The store houses Valentino’s womenswear, menswear and accessories lines across three floors where grey marble coexists with black steel, aluminium and brass. Two other Valentino stores (one in Aspen, Colorado, and the other in Miami’s Design Distric) are scheduled to open this year in the USA, a market that accounts for approximately 25% of the label’s global sales.

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A true polymath, Asim graduated from the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) and completed postgraduate studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science before undertaking the United Nations Development Program, an avenue he did not wish to pursue once he decided to become a psychoanalyst. During his psychoanalytic training he became fascinated with the roles that clothing and appearance played in relation to mind and body and, after embarking on a number of internships in the London fashion industry that started with Maurice Sedwell of Savile Row and ended at Vivienne Westwood, Asim attended Central Saint Martins, where he specialised in creative pattern cutting. 

In 2011, Omer Asim launched his eponymous label, which has become known for its questioning of aesthetics through modern silhouettes, layered shapes, architectural tailoring penchant for multi-dimensional textures combined with primeval sartorial elements to create a sense of regressive future. Such tropes are noticeable in his Autumn/Winter 2014/15 collection, where laddered cotton (hand-woven in a loom in the Ethiopian highlands that was first used over two thousand years ago) is reworked in elegant combinations with knitted linen and silk with various hand treatments and lacquered finishes across a colour palette of black, cream and copper. 

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In the year it opened, and as part of its cultural outreach programme, the Dragão do Mar centre featured the first ever edition of Dragão Fashion Brasil. Organised every year since then by Claudio Silveira with the financial support from commercial partners and local and national government authorities (including the Federal Government of the region of Ceará and the Brazilian Ministry of Culture), the event serves not only as a platform for new and established fashion designers to show their creations, but also entails a public series of lectures, debates, performances, seminars and practical workshops about the importance of fashion and associated creative industries. Anchored by an eclectic creative curatorial intent that is also practical and educational in its purpose, as it celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2014, Dragão Fashion Brasil confirmed its unique role in the global landscape of fashion events.

Between 23 and 27 April, over 45,000 participants made the most of the 2014 Dragão Fashion Brasil by attending at least one of the 40 runway shows where Brazilian and international designers and fashion graduates showed their latest collections, as well as taking part in dozens of presentations and hands-on activities. In addition, the showcase also involved the region’s buoyant manufacturing industry (which includes some of the largest fabric and clothing factories in the world, responsible for employing 115,000 people, producing 116,000 tonnes of fabric, and making 600 million garments a year) in the form of sponsorships and collaborations with emerging designers.

If most fashion creations displayed in the Dragão do Mar complex in the bustling centre of Fortaleza demonstrated interesting treatments of experimental concepts, when it came to their developmental process and direction of execution, proficiency levels unsurprisingly varied. However, a large number of brands stood out for their accomplished results and for demonstrating the benefits of quality and creativity to the betterment of society.
In womenswear, the reinterpretation of a traditional ultra-feminine perspective of fashion could be observed in the collections proposed by Kalil Nepomuceno and Ivanildo Nunes. In their designs, long voluminous evening dresses featured layers of chiffon and lace and the silhouettes were overall accentuated in voluptuous hourglass shapes. Drawing from this principle, but allowing a more dynamic fluidity generated by ornamented fabrics, Lino Villaventura presented a collection with a dramatic colour palette that combined dark earthy tones with off-whites, and print came in the form of ombré gradients, abstract florals and animal skin prints. And, in typical Villaventura fashion, large pleats, bejewelled pins and beaded stitching provided textured contours by manipulating the layering and hanging direction of delicate fabrics such as gauze and silk. 

London-based Italian designer Nico Didonna accepted the invitation made by the organisers of Dragão Fashion Brasil and presented a collection underpinned by the notion of wrapping. Plain off-white, royal blue, red, anthracite or hand-painted dresses made from jersey, viscose, or crepe highlighted the natural curves of the body while adjusting to, rather than shaping, the silhouette. Also playing a key role in this broad category, Mark Greiner and Roberto Dias worked together on a unique contemporary reinterpretation of local folklore that relied on strong original touches such as highly structured shoulders and a good treatment of noble fabrics (including chiffons, soft leathers and jacquards), even if, at stages, the final results were let down by the actual styling of the runway presentation.

