Yigal Azrouël Pre-Fall 2012 Collections

Yigal Azrouël has gotten good at nailing the details. More than some designers, he plays on his themes and variations, trusting in subtler touches to set seasons apart, like the frills that snaked around the curves of the hip. At the house of Azrouël, there'll always be accents in leather. There'll always be womenswear that borrows from menswear, usually a paper-bag waist or two, blocks of color layered on color. And here they all were for pre-fall. Dresses hit a little lower beneath the knee than in seasons previous and flowed more vertiginously between structure and fluidity. Stiffer fabrics like pinstriped wool and tweed gave his separates more heft. But the real change here was the increased emphasis Azrouël placed on the luxe. He used cashmere more than ever before and also experimented with vests in ombré Finnish raccoon and fox.

Via STYLE

Yigal Azrouël Spring/Summer '12 Menswear Collection

Launched in 1998, Yigal Azrouel’s namesake label is best known for its fluid, feminine draping. As Style.com said, “Azrouel is at his most effective when his clothes look like they could have been nicked from the models' own closets.” And with pieces like experimental jersey T-shirts and shrunken leather jackets, many of his clothes do bear that effortless touch-chic style. Azrouel, who also designs a menswear line, opened a boutique in the Meatpacking District in 2003, and a second store in Watermill in 2008.

The Israeli American New York based fashion designer, Yigal Azrouel has released its new Spring Summer 2012 collection which took  inspiration from the legendary Spanish painter Pablo Picasso.

Featuring model German Ruiz, the lookbook of Spring Summer 2012 collection comes in casual and relaxed basic designs with some  classic essentials as well as combining the freshness of modernity, which is photographed by Jason Kim.

Maintaining the designer’s dressmaking aesthetic of using high-quality and refined fabrics such as leather, denim and cotton making  for a comfortable line in modern silhouettes, this collection offers lines of daily wear of coats and jackets that layering light  pieces such as blouses, shirts and t-shirts.

 

There is a fabulous nautical coats in midnight blue shades that is paired with mid layer pieces, pants and boots, as well as other  gorgeous colors that are featured in various lines and styles of layering essential pieces, including army green, steel blue, bright  orange, khaki, and washed grayish shade, not to mention the classic and neutrals of black.

Valentino Spring 2012 Couture Collection

 A conversation with Pier Paolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri before the presentation of their new couture collection for Valentino quickly took a turn for the metaphysical. "If you don't think about fashion, you just do clothes," said Piccioli. "Fashion needs culture or it becomes empty." The duo found their cultural spine in the finest flowering of French thought, keying in on the eighteenth century's Age of Enlightenment and particularly the return to "real" values that Rousseau endorsed in his State of Nature philosophy. "Couture is a real value," Piccioli added. "It's not superficial."

But it was Marie Antoinette role-playing in her little farm on the grounds of Versailles who provided the collection's ambience. The first model seemed to arrive in the salons of the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild on a breath of cool country air. Sprigged flower prints covered almost everything. An antique fabric alchemy transformed taffeta into equally antique-looking blurred floral chaîne. The sense of precious old artisanship was also evident in the swirling bouilloné decoration. The volumes were diaphanous, bucolic, like the cloud of point d'esprit scattered with organza lace cutouts. The designers sought a "deep lightness." It was beautifully exemplified in dresses with up to five layers of lace and organza.

Examined up close in the atelier, the workmanship defied comprehension. The stitching was so fine it was invisible. It signaled the heart-stopping delicacy that distinguished the collection. But there was a real resilience, too. Hence the use of cotton amidst the lace, organza, and filigree, as in a coat with tone-on-tone embroidery that felt embossed. Hence also the flat shoes, which loaned their own kind of grace to the purity of an ivory coat dress decorated with tiny spirals (Piccioli compared them to stucco). A chaîne skirt had deep, useful pockets. Smocking was a rustic detail. There was a casual quality that made the clothes ultimately feel more modern than their long-sleeved, high-necked, and lace-gloved propriety would at first suggest.

Chiuri pointed out that she and Picciolo come from an accessories background, where they learned to tell a big story with a small object. That skill is now writ large in the collections they are designing at Valentino. Today's story was their most exquisite yet.

Via STYLE