Plus poolside fun courtesy of Saint Laurent and Cartier
Words by ELIZABETH VARNELL
Celine debuts a video of its star-studded winter show at The Wiltern
Hedi Slimane, with a keen eye perpetually trained on storied Los Angeles stages, selected The Wiltern Theater, an Art Deco landmark, to present the Celine women’s Fall/Winter ’23 collection, called Age of Indieness, now on view in a just-released video. What’s featured? Short cuts of the slimly tailored rocker clothes, skinny leather pants, capes, thin scarves, and sparkling slip dresses shown on a runway installed underneath the auditorium’s gilded sunburst ceiling. As always, the artistic, creative, and image director of Celine cast the models, including Kaia Gerber; created the set; and oversaw the show’s styling in addition to commissioning the film’s soundtrack, The White Stripes’ turn-of-the-century track “Hello Operator.” Former L.A. resident Slimane also included glimpses of live performances accompanying the show from Iggy Pop, The Strokes, and Interpol — all set at the historic venue built in 1931, where artists such as Prince, James Brown, Bob Dylan, and Nina Simone have previously headlined.
Saint Laurent’s escapist summer Rive Droite capsule
Collaborative projects, limited-edited objects, and ephemera evoking Yves Saint Laurent’s namesake boutique on Paris’ Left Bank remain at the heart of the inventive capsules the house’s current creative director, Anthony Vaccarello, devises for the house’s Rive Droite shops in Paris and Los Angeles. The latest drop, named 37.2, is brimming with summer-ready accoutrements, from insulated glass iced coffee to-go cups to waterproof Lexon radios. Also included are Baccarat crystal glasses in patterns and colors issued exclusively for the boutique, gradient boldly hued heart-shaped padlocks (and matching keys) for declarations of summer love, and a mix of gradient polycarbonate skateboards for beachside rides. Cotton towels, surfboards made in collaboration with French manufacturer UWL, Beau Lake paddleboards, and plastic boat floats round out the collection, as do gratification-delaying point-and-shoot Lomography film cameras.
Cartier debuts elegant poolside play things
The joy of summer play is at the heart of Cartier’s newest Art of Living introductions, the portable Cartier Characters collection. Blue or red beach towels with toucan or panther motifs accompany wooden beach rackets also emblazoned with resting cats — all ideal for nomadic adventures chasing surf and cool sea breezes. For afternoon entertaining along the coast or poolside, the collection also includes new tableware in bright seasonal colors, including acrylic coasters for chilled drinks and Limoges porcelain trays awaiting sliced lemons, glasses to be filled with iced tea, and bowls for fresh fruit. Playful tablescapes are awash in designs derived from maison’s archives, such as palm tree motifs, flamingos, and bell boy images, as well as the ever-present toucan and panther. Each character is reinterpreted in saturated color inside the house’s circular stamp, bringing to mind both passports and paradisal locales.
Archival prints make bold matches at Prada
Prada’s Double Match shirts, pairing prints with stately solids, are worthy of a double take. The men’s one-pocket, sporty-cut shirts in cotton, silk twill, or Re-Nylon complete with bowling collars incorporate recognizable graphics like fans, carnations, bananas, flames, and flower prints — all collection staples since the ’90s — in bold new spliced combinations. The half-patterned multicolored boxy shirts put a definitive end to the solid or stripes, patterned or plain shirt debate: The answer is clearly both.
Bryr opens a shop in San Francisco’s Dogpatch
Isobel Schofield, designer and founder of Bryr, a line of clogs with a cult following, has opened a new light-filled shop adjacent to her studio to house her made-in-San-Francisco footwear. Classic designs — handcrafted with solid wood bases from Spain and supple American leathers from EPA-certified tanneries that are created weekly at the studio — join new additions, including the Sylvie sandal and the Insta-darling Chonk, a just-released chunky clog that’s a style standout meant to last through long days of walking. The shoe’s genesis began shortly after a European vacation Schofield took with her wife, which prompted her to begin sketching on the back of a cocktail napkin during her flight home. Schofield, who designed the boutique herself, uses a revolving color palette but also offers made-to-order models and customized clogs available with personalized heel stamps — a nice addition for Bryr Bridal designs. 1080 Illinois St., San Francisco, 415-800-8093; bryrstudio.com.
Alexander McQueen’s all ablaze
Three perfumers have interpreted Alexander McQueen house codes to create a trio of scented candles helming the British brand’s first home fragrance collection. Each candle, crafted in a combination of black mineral and rapeseed waxes, is a study in contrasts encompassing light and dark, tradition and innovation, and a sense of strength and fragility central to the house ethos. Encased in an egg-shaped black lacquered glass are Ghost Flower with fresh freesia, peony, and patchouli; Pegan Rose plays on the tension between wild rose and peat; and the collection is rounded out with Savage Bloom and its notes of tuberose and oud. The glasses are topped with antique metal lids, protected by a mycelium shell and housed in a fully recyclable wooden crate. $395 each, mcqueen.com.
