FASHION Magazine

See the AMAs 2013 red carpet looks »

The biggest stars in music took over Los Angeles last night for the annual American Music Awards. From Miley Cyrus’s tongue-wagging kitty to Lady Gaga’s red carpet arrival on a white two-manned faux horse, the show was nothing short of spectacular.

On the red carpet, Miley Cyrus (sans bleached eyebrows) was surprisingly modest in a white Versus white pantsuit with black Saint Laurent pumps. Once inside though, it didn’t take long for the singer to return to her signature rebellious ways when she rocked a cat print crop top and high-waisted bikini bottom by Brit designer Markus Lupfer during her performance. In other attention grabbing sartorial choices, Lady Gaga, the newly appointed face of Versace, wore a lavender dress from the brand’s Spring 2014 collection. In eerily brilliant branding, she appeared the doppelganger of Donatella herself.

See the biggest Spring 2014 fashion trends »
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With the end of fashion week in Toronto marking the close of Spring 2014 show season, it’s time we looked back at all the trends that emerged. As much as the runway sets the pace for what’s to come for the top Spring 2014 trends, the streets play a major role as show-going trendsetters give us the relatable breakdown of how to wear what’s hot next season. Prints take two spots on our top Spring 2014 trends list through those with a painterly quality and those influenced by international cultures. At Hérmes, Rousseau-inspired water lily florals were printed on luxurious fabrics while at Diane Von Furstenberg, dresses and skirts depicting an African wilderness roared. As for fashionable time travel, prepare to keep reminiscing about the youthful 1990s, which haven’t ceased to get reincarnated season after season. Designers like Rodarte, Balmain and Jason Wu have reinvented the decade’s essentials yet again. To help with your daydreaming of long sunny spring days we’ve compiled the ultimate gallery of top Spring 2014 trends as dictated by the runways and our favourite street style stars in New York, London, Milan, Paris and Toronto! Feel free to let this be your guide to budgeting and creating closet space for next season’s must have pieces.

View by trend: 1. 1990s | 2. Art-Inspired | 3. Athletic | 4. Blue | 5. Crop Tops | 6. Embellishment | 7. Metallic | 8. Pleats | 9. Sheer | 10. Worldly

See our favourite Spring 2014 shoes »

With Paris Fashion Week ending our month long preview of all things Spring 2014, it’s time we gushed over the shoes that accompanied all that we are dying to wear in the coming season.

Femininity reigned supreme on the runway through Balenciaga, Dior and Roland Mouret’s take on the stiletto. Dior’s complexly inter woven straps would make any shoe addict salivate. At Balmain, our impending full coverage boots will shed a few layers and appear as heeled boots with varying dotted sheer and embellished cage finishes. While we saw Saint Laurent’s fall styles embrace the studded and spiked appeal of punk’s aesthetic, Junya Watanabe clung onto the trend for his Spring 2014 shoes with a menacing ankle boot. Enviable green snakeskin heels and platform chunky heels were seen at Gucci and Michael Kors respectively. Spring is incomplete without feather embellished flats as seen at Rochas.

To say that punk influenced the fall runways is an understatement; the late-’70s subculture bred from anti-establishment rock ’n’ roll dominated many collections. Aside from the tartan, vinyl, chains and studs, and the faux piercings on just one of the models’ lobes—a page ripped right out of the CBGB style guide—another trend rose from those anarchic ashes: choppy haircuts.

“Punk is an idea that was floating around,” Sam McKnight said backstage at Fendi, where he created haute fox-fur mohawks a few days after engineering a similar long-on-top, short-on-the-sides optical illusion at Clements Ribeiro.

“It might have been something in the air,” says Redken creative consultant Guido Palau of the punk theme, “but it wasn’t planned.” Other influences led him to create short styles at Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton and Jean Paul Gaultier—not least fashion’s fickle nature. “Designers see girls with long hair, and they get a little despondent. Sometimes they just want that different character, the kind of girl that would cut her hair.” Palau dates the move away from long, luxe locks to January 2013, when he cut over 40 wigs into gamine pixies for Raf Simons’s Spring 2013 Dior Haute Couture show. “Raf really wanted what that brings to an outfit—what that brings to a dress.”

By Zoe Whittall

In the early ’90s, I would take an hour-long bus trip from the suburbs of Montreal to hang out with friends in the city’s downtown core. I remember seeing billboards featuring lithe girls (who mainly looked like boys) posing in black and white alongside Highway 20, selling the apotheosis of gender erasure via CK One fragrance ads. It was a time when Quebec-born supermodel Ève Salvail was the biggest question mark on the scene. She sent shockwaves through the industry when she first walked down Jean Paul Gaultier’s runway with a shaved and tattooed head. She represented an overtly androgynous presence in the fashion industry and seemed, to me, as rare and queer as a glitter-encrusted rainbow unicorn.

