss Alice Waters once called Nosrat “America’s next great cooking teacher.” And if this publication is any indication, Waters appears to be correct. Below, Nosrat selects three recipes to share with Vogue and explains exactly why she likes each one. Vietnamese Cucumber Salad “I live for cucumbers, and all summer long I live for simple, cold dishes. This sweet-and-tangy recipe is inspired by the cucumber pickles I get at my favorite Vietnamese noodle restaurant. I love making a big batch and serving it along grilled meats, over chilled noodles, and just eating it as an afternoon snack.”
What makes for a Vogue wedding? Stylish and original, the wonderfully true answer is that there is no specific set of criteria. Throughout the years, we’ve seen snow-covered winter weddings, destination extravaganzas, and just about everything else in between. And as memorable as a blow-out bash can be (think #NellAndTeddy circa 2014), there is something undeniably sincere about a low-key wedding.
Intimate and sweet, these nuptials focused on the most important parts of two people’s special day—surrounding yourselves with those you love. Above, a roundup of a few of our favorites. From Brooklyn to the Bahamas and back again, not a single one compromised on a unique sense of flair. Jewelry designer Pamela Love got married in Montauk—while wearing a then-not-yet-trendy flower crown.
Wildflowers could be seen everywhere as the bride-to-be walked up the aisle. Audrey Gelman celebrated her union in a Detroit industrial space, where a DIY-esque flower wall stole the photogenic show. As the night continued on, she and her J. Crew–clad bridesmaids partied on and on. And more recently, Corey Tenold captured the pure happiness and sartorial swag of a New York City city-hall wedding. As the song goes, love is all you need.
Loewe has a demonstrated understanding of homes. Earlier this year, creative director Jonathan Anderson debuted his most craft-oriented collection of design objects yet, and now, the brand has immersed its Spring 2018 menswear collection in a famously beautiful house. Salvador Dalí lived in Cadaqués, Catalonia until 1982. The stucco structure, which alternates between organically shaped and highly linear exteriors, constantly evolved during the 40-plus years that Dalí called it home. The artist himself referred to the residence as being “like a real biological structure. . . Each new pulse in our life had its own new cell, its room.” It’s not particularly surprising then that the house, and its location on Portlligat Bay, was a frequent inspiration for his curvilinear, and surreal, art. In 1930, Dalí purchased the once-small hut, which had traditionally been used as a fisherman’s cabin. He used the advance money from a painting’s sale in order to make the purchase. Flash forward to 1932, and Dalí had begun to remodel an adjacent cabin that he had subsequently bought. Not long after, Dalí was forced to relocate to the United States due to the Spanish Civil War. Upon his return, he spent the better part of the 1950s growing his home. His work however didn’t stop there—it was not until the 1960s and ’70s that the residence’s summer dining room and swimming pool were ultimately added. Today, the home is a museum—and therefore able to provide fertile inspiration for creators like Jonathan Anderson. Loewe’s Spring 2018 menswear collection was shot at the house, and the brand’s accompanying seasonal publication was photographed there as well. The digital version of this product, as well as a correlating video, are currently available for download on iTunes. This however wasn’t quite enough to complete Anderson’s vision. For the brand’s Spring presentation earlier today, Loewe transformed its Saint-Sulpice atelier and showroom into a space deeply inspired by Casa Portlligat. Terra-cotta tiles met watery blue varieties separated only by a thin, white, strip. Modern, pool hall–worthy racks were used to display the clothes, while potted plants perched up above. Salvatore Dalí once said of his residence, “Portlligat is the place of production, the ideal place for my work. Everything fits to make it so: Time goes more slowly and each hour has its proper dimension. There is a geological peacefulness: It is a unique planetary case.” It seems that with Loewe, this is still the case. Below, a look around the Saint-Sulpice showroom from earlier today.
