Ken Downing and Carolina Herrera at the designer's studio in New York.
NM fashion director Ken Downing catches up with the ever-elegant designer to discuss Resort, Spring, and seductive versus sexy.
Travel pouches designed by Carolina Herrera for the Neiman Marcus + Target Holiday24 collection.
Read the entire conversation in the Resort 2012 issue of The Book.
Eddie Borgo and Ken Downing in New York.
I got to talk jewelry, family and that hat with rising-star jewelry designer Eddie Borgo in New York.
Eddie Borgo
KEN DOWNING: You and your jaunty fedora are a fixture on the New York fashion scene. Are you a Manhattan native or just have the cool that makes me believe you were born and raised here?
EDDIE BORGO: No, no, not a New Yorker at all. I am from Atlanta, born and raised. I went to high school in Virginia.
KD: Did the hat come with you from Atlanta, or is that a New York addition?
EB: I started wearing the hat about ten years ago. I have always loved hats and feel comfortable wearing them. I bought mine at Arnold Hatters on 8th Avenue. It’s sadly no longer there. They would brush and steam it whenever I stopped by. Recently, for my birthday, friends conjured up a way of secretly taking it for 24 hours.
KD: Hat-napping!
EB: [laughing] Kind of—they had a block made of it at Worth & Worth custom hat shop. It’s called the Borgo.
KD: Are you kidding me?
EB: I’m not joking. They surprised me with a new one that’s the exact duplicate of the original, so I can replace it if I ever lose it.
Eddie Borgo
I had the pleasure of discussing Fall’s biggest jewelry trends with Town & Country’s style director Stellene Volandes inside the magazine’s fashion closet!
Ken Downing and Alexander Wang catch up in NYC.
KEN DOWNING: Alex, you are considered one of the most brilliant and, might I say, coolest young talents on the American scene today. How old were you when you started your first collection?
ALEXANDER WANG: I was only 20 years old. It was my sophomore year of college. I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing, but I was determined to make it work. It was only six sweaters. I didn’t know what a line sheet was. I had no merchandising skills. All I knew was I wanted to design.
Alexander Wang, Spring 2013.
…I find that I’m inspired by others around me, how people dress on the streets. It was a real challenge for me in design school. I found the ideas of fashion I was being taught were very one dimensional to my ideas of what high fashion was all about. You know, the idea of what was agreeable, what was considered luxurious. I always felt T-shirts and sweatpants, when well designed, can be the most valuable things.
Alexander Wang, Spring 2013.
KD: You have always loved a nod to the idea of gymnasium chic. You were one of the first designers in recent history to reengage with locker-room themes. You really put the whole idea of a sportif motif in motion. I think yours was one of the first shows where we saw running shorts walk the runway in quite some time.
Our fashion director catches up with two of fashion’s brightest stars: Proenza Schouler designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez.
Ken Downing, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez
Ken Downing: Jack, Lazaro, Proenza Schouler is one of the most dynamic and directional collections on the American fashion scene. How do the two of you continue to stay ahead of the curve?
Lazaro Hernandez: We make it up to stay ahead! We reject popular things. We allow everything to inspire us—music, art, people. Nothing is sacred.
KD: It certainly works for you. You’ve had the attention of the fashion world from your very first show. How old were you when you started the collection?
LH: 23
Jack McCollough: No, no, we were 22.
LH: 22, 23… We were very young, just out of Parsons School of Design.
Proenza Schouler, Fall 2012
KD: And the decision to call the collection Proenza Schouler after your mothers’ maiden names?
LH: It was a very last minute decision. Our moms loved it, our dads, not so much.
One the many reasons I look forward to Derek Lam‘s runway show each season is the chance to see the masterful makeup artistry of Tom Pecheux, creative makeup director of Estée Lauder.
There are Lauder goodies galore during Up Close: Estée Lauder at NM stores and NeimanMarcus.com
Cheerio! In the final stretch of London Fashion Week, we press on to see Mary Katrantzou, the reining queen of photographic prints. She takes trompe l’oeil to an entirely new level. The pencil dress was not to be believed. To conclude this last episode of our series, I explain how the messages of the season come into focus. I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey as much as I!
With her four-year-old shoe label Charlotte Olympia making major fashion waves, I paid a visit to London-based designer Charlotte Olympia Dellal in her Paris showroom. The whimsy of her designs and the stories behind each one are incredibly charming, as is she. The motifs included paper moons, doll faces and African animals. Next we traipsed up the road to Place Vendome, where we had a lot of laughs while posing for photographer Dan Lecca. Coincidentally our outfits kind of matched, and I’ll bet the passerby thought we were honeymooners. See Dan’s final portraits of us in the Pre-Fall issue of The Book along with the complete interview.
Ken Downing: Looking at you is like looking at a movie still from the 1940s. You are a glamorous Hollywood siren! The hair, the red lipstick…
Charlotte Olympia Dellal: You are very sweet. Hollywood has always been a major source of inspiration to me—old Hollywood through a modern lens, a bit classic, but not old-fashioned. I would hate to be called a throw back! My grandmother has always been a huge inspiration to me. Her hair, her red lipstick, the whole idea of Hollywood glamour was something I was raised around.
Wave to The Queen! A royal wave is only proper as we push onward to Erdem and McQ Alexander McQueen in London.
All eyes will be on London in the next few weeks, so I wanted to share my London—host city of the coolest fashion week, hotbed of emerging designers, capital of prints. I let a cameraman trail me to the front row, backstage, the car, the hotel… I hoped to give you a feel for what it’s truly like to attend London Fashion Week. Join me as we get real.
