Savoir Faire Pour Haut Monde SS 2020

[Disclaimer:  Names of the dresses were informally coined by the blogger.  They do not represent official brand names.]  

Precious metals.  Ah, the sheen of them metals—them gold, them silver, them copper—watch them glitter before our eyes.  A quick financial tip:  Invest in precious metals like gold when the U.S. currency, or the value of the dollar goes down.  Ask yourself, how does the dollar measure against the Canadian or Japanese yen?  There’s your answer.  What about in fashion?  Well, you don them.  Raise an otherwise dreary ensemble to a shimmering flare with an all-around-effect or slight touch of these precious metals.  I love precious metals—love it as an accessory, love it even more as a focal point in fashion.  

Christian Dior fringed gold dress

Christian Dior Gold Woven Jacket and Skirt

Christian Dior Bronze Jacket and Pants

Christian Dior Nude Biscuit Dress

Christian Dior Gold Grecian Goddess Dress

Christian Dior’s evening wear does just that.  Dior uses precious metal colors as a main fashion focal point.  Drawing your eyes to that silky weave and satiny finish, precious metals bedazzles.  The models waft, swim through the runway wearing silky, light-as-feather gold and copper evening dresses.  At least to our eyes.  All the while, they shine head-to-toe of shimmering gold tones.  Only in precious metal tones would you find shimmering effects.

 

The spring-summer line starts with a long gold-tasseled robe-dress.  Gold in its gloss, and gold in its refracted light in which the glossy dress gives off.  The gold colored dress has fringed sleeves and skirts all around, and the dress hangs loose, reminiscent of dresses that dates back to the late 1970s.  How do I know this?  Well, I have watched fashion for the longest time.  And I can actually recall my mother wearing golden bronze robe-dress at my fifth birthday party.  The next outfit is a matching metallic bronze top-and-pant, equally shimmering in the precious metal family.  This color has a shimmer and sheen of a taupe eye shadow you wear on your weekend night out.  Or the bronzer you apply on your cheeks after the sun-kissed glow of a Caribbean suntan.  Two gold outfits soon follow—long loose-fitting evening attires—one, a basket woven design within the stiff-like- starched-summer linen, structured layout, and the other, a silky fabric with fringed and tasseled details, a dress designed for a Grecian goddess.  The collection fills with gold and bronze colored ensembles with a metallic finish for the shimmer.  Makeup lines have expanded their bronzers within the last decade; conversely, the skirts, the pants, the jackets have the bronzer look.  So why not spruce up your look with a flushed look that contrasts nicely with your skin tone? 

 

Your skin tone?  Yes, not just for makeup, your skin tone can also be highlighted by the color and tone you wear.  This season bronzer is not just for your cheeks.  Mixed in with gold and bronze are metallic-skyscraper-grey and chiffon-like beige-biscuit colored dresses which carry a lighter look.  Models glide in these dresses.  Other colors include classic crispy white-for-the-summer, copper, forest green, Tuscan-wine-burgundy and amethyst-purple.

  

 

Elie Saab White and Gold Sequenced Dress

Elie Saab White Papier-Mache fastened dress

Irises.  Ah, irises and their opaline glow.  The iridescent glow.  Look closely at opal as it casts a rainbow of colors.  Elie Saab collection begins with a heavily embroidered sequenced iridescent dress; the pattern on the white dress is distinctly white like an iris’s bulb at its center, a royal dress fit for a snow queen.  (Think Frozen’s Elsa!)  The dresses, along with some of the ensembles, have a white pattern which looks stenciled in like papier-mâché fastened, and then mixed in with transparent veil body mesh that magnifies the white opaline glow.  Like opal, perhaps mother of pearl, the dress has an undeniable iridescence.  You can wear this dress to a costume gala or that special night out on the town.  The dresses have a lustrous gold pattern, a sewn-in-sequence, an intricate fold which is layered like the petals of an iris.  (Look at last season’s Marc Jacobs!)  Another noteworthy feature of the dress is its big puffy shoulders (I’ve seen a design like this since the last decade); conversely, the shoulders have been exaggerated like the costumes from Elizabethan or Shakespearean period.  Shall we rejoin at the library?                 

Elie Saab Nude Gown with Gold Embroidery

Elie Saab Gold Sequenced "rain shower" Dress

Then came down the drizzle.  The rain.  The shower.  How is this related to Elie Saab?  A dress teemed with intricate gold sequence, sprinkled and showered with gold rain drops dazzled our eyes as it walked on the runway.  Drops of gold drizzled upon this dress to let us view it with an extra oomph and edge.  First it rained on the dress, and then later, crystallized out of the larvae for a final finish to a plunging V-neckline, a sexy slit evening gown nonetheless.  The crystallized sequence is reminiscent of mid-1990s work by Felix Gonzalez Torres’s Untitled (Water), where plastic beads were used against metal rods.  Then came silver and bold colors—Caribbean-turquoise, Tropicana-peach-sorbet, Key-West-kiwi-lime, against a nude or transparent fabric.         

