This week’s fashion guide is all about summer cool, from the hot new travel bag to sunglasses galore to the return of the 90s slip dress. Dive in for all your fashion gossip…
You know a piece is a fashionista favourite in the making when both Coco Rocha and Alexa Chung step out with it proudly on their arms.
The Jason Wu tote for St Regis is rapidly shaping up to be just such a piece.
It’s the new collaboration style – a big brand associated with luxury asks a cutting-edge designer to lend their street cred and impeccable taste to a new line.
And the tote, named the Grand Tourista in homage to the European tradition of the ‘grand tour’ among the aristocracy in the 1800s, is proving to be mightily popular.
Wu is famous for minimalism and 90s-inspired sleekness, and the St Regis bag is the first product he’s ever made just for travel.
The intended customer? A jetsetter with a taste for the chic. It’s available online only, from both Jason Wu and St Regis’s own boutiques.
At $1925 it’s only for the fashionista who’s been very, very good – but surely you have been…
Image: Jason Wu for St Regis Hotels tote.
Everything 90s is new again.
Well, not everything. The Spice Girls are opening a musical rather than an arena and razor scooters are still a bad idea, but the humble slip dress of 90s girls has appeared on the runway, evolved for the new century.
Slips and sheaths are being updated in bold hues, embellished with new detail or given new shape.
T by Alexander Wang is doing a roaring trade in long black layered slips, while Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren’s American minimalism has been rediscovered by the fashionable masses.
Issa, One Teaspoon and Rodarte also put lace and tulle-trimmed confections down the catwalks.
So how do you get in on the action? Slip dresses were notoriously unforgiving in their old incarnation, so rejoice in this season’s new interpretations – with distracting details, tulle overlays and petticoats.
Go long; the short silhouette of the slip dress has given way to long, sweeping interpretations that look like pretty Pre-Raphaelite nightgowns.
And look modern with tailored accessories, flatform shoes and up-to-the-moment jewellery.
Ready to rock the silk slip this season?
Image: Slip dresses at ASOS online.
Lucy Folk is the Australian jewellery designer to watch.
And now she’s teamed up with cult Japanese singer Yukimi Nagano to produce a line of jewellery good enough to eat.
The pop-hype collaboration is inspired by, of all things, the humble bento box.
The Japanese lunch construction is at the heart of Folk’s magic, with rice, sesame seeds, jasmine flowers and broad beans lending their shapes in silver and gold.
It’s not entirely new ground for cult fave Folk, who previously specialised in burgers and onion rings cast in gold – delicious and inedible, any fashionista’s favourite things.
The collaboration was all food-based. Nagano, who’s the lead singer of Japanese group Little Dragon, sent all her food favourites to Folk, who then transformed them into treasures.
You can find the work on Lucy’s website, in her boutique in Melbourne, and in exclusive places around the world – including the formidable Paris emporium Colette.
Will you be picking up a tasty Japanese treat from Lucy Folk?
Image: Folk + Yukimi.
The sunglasses movement has moved on from thick, neon frames of last summer.
Now it’s all about retro shapes and over-embellishment. RESCU’s faves for this summer are on-trend, off-beat and sure to make a statement.
The major player on the faces of every editor worth her salt has been the Dolce & Gabbana black-and-gold pair, replete with extensive gold eyebrows.
If you want something slightly less pricey, the Anna Della Russo for H&M sunglasses with elaborate gold snakes across the top of the frame do the same job for less.
We’re loving that Victoria Beckham is selling her own range of sunnies – for obscuring flashbulbs while stepping from a town car, obviously. They’re her own signature style: gigantic and ever so slightly square-shaped.
Prada’s striped pairs, in summery shades of orange and white, are also making big waves, while Tom Ford’s sunnies are always a classic for the fashion editor on holiday.
And if you want the next big thing, go for Henry Holland’s abstract shades – in bright jewel tones, their hexagonal frames are paired with red pouts all over Europe and will shortly make their way out to Australia.
Which shades will you choose this summer?
Image: Henry Holland sunglasses.
