Fashion goes digital with an LED gown

As a lower-powered alternative to conventional lightbulbs, LEDs have lately emerged from the stuff of blinking signs into many aspects of our daily lives. Times Square and Las Vegas are already famous for their flashing, colorful LED billboards, but lately we’ve been noticing a few NYC buses and subway entrances festooned with LED advertisements. As fashion channels developments in the world around us, it is no surprise that designers have been adapting this technology into their collections.

Hussein Chalayan tried it first, creating seemingly magical LED-lit dresses for his fall 2007 collection, and now, the Galaxy Dress, a new project from London-based smart textile company CuteCircuit, sparkles with more than 24,000 LEDs and 4,000 hand-applied Swarovski crystals. Its circuitry is hand embroidered on a layer of silk, creating a soft, fluid fabric. Although this dress is lightweight, ironically, the heaviest part is not the lights, but rather the 40-layer pleated silk organza crinoline.

The Galaxy Dress is still in its prototype stages, but demonstrates how clothing can create new forms of communication as technology pushes fashion into unmarked territories. Although it may not yet seem realistic to wear LED lit shirts or dresses as an everyday look, current developments like headphone wiring in snowboard jackets and solar-paneled laptop bags might have seemed crazy a few years ago, too!

via: Ecouterre

Anna Wintour, saving the world for fashion.

She was once so mysterious that "The Devil Wears Prada" resorted to thinly disguised fiction to betray her secrets — but suddenly Anna Wintour is everywhere: in the new documentary "The September Issue"; being interviewed on David Letterman; in this new commercial for her latest pet project, Fashion's Night Out; and even, on the big night itself, in Brooklyn and Queens. Shortly after, she'll make the hop across the pond to London, whose much-ignored Fashion Week she hasn't attended in two years — even though she was born and raised there!

But the big question remains: Can Anna Wintour save the fashion industry? Clearly, this season the rag trade has displayed an ingenuity and resourcefulness it lacked in flush times. Wintour's pet project, Fashion's Night Out, will bring top designers, fun, games, drinks, and shopping for all to stores around New York — and around the world — on the eve of Fashion Week; while London's Fashion Week, in a bid for relevance, has wooed back several prominent designers who had begun showing in other cities, including Burberry, Matthew Williamson, and Jonathan Saunders.

News flash: What recession? SS10 fashion weeks defy expectations.

With all the design houses going out of business lately, one might have imagined September's upcoming fashion weeks would be tragically quiet, underattended affairs. One would, in that case, have been utterly mistaken: IMG is reporting that the number of designers wanting to show at New York Fashion Week is up this season, while the British Fashion Council is staging a concerted – and so far quite successful – effort to lure back local designers to London's much-ignored fashion week.

Prodigal sons and daughters returning to the British Isles for SS10 include Burberry, Matthew Williamson, Pringle, Jonathan Saunders, and Clements Ribiero. Next step: Bring back the editors. WWD barely even bothered to cover last season's shows; this time around, PR diva/reality star Kelly Cutrone has been charged with filling London's front rows with American buyers and media. Will it work? Let's hope so – London has always been a hotbed of fresh talent and wild prints, and it would be a shame to lose its quirky charms.

News flash: Making it work, part 2

It's amazing how a little recession can foster a whole lot of creativity. Halston, it seems, has followed the trend we remarked on in our Holiday Bytes 2008, and created a video (pictured) instead of a runway show. Several young London designers, including Modernist and Antoni & Alison, are forgoing the runway for more budget-friendly presentation formats. And while mass-market chains are axing their spin-offs right and left, young New York designers are, in WWD's words, "invigorated by the challenging economy" -- rising to the occasion by paring down lines, skipping PV Paris, and discovering new ways to create their vision at a lower price point. Meanwhile, in Stockholm, new designers are pairing with graphic design and photography students to create splashy billboards to promote their brands. Yes they can!

Ostwald Helgason (London)

Taking their shared love of ballet as a departure point, German-born Susanne Ostwald and Icelander Ingvar Helgason together formed Ostwald Helgason, a finely crafted, highly theatrical line of womenswear. Their spring collection is inspired by Francis Poulenc's film Les Biches, and makes decadent use of the Rococo era's rich golds and cobalt blues.

Via Nylon

Jean-Pierre Braganza (London)

Formerly a visual artist, Jean-Pierre Braganza knew he was in the wrong field when he worried more about what to wear to his opening than how his paintings were hung. (For the record, it was a silver skirt and blond mukluks.) A Central St Martins grad like nearly every London designer of note, Braganza worked for Roland Mouret before starting his eponymous line in 2004, and quickly garnered notice from the likes of Alison Goldfrapp and Joan Jett. For fall, he offers futuristic structured knits inspired by science fiction, with leather detailing on wool waistcoats, armor-like cinched jackets, cropped tuxedo jackets, all in his usual achromatic palette livened up with shocking pink.

