Women's Fashion Inspiration: Men?

Women's Fashion Inspiration: Men?

By Yael Meromy

Women's fashion trends are constantly changing, and with four seasons per year, it seems like each new month brings a hot new style. However, despite consistent shifts in trends, some style concepts keep coming back around. One example of this is the idea of women's fashion inspired by classic menswear. We've all seen it before, but February's Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York City showcased the trend's return to the runway. Designers like Tommy Hilfiger and Donna Karan sent their models down the runway in menswear inspired designs, that successfully combined the flirtatious and feminine silhouette with strong and graceful masculine twists. The outcome is a dynamic re-invention of the menswear trend, and one that is catching for the upcoming seasons in fashion design. Below are several examples of how to combine the perfect masculine garments with the most flattering feminine ones, to get that fashion school savvy mixture of a menswear-inspired look for women.

Sometimes, it's as little as the pattern of a garment. Even if you are wearing a skirt or fitted pants, they will remind us of menswear if you choose a classic men's pattern like pinstripes or tweed fabric. Try paring a strong fabric or pattern with a soft, feminine style, like a pleated skirt, cardigan or even a fitted blazer.

A great menswear inspired look, is the classic white button-up shirt. Wear a form-fitting one and tuck it into denim shorts or even slouchier men's trousers. Or, try a loose one, untucked over jeans, leggings or a skirt. The crisp, tailored and light cotton of a white blouse is a really nice style for spring, and as it gets warmer, you can wear short-sleeved button-ups, or even sleeveless ones.

Try layering with a vest. Vests can bring a super masculine vibe to an outfit, but they are also a chance to show your kitschy or creative side. Pick a vest with a wild pattern, like a loud floral print or even bright gold. Leather and fur vests are also always awesome. In the spring and summer, when the weather gets warm, you can even wear a vest over just a bra for a sexy and scandalous look. Another classic look for the vest is to pair it with tight black slacks or jeans, a and a plain, white t-shirt underneath. This look is especially cute with lots of long necklaces. The more accessories the better!

If you want to rock menswear-inspired pants, try either a workman's look with overalls or a jumpsuit, or a businessman's look with tailored trousers and a belt. Overalls work well with a cute, ruffled blouse underneath, or a silky tank top to add a playful feminine twist to the outfit. The trousers look great with heels OR a pair of women's loafers. The looser fit on the jumpsuits and trousers will feel comfortable and breathable for spring.

Finally, add a boyish touch with classic menswear accessories. Top your outfit off with a fedora or a bowler hat. Wear a necktie under a sweater or with a collared t-shirt. Wear shoulder pads in your blazer to create a broader line across your shoulders. Wear oxford-style shoes or a chain. Even the subtlest menswear-inspired touch will broaden the horizons of your outfit.

From bowler hats to boyfriend jeans, the menswear look has proved itself a long-lasting, re-occurring trend!

Interested in learning more about trends in fashion design? Visit fashion colleges for more info.

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Image source: Google

Victoria & David Spotted During London Fashion Week

They bounced from one Fashion Week to the next! Victoria and David Beckham were spotted exiting the Love, Liberty and Alexander Wang Fashion party at Liberty in London's Mayfair yesterday. The couple tried their best to stay away from the shutterbugs, but they couldn't escape the ones who waited outside for them and captured them exiting via a side entrance while surrounded by security guards.

source: Zimbio & Celebrity-Gossip

Fall 2011 Presentation: Victoria's Narration & Close Ups

I'm so glad that someone posted the video above of Victoria's narration of her fall 2011 collection! I love the fact that she does this but we haven't really had the ability to hear a full on presentation.. well unless you're lucky enough to be invited to her show! Below are a few close up shots for you all to enjoy!

*Thanks to Vanda for the links!

source: HolyMoly & Guardian

Video: Victoria Interviewd By a Young Fashion Show Attendee

Video: Victoria's Interivew on CNN

This Saturday on CNN, there was a fashion bit done by CNN's New York correspondent Alina Cho who explored the ins and outs of Fashion Week. Included in the presetation was a brief interview with Victoria Beckham. The fashion designer discussed her new collection and talks of a fifth Beckham baby!

Reviews: Beckham's Fashion Risks Pay Off

Victorian Beckham says, five seasons into her fashion brand, that she’s a more confident designer and a more confident person, and that allows her to take risks beyond the structured cocktail dresses that gave her cred with a famously finicky industry.

For her recent morning New York Fashion Week presentation, she wore one of the loose, cashmere cocoon dresses that she said she found intimidating when she was more of a novice.

The swing trapeze dress and a multimetallic honeycomb in a kaftan-like silhouette were also items she added to the collection with a surer hand.

