Closet expert Lili Pettit is known for transforming and organizing several celebrity wardrobes, including Jessica Alba's. Each month, we ask Pettit for her expert opinion on a new closet-related topic. Scroll down for this month's tips!
Shuffling through the endless options at The Container Store can be stressful (and time-consuming!). To ease your next purchase at TCS, we asked expert Lili Pettit for the must-have items for an organized closet.
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PARIS — In a telling piece of accidental theater, as the Paris couture shows drew to a close with the debut of the Chinese designer Guo Pei, whose work went viral last year when she made the poached-egg extravaganza Rihanna wore to the Met Gala, news also broke that Chanel, one of the tent poles of the Paris couture system and a notoriously private company, was losing its chief executive.
This is normally the sort of information that would cause a ruckus in any front row, as industry watchers begin to speculate compulsively about the reason for the split and what it could mean for the brand (and who might get the job). But at Ms. Guo's show, held at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in a narrow white room with a golden palm frond framing the runway, few of the guests, many of them Ms. Guo's clients from Asia swathed in white furs and brocade gowns, blinked an eye. They were focused, rather, on what was in front of them: the melting pot of Western shapes and Eastern embroideries and mega-gowns that made up Ms. Pei's first Paris collection.
Once the most closed of all fashion systems, made by a few, for a few, couture is quietly expanding its borders. As the map of the so called 1 percent is redrawn, so, too, are the clothes shown on the runway.
Continue reading the main story Slide Show Ulyana Sergeenko: CoutureCreditRegis Colin Berthelier/Nowfashion
On Wednesday, Valentino, the last of the classic maisons on the official schedule, was sandwiched between Ms. Guo and Ulyana Sergeenko, the Russian socialite-turned-designer who has made her name by exploring the history and handicraft of her country. (She was following the conceptual shenanigans of the Dutch pair Viktor & Rolf, who this season offered a Picasso-meets-Mr. Potato Head parade of white technical piqué dresses that transfor med the wearer into a living cartoon of Cubist pottery). The diversity made for an interesting ending.
On the one hand, there was Ms. Sergeenko, referencing the fall of the Russian and Soviet empires, the early 1900s and the late 1980s, in tiered lace tea dresses with molded camisole tops (very pretty) and big-shouldered stirrup pantsuits (less so), ankle-length shirt dresses and "Like a Virgin" bustiers.
Photo From Guo Pei's debut show on the Paris couture calendar. Credit Miguel Medina/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOn the other hand, there was Ms. Guo and her phoenix-adorned tale of an "emblematic lady strolling in a Chinese royal courtyard," from a mint green miniskirt under an oversize sheer organza shirt etched with metallic stitching to dance dresses in bronze moiré or shell-pink fringed in silver, and a finale of the exaggerated entrance-makers — an abstract cheongsam with fluted sleeves to the ankles; a hoop dress in liquid steel that barely fit through the door — whose sheer size and effect have made her name, both at home and at the Met.
Continue reading the main story Slide Show Guo Pei: CoutureCreditGio Staiano/Nowfashion
And in the middle there was the incredible lightness of a Valentino show — sparked by the work of the designer Mariano Fortuny, not to mention the dancers Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham, and the French author Marcel Proust — where the designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli turned dresses into dreams on the body.
Continue reading the main story Slide Show Valentino: CoutureCreditGio Staiano/Nowfashion
Eschewing corsets and lacing and aerobic constriction (as well as shoes, and largely, but not entirely, daywear, including trousers and skirts), they hung gold-painted chiffon plissé from the shoulders, to float around the body like fog; washed and aged and hand-stenciled jewel-toned velvet tunics, tabards and gowns; and inlaid the tulle bodice of an empire-waisted white gown with hand-cut peacock feathers and flowers.
Though some of this risked tipping into costume territory, especially the stiffer patchwork brocade Fortuny gowns, the workmanship was never less than breathtaking, especially when it was less than obvious. See, for example, a sleeveless gold velvet mesh dress where the net was woven in three-dimensio ns in a single piece — no cuts or seams anywhere — and a "simple" white sleeveless gown, the neckline just deep enough to exert a magnetic pull, a strap like a scarf dipping from shoulder to the opposite arm, the hem finished in a flock of butterflies. It took 1,300 hours to make.
Photo At Valentino, this sleeveless gown with its plunging neckline and hem finished in a flock of butterflies took 1,300 hours to make. Credit Miguel Medina/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt's easy to mistake couture for decoration; handwork for the work needed to add something atop a garment. But at its best, it begins with the essence of a weave, and it is built on the idea — as Ms. Chiuri said before the show — "of diversity, and freedom, and the chance to express yourself."
She wasn't only talking about the clothes.
