#suzy menkes

[fashionbooksmilano]

The Windsor Style

Suzy Menkes

Grafton Books, London 1987, 224 pages, 22,5x28,5cm, ISBN 9780246132123

euro 90,00

email if you want to buy [email protected]

Looks at the postwar life of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in their Paris mansion and describes their jewels, clothing, and household furnishings

Whether you like them or not, you have to admit that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor had amazing personal style that extended from their wardrobes to their homes.  The stories about their dinner parties make you realize that no one lives as elegantly today except perhaps Mr. Valentino and some European royalty.  It was a different time when table linens were embroidered to match each separate set of china.  This is a look at their last home at 4 route du Champ d’Entraînement in the Bois de Boulogne.  The Windsors took over the house from General de Gaulle in 1953 and it was decorated with the help of Stephane Boudin.  After the death of the Duchess much of their French furniture was donated to Versailles and Mohammad al-Fayad bought and restored the house which had seen better days.

29/10/23

#Windsor Style #Suzy Menkes #Duke & Duchess Windsor #Paris mansion #jewels #clothing #household furnishing #wardrobes #designbooksmilano #fashion books #fashionbooksmlano

[jacquesdemys]

no Karl, I will singlehandedly force people to remember Chloe on tumblr

#karl lagerfeld #suzy menkes #vintage fashion #chanel #chloe #fendi

[milksockets]

undercover: jun takahashi - jun takahashi + suzy menkes (2016)

#my scan #jun takahashi

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

Kate is the Jewel in the Crown

Anna Wintour was asked for the name of a fashion role model and she chose Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, who is "always impeccably dressed."

Modest is Hottest

Classy

Or...

Tacky, Trashy and Ostentatious

Surely this was an April Fool's interview. Why else would this woman think people should value her fashion opinions?

Diana was young and chose her engagement ring solely based on size. She said the jeweler brought her a tray of rings and she simply chose the ring with the largest stone. Today Catherine wears that same ring and several other pieces of jewelry not just for the beauty but also for the sentiments. She's an artist and a historian who understands her role as a princess in a family legacy and the value of monarchy in a modern society.

#princess catherine #catherine princess of wales #HRH Princess of Wales #Modest is Hottest #anna wintour #catherine duchess of cambridge #duchess of cambridge #vogue #april fools #classy life

[embroideryobsession]

Rahul Mishra: Cosmos

SPRING-SUMMER 2023 PARIS - Haute Couture Backstage

(via Rahul Mishra)

Rahul Mishra presents the Couture spring summer 2023 collection in Paris.

Rahul Mishra’s Cosmos is a vision of physical reality founded in the utmost truth of our being—originating from the Sanskrit statement ‘Aham Brahmasmi’ which informs, ‘I am the cosmos’. It tries to understand if the world that surrounds us may be a construction of stimulations interpreted by the human brain, and if the universe within us may be a replication of the physical reality we are a minuscule part of. With this collection, we break the linearity of comprehension with inclusion of fantasy.

Realised in two and three dimensional hand embroidery complemented by elements made in hand casted recycled brass that are gold plated and encrusted with Swarovski crystals, this collection becomes our most exuberant effort at surface development. Hand crafted across villages of India, each separate generates employment for over three thousand human hours on an average. Articulated from age-old traditional Indian craft techniques, the application speaks to a global couture consumer of today. Striving to be ‘art’, while remaining ‘fashion’ the collection remains independent of trends and aspires to retain the whimsy of ‘classic’.

Each element from our ‘Cosmos’ is proudly made in India, with love, for the world.

About Rahul Mishra Rahul Mishra, the first Indian designer to showcase at the Paris Haute Couture Week champions slow fashion with traditional Indian crafts. His eponymous label with two flagship stores in India and a thriving national and international distribution channel finds its genesis in the ideas of sustainability that present fashion as a tool to create participation and empower the local craft community of India.

The brand’s purpose defines the process. The achingly slowed down process of hand-weaving and hand embroidery allows to build sustainable livelihoods for more than 1000 artisans. Fashion critic and former International Fashion Editor of Vogue, Suzy Menkes, an avid follower of the brand’s work, regards Rahul as a “national treasure” while the late Franca Sozzani has praised him as “successfully highlighting the best and most peculiar features of his homeland.”