Late on a Sunday night in June, Chromat designer Becca McCharen-Tran has just kicked off her shoes after a party thrown by her wife, Christine, an event producer and cofounder of the social and creative collective Witches of Bushwick. Over the phone from their Brooklyn flat, the couple delights in the fact that they have little to do between partying and going to bed: just a splash of some water and makeup remover before brushing their teeth. The almost-water-only approach to cleansing is one of two crossovers the couple shares when it comes to beauty. From ultimate minimalism, as seen on Christine, who is barefaced and has sported a buzz cut since shortly after their wedding last June—“I was like, okay, my family has the photos they need. Now I’m going to shave my head,” she says—to full-fledged maximalism, belonging to Becca. Of her bold hair and makeup choices, she says, “They’re so different, all the time.” The other concession is eyeliner. “It makes me feel like I’m ready to see the world,” says Christine of the black MAC Cosmetics gel liner she uses daily, courtesy of Becca, who, in addition to having a longstanding relationship with the beauty brand for her runway shows, just collaborated on her first capsule collection with the company. It’s ultra-pigmented and fearless, much like her fashion collections. Christine only has one other daily beauty ritual—a splash of Yves Saint Laurent’s sweet, floral Mon Paris—which acts as a sugary finish to an otherwise strictly bare regimen. The scent came about after Becca took a perfume class on how to decode notes during her 2015 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund residency. “I made Christine do a blind smell test of perfumes, and this is what she picked,” says Becca of the delicate pink bottle wrapped with a bow. “It’s so funny because it’s so femme,” adds Christine. “We joke that this is my inner true self.” Though Becca would “never wear a scent that sweet,” she says, the designer doesn’t shy away from the color pink. Her hair was a trademark shade of bubblegum for years before she let her naturally dark roots grow in. “It’s been a big change for me,” says Becca. “I hadn’t seen my roots in, like, 10 years.” For the color chameleon who has dipped her lengths in almost every shade since she was 18 years old—this month, they’re blue—beauty is a creative zone to discover new things about herself. Even her signature cat eye, often created with that same MAC gel liner, knows no bounds: It comes in diminutive flicks, shapes, and graphics, which are sometimes bold and filled-in, sometimes thin and empty. No color is off-limits, no glitter too bold, but perhaps even more impressive is that Becca typically needs only five minutes to put it on. “I’ve got it down to a science.” Admittedly, Becca may linger in front of the mirror for up to 30 minutes—when the occasion calls for a more amped-up look, that is. Not that Christine minds: “I love that Becca’s experiments [with beauty] show the evolution of her personality,” she says. “I can link her makeup looks to memories—they’re as nostalgic as scents.” The admiration is mutual. “I love that Christine is so confident and fully herself,” says Becca of her wife’s light alterations that allow for appreciation of tiny beauty marks around her eyes. “They’re really cute and special.”
Sofia Coppola’s new film, The Beguiled, has an impressive A-list cast that includes Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, and Colin Farrell. But at last night’s New York premiere, fashion was the unspoken star. Marc Jacobs hosted the screening, which was held at the downtown cinema du jour Metrograph, and he arrived on the arm of Coppola, who dazzled red carpet photographers in a black sequined party dress by the designer. Coppola received best director at the Cannes Film Festival weeks prior and upon arrival embraced Dunst, who seemed to be channeling the film’s Southern Gothic undertones in a prim Gucci frock buttoned up to the neck and down the bracelet sleeves. “It kind of looks like a country-western dress,” Dunst joked, before noting that the corsets in the film helped her get into character. “Edwina is very tightly wound—and so were they,” she said with a laugh. While both women took to darkly romantic hues at the premiere, Coppola told reporters that while she was working on Marie Antoinette, Jacobs was designing a collection based on macaron colors, and she found inspiration in the candy-coated palette of the clothes. “Just knowing him is inspiring,” gushed Coppola. After the screening, guests like Amanda Peet, Huma Abedin, and Zosia Mamet made their way upstairs to join Jacobs, Coppola, and the cast for the after-party. All enjoyed passed bites such as apple pie and mushrooms (which cleverly spoke to elements in the film) paired with Coppola’s own brand of Sofia Brut Rosé and Chardonnay, naturally.
With disruption no longer a mere media catchphrase but, rather, a daily occurrence in our lives, it was inevitable that the fall 2017 collections we saw earlier this year would do some shaking up of their own. Designers aren’t immune to the world we’re all experiencing, and they’ve embraced the positive in all of this—forget the rules, find your own voice, fight to be heard—with ever-greater inclusivity and diversity. Nowhere is this more evident than in their clothes, which career with a delightful abandon from glittery frippery to feathery fancy to fake-it-till-you-make-it furriness. Really, there’s only one message from fashion right now: Free your mind—and let your wardrobe follow.
