Fashion is On

“Fellini-inspired play clothes” was how Vera Wang billed her latest effort. And while this collection evoked the artsy but luxury-loving Vera woman more than it did, say, Anita Ekberg splashing about in a Roman fountain, the clothes aimed for an easy sensibility. In place of the designer’s beloved leggings were satin cropped harem pants and shorts (a tough sell, perhaps, though designers have been proposing the drop-crotch silhouette for a few seasons now, so maybe they know something we don’t). These were worn with, among other pairings, a molded bustier, sheer asymmetric cardigan, and lovely short-sleeve silver sequined coat.

Source

Vera Wang’s ready-to-wear is synonymous with a sort of artsy dressiness, so her pre-fall collection of tailoring, structured outerwear, and body-hugging knits was something of a departure. “I’m pushing myself out of my comfort zone,” the designer said. But Wang seems quite assured working with these new categories. A boy blazer in charcoal wool twill with a double lapel in darker gray was coolly confident. If her client isn’t quite ready to work a suit (the jacket was paired here with a short, sculpted skirt), Wang included plenty of the layerable lean basketball T-shirts and leggings she’s long been known for.

Source

Vera Wang is doing battle — alone. “To have the sophistication of a collection, but to have a more contemporary edge or toughness, that’s the war I have with myself,” Wang said days before her show.

Source

A bride-to-be might worry for months about making her wedding day perfect, and that includes finding the ultimate dress. But flash forward to the end of the night on her wedding day, to the champagne soaked floors, disheveled hair and a crinkled dress – yet she’s still looking radiant – and you see that there’s a real case to be made for imperfection.
A not-so-perfect, artfully mismatched look was the theme of Vera Wang’s Spring 2010 bridal collection, which she presented in her New York showroom.

Wang’s wedding gowns mixed and matched fabrics like silk with asymmetrically draped tulle, added mismatched bows tied in all different directions and tacked together sweeping mille-feuille layers, turning the back of one ball gown into a walking cross-section of the Grand Canyon. “Mixed-media” as Wang put it.

“It’s as though they were tossed in a washing machine,” said Wang, and then, one imagines, were tumble dried. “They’re youthful and more organic than most gowns,” she said.

Source

Source

Source

IT’S not just the world of fashion in which Vera Wang has made her mark. For her contribution to costume design, the designer is to be inducted into the US Figure Skating Hall of Fame.

Having taken up the sport at the age of eight, Wang went on to compete in the annual championship in 1968 and her fashionable career move came as a result of not making the US Olympic figure skating team.

“Skating was a chance for me to express myself in a creative way. It was the blend of all worlds – music, dance, athletics, choreography and, of course, costumes.

 Source

The sources for Vera Wang’s inspiration are never merely passing, superficial references. Whether it’s a painting, a novel or an intangible memory, they form an integral part of the design. Wang distills their key elements, whether a color palette or a narrative theme, into clothing that quietly evokes the artistic core of the original work.

Wang’s 2009 Resort collection, shown, in New York, took inspiration from Francoise Sagan’s 1954 novel “Bonjour Tristesse,” a coming of age tale about a French teenager in the south of France, on the Cote d’Azur. Taking the book’s motifs of the sun and the sea, “the former representing a paternal sign of power with the latter representing a daughter’s poignant longing for her deceased mother,” according to Wang’s program notes. Wang focused on two-tone pieces throughout most of the collection, with bright yellow symbolizing the sun and shades of blue for the sea, contrasted with grays, plums, greens and corals.

Source