The design house that works on the philosophy of the 3 E’s – Environment, Employment, and Empowerment, aims to look at luxury from the lens of participation and not just consumption.

(via rain-mag.com)

#rahul mishra #haute couture #fashion week #backstage #details #embroidery #text #ilovethis #Handmade Embroidery

[princessmadafu]

Oh Suzy...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-12336851/She-doesnt-Camillas-joy-Princess-Wales-labelled-disappointment-approach-jewellery-former-Vogue-editor-awarded-OBE-late-Queen.html

I have no idea who this ex-Voguey Suzy Menkes person is but she's clearly up her own bottom.

The Princess of Wales dresses appropriately for the occasion and recognises that many families struggle, so she doesn't flaunt The Firm's family wealth and privilege. For day wear, I like to see her showcasing the lesser known, up-and-coming British designers, and I love it when she wears something cheap and cheerful - like a £5 pair of High Street Woolworths Walmart Argos Catalogue earrings that a small child could afford, with kiddie-level pocket money, say for mummy's birthday or for Mother's Day.

https://people.com/royals/kate-middleton-wears-6-dollar-earrings-scarborough/

Evening wear, when she has to get glammed up for an opening night or a state banquet, she looks fabulous in a tiara and select pieces from the royal vaults. Thing is, she always has class, and understands when to bling or not to bling.

I think Sophie is good at this too, and Anne - who, let's face it, would always rather be in a moth-eaten gansey mucking out the horses yet still puts in all the hard work for charities and being pleasant to people she'd rather pepper with two barrels of buckshot up the wossname.

Suzy Menkes strikes me a little bit envious.

So Suzy, here's my fashion advice: Green is a not a good colour for you.

[practicalmagicintuitions]

As MM is out of the royal picture, now time to bash Catherine again. Because she is the one who is there. Because she is the one who hasn’t run away. Because she is the one who’s strength is silence and stupid people think this is weakness and they can talk about her.

#catherine princess of wales #princess of wales #kate middleton #british royal jewels #british royal family

[royal-confessions]

“Imagine being mad at a woman wearing affordable jewellery, that Suzy Menkes is ridiculous. I hope Kate continues to wear whatever makes her happy.” - Submitted by Anonymous

#kate middleton #catherine princess of wales

[skippyv20]

And if she was wearing all the fancy jewels…..she would get pounded for that….for being insensitive!!!!

[theoriginalsupermodels]

Perry Ellis - Spring 1993 RTW

Fun Fact: Marc Jacobs was fired from Perry Ellis after this collection. British journalist Suzy Menkes wrote, “Grunge is ghastly.” Except it wasn’t and this collection was iconic in its representation of the fashion of the time.

#fashion #fashion show #perry ellis #spring 1993 rtw #1933 #pespring1993rtw #christy turlington #marc jacobs #supermodel #original supermodels #supermodels #rtw #90s style #90s #90s fashion #runway #runway show #model #models #haute couture #couture #suzy menkes

[infinitycutter]

Fashion's Poet of Black : YAMAMOTO

by Suzy Menkes, for the New York Times (2000)

For the first time in recent fashion memory, black — essential, existential black — is no longer the ultimate symbol of cool. Black has dominated designer dressing, just as it has clad the entire fashion profession, since the wave of Japanese style swept over fashion in the early 1980s.

But now color has burst into the autumn clothes. Bright hues and subtle patterns are challenging dark and monochrome — and nowhere more so than from the designers for whom black was once the only fashion creed.

Yohji Yamamoto has built a career on proving that black — aggressive, rebellious, somber, romantic or seductive — is beautiful. He, more than most designers, is the poet of black, the director of fashion's film noir. In fact, a celluloid version of his favorite men in black was shown Saturday at the Venice film festival, where Yamamoto designed the costumes (not to mention the loud jewelry) for "Brother," a new movie by Takeshi Kitano about the yakuza, Japanese gangsters.

What is the lure of black that Yamamoto has been addicted to it since he first graduated from fashion college in Tokyo in 1969?

"Why black?" says Yamamoto, sitting in his Paris studio, black beard and black hair above a dense black honeycomb sweater, mat-black pants and black sneakers flashed with scarlet.

