FASHION Magazine

In January, Topshop released a pair of jeans trumpeting the words “Fake News” down the side in a bold stripe of red. Naturally, the pants triggered a firestorm on social media with its casual use of Donald Trump’s favourite media diss. Vanessa Friedman of the New York Times summed up the controversy when she wrote, […]

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Her heart will go on—literally! Céline Dion attended the Project Women’s Trade Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday February 21, to showcase her soon-to-be-released handbag line. But the real show-stopper was the 48-year-old Grammy-winning singer—and her seriously cool loved-up look. Dressed in a stunning Schiaparelli spring 2017 couture look, featuring a white shorts suit (emphasis […]

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After travelling the globe for seven years in search of a coveted Birkin to add to her 200-plus bag collection, Jenniffer Proskiw finally tracked one down in San Diego. “I went to boutiques in Paris, New York, Capri, Venice, Saint Maarten, St. Barth’s, Argentina—they all said no,” recalls the Calgary-based realtor. “I called the Hermès store in San Diego and the salesperson said, ‘If you can be here in person, I may have something.’ I know it sounds silly, but I was so excited to get my hands on one, I was shaking. When you open it up and smell that leather, when you see the handiwork—it’s something you want to look after and love.”

Fashion collectors like Proskiw—who obsessively collect a specific type of clothing or accessory—are a rare but growing breed. You probably know a shopping addict or two, but serious collectors are interested in more than the high a spree provides; a deeper passion fuels their spending. Many don’t even wear their purchases, instead displaying them like precious works of art.

Proskiw has built an entire closet and library in her new home around that premise. She plans to display her favourite handbags, including a Judith Leiber pearl- and crystal-encrusted peacock clutch that’s never left its dust bag and a Christian Dior evening bag that once belonged to Elizabeth Taylor (she woke up at 6 a.m. to bid on it the day Taylor’s estate was auctioned off at Christie’s in New York). Proskiw also collects eyewear—nearly 200 pairs, including prescription Dolce & Gabbana ski goggles.

Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, born on Aug. 19, 1883, was a true Leo. Bronze and marble lions litter the interior of 31 Rue Cambon, where she spent her life; in Lausanne, where she now lies, five lions sit etched on her tombstone. Beginning in the 1920s, the buttons of her soft tweed suits often bore symbols, including lion’s heads, and, as befits her leonine birthright, those suits won her king-sized fame. And yet, in the ’30s, Chanel found herself eclipsed by a Virgo.

Elsa Schiaparelli, born on Sept. 10, 1890, spent her childhood surveying the heavens. Her uncle, Giovanni, was a well-known astronomer, and it was he who pointed out that the moles on her face formed the constellation Ursa Major. In Schiaparelli’s 1938 Zodiac collection, the constellation glitters over the left shoulder of a blue velvet jacket that’s as lushly bizarre as Chanel tweeds are classic. Together, she and Chanel set up fashion’s organizing dichotomy—high art or expensive habit?—and they remain the century’s most important couturiers.

They loathed each other. Schiaparelli referred to commercial, streetwise Chanel as “that milliner,” while Chanel called the surreally cool Schiap “that Italian artist who makes clothes.” In fact, besides talent and mutual disdain, the only thing these two had in common was a belief in the very system that best explains their differences.

Even in today’s highly experimental fashion arena, it seems like a fantasy that a shoe-shaped hat could ever be considered high fashion. That, however, was the fantastical world of Elsa Schiaparelli. A true original, “Schiap” was a dominant fashion force in the ’30s and ’40s, and was hailed as a genius by her contemporaries (a 1934 Time article listed her as even more influential than rival Coco Chanel). Best known for pioneering a sense of playfulness and whimsy in fashion, the Italian-born designer captured the time’s Surrealist zeitgeist in collaborations with artists Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau.

See some of Christian Lacroix’s best hits »

The year of Schiaparelli speculation has finally culminated with today’s announcement that Christian Lacroix will show a one-off couture collection for the brand this July. “Elsa is a sacred sphinx who will never cease to make us question things, all the while offering new puzzles by way of answers. My wish is to reinstate her at the centre of her fashion house and on the stage through which she seduced the world,” he told French news magazine L’Express today. For all those who were a little more than miffed over his own line’s demise in 2009, this might just be that match in designer heaven we can all agree on.

Known for his penchant for pure extravagance, Lacroix was long lauded as a titan of Paris Couture since his debut collection in 1987, though he was never quite able to capture ready-to-wear sustainability despite his many diffusion lines, prominence in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and long-time cultural association with Absolutely Fabulous.

The Schiaparelli revival is going strong, and the resurging label has opened couture salons on the exclusive Place Vendôme in Paris to prove it. The “prêt-à-couture”  brand has yet to hire a designer, but if the magnificent interiors of its new salons are any indication of what’s to come, the fashion world is in for […]

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More than 50 years after its shuttering (and almost 40 years after the death of its brilliant founder), the house of Schiaparelli is set to relaunch just as its name once again reaches the prominence it had in the pre-war years.

To coincide with the opening of the Met Costume Institute’s retrospective exhibit Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations, Italian business tycoon Diego Della Valle announced the official relaunch earlier this week. Though the brand has remained dormant, even since being acquired by the titan in 2006, Della Valle plans on giving the old house a contemporary update, saying that it “doesn’t have to get involved in the frenetic world of numbers, accounts and dimensions, but it just has to express itself at its best.”

Last night on livestream, when one Met Gala-goer after another swore they were only really wearing that $50,000 look to the Oscars of fashion so they could sneak-peek “Impossible Conversations,” I almost believed them. The Metropolitan Museum’s daring pairing of a designer exhibit is that good: Schiaparelli, meet Prada; Prada, meet Schiaparelli. Hello, two most […]

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The Met Museum has revealed a sneak peek of the forthcoming and highly anticipated Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada exhibit in which Prada reveals her greatest design inspiration…aprons! “I’m interested in the lives of women in general, which is why I love aprons. The apron is a recurring theme in my work because it is […]

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We do say, the Museum of Vancouver’s exhibit “Art Deco Chic: Extravagant Glamour Between the Wars” is well-timed to assuage period piece poppers who have a while to wait for Season 3 of Downton Abbey (to be in the throes of the roaring twenties!) and Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby remake.

The fashion exhibit, which runs until September 23, 2012, features some 73 mannequins adorned in frocks from early 1920s through the late 1930s—those fit for tea and tittle-tattle by day and those for accepting marriage proposals by night. There are designs by French haute couture pioneer Charles Frederick Worth, Jeanne Lanvin, Madeleine Vionnet and Elsa Schiaparelli. One black Chanel day dress which was featured in English and German Vogue issues in 1928 seems particularly perfect for mourning, Turkish diplomats or otherwise.

Yesterday, we reported that Miuccia Prada was not too pleased about her upcoming retrospective with Elsa Schiaparelli at the Met. The designer was quoted by WWD as saying the exhibit was “too formal” and that the pairing of her and Schiaparelli was odd considering they were “total opposite[s].”

Now Prada has been doing some serious damage control, with a rep for the company telling Fashionista that the designer’s comments were taken out of context: