Fashion & Style

Stephan Savoia/Associated Press Tom Brady.

Last night, my favorite sports commentators, Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, on “Pardon the Interruption,” tussled over the merits of men in Uggs, now that Tom Brady, quarterback of the New England Patriots and husband of Gisele, has endorsed a man pair of the boots. Wilbon tried to sound positive, citing an obscure tradition of “house shoes” for men. Kornheiser winced: “House shoes?” I sense that Kornheiser saw a man in a different end zone. As it is, Brady’s wife won’t let him cut his hair. So Brady keeps saying. I just want to see the cameras pan from Coach Bill Belichick’s frowning face down to his Muggs.

Ragozzino/PatrickMcMullan.com Judy Collinson with Julie Gilhart.

No department store in the 1990s had the cool factor of Barneys New York. It had the edgiest designers (Martin Margiela, Helmut Lang, Comme des Garçons), the kookiest windows and a team of buyers and merchandisers that made the store something of a hip event. Even when the store filed for bankruptcy protection, in 1996, it kept its cool.

But a lot has changed in the post-recession world, challenging Barneys’ authority. On Monday, the store announced that two of its longtime buying executives, Judy Collinson, the general merchandising manager for women’s fashion, and Julie Gilhart, its fashion director, had been let go. Daniella Vitale, a former Gucci executive, was named Barneys chief merchant and would be responsible for women’s fashion, as well as the retailer’s online operations. Tom Kalenderian, the store’s top men’s wear executive, will stay. Read more…

Alastair Grant/Associated Press Phillipa Lepley is a wagering favorite to make the wedding dress for Kate Middleton. Above, Ms. Lepley’s London store.

The British royal family may not be the media’s only compass, but the needle certainly moved at the announcement that Prince William and Kate Middleton will wed, on April 29 at Westminster Abbey. Goodbye “Strictly Come Dancing,” luminaries in the broken-down zoo of celebrity … hello Kate! You sensed a collective surge of relief in the young lady’s direction — that her wedding might be good not only for the downsized economy but also maybe good for the country as a whole.

My friend Vanessa Friedman, the style editor of the Financial Times, was ready to dismiss the news and the dress speculation with a groan, but on second thought, she wrote, “The U.K. hasn’t had an opportunity to communicate so much through one person on one day in 30 years, or since William’s father married his mother, and Princess Diana took such care to choreograph an event right out of the Hans Christian Andersen playbook.” Ms. Friedman argued that the pomp does matter, in part because the royal family is one of the last “pure symbols” left.

Just what will be communicated remains to be seen. England is still a place of small dressmaking establishments, as it was when Princess Diana picked David and Elizabeth Emanuel to design her wedding dress and later brought attention to a largely unknown Catherine Walker. For the moment, the bookmakers Paddy Power and William Hill favor Phillipa Lepley, a Chelsea designer, to create Ms. Middleton’s dress, followed by Daniella Issa Helayel, Ms. Emanuel, and Amanda Wakeley. Never heard of Ms. Lepley? Nor had I.

Paddy Power gives odds to Gieves & Hawkes to make the groom’s suit, over Ede & Ravenscroft, maker of the royal robes. You can even place bets on the color of the Queen’s hat for the big day (pink is favored over light blue, apricot and gray) and on the length of the bride’s train (practically a speck compared to Diana’s 25-footer, so say the odds).

But England is a different place today, and maybe Ms. Middleton will feel the tug of a global brand with English roots, a Burberry or a John Galliano. In a way, her name says it all: neither plain nor exotic, she is straight down the middle. A comfy Kate rather than an airy Catherine. Even with the Veronica Lake hair sometimes spilling over one eye, her style is as England would love to define itself — educated, attractive, and somehow classless.

Kenny Komer A photograph from the Balenciaga installation.

Nobody who buys a Ralph Lauren prairie skirt or cowboy jacket really thinks a personal history of the West informs the clothes. Mr. Lauren grew up in the Bronx. The late Alexander McQueen loved Scottish history, but in practical terms, the links were as crumbly as an old castle. Even for the most sensitive of designers, fashion changes too often to supply a narrative of a single place or culture.

