vogue italia

chromat is in the september issue of vogue italia!

the editorial was shot by steven klein,

styled by patti wilson.

model crystal renn wears

the chromat bralette for the story

titled 'a point of view.'

chromat ss12

the chromat ss12 collection is up!

the collection of cages, dresses and bathing suits was inspired by ornate roman catholic cathedrals, devout hooded women and pagan rituals.

shot by lauren duque, hair by dakota heman, models lizzie arneson and kasimira mosich-miller.

fashion tonight out!

tonight! fashion! out!

international playground is throwing down tonight!

at the retail store at 13 stanton st (between bowery and christie) from 7-10:

tequila, bands and CHROMAT SHOES!

tonight marks the debut of chromat's first ever shoe collaboration!!

each of the designers in the showroom- mary meyer, study, upstate etc- designed textiles to be made into oxfords by osborn shoes. osborn is a brooklyn-based footwear designer that hand-makes all their shoes in guatemala. tonights release will be a limited edition- 12 pairs to be exact- so get em while they're hot! chromat's are in white leather with aluminum zipper teeth. i can't wait to see them! and you! tonight!

jean paul gaultier!!!

over the labor day weekend, i split town for an amazing little getaway to montreal, quebec! i rode around on the city-wide rentable cruiser bikes, ate (several) fresh baguettes, listened to electro music in a park next to a buckminster fuller geodesic dome, had a hilarious dinner in bitch-black darkness (with blind waiters!) and oh yea VISITED MY IDOL JEAN PAUL GAULTIER!!!!!

he had a retrospective at the museum of fine arts in montreal and it was amazing. with the mcqueen exhibit, the japan now exhibit at fit and now the jean paul gaultier show, i am filled to the brim with inspiration. it so cool to see how high the bar has been set for structural innovation in clothing. i much prefer these exhibits to runway shows or magazines. in the museum format, i can spend as much time as i want analyzing each seam and material intersection.

jean paul gaultier is the master of cages. waaaay before i started getting into boning and corsetry, pretty much before i was born, jpg was goin AT. IT. i loved seeing his original corsets and was impressed to see that almost all his cages were made of satin or leather. i'm assuming this means he manufactured his own satin boning encasement, which is really impressive. guess its time to step up my materials game to luxury level!

another thing i loved seeing was jpg's use of fringe. i've never really worked with fringe; coming from the south, i always associated fringe with country-western line dancing type outfits. however, the way he used the material transformed the tiny strings into a web of delicate gathers or long, lean musculature. it was beautiful.





aaaand here's three blurry pictures of me geeking out at the show. i wore my favorite chromat halo and underwire cage in jean paul gaultier's honor, to the amusement of all the guards and docents at the show. if i had to pick one, my favorite piece in the show would be the puffy black skeleton corset completely covered in black jewels. i loved the oversized bone structure and the detail to outlining the body.

in comparing two of my heros, mcqueen and gaultier, i read this from an interview with nathalie bondil, the curator of the jpg show and thought it was appropriate:

"Nathalie: I very much admired what McQueen did. McQueen is very dark and Jean Paul Gaultier is like joy, optimism. They have very different sensibilities of what is a human being. One is like dark and one is like light.
For Gaultier, fashion is for real people. McQueen is not for real people. His work is fabulous – like sculpture, but you cannot live in it. There is a corset is in wood, but you cannot move in wood. And with that dress painted by spray guns projections, it is like the woman is attacked. Gaultier said he would have done it with real painters – like a dance, like an interaction with human people."