LA Skips Spring..

Today was 75 degrees. Its the last day in January. LA weather is so.. unpredictable lately. There are some awesome looks for Spring09 that makes me wish that LA wont skip spring. Take a look at the amazing craftsmanship, tailoring, material use and design that went into the collections featured on style.com's Spring09 Trend Reports. style.com has six different trends for the spring, which include: depression chic, geometry lessons, goddess worship, marrakech express, sporting goods, and trash and vaudeville. I dont think some of these postings are necessarily the best of the respective designers, but they sum up the trend well.

I did not put much thought into model castings until very recently. A model has to have a certain look that appeals to the designers showing collection. There were several models in the trend report that did not embody the clothes they were wearing, which is a shame. Here are a few of my favorites:

_inspiration
"...the imagery was coming out of the twenties: satin palazzo pants, abstracted flapper fringe (done as tiered tabs on a drop-waist dress and a coat), and antiqued Lurex."

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"... Fabrics inspired by frayed curtains, antique wallpaper, and furnishings that roused a fleeting but distinct sense of the American prairie, threadbare times, and the colors of the dust bowl."

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"America, womanly, Broadway, Perry Ellis, country, naïveté…"


... Katie Holmes looked 10000x better.



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"But now Kawakubo is back to black, presenting it almost as a mathematical treatise in geometric volumes. Hexagonal cutting was the central motif, shaped into poufy geodesic tops and cocooning skirts."


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"blurring"—that is, rendering things not quite as they seemed. Futuristic."


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"Whatever's happening now," he said, "it's the end of fake. What's not real will go. What we have to do now is make life easier for women."

Even when times are dark, there's still room for clothes to make women keel over with desire.

_summary
"It was glamour with a capital G at Marchesa."


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"Everything was perfectly beautiful, maybe a bit too much so. You wanted to see de la Renta loosen up."


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".. wrapping the body in the style of ancient Greece... draping."

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"Citing Bruce Nauman's False Silence installation as inspiration, she added decorative fluorescent piping to short dresses.."


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"Hermès = equestrian heritage + sophisticated world traveler."



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"Simply put: Max went minimal for Spring."




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"The overall effect was one of unbridled optimism. We could all use a hefty dose of that, and if it comes in the form of a flirty dress that gives us Aphrodite-like powers over men, so much the better."


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"In a season of prints, Etro's are subtle standouts."


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"This was one of Gaultier's tamer collections. It felt more like an exercise in styling than a tryout of new ideas."


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"Ralph Lauren looked to North Africa for Spring."


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"Reem Acra wove a tale that began in the attic of a royal castle, the kind of magically cobwebbed place where one might chance upon a forgotten stash of silks and gems."


_summary
"An exploration of 'matte and shine, playing with textures to see how they reflect or absorb light. And playing with our house codes.'"


_inspiration
"..by the geologically extreme landscapes of Death Valley, Arizona, and Ethiopia."


_summary
""Accessible" and "pragmatic" can sound like synonyms for "boring" in the lexicon of fashion-speak, but Van Noten's simplified solutions for urban elegance quickly put a stop to that kind of talk."


_inspiration
"she used this transition—and, specifically, a comparison between the light of each city—as the basis for her Spring collection."


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"Titled "The Storyteller," the Spring collection was inspired by Out of Africa author Karen Blixen."


_summary
"Simply put, she's got cool-girl style down to a science."

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"The imaginary muse for his Spring show, he said, was a sexy, devil-may-care sort who would play basketball in a dress; hence the mesh insert patterned like beads of sweat on a draped jersey goddess number. But even with the infusion of brighter, more body-conscious looks, Wang's familiar grunge girl was still very present here—her toughness heightened by pierced and fringed black leather platform sandals."



_summary
"All bling and rock-chick fabulousness."


_inspiration
".. by a grayish portrait by Marie Laurencin, who painted Coco Chanel in the twenties, but really, it was yet another of his long, allusive, sometimes mischievous excursions around the house set pieces."

_designer says
"... land art blossomed only after humans began space travel and 'people began to see the Earth from a different perspective.'"

_summary
"Do It Yourself" conservation theme.

As GQ correspondents at men.style.com say.. whats in this coming spring is "the bum look". Whether or not the economy is the inspiration for the entire season, no one knows, but based on this forcasting, get out your old clothes and start ripping in some holes.


All summaries/inspiration quotes and images from style.com.