Kazia Jaszkiewicz
Steve Frous
Olivia P
Joana Gröblinghoff
Weronika Kumanek
“We met four years ago at a vintage furniture fair in Berlin,” Nina Kuhn, one half of the fashion line Rianna + Nina, recalls, remembering the moment she first locked eyes with Rianna Nektaria Kounou, the woman who would become her fast friend and business partner. Everyone else at that furniture show was traipsing around in boho black, while Kuhn and Kounou were clad in their typical garb—a riotous rainbow of magpie hues. According to Kuhn, they looked at each other and said, practically at the same time, “Who are you?” They were a fashion executive (Kuhn) and the owner of a Berlin vintage shop (Kounou), and it turns out they had more in common than just a penchant for nutty hues. After a fabulous Greek dinner at Kounou’s house, they realized so much chemistry was too good to waste and decided to found Rianna + Nina, an utterly unique collection ensconced, for the next two weeks, in a pop-up on the third floor of Bergdorf Goodman. (Go up there after tomorrow night and you can see the holiday windows!)
What did you miss this week in the fashion-verse? Just look to Instagram. First, last Monday, Bria Viniate of The Florida Project was hanging out with Fernanda Ly in Sandy Liang fur backstage at the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund awards. Also looking stellar this week was actress Salma Hayek, who headed to the LACMA Gucci Art+Film Gala literally glittering in her dress with a little help of the kirakira+ filter. Speaking of Gucci, Model Hari Nef model Hari Nef looked positively royal as she reclined in a Gucci dress? On the more casual front, Sita Abellan kept it cool in a pair of purple sweatpants and a crop top, along with some flashy kicks. Serving up some Y2K looks was dancer-model Alton Mason, who sported a pair of Ed Hardy jeans along with some monogram-heavy Gucci pieces. Rapper Tommy Genesis went the monochrome route, staring down Instagram in an oversized orange leather jacket pared with matching sunglasses. Also loving a tangerine hue was Venus X, who radiated cool in a Come Tees shirt. As for who takes the chic cake, though? Leave the laid-back ensemble to Caroline de Maigret, who was effortlessly chic in China in none other than head-to-toe Chanel.
After four months of studio visits, challenges, collaborations, and fashion shows the winner of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund was announced tonight. Telfar, founded by Telfar Clemens in 2005, won the top prize of $400,000. Chromat, founded in 2010 by Becca McCharen-Tran, and Ahlem, founded in 2014 by Ahlem Manai-Platt, took home the runner-up prizes of $150,000 each. Here’s what you need to know about Telfar. Clemens describes his label as “horizontal, democratic, universal” and makes unisex clothes for the socially savvy shopper. During the CVFF fashion show his designs were modeled by voguers to the delight of the celebrity front row at the Chateau Marmont, and he aced the Instagram challenge by highlighting the next generation of Telfar lovers, hashtag #telfarbambimo. Outside of the CVFF, Clemens has long taken a unique approach to his brand. Rather than collaborate with an up-and-coming label or musician, he teamed with White Castle on uniforms, and created a capsule collection for Century 21’s new in-store shop Next Century. The runners-up Chromat and Ahlem are disrupting the fashion system in their own ways. Drawing from her architectural background, McCharen-Tran designs swimwear with an engineer’s precision. She has also partnered with Intel on responsive garments, and her NYFW shows are routinely one the most diverse of the season, featuring models of all sizes, genders, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Ahlem, who is French and based in Venice Beach, California, produces sleek eyewear that is sold in her Abbott Kinney store alongside items for the home. Up next for the expat is a new downtown L.A. store.
San Francisco is a forward-looking tech city, which makes it no surprise it's been prescient in calling in the big guns to help with it's fashion. Last week, haute boutique Hero Shop played host to an elegant lunch for New York-based designer Adam Lippes where co-hosts Vanessa Getty and Gina Peterson celebrated the designer and his resort and spring 2018 collections. The store was transformed to elegant heights with bouquets of ranunculasa, roses, and more from The Wild Ones, while guests including Katie Traina, Lauren Goodman, and Connie Nielsen snapped up the delectable lunch from The Saratoga (conveniently located next door)! But the best part? The snow cone machine where the coconut flavor was savored long after the lunch and shopping.
Okay, yes, sure, you love your family, your friends, and who doesn’t like a party? But at this point, isn’t enough very nearly enough? All around you, everyone you know—gay and straight, rich or poor, young or not so—is taking their vows, planning ceremonies on beaches, mountaintops, gold-plated banquet halls, picturesque shanties. And you, their dear friend, are in the pews, in the sand, in the weeds, guaranteed to weep as you always do at the first chords of the organ, or the first reedy notes from the lone guitarist—the bride’s cousin!—strumming the wedding march. Don’t let those tears make a return appearance when you get this month’s credit card bill. You want these wonderful weddings to be occasions of pure joy, not the gateway to personal bankruptcy. Then again, you do want to wear something festive, something gorgeous to these myriad affairs. Plus, all your friends know one another; you don’t want to show up in the same flimsy ensemble, again and again. Which is why, as our special midsummer gift to you, we have prepared this guide to wedding dressing on a budget: everything from charming dotted frocks to emerald satin slippers to gossamer feather earrings to sparkle-clasped clutches you will want to have and to hold from this day forth and forever.
