Fall 2011

Couture shows are my favourite thing, seeing as they're pretty much an excuse for designers to do whatever they want.


I only realised really recently that Marchesa doesn't do couture shows, which I wasn't expecting, but then again, they do fall into a sort of category (BEAUTIFUL GOWNS) which I guess doesn't need a couture collection. They do experiment a fair amount in their RTW shows however:

STUNNING (Fall 11 RTW)

Elie Saab also falls into the BEAUTIFUL GOWNS category, but he does do couture shows. This is my favourite look from his Fall 11 Couture collection:

So beautiful I might actually die

But there are a ton of fantastic looks in there. Saab looks great on the red carpet, and Emma Watson wore one of these dresses for the last Harry Potter ever:

 
There's so much lace and white this season! I think the royal wedding (fever) is still having an influence. Check out this from the Alexander McQueen Resort 2012 (oops) collection:

lace x white 4eva

This from McQueen 2011 RTW:

 

looking at this makes me hungry and i dont know why

And just Givenchy's 2011 couture is an amazingly beautiful collection:

And I'll throw in one more from Giambattista Valli just to show that everyone's doing it:

So basically, you can see that white and lace and texture and sheers (weep) are everywhere.

In closing, I'd like to mention the Jean Paul Gaultier show for this look alone:

i just what

Beard + corset + flowy cape/wings? Clearly onto a winner.

I want to talk about this season.

And by this season, I mean Autumn/Winter 2011 [Southern Hemisphere] (totally not an official categorisation).

My favourite thing so far is the VELVET. There's a lot of it around in this season's colours - burgundy and navy and black as the most common (is anyone else reminded of school uniforms, or is that just me?). I bought literally the best dress ever from Lippy:

And I LOVE IT. Even if it is incredibly short and not quite appropriate for work. By the way, yes that is another velvet dress (black) on the hook next to me that I was already wearing that day. I also just bought a purple velvet ASOS dress that is incredibly complicated to put on and also doesn't really fit that well :(

I also love my ASOS cape. It was on sale and it's fantastic and it's only just really starting to pick up in New Zealand.

I love this model, she's just like "Yep, someone is taking another photgraph of me."

Capes are a bit of a mixed bag, though.

Pros

• Looks fantastic
• Relatively uncommon
• Cape envy on the street

Cons

• Draughty
• Can't carry bags on the shoulder
• Does up kind of weirdly

So I don't wear it that often.

One thing about this season that I'm not so keen on is sheers. This is pretty much just for practical/personal reasons, because
a) they're cold :( and
b) I'd have to find something in my clothespile to wear underneath them.

I feel like I'm slowly coming around to them, possibly because they're like 70% of all clothes this winter. I think they'll be around for spring/summer as well, seeing how layerable they are and how well they'll translate to next season's colours.

Another thing that seems to be sticking around is animal print. When I was young, animal print was kind of tacky, and I seem to have internalised this. It's still making appearances in the Fall RTW collections, which honestly surprised me. I'd like to see some more innovation in this area - less leopard, more giraffe maybe?

Look at that, it's gorgeous.

Zebra is a bit intense (and 80s) and I think tiger could work if it's muted and a decent fabric. OR COW PRINT.

I'm also hoping this brown/brown trend will be on the outs soon, I'm so not a fan. From what I've seen of next season colours (next post topic?) it won't fit that well, but then I like predicting that things I don't like will fall out of fashion despite all the evidence that it's really popular. Oh well.

What the shit is this?

Serious question. Apparently Karl Lagerfield's latest (leaked) advertising campaign.

(best first post ever)