This week Neiman Marcus will reveal the star of the seasonal Art of Fashion print campaign, featuring some of the most exciting premier designer looks of Spring 2012. Last season Drew Barrymore won rave reviews in the campaign. This season we went with an actress again. Care to guess who?
Joan Smalls models Raoul, Spring 2012
We caught up with Odile Benjamin, half of the husband and wife team behind the brand Raoul. Odile and her husband Douglas live in Singapore, where they design the collection and travel frequently to New York and Europe to seek inspiration and meet with their customers. Raoul started in 2002 as a shirt brand for men. Within two years, responding to customer demand, they launched a women’s collection, and today have become a complete lifestyle brand for both men and women. The brand was first launched in Asia, where they have several Raoul stores.
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Derek Lam took a day trip across the Hudson River to NM Short Hills. After prepping the models and getting mic-ed up, the designer narrated his Spring 2012 line-up of waffle print knits, patchwork snakeskin skirts, sorbet-hued wide-legged jumpsuits, and mirrored digital print seperates. “I think about, well, what isn’t in a women’s wardrobe at this moment,” Lam says, sitting right off the runway. Lam’s Spring collection delivers just that.
Shop Derek Lam in stores and on NeimanMarcus.com
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It’s the transposing of tradition that Roy does so well, both in her ready-to-wear collections and through her personal style. During our interview she hinted about her inspiration for the Fall 2012 collection, which she is currently working on. It has to do with “woman landscape architects.” Something tells us we have much more than floral prints to look forward to for Fall.
Shop Rachel Roy’s Spring 2012 Collection at the online Trunk Show on NeimanMarcus.com.
Designer Rachel Roy at her Spring 2012 presentation
The aloha shirt just turned 75, and it’s having a moment. Givenchy, Charlotte Olympia, Stella McCartney and Proenza Schouler have all designed recent collections with tropicalia and tiki culture in mind. Factor in George Clooney’s wardrobe in “The Descendants,” and the aloha shirt is riding a wave of attention.
Neiman Marcus Ala Moana celebrates the milestone by bringing a new level of sophistication and artistry to the aloha shirt through Honolulu designer Amos Kotomori.
Kotomori is an artist, designer and stylist who brings all his skills to his shirts. When creating the artful prints, he pays attention to scale, using smaller print proportions on the yoke and sleeve, progressing to larger versions at the hem. The shirts are hand made in Thailand of silks, linens and cottons that come from the same mills used by Hermes. Fourteen Thai tailors sew the shirts, paying acute attention to detail, fashioning French seams, meticulously engineered prints and an embroidered logo. Kotomori recently discovered a small stash of vintage fabrics in Bangkok, reminiscent of the rayons of the original aloha shirts of the 1930s. He created an extremely limited collection of shirts for Neiman Marcus Ala Moana from these finds.
In addition to his styling, art and design careers, three months ago Kotomori opened Villa Bodhi, a four-cottage bed and breakfast outside Ubud, Bali. (Yes, that’s the town where Elizabeth Gilbert found love in Eat Pray Love, but devotees won’t bring this up, as Ubud has drawn seekers and wanderers for decades.) Tucked up in the mountains, in Tiyingan Village, where just 60 families live, Villa Bodhi has provided a quiet retreat for writers, composers and yoga enthusiasts from France, Russia, Germany and Australia. Kotomori says Villa Bodhi is like an “artist’s showcase or living showroom. Anything you see there can be made for you by local artisans and sent to your home.”
Photos by Linda Ching.
After you have acquired precious jewelry, when can you really wear it? Most of it is delicate and only looks right with our most formal ensembles. You may start with the best intentions to wear your finery “with jeans,” but in practice, it can instantly make you look (or feel) overdressed. So you tend to stick to costume jewelry for everyday, while precious jewelry rests in a box—that is, until you own a piece by Nina Runsdorf. Nina’s NSR line is made up of precious stones, but she says, “jewelry should never be so precious that it cannot be worn.” This belief has led to a line of jewelry that mimics the edgy, creative and wear-with-anything feel of costume jewelry, using diamonds, sapphires, emeralds… you name it.
Two elements that separate NSR from other lines is Nina’s use of organic stones (amorphous in shape versus a classically cut stone) and sliced diamonds. The organic stones have a rougher, less perfect look, which only adds to the wearability and character of each piece. The sliced diamonds allow her to create head-turning statement earrings without the weight of traditionally cut stones.
The success of NSR (and an inspiring trip to India) eventually led Nina to create Silver Skin & Stone. The SS&S line creates the same look as the NSR line (gorgeous, stand-out pieces) but with semi-precious stones. If you love the look of Nina’s jewelry, but aren’t quite ready to take the plunge, the SS&S line is great way to get your feet wet. The forecast for Spring… fun and color! Look for lots of turquoise and pink opal.
NSR is available at select Neiman Marcus stores.
This recap contains spoilers! Stop reading if you don’t want to know who won or lost. Also, reading this may lead to cravings for gelato. Here we go. A guy wheels out a gelato cart, and the designers take turns picking from a finite list of flavors. In turn they are handed a cone with a corresponding swatch of color. (The names are actually more evocative than the colors. Vanilla Madagascar=white.) The instructions are simply to be creative and be quick, because this is fastest challenge in Project Runway history. They have merely 6 hours to work, so they don’t get to go shopping at Mood; they have to pull fabric from a limited selection dubbed Mini Mood. The guest judges are model Miranda Kerr, who will allegedly wear the winning design to an industry event, and Diane von Furstenberg. To impress the queen of contemporary dresses in a hurry, the designers must rely on their basic sense of color and silhouette. This lays bare the designers’ weaknesses, from a flawed eye for color to poor technique to bad judgment. Kara’s chocolate-cayenne spectrum of ruffles makes her model look pregnant, but April gets cut because her “blueberry” dress is sloppy, spooky and randomly styled. April cries, but reminds us she is only 22, and will be fine. For the win, the judges are torn between Mondo’s “cantaloupe” color-blocked, daytime caftan and Michael’s “grapefruit” satin evening caftan. Miranda, a new mom, is worried about cleavage, but regardless, Michael wins. For more fun with Project Runway All Stars, visit NeimanMarcus.com/projectrunwayallstars and Shop. Vote. Win!
We asked a few of our favorite beauty bloggers–a group of make-up masters that have swatch-tested, sampled and reviewed the best the cosmetic counter has to offer–to share their NM Beauty Award ballots. Here is NYC-based beauty blogger Ann Colville Somma of Cult of Pretty.
Ann Colville Somma, CultofPretty.com
We asked a few of our favorite beauty bloggers–a group of makeup masters that have swatch-tested, sampled and reviewed the best the cosmetic counter has to offer–to share their NM Beauty Award ballots. Here is Austin-based blogger Lindsay Rogers of Belle Belle Beauty.
Lindsay Rogers of BelleBelleBeauty.com
