If It's Hip, It's Here (Archives): clothing designers

The Made in NYC Designer Holiday Tree is an initiative to help Save the Garment Center. 30+ fashion and jewelry designers, including Anna Sui, Shoshanna Lonstein, Nicole Miller, Nanette Lepore, Malia Mills and Theia’s Don O’Neill have designed $30 ornaments that will be sold with all proceeds benefiting STGC, making good on a request by Caravan Stylist Studio’s Claudine DeSola, a longtime Garment Center supporter.

The participants make all or most of their collections in New York. The designers’ creations will be unveiled to the public on The Carlton Hotel’s holiday tree Dec. 5 with a tree-lighting ceremony with the cast from the Broadway show “Pippin.” Shoppers can buy the ornaments Dec. 4 to 18 in the hotel’s lobby. But I have a sneak peek at all of them for you right here.

The Made in NYC tree stands to raise interest in local designers, something The Carlton Hotel’s Victor Freeman has helped champion. DeSola said, “Our goal is to turn The Carlton Hotel into a fashion ideas hub where we can generate different projects from the holiday program to art projects to fashion week initiatives.”

Caravan Stylist Studio and The Carlton Hotel have also teamed with the social marketing platform PromoJam and launched a digital holiday tree Tuesday that will display Instagram pictures taken by participating designers of their holiday ornaments so that fans can have a closer look.

images courtesy of Caravan Stylist Studio and Madeinnycholiday.com

The newest collection from ANREALAGE just debuted at Tokyo Fashion Week. The 2014 Spring Summer collection takes classic black and white patterns like buffalo check, herringbone, stripes, plaids and pinstripes and plays with scale. Enlarging and minimizing the familiar designs in stark black and white (with a little pale yellow, light blue and ecru), they are paired with crisp white blouses and sheers. The layered fashions include lots of knee-length pants, long dresses and jackets, both long and short. Belted Jackets and buttoned dresses are shown along with Pagliacci clown-like blouses, but it's the bizarre accessories that made this collection stand out on the runway: cage-like face masks and inflatable shoes that look like hospital booties from the front.

WWD reports that "the real drama came midway through the show, when three models in shapeless black dresses were raised above the runway on an elevated platform, at which point their garments seemed to magically gather and shrink into minidresses. (It’s still unclear just how Morinaga pulled it off.) This trick was then repeated on several more looks, turning a black jersey sack into a chicly draped and ruched dress and oversize nightshirtlike pieces into minidresses with asymmetric gathers."

The video of the runway show:

About the brand:
ANREALAGE is a combination of words of "A REAL(daily), UNREAL(unordinary) and AGE(an era)." Designer Kunihiko Morinaga was born in Tokyo in 1980 and is a Graduate of the Waseda University and Vantan Design Academy. He pursues the values in making clothes under the concept of "God is in the details". In 2003, he launched his own brand "ANREALAGE."

In 2005, Kunihiko Morinaga won the Avan-Garde Grand Prix at Gen Art in New York, a contest held in NewYork for new young designers. In 2006, he presented the first runway collection at the large observation platform in Tokyo Tower with the brand of Keisuke Kanda. In 2009 the brand presented a collection uner the theme of ''○△□'', conversion of the most basic symbols into clothes. Soon, ANREALAGE found its own characteristics and followed with the collections'"凹凸" "Silhouette" "wideshortslimlong" "LOW" (a low resolution pixelated collection) and "SHELL."

In 2011, They opened its flagship store in Harajuku, Tokyo. Morinaga also won The 29th of Mainichi Fashion Grand Prix for the best new designer and the Shiseido incentive award.

images courtesy of fashionsnap