FTV Review

Herve Leger's Spring Collection

After several shows in a short period of time, which is typical of collections week, most models dread having to rush off to yet another show. But not if the show is for Herve Leger and his slinky, sexy creations.

Herve Leger: "Sometimes I feel that it is important for a woman to be noticed, maybe not every day but once in a while."
Helena Model. : "For me the collection is like a dream, it looks like an old movie. It looks like Marilyn or Jane Mansfield, I love it."
Claudia Mason: It's sexy, it's the most feminine show. You feel just like a sex-bomb. And who doesn't want to feel like that?"
HL: "I wanted to do a happy collection with a look of colour and love of femininity and to seem like a dream. I don't watch TV anymore, you open a newspaper and there's so much bad going on, so much evil. It's all wrong. So I want to fight against that. If you don't open your eyes there's going to be a disaster."

Whatever Happened to Designer Bob Mackie?

Over his 30 year career, Bob Mackie has been tagged with various nickmnames including: The Prince of Glitter, and The Sultan of Sequins. Once a major player on 7th Avenue, Bob Mackie and his designs have all but disappeared from the American fashion scene these past couple of years. So FTV decided to find out what ever became of "Barnum Bob", designer to the stars.
Bob Mackie first gained fame in the 70's as a costume designer for such TV productions as "The Carol Burnett Show" and "The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour". His flashy designs came to symbolize Hollywood decadence, and his name soon became synonymous with glammour, American style.
In 1982 he started his own ready-to-wear line. His showbiz background helped him produce a number of eye-catching catwalk shows.

(Here are some quotes from Bob.)
Quote from BM in 1987: "Anyone can design clothes, but you have to design clothes that will sell. And that's hard."
1988 - 25 year Retrospective"It's exhausting to think I was able to do that much in that amount of time. But I hope it is not the end."
About his 1990 collection: "I went all out and said to hell with it, let's just go for it. And it seems to have paid off. So I'm happy."
1992"There are people out there that want to dress up. They have money to dress, it hasn't changed. Maybe they used to buy eight dresses; now they just buy seven or six."

1992 was Mackie's last runway show. His business folded amidst allegations that he was deeply in debt to the Gambino Crime Family.

1994 - Somewhere in Suburbia Mackie's sitting at a table in a Sears store chatting and signing autographs.
BM: "We're selling fragrance, we have men's and women's, and the people just want to come up and have their picture taken, or get a picture of me, the lucky things. It's just a nice way to meet people."
Does he enjoy this?
BM: "I don't mind. I love it. It's fun."
Why did his business fail?
BM: There were business troubles. And also a terrible recession in the States. That was very hard on the very high-end clothes because they stopped having those events that my kind of clothes were worn to. It was one of those very difficult times. A lot of people fell by the wayside, and also a lot of stores went out of business that carried those kind of clothes.

Some rumours circulating at that time were: Mackie owed $250,000 to the Gambino Crime Family. Exorcisms were performed in his showroom. He borrowed money from Cher and Carol Burnett.

BM: The stories were wild. They were wild and woolly, you couldn't write fiction like that. Well, that was fiction. That was the problem. It was so crazy, people read it in the paper and they believed it. So it was fine. We're past that now. It all turned out to be really ridiculous. Sometimes those stories hurt. The tabloids are very tough and they write anything they feel like to sell a paper.
Right now, I'm very busy doing the Home Shopping Network in the States. I develop those products myself, and I'm on there about every month or two, and that's fun. I might do another ladies' dress line, cocktail, evening whatever. I don't know. We'll see, I'm sort of holding back for the moment.

Le Beuns Douche, Paris

For the last seven years in Paris, the end of collections week has been celebrated with the Venus awards. Here the guests vote for their favourite fashion figure. This fall, for the first time, the Venus awards party was held in the Big Apple at the end of the NY collections. And while people were up for a final blow-out, most of them seemed to take the award with a grain of salt.
Tanya Sarne Ghost designer : "I think the awards are a bit of a joke. To tell you the truth, I'm not really sure what it's all for. It's for me to have fun and say thank you to my lovely models."

