Turf's Up

Funny how a collection can take a roadside swerve in to a totally different direction and surprise you from behind.  When I last saw rising knitwear designer Lucas Nascimento in the studio, he was looking at graphic Japanese landscapes and kimono cut-outs.  Instead, for his A/W 12-3 collection, he looked closer to home - his home in São Paulo and got inspired by the idea of refining and distilling the city's graffiti and skateboard culture.  Back in February, at the stunning Two Temple Place where powerhouse PR agency RelativeMO staged a day of well-thought out, well-crafted presentations,Monster Beats Mixr, Lucas Nascimento made his LFW show debut and demonstrated why we should be paying attention to this new knittist.

What marks Nascimento out is that his work doesn't look like knitwear at all as he sets about choosing his yarns carefully to knit up his own textiles and create novel textures that go beyond visible wooly knit and purl. The waffle knit looks like a continuation of the jersey cordweave texture created for his S/S 12 collection and once again he sticks to sleek and uncomplicated shapes like pencil skirts, button-less jackets, puncuated by the flash of a yellow poloneck.  A chenille type yarn is woven into a tactile texture resembling the look of a carpet that mysteriously changes in different lights because you've rubbed your hands over it, causing the fibres to change direction.  When this structured carpet-esque fabric is tailored into shift dresses, the effect of a minimal shape vs. maximal texture is quite arresting.  Nascimento may have also created a strapless dress that I finally like with a purple tube dress rising into a peaked rectangle at the bust like a piece of armour.  Astroturf green pops alongside deep purple and yellow as references to Brazilian drinks bottles or in my mind, the nation's obsession with footie and the green pitches. 

The focal point of the collection though lies in the tinsel yarn worked into graffiti print pieces.  Nascimento has elevated the graffiti paint spray to a condensed and precise pattern that was carefully pre-ordained by a computer and a knitting machine.  It's this level of control over the potentially wayward knit,monster beats by dre headphones, that is extremely impressive and again, he restrains himself on shape, sticking to straight-lined shift dresses with a down-to-earth nod of pockets at the hips and gently cocooned coats.  Who knew wearing head to toe tinsel could look so refined?  This isn't lady-lady refinery either.  It's to-the-point and startlingly mature for a designer who is only a few seasons in.   

Here's a heads up of Lucas Nascimento's sample sale going on tomorrow at his studio if you're in London,Sennheiser, with price starting from a bargainous £40.  I sneakily got in there and nabbed a few things before I left for Australia but I promise I didn't leave the rails bare...

Around The Table

>> This should have gone up yesterday and some of you may have seen Grazia Daily's ickle videos of a few of us Brit bloggers being filmed saying some ridiculous things (speaking for myself here...) on a Flip camera but how to begin... well err... basically Arcadia organised a 'round table' dinner party of bloggers and print journalists to connect the two together.

Not that we are different species that need interbreeding but I did find it quite novel that a brand like Arcadia felt it necessary to do some intermediary connections especially as they weren't really pushing any product per se.  Tbe gist of it is that they well and truly don't see why there should be any conflict between the bloggers and 'print' journalists and in the name of 'integration', they thought they'd throw a wee get together.  

So who woz der... the list included Paula Reed, editor style director* of Grazia, Clare Coulson of Harper's Bazaar, Claudia Croft from The Sunday Times' Style, David Lamb of GW and also the newly-wed Melanie Rickey of Grazia who really crosses over between both print and blog also popped in.  Bloggers included myself, Steve of Style Salvage, Disneyrollergirl, Laetitia of Mademoiselle Robot, Liberty London Girl, Kristin of The Clothes Whisper and Yvan of Facehunter as official photographer.  

We, zee bloggers basically knew most of each other and whilst it was good to have a catch-up natter, the whole point was 'integration'.  Of course,Monster Beats Miles Davis Tribut, I have spoken with parties from the 'other side' before,coach bags on sale, but this time round I personally got sat next to Susan Riley, deputy editor** of Stylist magazine (Stylist is a UK-based free publication - if you do know of it, don't you just look forward to it on Thurs...?  I do...) who hadn't heard of my blog.  We wound up chatting about the free publication model and we sort of ended up concluding that in a way, blogs and the free pubs model were quite similar in many ways.  Connection.  Made.  So apparently we can all be in the same room together without making out like we're Montagues and Capulets (except there are no star-crossed lovers... maybe Melanie Rickey encompasses that couple...).  

