Posts with tag LosAngeles

It's pure torture when designers send a look down the runway, trick us into falling in love with it, and then never even bother to put the item in production. Even worse when those designers are the ultra-talented sisters behind Rodarte. But on November 3, you'll finally have a chance to own some of their priceless, never-produced pieces as Presse boutique launches its first online archival sale.

L.A. designer Brian Lichtenberg is fiercely independent, beloved by offbeat musicians like M.I.A. and Santogold, and the undisputed auteur of avant-garde unitards and hologram leggings. And at his Spring/Summer 2009 show, held during Los Angeles Fashion Week, Lichtenberg expanded on his favorite themes while adding some new staples to his repertoire.

While Los Angeles fashion week tends to be generally lackluster, one of the shows we always look forward to is Gen Art's Fresh Faces in Fashion. (Full disclosure: we sometimes write for Gen Art's arts and culture blog, but were fans of the show long before that was the case.) The non-profit organization has launched the careers of fashion heavyweights including Derek Lam and Zac Posen. Fresh Faces shows are held in a few major cities each year, and are always a surefire spot for sighting upcoming designers.

Traveling pop-up shop Little Black Dress debuted in Los Angeles this week. The sprawling boutique features clothing, jewelry, artwork, and even botanical and floral arrangements--all for a good cause.

Benefiting do-good organizations like Junior League and Dress for Success, Little Black Dress offers clothing from the likes of Kira Plastinina, La Rok and Vivienne Westwood. (Candle designer Dayna Decker even created a Swarovski crystal-encrusted collection exclusively for the temporary store.) After hours, Little Black Dress will hold philanthropic fashion events like "Vino and Vinyasa" and "Movie and a Makeover."

And if the Sunset Boulevard locale is far from home, not to worry. In 2009, Little Black Dress will make appearances in New York and Chicago, too.

Being an international music and style icon, rapper and sometimes clothing designer Kanye West has to be about as comfortable with getting mobbed by the paparazzi as one can get. Yet, it appears that even Kanye can sometimes lose his cool amidst the constant click of $10,000 cameras.

According to reports, at around 7:15am Thursday morning, Kanye and his manager/bodyguard Don Crowley got arrested for "felony vandalism." The altercation apparently broke out between West, Crowley, and two TMZ photographers in area just outside of LAX's security screening area. No word yet about what set Kanye off, but if we had to guess, we'd say that he's probably not a morning person. Police originally considered battery charges for the star, but found no evidence and stuck with vandalism of a camera valued at over $10k.

TMZ apparently got the whole thing on video. To be fair, if there's any time or place that we wouldn't want the paprazzi in our face, it's at 7:15am just before we have to go through an airport security probing. Bad timing.

In 1973, the LACMA unveiled "LA Flash." The exhibition featured photographs of 400 of the city's most stylish residents, collected by a handful of shutterbugs who wandered different neighborhoods, capturing the best of L.A. street style. Now, on its 25th anniversary, the museum will re-launch "LA Flash," which originally ran for three months, for one night only. The photos, according to The Los Angeles Times, are still a fashion inspiration: "Many of the original images, which have been digitally enhanced for the new showing, could have sprung from the latest issue of Vogue."

There's no doubt that "LA Flash" was a precursor to the ubiquitous girl-on-the-street magazine pages and blog features we see today. With that in mind, the museum will offer a modern spin on the idea by starting a new, street-style blog to celebrate its anniversary.

Michael Buckner is a fashion and celebrity photographer who travels around the world taking pictures on the red carpet. He gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the hottest entertainment industry events.


John Varvatos USA brings Los Angeles part of CBGB at the Fred Segal Santa Monica store. By gutting an old bricked room in the flagship department store (where the clothing normally serves as the decor), and putting floor to ceiling concert posters and woofers, Varvatos has established himself as the standard in men's apparel with no hint of modesty.

The store features original concert promo posters and record covers from American Rock N' Roll greats like Tom Petty, Cheap Trick, Bruce Springsteen and Joan Jett, as well as a Red, White and blue Harmony acoustic guitar.

Oh yeah, clothes also fill the walls of the room.

Jesse Metcalfe came out to shop and mingle. He arrived in John Varvatos and left with bags of the new Fall collection. He played a little guitar in the shop. Who knew he was so multi-talented?

We love Emmy Rossum. We just do. She's so darn pretty, and seems like a really sweet girl, and, best of all, is almost always well dressed. We wish we could bottle up that bright and shiny fresh-faced thing she's got going and dab it on when we're feeling dull. Or maybe sell it. But we'd keep a little for ourselves, for sure.

Anyhoo, Emmy came out for the 3.1 Phillip Lim Los Angeles store opening earlier this summer, and we just loved her look. It's youthful and fun, but not so young that it can only be worn by Hollywood's youngest. And, this shade of yellow is great going into fall -- still bright and fun, but with less of a neon aftertaste. Want this look for yourself? Click through the gallery to see how you can make it happen!

Good morning, California babes.

In case you haven't went wild with your stimulus check yet, you might want to consider stopping by a very righteous sale occurring in your backyard this weekend.