Helena Christensen: "I don't know what's actually going on with all the prizes and all that stuff. I don't know that anybody really knows. And when the prizes are given, nobody knows who actually got them. But it's nice sitting here seeing your friends really relaxed. People ask us "Are you girls really friends?" and yes we are and this is a time we can get together. The real reason I'm here is the free drinks."

Karen Mulder "It's a really nice evening 'cos everyone that is there for all those weeks, everybody that was at Milan, Paris and NY. We all get together and pick the people that we like best. It's fun."

And the winners are:
Best Designer of the Season: MARC JACOBS
Best Runway Model: LINDA EVANGELISTA
Best Hairstylist: SAM McNIGHT for GHOST
Lifetime Achievement Award: CLAUDE MONTANA

Lauren Ezersky Paper Magazine : I'm cranky. I'm tired. I'm wearing a wig, it's too tight. I'm wearing this outfit (she's wearing a tight black dress with cut-outs at the waist), all fashion. I really want to go home and stay in bed for two days. I don't know what I'm doing here. It's the last day, the last party. I didn't go to any parties. This is the last one and I dragged myself out to attend."

Anna Sui Collection

Crews are queuing up to see Anna Sui after her show in NY, but first in line are her friends and family. Everyone's waiting patiently.
Jeanne Beker: "Congratulations. That was a great trip you took us on: Chicago, Miami, Hawaii, Vegas and various other places around the world."

Anna Sui: Well, I'm glad that you went 'cos I've been back here working really hard."
JB: Do you think there might be a backlash next season against all this glitz and glamour and sexy stuff?"
AS: I think we've been missing it. And I think that's why people are smiling when they see it. We went through that very plain stripped down, no clothes, no make-up sort of stage. I think it's time now that we started playing again and having a little fantasy."

Anna Sui
by (Sui, Anna). Kawachi, Taka
(SUI, ANNA). Kawachi, Taka. ANNA SUI. Tokyo: Masakazu Takei / Little More, 1997. Profusely illustrated in colour. Text in English and Japanese. Manna from heaven for your inner Japanese teenage girl! This vibrant confection has everything--cartoons, posters, kooky design. Short on biographical details and long on cute, this colourful scrapbook illustrates the world of Anna Sui. But who needs an academic analysis of her collections when you can read about Anna Sui's Favourite Things, like her favourite nail polish (Zulu, dark green, by Nars) or her favourite current band (The Smashing Pumpkins). And there are the celebrity endorsements from the perennially Cool (Supermodels Kate, Linda, Naomi & Amber, Marc Jacobs, Anita Pallenberg, Kim Gordon and Sofia "Anna is the Coolest" Coppola). PLUS, laid in is an invitation to "The World of Anna Sui", a 1997 month-long gallery event in Japan. How could you not want this?

Dominique Issermann

FT spoke to Dominique while on a photo shoot for Italian Vogue. This is what she had to say about photography.
Dominique Issermann: There is a moment when everybody knows that it is nice. It's when everybody shuts up. When you don't hear a sound, when you can hear a fly overhead, when you hear the leaves fall from the trees, you know the picture is good."

In the highly competitve field of fashion photography, Dominique is ranked near the top. But that wasn't her plan. She started out in 1973 as a radically-minded on-set photographer. Her shots caught the eye of several fashion houses and have kept her busy ever since.
DI: "Everybody remembers their wife or husband the first time they met. They remember, "Oh yes, darling you were wearing that cute little pink dress." That's why fashion is so important. It is so motivating for sexual desire, communication."
When the light is beautiful and I see it going, it's like liquid, it's like water. I see it going over trees, the grass, the people's faces and it goes, and nobody understands it. They think it's there forever. And worse, they think the light will come back the next day. It's never coming back. It's another thing. It's travelling endlessly."

Poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen chose Issermann to direct two of his videos. She has also directed numerous beauty spots for French TV.
DI: There is not much difference between the excitement I can have when I photograph a model, than the husband at the side of the pool who says, "Darling, don't move, I'm going to find the camera, I'm going to take a picture." That's what I'm doing. You see an image and you run for the camera and you want to do it."