photo by Cool Chic Style Fashion Blog

Yohji Yamamoto’s opening and his entire show to present his spring-summer collection for 2012 will be accompanied by the calm and sensual voice of the great George Moustaki. The only interruption will come from the inspiring chorus’ sung by the Amabile Chamber Choir and the Petits Chanteurs de Saint-Marc, with their magnificent rendition of “Ma liberté”. The measured rhythm on the catwalk is anything but frenzied, and is seldom shared by more than two outfits at a time. These aspects invite you to relax and fully appreciate the spectacle of a collection that blends and allows the musical score to tell the story.

photo by Cool Chic Style Fashion Blog

Clothing items and music celebrate the best of Yamamoto’s sartorial expertise that is totally untouched by any stylistic conditioning in trends.

Minimalist lines combine with generous volumes in a challenging exercise in asymmetry and layering, draping and ruffles. Colours and imperceptible patterns as usual create that extraordinary synchronizing between modern and traditional styling in which the Japanese designer is an expert composer.

photo by Cool Chic Style Fashion Blog

photo by Cool Chic Style Fashion Blog

A season that dresses and celebrates a passionate, free, cultured and committed femininity that is almost poignant, in the poetic respect that Yohji Yamomoto manages to put together.

photo by Cool Chic Style Fashion Blog

Come and discover the 2012 spring-summer collection at IVO MILAN!

…and on youtube, the more suggestive shot of the entire show!

Many thanks go out to Stefania Motta of COOL & CHIC STYLE FASHION for allowing us to use this wonderful footage!

Contrary to what you could think on reading the name, Peter Non is an all Italian product with head office just below the splendid Dolomites. Peter comes from the Greek term “petros”, rock, and indicates the solidity and robustness of fully handmade footwear. The negation “non” stresses the idea behind it, something really important for the project’s young designers, that of a “non” shoe.

This principle, a paradox for something that is, in fact, worn, wants to stress comfort instead of function, the naturalness and spontaneity each model is worn with. An example dear to the company is that wearability can be compared to the same primary instinct with which you start walking with your right or your left foot.

The cork and rubber sole, the same as the famous German Birkenstock, is designed to be a natural support and accompany foot movement. This way it guarantees such well-acknowledged anatomic properties that they become an absolute must in the conversations of whoever suffers, or has suffered, with foot problems.

Along with its craftsmanship and fundamental anatomic characteristics, Peter Non concentrates on the design of uppers, the exclusive choice of natural, ecologic materials, and on unequalled quality. Rope, straw, raffia and leather woven into very detailed textures, evocative of precious fabrics like broderie anglaise and the historical Vanoni embroidery, but also geography and landscapes. Summer collection models are named for places inspiring them: Almeria, Granada, Santa Fe. The warm, arid colours of those areas around the Cabo de Gata desert and the typical decorations of Arab Andalusian forts translated onto this collection’s uppers.

In their rich design, Peter Non moccasins and sabots are just ideal for both more sober clothes and to contain the daily rhythms of more complex clothing styles.

The Comme des Garcons spring/summer 2012 collection, baptized White Drama by Rei Kawakubo, is steeped in symbolic meaning. The title introduces the major role played by the leading color of the parade – white - very unusual in the world of the Japanese school, which has always focused on the possibilities and conceptual properties of black.

The extremely scenic impact of the light and structure of the clothes intersect, helping to shape a considerable body of thoughts on the status of women, inside the potent setting of religious ceremonial wear. Floral patterns that grace tulle impalpably or more exuberantly in sewn lace, decorate, wrap and contain; volumes exaggerated with crinolines and insistent three-dimensional stratification cannot help but evoke the wedding dress. Just as the hats, headdresses, veils covering their faces, the atmosphere is one that leads to the altar.

But the genius of Rei Kawakubo is not content merely to stage the ceremony; she constructs its probable developments and reveals its dark implications.

The pace of the ritual is trapped by huge and long sleeves, restrained by festive ribbons. The most magnificent architecture of dresses and skirts reveal their double nature as cages, prisons of the spirit. In this perspective, the improbable and artistic polystyrene hairstyles seem more like complex, deformed brains searching for a way to escape.

A mocking, controversial, even melancholic analysis of a world of women barely emancipated, still poorly understood, and sometimes victims of their own illusions is presented on the catwalk, and is then reshaped in pieces of a collection of sensational beauty, sensitive to details of rare poetry. An aesthetic legacy of the undisputable and essential right of every woman to like herself as much as possible!

Watch Comme des Garçons spring-summer 2012 collection, from Palais de la Femme, Paris

We are photographing the new collections… keep up with us to find out all the news, the opening of the shop in Padua and the catalogue, which is growing day by day!

The photographer, Orlando, and the model, Helena, in the magnificent vest in eco leather and linen by Simona Tagliaferri, an extraordinary new entry!

Amanda, the “historic” model, with an outfit by Y’s-Yohji Yamamoto

and Viky, also in an outfit by Y’s-Yohji Yamamoto, with classic spring shoes by Trippen

Checks and inspections…

And the photos start again!

Amanda, in an outfit by Y’s-Yohji Yamamoto

Helena, looking for the right position on the photo set in a tunic dress by Rick Owens…

But in Padua it is still the dead of winter, as Marisa‘s outfit demonstrates…

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…And the climate gives us a minute for a few winter pearls.

Central shop window: sheepskin pea coat, Nigel Preston, sweater with crocheted detail, Gudrun&Gudrun, scarf in modal and silk, Per Una Lira, skirt by Issey Miyake, hat by Scha and series of bags in leather by Dragon…

Internal bodice with Y’s-Yohji Yamamoto coat, wool and leather dress by Dusan and boots by Marséll-”goccia”

Entry window display, with coat by Daniela Gregis and dress by Sacai Luck