This past week in New York, Calvin Klein Collection designer Francisco Costa served up a women’s resort collection that was classic Calvin – elegant, simple, and unfettered. One of our favorite pieces was a creamy knee-length dress sported by Jac (above left). At another high point, the gorgeous Karmen Pedaru (above right) donned a crisp and cool sleeveless dress in a brilliant white with beautiful geometric pleating, which seemed to be a gentle reworking of Costa’s architecturally-driven Spring 2009 collection. Against this kind of minimalist backdrop, a velvet evening dress – worn by Kristy Kaurova (above center) – caught the eye with its vibrant yellow and has earned a nod from the fashion media.

THE SHOW

THE SOUNDTRACK

Simply minimalist in wash of guitar riffs and beats courtesy of Toro Y Moi and Krikor – The Dead Hillbillies. On a fashion note, it’s interesting to see that the same Toro Y Moi track started off the Gudrun & Gudrun show during Copenhagen Fashion Week.

REVIEWS

• Resort Report | Calvin Klein’s Palate Cleanser – New York Times Style Magazine
• Calvin Klein Resort 2011 Collection – Style.com
• A Look at Resort 2011: Calvin Klein – Vogue.com

MORE CALVIN

See the full collection at Calvin Klein Collection Women.

CREDITS

Photography by Don Ashby

One of the supreme highlights of Francisco Costa’s women’s ready-to-wear show for Calvin Klein Collection was the appearance of Polish model Monika Jagaciak, or simply, “Jac”. She opened the show, which turned out to be one of Costa’s most minimalist and spare since he took over as women’s designer from Mr. Klein himself in 2004. In my eyes, it seemed as an evolution of ideas first presented in his fall 2007 and spring 2009 shows. (Cecilia Dean, founder of the luxe fashion magazine Visionaire had appopriately described the latter show as “soft geometry” in an interview.) While the show seemed geared towards pragmatic but ever-so-cool dressing for everyday, Jac did sport one of Costa’s three spare, elegant evening dresses in silver silk Lurex. Calvin Klein’s live webcast, unfortunately, did not capture the intricacies of the fabric’s delicate grid pattern. It is good to know that, even with technology, you still need to be there in person to truly see it… That is, until houses start broadcasting in high-definition.

In the meantime, Jac can also be seen as the face of Calvin Klein Collection’s 2010 Spring Collection campaign.

Sources:

• Style.com | Photos: Marcio Madeira &  Greg Kessler, FirstView.com

Along with over 8,000 people worldwide, I watched the A/W 2010 men’s collection from Calvin Klein Collection online on February 14, 2010. I took it as a Valentine to all those who appreciate minimalist design.

Lean and mean for everyday

I love the sheer lean, sharp, serious quality to this collection. GQ’s review is on target when it describes the collection as “crisp, angular, and authoritative as hell”. The futuristic element that Italo Zucchelli has introduced to the men’s line is still present. But this time, it’s more integrated into a real world sensibility without losing its éclat, or spark, as they’d say in French.

Pieces on the wishlist

While much of the construction was quite attractive, these are the favorites of Kaila Hawai’i.

Iron Cuoio Two Button Sport Jacket | Bonded Plongee Leather/Ribbed Merino Jacket

Ottoman Rib Hooded Sweater, espcially in cloud white.

Onyx Rubber Overcoat and the Bonded Sueded/Denim Engineered Pant

Details on all looks at Calvin Klein Collection – Men Fall 2010 lookbook.

(All photos – Source: GQ | Photo: Andrew Thomas)

The aesthetics of walking

One small change I noticed happily was the overall change in model’s walk from the Spring 2010 showing. Gone was the stiff gait that dominated much of the Spring collection’s appearance. Aside from Mr. David Agbodji-see more and less of him here-very few of the men seemed to have mastered the “back from the future” walk that the house was going for with that presentation. On this outing, the men opted for a more direct, boldly confident stride that had an almost militaristic quality at times. (A few did have an odd robotic quality with how they took corners. )

A touch of Grace?

(Source: GQ | Photo: Andrew Thomas)

Is it me or does Mr. Agbodji’s appearance seem to be referencing Grace Jones?  The cut of his hair and the sharp blazers are reminiscent of Ms. Jones on her 1981 album Nightclubbing.

The soundtrack

The sound of the collection is built around various around a them, well, remixes that is. The sound design integrates several different mixes of “Basic Space” by up-and-coming Brit band The XX.

• Basic Space – Jamie xx Mix
• Basic Space – Mount Kimbie/Diskjokke remixes
• Basic Space (Astronomer remix)
• Basic Space (M.A.T.H.E.S remix)

Here’s the original version in the slick video by directed by Anthony Dickinson.