It’s astonishing, then, to realize how much one country shaped the ideas of Cristóbal Balenciaga. The country, of course, is Spain, and the period of influence was from 1937, when he opened his Paris house, until he retired in 1968 and returned to Spain. That is the fascinating, single-minded focus of “Balenciaga: Spanish Master,” an exhibition that opens Friday at the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute on Park Avenue. Read more…

Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times Billy Reid, the winner of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund winner for 2010, and his wife Jeanne Reid.

When the actress Carey Mulligan announced last night that Billy Reid had been voted the winner of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund winner for 2010 — in front of a crowd that included the designers Michael Kors, Olivier Theyskens, Jason Wu, Zac Posen and Alexander Wang; the “True Blood” stars Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin; the ubiquitous Kim Kardashian; and the evening’s co-chairwoman Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue — there was a brief, seemingly stunned silence, followed by a burst of enthusiastic applause and whoops and hollers from the back of the room, from which the 46-year-old designer shakily made his way toward the stage.

“I did not expect to be up here tonight,” he said in an emotional voice. “I’m shocked.” Read more…

Fabien Baron The cover of “Minimalism and Fashion,” by Elyssa Dimant.

Consumers have had plenty of reasons to meditate on the new wave of minimalist fashion now in stores, namely to decide if a simple camel coat — as all the magazines suggested — is the right look for them this fall. As a trend, minimalism seemed to come out of left field this season, ubiquitous on the runways for no better reason than, well, Phoebe Philo is doing it, so it must be right.

Elyssa Dimant, a fashion historian and a former research associate at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, decided to look a bit further into the subject in her substantive new book, “Minimalism and Fashion: Reduction in the Postmodern Era” (Collins Design). Ms. Dimant examined the role of minimalism in fashion, but also looked at the broader context of its appearance in art, architecture and design, noting some surprising correlations along the way. One of the most intriguing aspects of her book is the juxtaposition of runway looks with art and sculpture, such as an organic piece by Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher opposite dresses from an unrelated resort collection by the Calvin Klein designer Francisco Costa, or a Richard Serra installation of curling metal plates next to Hussein Chalayan’s coffee-table dress from 2000. Read more…

Danny Moloshok/Reuters Heidi Klum arrives for a screening of the film “Black Swan” wearing a dress designed by Mondo Guerra.

Last month, when Gretchen Jones was named the winner of “Project Runway” over Mondo Guerra, the decision was unpopular not only with a lot of the show’s viewers, but seemingly with Heidi Klum, the show’s co-host, as well.

Ms. Klum argued with her fellow judges, Nina Garcia and Michael Kors, that Mondo was the more creative of the two, and the one whose signature dress in the final collection — a form-fitting, floor-length gown in black-and-white polka dots — she would be happy to wear on the red carpet one day.

The two other judges laughed in response.

Well, there Ms. Klum was last night, at the closing night gala for the AFI Screen Fest in Los Angeles, to see the film “Black Swan,” strutting the red carpet in Mondo’s dress. And looking spectacular.

Who’s laughing now?

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times Jesse Finkelstein and Katie King.

Young designers are now the focus of a New York City initiative to provide mentors and new retail concepts. Others are trying to save the garment district, where many factories have closed or laid off workers and raised prices. Fabric costs are up, especially for cotton, and just about everyone who deals with manufacturing in China knows you can’t get a minimum of anything: 1,000 blouses maybe, but not 100. Department stores threaten to cancel orders if a delivery is late. Meanwhile fast-fashion companies reap the rewards of being nimble and democratic while grabbing the ideas of others. Prestige labels hold on to their heritage. And consumers wonder: Where’s your app?

Does that about sum up the current fashion logjam?

Jesse Finkelstein and Katie King are not immune to the problems of young business owners — they are entrepreneurs as much as they are designers — but they have found a way around at least some of them. Read more…

“Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty,” an exhibition of the fashion of the late British designer, will open at the Costume Institute on May 4, the Metropolitan Museum of Art said today. The exhibit will include designs from Mr. McQueen’s postgraduate show at Central Saint Martins in 1992 until his final collection in 2010. He died in February.

