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    Virgil Abloh’s Legacy Reaches a New Stage

    Shannon Abloh and the Fashion Scholarship Fund unveil a new plan.Many companies, including fashion companies, may be going silent about their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the face of political change. The last round of major designer appointments may not have included a single creative director of color. But at least one group is doubling down on its commitment to broadening the style-talent pipeline.At its annual gala on April 8, Peter Arnold, the executive director of the Fashion Scholarship Fund, the nonprofit that is dedicated to expanding access to the industry for underprivileged students, and Shannon Abloh, the widow of Virgil Abloh, will unveil a new strategic plan for the Virgil Abloh “Post-Modern” Scholarship Fund. The new initiative will double the number of recipients and expand the way the fund defines support.As such, it marks the next step in Ms. Abloh’s efforts to consolidate her husband’s legacy.Mr. Abloh, the pioneering Black designer who founded the brand Off-White, collaborated with Nike and became the first Black creative director of Louis Vuitton men’s wear, died in late 2021 of a rare form of cancer.“When he became successful, Virgil was the first Black face that many kids saw in a room they didn’t know they could enter,” Ms. Abloh said via Zoom from Chicago just be fore getting on a plane to fly to New York for the Fashion Scholarship Fund event. “He and I talked about, How can we turn this into something that really means something over time?” The Virgil Abloh “Post-Modern” Scholarship Fund was part of the answer.Shannon Abloh with the designer Aurora James at the CFDA awards ceremony in November 2022.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesNow, she said of the D.E.I. reversals, “it’s really nerve-racking, seeing the changes that are happening. But for me, all it means is that the work needs to continue to be louder. It just makes me double down and say, ‘OK, then we need to fight harder.’”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    LSU’s Kim Mulkey Courts Controversy in Style

    Inside the coach’s winning fashion playbook.The smog of a Washington Post exposé may have been hanging over Kim Mulkey’s head during the L.S.U. game on Saturday afternoon, but the highest paid coach in women’s collegiate basketball wasn’t going to hide. How could you tell?Well, in part because at the start of the N.C.A.A. tournament, she had given a news conference threatening a lawsuit about the article, thus calling to attention to it. In part because there she was, running up and down the sidelines and screaming her head off. And it part because … goodness, what was she wearing?A gleaming pantsuit covered in a jumble of Op Art sequined squiggles, as if Big Bird had met Liberace and they’d teamed up for “Project Runway.”Kim Mulkey, resplendent in sequins at the L.S.U. Sweet Sixteen game on March 30.Gregory Fisher/USA Today, via ReutersEven in the context of basketball, a sport in which players and coaches understood the power of personal branding through clothes long before almost any other athletes, Ms. Mulkey stands out. More than perhaps anyone else in the league — possibly in all of women’s basketball — she has made her image a talking point, a reflection of her own larger-than-life personality and a tool to draw attention to her sport. She is basketball’s avatar of the Trumpian era, offering a new version of The Mulkey Show at every game and costuming herself for the moment. As her team meets the University of Iowa again in the Elite Eight, brand Mulkey will most likely be raising the stakes once more.It would be wrong to call her clothes “fashion.” They have little to do with trends or silhouette. But love what she wears or hate it, love how she behaves or hate it, her sometimes ridiculous, always eye-catching outfits are, like her winning record, abrasive personality, problematic comments about Covid-19 and reported homophobia, impossible to ignore.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Celine’s Fall Collection Recalls the 1960s