Felix Gonzalez Torres Untitled (Water)

Brandon Maxwell Bronze Blazer and Black Vinyl Leather Pants

Brandon Maxwell matching Green top and jacket, neon lime green skirt

Brandon Maxwell cream top and blue denim

Blazers . . . when do you wear them?  On the weekend getaway you’ve planned weeks ahead.  Brandon Maxwell ready-to-wear begins with an ensemble featuring a cocoa-coconut shade blazer paired with slim-fitting vinyl leather pants.  The blazers are sleek, light, and hang loose like men’s soggy, soiled silk necktie; have you select from a variety—pale blue, coastal ivory, mustard green, spirulina green, striped blue-and-white—nicely paired with shorts , denim, or leather pants.  Maxwell’s men’s line is sexy.  A light black coat paired with black jacket, pants, and white shirt—Mmmmm.  The men’s line also has a collection of blazers in variety—peaches-and-cream, pale blue, grasshopper green, toasted auburn.  I do not know Maxwell well but a nice spring jacket/blazer drowns out the rest of the room.  

Philosophy di Lorenzo Serafini SS 2020

Back to the shoulders.  Accentuate the shoulders.  Big, oversized shoulders.  This is the fad.  And Philosophy di Lorenzo Serafini got ‘em.  Forget cigar jackets to retire in for the night when you have jackets that have a modern retro look—striped color contrast (white-and-blue or white-and red) and knitted fabric gives a preppy cottony look for sailing or lounging for the evening.  The shoulders have been exaggerated like the 17^th century England only modernized.  I’ve seen these big or puffy shoulders since the millennium, and it has been fifteen years since, and so you expect to see more of them.  Other honorable mentions:  bubble tulip skirts and studded denim jackets.  They add a dash of rhinestones for that je ne sais crois star specks.  

Valentino Ivory Robe Dress

Valentino Ivory Robe, White Transparent Meshed & Ruffled Dress

Valentino Embroidered Green Leaves Dress

Blanc.  Camouflage.  Painterly.  This is the takeaway of this season’s Valentino.  White, white, and more whites are in store for the spring/summer.  A glass of milk poured onto the ensembles:  Milk, ivory, blancmange.  Hence whites make sense for summer.  Whites cast the Ivory- Coast-resort look on robes, skirts, and dresses.  But Valentino stands out amongst the rest because of their painterly effects on the dress—print or hand-painted leaves or layers of involute leaves in sunrise lemon, Aspen evergreens, café-au-lait-et -cocoa, Isles of aquamarine—worn as long skirts, dresses, or sheaths.  Their colors range broadly, giving a novel take on Japanese caricature, a hand-painted ink of the tropics or the wild Amazon jungle on buttered cream canvas.  Some have been embroidered, a good needlework, you might say.  

Giorgio Armani White & Silver Jacket and Pants

Giorgio Armani Silver-and-Blue Jacket and Pants

Giorgio Armani Green Sequenced Ensemble with Cape

Art deco.  Silver.  Ah, the blues.  Giorgio Armani’s spring summer has these 3 elements: silver, art deco, blues.  Apart from gold, silver is the cheaper precious metal.  So if you cannot afford to invest in much gold, opt for silver.  Aside from that, silver is . . . well, silvery.  Silvery is pleasantry.  It is Christmas in the summer.  And Armani’s models are thin, willowy accentuating the trim, art deco silvers and blues prints and patterns.  The first outfit on the model is a metallic silver jacket paired with printed black blots that bled onto the indigo pants.  Compared to other designers, Armani uses tall, thin, and I mean slim, leggy models this season.  The models also don a short hairdo like the flappers from the roaring 1920s in the Jazz Age.  This is the original Coco Chanel’s dress.  The next few ensembles are also silver tops paired with bright, cheery solid colored pants.  But the blues—ah, yes, the blues—are none like other:  indigo blue, periwinkle blue, Aegean blue, sapphire blue.  The blues contrasted against whites and silver is like having Christmas in the summer.  The tops have a vintage look to them like the overall look of ensembles redolent of the golden age; the beads on the tops, like lavender blues of wisteria, trickle downward until it reaches your navel.  

Hear the clinch of champagne glasses.  Ting-a-ling.  Ting-a-ling.  The glass beads glisten in their dark onyx form—flap and dangle when models walk— as it sits along the subtle outlines of the lapels on the jackets.  Like frosty dews that remain on the sidewalk in winters-in-the-city, the tops and the jackets glisten on a night backdrop.  So don the frosty tops, jackets, and cascading beaded necklaces and sequenced semi-sweetheart tops which accentuate a women’s décolleté by a wide range:  onyx, larkspur lavender, navy-and-white, Jamaican braided beads, and emerald greens.  They lay on sheath, sheer overlay or A-line skirts.  Wear evening wear in-style.