Finding examples of his early work will be a detective hunt for the Met’s costume curators, as Mr. McQueen generally sold dresses to friends or individual patrons to pay bills, and there may not be a solid photographic record of those collections. Still, it would be interesting to see as much of the early work as possible alongside his later designs. The exhibition will also have pieces from Mr. McQueen’s time at Givenchy.

The Costume Institute gala will be on May 2. The honorary chairs are François-Henri Pinault of Gucci Group, which owns the McQueen brand, and his wife, Salma Hayek. The co-chairs are Colin Firth, Stella McCartney and Anna Wintour.

San Francisco Giants pitchers Brian Wilson and Tim Lincecum. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

What a week in fashion it was, and I’m not even talking about the long drum roll up to the Lanvin sale at H & M. Rather, I refer to the exuberant displays of hair and fashion we saw in politics and baseball.

First, there was Tim Lincecum on the mound for the San Francisco Giants in the World Series: the shoulder-length hair, the stringy body of a power pitcher. His style immediately interested me, and I’m not a baseball fan, not at all. I’m more likely to cringe when I see Troy Polamalu of the Pittsburgh Steelers, with his curly Samson locks flying over his pads. Doesn’t it get tangled in someone’s teeth? I’m more apt to watch football than baseball — for the dreads and resplendent tattoos on tree-trunk size arms. But unaffected Lincecum beats any male model, and I hope he’s never tempted to act like one if GQ calls. Then there is Brian Wilson, the San Francisco closer — or rather, the Beard of Brian Wilson. I know sports writers and bloggers comment a lot on his dense black face rug. A columnist recently asked him if he enhanced it with dye.

“Are you seriously asking me that question?” Wilson replied.

Oh, man. The fact is the Beard has a style and shape all its own. Call it local or homegrown or a Cal rogue tradition — whatever. There’s nothing put-on about Mr. Wilson’s look. My thoughts scrolled, naturally, to people in fashion (Tom Ford, are you up to the Wilson face challenge?) and the temptation to embrace and dismiss beards as an old hipster thing. But if you can grow a beard and mustache like Wilson’s, wouldn’t you? Baseball players generally seem such stock apple pie figures; maybe that’s why Wilson and Lincecum look so completely liberated.

Election night’s style was politics as usual — that is, the usual red ties and red dresses on spouses. “It’s flattering and it’s fleeting,” said Marco Rubio, the Republican senator-elect from Florida, referring to the political limelight that accompanies the winners to Washington. He could have been referring to youth and fashion as well. He looks like a young designer, in fact.

The freshman class includes a former reality show star and champion lumberjack (Sean Duffy of Wisconsin) and Kristi Noem, a cattle rancher and mother from South Dakota. Strictly from the style perspective, I checked out Ms Noem on YouTube. She has a good natural look, despite (or because?) of the fact her pantsuits sort of hang on her lanky frame. She’s tough — perfect for a French Vogue stylist with a rack of Isabel Marant clothes. That will never happen. And what a great head of hair, no? Maybe blown back from all those speeding tickets she got. Seriously, though: I hope she stays just the way she is. Thinking about Carly Fiorina’s uppity dumb comment about Senator Barbara Boxer’s hair, there’s nothing “yesterday” about her.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today signaled his commitment to New York City’s fashion industry with a far-reaching effort to uphold New York’s status as a fashion capital. With Robert K. Steel, the deputy mayor for economic development, and Seth W. Pinsky, the president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, the mayor announced a six-part initiative to ensure the industry’s growth in the next decade.

Outlined at the Women’s Wear Daily C.E.O. Summit at the Plaza Hotel, the mayor’s initiatives are intended to reinforce the city’s position as a magnet for emerging designers and to nurture the next wave of design, management and retail professionals. Read more…

WWD The cover of WWD, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the magazine.

Women’s Wear Daily, the quippy and quirky trade paper of the garment industry, marked its centennial with a commemorative magazine out Monday that traces the evolution of fashion and also of its own coverage of fashion. For the cover, its editors came up with a pretty novel approach to illustrating 100 years of putting out a paper: a montage of notable designers, celebrities and socialites assembled as if they were the audience of a runway show. Yves Saint Laurent, Coco Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld, Ralph Lauren and Jackie Kennedy are in the front row; Andy Warhol, Claude Montana and Cindy Crawford are all the way in the back, so you can’t imagine that anyone will be complaining too much about their placement (as long as they were included).

