We check out the looks from The Great Gatsby, find out what Beyonce will be wearing on tour, and find out why the fur market is experiencing a boom.
If you’re a fashionista who loves film, you’re starting to get really excited about Baz Luhrmann’s Great Gatsby, which is coming out this month.
The Tiffany jewels, the Prada-designed 1920s outfits – we’re already fainting.
And now the film’s star Carey Mulligan is modelling her character’s Jazz Age fashions for the cover of Vogue. Mulligan said she was inspired very heavily by Zelda Fitzgerald, the society butterfly wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote The Great Gatsby.
Zelda was a famous fashion plate and media star – Mulligan calls her the “Kardashian of her day” – and Mulligan’s Daisy Buchanan, the heroine of The Great Gatsby, more than lives up to that fashionable reputation.
The shoot, by Mario Testino, pulls out all the 1920s stops. Think headbands, fringing, cloches, Art Deco jewellery and glorious flapper skirts.
Our favourite looks? The long beautiful pendant necklaces, the crushed velvet head-cap and pearls, pearls everywhere.
Are you excited for The Great Gatsby and Mulligan to shimmy along the big screen?
This month Australian Vogue has also paid hommage to flapper style, featuring Karlie Kloss on the cover.
Image: Carey Mulligan in Vogue.
It’s already shaping up to be one of the biggest tours of this decade.
And now Beyonce has announced that she’s getting some of the most avant-garde big designers to do her tour costumes for her huge Mrs Carter tour.
DSquared2, made up of twins Dean and Dan Caten, put out a joint press release to say they were designing at least one outfit for the blockbuster tour, which starts April 15.
And, unusually, we even have an idea of what it might look like.
Apparently Beyonce was inspired by the duo’s 2013 show, Glamazon, and asked them to put together an outfit. We’re suspecting it will only be one of many costume changes – Beyonce’s tours tend to be high-octane and very varied, though in the past her stage outfits have always been designed by her mother, Tina Knowles.
So what was the theme of the Glamazon show this spring/summer? 80s-90s Versace-esque short skirts and leather. It would have been very familiar to Christie Turlington and Naomi Campbell, who modelled very similar Versace looks in the 1990s.
There were lots of bustiers, gigantic hats, leather and gold chains and ornate strappy sandals – all retro, t-shirts with leather, and all excess, excess, excess.
Fashion critics didn’t love it, but it certainly made an impact. If we were placing our bets on Beyonce’s favourite, we’d go with one of the onesies, or the black leather quilted miniskirt.
Image: DSquared2 Spring Summer 2013.
Find out about the Beyoncé costume that caused a controversy here
Fashion and art often collide – the retrospectives of designers at major museums are now a huge and regular event.
However, never before have they been so expensively linked. The Lauder art collection, worth a massive $1billion, has just been donated to the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
Estee Lauder isn’t just a brand – it’s a fashion dynasty. The eponymous founder’s son, Leonard, is the current chair of the brand and the one who donated the spectacular artworks. Among them? 33 Picassos.
Because fashion powerhouses don’t do anything by halves. The gift to the Met has stunned the art world as well as the fashion papers – the director called it “an extraordinary gift”, and they’re opening a Leonard Lauder Centre For Modern Art just to house it.
Fashion designers are some of the most prolific art collectors in the world. Valentino’s collection is legendary – he owns Warhols, Basquiats, De Koonings and countless others – and he gives rare interviews to art magazines discussing what he wants to buy next.
And Karl Lagerfeld’s auctions, of his gigantic collection of ornate 18th century furniture and Old Masters, earned him millions. However, lucky New Yorkers will now wander the Lauder collection all they like – in their finest Estee Lauder make-up, of course.
Image: Lauder with Liz Hurley, face of Estee Lauder.
It seemed like, in the 90s and early 2000s, fur was out, never to be seen again.
However, Anna Wintour, head of US Vogue, has always loved it – and now the new Chinese elite are following her lead, pushing the market to heights it’s never seen before.
It’s such a big change that it’s making major headlines. The mink market has more than doubled since 2008 – to a whopping $218 million. China and Russia’s new upper middle classes are pushing up the demand.
They see mink and other furs as signs of status, glamour and wealth. Plus their unusually cold climates mean fur must seem like a practical option as well as a big investment.
And it can’t hurt that fur has been all over the catwalks in the past few years. Despite PETA protests and animal rights activists lambasting the trend, and many European and American customers refusing to buy anything so politically incorrect, designers still love it.
Chanel in particular loves a bit of fur trim on winter collections, the bigger and fuzzier the better. (Karl Lagerfeld sometimes appears to be inspired by yetis.)
Gucci is famous for its over the top fur wraps and coats, and Max Azria put huge fur accents over all its winter offerings this year.
However, Prada’s massively popular technicolour fur of several seasons ago, worn all over the place by Kate Moss and Anna Della Russo, came in both fake fur and real – and the price difference was in the thousands, even though the two were indistinguishable. Muiccia Prada herself has said she’s bored with fur.
The battle over whether it’s fair and humane rages in the fashion world continually – fake fur isn’t biodegradable, while real fur has the same ethical issues it always had.
However, if you’re planning to go to China or Russia on holiday, prepare to see a lot of mink strolling the streets – it’s not going anywhere.
Image: Fur on the catwalk.
