It goes without saying that Anna Wintour and Amy Schumer aren't the most likely duo, but in honor of Schumer landing July's cover of Vogue, the two paired up for a fun video in which they swap lives for a day. (Schumer even dressed the part!) Hilarity ensues, as expected, and one of the women finds their new career-for-a-day much more manageable than the other. This one is bound to go viral.
Watch the video below! (You've never seen either of them like this before.)
After decades spent transforming the tenets of men's wear for women, imbuing the traditional Savile Row trouser suit with a sexual insouciance, Stella McCartney is finally doing the inevitable: making men's wear for actual men. On Thursday — as the men's fashion circus swirled in Florence at the Pitti Uomo trade fair — the designer confirmed long-rumored plans for a men's line, to debut Nov. 10 in London alongside her spring women's collection, the one that used to be presented in May but that has now moved to a see-now/buy-now schedule, with the show taking place just before the clothes go on public sale. Similarl y, the men's wear will be sold a month after the big reveal, hitting shelves in early December.
"The desire to marry the Stella woman to a man has been inside me since the very beginning," said Ms. McCartney, herself a Stella woman married to a man, on announcing the news.
"My time on Savile Row" — she trained with the tailor Edward Sexton after graduating from Central St. Martins — "inspired so much of what I do, and it feels like the right moment to talk to men and give them what they deserve," she said. "I want to deliver to men what I deliver to women."
And what is that?
"A wardrobe, a choice and effortle ss modern clothes," she said.
Translation: Like her women's wear, the men's wear will be leather- and shearling-free, and, like her women's wear, it will be a full collection, encompassing suits and separates, outerwear and accessories; eyewear is in the works.
However, unlike her women's wear, the men's collection will not be associated with any particular season: The line, which will continue to be shown with Ms. McCartney's pre-collections and not on the classic men's wear schedule, will be called something like Collection One and Collection Two (it will be sold to wholesalers a few months before it is shown to the press and public). The theory is that men buy differently from women: They see something, and if they like it, they want to get it immediately. And they do not think in trends .
As to what the clothes might look like, that's still a secret. But some clues may be found in Ms. McCartney's past.
The designer has dabbled in men's wear before, making suits for both her husband, Alasdhair Willis (a jazzy midnight-blue double-breasted tuxedo with black lapels), and her father, Paul McCartney (a single-breasted tartan tux atop classic black trousers), to wear to the Met Gala in 2011. She has done bespoke pieces for Guy Ritchie and David Bowie, and she makes all the competition and off-duty Olympic Village clothing, including some urban athleisure sweats, for the male and female members of Britain's Olympic team in collaboration with Adidas. The overall look for both is kind of tailored, no-fuss hipster.
Photo One of the uniforms designed by Ms. McCartney, in collaboration with Adidas, for the British 2016 Olympics team.If those men buy it, why wouldn't everyone else?
After all, there is nothing new about brands making their names in women's wear and then segueing into the men's market, often very successfully, much like Lanvin, Christian Dior and Louis Vuitton. And though all those brands have named men's wear designers running the men's side of the business (Lucas Ossendrijver, Kris Van Assche and Kim Jones), Miuccia Prada has been as influential in men's wear design as she has been in women's wear, and at Hermès, the long-term men's creative director, Véronique Nichanian, has given the men's line its own clear identity.
Photo Paul McCartney, in a tuxedo designed by his daughter Stella, and Nancy Shevell at the 2011 Met Gala. Credit Stephen Lovekin/Getty ImagesThe biggest risk may lie in the fact that Ms. McCartney has built her identity as a designer on the idea of being a "woman designing for women," as she told The Guardian in 2014, and there is some ambivalence around how that will translate for men. Part of her calling card has been a willingness to eschew capital-f Fashion statement-making for real life statement-making, focusing on clothes that allow a customer to move seamlessly from breakfast waffles to power meeting to margaritas in Ibiza with seemingly effortless aplomb. That's not necessarily a gender-specific aesthetic, but it has been sold that way in the past.
Of course, we no longer live in such gender-specific days. So perhaps the real question is: What took her so long?
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