Bridget Foley, the executive editor of WWD, has observed the comings and goings of designers long enough to have a sharp perspective on the changing nature of fashion journalism, which she shared in a Q&A.

How do you go about summarizing 100 years of WWD’s history in a magazine?

Well, it’s not a history book. What we wanted to do was represent some of the key issues and motifs of the industry that had been important within the past 100 years. It is a highly subjective distillation of 100 years, and that is what made it fun. There were certain things that were very obvious, and some people who would be at the top of the list to anyone who ever made a shirt. For example, our first writing about Coco Chanel was in 1918. That makes the house of Chanel very important in this industry for the better part of WWD’s 100 years. The entire issue was done, literally, by turning pages. Someone, or someones, flipped through every single issue.

How did you identify what was important, versus what wound up on the cutting-room floor?

It was very difficult. There were, at the end of the day, some emotional calls. For example, Stephen Sprouse had a very finite moment, but it was a big important and emotional moment, so we felt he should be included. And there were always people the paper was obsessed with. The biggest one was Jackie Kennedy. She was an obsession of WWD and John Fairchild when she was a senator’s wife, when she was a first lady, when she was Mrs. Onassis, when she was a widow, all the way through the end of her life. Ali MacGraw was a mini-obsession for quite some time. She was a major fashion icon in the 1970s, but I think her importance to the issue escalated because of the way the paper covered her.

Were there any surprises you learned by looking back at the history?

One of the things that interested me most was uncovering certain themes, sometimes small, but themes that have remained constant in fashion. In the 1920s, there was a funny story, or one meant to be funny, of someone wanting to have a funeral for color because all women wanted to wear was black. We think of that as a modern thing, like we think of the rise of covering young fashion. But we certainly covered flappers and wannabe flappers, and the overall marketing to that group. Then there are stories, here and there, about politically correct ways to refer to large sizes. One was about “chubettes.” Another said, “Don’t call them fat; call them not small or not thin,” or something like that.

As a critic, what kind of changes have you seen in the how fashion has been covered over the years?

Early on, we covered fashion in its minutiae. We covered the inset of a sleeve and gave highly detailed information. I think that the progress has been more to put clothes in a breezier context. Absolutely, John Fairchild revolutionized this paper by making designers celebrities, but what surprised me was that there were designers who were treated as celebrities even before that. Poiret was the first designer the paper covered.

Do you think with the Internet and social media that you are beginning to cover fashion differently today?

We’re covering everything faster, obviously. In Europe, just a few years ago, we used to look forward to Friday nights. We’d be off because we didn’t have a paper on Saturdays, but now we have a Web site. Our roles are changing because anyone who has a computer can weigh in. Anyone can have a blog, and we see designers and executives paying attention to that direct consumer feedback. In terms of reviewing collections, they go at a faster pace, but I try to personally take the same approach, to see each collection in its own context, to be honest but not cavalier.

Does writing faster change what you write?

When you are writing reviews, it has always been pretty fast. You don’t have a lot of time to let a collection sink in. In a perfect world, it would be great to see the show, then see the clothes in the showroom, but a show is the designer’s chosen way to put his or her statement out there. What I write is largely an emotional response, but that is what fashion is, an emotional response. But a different question: Are we in competition with bloggers? Absolutely. I’d like to think that knowledge of what you are writing about is still considered important. I’d like to think that some bed of knowledge about a designer and the history of the house remain important. I think we are starting to feel a little backlash toward the whole immediacy of things. The person who really saw this was Tom Ford. [Mr. Ford showed his spring collection to only 100 editors and allowed no photographs to be released.] Everyone who was at his show knew it was such a moment, because we get bored, and so we like the opposite thing. Part of it was that people who cover fashion used to feel special. And so you felt special again, and there’s something to be said for that.

Do you ever second-guess your reviews, if you came out with a different opinion than Suzy Menkes or Cathy Horyn?

Not so much if I differ from Suzy or Cathy, but sometimes, I go back. I always read the last couple of reviews before a show, or when I am researching something, and I would rather not say the example, but I read something recently that I thought was too mean. At the time, I thought it was great, but this went on too long. That is most likely to happen when you have such an emotional response, either positive or negative. But I am pretty confident in my own opinion.

