Karl Lagerfeld is setting trends based on the Chanel icon database. Everywhere you go, you see double Cs, pearls and bouclé women suits.
Emerging brands are inspired by the 50s or the Sex Pistols’ punk wave and are showing innovative, but not impossible, women’s wear.
Mandarina Duck has just doubled its presence in both Turkey and Istanbul with the opening of its second store in the Besiktas district.
It seems bizarre to have such hi-tech bags in this large big Turkish city - now a UNESCO heritage site - which evokes memories of Constantinople, the eastern Holy Roman Empire, the glory of the Ottoman Empire and Turkish sultans.
The aroma of spices and the sound of belly dancing music are still here in between the Topkapi Palace, the Hagia Sofia church-mosque and the historic districts of Tarlatasi and Kumkapi. They’re all being revamped for the Biennial Exhibition in 2009 and the designation as European Cultural Capital City for 2010.
The ultra-modern buildings in Levènt - the business and financial district - clearly show that the city is looking to the future.
Browsing through art exhibitions can actually not be boring, especially if they’re about fashion art!
Do you love buying shoes? Have you already spent all your savings on your last spending spree during the sales season?
Well, from 23 September you can dream of being a Hollywood star like Audrey or Marilyn without going broke!
At the Triennale Design Museum in Milan you can see wonderful creations by Ferragamo in the exhibition “Salvatore Ferragamo - Evolving Legend 1928-2008″, which includes wooden shapes of famous feet and shoes from the Fifties.
I often go to Paris to look for new ideas.
I never miss out on a tour of luxury stores including Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs and Martin Margiela.
Along with big fashion names, Colette is a great reference point for discovering new talent. It offers design, graphic arts, music and cinema news, as well as mentioning many temporary exhibitions. Such as Josephine Meckseper’s installations on the relationships between media, fashion and advertising.
We’ve already given you some previews with our fashion show video and now here are the details on our proposals for this spring.
Lightness, fluid shapes and natural-looking materials: these are the concepts for the Mandarina Duck Spring-Summer 2008 collection.
The focus is on clean lines and shapes, soft and enjoyable materials and glossiness.
Colors on the move: white-blue, black, red, green, yellow and khaki.
Big bags: the trend in shop windows and on catwalks is for voluminous bags with lots of organizing space.
Read the rest of this entry »
Spring is coming and our wardrobe needs the usual revival.
This season, however, there’s a good remedy for that guilty feeling that comes with overspending: charitable shopping.
As you know, fashion is a fun and enjoyable thing! Especially when it does the right thing!
After last season’s success - the Free Burma Bag and Levi’s World Aids Day t-shirt - there are a lot of new things!
Three charitable brands debuted during Milan Fashion Week: V.A. Studio, Opera 27 and Dog 58. Part of their sales proceeds will go to Escola Estrela do Mar in Brazil.
If you want to do good and not go broke, you can just buy a t-shirt.
Many celebrities have lent their images to Marc Jacobs’ “Protect the skin you’re in” campaign in support of skin cancer prevention.
We know that advertising is considered an art.
But art flirting with advertising is really something new.
Advertisers are fed up with the usual famous people. So, they’ve called on some exceptional figures who don’t need any restorations (well, very few!) to be trendy and beautiful.
David Beckham and Naomi Campbell?
In their place, we now see Michelangelo’s David wearing jeans, the Venus de Milo wearing sunglasses and Leonardo’s Mona Lisa with curly hair.
We have to admit it: Greek statues are better looking than football-players and people prefer Mona Lisa to showgirls.
A new craze has been born in the USA.
I’m not referring to over-sized purses but real shopping bags. The common plastic or paper bag we use to carry our groceries.
It all began about a year ago, when Anya Hindmarch designed and produced the now famous “I’m not a plastic bag” bag. An eco-friendly cotton tote bag created to replace the plastic bags being used in supermarkets.
Becoming more of a fashion accessory than an eco-shopping bag, the Hindmarch tote gave life to a case history.
This phenomenon has since spread across the USA. The desired object is no longer the content but the container! While walking around New York or Los Angeles, you can easily come across groups of young people toting colorful, branded paper bags.
Glossy. Soft patent leathers.
This season’s ‘must’ is soft, shiny leather. It must have wavy textures, the idea of softness and never be flat.
Digital Visions.
Dazzling, light colors that are bone dry.
Intense, fresh, juicy neon colors.
Light blue becomes a memory of computerized digital visions in contrast to juicy colors.
These are images from Pantone Books that we have used as a guideline for this season:
Technorati Tags: Inspiration, pantone book, colours, design, textures
Brief, concise and specific, this is requested by a well-informed client that uses naming! A few words and seconds to obtain a desired object, a brand new Gucci bag.
No more alphanumeric codes or ambiguous descriptions but an actual name to identify the product.
Naming is becoming more common in accessory companies that manufacture for both the luxury and the mass markets.
In the current market, it’s no longer good enough to just choose the right trends, colors, shapes and sizes of new products. You need to make up a convincing story about the product in order to have it perceived as unique. This is why accessory companies now need to create something more than just an “eye-catching” bag but rather a product with a “catchy” name.
© 2007 Mandarina Duck by Plastimoda SpA - P.I. IT 00820861201
Duck Side - Mandarina Duck’s Blog is proudly powered by WordPress - powered by WebRanking
Entries (RSS)
e Comments (RSS).