However, it was when designers opted for exploring minimal lines and structured silhouettes that womenswear collections were at their most successful during the 2014 edition of Dragão Fashion Brasil. In this sense, Vitorino Campos’s fusion of streetwear tailoring with luxurious fabrics (unveiled just a few weeks earlier during São Paulo Fashion Week), Carol Barreto’s asymmetrically fastened garments and structured cuts (that contrasted with oversized crocheted jewellery pieces), Jefferson Ribeiro’s geometric exercises in an elegant colour palette of white, lemon and crimson, and Gisela Franck’s deconstructed garments made from soft fabrics with applications of collage-like layers all contributed a new vocabulary towards the lexicon of Brazilian women’s fashion.

In menswear, the most accomplished collection was the one that guest designer Nuno Gama presented on the very last day. Well-established in his native Portugal (where he founded his eponymous label in 1991), Gama chose to exhibit and edited version of his Autumn/Winter 2014 collection, where textures and rich materials (including fox fur, snakeskin, astrakhan, leather and thick wools) provided the material frame to extremely fitted cuts.

Currently enrolled in Milan’s Istituto Marangoni, young designer Jonathan Scarpari took a break from his fashion studies to return to his native Brazil and show his latest collection during Dragão Fashion Brasil. Entitled ‘B-24’, the collection drew inspiration from the idea of incorporating the genetic code into the design of unique garments in order to highlight the importance of individuality. This was achieved by working fabrics such as softened leather through hand-woven three-dimensional houndstooth patterns. In addition, Brazilian and Italian cool wool and organic silk were used in fitted tops, tailored shirts, jackets, trousers, and overalls that showed the influence of recent menswear designs by the likes of J.W. Anderson while audaciously and confidently attempting to push forward the boundaries of conventional tailoring.

Rather than focussing on a single collection, like most designers opted to do in Fortaleza, renowned Brazilian menswear designer Mario Queiroz showed 27 looks that he had designed throughout his 18-year-old career, ranging from conventional suiting and casual staples to more confidently daring kaftans, sleeveless jumpsuits, gold shorts, and sequined espadrilles. Pushing the boundaries quite a few steps further, Weider Silveiro and Jadson Raniere displayed the collection that they presented to inaugurate their label 2|Dois in October 2013. Both alumni of the São Paulo-based creative platform Casa de Criadores, Silveiro and Raniere investigated the potential of deconstructed tailoring, androgynous identities, and the influence of 1980s Japanese designers in details such as exposed stitching and frayed fabrics, elongated sleeves balancing cropped waist lines, oversized leather biker jackets, and abstract patterns supposedly inspired by the futuristic graphic artwork created by Peter Saville for Joy Division’s 1979 album ‘Unknown Pleasures’.

When asked to describe 2|Dois to Brazilian followers of fashion, Silveiro and Raniere declared that they hoped it would be ‘a breath of fresh air in a market typified by sameness.’ As their runway show finished and the audience applauded with resounding excitement, there was little doubt that their words would also be most suitable to describe what Dragão Fashion Brasil has achieved over 15 years, and the exciting developments that Brazilian fashion has in store for many more years to come.

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The decision to host a runway show in your own home is a brave and yet challenging one on more levels than one can fathom when first contemplating the idea. Technical imperatives aside (good examples including the light and acoustics of any domestic space, which are, ironically enough, not the most suitable to bring out the best in garments), combining personal and familial life with public and professional realms in the same space is not always a good idea. This is particularly true of events that present the finished work made by an artist or fashion designer that, in such contexts, are often accompanied by a build-up of preconceived considerations about the creative influence and process to an audience of friends, relatives, and complete strangers such as journalists and photographers. However, in the case of the event that unveiled Paula Raia’s Spring/Summer 2014/15 creations, the challenge was accepted, resolved and accomplished with undisputable aplomb at all levels to the benefit of the display of one of the best collections presented during the latest edition of São Paulo Fashion Week.