These roomier designs take more work, but they are worth it so women can be fashionable, as well as comfortable, explained Beckham, her hair pulled into a long ponytail.

(She announced last month that she and husband David Beckham are expecting their fourth child.)

“I designed this collection before I knew I was pregnant,” she said with a laugh to the small crowd of editors, retailers and stylists gathered at her favourite Upper East Side mansion runway venue that allows her to individually greet guests.

A red V-neck tunic dress looked the simplest, she said, but “it was a nightmare”.

Using a palette she described as “desert brights”, Beckham offered a teal matte gazar V-neck cocoon that she said was “young red carpet”, but the finale gown in the same colour and fabric was the one to talk about: it had chiffon-covered resin bits arranged in a mosaic pattern that looked like shards of shattered glass around the neckline.

For the first time, Beckham offered coats, including a red raglan-sleeve coat with a buckle at the collar and a super-chic black coat with knife pleats from hip to hem.

She did several dresses with pleats, too, a look she always wanted to wear but couldn’t figure out how to until she started placing them below the hip bone.

The best versions were a saffron-yellow crêpe dress with a halter-neck and the honeycomb gown, also with a halter-neck, that had restrained pleats at the top and fuller ones on the skirt. That look, she said, was her favourite.

Beckham has numbered in order each style she makes. The autumn collection includes look No. 100, which has the more fitted shape with exposed seams and zippers that are her hallmark but adds the wrap shape that she built this season around.

“The 100th dress is a Victoria Beckham silhouette chosen as the perfect representation of everything the collection set out to achieve at the outset,” she said in her notes.
source: SAMANTHA CRITCHELL

Reviews: Style.com by Nicole Phelps

Victoria Beckham is pregnant with her fourth child, but she says she finished her Fall collection before she found out. The fact that she loosened up her silhouette more than ever before, and pushed the draping, is merely sweet synchronicity. Mixed in among her signature body-loving hourglass dresses (this season in bright shades of saffron, magenta, and vermilion, and featuring curving seams that shape the torso) were a pair of blouson minidresses, one in an iridescent honeycomb jacquard and another in a kingfisher blue matte gazar. Their cocooning shapes will be a boon as her baby bump grows. Continuing in the relaxed vein, she showed a few outfits that looked like draped cashmere shawls belted over fitted pencil skirts. But it was an illusion: They were in fact trompe l'oeil dresses, and great-looking too.

Also new for Fall were coats. But whereas elsewhere she was thinking loose and liberating, here she was all rigor and precision. The toppers were cut in structured wool, and their stand-up buckled collars notwithstanding, they were the opposite of tricked-out. Amid all the utilitarian parkas we'll be seeing on selling floors come fall, they'll look practically stately. That's fine with Beckham, for whom the classics have always trumped the trends.

What will she do for an encore next season? Pantsuits, maybe? After this first shot at tailoring, they seem like the next logical step for a designer who, ironically, given her celebrity status, pays closer attention to her clients' real-life needs than many of her peers. It's an approach that continues to pay dividends.
source: Style

Reviews: Grazia Daily by Paula Reed

'I designed this collection before I got pregnant, so this was the only dress I could wear,’ Victoria Beckham told us before taking a front row seat to talk us through her AW2011 collection. The dress was a grey and beige cocoon tunic in babyfine cashmere. The venue was the grand Upper East side townhouse that was the location of Big and Carrie’s dream apartment in Sex & The City and has been fashion week home to the Victoria Beckham collection for the past three seasons.

And on this, her sixth season in business, Mrs Beckham is getting better and better. What started as a capsule collection of dresses that looked like her personal wardrobe, has expanded into something more fully formed. ‘I’ve eased up the corsetry a lot,’ she explained.’ I’ve travelled and loosened up in my own skin. I feel I have evolved as a person and this has evolved as a collection.’

The dresses all start with a very neat shoulder (sans pads, but cut sharply and close to the natural line). And for lovers of the second skin column there are still lots to choose form in the dense jersey rib (‘women love how it holds them in’) that she has made her signature fabric, like her 100th dress with seams circling the body. ‘I started numbering the dresses six seasons ago back when I started and never thought I’d get to this point.’

But more interesting were the easier shapes cut with gentle volume and movement: a cerise swing dress cut above the knee in four meters of heavy wool crepe. A kingfisher blue dress knee length cocoon dress cut in silk gazar. Or the floor length pleated dress with soft draped neckline. 'I love pleats but never knew how to wear them,’ she explained of a dress in saffron wool with drop waist and knife pleated skirt. ‘The pleats were ironed in by hand in the studio.’ She called the colours of ochre, saffron, brick and scarlet, her ‘desert brights’.

