Dolce Gabbana AW13-14: Byzantine inspiration

I must confess it had been a while since I was overwhelmed by a fashion show. Dolce & Gabbana unveiled their Fall-Winter 2013-14 collection, part of the Milan Fashion Week, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 24, 2013.

These photos are from backstage, you will find many more at their Facebook page.

 

What do you think of the collection? The Byzantine inspiration is obvious, this is amazing art we see here. The religious inspiration I would say looks more like an element of fashion, as the elements that are stressed are those of wealth and luxury, quite the opposite of what religion teaches. Well, I guess people in Byzantium were a lot more secular than we thought!

Uptights leggings

A few months ago I discovered Uptightso, a shop on Etsy that sells impressive print leggings. I decided to do a post about it when I saw that the woman behind it has a Greek sounding name :)

Penelope Kokinelis is a Sydney, Australia based designer, who creates limited edition quirky elegant leggings (and more), in prints that I have absolutely fallen in love with. See for yourselves.

 Green print

 Spring flower print

 Rain print

 Mexican Day of the Dead skull print

 Mexican pyjama print

Green spot print

Absolutely fabulous, don't you think?

QooQoo

From Riga, Latvia comes a fashion brand led by a graphic designer, famous for designing and producing their own fabrics prints. QooQooFashion makes each garment to order.

Blue tribe dress

Orange tribe dress

Purple crystal dress

Royal blue tribe dress

Pink rides leggings

Lace dog dress

 Royal blue floral dress

The designs evoke dynamism, but also sensitivity, and they are in accordance with the current trends for geometry and bold color. What more could a girl ask for?

Women's Spring 2011 Fashion Trends: Mary Katrantzou's 3D Prints

Fashion has been old-fashioned for quite a while now. With exceptions of course, every now and then designers seem to remember the '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s... It offers a kind of safety, I suppose, to present clothes that remind us of something, which is perfectly OK -don't get me wrong here. I'm just saying that revolutionary things could easily be deemed 'non-wearable', and thus whole collections could go either wasted, or straight in a museum.

But now the waters seem to be moving. And the person who is largely responsible for that is London-based, Greek-born Mary Katrantzou. Mary attended Rhode Island School of Design and then completed both her BA and MA at Central Saint Martins. She has previously worked for Sophia Kokosalaki and freelanced for Bill Blass, amongst other designers. Since 2008 she has been doing shows and taking part in Fashion Week. So how exactly is her work different?

Mary's design signatures are a hyperrealist aesthetic, bold graphics and industrial jewellery. But it's probably the most sophisticated thing you have ever seen!  Katrantzou said after her SS 2011 show that she worked in three dimensions for the first time while designing her prints. There is definitely an almost hallucinatory depth to the images, as they are laid over the fitted silhouettes! The images are literally depicting rooms on women, and as the designer explained: She was looking at the highly stylized seventies photography of Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin, when it occurred to her that the interiors in the pictures were just as important as the models. Now, it's no accident that her trademark piece was the lampshade skirt! Her 3D prints have already gained her fame in the fashion world, and there's much more to expect from Mary in her AW 2012 collection...

See for yourselves!

Photos courtesy of IMAXtree.com and Matteo Volta

As you must have realized by now, I could kill for a Mary Katrantzou... I found many pieces at Polyvore. And her collaboration with Topshop this February is also a fact!!!  So... could I please hope for many many sales at my Etsy shop?????

Bamboo Bangles with Recycled Carpet Prints

This is a new design for me, I hope you are going to like it! Bangles are very fashionable this spring summer season, but of course they are classic too. These bangles that I made were created out of sustainable bamboo tiles, decoupaged with recycled carpet prints, and connected with elasticity -so they are very easy to put on! They are very well made, and sit on your wrists relaxed like your average bangle. Not suitable for smaller wrists, though.

The geometry of tiles connected together has an interesting effect on the geometry or the fluidity of the carpet prints themselves, and this goes perfectly with the new prints trend! Soon available in my Etsy shop!