Designed by celebrated Brazilian architect Isay Weinfeld, Raia’s house is a rare peaceful and green oasis in the centre of a city of towering concrete blocks that house a metropolitan population currently exceeding 20 million people. After taking my seat to watch the show in a room with limestone floors and a wood-panelled central wall surrounded by wide glass sliding windows, I paused to observe the lush garden surrounding the house and the elements that, only after the show, I realised had undoubtedly influenced Paula Raia when developing her collection’s identity: a carefully manicured grass lawn framed a discreet swimming pool designed to look like a natural lake, and a couple of majestic wide and tall trees stood on grounds adjusted across generations around their longstanding existence, in a reverence to nature adroitly illustrated by Raia in her latest fashion range.

Finding inspiration in the universal idea of woman as a resilient tree (and in the indigenous mythological traits that it acquired within Brazilian folklore), Paula Raia resorted to natural fabrics and handicraft techniques to create a collection that is also an empowering celebration of womanhood and motherhood. Hers is a woman stoically and pragmatically grounded to life who, like a tree firmly rooted to the earth, steadfastly battles forces of nature to stand tall and strong for her children (the branches that reach upwards and outwards as physical and metaphorical extended manifestations of body and soul). If the description of woman as a living plant deeply connected to the soil and nature could have resulted in a condescending and commonplace social construction of women, under Raia’s command it managed to straddle the sensitive social line that divides Brazilian women with delicate consideration.

To a soundtrack of African tribal chants (some of which are at the root of Brazil’s folklore music owing to the slave trade during the country’s colonial foundation by the Portuguese in the 16th century), the models descended through a sculptural spiral staircase on the outside of the house and walked in and through two connected large rooms. The result was a parade of 22 looks presented in a gentle cadence through a gradient colour palette of earthy tones ranging from off-white and ecru to straw and ochre in textured natural fabrics such as raffia and straw, as well as in woven silk and cotton organza in some cases meticulously layered to create patterns such as fish scales. 

Elongated silhouettes were prevalent throughout the collection in the form of floor-length column skirts and dresses with sharp angular designs crafted around the shoulder lines. In a number of dresses, stacked layers of contrasting fabrics conjured the geometric designs that were made popular in the fashion and architecture of the 1930s as well as in the bulbous volumetries of Christian Dior’s garments of the late 1940s. Nevertheless, if Raia’s conic structures and pleated details revealed influences of the New Look, they also benefitted from Raia’s own reinterpretation by replacing Dior’s heavy wools with the lightness of cotton lace and of woven or plaited straw. And as the last model exited the house wearing a fitted top made of geometrically layered blocks of ecru and ochre fabrics over a long flowing skirt, and stood in formation with the other models in the garden facing the audience through the glass walls, the sense of communion with nature as the anchoring concept for the collection could not have been reinforced any further.

After the show ended and I began to formulate questions about the collection in my head in case I was able to have a few minutes alone with Paula Raia, I realised how, in spite of all the commotion that always ensues a runway show, the designer remained serenely happy. As I waited my turn to speak to her, I noticed that Raia kept holding her two children’s hands and paid attention to everything they said or did, even when her attention was requested by several people for the most diverse reasons. And when her mother congratulated her by giving her a long, silent embrace with tears running down her face, I quickly came to the conclusion that interviewing her would have been a redundant exercise. Against a hectic and noisy scene, that dignified and unstudied emotional portrait of generational ties and family love had provided all the answers to my questions about the origins of Paula Raia’s confidence, professional reliance, and the foundations for the personal and social awareness of womanhood and motherhood that she so consummately distilled into her sartorial creations.