She ‘decided to have a go at coats’ for the first time: a simple shape with vertical seams and stand up collar or a drop waisted pleated option were perfect companion pieces for those slim dresses and ladylike bags. The bag collection has expanded to include over the body cashmere duffles and a collaboration with Christian Louboutin has provided some pretty fabulous straight knee high boots.

With Anna Wintour on her front row and a room full of fashion A-listers, Victoria Beckham has become a fully fledged fixture of the NY collections.

Reviews: WWD

Some compliments have the ring of insult: “You look amazing in this picture; I can barely tell it’s you.” At some point it’s going to sound insulting to note that designer Victoria Beckham, she of the second career, is “the real deal.” But a mere six seasons into this fashion thing, she still wows with the success of her crossover. Beckham continued her impressive evolution for fall, on Sunday morning showing a lineup that highlighted her increasing sense of ease. Thus she favored “desert brights” and a continued relaxation of silhouette. Beckham flaunted both right from the start, with two magenta dresses, one a linear, below-the-knee “nomad dress” with long sleeves and hood-cum-cowl; the other, a short, swingy trapeze. She also showed a terrific take on the shirtdress (from the front it looked like separates) and a charming cashmere sack like the one she wore to disguise her pregnancy.

Beckham talked about growing in confidence as a woman and as a designer, while at the same time noting the importance of giving her customers what they’ve come to expect. Thus, along with her loosened looks, were new takes on her back-zipped curvy numbers with “traveling seams,” including a version in her best-selling dense rib jersey.

Beckham is answering her customers’ needs in another way as well, with the addition of outerwear, though she’s not falling in with the season’s emerging anorak army. Rather, she took a polished chic approach to chasing the chill, as with a lovely long sand wool coat with belt-buckle collar.
source: WWD

Victoria Bundles Up her Baby Bump

After presenting her fall 2011 collection, Victoria Beckham changed clothes (into a LBD) and added her fabulous Fendi fur before leaving the venue. We have yet to get a peak at her little bump!

source: Zimbio

Shoe Collaboration for Fall 2011 - Beckham & Louboutin

Each season we see that Victoria works with one specific designer for the shoes that the models will wear. She started with Christian Louboutin, then went over to Yves Saint Laurent, and finally Brian Atwood.

Since Victoria actually collaborated with Brian Atwood for the shoe designs and colors for her spring 2011 collection, I thought for sure that she would be doing so again (especially since she always wears the designer's shoes herself). But she surprised me and this time around went back to Christian Louboutin with whom she collaborated on two new boot designs.

The Vicky Botta is a heeled boot that is loose fitting from the ankle up. It is a knee high boot that features a square heel and a round pointed toe. This boot was featured in three different colors (rouge, noir, and taupe) and two materials (leather and suede).

The Vicky Booty is a ankle boot that has the same toe and heel shape as the Vicky Botta. This adorable booty style also comes in suede and leather and in the three distinct colors.
source: CP & Else at La Passion des Louboutin

My Favorite Elements of the VB Fall 2011 Collection

I want to start off by saying that I absolutely adore Victoria's fall 2011 collection! I think that this season really proved that Victoria is a fashion designer... point blank. Her Spice days have been put completely behind her as she showed that she has evolved and is getting better and better with each passing season.

Some of the elements of the fall 2011 collection that I really liked were...

The ruffled and buckled necklines! We are used to seeing a very structured piece from Victoria and this season she loosened up a bit and experimented with different necklines. For the newest additions... the coats, she added chic buckles at the top which is something we've never seen before. I find them quite alluring and understatedly sexy! The ruffled high necklines were my favorite and a focal point for me. The are so feminine and flirty! Can't wait to see them on VB and her huge celebrity following!

I also loved the pleating very much as it too was brand new! Victoria stated that the pleats were ironed on by hand and this is a huge trend on the runways for fall. I also really liked how she did long and short versions which gives the collection even more of a variety.

And of course, just because I'm a sucker for sparkles, I loved the new embellishments. This season Victoria only embellished one dress with dazzling gems and the result was new and stunning! I also loved the new dotted print as I find it perfect for fall - especially because of the lovely jewel tone colors!


And finally, these are my absolute favorite designs from the fall 2011 collection. I really adored the belted pieces that have a separate feel to them. Another job well done Victoria!

What did you all think of the new collection? I'm dying to here your thoughts!

source: Style

Video: Victoria's Fall 2011 Presentation

We got a treat this year and that is the fact that for the first time ever, we got to see the complete runway presentation of one of Victoria's collections! I hope we get a video of each from now on! It was wonderful to finally be able to see a complete presentation!

Enjoy!!

Victoria Beckham Fall 2011

source: Style