But I’ll say it straight: Lesbians are rarely part of the fashion party. The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and its museum’s latest exhibit,  A Queer History of Fashion—which opens Sept. 13—touches on the subject.

See punk fashion on the runways »

When the Sex Pistols burst onto the scene in 1976, their spitting anarchist anthems were the antithesis of high fashion. But these days, a studded leather motorcycle jacket is as covet-worthy as a designer bag.

Opening on May 7, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York shines the spotlight on this rebellious movement with its latest Costume Institute exhibition, Punk: Chaos to Couture. In its early days, British punk rock bands like The Clash forced safety pins through leather while Patti Smith, The Ramones and Blondie’s Debbie Harry holed up at New York’s legendary dive bar CBGB in tattered T-shirts and ripped jeans as a protest against the city’s glitzy disco scene.

Designer Vivienne Westwood’s punk roots also run deep—in 1976 she cultivated many of this era’s DIY hallmarks at her London boutique, Seditionaries, which she owned with then-boyfriend, visual artist and Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren. The duo’s endlessly creative takes on rebellion helped shape the unofficial punk uniform, with reappropriated patriotic symbols including Queen Elizabeth II’s face and the Union Jack. The movement’s raw aesthetic gained mainstream appeal in 1977, when British designer Zandra Rhodes used exposed seams, strategic rips and bondage-like accents on her floor-length dresses.

See Jean Paul Gaultier Fall 2013 collection photos » Exquisitely tailored leathers, patchwork fur and punky toupées (that coiffed the models with wild two-tone hair): all the ingredients you might expect from a Jean Paul Gaultier show and then some. The stage at Place Wagram was set like a Broadway production of Chicago; a double-tiered […]

The post Paris Fashion Week: Jean Paul Gaultier’s fierce muse for Fall 2013 appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

See our favourite shoes from Fall 2013 »

Forget diamonds, everybody knows that shoes are a girl’s best friend. As the Fall 2013 trends begin to emerge, so too do the must-have heels, boots and flats of the season. This round of fashion week has brought with it oodles of new shoe trends to look out for. From strappy suede booties to architectural high heels, the New York, London, Milan and soon-to-be Paris runways are filled with quirky designs that can certainly be the finishing touch on any outfit.

So far, many designers are reinventing old classics and updating them with modern details. Case in point: high-heeled loafers, seen at Mulberry, Rag & Bone and Moschino, which gave a new feminine twist to menswear’s most classic shoe by using fresh yellows, and unexpected patterns. Speaking of unexpected combinations, one of the most unusual footwear trends is the emerging sandal-boot. Open-toe booties are nothing new, but this time designers such as Prada have created a boot customized with cutouts around the sides and front of the shoe.

See our all-black makeup picks! »

It is always darkest before the dawn, so the proverb goes. By our calculations, the sun should be rising on planet fashion any day now: the Fall 2012 runways plunged us into a cavernous black hole of clothes worthy of Louise Brooks and Siouxsie Sioux, and haunting beauty looks that referenced Tim Burton’s films. That mood also infected the making of Lady Gaga’s fragrance, Fame. “I like black, especially what it has to do with fame, because it is a veil,” she says, tapping her knife-like ebony talons on the table at a hotel in New York. “It’s sort of like saying, ‘I don’t want you to see something.’” The R&D department struggled to create the noir-hued perfume that turns clear once airborne—an industry first. (Rumour has it one staff member was inspired when he spotted a bottle of black vodka behind the bar while out for a drink.) The request for an ominously coloured juice was music to the ears of its perfumer, Richard Herpin. It meant he didn’t have to exclude ingredients that can be visually unappealing when mixed together. “I could use anything I wanted,” he says. As fashion has taught us, black hides a multitude of sins.

With 2013 so close we can nearly taste it, we’re taking some time to look back and reflect on 2012 and learn a little. Our year has been filled with designer switch-ups, Kate Middleton sightings and a whole lot of celebrity spotting. We’ve always been told we’re supposed to learn from our mistakes, but instead […]

The post Worst Dressed 2012: What this year’s top 10 celebrity fashion gaffes have taught us about how not to dress next year appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

Canada’s most expressive supermodel on following her convictions, her new job with Naomi Campbell and her thoughts on motherhood.

See Coco Rocha’s FASHION Magazine cover shoot »
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Finally, a reality show we’re actually excited for! Reps for Andrej Pejic, the world’s most famous androgynous, gender-bending model (and our February cover star), have finally confirmed the blonde stunner’s forthcoming reality show, which will trail Pejic for weeks as he performs normal model duties. In an email to Fashionista, DNA Models (Pejic’s New York […]

The post Andrej Pejic is getting a reality show appeared first on FASHION Magazine.