MANILA, Philippines - With Fashion Week having just wrapped up in all major cities, everything — but everything — is all about the fall/winter collections, which is great, but unless you’re some fancy-pants princess from the Middle East, you’re not getting your hands on any of it anytime soon. So let’s focus on the spring/summer 2014 collections, which will all help cheer us all up, especially with this oppressive heat.
For the current season, designers had a wide range of inspiration from jetsetters in St. Tropez to Parisian graffiti, by way of Hungarian artist Brassaï — but they all had one thing in common: everything was so much fun to look at! Now, you’ve probably heard of this age-old stylist’s trick: To transition from one season to another without having to snap your credit card in half, invest in new accessories. Carine Roitfeld totally told me that in this random interview I read somewhere a couple of years ago and something tells me that she knows what she’s talking about.
We selected four trends from the spring/summer 2014 shows in New York, Paris and Milan and paired them with similarly inspired accessories that just hit stores and are totally available to you today, and not half a year from now. Or as Hannah Horvath would say, “Might as well be a million years!†Patience, dear Millennials.
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Rene Caovilla, Rebecca Minkoff, Sergio Rossi and Ivanka Trump are all available at Rustan's Department Store.
Cultural appropriation
Damn, Africa. What happened? (FYI, that was a Mean Girls reference, and not a racist comment.) Seriously, though. African culture appeared to have a major influence on the collections of Valentino, Givenchy and Alexander McQueen. With cranial adornments, ranging from dainty headbands to full-on metal headgear (no offensively misappropriated headdresses in sight), along with beautifully woven fabrics and safari-ready footwear, Earth’s second-largest continent is having a major moment. I mean, dude, just look at Malaika Firth, who is everywhere now. What’s that? She’s from Michigan?
Maria Grazia Chiuri, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Sarah Burton and Riccardo Tisci were all clearly dreaming of Africa, the women stomping the runways at Michael Kors, Burberry Prorsum and Tommy Hilfiger were too busy planning their outfits. Maybe they even got around to booking their flights. While Michael Kors is all about dressing wealthy jetsetters, and Tommy Hilfiger created the wardrobe for freshly-scrubbed California girls, Christopher Bailey gave us dreamy coats at Burberry that make us hope that maybe the polar vortex will hit Manila. Nab the frequent flier look with roomy totes with bright hues, security-check friendly sandals and cute sneakers for days when you “accidentally†spend all your cab money.
This season, several designers, like Phoebe Philo, Miuccia Prada and Karl Lagerfeld, were inspired by art. The bold, painterly strokes at Céline were inspired by Brassaï’s photographs of Parisian graffiti, while Prada featured what appeared to mural-like portraits on dresses. Chanel, of course, completely did away with subtlety and put up an art exhibit at the Grand Palais, while blasting Jay-Z’s Picasso Baby. Of course, fashion x art is still a trend that may be teetering towards its expiration date, so no one can fault you for just wanting a shoe so intricately designed and crafted, it’s basically art.
Fashion isn’t quite done with the whole midi-skirt trend, so Raf Simons, Christopher Kane and Roksanda Illincic were all about full skirts with conservative hemlines. So far, we’ve pretty much loved everything that Raf Simons has done at Dior, especially when it comes to his use of color, which really livens up the ladylike silhouettes that he’s been leaning towards. The same totally goes for Illincic, whose collection was made all the more summery by her fun use of color blocking. The same goes for your accessories — by all means, go for a conservative pump, but stick to bright hues, rather than limiting yourself to staid tones.