As predicted by our own Whit Honea, Perez Hilton's celebrity line looks like it's going to crash and burn in true blog-worthy fashion. According to New York Magazine, a grand total of 7 loyal fans showed up at the LA Hot Topic where Perez was hanging out to celebrate the launch. Frankly, we're a little embarrassed for him. Here's what a supposed Hot Topic employee had to say about the fiasco:

"Mario was BEYOND upset texting and DEMENDING the right water,food,ETC he was a rude royal pain in the ass and BEYOND crass... My manager was trying to get people to come in to meet Perez by handing out $5 gift cards NO ONE WANTED TO MEET HIM! ...he left around 8:45PM without saying goodbye to anyone & looked like he had been crying like the little bitch he is. We sold a grand total of $6.45 of Perez Hilton items between 6PM - 9PM. My manager has already talked about discounting his 'line'!"

Dov Charney's genius in the perverted arts and sciences has long been the subject of rigorous debate and legal actions. Well, last Friday's LA Pride festivities brought with it another opportunity for American Apparel's CEO to showcase his rare talent at coaxing free advertising out of America's sex-crazed twenty-somethings.

American Apparel's LA store hosted a party that included the first inaugural 'LA Pride Underwear Contest,' where the winner could appear in an American Apparel underwear ad for free, and receive a gift package -- get it? For clothing that for the most part isn't all that sexy, American Apparel certainly manages to get the most mileage out of their soft-core porn marketing ideas. Sleazy, yes -- but we still kinda wish we could have been at the party. The flier is what really gets us -- click here to see the full flier. NSFW.

[via Gawker]

Last night I partied like the Warhol muse that I think I am at Fred Segal in Santa Monica. The event celebrated Fred Segal's new pop-up store, which exclusively carries the collection by Damien Hirst in collaboration with the Warhol Factory and Levi's.

The scene was not your typical fashion-event-going crowd; it was very (very) hipster -- lots of grungy boys and girls wearing hoodies, sneakers and jeans (which of course was fitting considering the collection was based on those pieces). DJ's were spinning, drinks were being mixed, and photographers were snapping away -- Warhol would have been proud.

The collection itself was pretty darn cool too! Amazing skull bedazzled jeans, skull printed short-shorts, tee shirts, and one of my favorite pieces were the shiny leather jackets. In fact, I liked the jacket so much that I got one of the hipsters to model it for me.

Check out the store at Fred Segal in Santa Monica on Broadway and 4th Street (420 Broadway).

After my head stopped spinning from the horror called IMASU by Kelly Nishimoto I needed two things ... a cocktail and a better runway show. I suppose I got both with Orthodox but I have a sneaking suspicion the cocktail helped me enjoy the second show more.

The show was short with only 22 looks in the collection and showcased both men's and women's fashions. The overall feel to me was slacker chic, which was the perfect match for the Nirvana cover song they played to open the show. Some key trends I picked out of the collection were metallics, geek glasses, ombre, purple, and gloves.

The great thing about the collection is that it was very wearable and that is exactly what I have to come to expect during LA Fashion Week shows. There was a fair amount of black and white in collection, which is perfect for mixing and matching. Nothing in the collection was too over-the-top so you could literally rip the clothes right off the runway and be on your way.

It looks like LA Fashion Week is starting to look up after all.

L.A. Fashion Week kicked off at 4pm on Sunday with a show by Kelly Nishimoto. Who? Yeah, that's what I said. A no-name opening up Fashion Week was a bad sign but I tried to remain positive. My positive spirit started to diminish after waiting for 45 minutes for the show to start. Listen Kelly, you ain't no Marc Jacobs sweetie! Let's start the show on time.

Once the show got underway I couldn't wait for it to end. It was dreadful. If I were to give the show a name it would be 'The joker and the thief and Kelly Nishimoto' because it looked like a medieval nightmare. There was crazy ribbon work, hoods, ruffles in all the wrong places, tassels, bows -- she basically took every Fall 2008 trend and piled them into one hellish collection.

The end of the show when Kelly came out to take her bow was the real kicker though. Most designers step out a few feet, bow, and turn around to get the hell off the stage. Kelly, her model, and a man dressed up in a Pink Panther costume (I can't make this stuff up people) took a good 5 minutes to get down the runway. Once the clan got to the end Kelly wouldn't leave the end of the runway. She stayed down there posing like a dope for so long that her model left the runway and the photographers actually stopped snapping photos. I was mortified for her.

If LA Fashion Week keeps at this pace it's going to be a long week.

It's almost that time again, Fashion Week -- this time in L.A. Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Smashbox Studios in Culver City, CA will run March 9-13th showcasing L.A. designer's Fall/Winter collections for 2008. The preliminary list of designers has been officially announced to include the following designers:

• Kelly Nishimoto
• Orthodox Clothing
• Julia Clancey
• Whitley Kros
• Octavio Carlin
• Joseph Domingo
• Suh-Tahn
• Falguni Creations
• Bow & Arrow by Alan Del Rosario
• Lauren Conrad Collection
• Maggie Barry for Xubaz
• Nicholai
• The Gallery
• Jenny Han
• Kevan Hall
• Samora
• Monarchy Collection
• Ashley Paige
• Pussycat Dolls

As you look at the line up there is probably a bunch of "who the hell's" floating out there but that is normal seeing as many of these designers are debuting their collections for the first time.

I am looking forward to seeing Ashley Paige, Jenny Han, Monarchy, and Orthodox. I also am excited to see two train wrecks unfold on the runway with the Lauren Conrad Collection and (vomit) the Pussycat Dolls -- why again are they showing at Fashion Week?!

Stay tuned because StyleDash will be there through the good, the bad, and the ugly.