Fashion milestones
MANILA, Philippines - In honor of the magazine’s momentous 120th birthday, Anna Wintour, the most iconic and revered EIC of our time, decided to share the real story behind her groundbreaking first cover. You know, the one with Israeli model Michaela Bercu smiling — not pouting — on the cover with her eyes closed, wearing jeans. The anti-Vogue cover, in other words. As it turned out, the Christian Lacroix jacket with an embellished cross was part of a suit, but the skirt didn’t fit Bercu, who had gained weight on a recent trip to Israel. Enter the stonewashed denims by Guess, which is as mass retail as it gets. “Afterwards, in the way that these things can happen, people applied all sorts of interpretations: It was about mixing high and low, Michaela was pregnant, it was a religious statement. But none of these things was true. I had just looked at that picture and sensed the winds of change. And you can’t ask for more from a cover image than that,” Anna wrote on Vogue.com. And so began her legacy. Also celebrating a birthday is Choupette Lagerfeld, who turned one last Aug. 20., which also happens to be Coco Chanel’s birthday. Leave it up to Karl to make sure that every single detail about his kitty is puurr-fect.
Making the cut
In its second year, the Preview Emerging Fashion Talent Awards (PEFTA) is a competition of the Philippines’ best upcoming fashion designers and a step forward from the magazine’s annual Ten Young Designers list. The preliminary round, judged by Preview editor in chief Pauline Juan, creative director Vince Uy, and fashion editor Daryl Chang, narrowed the initial entries down to 10 semi-finalists who were given P5,000 in seed money to create one garment that represented their collection. Presented in front of a panel composed of Pauline Juan and Preview fashion editor Anna Canlas, Stylebible.ph managing editor Isha Andaya, fashion designers Inno Sotto and Cesar Gaupo, fashion director Robby Carmona, and model Ria Bolivar, five finalists were selected: Vince Tolentino and Ma. Stefanie Caintic (School of Fashion and the Arts), Lou Ivy Jean Eleazar and Monina Dyan Gatan (Slim’s Fashion and Art School), and Emir Yamamoto (Fashion Institute of the Philippines). Their full 12-piece collection will be presented in a Preview spread and a fifties-style “salon show” on Sept. 19. In addition, another set of five finalists of internationally-educated Filipino designers chosen by Preview will also have the chance to present their collections in the salon show. Out of the 10 finalists, the winner will have his creation featured on the cover of Preview.
Caped crusaders in couture
Designer look books, no matter how beautifully shot and styled, have a tendency to get a little boring because, well, believe it or not, looking at clothes all day can get boring. So when designer Phillip Lim decided to present his 3.1 Phillip Lim fall 2012 collection with a comic book, even the un-geekiest fashion girls got excited. Featuring neo-noir heroines and a story of love and betrayal (but of course) the comic book is titled Kill The Night and was drawn by Jan Duursema (who did the Star Wars comic books) and co-written by Lim and John Ostrander (Suicide Squad, Grimjack, and Star Wars: Legacy — not that we’ve actually read these; we’re just name-dropping. At least we’re honest!). Sign up at 3.1philliplim.com for a chance to receive a signed copy when you shop online or better yet, pin, tweet, or post your fave 3.1 Phillip Lim image with the hashtag #killthenight to win a $3,000 online shopping spree. Let out your #fakegeekgirl and be proud of it!
Fashion showdown
Word has it in the industry that Katie Holmes’ will be debuting her highly-anticipated Holmes and Yang line on the same day her BFF, Victoria Beckham sends her collection down the catwalk. Whether they have the same time slots as well remains to be seen, but people demand drama and various news engines have been pitting the two against each other, referring to them already as “ex-BFFs.” Hello, sensationalism! We consider ourselves neutral in this fashion-version of Celebrity Deathmatch, but if prodded, we’d have to put our money on Posh. I mean, she’s got a husband who has a nearly-naked 10-foot silver statue of himself displayed on 5th Avenue to promote H&M skivvies. That’s a little hard to compete with, especially in Katie Holmes’ newly-divorced state. (Wow, that sounded a lot meaner than we intended it to.) On a side note, New York sure is lucky Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a lot cooler about these things than, say, Mandaluyong City Mayor Benhur Abalos. Like, way cooler.
Street style royalty
Street style photography’s first couple are as unstoppable as ever with a seemingly endless supply of projects and collaborations headed their way (but whatever happened to that reality TV show they were supposedly doing back in 2010?). Scott Schuman’s new book, The Sartorialist: Closer, features style denizens outside of New York City and is due out on Aug. 9, stateside. “I called this second book, Closer, because I’m getting closer to the niche of the type of people I want to shoot,” he told Harper’s Bazaar. “I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to shoot anywhere different than just New York and really get a great variety of types of people. As the blog grew... instead of waiting for other people to send me somewhere, I could start saying, ‘I want to go to Morocco, I want to go to… Savannah,’ wherever. So that was a big part of this book — just seeing the continued diversity of people, cultures and styles.” Meanwhile, his lady love Garance Doré collaborated with Kate Spade on a line of dresses, handbags, and other leather goods with her illustrations printed on them. How do you say “OMG, super cute!” en Français? Also, Vogue Paris gave her a regular column, which will debut in their September issue, which is awesome, except we don’t speak French. Merde.