September News Roundup
1.
If you regularly read this newsletter, you already know that I am a huge fan of Ashlyn Park’s work. The South Korean designer, who has become a highlight of NYFW, was formerly the pattern-cutter for none other than the great Yohji Yamamoto. Park’s clothing beautifully melds the elegance of Japanese tailoring with the romance of haute couture elements like bustles, peplums, and panniers, but modernized so a woman today can easily wear her pieces. Learn more about the designer and her work in this in-depth profile.
Marie Antoinette illustration by Nicolas Dupin, Augustin de Saint Aubin and Esnauts and Rapilly, c. 1787, Marie Antoinette: The Queen of Fashion: Gallerie des Modes et Costumes Francais, Rawpixel.com / Shutterstock.
2.
Though she has been dead for more than 230 years, Marie Antoinette has had incredible PR over the last few months. The French queen continues to rack up the press hits with a new exhibition dedicated to her maximalist style: Victoria & Albert’s “Marie Antoinette Style.” In this essay, writer Anne Higonnet muses on what makes the Queen of Excess so alluring to audiences today and why fashion was her ultimate downfall.
Olivier Theyskens for Theory Spring 2012 collection, image courtesy of Nata Sha / Shutterstock. Olivier Theyskens, image courtesy of Lev Radin / Shutterstock.
3.
One name that was not bandied about as the head designer of a European house over the last few months was Olivier Theyskens. The Belgian creative director, whose last stint was designing elevated workwear for the contemporary label Theory, has been quietly working away on his own line ever since leaving the American brand in 2014. In a surprise move, Theyskens is launching a new fashion house named Boloria and partnering with the Belgian group Weareone.world, who are the organizers of the Tomorrowland festival. Read all about the new venture here.
4.
If you’ve ever been irked by the way social media has co-opted fashion terms like “quiet luxury” and any "-core" and "-aesthetic" phenomenon to the point of making them meaningless, Diet Prada co-founder Tony Liu is right there with you. In this essay, Liu discusses what he calls the “era of ‘keyword-ification,’” a symptom of our immersion in the digital machine and how social media drives taste – frequently via clickbait. And while this essay’s focus is on the world of interior design, it could just as easily apply to fashion.
AI illustration by Artistdesign.13 / Shutterstock.
5.
AI has been a bit of a taboo subject in fashion. While many designers are happy to discuss how they use it to write everything from emails to marketing materials, bringing it into their creative process tends to be a bit more suspect – at least for now. On the eve of NYFW, Fashionista decided to ask designers Grace Ling, Brandon Maxwell, Stacey Bendet and others how they are currently using AI and how they approach their relationship to technology.
