Fashion

I love the theatricality of this editorial and the stark blue and white, like china…

Me a few weeks ago at the Slovenian seaside (the Slovenian coastline on the Adriatic only stretches 45km, so what you see in the distance is in fact Italy – Trieste I think). As you can see I’m making good use of my new tilt hat that I bought in London, a few weeks before that! It’s a 40s style, but I think it’s from the late 70s or early 80s – you know when they had that huge 40s fashion revival? Oh, the high-waisted jeans I bought in London too actually – Tara Starlet that I bought from Revival Retro.

Photograph by Loomis Dean in Paris, 1957.

I usually don’t like to double up with SwingFashionista.com but I just HAVE to re-blog some images from Elisa Palomino’s Fall 2010 RTW collection, that Jo posted.  Who is Elisa Palomino? Though her own label is a new thing, she’s no newcomer to the fashion scene.  She has been the designer behind Moschino’s Cheap & Chic collections, and the head of the John Galliano studio, during which time she also worked for Dior. She was studio director at Cavalli and is now the Vice-president of Design at Diane Von Furstenberg. Serious credentials! She’s also a 1920s style enthusiast and a collector of vintage Japanese kimonos, as you can see.  Elisa is the lady with the long, straight black hair in a few of these pics…

In April 2009 I started the SwingFashionista.com blog with my buddies Jo Hoffberg and Alice Mei. Well it came a long way in 2009, from a fun way to share retro fashion finds between ourselves, to over a thousand views per day. Thanks to everyone who has been reading and commenting! Here’s a roundup of my favorite image posts from 2009:

These are snaps of what the guests wore to the opening of the Poiret: King of Fashion exhibition at the Met in New York way back in 2007. I thought I’d post a few since a lot of the celebs did a pretty good job of paying tribute to Paul Poiret.

I’ve posted a few things related to Paul Poiret, but haven’t ever actually posted any images of his work. So here we have a little Poiret inspiration. Click on the thumbnail to view the larger image.

From Wikipedia: “Paul Poiret (20 April 1879  – 30 April 1944) was a French fashion designer. His contributions to twentieth-century fashion have been likened to Picasso’s contributions to twentieth-century art. Though perhaps best known for freeing women from corsets and for his startling inventions including hobble skirts, “harem” pantaloons, and “lampshade” tunics, Poiret’s major contribution to fashion was his development of an approach to dressmaking centered on draping, a radical departure from the tailoring and pattern-making of the past. The structural simplicity of his clothing represented a “pivotal moment in the emergence of modernism” generally, and “effectively established the paradigm of modern fashion, irrevocably changing the direction of costume history.”

I’ve posted this on SwingFashionista.com already, but I just keep coming back to it, so I wanted to post it up here as well. Just such a dramatic collection, futuristic yet nostalgic…

I like it. I have neither a red belt nor a blue dress, but nonetheless…

This one’s a flashback! One of my favourite photographers, Tim Walker, for US Vogue way back in 2005, with model Karen Elso as a crazy cat lady, with a killer vintage wardrobe…

Via