Oscar de la Renta Peaches-and-Cream Draped Dress

Oscar de la Renta Striped Asymmetrical 1-Shoulder Dress

Oscar de la Renta White Crotched Dress

Oscar de la Renta (Rock It!) Dress

Oscar de la Renta tiered eggshell pink dress

Tickle for the joie de vivre.  Delight in the good times.  Revel under the summer nights at the fiesta.  Oscar de la Renta’s spring summer collection has a fun-loving wearable sportswear, resort wear, and evening gowns fit for a frolic on a holiday.  The runway is set against the diaorama of palm trees and columns set like a resort villa like a trip on a holiday.  Spice up your summer with a hit at the hot spot.  Bright California colors and light fabric, mini, short or long skirts, makes this collection a classic casual summer wear.  Enjoy seeing colors that comes in variety—peachy sorbet, lemon zest, mix of black-chamois-white, striped scarlet-off-white-banana-soiled brown, periwinkle variety, coral, browns, tree bark, honeyed yolk, eggshell pink, jet black, khakis, and whites, oh whites that just about anyone, anywhere can wear.  The skirts and casual dresses are either light chiffon-like material or a heavier set of crochet or knitted variety that further comes in lace or plait, or gossamer of transparent threads that entwines in complex folds.  Long silver and copper evening gowns are included (of course) because that is the hot item this summer.  But from a female perspective, Oscar de la Renta’s eggshell pink, fuchsia, or black strapless dresses that have a short enfolded bubble-like skirt in front and a longer tiered trains in the back really do rock the show.

Ralph & Russo Art Deco Silver and Peach-Pink Geo-Circled Dress

Ralph & Russo Silver Sequenced Dress

Ralph & Russo Silver Halter Dress

Ralph & Russo Feathered Yolky Yellow Dress

Ralph & Russo "Mococo" Dress

Ralph & Russo Feathered Sculptural Dress

Ralph & Russo White Feathered Dress with Train

Haute Couture.  Fluff, ruft, and tuft your feathers.  I’ve mentioned last summer how much I love haute couture.  Ralph & Russo got the look I like—bold, novel, risk-taking fashion mixed in with a bit of Pop-art pieces, a bit of off-the-beaten track and a bit of tone down elements—still making it a classic, which to the consumer means you don’t wear it only once.  Peaches, aquamarine, Romantics or Claude Monet’s pastel lime greens and aquamarine blues (the colors are redolent of the light pastel colors used during the Romantic movement and Impressionism).  Monet + Rococo style (the dress is ornate and fanciful like the Rococo period) = “Mococo.”  (I just made up this term.)  Peaches-and-cream dress with round art deco pieces sewn on, and by attaching the lanate decorative elements will not only fluff up the dress, but rev it up a notch to a noveau modern fashion.  But back to that “Mococo” dress that stood out in a crowded room.  The skirt is wide, like A-line or ballroom, and has boa-like feathers sewn in—the feathers are pastel in color—flows along with the remaining colors of the dress impeccably.  The art deco piece occurs again in a dress with white-and-silver sequence on nude cloth, and the sequence, a line of circular neo-geometric silver glittering plastic, magnified with longer white beads at the seam of the dress have a “Monet” effect, giving a dress a good visual from the distance.  Other silver dresses that follow are heavily sequenced with shimmer and feather, in which the feathers have a cottony, downy, wooly, otherwise a shaggy mane of a big-and-long-haired rug.  (The big feathers are like last season’s Marc Jacobs, only tempered for a slightly more conservative, timeless look.)  Silver encrusted dresses have tassels at the seams, which further divides into fringes, and couplings of long, silver hairs.  The short silver dresses are form-fitting and cast a metallic shine, and its binding wear creates a nearly futuristic, novel rock-star-look.  Ruff feathers have been attached big—by clunks or tassels near or at the bottom of the seams.  A noticeable display of feather like a sculpture, where each individual puce or purple feather has been tied and attached singularly like hanging mobile pieces on Alexander Calder’s works; whatever it is, it is a sculpture that hangs and the pieces of each puce feather hangs like a sculptural piece of art on a large, furry, mohair mane of pale peaches-and-cream made to slip on as a dress for women.  Now that is novel.  That is art.  That is fashion.  