I swear the spirit of Carine Roitfeld must be haunting me…. or, at least, her legacy as a stylist before becoming renowned fashion editor at French Vogue.  Awhile ago, I was browsing photographer’s Mario Testino’s über-cool site, going through his archives. I came across his shoot he did for the Calvin Klein Spring 1999 campaign featuring the one and only Kate Moss. (Ms. Moss’ brooding  male counterpart, by the way, is Mr. Colin Branca, who still works in the industry.)  Shortly therefafter, I learned, via the Fashion Spot, that the stylist was none other than Ms. Roitfeld herself. So not only did Ms. Roitfeld shaped my style consciousness via the triumvirate she formed with Testino and Tom Ford in the Gucci era–you can catch the earlier meditation on their work here–but she also influenced me stateside through the architectonic designs of the one and only Mr. Klein.

While an advertising campaign may seem as irrelevant for some, these Testino-Roitfeld images jumpstarted my memory…  though not exactly in a Proustian way. When Proust took a bite of the madeleine, as he recounts in Du côté de chez Swann, he remembered his youth in Cambray, the warm cup of herbal tea.  In contrast, I don’t ever remember seeing  seeing this campaign. But somehow, they capture the spirit of that era, the end of the nineties right before the new millenium and the end of the proverbial party in 2001. I was a sophomore in New York the year that this campaign was put together and released. For me, this  campaign captures what was the epitome of style for me. A bare white room… simple but just so chic clothes… even the chop of Kate’s hair. As a historical document, the campaign succinctly captures a particular fin-de-siècle aesthetic in a minimalist mode. Personally, it’s almost like discovering a photograph from a decade ago that I somehow recognize though I don’t remember ever having taken it.

Interestingly enough, Testino captures what video couldn’t catch. I had already seen this collection awhile ago, via YouTube. All that’s conveyed is a minimalist aesthetic, conveyed in a broad palette of colors. Yes, there’s the music of the era–Massive Attack amongst others–and the stoic expressions of the models. But the distinctive edge that Testino conveys so well just isn’t there. Reduced to a digital feed-perhaps akin to the archival films of yesteryear-the fine details have been lost, and with it, the ephemeral essence of the era.

Moreover, this campaign, under the direction of Testino and Roitfeld, reminded me what I had originally gleaned from the end of the nineties and has remained with me ever since.  No controversy, no fuss, no overt theatrics. Simple but sensual with a razor sharp edge, like that of a finely tailored garment fitted to the body or  carefully sheered locks of hair against the clarity of white.

WOMEN

Ink Printed Dress, $66.75 until January 10

Tie Front Print, $30 until January 10

MEN

Tuxedo French Cuff Sport Shirt, $35.70 until January 10

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Bonded Zip Funnel Jacket, $61.95 until January 10

I admit that I usually skip over the local Honolulu papers and send my browser right over to the New York Times. This is one area in life where the former New Yorker in me refuses to give up control. But the articles are just too good. This past week, I enjoyed in particular…

• Suzi Menkes’ “American Beauty”, a meditation  on the passage of classic, simple American sportswear : in an interesting exchange of roles, European designers are taking up the simple and practical, while formerly pragmatic brands like Donna Karan and Calvin Klein are delving into the details. Fascinating.

• I was moved and disturbed by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert’s opinion piece, “Times to Remember, Places to Forget” about the progressive disappearance of any local flavor in the American landscape. This particular passage got me:

When they [Americans] remember the Starbucks where they met the one they married or the Gap where they lost the one they didn’t, they will be marinating in memories that happened everywhere but not somewhere, reliving experiences that are located in time but dislocated in space.

From a Hawaiian perspective, I find it even more disturbing to see it happening right here in Hawai‘i at an accelerating rate. Burial grounds literally covered by a Walmart, the continual progression of generic SoCal-style suburbs across the ‘Ewa plain, where we can over our beds in Hawaiian-syle quilts that were actually made in Southeast Asia.

PACK UP THAT ED HARDY,  THE NEW TATTOO TEES ARE HERE

So it seems just about everyone has an Ed Hardy t-shirt. But honestly, when Jon Gosselin  (of the now defunct reality series Jan and Kate Plus Eight) is donning them (see here), perhaps it is a sign to move on. I first heard about Horiyoshi the Third via style.com. The line is based upon the work of Japanese master tattooist Horiyoshi III. Born Yoshihito Nakano, the master was bestowed the title from his teacher. Collections are available for both men and women, covering basics like t-shirts, sweaters (yes, cardigans too) and scarves—all emblazoned with designs inspired by Horiyoshi distnctive aesthetic. While some of the oni designs were a bit too menacing for us, this groovy sweater in light blue from the new Spring 2010 collection seems less intimidating but seemsnevertheless stylish and bad-ass at the same time. Pieces are meticiously done in limited runs in Japan, making a Horiyoshi tee more of a luxury buy. But don’t the finer things in life usually cost a bit more? Distribution is currently limited, but the Horiyoshi brand is in the process of adding an online store to their site. http://www.horiyoshi-thethird.com