Les Chiffoniers (London)

Designer Leena Similu didn't mean to start her own line - it just happened to her. Having made herself a pair of leggings from some leftover PVC, she found them in demand by hordes of stylists after Kate Moss traipsed all over London in them. Not that Similu was a fashion newbie - far from it, she graduated from Central St. Martins and worked for Jil Sander and Stella McCartney. So for fall 08, she launched a full collection of her very own, featuring easy - and often shiny - separates for the girl about town: Les Chiffoniers, named after rag-and-bone men. The future is looking bright and shiny indeed.

Via Elle

Richard Nicoll (London)

Drawing on a colorblocked palette of pastels and brighter tropical hues for his collection of easy sportswear, this Central St. Martins grad is quickly becoming the first of his generation of young British designers to mature into a maker of wearably chic clothing. While goth-shocker Gareth Pugh restrained his usual excess to put out an imaginatively sculptural collection for SS09, it's Nicoll who channeled the spirit of the moment into something women will want to wear, and not just for a costume party. Eschewing this year's omnipresent ombré for two-tone colorblocking, he created a selection of mix-and-match separates that include the season's popular sheer tops, long vests, boleros, and cigarette pants, not to mention a T-shirt-inspired silk shell.

Okley Run (London)

M.I.A. defies classification. International and interdisciplinary, the British-born singer, graphic designer, and visual artist, daughter of a Tamil freedom fighter, is known for her wildly patterned stage clothes almost as much as her pastiched, multiethnic, hip-hop-influenced music. Her colorful handmade clothes were at the vanguard of the current tribal trend espoused by influential designers from Balenciaga to Junya Watanabe to Oscar de la Renta, and a stint modeling for Marc by Marc Jacobs cemented her status as eccentric fashion icon. Just this fall, tiring of being copied by others, M.I.A. launched a small line of tribal-print clothes, called Okley Run, which she sells from her website in her typical do-it-yourself fashion. 

Via Nylon

Jonathan Saunders (London)

New Yorkers got a fresh jolt of color amid all the black when the Scottish-born designer Jonathan Saunders began showing his print-happy collections in the Big Apple not year. With loads of colorblocking, bold tailoring, and of course his signature multicolored prints, Saunders also caught the attention of Target, where he collaborated on their latest Go! International collection, a younger but still edgy take on the designer's cheerful aesthetic.

photos of Target collection via Nylon 

Modernist (London)

The brainchild of designers Abdul Koroma and Andrew Jones, Modernist was formed in 2005 and has since been turning out starkly modern (natch) womenswear, laden with plays on texture (fur, cable knits), volume (slim tights, baggy trousers), and layering. Inspired by folk, craftwork, and the macabre, the FW08-09 collection was nearly all black, with flashes of grey and orange marking the show's finale.

David David (London)

An art-school grad and onetime painter, designer David Saunders was drawn into fashion when he shared a flat with Fashion East director Lulu Kennedy. Now a darling of the London fashion world, with his David David line of mens- and womenswear selling at Dover Street Market and Seven New York, Saunders channels a less flowery Emilio Pucci with his colorful graphic prints, displayed for SS 2008 on a series of blazers, short jumpsuits, knitwear, and even socks.

From Somewhere (London)

Founded by Orsola di Castro and Filippo Ricci in 1997, From Somewhere's goal was to make eco-fashion that wasn't about "hemp sacks and uncomfortable itchy socks." Instead, the designers used production waste fabric to create quirky, mixed-fabric dresses that for SS 2008 range from stripes to colorblock to plaids, from long, slim jersey pieces to short, smocked shirtdresses.

Monsoon Fairtrade (London)

British fast-fashion chain Monsoon was founded with an international vision by Peter Simon, a regular traveler to India who started out in 1973 selling ethnic handicrafts on Portobello Road.  Building on their main line of bohemian, ethnic-inspired dresses, boleros and beachwear, their new collaboration with the organization Fairtrade is a small line of Fairtrade-certified cotton tees and jeans in muted tropical tones. Monsoon also sponsors Estethica, a loose group of green suppliers, and through its Accessorize brand, is supporting a workshop for Afghan female embroiderers, bringing their traditional embroidery to the British high street.

Mark Liu (London)

A former Alexander McQueen intern and grad of Central St Martins' Textile Futures program, Mark Liu creates fashions that are futuristic in both their appearance and their outlook. Zero Waste Tailoring is his method of designing garments whose pattern pieces interlock like a jigsaw puzzle, saving the 15% of fabric that normally gets wasted in the cutting process.