Top Picks: Alexander Berardi Spring 2011

Elegant casual and Parisian chic from Alexander Berardi’s Spring 2011 show. You just can’t go wrong with classics like these – horizontal stripes in black and white, camel coloured trench coats, filmy floral tea dresses, espadrilles and belted polka dot babydoll dresses.  And I adore the sequined gold harem pants, I never would have imagined myself in such a thing, but I want these!

Top Picks: Christian Dior Spring 2011 Ready-to-Wear

Am I sick of Galliano for Christian Dior yet? Never!! So this ready-to-wear collection is nothing on the couture I posted a few days ago, but ain’t it sweet? Keeping nautical in for spring I see – hello sailor! – and more catseye sunglasses. Oh, and the Bettie bangs (false on the models), brilliant! I’ll post up the hair and makeup shots as well, so you can get a closer look.

I’m more a fan of the styling of the show, than of the individual pieces, but my favourite in the collection is probably the pink ribbon dress. I would love to dance in that… not that there’s much to it. It reminds me a little of Cyd Charisse’s green flapper dress in Singin’ in the Rain. Laura Glaess has a lovely recreation of that. Enjoy!

Jo’s Picks: Chanel Resort 2010

The 350 guests reclining on sun beds in the famous white tented cabanas certainly felt privileged to be witnessing the extreme glamour of the designer’s learned-but-light invocation of an important part of Coco Chanel’s biography, one that was overlaid with passing allusions to Visconti, Fellini, the Venice carnival, and the city’s art treasures.

“I wanted to reinvent the mystique,” said Karl Lagerfeld, talking about locating the collection in one of Coco Chanel’s favorite summer haunts—she visited Venice for almost ten years beginning in 1919 and met Diaghilev here.

“Coco on the Lido,” as Lagerfeld called it, started with a tableau of figures in tricorne hats and cloaks—cover-ups for a play on girdles and bras as bathing suits. Next came Tatjana Patitz promenading in creamy lace as the picture-hatted Edwardian mother in Death in Venice, her sailor-suited son Tadzio and his two sisters in ingenue fan-pleated dresses trailing behind. From there, the sequence took off into matelot- and gondolier-inspired stripes, interpreted in long-line fine-knit cardigans and playful beachwear with funny red and white striped wedge booties. The references kept streaming out—a halterneck dress fashioned in plissé knit to suggest Fortuny, the deep Doge red and the golden lion motif of the city flag, shimmery sequins and glass embroidery made to imitate the light of Venice glancing off water.

Pictures and Blurb from Style.