The snow must go on - New York Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2013/2014

catherine mcneil walks jason wu FW1314 via style.com

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers" goes the creed of the United States Postal Service. With 4700 flights cancelled in anticipation of Winter Storm Nemo - a blizzard of potentially historic proportions that is currently bearing down on the northeastern US - that remains to be seen. Although Marc Jacobs has had to postpone his show until next Thursday, New York Fashion Week rolls on regardless. Among those turning up for duty is a swag of Aussie models. So far we've counted eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen, but there are no doubt more to come, including new faces Gabby Dover and Jordan Cohayney. Of note, Catherine McNeil, who is looking better than ever and was third out at the high profile Jason Wu show on day two yesterday, also closing Kenneth Cole. Here are her catwalk compatriots thus far.

The Exit strategy of Jason Wu

Well it’s not quite page one of Paris Vogue but Myf Shepherd looks to have gotten off to a cracking start with her second New York Fashion Week by making today's cover of US fashion industry ‘bible’ WWD. Shepherd was snapped during a fitting with Jason Wu, which could well mean that she has also bagged Wu's show - one of the week's hottest tickets. Wu has emerged as the hottest rising star in the US fashion business thanks to the personal endorsement of one Michelle Obama on two extremely high profile recent occasions. Wu's show will take place at 5am Saturday morning Sydney time (1pm Friday 13th in NY) at Exit Art on 10th Avenue.

America’s new First Lady chose a Jason Wu one-shouldered ivory gown to wear for the Inaugural Ball on January 20th.

Obama also appears in a magenta Jason Wu cocktail dress on the March cover of US Vogue.

Wu's website reportedly received four million hits within 24 hours of the Inauguration – and sales appointments for his FW0910 collection are said to have tripled.

The collection is inspired, says Wu, by fairy tales. Which pretty much sums up the designer's career thus far.

Before Jason Wu dressed the First Lady, he dressed dolls

fashionroyalty.com


It’s difficult to gauge the impact that Michelle Obama’s Inauguration wardrobe choices could have on the careers of the respective designers. Firstly Isabel Toledo, who designed the lemongrass wool lace shift dress and coat worn to Tuesday’s swearing-in ceremony. Then Jason Wu, who created the one-shouldered ivory gown in which Obama dazzled later that evening. In the just-screened interview, below, from MSNBC’s Today show, Cuban American Toledo, a veteran of 25 years in the US fashion business, reveals that people started lining up outside her studio almost the minute the news of the dress broke (a spring version of which will reportedly hit Barneys in March for US$1500). With his gown now etched in history and destined for the Smithsonian Institute, the significance for Wu in particular seems almost immeasurable. While a designer could wait their entire career for the opportunity to design an Inauguration ballgown, the former Narciso Rodriguez intern has pulled off the feat at the age of 26, with a label that is just three years old (and apparently with a legup from US Vogue editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley, who hooked Wu up with Obama). The Obama coup is a career highlight for the Taipei-born and Vancouver- and Connecticut-raised designer – and that's a career, interestingly, which already spans a decade and covers some unorthodox ground.

At the age of 16, whilst still in boarding school, Wu began freelancing for the US company Integrity Toys and created his own line of dolls.

Now sold at FAO Schwartz and reportedly considered collectors' items, Wu’s dolls include the camp Fashion Royalty line of vinyl divas (pictured at the top of this post). In some of their sexier Wu outfits, the dolls look like they are dressed as backing singers in a Beyoncé or Madonna music video clip.

Far more suited to a First Lady of course are Wu’s fashion collections proper. Not including Tuesday night's gown, Michelle Obama reportedly already purchased four dresses from Wu's SS09 range.

Wu told the Wall Street Journal that the Inaugural ballgown “can’t be replicated - it will never appear in any form in my collection. It has to be special.”

That said however, frockwriter spotted the following two gowns in Wu's Resort 2009 collection:



jason wu resort 09/style.com

The designs bear a marked resemblance to Obama’s Inaugural gown – minus of course the silk chiffon flower and Swarovski crystal embellishments:


reuters/daylife

Anyhow, here's the Today vid:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

today/msnbc

Michelle Obama recalls the Reagan, not Kennedy, era for her Inaugural gown

reuters via daylife

Well Barack Obama has been sworn in as the first African American president of the United States and of the deluge of global news coverage, a significant proportion has been devoted to the sartorial decisions made by his wife. That is, a quite luxurious “lemongrass” embroidered sheath and jacket from Isabel Toledo for the swearing-in ceremony and a white, embroidered, one-shouldered evening gown by Jason Wu for the Inaugural Balls. Some have already noted that Jacqueline Kennedy also chose white for John F Kennedy’s Inauguration in 1961. But frockwriter feels the need to point out that the latter was a relatively modest affair compared with Obama’s one-shouldered gown. While very much in keeping with fashion trends, the one-shouldered gown proving big news on the red carpet over the past 12-18 months, the Jason Wu gown is nonetheless a risky - and some might argue, girly - choice. Not that Michelle Obama is risk-averse: she ignited debate over the red and black Narciso Rodriguez dress that she wore on November 5 when Obama delivered his Victory address. But there is one precedent. Nancy Reagan also chose a white, embroidered, one-shouldered gown - designed by James Galanos - to Ronald Reagan's Inauguration in 1981.


bettman/corbis via instyle





frank scherschel_LIFE©time inc. via instyle