I’m a huge fan of the American Fashion Design show, Project Runway hosted by Heidi Klum. The British version, Project Catwalk hosted by Kelly Osbourne is equally as good, however sadly our freeview box in our student house doesn’t have sky one and it might have to be something i have to catch up on via youtube or when i pop home.
Last night i caught up on episode 8 of the stateside show. The theme today, was couture! The contestants had to create avant-garde pieces inspired by the model’s hairstyles, so you have massive bouffant styles, birdnests and strange mohawk styles. Not only this they were asked to produce a last minute ready to wear look. Yeah No pressure guys! I was pretty intrigued as to what they would come up with, but i was left a bit dissapointed.
I’ve chosen three out of the four designs that stood out for me. First of all, we have the very layered, tierded, beige dress. Its definitely avant garde and worked out pretty well but it didn’t blow me away, probably because it reminded me of one of those horrible doll loo-roll holders and it was suprisingly the winning dress for the episode. In the middle, we have the group that lost, and subsequently one of its designers was picked to leave the competition. It’s very costume-y and not at all avant garde, what were they thinking? The judges compared the material to bedding, and it does remind me of Laura Ashley material, very floral. It’s looking back into the past and not very fashion forward. Finally, we have my favourite design of the day. A really dramatic black trench coat which was esquisitely made! It was stunning buttoned up, very structured and tight on top, but it had a train and glided down the runway. Underneath was a top and some trousers. Not much to say on these seeing as they were very well made but didn’t have the ‘wow’ factor, it was really the trench that made me sit up and watch
For real avant-garde i checked out the latest offerings from Christian Lacroix who defnitely doesn’t do drab. If you didn’t already realise sheer is definitely back, and Lacroix has wonderful shades on the legs of his models. What is interesting is that the group who made the ‘Laura Ashley’ dress should take note, Lacroix takes eighteenth century fin-de-siecle France as his inspiration and has turned the past into the avant garde.
His Summer collection was bright, fun, elaborately puffed sleeves, ruffles, lace and luxury materials…and the fantastic ombre-tinted sheer tights! Bit of a sensory overload, but in a good way!
Each outfit is amazing, and really stunning (i think i could look at the images for hours) now this is what i call fun haute couture!
