FashionPeddler.com Fashion News

Canary Island native Manolo Blahnik has been in the fashion industry for over forty years. Originally, he wanted a career in clothing, but it was the late Vogue editor Diana Vreeland who suggested “just stick to footwear” after he presented his portfolio. The massive popularity of the show Sex & the City made Blahnik a household name to women who would otherwise not know (or afford) him. Manolo Blahnik has had it with the recognition & stated at his S/S 2010 presentation “I hate celebrities and all those pointless girls. I won’t name names, but you know who.” We do, too, but even Anna Wintour understands the power play of celebrities in fashion in this modern age. – Ashkan.

How could any man retire from dressing Kate Moss & other vixens in the sexiest lingerie? That’s precisely what Joe Corre – co-founder of Agent Provocateur – has done. Corre is also the son of rebel designer Vivienne Westwood. He left the label to devote time to his menswear line & shop called A Child of the Jago. He is pursuing the line with principal designer Simon “Barnzley” Armitage. The line is labeled as “terrorist” clothing & here is a missive from their site www.achildofthejago.com :

A Child of the Jago isn’t being raised to expect a warm welcome. It’s being brought up to cause trouble while it contrives to raise the bar. The zeal for agitation is a natural extension of the pair’s stylistic inspirations. The attitude reflects the sartorial excesses of the original dandy and the raw unpredictable razor’s edge of Rock & Roll stitched together with the excruciatingly rigorous standards of the Saville Row tailoring tradition. This all makes for a volatile cocktail of no-rules merchandising. Milkman jackets reminiscent of work wear’s golden age are presented alongside Scottish cashmere and fine shirting crafted in Jermyn Street factories. At the same time the tyranny of forced fashion “cycles” and industrially contrived “trends” receive a brutal Liverpool kiss-off, neutralized and dismissed as waste-creating crutches habitually brandished by brain-dead corporations well and truly only in it for the money. But neither Corre nor Armitage are interested in disposable rebellion or a shallow veneer of style. They don’t believe standards of quality have been lost so much as they have been stolen, kidnapped, hijacked and brutalized by the mainstream fashion system. And they clearly don’t care how much shoe leather is worn away in their efforts to free quality from its current confinement. They have wired together a clandestine alternative network that unifies select Saville Row tailors with irreverent young talents from Japan’s best fashion academies. They have identified hole-in-the-wall suppliers of ultra-premium dead stock menswear fabrics and implicated them deep within their plot. Maneuvers that combine with their abandonment of artificial fashion cycles and grant them access to the best pure wools, rich silks, sharp gabardines, rugged twills and a host of one-of-a-kind yard goods of unrivaled quality that can otherwise stack up in the dust left by built-in-obsolescence and an inefficient and cynical marketing system.

Who hasn’t done a capsule collection for H&M or Target? Next up is French designer Jean Paul Gaultier for Target for S/S 2010. The collection will be available from early March until early April 2010. I envision the collection will consist of pieces like matelot sweaters, sailor stripes, a bustier or two, and something ethnic. With a bit of luck, Gaultier will bring something unusual & lively into the closets of mass America. The muse for the collection is yet to be announced & I foresee someone “Sticky & Sweet” whose name starts with “M.” - Ashkan.

I can’t help but hear the Queen song “Another One Bites the Dust” ring through my Tiffany studded ears. Yohji Yamamoto filed for bankruptcy in Japan reporting $76 million in debts. The 39 year old label isn’t the only one on shaky ground in Japan. Versace is closing all doors and leaving the island country. Louis Vuitton nixed plans for a mega store as Japanese shoppers are turning to more budget friendly lines. Unlike the fate of his creative peer Christian Lacroix, Yamamoto accepted cash assistance from an investor in order to continue operations. Yamamoto is a necessity in the fashion wolrd as he is often removed from current trends with whopping silhouettes in forward-thinking textures. – Ashkan.