Balenciaga - Spring 2011 RTW

The first thing that you noticed at Nicolas Ghesquière's terrific Balenciaga show was the casting. He opened with a trio of unknown girls with short, spiky hair that his team cast from the street, and he closed with the biggest super of them all, Gisele Bündchen. In between: Amber Valletta, Carolyn Murphy, and Stella Tennant—all of whom were very nearly bare-faced. "It was important not to disguise them. I didn't want clones," the designer said before the show.

Ghesquière made references to the house's past—a famous leaf-paneled dress of Cristobal's apparently influenced the cocooning shape of pied de coq coats; an antique clock in the Balenciaga atelier inspired a new range of watches—but this wasn't an "archive" show. Nor was it one of the designer's bold leaps into the future. The through lines here: a teddy boy-meets-punk masculinity (for the first time in his tenure at the house, Ghesquière showed creeper-ish flats); wet-looking, plasticized textures; and, once again, the places where the handmade and the technological meet. The last dress, for instance, was finished with couture techniques near the neckline, but a laser machine made the precision cut that separated the bodice from the skirt.

"It's a reaction to a certain kind of sexiness," Ghesquière said. "It's about individuality." That's not necessarily so different from his thinking last season, but if Fall was conceptual, this produced some fantastic, utterly wearable (not just once-and-it's-over) clothes. The list is long and ranges from houndstooth outerwear with a graphic punch (the pattern made from plastic-y faux leather) to sleeveless, backless button-down shirts spliced together from mismatched neon lace to the streamlined, comparatively simple tuxedos to quilted leather moto jackets to the closing pair of spare yet technically complex dresses. Who but Ghesquière could make real life look this interesting?

Milou van Groesen (A MODELS AMSTERDAM)

Eliza Cummings (NATHALIE)

Saskia de Brauw (VIVA)

Britt Maren (WOMEN)

Miranda Kerr (IMG)

See more..

Bambi Northwood-Blyth (ELITE)

Ashley Smith (MARILYN)

Lindsey Wixson (MARILYN)

Delfine Bafort (FORD)

Aymeline Valade (WOMEN)

Jamie Bochert (ELITE)

Kinga Rajzak (IMG)

Liu Wen (MARILYN)

Jana Knauerova (FORD)

Arizona Muse (NEXT)

Anabela Belikova (SILENT)

Bo Don (MARILYN)

Chanel Iman (ELITE)

Katie Fogarty (NEXT)

Valerija Kelava (OUI)

Amber Valletta (DNA)

Ann Catherine Lacroix (ELITE)

Carolyn Murphy (IMG)

Patricia van der Vliet (ELITE)

Stella Tennant (MARILYN)

Carla Gebhart (VIVA)

Kori Richardson (IMG)

Lisanne De Jong (NATHALIE)

Kasia Struss (WOMEN)

Melissa Tammerijn (NATHALIE)

Caroline Brasch Nielsen (ELITE)

Johanna Kneppers-Corbel (WM)

Daria Strokous (WOMEN)

Kirsi Pyrhonen (DNA)

Mirte Maas (WOMEN)

Julia Nobis (ELITE)

Freja Beha Erichsen (IMG)

Gisele Bündchen (IMG)

Nicolas Ghesquière

Verdict - Very Rock and Roll.. Would have likes to see a bit more of accessories.. Love the use of prints..

Rewards program

Today was spent rewarding myself for working... well, maybe not so much working hard as working smart ;) First stop was the Suntec Convention Centre for a sale event by an online shopping site I'm subscribed to. I arrived at 11 a.m., an hour before the event was scheduled to start and was welcomed by this monstrous queue.

While waiting for our turn to enter, Marlon got a crash course in women's designer handbags (he can now tell a Miu Miu from a Balenciaga, which is all that matters to me), a briefing on my color preferences (classic/subdued or bold/striking), and an assignment in my plan of attack.

We finally got to enter the event at 1:30 p.m., not a moment too soon. Let me tell you, things can get ugly when dozens of bag-crazed women are made to wait. Inside, the atmosphere was buzzing but civil—no shoving, grabbing or arguing, thank goodness. The strategy of choice seemed to be grabbing three or four bags, walking around with them while trying to decide on one, and making multiple return trips to a shelf to see if any women had discarded a bag that you were looking out for.

In the end, I narrowed it down to Subdued & Classic vs Bold & Striking. While I was vacillating in front of the mirror, a very fasyon Chinese woman ran up to me and grabbed my arm. She whispered urgently, with eyes wide open,"You HAVE to get the orange one. You have to. It's DIVINE!" and ran off.

It was in this fashion that Bold & Striking won! And so I am now the proud owner of a brand new Balenciaga Arena Covered City bag in the happy, juicy hue of orange!

Thank you, my clients! Thank you!

After a recharging lunch of kinilaw na tanigue and salpicao at 7107 Flavours in Marina Square, we headed off to Orchard Central for Fash Bash, a thrice-yearly bazaar. I miss market and bazaar shopping scene back home, so I check these things out whenever I can. I was curious about the local designers advertised, but when I got there it was really the young Thai jewelry designers who made me drool!

After much going back and forth between stalls, I chose this pair of delicate, handmade gold-plated earrings from Thai designer Fontips Tangviriyamate. I fell in love with the delicate workmanship of the intricate but organic-looking pattern, and the curved wire extending way below the earlobes was a unique touch that I really liked. (One woman asked the designer if she could cut the wire short. Anobuh! Kasama yun sa concept no!)

And with that, my personal "rewards points" are fully redeemed! My shopping moratorium starts now!