"Black is modest and arrogant at the same time," he says. "Black is lazy and easy — but mysterious. It means that many things go together, yet it takes different aspects in many fabrics. You need black to have a silhouette. Black can swallow light, or make things look sharp. But above all black says this: 'I don't bother you — don't bother me!"'

All this is said with a merry smile that belies Yamamoto's reputation as a designer of clothes for earnest intellectuals. Recent collections have shown rather a whimsical sense of humor: the Inuit-inspired autumn line with its russet paisleys and furry hoods, and the 1998 "wedding" show, in which a bridal "striptease" took models from inflated Victorian crinolines to slim-line dresses and pants.

For men, the art-director image of black suit with truncated proportions, shown on brawny-to-scrawny guys, has also been replaced by a more macho, even rock-star look. (As recreation, Yamamoto plays guitar or harmonica with a group called Suicide City.)

Yamamoto cut his fashion teeth in his widowed mother's dressmaking business, but rebelled at the clients' arriving with magazine styles to copy.

"At the very beginning, I just wanted women in men's style," he says. "Typically Japanese women were wearing imported and very feminine things and I didn't like it. I jumped on the idea of designing coats for women. It meant something for me — the idea of a coat guarding a home, hiding the woman's body. Maybe I liked imagining what is inside."

When an avant-garde buyer gave Yamamoto his first corner in a store, he was faced with what he calls elliptically "very strong competition" and "the start of my Olympic games." He was referring to the designs of Rei Kawakubo, his long-term partner and fashion picador under her label Comme des Garcons. Together — yet with entirely separate aesthetics — they created dark shrouds, asymmetrically cut in fluid, indeterminate shapes, and sheltering sweaters that clothed the acolytes of the all-black cult.

Of course, Japanese designers did not introduce black to 20th-century fashion, as witness the Parisian elegance of Coco Chanel's little black dress or Yves Saint Laurent's tuxedo, and rebellious style from Beatniks through Marlon Brando. But there was an abstraction, a modernism and a lack of visual definition in the work of fashion's avant garde that seemed to be layered in meaning, in the spirit of Mark Rothko's "dark" paintings.

Yamamoto, born in 1943, describes a "lost" postwar generation, educated to look to America or Europe and ignore Japanese tradition. So when his experiments in pushing the boundaries of shape and proportion were hailed as "Japanese" style, he was baffled.

Yamamoto sees his original look emerging from punk. His first collection was presented in Tokyo in 1977 and in Paris in 1981 when the "Japanese" (including Issey Miyake and Kenzo Takada, who were five years his senior) seemed diametrically opposed to everything that French fashion stood for: its well-defined cut and silhouette, its familiar fabrics, its conception of female allure and coquetry. Even 15 years later, when Carolyn Bessette Kennedy favored Yamamoto's designs in the mid-1990s, her choice of flat-plane, dark clothes to frame her good looks still seemed revolutionary.

The French electronic musician Jean-Michel Jarre once defined Yamamoto's style like this: "His work is totally different from anything else. I like the quasi-religious approach he has to fashion. For me, a woman in Yohji is like a nymphomaniac nun. His clothes are at once sensual and very ritualistic."

That phrases captures the eroticism lurking under the skillful tailoring of a purist exterior. In his genuine affection for women, Yamamoto stands apart in a fashion world where male designers tend either to idolize or to dislike the female sex. He admits that "my life is thinking about women."

"First my mother — last my daughter," he says. "And in between are all the secret ones."

Mother, daughter and son (who has brought him a granddaughter) all work in the business: His mother is the revered directrice; his daughter was launched in March, after three years as pattern cutter, as designer of the ready-to-wear line called Y's bis Limi. The proud father claims, "She'll be strong — she'll be bigger than me."

Yamamoto's career reached its zenith with the 1998 "wedding" collection. It confirmed the new, romantic path he had taken as he shifted register from masculine to feminine. The catalyst was his study of haute couture. He pored over the neo-Edwardian gowns of the American designer Charles James at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in the summer of 1999, when he was in New York to pick up an American Fashion Award. In the jigsaw of pattern pieces he uncovered "another designer's process."