VIKINGS WITH TATS: NORDIC DRAGONS BY COLIN DALE

While we’re on the subject of tattoos, I’ve been considering getting one for a few years now. But as I always have to go for the complicated and arcane, I have . Though I have a few different ideas in my head—I’m going to have to get my Hawaiian genealogy down before I get a traditional kākau—the one design I’ve been contemplating is a dragon. Well, actually two. A Chinese flying dragon, fei long zai tian, in a sleeve, completed by a Nordic dragon either on the other arm or on my back, as a nod to the other half of my ancestry. Ideally, I’d get one from Colin Dale, Canadian-born tattoist of Nordic origin. He draws his inspiration of Viking tradition as well as the indigenous Inuit of northern Canada where he was born. The only problem is that Colin lives in Copenhagen. So for now it seems, I will have to wait for one of his tattoos when I finally visit Scandinavia. In the meantime, I will continue to check out Colin’s portfolio on MySpace.

In the web chatter that surrounded Francisco Costa’s recently debuted Spring 2010 collection for Calvin Klein, several references were made to how Costa had revamped Calvin Klein’s famous t-shirt inspired collection from 1994—the same collection that launched Kate Moss as the designer’s muse.

In one of my recent jaunts on YouTube, I happened to find by chance a segment from Elsa Klensch’s Style featuring the same collection. Watching the clip was a flash back into my youth in the early nineties. This was before the Internet explosion, when we all had to actually read the newspaper or watch television to find out was going on. Klensch’s distinctive accent was overly nostalgic for me. Her voice took me immediately back to being a teenager, sitting in a living room in west O‘ahu and watching flashes of an intriguing, glamorous world, as far away from New York as one could possibly be.

Unbelievably, sixteen years have passed since Calvin Klein debuted the collection back in 1993. As I look at the clip now, the passage of the years, the South Asian-infused runway soundtrack, and Klein’s urbanized accent (he did grow up in the Bronx) makes the whole segment seem like something out of an art installation. Some pieces scream the early nineties, particularly the black and white dress and long sleeve t-shirt combos. Other pieces, on the other hand, show how Klein’s relaxed yet sophisticated minimalist vision has moved into the general population. Of course, there are Klein’s models… a young and fresh Kate Moss sharing the runway with the androgynous Jenny Shimizu.

Klein’s commentary is particularly fantastic, saying a lot without saying that much at the same. “The clothes are tonal…,” he says. “…and very face powdery colors… but with an edge, so there’s a surprise of a shot of black or the shot of white or the black with the white. So that there’s always a strength and a softness that I think is very special.” But how much detail can one add to the simplicity of a t-shirt or tank peaking beneath a dress. In the end, it’s the bare juxtaposition of colors and textures that speaks for itself.

As I move into my thirties, seeing this clip makes me realize how much I am a child of the nineties. I didn’t get experience the Summer of Love, the sexual revolution of the seventies, or the eighties’ over-the-top decadence. Instead, the culture of my youth was the sobriety that followed in the wake of AIDS combined with the hope that marked the beginning of the Clinton years. Though the nineties don’t sizzle as other decades did, the nineties had its own particular edge, a clarity and a chic that one could pull off simply with just a flash of white against black. It’s this kind of minimal allure that one would eventually lead me to New York to experience this for the last few years of the decade. Of course, all of this came to a final end with 9/11 and the Bush years, which produced a cultural shockwave that we’re finally coming out of.

As we move as a culture into a new era, and the nineties are now an almost even ten years behind us, it seems appropriate that the nineties start to makes its influence felt. After the explosion of decadence and excess of the last few years, I would be more than happy to have my aesthetic sense sharpened by an edge of black and white simplicity.

But the show we’re really waiting to see in full is Francisco Costa’s 2010 Spring collection for Calvin Klein, which just debuted this afternoon in New York. His 2009 Spring Show, with its architectural pleats and folds, made us think of a 21^st century Jackie Onassis as well as Merce Cunningham choreography. The latter association arose not necessarily from the actual designs, but from the sheer angularity and modernity they embodied and the accompanying musical combination of cacophony and elegance.

In retrospect, it’s interesting to compare Costa’s work with the founder of the house whose house he was entrusted with, Calvin Klein himself. Looking back at his Spring 1999 and 2000 collections, we are awed by the sheer simplicity and minimalism of it. While some of the pieces seem commonplace today, a few are just stunningly simple. Light, ethereal but still utterly seductive, the last few dresses from the 2000 show still leave us breathless. While Costa has upheld the minimalism that defines the Calvin Klein aesthetic, there is progressively more play on structure and form.

Calvin Klein – Spring 2000

Calvin Klein (by Francisco Costa) – Spring 2009

In 2003, a feature article on Klein in the New York Times magazine proposed that Klein, while reinventing fashion into a powerful attitude, did not add a distinctive signature look to the field. Costa, however, seems to be carving a definitive niche for himself. While the look of crisply folded paper in a shimmering white may please the general masses, it certainly leaves a bold impression for those that 19^th French novelist Stendhal once called “the happy few” of which Kaila Hawai‘i is thankfully included.