    It’s a genuine trend. Just look at Hedi Slimane’s Celine.A full week after the end of the fashion season, Hedi Slimane of Celine released his fall women’s wear collection — as a video. But while he may have been going his own way with timing and format, in one way he was right on trend: Rather than offering up yet another cool-girl-in-the-city collection (trench coats, jeans, blazers, vintage slip dresses), he swerved in an entirely different direction.It was one that focused on the three Ps — pearls, pussy bows and polish — of midcentury chic. The word “pert” also came to mind. Politesse, too. Oh, and pouting. Celine is getting in on the beauty game.In what was framed as an ode to the Celine founder, Céline Vipiana, as well as the photographer Richard Avedon, Mr. Slimane offered up a tight collection of late 1960s silhouettes: extremely short on the bottom (just brushing the rear), structured on the top, and defined overall by an ethos rooted not in rebellion but in the jolie madame. It was less night crawler than day bruncher. Little skirt suits with bright buttons alternated with jewel-encrusted balloon minidresses; neat peacoats with oversize bow blouses beneath carefully cropped jackets.Celine, fall 2024CelineCelineCelineCelineCelineCelineThere was not a pair of pants to be seen, though there were a lot of boots, exaggerated spitfire caps, shades and, always, pearls, in the form of button earrings or Babe Paley strands. Indeed, in aesthetic terms at least, Mr. Slimane and Ryan Murphy of “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans” seem to be on the same page in embracing the return of highly conscious, coordinated outfits — in embracing the idea of the outfit itself, retrieving it from the dustbin of the passé.There’s nothing casual or just-rolled-out-of-bed about these clothes. Nothing “Oh, this old thing?” Rather, they speak to the importance of dressing for the occasion, when every day is the occasion.The message was somewhat undermined by — buy? — the loving close-ups of the new lipsticks, as well as by Mr. Slimane’s insistence on using only very young, very skinny models. (In this, he is still unfortunately stuck in a rut.) But it’s still a striking message, and one that has been dormant for a long time.Ever since casual Fridays were introduced way back when, we’ve been on a slippery slope to the end of even an unspoken dress code. These clothes — this trend, which was also the biggest takeaway of the recent season — suggests there is value in moving in the other direction, in the idea of putting oneself together.In the end, it’s a form of self-care. Can’t everyone use a bit of that right about now? More

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    A Painter’s Role? Capturing the Sparkle of a Gemstone

    As one artist wrote: “Luxury is not found in the cold pixels of our phone or computer.”There are myriad words to describe how light enters and reflects in diamonds and gemstones. They glisten and sparkle, twinkle and dazzle. Often they are luminescent, sometimes brilliant and certainly eye-catching.But conveying those sentiments artistically, as in a drawing or painting, requires an entirely different kind of articulation. And as times have changed, so have the techniques used to capture jewelry, as well as the reasons for depicting it.“There is a code to always respect so that the eye can read the volume and the jewelers can understand the design,” Estelle Lagarde, 29, a gouache painter and jewelry designer in the Haute-Savoie region of eastern France, wrote in an email. “The light always comes from the top, at 45 degrees to the left. Thanks to this code, we know where to place the shadows and light.”Ms. Lagarde’s use of that code, which guides artisans turning designers’ ideas into reality, can be seen in her meticulously detailed images of jewelry and watches. She begins each project the same way: making a contour drawing using a software program, “in order to have the exact dimensions of the technical drawing and the contours of the piece.” She then prints the sketch on a sheet of gray paper and fills its curves and spaces using paint pigments and a long, thin hair brush, called a rigger brush, that allows her to paint fine lines and intricate details.She has created artworks for watch brands such as Vacheron Constantin, MB&F and Purnell and for jewelry companies including Messika and her own Lagarde Jewelry. And she always sells her jewelry with its matching painting, and also accepts painting commissions. Currently, a ring called Pop Candy (21,000 euros, or $22,630) is her entry level piece.The Pop Candy ring.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Jewelry Brands Say Showing a Client a Good Time Brings Sales

    Brands including Van Cleef & Arpels and David Morris acknowledge that showing a client a good time really produces results.For its first flagship store in Europe, the family-owned jewelry company Mouawad chose one of the nine Arcade boutiques at the Peninsula in London. The hotel opened in September, alongside Hyde Park Corner and Wellington Arch, and marketing makes clear that its target audience is the ultrarich.But Pascal Mouawad, a co-guardian of the Swiss house, acknowledged that its most significant sales would not occur in the new store.“Our big sales happen outside the boutiques,” Mr. Mouawad said as he sat beneath the store’s interior arches, a nod to the typical architecture of the family’s native Lebanon. “We do a lot of private events, trunk shows; we caravan the big pieces around the world.”Mouawad is not alone in its approach. Taking a leaf out of luxury fashion’s playbook, which in recent years has involved whisking V.V.I.P. clients to exotic locations around the world to see (and buy) their resort collections, jewelry parties and multiday trips have all but replaced the semiannual high jewelry presentations scheduled during Couture Week in Paris.In late December, for example, Van Cleef & Arpels invited a group of special clients to London to view some of its high jewelry pieces between private receptions and an evening at “The Nutcracker” at the Royal Opera House (the jeweler is a longtime sponsor of the theater).Anoona Jewels held a party for clients in London in November.via Anoona JewelsWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    The Jewelry Designer Kia Schwaninger Steps Out With Her Own Collection