The museum has now asked him to curate a fashion exhibition from its archives. It will open in autumn 2001 and thus commemorate the anniversary of 20 years showing in Paris, although Yamamoto says he is thinking not of his past but of "tomorrow and the day after tomorrow." At 56, he thinks vaguely of retiring and of fulfilling his ambition to write. He worries that others might think, "Yohji, you have sung your song already."

A recent Yamamoto signature has been the swoop of a back, from the geisha-esque curve of the nape through the base of the spine to the neo-Victorian bustle.

"This is my fetish idea for a woman's body," he says. "I like the back curve line of women. I am always watching the silhouette in the streets. The rib cage and the hip is very important for me. The image represents the back of a woman. I'm always following her. Don't go! Don't leave me!"

Don't count on Yamamoto, or his women, turning their backs on black.

#yohji yamamoto #long post

[fashionbooksmilano]

Le Style Windsor

Suzy Menkes

Chêne, Paris 1987, 224 pages, 22,5x28,5cm, reliure pleine toile éditeur, titre doré sur le dos, jaquette illustrée en couleur, ISBN 2851085344

Préface - 1. Art de vivre - 2. Distractions - 3. Les Windsor et la mode - 4. Objets de désir - Epilogue : La dispersion - Le livre de cuisine de la duchesse

euro 90,00

email if you want to buy [email protected]

Le Style Windsor est le premier ouvrage qui traite de la vie menée après la guerre par le duc et la duchesse dans leur hotel particulier de Paris. Là, l'ancien roi s'adonnait aux plaisirs du jardinage dans son jardin anglais aux mille fleurs. L'auteur nous trasporte également sur la Cote d'Azur dans une somptueuse villa nous suivons le duc et la duchesse dans un périple qui nous conduit entre autres à New York et à Palm Beach. 

La vie du duc et de la duchesse de Windsor, la décoration fastueuse de leurs maisons, leurs grandes soirées, les modes vestimentaires et culinaires qu'ils ont lancées et les objets de leurs collections.

#Style Windsor #Windsor Style #Paris #Cote d'Azur #New York #Palm Beach #Suzy Menkes #fashion books #fashionbooksmilano

[jacquesdemys]

Back with another list. Top moments from the Yves Saint Laurent fall/winter 1987 show.

1) the horrible low angle this video was shot from

2) Sonia Rykiel looking enchanted

3) Suzy Menkes looking bored as fuck

4) stone-faced Catherine Deneuve and Paloma Picasso

5) the rich bitch marking all the outfits she wants with her gold pen

6) Claude Montana looking stoned as fuck while “Sign O’ the Times” by Prince plays in the background 

7) these coats

8) the audience LOSING THEIR MINDS over these dresses

9) this dress

10) the standing ovation was kind of cute

11) the bride’s hat almost hitting the other models

12) the photographer who touched the dress!!!

[milksockets]

undercover: jun takahashi - jun takahashi + suzy menkes (2016)

#my scan #jun takahashi

[70s80sandbeyond]

Suzy Menkes is a British journalist and fashion critic. Formerly the fashion editor for the International Herald Tribune, Menkes also served as editor, Vogue International, for 25 international editions of Vogue online until October 2020.

[dresswithdan]

“Cadillac” bag, John Galliano for Christian Dior, Spring/Summer 2001 For S/S01, Galliano ripped Dior apart. He dedicated his show to “Trailer Trash”, opening with a soundtrack of Jerry Springer audience chants and closing with a Hole-worthy parade of ravaged beauty-queens in sashes anointing them with titles named after Dior fragrances. It was a mark of his absolute confidence that Galliano could propose something so audacious for Dior – in fact, two days later, he even went to far as to base his own-label collection on this Dior show, opening with same outfits and then playing Britney Spears’ “Oops I Did it Again” before remixing it into his own label. "I have been inspired by Picasso and paintings like Guernica that happened because of a historical event,” he told Suzy Menkes. “So I am going to reconstruct my Dior show of 48 hours ago through Picasso's eyes." Yikes. His Dior Cadillac handbag was an audacious and provocative reworking of a womens’ accessory, complete with polished patent-leather “chassis” and silver door-handly, as if wrenched off a wrecked car. Even the shoulder-strap was attached to the bag via a mini steering-wheel embossed with “CD”. Those are the details I’m talking about, that make Galliano’s world quite so magical. There’s God in every one of them.