All you need is glove

reuters via daylife

Here are some early shots from the Phillip Lim 3.1 show. With its Beatle-esque Mop Top wigs, skinny bootleg crop pants, ruffled silk blouses, goat fur chubbies, embellished micro slip dresses and Sgt Pepper jackets, if you’re thinking there’s more than a little rock n' roll vibe going on here, you’re not wrong. Even Kanye was sporting what looked to be a real band jacket in the front row. It's an evolution of the long-established military trend, given a bit of a reboot recently courtesy one Christophe Decarnin at Balmain (a name we’ve been hearing a lot this week). “Poetic mod rock” and Mick Jagger were the references given to the NARS makeup team and the garments had rock star names such as the Hendrix jacket and the Stevie dress. The collection also featured gloves which, as Averyl Oates, the buying director for Harvey Nichols noted via her avatar alter ego on style.com’s brilliant “virtual front row” series, are a major trend this season. And not before time, given how many glovemakers have gone out of business. One of frockwriter’s fave boutiques in the world is the tiny Sermoneta Gloves on Milan’s Via Della Spiga.

As already reported by several media outlets on Twitter, the models had issues with their skyscraper Christian Louboutin heels, some taking them off to avoid runway catastrophe.

Frockwriter’s esteemed blog colleague Imelda thought it was all a "stitt storm in a teacup" however on closer inspection, these puppies look like they could have wreaked some serious ankle damage.





reuters via daylife

Click here for the complete collection on wwd.com.

Here’s a video from USA Today whose rep, evidently, did not have a front row pew. But it gives you some of the show's rock vibe.



But frockwriter wonders whether the real problem here may have been the models either being dressed with inexperienced and unpaid helpers – or even, heaven forbid, having to dress themselves.

If you have ever spent time backstage at a fashion show, you will appreciate the narrow window of time which models often have to change outfits - literally seconds - and how vital experienced backstage support crews are.

Twenty-four hours before the show, Lim reportedly cancelled the services of backstage support company The Ground Crew, which normally takes care of ironing, hemming and dressing.

Presumbably Lim cancelled The Ground Crew in order to save money - one of many cancellations The Ground Crew reports that it has incurred this Fashion Week.

Yes times are extremely tough.

In spite of the cheerleaders and those present in the trenches whose primary focus using social media service Twitter seems to be saying hi to their mates, there is no denying the anecdotal evidence afforded by the real reporters - whether professional or otherwise - who have been Tweeting what's really going down there in front of their eyes.

As reposted by frockwriter on several occasions this week, what they are seeing is empty seats, gaps in between shows and a general malaise.

In a just-posted story which was originally entitled "There's trouble in the Tweets", but since renamed, "Troubling signs around Fashion Week", The New York Times picks up the Twitter story - pisses it off - and then discusses the increasingly ominous signs on the fashion horizon.

"There are those who suspect that, behind all the hoopla, the viral communications, the artificial urgency of New York Fashion Week, there lies an aging and substantially dysfunctional industry slumping toward ... well, extinction is probably too strong a word” notes NYT fashion reporter Eric Wilson, before speculating that the long-evangelised ‘Shopocalypse’ of NY performance artist Reverend Billy, from the Church of Stop Shopping – who created the national ‘Buy Nothing Day’ - may have become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Manhattan retailer Fern Penn tells the NYT:

“We’re at the point where we’re dipping into our savings to stay alive. It seems like there is absolutely no good news on the horizon. It just feels very scary because the stores are empty. Big stores, little stores, it doesn’t matter. Everybody is scared.”