Versace SS 2020:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0iLg-fgNbE&t=692s

Roar into the jungle.  Versace’s jungle is where this summer you’ll find leopard prints.  Meow.  Yowl.  Mustard yellow-and-black leopard prints on pants, jackets, and dresses have a sleek, edgy, new take for the summer.  Black ensembles include a cropped jacket and slimming cigarette pants and the jacket that sits high, close to the waist but above the navel.  Intricate gold patterns have been set on the jet black tops, and as for the pants’ design, patterns on binding white leggings are similar to Emilio Pucci’s designs on his scarves that were out as fashion trends years ago.  (Pucci’s designs had riding saddles that I took a mental picture of.)  Only in Versace would you find these types of designs spilled onto main tops and pants—jet blacks, whites, yellow gold, reds, royal blues—forming an intricate, rich pattern.  And the designs come in sky blue, stardust yellow, and black patterns that hugs around your legs, hips, glutes, and then contours around your body.  The look of these leggings is similar to 1980s spandex.  But that is just the beginning.  It’s subtle, rich but still minimal.  Splash of bold colors soon ensues in bright mosaic blend of primary and secondary color patterns—reds, blues, greens, yellows—and copies of  Andy Warhol’s silk screening of Marilyn Monroe, dye heavily onto body suits and long dresses.  Another flash from the past, I’ve seen this look during mid-1990s, a retake of a past trend nonetheless.  

Fendi's Spring Summer 2020

At dawn, by the apricot-orange sunrise, a chameleon crawled onto the desert sand, and behind it, the arid backdrop of sands and shrubs, the mountainous region of the Rustic Sunbelt and its charms stood.  Then it changed its colors like a chameleon would —white to green to brown to tan beige— and transfigured with ooze in a translucent overlay before reverting back to its original color.  This is Fendi’s Spring Summer in a nutshell.  

Fendi SS "OOZE" transparent dress

Fendi's Khakis-Biscuit Spring Coat

Fendi's Mustard Green Crotched Dress

Fendi's Cocoa Brown Dress

Fendi's Fur Coat

Fendi's Green Dress

The back of the runway hangs an orange dome low and models wear Fendi’s spring summer collection, gliding down on a faded black room.  First few outfits showcase their quilted light pea coat for spring.  Young girls usually wear pea coats during winter, but the spring coats are thinner material with a quilted pattern in off-white and pale peach, casting a casual breezy look for spring.  Let the chameleon appear.  Firstly, it is camouflaged in leafy long greens and dirt soil browns.  Secondly, it changed its colors to tan, tawny browns, cocoa, mustard greens, white sands, ecru, nude bisque.  Thirdly, it shed its translucent skin and transforms into water-resistant plastic coats and dresses.  The coats and dresses have a thin, flimsy plastic outer layer that wears as water-resistant, so save it for a rainy day.   Fourthly, it reverted back to its color of browns and green oversized jackets, and beige quilted, not coat, but this time, a light jacket.  The colors have been muted in a matte, neutral sheen.

Fly from the Rustic Sunbelt to the celestial urban skyscrapers for a change of scenery.  Louis Vuitton’s spring/summer collection has been set on an industrial warehouse against a backdrop of celestial skies via video accompanied by the beat of electronic music.  And so we head into street wear.  Trousers, pinstriped or solids are worn with blouses—blouses that have been subtly lifted, accentuating the shoulders, puffy shoulders— and jackets that have been sewn with puffy shoulders, point upwards, as if they allow leg room between the arms and the shoulders.  Vuitton’s shirts, jackets, and coats give a modern twist to women’s shoulders — raising them a little higher and direct the attention to women’s shoulders and arms.  

Louis Vuitton's blouse and pants

Louis Vuitton SS 2020

Louis Vuitton SS Tangerine-Crimson-Scarlet Spring Coat

Arms?  Yes, arms.  Arms on blouses and dresses not only look spacious but have more weight with a heavier look that carries them (like wide-leg trousers), and Vuitton’s has designed wide-sleeves blouses and dresses that elongates women’s arms.  At any rate, the shoulders are the focal point that creates and embellishes distinctive looks in blouses, jackets, and coats.  

Ah, spring coats, Vuitton’s spring jackets and coats together add up to a deadly combination —a bold colorful scheme with an intricate design pattern that really draws your eyes in.  Spring coat comes in variety of greens—lime, grassy, deep fir, and glossy solids —Barney purple, tawny houndstooth, tangerine-crimson-scarlet, and black-hyacinth navy-gold pattern.  Wrap around and tulip skirts blend well with accentuated shoulder blouses and jackets, stirring and whipping together naturally like flour and water; therefore accentuated shoulders and slit in the center of the tulip and wrap around skirts infuse effortlessly like two chemicals in a test tube.            

        
To sum up spring/summer 2020 collection accentuates the shoulders with oversized hyperbolized Elizabethan shapes or with a more subtly variety —a slightly puffy shoulders sans a shoulder pad.  Precious metals — gold, silver, and copper tones — glitter down the dresses accented with shimmering embroidery or sequence combined with accented shines that gives a well-accessorized touch to a full ensemble.  Go and rock 'em!  Til next season, whitewash everything and get ready for a brand new collection next season.  Join me then!