SHOWnews: Issey Miyake and Pucci In Technicolour, More Dior and More

Sarabande Extends Their Studio Deadline

London’s intrepid creative community with big ideas and small pockets still have a chance to apply for Sarabande’s Studio subsidies. The foundation Lee McQueen created has extended their application deadline by two more weeks. Sarabande owns two London studio complexes (Haggerston and Tottenham for Citymapper needs) with 32 artist spaces in total. You — yes YOU if you are reading this and apply art to life in a cramped closet space — can interact with multidisciplinary artists, fashion designers and creative industry professionals for £1 per square foot per month. So you, yes YOU, stop doom scrolling, get that application in and gain access to human interaction with art residents who probably think like you do: big. Your link to apply is right here, so get going!

Guerlain and Pucci Blow Marmo Lipstick Kisses in the Wind

Camille Miceli of Pucci and Violette of Guerlain are notable directors who succeed at their respective houses using the obvious, each has a natural feel for beauty and style. Commonalities between the two converge as Miceli’s Pucci and Violette’s Guerlain release limited make-up products on 26 August. Visual language both houses utilise bounces freely in symbolic word associations that embody the capsule: flamboyance, boldness, colour contrasts, Rouge G and Marmo. Witness the harmony of heritage, packaged by Pucci’s psychedelic Marmo print, cascading across hardware while Guerlain’s Rouge G, redesigned in a golden finish, takes centre stage across a collection of beauty with a lively appeal to fun and sophistication. Natalia Vodianova seals this marriage between aesthetic immortals with a supermodel kiss, no doubt in Rouge G plum’s velvety finish.

The Homme Plissé Art Conversation Is Calling

Creative exchanges last January between the French designer-artist Ronan Bouroullec and Issey Miyake will see their first delivery as Homme Plissé A/W 24 launches next week. The fashion/art hybrid presentation saw the design team reinterpret Bouroullec’s drawings as a medium to view, engage and inhabit art rendered as fashion. Their collective portfolio incorporates less, the showy side of commissioned prints and gains momentum using an immersion of Ronan Bouroullec colour and Homme Plissé asymmetry for contrasts. This is where Plissé design results tickle your Apple wallets. The house where garment pleating and brush strokes from painting are an obvious communion, become fractals merging as singular, arresting patterns over tank dresses and anoraks, monastic seeming scarves and shrouds. If all that sounds too art teacher for you, just pump it over to 10 Brook Street, London W1S 1BG this Monday to get your colour fantasy fits together for gallery openings.

Dolce & Gabbana and Susan Fang are a Natural Fit

Dolce & Gabbana and Katie Grand continue to demonstrate how encouragement in this industry goes farther than a reassuring pat on the shoulder. The latest chapter of their ongoing project, Supported by Dolce&Gabbana, sees artisanal expert Susan Fang benefit from the Sicilian superheroes and superstar stylist’s beneficence. Fang will present her interdimensional designs at Milan Fashion Week this September. Fang taps beauty as scattershot doodles — crystal bubbles, pastel cloud scribbles, Teletubbies bucolic scenery — spring to life through her spiritual belief in nature. If that sounds flaky, don’t eyeroll just yet. Fang did the Saint Martins BA (Daniel Fletcher’s year), interned at Céline (yes Philophiles, that era) and was a 2019 LVMH Prize semi-finalist (the year Stefan Cooke were runners-up). So now you see how Fang sits among a well-regarded wave of designers who have helped quietly shape fashion’s last half-decade. Fang’s pastel chiffon, delicate organza and lingerie are no longer the stuff of dreams. Supported by Dolce&Gabbana helps Fang get real unreal next month.

Miss Dior Pops-up in Harrods

Christian Dior’s unrelenting love affair with England these past 70 years is almost as tireless as Dior novel activations this past year. Yet here we are again, this time at Harrods. The epicenter of British retail elegance (just so you know) ties a bow around Dior’s fall theme into a pop-up experience.

Harrods and Dior celebrate Maria Grazia Chiuri’s tribute to 1960s energy — those youthful but rigorous hemlines from the Marc Bohan/Philippe Guibourgé chic Miss Dior moment. Miss Dior at Harrods is a truly exclusive activation featuring colourways only available to Harrods. Retail walls are colour coded in shades of Grace Kelly’s pink, purple and lime, which featured in the original collection. The Harrods and Dior pop-up maintains the enduring spirit of continuity, heritage and historic dialogue. It remains open to the public through 25 August.

The First Courrèges Store of Orange County

Last month, Courrèges returned to Southern California to open its second US shop in South Coast Plaza. This is architecture history on Xerox repeat as André Courrèges did it first in 1975. In any case, Belgian masterminds Bernard Dubois and Nicolas Di Felice keep the spaceship for modern, future-minded, club going consistent with chrome pillars, mirrored ceilings white floors that match the interiors of the recently opened Marais shop in Paris. Modularity is a touchstone of Courrèges ideas. Mirror panels in front windows evoke the inside of a disco ball (a touchstone of Di Felice collections). A sparse yet robust structure with womens and menswear designed for daywork or nights at Sunset WeHo represents the motion and emotion designed by Di Felice’s Courrèges.

Tiffany & Co. Announces American Fashion Still Has A Chance

As New York designers Elena Velez, Melitta Baumeister, Kozaburo and Carly Mark speak out about neverending challenges of making resonant fashion in a city that does not support its designers enough, maybe the fashion establishment is coming around. This week, Tiffany & Co. with the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) put their money and mouths together, announcing the Tiffany & Co. x CFDA Jewelry Designer Award. It will acknowledge American jewelry designers who are committed to driving inclusivity within the design industry, while also elevating jewelry design on par with women’s and men’s fashion. Participants will receive mentorship, engage with the design team at Tiffany & Co. and receive a $50K award. Access, inclusivity, mentorship and yes, money are keys to strengthening the New York fashion system. Thanks to Tiffany Atrium, Tiffany & Co.’s social impact division, opportunities for those of us who cannot afford to be in fashion — yet are driven to participate anyway — can find a small crack to creep into these foundations as the CFDA gradually realises they needs to invest in creatives to keep itself functional.

AMI Remains True Bleu…Blanc and Rouge

Don’t let Fran Drescher or Lou Doillon campaign ads fool you. AMI proves their place in fashion as the home for luxury-accented, casualwear for daily life isn’t all that elevated as their high-wattage shows lately — featuring Charlotte Rampling and Vincent Cassel, Amber and Malgosia, Mariacarla and Saskia, Selena Forrest and Cole Mohr — would have you assume. Far from it! To ease the minds of customers who just want nice things without supermodels making things uncomfortable, Ami suggests their new Bleu Blanc Rouge collection. Alternating also as a clever distraction from work, the capsule urges you to defy all that Olympic foot traffic to have a good time. Unisex offerings still maintain the AMI mission statement of classic essentials. So go grab a fleece hoodie, pull that bucket hat down as you slip past your supervisor en route to Deauville Beach this summer.