From time to time, your critics have said that Women’s Wear has lost its bite. Do you think the paper has changed its tone?

Of course the tone of the paper has changed. It’s 100 years old. But I don’t think the paper has lost its bite. We still are critical when we feel we should be critical. We still try to deliver stories with wit, but not everything calls for that. People remember the extremes of anything. The industry has changed. We are a serious newspaper that covers a serious global industry. But things are different today. Things are more controlled. The publicists to celebrities have changed a lot of things. We once had a picture of Judy Garland in her dressing room shot by Tony Palmieri, a staff photographer. That would not happen today with anyone, not even a “Gossip Girl,” let alone Judy Garland.

In Hollywood, everyone is so afraid of being trashed. Everyone dresses not for the biggest event one can imagine, but for a mass television audience. That may be good for the houses to have their brands radiate across the globe, but I don’t think it’s really good for fashion. I am dying for someone to show up on a red carpet in one of Raf Simons’s T-shirts and skirts with a peplum. I mean, how gorgeous?

I’ll take a bet on that one not happening. What do you think will be the future of WWD? Can fashion be covered the same way online?

Obviously digital continues to be increasingly important. I remember when we started the Web site, we said the Web site will never scoop the paper. Well, that lasted 10 minutes. At the end of the day, the way I look at it, and I’m no techie whiz, it’s a delivery system. For a long, long time, the paper was the fastest delivery system. Then television was the fastest delivery system. We have to continue to embrace the possibilities.

As the host of Fashion Group International’s annual Night of Stars awards gala, Simon Doonan traditionally delivers an opening monologue that lightly, and hysterically, skewers the honorees. For this year’s routine, at the event on Wednesday night, Mr. Doonan revisited a subject from one of his New York Observer columns in which he discovered the joys of an online spoof called the “Jersey Shore Nickname Generator,” which randomly assigns silly MTV-style aliases for anyone.

So Mr. Doonan stood there, addressing Nicolas Ghesquiere as the “Prince of Paramus,” Jack McCollough as “The Condition,” Evelyn Lauder as “Pookie,” and Nina Garcia as “The Paris Hilton of Trenton.”

But only about half the audience seemed to get the joke, since this year’s honorees were a global bunch, including Pierre Cardin (“The Impact”) and Diego Della Valle (“The Triceps”). Alas, Mr. Doonan seemed to recognize that his speech had fallen a little flat, as when he suggested someone might need to explain the “Jersey Shore” references to Mr. Ghesquiere, pronouncing Paramus as Para-moo.

By the way, there was a little intrigue in the audience. Among the guests at the Proenza Schouler table, where Mr. McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez sat with Anna Wintour between them, was Andrew Rosen, the Theory executive, who has reportedly expressed interest in taking a stake in the company.

William P. O’Donnell/The New York Times A spread from the book “Allure” by Diana Vreeland with Christopher Hemphill, featuring a new foreword by Marc Jacobs.

With “Balenciaga: Spanish Master” opening in mid-November at the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute in Manhattan, a new edition of Diana Vreeland’s “Allure” seems strangely well-timed. The first edition appeared in 1980, when Vreeland was special consultant to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she organized costume shows of Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent, among other legends. She worked on “Allure” with Christopher Hemphill, a process that took three years as Vreeland sought the elusive quality of personality in images of celebrities and models, in their gestures and sometimes violent expressions — a special condition for pictures of Maria Callas — and Mr. Hemphill did his best to oblige her. He recorded their conversations as they went along. Read more…

Christophe Ena/Associated Press Olivier Theyskens.

After introducing his first capsule collection for Theory in September, the designer Olivier Theyskens broadened his relationship with the contemporary sportswear powerhouse this week by signing on as its artistic director. In his new role, Mr. Theyskens, formerly the designer of the luxury labels Rochas and Nina Ricci, will oversee the design of men’s, women’s and accessories collections that now have sales of more than $500 million annually. (Istvan Francer, who was the design director of the women’s Theory collection, is expected to move to another role within Theory’s parent company, Fast Retailing.) Read more…