    Kia Schwaninger, who worked for other brands before starting her own, focuses on precision craftsmanship, style and a dash of emotion.When she was 5 years old Kia Schwaninger designed her first piece of jewelry, a refined necklace of royal-blue polymer clay beads that was for her mother.“I guess that was my first commission,” the Swiss-born designer who now lives and works in Brooklyn said as a joke. Her mother still has the necklace.Ms. Schwaninger started her own business, Jewels by Kia Schwan, in 2020.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesMs. Schwaninger, 42, has been serious about jewelry design ever since. After training in metalsmithing during her teen years, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in jewelry and metalsmithing from the Rhode Island School of Design, completed a design internship at Tiffany & Company and received a Master of Arts in Design and Applied Arts at the Creative Academy, a program in Milan founded by Richemont, the Swiss luxury group whose jewelry houses include Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels.It was Van Cleef’s president and chief executive, Nicolas Bos, who spotted her talent at the academy and later hired her as a junior designer. “She has an engineer’s mind-set and is very precise, but also has real creativity and a touch of whimsicality,” Mr. Bos said.She spent 10 years working for the French jeweler in Paris and then New York, where she rose to a senior designer post. “She created a legacy of her work in the Van Cleef collection,” he said, “some of which still remains today.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    The Jeweler Hemmerle Is Leaving its 120-Year-Old Boutique

    Hemmerle is leaving its historic boutique for a discreet suite down the street. “It’s more in line with who we are today,” Christian Hemmerle said.For 120 of its more than 130 years, the German jeweler Hemmerle welcomed clients in an elegant shop at Maximilianstrasse 14. On one of Munich’s prestigious royal avenues lined with high-end fashion and jewelry stores, the boutique was Hemmerle’s only physical site; its grand arched facade a symbol of the brand in the city.A necklace made with sapphires, rock crystal, labradorite, silver and white gold, and earringsmade with tourmalines, sapphires, garnets, bronze and white gold.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesEarrings made with emeralds, bronze and white gold, and a diamond ring made with bronze aluminum and gold.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesLast year, as it marked its 130th anniversary, Hemmerle gave up the lease and announced, on cards mailed to clients, that it was relocating. The new home would still be on Maximilianstrasse, but on an upper floor, accessible only by appointment.“The new space is a dream come true,” said Christian Hemmerle, who now owns the business with his wife, Yasmin. “When the landlord offered to buy out our lease, we jumped at the opportunity.”The business never had a great deal of foot traffic anyway, he said. “We have always been confidential, so this is more in line with who we are today.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    At Alexander McQueen, a Confusing Debut by Seán McGirr

    A confusing debut at Alexander McQueen, but Rick Owens and Yohji Yamamoto prove originality is the best revenge.Alexander McQueen, fall 2024Indigital.Tv/Alexander McQueenAlexander McQueen, fall 2024Indigital.Tv/Alexander McQueenThat the death of Iris Apfel, the geriatric influencer whose idiosyncratic sense of personal style made her a fashion star when she was well into her 80s, happened smack in the middle of Paris Fashion Week was both startling and oddly fitting. All the appreciations of her life and outfits have been adding up to pointed reminders of how this whole circus relates to the art of dressing, and the way clothing can be an interface with the world in the most expressive, original way.I was thinking about that a lot over the weekend, in part because of the designers here who, like Ms. Apfel, have built empires (or at least small fiefs) on a willingness to go their own way — Rick Owens, Yohji Yamamoto. Designers with a deep understanding of the rules and history of fashion and an equally powerful ability to rewrite both, and to imagine a different world. One whose uniforms can look bizarre and outrageous, but which create a sense of thrilling possibility: clothes like permission slips to think out of the box.And also because in Seán McGirr’s debut at Alexander McQueen, a house that once did all of the above, it got so very garbled.A McQueen MisstepMr. McGirr had the complicated job of taking over from Sarah Burton, the longtime deputy to Mr. McQueen, who had stabilized the brand after the designer’s suicide in 2010 and made it her own, adding a touch of grace to the angry romance and soaring imagination that traversed heaven and earth and that, combined with great technical proficiency, defined the McQueen name.Mr. McGirr is, in other words, the first designer to lead the brand with no particular connection to it, and that showed. In a preview, he talked excitedly about Mr. McQueen’s spring 1995 collection The Birds, as well as the East End of London, rough edges and rebels, but the result looked like McQueen, the TikTok dance version. It had energy, but not depth.Alexander McQueen, fall 2024Indigital.Tv/Alexander McQueenWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More