Vogue collections Paris, Milan, NY, London for S/S 2013

I am absolutely delighted to find out that the first thing I had to do for Part 3 of my textiles course was to look at Vogue and Elle Decoration. How hard can that be? I usually look at the February and August editions of Vogue to look at the fashions for the next season. So this time I was going to buy a December edition for the first time ever, and found this - the undiluted catwalk photographs from the big designer shows. I spent quite a long time just flicking through them.

I would usually be doing this to think about what sort of fashion would suit me, and how I could adapt what I've already got to wear, and make one or two new items of clothing. This time was different, because the idea was to look at the textiles to see what is fashionable.

The first thing that struck me was the remarkably limited range of colours - black, white, bright red and royal blue seemed to be all for most of the designers. There was an obvious interest in contrasts between shiny and matt fabrics on the same person. And sparkly black especially.

There were a handful of big labels whose colours stood out as being different, especially Marc Jacobs (for himself and for Louis Vuitton), Kenzo, and Gucci.

Elle Decoration is not a magazine I usually look at, and I found that the vast majority of photos in it (not distinguishing much between the articles and the adverts) were of natural colours with a strong texture, like undyed linen. I have sent off for some samples of similar fabrics through John Lewis.

89% linen, 11% polyester

Louis Vuitton S/S13
Dress with applique

The next part of the research was to go to a fashion fabric shop and find fabric like the ones in the magazine.

There were several designers who have come up with variations on BLACK AND WHITE SQUARES.

Georgio Armani S/S 13

Marni coat & skirt

100% polyester
 tweed from Peter Jones

All the catwalk photos in this blog today are from Vogue Collections S/S 2013. The fabrics are the ones I found in the last few days in Lewisham and John Lewis.

I particularly liked this tweedy pattern.

It feels softer and lighter than the equivalent in wool would probably be.











The next fabric that seemed to be popular with the designers was SILK CHIFFON in skin colours, often a very pale pink or cream. Valentino (below left) and Rick Owens (middle) put it under plastic. Nina Ricci (below right) made it flow under fringes. Fringes were popular with many designers, the shinier the better, but I couldn't get a sample.

 

100% silk chiffon

Valentino

There were lots of OPENWORK FABRICS in these designs.

Dior - it looks as if the neon comes through the holes to the front of the white fabric.

Celine with string
vest cut out

White vest mesh

Some of the designs had other coloured fabrics underneath, and some had apparently nothing. I looked for some fabric like these, but while there was some classic broderie anglais, and lace, there wasn't anything comparable to the cut work here. So I found some white vest mesh. I have scanned it here over lime. There were a few bits of this neon green/yellow in some designers' clothes, including Janya Watanabe, Roberto Cavalli, DKNY and Diane von Furstenberg. The fabric above is Wernertex Marcella in lime.

BRIGHT RED was popular in all sorts of different fabrics, as long as it came on strong and bright. 

Metallic red for
Jean Paul Gaultier

Alexander McQueen

Red chiffon for
Valentino

I found this red lycra and polyester lace at Rolls & Rems Lewisham

This design is by Barbara Bui. The GEOMETRIC PATTERN is more interesting/ elegant than many of the patterns used by other designers. I found this piece of jersey that reminded me of it. (Although the original looks more like printed linen).

This is a Celine ensemble showing the contrast of satin and matt.
I found some white 'embossed' fake leather, and polyester lining fabric that in life, if not in this scanned version, show a similar contrast.

 

This one shows a Lanvin combination of plain and
textured leather, which, among many other examples,
inspired me to collect these two black fabrics -
a polyester taffeta and a ridged stretch fabric, both in black. 

I also found some 'shimmer crinkle' in gold and black pinspot tulle, both 100% polyester, to represent the frequent use of similar fabrics by the designers.

The last page below shows some of the fabrics which I did not manage to 'match'.
These four come from Chanel.
There were some geometric fabrics in the shop in the same colours as the left hand picture, but by the time I found them I had exhausted my cheek and didn't want to ask for yet more free samples.
The black outfit is made of crochet. The ruff is fake pearls.
The white dress is decorated with covered buttons with a gold rim in classic Chanel style.

The dress on the right of the page is embroidered with flowers. I recognised the style and colours from an old kimono which I grew up with.

It was at this point that I recognised how much Japanese influence there is in next season's designer clothes. Shown in the choice of colours, the straight down silouette, and the many oriental models.

Other common themes I could not find were thick bright colour/ white or black/ white stripes. They seemed to be everywhere in the collections, and nowhere in the shops.