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While introducing the collection to me, Pombal referred to the images of the mood board to explain his process: “After an incredibly hot summer in Brazil, I just kept wishing for light breezy things. And what came to me was the images of these beautiful changing room pavilions in Miami’s iconic Art Deco hotels and their architectural swimming pools. It was very much about the luxury of the beach resort atmosphere in the 1950s and 1960s and how glamorous women aspired to be at the time.”

To achieve his intention, and in addition to incorporating his trademark fitted silhouettes, Pombal ventured into the realm of the little summer dress featuring bustier cuts, sleeveless and backless tops, and high-waist micro skirts with ballooned or pleated structures that came in a colour palette of silver, black, whites, pinks, and blues. The collection’s fabrics were also carefully chosen to highlight the concept: “This season, I tried to source quality fabrics from all over the world to make sure I got the results I wanted, including an iridescent chiffon made in Switzerland that perfectly conjures my vision of the glistening colour refraction found in floating soap bubbles” stressed Pombal. In contrast to the weightlessness of these materials, the collection also included highly textured fabrics such as jacquards combining cotton with woven raffia, neoprenes, thin memory foams that reshape after being touched, laces, and laser-cut tricoline flowers designed to resemble adornments from 1960s women’s swimming caps. Unsurprisingly, after the collection was presented, the references that kept being suggested by viewers included the Barbarella aesthetic and the disappointing low-key looks in comparison to Pombal’s previous endeavours. Understandable as those interpretations may be, Tufi Duek’s latest fashion offering deserves to be appreciated beyond its apparent simplicity: in spite of its illusive superficial softness, this is a collection whose richness and depth lie in a subtle attention to detail. And for that alone, Tufi Duek’s Spring/Summer 2014/15 deserves a closer examination and reassessment if one is to understand and appreciate its accomplished qualities.

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If Lisbon has had a reasonably successful fashion week that has been running for decades owing to sponsorship agreements, Portugal Fashion uses Portuguese and European Union private and public funds to promote not only some of the designers that regularly show in the Portuguese capital but also, and rather importantly, to allow many budding labels to exhibit their collections in Lisbon, Porto, and internationally in São Paulo, London and Paris. “Portugal Fashion was originally based exclusively in Porto; however, over the past few seasons, we felt that it was important for visitors to the event to be able to see what Lisbon offered too; hence starting there on the first day before heading to Porto” a spokesperson for ANJE explained.
The first day saw Storytailors, João Melo Costa and Alves/Gonçalves showing their collections in the Portuguese capital. Of the three fashion labels, it was the young Melo Costa (whose pieces had been shown during London Fashion Week just a few weeks before) who stood out, with a well-edited collection featuring inquisitively youthful silhouettes and comprising garments made from noble fabrics and adorned with seductive embellishments.

On the second day of Portugal Fashion, and after a three-hour bus journey to Porto (Portugal’s second biggest city after Lisbon), over 100 journalists, buyers and agents were able to witness the collections by Julio Turcato, Luis Buchinho, Daniela Barros, Hugo Costa, and Anabela Baldaque in the environs of Porto’s Customs House, the majestic building designed by French architect Jean Colson and inaugurated in 1869. If Baldaque charmed for drawing inspiration from Swinging London and late 1960s womenswear shapes and patterns, Hugo Costa’s menswear collection (presented under the moniker ‘Bushido’ as an homage to Japanese culture) shone for its accomplished urban and cosmopolitan sartorial tropes, with strong examples of footwear and backpacks to match.
On 28 March, Susana Bettencourt, Estelita Mendonça, Carla Pontes, Katty Xiomara, Diogo Miranda, Mafalda Fonseca, Teresa Martins, Carlos Couto, and Fátima Lopes had the chance to show their designs in the busiest day of the showcase. Perhaps the most international of this cohort, Lopes unveiled a collection that relied on formal structures and dialectic approaches to silhouettes that balanced geometries and lines throughout a crafted range of pieces. On the opposite scale, Miranda opted for a classically elegant collection redolent of Christian Dior’s New look and suggesting the influence of some of Yves Saint Laurent’s early designs. In menswear, João Pedro Estelita Mendonça stood out for his innovative fabrics and deconstructed menswear lines. The last day of Portugal Fashion Autumn/Winter 2014 focussed on presenting commercial ranges of ready-to-wear, accessories and footwear, areas where Portugal has been revealing some solid accomplished successes over the last two or three years by relying on an investment in collaborations with young designers. Miguel Vieira, whose creations have been recognised in Portugal and abroad particularly over the last decade, closed the event with a series of looks anchored by tubular forms made possible by accentuating waists, slumping shoulders and balancing oversized and fitted garments.

