Tag Archives: Fall-Winter

Leonard: flowers and fluid elegance

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Beautiful paper and generous graphic design, I really like the flower on the invitation card. I’m a big flowers and detail and line lover. The hall is full, heterogeneous audience : Madame de Fontenay (the famous organiser of Miss France) escorted by one of her Miss ? I’m really not involved in celebrities stuff…Oh Maybe Sonia Rolland (ex Miss, now a TV actress). Lots of fashion journalists, around me many German and Russian ones. Vague impression of a right balance between the old France and the international hype : unusual match. I’m waiting for the show, like my neighbours.

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[googlevideo=http://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=337027167630141801]

The show’s ending and I still haven’t fixed my video problem of my « other me », my capricious Canon ! Some fabrics are absolutely fabulous ! Now I can better understand  the big success of Leonard in Japan. On daily I don’t use printed fabrics, I prefer minimalist plaint fabrics. But I confess : Leonard’s flowers are gorgeous and irresistible !

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I knew the brand’s name. But I’ve discovered with this show, a really infectious classical and modern elegance. With the excellent Michel Gaubert soundtrack. And a top feminine make-up. Great hair like the Botticelli’s Venus : congratulations Mr Marc Lopez ! At last, lovely models with a great grooming. Congrat to the catwalk coach too : at last (again) slender walks ! It’s so important ! Bones teens girls disguised as women badly walking : I simply can’t look at the cloth ! 

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And of course there are those incredibly fluid dresses, especially the black background and « Ryokan » flowers printed  ones : a big fantasy ! Yes ! Those dresses reminds me the perfect dressing of a Seventies-early Eighties TV actress. Puffed sleeves and tide shoulders, or hippies chic bustier dresses and I imagine Angie Dickinson in the late Seventies. Or an extra on the « Boat Love » set. And Purdey of « The Avengers ». With Ben Gazzara as an escort boy, dressed in white flares and suit and thin Ray Ban sunglasses surrounded with gold. Wow !

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So beautiful, here the printed dress of my next sexy winter ! Irresistible, isn’t it ? Yes I love being a vintage « Charlie’s Angel » ! Wow wOw so exciting ! Champagne Leonard !

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www.leonardparis.com 

Related posts : TRENDS 

Angel Lili Marlene: Esther Perbandt

A lovely short time in the Paris collections rush: the bags and accessories private sale of a Berliner fashion designer, Esther Perbandt. I come late in the cosy small press office of her Parisian agent.

 

A tall dark-haired girl with a Louise Brooks fringe leads me to a room full of white, black, silver, bags and jewels and chains. Esther, for me: Esther-Lili Marlene! Then starts an absolutely improvised interview. Blue Angel talks an irresistible English (like mine I suppose!) and uses an impeccable French to precise. Her fingers play with a white wine glass. I’ve always liked a lot  Berlin, German Expressionism, Krafwert, Inspector Derrick and Charming.

– Berlin has changed for 5 years. In West Berlin (surrounded by East Germany) we were really living like in island and I always have the feeling to be “someone” special. Most of Berliners feel it too. When the wall felt, I was fourteen. I went with my hammer and I picked some pieces of the wall with graffiti. It’s so unique, strange. 

Dear Berlin ! Esther-Lili Marlene is a tough gir of Berlin: “the rough way we talk, slangish Berlin”. The Berliner knows well Paris: in 2001 she is graduate of IFM, the French Institut of Fashion. Then she moves to the South of France, to work as an assistant designer at Chacok:

– It was really a big challenge.

Esther loves black, white and very few colors, like this really light yellow. She « jumps in the cold water » and creates her brand in 2003, with a first women’s collection « it’s not  really super pointu, it’s – quand même – avant-garde ».

– My style : a contrast between feamal and male aspect. Fluent drappy, soft sharp or line. Just this is boring. I always have to break it with male aspect : stacking up shirts, straight lines. Really rock heavy chains and leather. And Viscose and silk and coton. It might be sexy, but not “premier degré”.  The « sexy » way of Perbandt : a strong personality, unusual beauty, woman’s laugh.

– Maybe, I’m describing myself.

She has a pensive look at her wine glass, then spruce again :

– Black sheep, was my collection of this summer. I’ve always considered myself as black sheep. My « organic » father has a big sheep farming. 

– Winter Garden, my last collection (Fall-Winter 2008-2009) is the best. It’s a breath, freedom. I used to be called « Bird ». Birds are eveywhere in this collection. I can really identify myself in each pieces. The right balance between commercial and pointu (edgy).

– I live and work in Berlin. And my bags are produced in East Germany, but my customers are not Berliner. German don’t pay attention of what they put on, but I’m selling a lot in Japan.

And also in Paris, at Musée des Arts Décoratifs (jewels), Germany, Danemark, Italy, Switzerland and Canada. In her 2008 wishlist, she fills a commercial agent, a financier and an assistant.

And When Angel Lili Marlene-Esther Perbandt stays in Paris :

– I like to sleep, have a  glass of white wine at cheap brasserie, watch people concerning to their look and beautifull small guys. French guys are small, aren’t they ?

Common big laugh : I miss Berlin, a kind of tough simplicity. The angel’s gone. Thank you Esther ! Maybe to be continued in Berlin…

 

www.estherperbandt.com 

 

Related posts : 

Meeting Esther Perbandt in her shop in Mitte, Berlin  

INTERVIEWS & DESTINATIONS

 

Video and pictures of Elie Saab show, with a special guest Adriana Karambeu

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Great job Mister Saab !

Better than any fashionista’s big speech: enjoy this second video on my blog! Made with my buddy Ixus. What a pity my memory card was almost full when the show started.

Red and few big shots of an architectural dress and a really fluent and feminine other one. Cocktail dresses… movies dresses. I can imagine Gena Rowlands in the fluent dress in Cassavetes movies. Or a hitchcock blond heroine. 

And the tall-issime celeb too: Adriana Karambeu on the front row, escorted by photographers, not paparazzi, super excited press photographers. Big mess. And I wondered if she was as famous all around the world? Existential. Tomorrow I take some gossip magazines, I really need to get informed!

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www.eliesaab.com

Thanks to Zeina Raphael

Related posts: Fashion & Look Books