Design Museum Holon | Photo: Meir Bar Asher

TEL AVIV, Israel — For people who live smack dab in the middle of the world’s most politically charged region, Israelis are a very warm and welcoming bunch, keen to show a side of the country that doesn’t make it into most international news reports. As is true for most places in the world, in order to understand Israel and its people, one really needs to visit the country and experience it first hand.

So, I was extremely fortunate to have been invited to speak at Holon Fashion Week (HoF11) last month, held at the stunning Design Museum Holon designed by Ron Arad, who is credited with putting this suburban city on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, on the global design radar. Though the event was dubbed a ‘fashion week’, there were no fashion shows to speak of. In reality, what transpired was more of a constructive dialogue between the global fashion industry and Israel’s fashion community.

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Vogue: The Covers | Source: mostmagnific.com

LONDON, United Kingdom — There are two ways in which a fashion magazine can be successful: either by featuring clothes with which the reader can identify or by stimulating the reader’s imagination. It is the old tussle between commerciality and creativity. Except, of course, it isn’t a tussle that existed before fashion magazines became mass market and needed to chase and keep readers who, for most of the twentieth century, never even opened a ‘glossy’ magazine, which until the fifties was still a very exclusive and small circulation type of publication.

The effects of commercialisation can be seen very clearly in Vogue: The Covers (Abrams), which is a visual threnody for subtleties lost. The change happened comparatively quickly in the sixties when the clothes and the elegance they epitomised gently morphed into the woman — and normally the famous and easily recognised woman — as the face became the selling point: a clear indication of the power of the cosmetics industry over magazine publishers. The battle between clothes and make-up was largely over by the end of the decade as flawless faces and worryingly perfect teeth, seen through slightly parted lips in order to emphasise the lipstick shade, routed the clothes which had dominated the previous three decades.

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Loulou de la Falaise 1948 — 2011 | Source: Luxe Magazine

Debra Scherer remembers Yves Saint Laurent muse Loulou de la Falaise — once called “the quintessential Rive Gauche haute bohémienne” by The New Yorker — who passed away on Saturday at the age of 63 in Paris.

PARIS, France — The last time I saw Loulou de la Falaise was on American television. Yet, as a muse to the legendary Yves Saint Laurent, she will always be remembered as one of the most influential women from a magical time in Paris fashion. She had the ability to take a printed chiffon blouse and a khaki A-line skirt, add a twist of unexpected colour, a scarf tied around her head, arms stacked with beautiful bangles… et voila!

There was Betty Catroux; there was Marina Schiano; there was Catherine Denueve; each one epitomised the Saint Laurent aesthetic. But at its core, it was all about the remarkable ease with which Loulou de la Falaise could put together Saint Laurent’s pieces without it ever seeming like a ‘total look.’

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Burberry S/S 2012 Details Screenshot | Source: American Vogue.com

Legendary fashion writer and BoF contributing editor Colin McDowell has been attending and reviewing fashion shows for more than 30 years. Who better to give us the lowdown on one of the best London Fashion Weeks in recent memory?

LONDON, United Kingdom — Each season, despite challenges, London continues to raise the stakes, in terms of both creativity and, dare I say it, commercial potential. Here, I’ve assembled my top choices of London Fashion Week.

BURBERRY
We were all rather shocked at the colours that first came down the runway. “Is it Spring-Summer or Fall-Winter?” my neighbour on the sardine-packed benches asked. But within seconds winter green and maroon seemed not only the most natural colours in the world for Spring, but the only colours. The conviction and strength of what was Burberry creative director Christopher Bailey’s most powerful collection for a few seasons suddenly had the same sort of rightness that Christian Dior’s New Look collection did. Women were so convinced that they came out of the show desperately trying to lower their hemlines. At Burberry there was a version of that overwhelming sense of something not just totally right for now, but also presaging the future. I loved the shapes, textures and scale of just about everything — and people who know me are well aware of how rarely I say that about a collection. No wonder this chap is where he is — he is truly exceptional.

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Cadre Noir by Helmut Newton, 1980 | Source: Osborne Samuel

NEW YORK, United States — I once began a fashion meeting at French Vogue in Paris with a question to the rest of the team: “Why do we take pictures of clothes?” Everyone just gave me that look and said “Debra!” I know it probably seemed crazy for a fashion editor to say this, but sometimes we need to ask ourselves the question and I think now is a great time to revisit this topic.

Franceline Prat, an editor at French Vogue and a mentor to so many of us, always reminds me that the most important work she did for the magazine was less often inspired by the clothes themselves than by the great stories that she and many of the forces in fashion’s creative ecosystem pulled directly from their own life experiences.

As Franceline said herself, “always remember the great characters you meet in your life, they will inspire you later on and you never know when.” Our own life stories will always be, for fashion, the strongest and most powerful reference of them all.

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