It began with a jacket from the Plutonian Tears collection for Spring 2017. Raffaella Hanley, the lady behind the crafty New York label Lou Dallas, never once designed anything for a bride. The women she makes clothes for are slightly more concerned with dressing like chic magpies and misfits, rather than playing the traditional, dare we say cookie-cutter, part for their nuptials. Plutonian Tears doesn’t exactly give off a “to have and to hold” vibe. So it was an exciting and challenging prospect when Hanley’s friend Esther Sibiude, who is a contemporary artist, called on her to create a unique wedding ensemble for the big day this past March. After the bride-to-be explained to the designer that she wanted something like one of the jackets from the Spring ’17 collection, Hanley started thinking creatively about how to make such a lo-fi look fit for a bride.
“I’d never really thought about what my wedding outfit should look like,” Sibiude explains. “I am an artist and I consider marriage to be something conventional, but on the other hand I am a romantic.” She adds, “I wanted something chic and sexy to wear as I entered into adulthood. I knew it had to be unique, inventive, and powerful, like a good piece of art.” Hanley took Sibiude at the very start of the process to a fabric shop in midtown Manhattan where they found beautiful ivory silk and an embroidered mesh material that would become the cropped shirt layered underneath the jacket. “The idea of a suit came to my mind and seemed empowering in a feminist way,” Sibiude says. “I wanted to feel strong and not just pretty on that particular day.”
“I think a wedding look should be all about the bride’s fantasy,” Hanley notes. “Hopefully their fantasy is romantic, glamorous, sexy, and one that sweeps the groom off his feet.” As the two friends collaborated and constructed together, Sibiude certainly felt as if she was living in a fantastical moment: “I would leave my studio in Greenpoint and turn into a very fine sculpture myself—Raffaella would measure me, wrap me, pin me, and see things that I couldn’t see. It was a beautiful experience.” The resulting wedding suit was even more beautiful, and the groom, artist Jett Strauss, was definitely impressed. “Jett was happily surprised when he first saw me,” Sibiude says. “We never really told him it was in preparation, and because everything was pretty spontaneous, he didn’t expect such an amazing look.”
Hanley says that she looked to Chanel’s Spring 2010 Couture collection and Comme des Garçons’s Spring 2012 collection, as well as old Christian Lacroix for reference. Ultimately, however, the ruffle-sleeved lace-up jacket, high-waist silk trousers, and sheer cropped blouse were as refreshingly unusual as a bridal look can be. “It’s funny, I’d never really paid much attention to wedding looks or thought about making them,” Hanley adds. “But then, I totally fell in love with the experience.” Above, take a closer look at Esther Sibiude’s custom Lou Dallas wedding suit.
When Louis Brunet and Olivier Plusquellec moved from France to the United States, they were dismayed to find that the flower selection was not exactly up to Parisian snuff. In particular, Burnet and Plusquellec were struck by the lack of quality roses readily available for purchase in New York City. Flash forward to the present day, and Brunet and Plusquellec have their own New York City–based flower delivery business. Ode à la Rose is a chic alternative to your general run-of-the-mill 1-800 service, but with a bit of a twist. All of their bouquets are made using the traditional French method of creating a hand-tied bouquet. Confused? So were we. Below, Burnet and Plusquellec detail exactly how the French make flower arrangements.
Step 1: Selection
There is no need for more than three varieties of flowers in a bouquet. The color palette should feel tonal, nonchalant, and not too busy. So choose flowers that go together, and don’t forget foliage, as it complements flowers nicely. Beware of using too much greenery, however; you don’t want to make an arrangement of weeds.
Step 2: Preparation
Prune the leaves off your flowers with your hands or with a swift but firm slice of the knife. If you’ve picked fresh flowers, they will still have their guard petals. These are the hardy outer petals that keep the flowers safe from the elements. You can remove the guard petals if you prefer a more polished look.
Step 3: Creation
The French style of creating a bouquet is a classic technique requiring minimal fuss. The main point is that it’s all in the wrist. Start by holding the first three or four flowers between your thumb and index finger, and spin! Add flowers to your liking, and until balance is achieved on each side. The trick to a successful circular bouquet is adding your flowers at the same angle. This will lead to a beautiful twist of stems. Use your base flowers first, sprinkling in greenery here and there, and repeat until the bouquet is balanced.
Step 4: Hand-Tying
Starting from the back, wrap your ribbon or raffia around the arrangement, tightly, several times. Once bound, make one small knot and clip the strand short. With fresh flowers, you’ll want to give them room to bloom, so make your tie low.
Step 5: Finishing Touches
The length at which you cut your arrangement depends on its final destination. Will it be on display in a highball vase? Will it be presented to your loved one and carried throughout the day? Use small shears to ensure an even cut that’s to your taste (avoid scissors, as they’ll ruin the stems). Finally, prune any excess petals as needed.