Fashion Scoops
Summer Prize
A string of Italian fashion entrepreneurs and managers are poised to be bestowed with the Tao Awards on July 20 in Taormina, the luxury beach resort located on Italy's Sicilian island.
Marco Bizzarri, the former president and chief executive officer of Gucci and currently chairman of personal holding Nessifashion, as well as fashion designer and entrepreneur Elisabetta Franchi, are among the individuals to be honored with the prize during a gala night to be held at the town's Ancient Theatre.
Incidentally, Bizzarri's Nessifashion has invested in Franchi's fashion company earlier this year, as reported.
Alessandro Maria Ferreri, founder and CEO of The Style Gate luxury consultancy, menswear label Tombolini, as well as Italian singer Leo Gassmann, are also being recognized in their respective fields with a Tao Award.
The awards are part of the Taomoda Week event established in 2000 by Agata Patrizia Saccone, with the goal to promote and honor Made in Italy across 15 fields including fashion, design, science and performing arts.
The weeklong Taomoda event kicks off on Tuesday in the Sicilian town, marking its 25th edition with conferences, master classes, round tables, cultural events and July 18 dedicated to sustainability.
Past recipients of the Tao Awards in the fashion category included Brunello Cucinelli, Claudio Marenzi per Herno president and CEO, Ermanno Scervino, Antonio Marras, Genny, Cividini, Les Copains and Capucci, among others. — LUISA ZARGANI
Future Tense
Both love royal blue, though one is more associated with copper than silver.
Nevertheless, skin care guru Augustinus Bader and architect and furniture designer Harry Nuriev are coming together on a retail installation.
Nuriev has designed a futuristic pop- up space that will land inside the Augustinus Bader flagship Paris boutique in Palais Royal in mid- September for a residency until January.
Renderings depict a silvery, stepped pavilion pierced by a door and window that provide a glimpse of the Palais Royal garden with its precise rows of trees and rose bushes.
Bader's rich creams, packed in slender blue tubes with copper caps, are arranged in neat rows in front of a bench appointed with silvery pillows.
Meanwhile, a treatment room is decked out with the kind of chair you might imagine in a spa or dental clinic on the Starship Enterprise.
According to Nuriev, he drew inspiration from "the high technology of the future and the architecture and symmetry of the traditional formal garden."
Nuriev's interior architecture and design firm Crosby Studios was behind Jimmy Choo's new store in Tokyo's Ginza neighborhood, and he has collaborated with an array of brands on various projects, including Nike, Valentino and Dover Street Market. He also has a line of home and lifestyle projects.
Charles Rosier, chief executive officer and cofounder of Augustinus Bader, said Nuriev has long been a fan of its products and got in touch a year ago about a potential collaboration.
Rosier said he was "curious to see what his vision would be for Augustinus Bader on the retail front." The Palais
Royal project is billed as the beauty brand's first retail collaboration.
— MILES SOCHA
Monumental
L. A. fashion's favorite multihyphenate Eli Russell Linnetz has added another dash to his bona fides.
The designerphotographer-writer-director, born in Venice Beach, Calif., has opened his debut art exhibition at the Jeffrey Deitch gallery in Hollywood and it's as wonderfully wacky as you'd expect.
Titled "Monuments," the show looks at iconographic symbols of American culture. Chief among them is a monumental sculpture of Mount Rushmore with a fully functional pizza oven built inside, which guest chefs including star Evan Funke are being invited to try out at gallery- hosted dinners. It's made of foam, fiberglass and car paint.
"I tried to encapsulate America into one sculpture," said Linnetz, wearing a chef's toque at the opening party, where naturally, pizza was served and ERL skater pants and tank tops were de riguer. "This is for people who don't want to go to Mount Rushmore. And a few people who have been to Mount Rushmore said this is better."
Other monuments in the show include a rack of hoodies loaded with uneasy American symbolism, and a fallen Statue of Liberty that will be familiar to guests of the 2023 edition of Pitti Uomo, where a similar work was a fixture at the menswear fair's central hub, and Linnetz presented his first stand-alone men's runway show for spring 2024.
There are also several paintings on display, which are abstracted presidential portraits of Theodore Roosevelt, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and others built to the scale of the real portraits they are based on. "I love the abstraction with the matte gray of the painting and taking something and totally flattening it. It's also inspired by 'North by Northwest.' I really wanted to get Eva Marie Saint here," he said of the Hitchcock heroine who turned 100 on July 4.
The gallery text for the exhibition, which is open through Aug. 3, calls Linnetz "one of the preeminent contemporary interpreters of American nostalgia... who has reinvigorated the exploration of the American past and present for a new generation." Prices for the works start at $ 10,000.
"I am always interested in creative forces like Eli who are expanding the definition of art and the artist," said Deitch of his interest.
"I began following Eli's interventions into the fashion system and saw that what he was doing was as much art as fashion. I invited him to develop a project for my gallery. When he described his concept for a Mount Rushmore pizza oven, I knew we had to make it happen. Miraculously we now have a Mount Rushmore pizza oven in the gallery, with pizza served every Saturday."
— BOOTH MOORE
Having A Ball
The soaring nave at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, recently the site of fashion shows for Thom Browne and Wales Bonner, will next year host a "Grand Ball."
The popular Paris museum has set July 6, 2025, as the date for a gala to celebrate the centenary of the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris.
In a short press release, Les Arts Décoratifs said the event would be "in the tradition of the great Parisian balls" and a "celebration of fashion and French art de vivre."
While perhaps best known for its blockbuster fashion exhibitions dedicated to the likes of Thierry Mugler, Iris Van Herpen, Louis Vuitton, Dries Van Noten and Dior, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs also showcases its vast collections of furniture, tableware, textiles, jewelry, wallpaper, art and design objects, glass, toys, advertising, drawings and photographs.