Millions of travelers flock to Italy each year, often with one dish in mind: pasta. While true pasta fanatics would be wise to make a pilgrimage to Bologna for soul food tortellini in brodo and to Rome for its rich carbonara, if you find yourself in Florence, there are pasta treasures to be had. Tuscany (of which Florence is a part) is generally famous for panzanella, peasant soups like ribollita, game such as wild boar and guinea fowl, seafood tomato stews, tripe, and Florentine steaks. But there are plenty of fantastic restaurants serving up delectable bowls of pici, maccheroni, gnudi, tortelli, spaghetti, and pappardelle. So if you're craving a bowl of noodles, head to one of these seven spots, all conveniently located in the city's historical center:
Aralda Vintage wasn’t built on wheels. The shop’s founder, former model Brynn Jones, always imagined she’d be able to drive around the country selling her collection of long-forgotten ’90s Prada and ’70s Givenchy out of a refurbished food truck. Then in September of last year, reality hit. She realized she didn’t want to be away from home, from her boyfriend and her dog, traveling like a nomad with a car full of clothes. So, she partnered with her friend Lily Kaizer and started planning to open a proper brick-and-mortar vintage store in L.A. Kaizer found a space next to her bridal salon inside the famous 1950s-era shopping center Crossroads of the World in Hollywood. “A few months later, I got the keys to the space,” Jones explains. And just like that, Aralda found a permanent home. The whole concept actually began a few years back. “I really honed my thrifting skills when I was living in Hawaii as a penny-pinching college drop-out,” Jones says. “But Aralda started about two and a half years ago—after booking a couple of high-paying commercial jobs while modeling, I decided that I was going to use the money I made and put it toward this back-burner idea I’d toyed with since high school.” She started collecting vintage pieces and having them photographed on her peers; then she’d sell via email through her website. In April, Jones opened the official Aralda space and appointed her friend Lauren Hanawalt as CFO. Aside from the dreamy stock, which currently includes pieces like a No Doubt band tee, a red Bill Blass suit, magenta Prada slides, and a silk Halston blouse decorated with a telephone print, the space itself is something special too. “Lauren would meet me at the shop and we’d spend our weekends drinking beers and painting the walls,” Jones remembers. “I wanted it to be welcoming and beautiful, but not too serious—to be visually stimulating with a lot of gold!” Locally produced artwork hangs on the walls, and most of it is for sale. There are old Penthouse and I-D magazines on the shelves; vintage jewelry dotting the counters and inside the bathroom; “an all-purple ode to Princess Diana, stocked with tampons, floss, mints, hair ties, ring pops, and perfume).” As for the name of Jones’s passion project, “I thought of myself driving around the country solo in my vintage truck, and then I thought of my grandpa Aralda Jones.” She adds, “He lives in a trailer in the middle of a ghost town in Eureka, Utah. Every day he wears railroad stripe overalls, a polo shirt, and a navy blue bucket hat with slip-on sneakers. He’s the most interesting man I know, and I decided that Aralda Vintage was the perfect ode to the man who marches to the beat of his own drum.”
Chanel is known to take its brand around the globe—with some recent shows in Cuba and Tokyo—so it’s no surprise that the brand tapped Lucia Pica and her California travels as the inspiration for the brand’s latest makeup collection for the Fall. Last night, guests such as Amber Valletta, Yara Shahidi and Rowan Blanchard (who dawned an effortlessly smudged mix of eyeshadows not unlike the complexity of a California sunset) gathered with artists, designers, and the coolest set that Los Angeles has to offer at Capo in Santa Monica to toast Pica and Chanel’s latest beauty collection. Once guests arrived inside, the vaulted wooden ceiling and French bistro chairs created a scene that felt very Chanel-Goes-West, combining the California cool of the beachside locale with the iconically French brand. Laura Mulleavy, Max Farago, and Tali Lennox were among those who gathered to celebrate Pica, Chanel’s Global Creative Makeup and Color Designer, who created a palette of unexpected textures and shades to evoke the essence of California after being inspired by a recent visit to the Golden State. According to Pica, “makeup should never be used as a mask, only to enhance what is there,” which is the ethos that most California women embody when they choose their own day to day makeup looks.
Playing fair and square has taken on new meaning in yet another instance of fashion tapping a source without transparency. Look at the two images and it would be impossible to deny the near-identical resemblance; one features a photo from a series by artist Brad Troemel; the other, patchwork knit sweaters by Vika Gazinskaya from her Spring 2018 collection. Since Troemel posted the comparison to his Instagram on Sunday, there’s been no shortage of commentary—frankly, some quite hostile towards Gazinskaya—addressing an issue that seems to happen with surprising frequency, given how easy it is to trace, identify, and credit source material today. In the midst of the situation, and given that I had written the review, it seemed fair to approach both of them for their version of what happened, posing the same questions to each of them to remain as balanced as possible. But before proceeding, a little background on the concept behind Troemel’s series, Freecaching, which he exhibited at the Tomorrow Gallery (now Downs & Ross) in November, 2016. Upon realizing that he could no longer afford his studio in New York, he buried the contents in Central Park—but only after taking photos of the pieces and recording their exact locations. As a “certificate of authenticity” he created magnetized puzzles, with each side of each block featuring a randomized color, the geolocation of the buried piece, and an image of the artwork prior to burial, or a contract for ownership. What he exhibited were the jumbled versions—like a hanging version of an unsolved Rubik’s Cube. Ostensibly, collectors could choose to solve the puzzle and dig up the buried work; or they could leave the works stored in the ground and simply appreciate the puzzle for its striking visual impact.
Late last month, Saint Louis Fashion Incubator executive director Eric Johnson and Fashion Fund chair Susan Sherman hosted an intimate dinner with André Leon Talley following a discussion with the iconic figure on the state of design and the future of the industry. And this past weekend saw Talley return to the South for the Fashion Fund’s latest endeavor, a fashion show focused on gender-fluid dressing inspired by the Saint Louis Art Museum’s exhibition “Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear, 1715–2015.” Also taking in the show were Alexandra Kotur, while fashion-forward news journalist Tamron Hall swapped out her front row seat for a prime spot on the catwalk.