However, the collection that stood out for all the right reasons was the one that Teresa Martins conceived for her label TM Collection. Through an intelligent and critical questioning of ethnicity and Portuguese folklore, Martins engendered a range of garments that, when examined beyond the styling and presentation format, revealed elegant details such as painstakingly pleated skirts and blouses, as well as embroidered coats and bags. Voluminous garments and scarves contrasted with fitted pants, and noble gold jewellery pieces were juxtaposed with heavy urban footwear. Ultimately, this was a collection that summed up the unique aesthetic mark that young Portuguese designers have been making on the international fashion arena; one that, despite its genteel level of influence, undoubtedly deserves a closer look.

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In addition to the ready-to-wear collections and its full range of accessories (including handbags, watches, jewellery and eyewear), the flagship will house two new concepts for the brand: a dedicated men’s accessory section and a women’s shoe salon carrying both the Michael Kors Collection and Michael Michael Kors shoe line.

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The 40,000 square-foot store will be Topshop’s second largest retail space in the world after the 90,000 square-foot London flagship on the corner of Oxford Street and Regent Street. Its inauguration will mark the expansion of Topshop/Topman in the US, with new stores planned to open in San Diego and Washington in 2014, and in Houston and Atlanta in 2015. Globally, Topshop trades from around 500 stores, while Topman trades from about 400, while 15 new stores trading both brands are planned to open over the next year in eight countries, including Russia, Turkey and Vietnam.

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The eccentric Dutch label produced another enthralling presentation for a collection where, textured materials and fabrics such as padded leather, fake furs, feathers and oversized knits came in metallic finishes and an array of bright colours were used to create looks that interrogated fashion by exaggerating elements of what, on the surface, were ordinary clothes. Successful examples of this approach included biker jackets that had their dimensions extended in different angularities, jackets that lost their original shape and became oversized by adding numerous feathers, and 1950s-inspired skirts infused with extra volume created by cleverly cutting and layering thick wools.

At a time when fashion designers are under pressure from investors excessively concerned with business profitability, MaryMe-JimmyPaul’s celebration of fashion as an elevating art form reminds us that it’s only because of talented designers’ intelligence, creativity and hard work that the global landscapes of fashion are richer and more meaningful. And for that reason alone, their runway show on 25 January 2014 might have been the most important event of the latest edition of Amsterdam Fashion Week.

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In a small but perfectly edited womenswear range, Laport (a graduate from the Dutch Royal Academy of Art) explored how highly structured shapes and conventional feminine tropes can be used to engender successful praise of high fashion. If his looks started with tailored pants and fitted tops as a way to illustrate how the rigidity of slim cuts serves to highlight the natural curves and lines of the body, they evolved to include laboriously structured pleating and bulbous shapes that exploded from the waist or the chest in different directions to create innovative (and yet very feminine) silhouettes. Nevertheless, and amidst his broken and asymmetric geometries, Laport imbued the collection with dotted floral embroideries that anchored femininity to conventional thinking while subtly questioning the role of embellishment.

Added to a diverse colour palette that comprised neutral blacks and whites contrasted with vivid oranges, yellows and shades of green, this was a capsule collection that, in its curated apparent simplicity, revealed that David Laport is a young designer that the fashion industry should watch for.

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