January 2023: Loro Piana Spring 2023 | Tiffany Blue at Fendi | Natalie Portman for Miss Dior
/ Anne EnkeJanuary 2023 Brand Posts with Excerpts
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Spanish model Steffi Thaler invites us into the evolving world of Italian brand Dolce & Gabbana, featured in this expansive, lingerie-rich, sensual dressing fashion story in Mexico’s L’Beauté Magazine.
At the beginning of 2022, the Italian fashion house revealed that the brand intended to end its licensing deal with Shiseido, taking Dolce & Gabbana’s fragrance and beauty lines (founded in 1992 and 2009 respectively) in-house.
In September 2023 Dolce & Gabbana Beauty released a fragrance named Devotion. At the end of 2023, the brand carved out a space for its fragrance and beauty products in its flagship London store on 6-8 Bond St.
Loro Piana is also on an Italian grand tour in the cashmere brand’s Spring/Summer 2023 campaign.
Models Amar Akway, Mika Schneider, Rianne Van Rompaey and Leon Dame present an appetizer excursion of authentic Italian experiences that are in communion with nature, land and community.
Inez and Vinoodh [IG] capture the quartet, styled by Aleksandra Woroniecka./ Makeup by Lisa Butler; hair by Eugene Souleiman
Writing about Loro Piana’s Fall 2022 collection and campaign, AOC shared highly-specific information about a decade’s worth of the brand’s processes and control over its cashmere production.
‘Transparency’ is a stake in the ground among today’s cashmere brands, including less expensive but very well-run cashmere labels. There is no “Don’t worry, be happy, I’ve got this issue under control so you don’t have to worry” in today’s cashmere business.
Reviews for this new Givenchy Spring 2023 campaign have been very positive. It would seem that holding the line and trying to make this vision of Givenchy work has merit.
In October, the New York Times explored the evolution [or confusion] around Williams’ vision for Givenchy.
Reminding readers that Givenchy has no core house identity, the sequence of designers at Givenchy has further created murky waters.
As for the talented American creative director Mr. Williams, does a former Kanye West acolyte, have a vision capable of translating Givenchy in modern terms — especially when none of us knows anymore, what Givenchy is about?
Because it’s game over if Mr. West, legally known as Ye, gets anywhere near an advisory role to Mr. Williams to help sort out his quandary.
From all I’ve read about him, Williams can’t possibly share West’s ‘I’ve never read a book, because I don’t need to’ attitude.
As The Atlantic explained this week: “Identifying as someone who categorically rejects books suggests a much larger deficiency of character.”
Note from AOC: The Spring Summer 2023 Miu Miu campaign is not for mere mortals. It is for the fashion rebels, “united in their courage and desire to challenge conventions” by wearing Miu Miu. You are now absorbing the meaning of meeting this deadly-serious assembly of warrior-women models and talents who understand that by choosing Miu Miu, the decision has a “deep impact on life, enhancing it more and more.”
Hopefully, their sartorial Miu Miu brand enlightenment can be transferred to us, if only we open our minds to these exceptional fashion prophets.
All bow down now and breathe deeply.
Good goddess, I LOVE Miuccia Prada. Lips zipped, because I am not worthy to speak of this campaign’s brilliance. Not one more word. xxxx ~ Anne
“Black-ish” and spinoff “Grown-ish” actor Yara Shahidi has exciting news. She will be joining American Ballet Theater principal ballet dancer Misty Copeland in Abu Dhabi for the Know Your Value and Forbes Magazine second annual 2023 Forbes 30/50 Summit, running concurrently with International Women’s Day from March 7-10.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is headlining the 2023 Forbes 30/50 Summit, that is organized by Huma Abedin, vice chair of the 30/50 Summit, along with Forbes editor Maggie McGrath and “Morning Joe” co-host, and founder of Know Your Value Mika Brzezinski.
Anya Taylor-Joy was named to the Forbes Europe 30 Under 30 List in 2019. She was honored last November by Harper’s Bazaar UK in their 2022 Women of the Year Awards.
I personally went back over Virgil’s older shows and the influence of the menswear design studio is strong in the Fall 2023 collection. This is not about radical change.
AOC remains a believer that Beccari and Arnault will take the menswear design group for an innovative spin — sort of a design laboratory that focuses on the future studio workplace.
But to hear in March that Colm Dillane gets his LV men’s position would not surprise us. AOC believes strongly that elegance is in the wind. I did keep asking myself “Would Jay-Z wear these clothes? Would the NBA players wear these clothes because the LV Men’s NBA clothes are fabulous.
We are positive that LVMH will make some kind of investment in Dillane. His whole story and his talent are pretty irresistable.
At first glance Natalie Portman’s new Miss Dior Blooming Bouquet campaign seems straightforward enough. The floral scent features notes of bergamot essence, Damascus rose, and peony with the tagline: “Love is a bouquet.”
The music to Natalie Portman’s new Miss Dior Blooming Bouquet campaign is Janis Joplin for heaven’s sake. I thought I was going to lose my mind.
When Natalie Portman looks straight at me in a Janis Joplin music commercial and says WAKE UP, she has my undivided attention.
AOC wrote in 2019 about Natalie Portman’s human connection and deep respect for Catherine Dior. The Miss Dior fragrance was named for Christian Dior’s sister who was a member of the French resistance during WWII. Catherine was sent to multiple concentration camps in Germany.