Sarah Hoover dons bold Barton Perreira shades
Los Angeles eyewear innovator Barton Perreira tapped curator and art dealer Sarah Hoover for its second Women’s Coalition Campaign, this time creating vivid acetate Delia sunglass benefiting The Art Production Fund. Hoover and company cofounder Patty Perreira mined Hoover’s coming-of-age story headlined by summer visits to Los Angeles, a longing to spot mermaids offshore along Pacific Coast Highway, and ‘90s style staples like the Delia catalog to design the jubilantly oversize square frames in eye-catching shades of lime, magnolia, and champagne. For inspiration, Hoover even compiled old catalog cutouts and photographs from her teenage years, arranged zine-style. Shades from the Barton Perreira x Sarah Hoover collaboration are paired with a cleaning cloth emblazoned, naturally, with a mermaid painted by Hoover-selected Brooklyn-based fine artist Hiba Schahbaz, who hails from Pakistan, adding yet another talented woman to the mix. $515, bartonperreira.com.
Hermes arrives in Topanga
Within sight of the craggy Santa Monica mountains lined with wildflowers and white sage, Hermès has opened a Topanga boutique, its latest in Los Angeles. The façade of the ground floor space inside Westfield Topanga is awash in a palette inspired by the neighboring Topanga State Park. The interiors, also designed by Parisian architectural agency RDAI, contain clear terra-cotta stucco and cherrywood. Women’s silk scarves and perfumes sit alongside the French house’s beauty line, ready-to-wear, leather goods, and equestrian accessories, along with a wall filled with covetable bags. Also on hand are jewelry and watches, men’s ready-to-wear and ties, plus tableware, objects, furniture, and games. Art is all around, including photographs by Joel Meyerowitz and Catherine Henriette. 6600 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Canoga Park; hermes.com.
Lafayette 148 launches on the West Coast
New York’s Lafayette 148 is westward bound, opening its first boutique in Beverly Hills in a white-hued gallery-like space that nods to the company’s original Soho address. Inside is creative director Emily Smith’s Fall/Winter 23 ready-to-wear collection, inspired by the Brooklyn Public Library’s serene Central Branch. Relaxed designs emulate the library’s meandering lines, and muted colors evoke the rich patinas of its volumes. Smith took over as creative director in 2017 and has spent her time at the helm refining L148’s pared-back silhouettes favored by women seeking polished yet understated designs, including Reese Witherspoon, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kristen Bell and Viola Davis. Italian-made accessories, bags, footwear, and jewelry are also on hand inside the architectural space, which is covered with subtly embossed L-beam logo wallpaper and filled with wooden podiums by Yucca Valley–based sculptor Dan John Anderson and a credenza by New York artist Tyler Hays. 9533 Brighton Way, Beverly Hills, 323-622-1445; lafayette148ny.com.
Schiaparelli debuts in Los Angeles
Now that Schiaparelli has arrived on the West Coast, racks of eye-catching ready-to-wear, gowns, bags, accessories, and jewelry — often inspired by the archival designs of Salvador Dalí, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Cocteau, and the brand’s revolutionary founder, Elsa Schiaparelli — are turning heads in California.The permanent second-floor boutique at Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills, designed by the house’s creative director Daniel Roseberry in collaboration with architect Daniel Romualdez, evokes the surrealist and whimsical details of Schiaparelli’s Paris headquarters, down to the single ears carved into rolling racks, an homage to a 1938 earring collaboration between Elsa and Jean Schlumberger. The partnership between Schiaparelli and Neiman Marcus dates to the same era: In 1940 Elsa won one of the first fashion awards the department store bestowed. Neiman Marcus, 9700 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, 310-550-5900; neimanmarcus.com.
Erykah Badu links voices with Marni on a fall capsule
Designed to be seen, touched, and metaphorically heard, the new collaboration between otherworldly singer-songwriter Erykah Badu and Marni creative director Francesco Risso is intensely tactile and riotously colorful. The limited-edition capsule of women’s ready-to-wear, accessories, and shoes is part of the multidisciplinary Marni Jam program of experimental dialogues between artists, which links the voices of Badu and Risso and fuses the Italian house’s artisanal roots with the multi-hyphenate creative’s singular aesthetic. Marni x Erykah Badu comprises an assemblage of jewel-toned patchwork dresses with vibrant color-blocked velvets, shearling-collared trenches, and shirts and skirts embroidered with onyx, silver, gold, and bronze sequins. Tailored jackets in wools and suedes join knit capes in oversize stripes and raw-edged sweaters, all nodding to Badu’s revered personal style honed since her early years as a rapper and dancer. Topping it all is a slew of crystal-encrusted bracelets, armlets, tiaras, necklaces, and earrings — as well as an abundance of flamboyant hats, always a Badu signature. 8460 Melrose Pl., L.A., 323-782-1101; marni.com.
Feature image: Marni x Erykah Badu. Photo by Sergio Cattivelli.
Portions of this story originally appeared in the Fall 2023 issue of C Magazine.
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