Of course, for the most part, it is a silly myth perpetuated by catty news pieces that there is an animosity between online and print.  I'm not saying that genuine mistrust or dislike doesn't exist either.  Perhaps all of that was well hidden and politely tucked away on the night.  Whether it exists or doesn't exist, events like this are certainly most welcome.  You can luck out a dinner party and go home with a good connection with someone or perhaps awkward silence will prevail.  What I'm really saying with that cheesy metaphor, is that a few more 'round tables' like these can only really help the two different practitioners of their media relate to one another.  If it doesn't happen, then you've had some yummy food and your tummy is full (hmmm...check out some food porn on my new Snappetite food journal...).  No biggie.  I'll take tender lamb chops any day...   

Alright, it being Arcadia, perhaps there was a bit of subtle prodding.  I promise his will be of interest to the majority of you guys though.  Perhaps some of you have seen the new Topshop website design, which is also applied to other Arcadia brand sites.  Apparently only 20% of peeps can see it as it's in soft launch period.  Basically it makes for a cleaner,discount coach handbags, clearer and prettier shopping experience.  We browsed about the sites on iPads and iMacs.  Pretty pretty...  

 

Not really related to the event as it was on the wall of the Ivy Club already... but hey the sentiment is there...

*

**

Apologies - I just amended the titles... post-Eurostar posting ain't good enough...

Come into the Light

I'm feeling rather good about the fact that my right thumb has started cramping up.  Why?  A few of the designers at Tokyo Fashion Week have ditched the conventional catwalk lighting norms in favour of ambiance which has meant that my thumb has been going mad on the ISO dial on my camera,Monster Beats Turbine, switching it up constantly to cope with the lighting fluctuations.  Cramped hand it is and I'm perfectly content seeing as the spectacle of the shows were definitely enhanced by their whimsical lighting decisions.

First up was Johan Ku, who is an oddity at MBTF in that he's from Taiwan and based in London and yet he expressed a desire to show at Tokyo Fashion Week and was successful upon application.  Geeeeeee whiz and people told me JFW was supposedly a closeted and closed affair.  He was welcomed with open arms and didn't disappoint by choosing to base his collection around the triptastic film Enter the Void, set in a pyschedelic Tokyo.  For those that have a weak constitution,discount coach bags, avoid the film at all costs.  I came out of the cinema feeling like someone had stuck their fingers in my brain and swirled them around a bit.  I'm now somewhat glad I did watch it as Ku's knits, made out of special yarns that glowed in the dark, made all the more sense with that dissolute and neon-lit Tokyo backdrop in my head.  The on and off darkness was therefore what made my ISO dial go from one end to the other, back and forth and made for some freaky shots.  The knits themselves have been reduced in chunkiness from Ku's previous collections,cheap beats by dre solo, judging from his website.  They were supported by leggings and jersey skirts but it was mainly about the textural chunky-yarn tops and voluminous dresses with their extra-terrestrial glowing property.  Long may there be other 'outsider' forces at Tokyo Fashion Week...

Christian Dada's show plunged us straight into darkness but the dramatic spots also made for some ISO dial tinkering.  This was only Masanori Morikawa second show for his label Christian Dada but the anticipation in the crowd coupled with the beginning of the show gave me a flashback of a 'Gareth Pugh Tingle' - a feeling that I felt in the early days of Gareth Pugh's career in London where the start of the show (thanks to Matthew Stone's soundtrack) sent tingly shivers up my back, something that sadly doesn't occur often enough these days.  The comparison stops there seeing as the aesthetic of Morikawa's collection can't really be linked with Pugh's, save for the use of a giant box obscuring the model completely.  This seemed to stem from the idea of protecting the Dada creature - be it with animal skulls, spines running up dresses, thorny branches or quite literally a cage that seemed much more positive in person, than it sounds.  Morikawa's vision didn't become fully reveal itself until the very last instance when a woman in white came out with a train of branches, strangely serene.  The label Christian Dada seems to be one of the new generation of designers in Tokyo that are content with exploring visual impact to the max before figuring out mapped-out wearability and the newly branded Tokyo Fashion Week could certainly do with a double dose of this vision for coming seasons to build up the week's newfound profile.