In the 2019 interview for Harpers Bazaar UK, the Hollywood star had sober words for progressive optimists:
“I think it’s a mistake to think of humanity as evolving,” the intellectually-accomplished Portman explains. You want to believe it, for sure, but it’s more like cycles of violence. Yet we’ve had an extraordinary lifetime of peace, too, so it’s allowed us to live in this belief that progress is being made.”
Technically-speaking this fashion campaign is about Fendi’s x Tiffany winter-drop two weeks before the holidays. Yet the power of a color — Tiffany Blue — defines it’s larger message and impact. The campaign is promoted almost solely by Fendi.
Trademarked as a color in 1998, and added as an official color to the Pantone system in 2001 [use governed exclusively by Tiffany], the color was trademarked in every classification.
Maverick artist Stuart Semple dared Tiffany & Co to sue him, when he liberated Tiffany Blue in 2021, creating Tiff.
Most IP lawyers agree that Tiffany would have won a lawsuit against Semple. The question was if they really wanted to sue artists — famous and not famous — the audience who bought the soldout Tiff acrylic paint at once.
The answer is no.
No one has been more committed to use her fashion shows platform to tell women’s stories than Maria Grazia Chiuri.
Dior ambassador Anya Taylor-Joy has a life-long passion and fascination with animals. The star adores animal prints, making her the perfect face for Dior Beauty’s Dior Mitzah collection.
Christian Dior’s original muse Mitzah Bricard inspired him to recognize the leopard print as a reputable trend.
Mitzah’s advice was: “When a man wants to send you flowers, always say — ‘my florist is Cartier.’” “Madame Bricard is one of the rare people for whom elegance is their sole reason for living,” wrote Dior.
Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘The Second Sex’ was published in 1949, when the French existentialist philosopher, social theorist and feminist activist was age 41.
The lifelong partner and lover of Jean Paul Sartre wrote a piece for Vogue in 1947, arguing that “Femininity is a Trap”. Dior’s Chiuri used the 1947 statement in her Pre-Fall 2022 show.
LVMH made major news this morning with significant executive suite moves at motherlode brands Dior and Louis Vuitton.
Pietro Beccari, the chairman and CEO of Christian Dior Couture, has been appointed chairman and CEO of Louis Vuitton, succeeding Michael Burke.
Delphine Arnault, the executive vice president of Louis Vuitton, who oversees all of its product-related activities including the blockbuster January 2023 Louis Vuitton x Yayoi Kusame collaboration, has been named chairman and CEO of Christian Dior Couture.
KidSuper founder Colm Dillane, Brooklyn’s homegrown superhero, will return to Paris Fashion Week, as the luxury fashion equivalent of an ‘artist as residence’ in the creation of the Louis Vuitton Autumn/Winter 2023 menswear collection.
Mr. Dillane, 31, is considered to be a great storyteller. In 2021, the prestigious LNMH Prize awarded him the runner-up Karl Lagerfeld prize with two other designers. Dillane thrives on collaboration, as did Abloh, and his commercial partners have run the gamut from Puma to SpaghettiOs.
Arab News Tehran reports that Iran’s judiciary has ordered police to “firmly punish” people who violate the country’s hijab law, a news agency reported Tuesday, January 10.
France’s Charlie Hebdo magazine, a French satirical weekly magazine, has again provoked the Iranians, publishing cartoons mocking Iran’s ruling clerics and their aggression against the protesters.
Two French-born al-Qaida extremists attacked the newspaper’s office in 2015, killing 12 people in Paris on January 7, 2015. Today the irreverent publication operates from a secret location with round-the-clock police protection, continuing its refusal to bow down to right-wing, religious zealots of any ideology, not only Islam.
The story of Armani Beauty’s ‘My Way’ journey to market is deeply rooted in the sustainability values of the younger generation, many of their boomer grandparents and conscientious consumers of every age.
Photographer Dario Catellani [IG] photographs Sydney Sweeney in the 2023 campaign. The Italian visionary is known for his deep attachment to nature — beautifully expressed in the Etro FW 2020/21 ‘We Are All One’ Campaign.
Reading more information about Armani Beauty on the L’Oreal website — L’Oreal holds the beauty license — claims and certifications about sustainability are monitored and validated by the Sustainable Product Optimization Tool (SPOT) developed in 2013 to measure social and environmental impacts.
Based on 14 key sustainability criteria, it covers the entire process from production to the end of the life cycle, including the purchase of raw materials and the product’s use by the consumer.
Lost in some of the late December 2022 holiday news was the appointment of current fashion director Christine Centenera as editor-in-chief of Vogue Australia, replacing Edwina McCann.
Centenera’s most recent role in the limelight was styling Kanye West's controversial 'White Lives Matter' show in Paris, on October 3. She also worked closely with Virgil Abloh, styling Louis Vuitton Mens until Abloh’s passing.
Centenera runs her own label Wardrobe.NYC. In May 2021 she gave birth to twins, becoming parents with her long-time friend and partner since 2018, actor Joel Edgerton.
For Holiday 2022.23 ‘Les Extraits Murano Masterpiece’ advances this transformation of fragrance into art with the visionary expertise of Glass Master Simone Cenedese.
This entire fragrance project is so intellectual, that we must backtrack to it origins in order to full appreciate it newest fragrance art offering.
In his own words, Belletrud explains the origins of ‘Les Extraits’ collection:
I wanted to venture where no one goes anymore. To reinvent the notion of an Extrait in a contemporary way. To bring it light, expand matter, and lighten things up. I wanted to deconstruct the very architecture of perfume