The museum boasts one of the largest decorative arts collections in the world, spanning some 1.5 million objects dating from the Middle Ages through to today.
At present the museum is hosting several exhibitions at its main site in the Louvre building's Rohan and Marsan wings, including “The Birth of Department Stores,” "Luxury in China" and one mingling fashion and jewelry creations with the museum's permanent display of furniture and design masterpieces.
The International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts took place on the
Esplanade des Invalides, along both banks of the Seine and in and around the Grand Palais, from April to November 1925, according to documentation on the Musée des Arts Décoratifs website.
It notes that two major sites were devoted to fashion: the Grand
Palais and the Pavillon de l'Élégance on the
Cours- la- Reine. Designer Jeanne Lanvin served as chairwoman of the international awards jury and also was in charge of selecting exhibitors and the exhibition's architectural decor. — M. S.
Burns’ Turn
Grace Burns will be featured in Asta Resort's pre-fall campaign shot on the French Riviera.
The campaign follows the journey of a glamorous "old Hollywood" cinema star as she travels the Mediterranean coast with her lover in a place where stars and fashion icons gather, evoking the sense of the French Riviera's Golden Era. The campaign breaks Thursday and will appear on social media and the company's website.
Helena Ammitzboell, founder of Asta Resort and creative director of the campaign, said, "I was inspired by Grace Kelly's character, Francie, in ' To Catch a Thief.' An outgoing female and lasting icon from ' 50s cinema, visiting the coastline, who is spun into a whirlwind romance fueled by convertible cars and cliffside views." She said they blended this narrative with the French Riviera lifestyle and their muse, Burns, who has a cool tranquility and artistic nature. The 20-year- old Burns is a published poet and photographer, and is also Christy Turlington's and Ed Burns' daughter.
"For me, she's the epitome of Gen Z kindness, curiosity and poise," Ammitzboell said.
The print campaign was photographed by Drake Alexander with video by Jeff Bierman, art direction by Maya Chantout and styling by Charlotte Lauxerrois. In addition to Burns, the models are Dia Anitska and Fabio Ezzaher.
The fall collection has 46 stock keeping units, consisting of 11 swimwear sets, 31 ready-to-wear styles ( dresses, matching sets, bomber jackets and tops) and four accessories ( shawls and scarves).
The color palette ranges from lavender, soft rosy pinks, ivory with hints of bright red, reminiscent of the Technicolor films of
the ' 50s. The collection is available globally on Asta Resort's e- commerce site. The company also wholesales its collection to stores such as Kith, Revolve, Ounass, Flannels, along with smaller stores in Nantucket, Mass.; New York; Los Angeles, and Miami.
The collection is designed by sisters Helena and Jasmine Ammitzboell. Helena founded the company in 2021 in Sydney, Australia, and Jasmine has been with the brand supporting design since 2023. The brand is now based in Los Angeles.
— LISA LOCKWOOD
Heading West
French luxury brand Balmain is joining the SWAIA Native Fashion runway show taking place at the 102nd annual Indian Market in Santa Fe, N.M., on Aug. 18.
The event, which has drawn Indigenous Hollywood stars as models and spectators, including Jessica Matten, Amber Midthunder, Zahn McClarnon, Kiowa Gordon and D'Pharoah Woon- a-Tai, is a premiere showcases for contemporary Indigenous fashion design, including the work of the first Indigenous member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America
Jamie Okuma, "Project Runway" alum Patricia Michaels, Lauren Good Day and rising star Jontay Kim.
Kim, who is Plains
Cree and has a futuristic style inspired by nature, Alexander McQueen,
Iris van Herpen and Nick Cave's sound suits, will present his designs on this year's runway alongside collections by Okuma, Good Day, Caroline Monnet and ASEP Designs by Adrian Standing- Elk Pinnecoose.
There will also be a selection of Balmain fall 2024 looks originally presented at Paris Fashion Week in February, designed by Olivier Rousteing, who has been a champion of diversity and inclusion in fashion throughout his career. ( One of his representatives was at last year's fashion show, and was so blown away he helped bring the brand into the 2024 program, according to art historian Amber- Dawn Bear Robe, who curates and produces the runway event.)
The collaboration will give SWAIA Native Fashion models international exposure while exposing Indigenous designers to a broader audience, underscoring the event's commitment to elevating Indigenous design in the global fashion conversation, she said.
Grammy award-winning musician and Black- Eyed Peas member Taboo will open the fashion show, which will be held at the Santa Fe Convention Center, and there will also be an art exhibition by Cree artist Kent Monkman.
The first Santa Fe Indian Market contemporary Indigenous fashion show was held in 2014 at a public park with four designers, a $ 200 budget and a U- Haul for models to get ready. “What's changed is people want to see more of it, which is great. What has remained the same is these are amazing talents and designers who are diverse in all their collections and personalities and creativity,” Bear Robe told WWD.
She also created the first Indigenous Fashion Week that debuted in Santa Fe in May 2024.
The August showcase coincides with Indian Market, the largest and most prestigious juried Native art market in the world, and has drawn brands such as Ralph Lauren and Amazon
Fashion scouting for fashion talent. SWAIA Native Fashion is a subbrand of the historic Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, which produces Indian Market.
Hayward Ho
Arnold Brant Silverstone is back.
The founder of the
Arnold Brant label, who also served as design director at Nordstrom and president and chief creative officer at Hickey Freeman and Samuelsohn, will be introducing the Douglas Hayward brand to the American market.
Douglas Hayward, a Savile Row-trained tailor, died in 2008 and Sterling, a 66-year- old Londonbased tailor, purchased the brand in 2018. It currently operates in the U. K. and showed at Pitti Uomo in Florence, Italy, in June to further expand its reach in Europe.